Honourable Intentions

3

“My name is Detective Inspector Thomas Hector McDaniel of Bow Street Police Station.” Ranklin was particularly glad to hear those words, the point being that he could hear them, after three-quarters of an hour of straining and guessing.

Popular myth has it that court-rooms provide scenes of natural drama. Not this one: most of that morning would have been upstaged by a public reading of the London Street Directory. He couldn’t even study Grover Langhorn. Jammed among the spectators at the back, Ranklin was facing the magistrates’ bench, but so was Langhorn, standing in the raised dock in front of him. By the end of the morning, Ranklin knew he would recognise that slight and shabby back view of baggy check trousers and dark blue donkey jacket for the rest of his life, but he had yet to glimpse the face.

Moreover, once Langhorn had agreed he was who he was supposed to be, he apparently became irrelevant to the routine going on around him. Documents were passed, mulled over and agreed upon, men in old-fashioned frock coats, one being Noah Quinton, bobbed up, murmured things, and sat down when the magistrate had murmured back.

Then came Inspector McDaniel (it was odd how many London policemen had obviously been born elsewhere; were native Londoners too finicky or too corrupt?). He was bald-headed, walrus-moustached, as well fed as any lawyer, and probably as familiar with court-rooms. He gave his evidence loudly and confidently, pausing after each sentence so that the clerk could write it down. “Acting on information received” he had proceeded to 29 Great Garden Street . . . He there saw a man who admitted he was Grover Langhorn . . . Yes, he is the man standing in the dock there . . . He then arrested said man on a warrant issued by the Bow Street magistrate on the second of April . . .

The slow delivery let Ranklin’s attention wander to the others crammed beside him in the public seats. He had thought carefully about how he should dress that day, but after dismissing the idea of posing as a Cockney as impossible, and a farmer-in-town-for-the-day from his native Gloucestershire as improbable, he had just dressed as himself. He knew he would look vaguely official – just how, he wasn’t sure, but he had to accept it – but hoped the case would attract vaguely official attention anyway. And so it had: those around and altogether too close to him were definitely official-looking; he thought he recognised at least one face from the Foreign Office. Indeed, the one man who stood out was wearing a non-London check suit. He was taking assiduous notes.

Ranklin came back to earth when he realised the bowling had changed and Quinton was asking the questions: “Did my client say anything when you arrested him?”

Quinton’s court-room voice was monotonous and uninflected.

“Yes, sir, he asked me how I found him there. He also -”

“And what did you reply?”

“- he also,” McDaniel said firmly, “stated that this was supposed to be a safe place for him to hide. I made no reply to these statements.”

“Did he say anything else, then or at a later time, apart from confirming his name?”

“No, sir.”

Quinton sat down again. McDaniel stayed where he was while his evidence was read back to him, then the court relapsed into muttering over documents. Ranklin was looking at the time – it wasn’t easy to get his watch out in a crush like in a crowded underground train – when another witness popped up in the box and identified himself as Inspecteur Claude Lacoste of the Paris Prefecture attached to the eighth district, which included the nineteenth arrondissement - La Villette.

By contrast with McDaniel, this was a man with a clean-shaven round face who might have been chosen for his all-round averageness (and had been, Ranklin discovered later: French logic said that only men of average looks and height could become Paris detectives). But his manner was quiet and confident, someone who knew his job. He spoke English with a strong accent, but fluently enough to manage without an interpreter.

Yes, he could identify the accused as Grover Langhorn . . . He had been employed as a waiter at the Cafe des Deux Chevaliers since last autumn . . . It was a haunt of anarchists-

“I fail to see the relevance of that,” Quinton interrupted.

The magistrate looked enquiringly at the prosecutor, who was just another half-bowed back to Ranklin, but Lacoste beat him to it: “It is the only reason why I am familiar with the establishment, M’sieu.”

Quinton shrugged dramatically – by the dramatic standards of the day so far – and sat down.

Yes, on the night of 31 March there had been a fire at the police barracks . . . It had quickly been established that it was deliberate, caused by petrol . . . A fire-warped 5-litre petrol tin had been discovered at the scene . . . He had led the investigation . . . He had questioned certain persons . . . There are few places in La Villette which sell petrol, there being few motor-cars in the area . . . At one garage, however, he had learned that at about six o’clock in the evening four days earlier . . . Yes, 27 March . . . the accused had purchased a green tin of petrol . . .

