Garth Albany said quickly, ‘What do you want them to talk about?’

The direct glance dwelt on him. ‘Ever hear of a man called Michael Harsch?’

‘I don’t think so-’ Then, with a quick frown, ‘I don’t know – I seem to have seen the name somewhere-’

Sir George’s pencil twirled. ‘There’s going to be an inquest on him at Bourne tomorrow.’

‘Yes – I remember. I saw the name in the papers, but I didn’t connect it with Bourne. I’d have taken more notice if I had. Who was he?’

‘The inventor of harschite.’

‘Harschite – that’s why I didn’t connect him with Bourne. I didn’t know he was dead. There was a paragraph about this stuff harschite – about a fortnight ago. Yes, that was it – harschite – some sort of explosive.’

Sir George nodded. ‘If we’d any sense or logic we’d take the man who wrote that paragraph and the editor who passed it and shoot them out of hand. Here we’ve been going on like cats on hot bricks about the damned stuff, and out comes a footling penny-a-lining paragraph and gives the show away.’

‘It was pretty vague, sir – I can’t say I got much out of it.’

‘Because you didn’t know enough to put two and two together. But someone did, and so there’s an inquest on Michael Harsch. You see, we had been in touch with him for some time. He was a refugee – Austrian-Jewish extraction. I don’t know how much Jew, but enough to queer his pitch in Germany. He got away about five years ago. His wife and daughter weren’t so lucky. The daughter was sent to a concentration camp, where she died. The wife was turned out of her house in the middle of a winter’s night and never got over it. He got away with his brains and practically nothing else. I saw him because he had an introduction from old Baer. He talked to me about this stuff of his.