Scotland Yard serves as the British operational counterpart to Claude Lebel’s investigation: its senior officers recognize the gravity of his guarded warning, search their own records, and mobilize personnel to trace the suspected assassin. Its role is shown less through a formal description of the building than through the decisions and communications that make the headquarters part of an international manhunt.

Offices and First Responses

Assistant Commissioner Anthony Mallinson receives Lebel’s call and understands what the French investigator cannot yet state openly: a first-rate political assassin may be loose, and the likely target in France is Charles de Gaulle. Mallinson considers the implications from his soberly appointed office overlooking the Thames, then orders a personal check of British records for known living professional assassins. The request is startling enough that the young detective inspector receiving it questions whether he heard correctly.

Lebel’s approach is deliberately limited. He explains that he is acting officially but cannot present the matter as a formal inquiry between the two police forces: the threat remains a tip-off, its preparation is uncertain, and the suspect has no known name. Only after laying out the possibility that the man is a politically motivated contract killer with successful assassinations behind him does Lebel ask whether anyone of that description appears in foreign files. The conversation gives Scotland Yard a warning without yet giving it a conventional case to investigate.

Records and Cross-Border Cooperation

The British records search is one strand in a wider exchange of police information. Mallinson asks for a discreet review of every existing record of known living professional assassins in Britain, even though he cannot explain the reason for the request. The scene emphasizes both the limits and the value of institutional knowledge: Scotland Yard can search its files, but Lebel’s description is thin, the suspect’s identity is unknown, and the political stakes are left implicit.

The French investigation later draws on a different, much larger archival system. In the Pantheon archives, French officers find border records showing that Alexander James Quentin Duggan entered France on the Brabant Express from Brussels on July 22 and left for Brussels on the Etoile du Nord Express on July 31. A Paris hotel card links the same name and passport number to a stay near the Place de la Madeleine. Those findings belong to the French search, not to Scotland Yard’s records operation; together, however, the two investigations show how the pursuit depends on national files that become useful only when officers know what to ask and can exchange information across borders.

Mobilizing the British Search

Scotland Yard’s response becomes more active when Superintendent Thomas assembles a team to establish the whereabouts of Charles Calthrop. Two inspectors already assigned to the inquiry are joined by six Special Branch sergeants released from routine duties after a series of calls. Thomas briefs them that the man they seek is believed to be abroad and probably travelling on a false passport. He withholds the reason for the search, concentrating the team on finding him quickly.

The headquarters’ work is practical as well as analytical: senior officers make requests, use personnel from other duties, and direct searches that can proceed despite incomplete information. Later, Lebel asks Thomas to leave home and return to his office as the French inquiry intensifies. Scotland Yard is thus presented as a working centre within a distributed operation, not as a solitary detective’s command post.

Narrative Significance

Scotland Yard’s contribution is defined by the gap between what its officers infer and what they can prove. Mallinson recognizes the target implied by Lebel’s warning, while Thomas is instructed to find a man without being told why he matters. The secrecy protects a sensitive investigation but also restricts what can be shared with the people carrying it out.

That tension places Scotland Yard within the novel’s procedural structure. The manhunt advances through calls, record checks, staffing decisions, and cooperation between national police forces, rather than through a single decisive clue. The headquarters can mobilize people and search information, but its effectiveness depends on the fragments supplied by others—and on whether those fragments arrive in time to make an unknown man identifiable.