There was a break while the prosecutor assured the magistrate that there was a sworn statement by the garagiste, one from the cafe proprietor, two from patrons, and one from an eyewitness, representing Lacoste’s investigation.

. . . As a result of all this, Lacoste had sought to question Langhorn . . . He could not be found . . . It had been suggested he might have fled to England . . . (there was something missing here, Ranklin thought: somebody had either volunteered the suggestion or been persuaded to volunteer it by method or methods unknown. Such thoughts wouldn’t have occurred to him eighteen months ago.) . . . Consequently, an extradition warrant had been sought . . .

In his own job, Ranklin demanded bare facts and came down brutally on colourful phrases. But here he felt cheated at being told of an arson attack followed by a police trawl of the local underworld, hasty flight and legal pursuit – and all made as dull as a railway timetable. Perhaps Quinton’s cross-examination would help . . .

“The fire at the police station – what part of the building did it damage?”

“The kitchen, M’sieu.”

“So it could hardly have been an attempt to free any prisoners held there, for example . . . Do you have any reason to believe that my client is an anarchist?”

“He is a waiter at a cafe of anarchists, M’sieu.”

“Just an employee – one who is paid to work there?”

“I know nothing of his pay, M’sieu.”

“But still only an employee?”

“So I believe, M’sieu.”

“And would you expect every waiter at – say – every poet’s cafe in Paris to be a poet?”

“No, M’sieu.”

“Has my client ever expressed anarchistic views to you or within your hearing?”

“No, M’sieu.”

Ranklin was not tempted to whisper to those beside him that here Quinton was paving the way to claim that this was a political crime and his client was not an anarchist. But he didn’t mind them noticing his knowing nod and smile. Then he remembered he was here on duty and trying to be anonymous, and shamefacedly went back to thinking about the case.

Probably Lacoste would have pointed out that in a scruffy, dangerous little cafe in the nineteenth arrondissement an anarchist clientele wouldn’t have tolerated for a moment a waiter who didn’t share their views. But Quinton had given him no chance to say so, and presumably magistrates weren’t allowed to think such things for themselves.

Once Lacoste had stepped from the witness box, the court returned to murmuring over documents. In front of him, Langhorn moved nervously from foot to foot, never quite standing straight. An Englishman might have stood to attention or he might have leant on the dock rail; he wouldn’t have stood in that loose, rangy way. Perhaps it was something to do with Americans walking with their hips thrust forward – Corinna had once demonstrated that for him, stark naked. It had been most instructive but not a suitable memory for a police court-

From what Ranklin could hear, the depositions from the cafe proprietor and patrons had Langhorn asking to go off duty at ten that evening and not reappearing until about one o’clock. Obviously it was not a cafe which relied on early-to-bed working citizens for its customers.

Several times Quinton bobbed up asking for clarification of some point, in a manner that looked to Ranklin like time-wasting. It apparently struck the magistrate the same way, because the last time he gave Quinton a sour look, weighed the yet-to-be-accepted depositions in his hand and said: “It looks as if we’re going to have to postpone hearing the next witness until after lunch. Perhaps that won’t inconvenience you too greatly, Mr Quinton?”

Quinton fawned decorously, and once they had polished off the depositions, they broke up.

Standing like a rock amid the hurrying crowd spilling out from the court was a man in dark-blue chauffeur’s kit asking people if they were Captain Ranklin. It was a distinct shock to Ranklin to hear his name used so publicly when he was working – it reminded him again of how far he had come in eighteen months – and he hurried to hush the man up.

“Mr Quinton’s just having a word with his client, sir, so he said would you care to wait in his motor?” He led the way to a spacious black Lanchester parked at the kerb, ushered Ranklin into the back seat, and opened a small built-in cabinet behind the driver’s partition. “Whisky, sherry or beer, sir?”

Quinton arrived nearly ten minutes later. But instead of driving off, the chauffeur handed in an attache case and spread a napkin over Quinton’s lap. From the case, Quinton took a china plate, then unwrapped a game pie and several small dishes of salad and pickle. His movements were quick and precise. The last item was an opened but recorked pint of claret. During this, he said: “Could you hear anything in court? What do you think so far? You talk while I eat.”

Privately, Ranklin thought that having your lunch in a parked car was a bit showy when you could just as well have been driven back to your office or a chop-house. Perhaps it was another form of advertisement, or perhaps it just came of being born poor.

