The forward-leaning, sandy-coloured recruit gave a laugh which he stifled. Several of his companions grinned doubtfully and wiped their mouths. Two looked startled and the rest uneasy.

“At all events,” Alleyn said, “that’s what he says it is and as he hasn’t got any other name, Foljambe let the Jampot be.

“He was born in Johannesburg, received a good education and is said to have read medicine for two years but would appear to have been from birth what used to be known as a ‘wrong-un’. His nickname was given him by his South African associates in crime and has been adopted by the police on both sides of the Atlantic. In Paris, I understand he is known as Le Folichon or ‘the frisky bloke’.

“I’d like to pick up his story at the time of his highly ingenious escape from gaol which took place on the 7th May the year before last in Bolivia…”

One or two of his hearers wrote this down. He was giving an address by invitation to a ten-week-course at the Police College. “By an outlandish coincidence,” Alleyn said and his deep voice took on the note of continuous narrative, “I was personally involved in this affair: by personally, I mean, as a private individual as well as a policeman. It so happened that my wife—”

-1-

“—above all it must be said of this most distinguished exhibition, that while in scope it is retrospective it is by no means definitive. The painter, one feels, above all her contemporaries, will continue to explore and penetrate: for her own and our sustained enjoyment.”

The painter in question muttered: “O Lord, O Lord,” and laid aside the morning paper as stealthily as if she had stolen it. She left the dining-room, paid her bill, arranged to pick up her luggage in time to catch the London train and went for a stroll. Her hotel was not far from the river. Summer sunshine defined alike ranks of unbudgingly Victorian mercantile buildings broken at irregular intervals by vast up-ended waffle-irons. Gothic spires, and a ham-fisted Town Hall poked up through the early mist. She turned her back on them and made downhill for the river.