For the Chief, a Quiet Exit and a Vow to Return : Departure: Gates acknowledges humiliation but asserts that he will be back one day from his involuntary leave.

A computer-printed sign above the door of Room 619 proclaimed, “GATES MUST STAY--GATES MUST STAY.” But as the door opened late Thursday afternoon, Daryl F. Gates was leaving, perhaps never to return as chief of police in Los Angeles.

Carrying a jam-packed satchel in each hand, a stern-looking Gates stepped from his sixth-floor office at police headquarters at 4:10 p.m., four hours after the city Police Commission stripped him of power pending ongoing investigations into the beating of black motorist Rodney G. King.

“Well, I guess there’s humiliation in all of this, as you might expect,” Gates said quietly, looking straight ahead, as he moved through a steamy hallway obstructed by reporters and television cameras. “(But) I think we’ll get through it. I anticipate getting through it.”

Gates was asked whether he expected to return from the involuntary 60-day leave, which he has vowed to fight in court and which has seemed to signal a swelling political tide to remove him permanently from office. His answer was emphatic: “Oh, absolutely. No question about it, I’m coming back.”

The departure, about the same time that Mayor Tom Bradley was briefing reporters on the issue at Los Angeles International Airport, was quick and seemingly anticlimactic, the end of a slightly shortened but busy workday for the man who has been the city’s powerful and controversial police chief for 13 years.

Gates was dressed in gray slacks and a blue blazer. He had ordered out for half a tuna sandwich after the commission action shortly before noon. He then spent much of the afternoon behind closed doors, he said, negotiating details of his leave with members of the commission.

The throng of reporters awaiting Gates’ departure witnessed two false alarms, once when the embattled chief stepped from his office to walk 20 feet to a hallway drinking fountain, a journey that required two bodyguards to keep back aggressive cameramen. Gates later traveled the long corridor to the elevator to take care of personal business on the eighth floor, declining to answer questions as his staff tried to keep the cameras out of his way.

“CNN, how about backing off?” one bodyguard yelled.

“Back off, CNN!” another hollered.

Gates returned 15 minutes later. He had been videotaping a goodby message to officers in the department.

“They do feel badly about all of this,” he said later. “I’m concerned about them. But they’re strong-willed people. They’re professionals . . . and I know they’re going to do a great job.”

By the time Gates did leave, the crowd of media people had thinned to half a dozen die-hards.

As a guard shut the door behind him, Gates walked past his conference room--the same room where nearly a month earlier he appeared at a press conference to thank amateur photographer George Holliday for turning over the videotape of the King beating.

Gates said the satchels in his hands contained just a few of the many mementos he kept in his office.

“I’ve got a lot of personal things,” he said. “If I had to get all my personal things out of the office, I’d have to have a couple trucks.”

He left behind a display case filled with some of them--including plaques from the nations of Israel and Argentina and a gold trophy presented by the department’s Northeast Division in 1986, with the inscription: “Our sincere appreciation for the Number One Chief of the Number One Police Department.”

As he boarded an elevator with three bodyguards, Gates said he still doesn’t understand the commission’s action.

“I don’t think there was a good explanation for it,” he said, glancing up at the lighted floor indicator above the elevator door, following its path downward. “At least, if they have one it was not explained to me.”

His pace accelerated as he reached the ground floor and headed into a tunnel leading to the police garage. He said the commission agreed to let him keep his bodyguards during the suspension.

“I’ve had many threats against my life and my family’s life, so they allowed me to have some protection, yes,” he said.

As for his personal police car, “Well, I won’t need a car much because I’m not going anywhere. I have my own personal vehicle.”

Gates showed his only sign of testiness when asked if he would have to check his gun, as a civilian might, when entering police headquarters.

“Absolutely not,” he said quickly. “I’m a peace officer of the state of California.”

Ever the tough cop, he said he had only one message for the people of Los Angeles: “I’ll be back.”

Then he stepped into the passenger seat of a late-model Oldsmobile and flashed a thumbs-up sign as it whisked him toward home.