The one in the most garish clothes snarled something at him in an incomprehensible patois. Jay said: “Vous desirez de la monnaie?” and reached for his pocket. The man pulled out a large Mauser pistol, the twin of the one the man in Stepney had used (could anarchists have done a bulk-purchase deal with the Mauser company?). Jay reacted with exaggerated fright, cowering back a couple of steps and looking aghast.
The flic on the other side of the road shouted something and started across. The gunman swung, levelled his aim, and fired. The flic staggered. Jay took out his own pistol and shot the gunman twice in the ribs. The impact knocked the man off his feet and sprawled him in the dirty roadway, dead or alive but out of the fight. Then everyone was shouting and more than one firing; Jay crouched against the wall, making himself as small as possible and waiting for a clear shot at someone who looked dangerous.
And suddenly it was over. The other two roughnecks had run, one flic was helping the other to the pavement and blowing a whistle furiously, and neighbours were flocking out of doors. Jay went over to the gunman, who was wheezing and trying to sit up but not bleeding too badly, and collected the Mauser.
By then the flic had sat his colleague, who had only an arm wound, on a doorstep and took time off from blowing his whistle to start asking questions. Jay gave him a visiting card and offered to surrender his pistols.
The flic puzzled out the words “attached to the War Office” and asked: “L’Intelligence?”
Jay rocked his hand to indicate “you might say something along those lines” and the flic nodded. They understand these things so much better in France.
Once they had crossed the Avenue d’Allemagne, the buildings became substantial warehouses and the people more purposeful. Now O’Gilroy was getting suspicious glances not because he was a stranger but because he might be a pilferer. The world had taken a step up from the streets of La Villette.
Then “Mrs Langhorn” turned left along a broad rectangle of water which O’Gilroy realised must be the bassin of La Villette, unloading point for the cargoes of grain and whatnot brought in from the countryside along the canal. Nothing much seemed to be happening, which was normal for any port he had seen, but the bassin was jammed with long low barges that seemed very wide to British eyes. The cobbled quayside was lined with warehouses, chandleries, shipwrights, a few stubby cranes and occasional crowded dockers’ cafes.
Carts and a few lorries gave some cover, and O’Gilroy was working his way closer around one when “Mrs Langhorn” vanished. He kept his head bent but his eyes flickered all around, and there was a glimpse of her crossing behind the cabin of a moored barge to the one tied up outboard of it. This had to be the end of the line, unless she proposed to swim, and all he needed now was the name of the barge and he’d call it a day.
But that wasn’t so easy. Apart from all being “barges” to the layman, the craft were very varied: some were just open metal tanks, some had raised hatches, others had tarpaulins stretched over their holds, and their cabins were of all sorts. What they had in common was the obscurity of their names. Perhaps their very individuality made names superfluous – to other bargees. So trying to find the name of one that was mostly hidden by the quayside one, while still looking like a passing tramp, in the end defeated O’Gilroy. He memorised a rough description and was shuffling away when a man ran along the quayside behind him and danced his way across to the outer barge. News of the shooting affray?
So he sat on a bollard almost out of sight for twenty minutes, but nothing more happened.
They had decided to meet at the buffet at the Gare du Nord, which was cosmopolitan and roughly halfway towards La Villette anyway. Ranklin hadn’t rushed there, but still had to wait through three coffees before seeing a figure looking like the roadside flotsam which had so fascinated him and disgusted his mother when he was a small boy. He nodded at his Inverness cloak, hung on a nearby peg, and O’Gilroy covered his shame with that. It was too small, of course, but its looseness hid a lot.
“Ye’ve heard nothing of young Jay?” O’Gilroy asked (Jay was about his own age, but newer to the Bureau). “Was a bit’ve shooting jest after I saw him last, so mebbe he was in that.”
Ranklin was startled. “The devil he was! He could be hurt.”
“He can take care of hisself. Anyways, was a couple’ve flics following her as well, so mebbe they helped out – un grand au lait, s’il vous plait – et une fine,” to a hovering waiter. “How it went was . . .” and he told the tale.
“Hm.” Ranklin wondered whether to roast O’Gilroy for not going to Jay’s help, but decided no: the job had been to follow the woman and he’d done that. If Jay couldn’t look after himself in a Paris street fight, then he had to be expendable. Such conclusions were inseparable from being in command, but that didn’t mean he liked them. He switched thoughts. “So they – whoever they are – could be hiding out on a barge. And the police may not know about it, or at least they don’t think they know. But you don’t know what it’s called?”
“I know where it is, and I got a drawing . . .” He produced a crude sketch, although not much cruder than the way those vessels were built anyway. “ ’S’got a green cabin and red handle thing to the rudder and-”
But then Jay came smiling past the crowded early-lunch tables and stood a moment looking down at O’Gilroy. “My loyal colleague. Where were you when the fun and games started?”
“Listening. And following ‘Mrs Langhorn’.”
“Oh well.” Jay sat down. “I suppose somebody had to.”
“Are you all right?” Ranklin demanded.
“Never better. I actually shot someone under the very eyes of the police and they said ‘Thank you’. There, I bet that’s never happened to you.” He smiled at O’Gilroy. “Interesting thing, though: they were from the Surete Generale, not the Prefecture. Do I hear the merry clash of competition there?”
“Probably,” Ranklin said, wondering if this was good or bad for their cause. Either force might now act hastily, but that itself should distract them from the Bureau’s doings.
“They took me down to the Quai des Orfevres,” Jay continued, “and I had to sort-of-explain who I was to excuse following that woman. But mostly, they were wrathy about one of their chaps getting plugged, and I think they’re going to use it as an excuse to do something drastic. But they showed me the door before I found out what. Funny people, rozzers: when you don’t want to be there they hang on to you, but once you start getting interested, they heave you out. Still, I’ve got the name of a chap there who might be useful . . . Should we pool everything we’ve got?”
Ranklin nodded and said: “First off, the woman isn’t Mrs Langhorn. I don’t know who, perhaps just an Englishwoman of a certain class living over here and down on her luck. But it more-or-less confirms the gang have the real Mrs Langhorn under controclass="underline" they wouldn’t send a fake unless they knew the real one wouldn’t turn up. Anyway, I presume this fake went off to report what I said about their conspiracy coming unravelled in London.”
“D’you think it is?” Jay asked.
“It isn’t all going as they planned . . . anyway, O’Gilroy knows where she went.”
So O’Gilroy told about the barge. When he had finished, Jay said: “So that’s as far as we’ve got? Are we any closer to stopping this runaway train you spoke of?”
Ranklin shook his head sombrely. “Not that I can see. But I’d like to know where Dr Gorkin is. I think the La Villette end is being run by the cafe proprietor, Kaminsky, but I still fancy Gorkin as being the brains behind all this.”