“Well, Mr. Graham!”
“This man. He was at Le Jockey Cabaret. It was the Arab girl who drew my attention to him while we were dancing. She said that he came in just after Kopeikin and me, and that he kept looking at me. She warned me against him. She seemed to think that he might stick a knife in my back and take my wallet.”
“Did she know him?”
“No. She said that she recognised the type.”
Colonel Haki took the card and leaned back. “That was very intelligent of her. Did you see this man, Mr. Kopeikin?”
Kopeikin looked, and then shook his head.
“Very well.” Colonel Haki dropped the card on the desk in front of him. “You need not trouble to look at any more of the photographs, gentlemen. I know now what I wanted to know. This is the only one of the fifteen that interests us. The rest I put with it merely to make sure that you identified this one of your own accord.”
“Who is he?”
“He is a Roumanian by birth. His name is supposed to be Petre Banat; but as Banat is the name of a Roumanian province, I think it very probable that he never had a family name. We know, indeed, very little about him. But what we do know is enough. He is a professional gunman. Ten years ago he was convicted, in Jassy, of helping to kick a man to death, and was sent to prison for two years. Soon after he came out of prison he joined Codreanu’s Iron Guard. In nineteen thirty-three he was charged with the assassination of a police official at Bucova. It appears that he walked into the official’s house one Sunday afternoon, shot the man dead, wounded his wife, and then calmly walked out again. He is a careful man, but he knew that he was safe. The trial was a farce. The court-room was filled with Iron Guards with pistols, who threatened to shoot the judge and everyone connected with the trial if Banat were convicted. He was acquitted. There were many such trials in Roumania at that time. Banat was afterwards responsible for at least four other murders in Roumania. When the Iron Guard was proscribed, however, he escaped from the country, and has not returned there. He spent some time in France until the French police deported him. Then he went to Belgrade. But he got into trouble there, too, and has since moved about Eastern Europe.
“There are men who are natural killers. Banat is one of them. He is very fond of gambling, and is always short of money. At one time it was said that his price for killing a man was as little as five thousand French francs and expenses.