“It seems,” he began slowly, “to be mostly what I think you call ‘circumstantial’ evidence – though unless you’ve got someone who saw Langhorn strike a match, I imagine that’s what you’d expect. So far, all we’ve got is that he bought the petrol-”

“He bought some petrol.”

“Sorry, some – and was off duty at the relevant time. I imagine this afternoon’s witness will implicate him more deeply . . . Is he the one you want to tear apart in cross-examination?”

Quinton, his mouth full, just nodded.

“And, of course, he fled to London. I don’t know how much inference one can legally draw from that, but I don’t see how anyone can ignore it.”

Quinton swallowed. “A fair enough summary. Any gaps or weaknesses?”

“Simply as a story, I’d like to know who told the French police he’d gone to London and who told our police where to find him.”

“You’ll see winged pigs first. That’s the police on both sides protecting informers.” He was about to take another mouthful when there was a scuffling sound outside and they looked up to see the chauffeur trying to hustle away a dumpy girl in a big hat and ankle-length coat the vague colour of an Army blanket. Quinton said: “Oh, damn it,” handed Ranklin his lunch and got out of the car.

Ranklin watched through the open door and tried to listen, but in the busy street all he heard was that they were speaking French. Quinton had called off the chauffeur and seemed to be pacifying the girl. Her features weren’t exactly coarse, just not refined, except for an upper lip in an exaggerated medieval bow shape that gave her a natural pout. Right now, she was pouting fit to bust, her dark eyes adding sullenness. She also had an unnaturally upright stance, as if she were balancing her big hat rather than wearing it. A few untidy strands of brown hair dangled from under it.

After a time, Quinton gave an exaggerated hands-and-shoulders gesture and turned away. She went on pouting but didn’t follow as he climbed back into the Lanchester.

“That’s the girl-friend of the accused. Apparently spent her own money following him over here.” He shook his head. “Young love’s seldom any use in court.” He reclaimed his lunch and added: “She says she was in bed with him at the time the offence was committed.”

At least this promised a more interesting afternoon in court, and Ranklin cheered up. “She’s going to say that?”

“Of course she’s not.” Then, seeing Ranklin’s disappointment, he went on: “Captain, this world spends half its time denying it was fornicating when it was, and the other half claiming it was fornicating when it was doing something worse. Every magistrate’s heard it a thousand times. She’d only label herself a whore and thus unreliable as a witness.”

Ranklin nodded, understanding, but a little regretful. The girl was standing back on the pavement, still unnaturally upright but now looking lost and somehow alien. A man raised his hat to her and made some inquiry. Ranklin couldn’t hear it or her terse reply, but the man recoiled and walked away quickly.

“D’you know her name and address?” Ranklin asked.

Quinton looked at him warily. Ranklin said firmly: “Government business.”

“Her name’s Mademoiselle Berenice Collomb,” Quinton said, “and she doesn’t speak any English. I’ve no idea where she’s staying in London.”

Ranklin wrote down the name, then asked: “And you said that Langhorn isn’t going to say what he was doing, either?”

“His is not.”

Ranklin thought this over for a moment, then: “May I ask: is he innocent?”

There was no change in Quinton’s expression. Just the sense that he had withdrawn into himself and was thinking that just when Ranklin had been showing signs of intelligence, here came the usual naive old question.

So Ranklin asked it again “You’re a man of experience: does your experience tell you he’s innocent or guilty?”

Clearly, Quinton’s experience had been carefully trained to avoid such emotive thinking. “If you’re asking whether or not he’ll be extradited -”

“I’m not. I’m asking-”

“- on the face of it – and that’s what prima facie means – the case against him is good so far. I still think it may fall apart in a French court, but that’s not my concern. He wants me to save him from being extradited, so that’s what I’m trying to do. No evidence has been given that he himself is an anarchist, and a rather half-hearted attempt to burn a police station seems only explicable as a political gesture.”

“Thank you. Now may we go back to my original question?”

Quinton looked at him for a while, then shrugged quickly and spoke just as quickly. “All right, he’s acting as if he were innocent. He’d like to get this over with: stand up, say his piece, be believed and walk out a free man. But that’s no way to conduct a defence, as any experienced criminal knows. You take your time: time for something to turn up, for witnesses to forget – sometimes even be persuaded to forget. So, yes, Langhorn’s acting as if he were innocent – of this charge.

