'That saves me the trouble of bothering with them.'
'How many names are left?'
'Less than twenty. We are slowly whittling them down.'
'Why are you so sure that the man we want actually attended that lecture? If he detested the idea of that railway being built in France, wouldn't he avoid a man who was talking about it?'
'On the contrary,' said Colbeck. 'He'd want to find out as much about it as he could. Also, of course, he'd be keen to take a closer look at Gaston Chabal. The man represented everything that he loathed and feared. No, he and Rogan were there together, I'm certain of it. They may not have sat beside each other – they probably took care to stay apart in order to conceal their relationship – but they were both at that lecture.'
'Then we are bound to find him in the end.'
'Oh, yes.'
Colbeck stirred his tea before tasting it. Leeming had already finished one cup and was halfway through the second. He chewed on the slice of cake that he had been offered.
'What did Mr Tallis have to say about it all?'
'He was pleased, Victor. Or, to put it another way, he smoked no cigars, had no tantrums and was almost disarmingly civil. All that he craves is a little success,' said Colbeck. 'It stops him from being pilloried in the newspapers.'
'Talking of the newspapers, sir, I saw that notice you put in this morning's edition. It's sure to get a response.'
'Not all of it entirely reliable, alas.'
'No,' said Leeming, wearily. 'The promise of a reward does things to some people. They invent all sorts of stories to try to get their hands on the money. But they won't all be fraudulent. There may be some wheat among the chaff, sir.'
'I'm counting on it.'
'You gave a good description of Rogan. It tallied with the one I had from Horace Eames.'
'I also relied on what Madame Hennebeau told me. She was clearly very fond of the man but, then, so were a number of women.'
'Luke Rogan will be on the run by now. You'll have flushed him out of his hiding place good and proper.'
'That was the idea behind using the press,' said Colbeck. 'I wanted to scare Rogan and drive a wedge between him and his employer. When he realises that we've identified his hired killer, the man who set everything in motion will want to distance himself from Rogan. My guess is that he'll go to ground immediately.'
'Here in London?'
'Well, it won't be in France, we may be certain of that.'
While his visitor drained his teacup, Colbeck told him about the conversation he had had earlier with Madeleine Andrews regarding her sketch of the Sankey Viaduct. Leeming was almost as confused by his talk of symbols and metaphors as she had been, but he trusted the inspector to know what he was talking about. What interested him was Colbeck's theory that the man who had engaged Rogan had probably served in the army at one time.
'I wish you'd told me that before, Inspector,' he said.
'Why?'
'I could have asked the people I interviewed this morning if they knew anyone who'd been at that lecture with a military background. It's a small world – engineers and such like. They all seem to know each other.'
'That's in our favour.'
'Do you have any more names for me?'
'Haven't you done enough work for one day?'
'No,' said Leeming, ignoring the stab of pain in his ribs. 'I'm only just starting to warm up, sir. Use me as much as you wish.'
'Mr Tallis would admonish me, if he knew.'
'You employed Brendan Mulryne behind his back and got away with it. Unlike him, I do work at the Detective Department.'
'But you're supposed to be on sick leave, Victor.'
'I'm sick of sick leave. Give me some more names.'
'As you wish,' said Colbeck, taking a slip of paper from his pocket and handing it over. 'There are four more people for you to chase down. Be sure to find out if any of them bore arms against the French at one time. That would make them fifty or more at least.'
'I'll remember that.'
'And take a cab. You don't have to go all over London on foot. Keep a record of your cab fares and I'll reimburse you.'
'You can save your money with this chap, sir,' said Leeming as he saw the first address on the list. 'He lives in Pimlico. That's well within walking distance of here.'
'It is indeed. What's the man's name?'
'Hetherington – Sir Marcus Hetherington.'
The publicity in the newspapers had given him a real fright. Before his landlady or his neighbours could report his whereabouts to the police, Luke Rogan gathered up everything of value and stuffed it into a bag. Then he changed out of the slightly garish attire he usually wore and put on a pair of dungarees, a moth-eaten old coat and a floppy hat. It was a disguise he often used in the course of his work as a private detective and it was so nondescript as to render him almost invisible. After checking his appearance in the mirror, he fled from his house in Bayswater without leaving behind the unpaid rent.
He left his belongings at the house in Paddington of a woman he had befriended during his days as a policeman. He gave her a plausible explanation about why he was dressed as a workman but she needed no convincing. She was a lonely widow who was so pleased to see him that she offered him accommodation for as long as he wished. As she never read a newspaper, there was no possibility that she would link her former lover with a series of horrific crimes. In the short term at least, Rogan had somewhere to hide.
Sir Marcus Hetherington had ordered him to kill Colbeck in order that the murder investigation would lose the man who directed it and make it founder. In view of what the inspector had done, Rogan was now fired by revenge as well. He was anxious to strike back at the person who had exposed him in the newspapers as a wanted felon and spread his name across the whole of London. He knew that he could never return to his old life again. Colbeck had robbed him of his occupation. In recompense, he would deprive the detective of his life.
Rogan had been patient. He knew what his intended victim looked like and where to find him. Lurking outside Scotland Yard until the inspector had emerged, he waited until Colbeck had summoned a cab then flagged down one of his own and ordered it to follow the first vehicle. What he learned was that Colbeck lived in John Islip Street and that, very soon after his arrival, he had a visitor. While the two men were inside the house, Rogan loitered in a doorway on the other side of the street and bided his time. He felt under his coat for the knife that was thrust into his belt. Having already killed Gaston Chabal, it could now be used to dispatch another man.
Inside the house, the detectives came to the end of their conversation.
'I'll be on my way, Inspector,' said Victor Leeming, rising slowly to his feet. 'Thank you for the tea and cake.'
'When this is all over, we'll celebrate with something a little stronger,' promised Colbeck. 'Before that, I'll want to know how you fared this afternoon.'
'Where will I meet you?'
'At the Lamb and Flag.'
'What time?'
'Shall we say six o'clock?'
'I'll be there, sir.'
'Good.' Colbeck got to his feet and led the way into the hall. 'I'll go back to Scotland Yard to see if anyone has come forward as a result of that notice in the newspapers.'
'And I'll ring some more doorbells.'
