'Yes?' he barked.

The door opened and Praine put a tentative head around it.

'The gentlemen from Scotland Yard are already here, sir,' he said, sheepishly. 'Shall I show them in?'

Heyford leapt to his feet. 'Here?' he cried. 'How can that be? You told me that we had at least an hour.'

'I was mistaken.'

'Not for the first time, Constable Praine.'

Quelling him with a glare, Sidney Heyford opened the door wide and went into the outer office, manufacturing a smile as he did so. Robert Colbeck and Victor Leeming were studying the Wanted posters on the walls. Both men had bags with them. After a flurry of introductions, the detectives were taken into the little office and invited to sit down. Heyford was not impressed by Colbeck's elegance. With his stocky frame and gnarled face, Leeming did at least look like a policeman. That was not the case with his companion. To the man in uniform, Colbeck's debonair appearance and cultured voice were completely out of place in the rough and tumble world of law enforcement.

'I'm sorry that it's so cramped in here,' Heyford began.

'We've seen worse,' said Leeming, looking around.

'Much worse,' agreed Colbeck.

'Ashford in Kent, for instance. Six thousand people and only two constables to look after them from a tiny police house.'

'Some towns still refuse to take policing seriously enough. They take the Utopian view that crime will somehow solve itself without the intercession of detective work.' He appraised Heyford shrewdly. 'I'm sure that Liverpool displays more common sense.'

'It has to, Inspector,' said Heyford, sententiously, 'though we are woefully short of men to police a population of well over three hundred thousand. This is a thriving port. When the ships dock here, we've foreigners of all kind roaming our streets. If my men did not keep close watch over them, we'd have riot and destruction.'

'I'm sure that you do an excellent job.'