“But there are degrees of innocence. If I let him be cross-examined this afternoon, I’ll tell you just what he, in that innocence, would admit. First, that of course he’s an anarchist. Second, that he left a good, respectable job (did you know he’d been a steward on an Atlantic liner?) to work in a filthy dive among other anarchists and known criminals – I’ve learnt that much about the Cafe des Deux Chevaliers. And lastly, that he thinks the police are the sheepdogs of cruel government shepherds herding the workers to slaughter, and thoroughly deserve burning. That is not my own phrase. Now you should see why I don’t want that on the record. And perhaps it answers your question.”

“Very fully, thank you.”

“And incidentally, remember that someone did set fire to that police station, and if Langhorn didn’t do it, he probably has a very good idea who did. As I said: degrees of innocence.”

There was a gentle rap on the window and Quinton looked up with an impatient sigh. But it was just one of his clerks with a couple of papers to sign.

Ranklin asked: “Then we won’t be hearing any of Langhorn’s story?”

Quinton smiled briefly. “Oh, we’ve got nothing to hide. He needed the petrol because he’s helping put a motor in a boat in the nearby canal, as I shall tell the court. And at the time of the fire, he was resting in his room. But this isn’t a case that turns on an alibi. The facts all depend on this afternoon’s witness.”

“And Langhorn hasn’t said any more about his threat . . . ?”

“Captain, I hope you aren’t relying on me for any more explanation of that. As I suggested yesterday, I have a certain amount of experience at not being told what I don’t want to hear.”

Mildly annoyed, though without any justification, Ranklin said: “Never mind. Tomorrow we may well have our own man sharing his cell.”

“In Brixton? You won’t, you know. Things have changed since Dickens’s day. Whenever I go down there, each prisoner has a cell to himself and a number of empty ones left over. They don’t like prisoners on remand talking to each other and cooking up mutual alibis.”

Blast. And the Commander would say it was another of Ranklin’s half-baked, unthought-out wheezes, quite ignoring how eagerly he’d adopted it himself.

Pleased at ending the conversation on a winning note, Quinton smiled and said: “We’d better be getting back. Wish me luck.”

“Hals und Beinbruch,” Ranklin murmured, and if Quinton really had broken his neck and legs at that moment, he wouldn’t have minded at all.

There was a public telephone in the ante-chamber to the courts – probably for journalists – and Ranklin caught it at a free time. He called the office and made some arrangements. Then he had at least twenty minutes before the court restarted. He should have lunch, but there was hardly time enough, so he went outside again to light a pipe.

By the doorway was the man in the check suit, and by now a foreign-looking hat, who had been taking so many notes. He was a little taller than Ranklin, a little older, wore a neat grey-flecked black beard and was smoking a small cigar.

They looked at each other, smiled tentatively and then it became impossible not to speak.

“Are you a reporter?” Ranklin asked politely.

“Of a sort.”

“For whom?”

“Les Temps Nouveaux of Paris.” The man had an unidentifiable Continental accent. But that wasn’t rare: Continental frontiers were porous and cross-border marriages common. “And yourself?”

“Oh, I’m keeping a watching brief for the American fund defending this lad. Sorry, I should introduce myself: James Spencer.”

“Feodor Gorkin.” They shook hands, and Gorkin consulted his watch. “The court does not reconvene for half an hour. Do you like a drink?”

“Happy to.”

In Covent Garden you’re never more than a few steps from a public house, but Ranklin let Gorkin choose which. As they walked the few steps he was trying to dredge up what he knew of Les Temps.

“I say, Les Temps Nouveaux – isn’t that the anarchist . . .” he searched quickly for an alternative to “rag”; “. . . er, – publication?”

“It is. I think that is why I am not permitted to sit with the other journalists.”

“Ah.” Ranklin put on an innocently puzzled expression – easy for him. “I can’t make this lad Langhorn out. A waiter in an anarchist cafe, but no mention of him being an anarchist himself.”

“What does Mr Quinton say?”

“Yes, I was talking to him -” since Gorkin had obviously seen that already “- but he wouldn’t say much. You know lawyers, I dare say. Some stuff about if you’re an anarchist you can’t claim you committed a political crime. I’m not sure I follow that, but I don’t follow most of what lawyers say . . .” They were at the bar now. “What would you like?”

