This was the man Foyle had now called in. He stood, with stooping shoulders, nervously twisting his shabby hat, apparently ill at ease. His nervousness
dropped from him like a garment, however, when he spoke. Foyle made clear to him the purport of the excursion they were to embark on.
"Very good, sir," he said. "If you think the man you want is on the river, we will find him. I guess, as you say, he's got a job as a watchman. He's probably had to get somebody to buy a barge, for they don't give these jobs without some kind of reference."
"A reference could easily have been forged. But that doesn't matter. How soon can you get your men together?"
"An hour,—perhaps two. They're scattered all over the place. I sent out to fetch 'em before I left Wapping."
"Three or four will be enough. With Green and yourself and myself we should be able to tackle anything. Have a launch and a motor-boat at Westminster Bridge Pier in a couple of hours' time. If you can borrow them off some one, so that they don't look like police craft, so much the better."
"I can do it, sir."
"Good. In two hours' time, then."
And Heldon Foyle turned away, dismissing the subject from his mind. Green had gone upstairs to find how Grant of the Finger-print Department had progressed in his scrutiny of the finger-prints on the advertisement. He found his specialist colleague with a big enlargement of the paper on which the advertisement had been written mounted on paste-board, and propped up in front of him, side by side with an enlargement of the prints found on the dagger.
"Any luck?" asked Green.