him the Union can.»
«How many of them are there in Paris?» asked the Minister dubiously.
«About eighty thousand. Some in the police, Customs officers, CRS, Secret Service, and, of course, the underworld. And they are organised.»
«Use your discretion,» said the Minister.
There were no more suggestions.
«Well, that's it, then. Commissaire Lebel, all we want from you now is one name, one description, one photograph. After that I give this Jackal six hours of liberty.! 'Actually, we have three days,» said Lebel, who had been staring out of the window. His audience looked startled.
«How do you know that?» asked Max Fernet.
Lebel blinked rapidly several times.
«I must apologise. I have been very silly not to see it before. For a week now I have been certain that the Jackal had a plan, and that he had picked his day for killing the President. When he quit Gap, why did he not immediately become Pastor Jensen? Why did he not drive to Valence and pick up the express to Paris immediately? Why did he arrive in France and then spend a week killing time?»
«Well, why?» asked someone.
«Because he has picked his day,» said Lebel. «He knows when he is going to strike. Commissaire Ducret, has the President got any engagements outside the palace today, or tomorrow, or Saturday?»
Ducret shook his head.
«And what is Sunday, August 25th?» asked Lebel.
There was a sigh round the table like wind blowing through corn.
«Of course,» breathed the Minister, «Liberation Day. And the crazy thing is, most of us were here with him on that day, the Liberation of Paris, 1944.»
«Precisely,» said Lebel. «He is a bit of a psychologist, our Jackal. He knows there is one day of the year that General de Gaulle will never spend elsewhere than here. It is, so to speak, his great day. That is what the assassin has been waiting for.»
«In that case,» said the Minister briskly, «we have got him. With his source of information gone, there is no corner of Paris that he can hide, no single community of Parisians that will take him in, even unwittingly, and give him protection. We have him. Commissaire Lebel, give us that man's name.»
Claude Lebel rose and went to the door. The others were rising and preparing to leave for lunch.
«Oh, there is one thing,» the Minister called after Lebel, «how did you know to tap the telephone line of Colonel Saint-Clair's private flat?»
Lebel turned in the doorway and shrugged.
«I didn't,» he said, «so last night I tapped all your telephones. Good day, gentlemen.»
At five that afternoon, sitting over a beer at a cafe terrace just off the Place de L'Odeon, his face shielded from the sunlight by dark glasses such as everyone else was wearing, the Jackal got his idea. He got it from watching two men stroll by in the street. He paid for his beer, got up and left. A hundred yards down the street he found what he was looking for, a woman's beauty shop. He went in and made a few purchases.
At six the evening papers changed their headlines. The late editions carried a screaming banner across the top. Assassin de la Belle Baronne se refugie a Paris.»
There was a photo beneath it of the Baronne de la Chalonniere, taken from a society picture of her five years ago at a party in Paris. It had been found in the archives of a picture agency and the same photo was in every paper. At 6.30, with a copy of France-Soir under his arm, Colonel Rolland entered a small cafe off the Rue Washington. The dark-fowled barman glanced at him keenly and nodded towards another man in the back of the hall.
The second man came over and accosted Rolland.
«Colonel Rolland?»
The head of the Action Service nodded.
«Please follow me.»
He led the way through a door at the back of the cafe and up to a small sitting room on the first floor, probably the owner's private dwelling. He knocked, and a voice inside said, «Entrez.»
As the door closed behind him; Rolland took the outstretched hand of the man who had risen from an armchair.
“Colonel Rolland? Enchante. I am the Capu of the Union Corse. I understand you are looking for a certain man…
It past eight o'clock when Superintendent Thomas came through from London. He sounded tired. It had not been an easy day. Some consulates had co-operated willingly, others had been extremely difficult. Apart from women, Negroes, Asiatics and shorties, eight foreign tourists had lost their passports in London during the previous fifty days, he said. Carefully and succinctly he listed them all, with passport numbers and descriptions.
«Now let's start to deduct those whom it cannot be,» he suggested to Lebel. «Three lost their passports during periods when we know that the jackal, alias Duggan, was not in London, We've been checking airline bookings and ticket sales right back to July first as well. It seems on July 18th he took the evening flight to Copenhagen. According BEA he bought a ticket at their counter is Brussels, paying cash, and flew back to England on the evening of August 6th.»
«Yes, that checks,» said Lebel. «We have discovered that part of his last journey out of London was spent in Paris. From July 7th until July 31st'
«Well,» said Thomas, his voice crackling on the London line, 'three of the passports were missed while he was not here. We can count them out, yes?»
“Right” said Lebel.
“Of the remaining five, one is immensely tall, six feet six inches, that's over two metres in your language. Besides which, he's Italian, which means that his height on the fly-leaf of his passport is given in metres and centimetres, which would be immediately understood by a French Customs officer who would notice the difference, unless the Jackal is walking on stilts.»
“I agree, the man must be a giant. Count him out. What of the other four?» asked Lebel.
«Well, one is immensely fat, two hundred and forty-two pounds, or well over-a hundred kilos. The jackal would have to be so padded he could hardly walk.»
«Count him out,» said Label. «Who else?»
«Another is too old. He's the right height, but over seventy. The jackal could hardly look that old unless a real expert in theatrical makeup went to work on his face.»
«Count him out too,» said Lebel. «What about the last two?»
«One's Norwegian, the other American,» said Thomas. «Both fit the bill. Tall, wide-shouldered, between twenty and fifty. There are two things that militate against the Norwegian being your man. For one thing he is blond; I don't think the jackal, after being exposed as Duggan, would go back to his own hair-colouring, would he? He would look too much like Duggan. The other thing is, the Norwegian reported to his consul that he is certain his passport slipped out of his pocket when he fell fully clothed into the Serpentine while boating with a girl-friend. He swears the passport was in his breast pocket when he fell in, and was not there fifteen minutes later when he climbed out. On the other hand, the American made a sworn statement to the police at London Airport to the effect that his handgrip with the passport inside it was stolen while he was looking the other way in the main hall of the airport building. What do you think?»
«Send me,» said Label, «all the details of the-American Marty Schulberg. I'll get his photograph from the Passport Office in Washington. And thank you again for all your efforts.»
There was a second meeting in the Ministry at ten that evening. It was the briefest so far. Already an hour previously every department of the apparatus of the security of state had received mimeographed copies of the details of Marty Schulberg, wanted for murder. A photograph was expected before morning, in time for the first editions of the evening papers that would be appearing on the streets by ten in the morning.
The Minister rose.
«Gentlemen, when we first met, we agreed to a suggestion by Commissaire Bouvier that the identification of the assassin known as the jackal was basically a task for pure detective work. With hindsight, I would not disagree