They sat down, Gorkin with a brandy-and-soda, Ranklin with a whisky, and nodded to each other and drank. Gorkin might be ten years older – it was difficult to tell with people of different backgrounds – with a face that was very calm and dark eyes that were quietly watchful. Ranklin said: “Is this affaire causing much interest in France, then?”

“But yes. The burning of a police station, the Prefecture takes that most seriously. I think they will do anything to get a conviction.”

“Ye-es, I suppose it strikes at the whole edifice of law and order . . . But that’s what anarchism’s about, isn’t it?”

“Striking at law, yes. Laws are not needed, and every law breeds another law until, you say yourself, you cannot understand what lawyers talk about. But order, people will make their own order, without leaders, after government has collapsed.”

“Government collapsing? What makes you think . . . ? But then you’d have . . .”

“Anarchism, not anarchy.”

“Oh.” Ranklin hadn’t planned on getting into a political argument; he was just, suddenly, there. “But I thought you wanted a revolution?”

“That is one way to make a government collapse, yes.”

“But do you really think a revolution is likely?”

“Unless government collapses of its own weight, it is inevitable. Do you know how much your factory workers and farm labourers are now paid?”

“Pretty damn little, I imagine,” Ranklin admitted. “But people get killed in revolutions.”

“People are killed in wars between nations now. But never the generals and politicians who decide to have a war, just the workers who can gain nothing even if they win.”

Ranklin had his puzzled frown working overtime. “Well, I suppose so . . . But you can’t mean in Britain. We haven’t had a war for a hundred years.”

“Not in South Africa? And other parts of Africa? And all the time in India?”

“Oh well, those are just . . .”

“Just imperialist wars?”

“Oh, dammit all . . .” But he didn’t want to get embroiled in arguing a defence of empire: Gorkin must have had such discussions so many times before that he always had the answer ready, soft, polite and smiling. It was like playing chess against a master.

So he switched tack. “But whoever we were fighting, they all seemed to have leaders. Don’t revolutions throw up leaders, too?”

Gorkin nodded and sighed perfunctorily, as if he always did when about to make this point. “It happens, and it is always a mistake. When a revolution creates leaders, even elects them, the revolution is finished. Anarchists know that people are truly sociable, that if they are left alone they will work at what they do best for themselves and for others. You do not believe this.”

“I think people need a framework.”

“But then the framework, as you call it, becomes a shell like a . . . a lobster and holds everyone in, makes them slaves to that shell. Is it not so in England? With your King and your ministers and Parliament and law, your judges and generals, all this becomes your nation that you worship and cannot ever say is wrong. And yet -” he smiled sadly “- it began so harmlessly as just a framework to make life more efficient.”

The King can do no wrong, Ranklin recalled. Did that still hold good? Certainly Parliament could do no wrong: it was the final arbiter of such matters. On earth, anyway. “I imagine,” he said, “that you don’t believe in God?”

“I think that does not matter so much.” Gorkin finished his brandy and checked his watch again. “Just look about and ask: does God believe in us?”

As they walked back towards the court, Ranklin’s thoughtful frown wasn’t all acting and he asked: “But thinkers, intellectuals perhaps like yourself, aren’t you leaders?”

“There will be no laws to make people do as we suggest.”

Ranklin nodded.

Gorkin said: “I should enjoy to continue this discussion. Perhaps if you care to call while I am in London . . . ?” He took out a card and wrote an address on the back. Glancing at it, Ranklin noted that Gorkin was a “Dr”, but of course that didn’t necessarily make him medical; on the Continent, it only meant a university education. He handed over a James Spencer card of his own, with the address as just Whitehall Court.

Raymond Guillet, meat porter aged twenty-five with an address in the rue Petit, looked the part: blunt and hefty, with cropped fair hair and a tiny patch of moustache, dressed in his Sunday suit of shiny black. Above all, he looked genuine: a proper workman, worlds away from what Ranklin imagined anarchist cafe society to be.

Even through an interpreter and with the need to write everything down, it didn’t take long to extract Guillet’s story. At about half-past eleven he had been returning home when he passed Langhorn, the waiter from the Deux Chevaliers. He knew him because he was the only American he had ever met; everybody around there knew him. That night, Langhorn had been carrying a green petrol tin in the direction of the police station.

When the story was finished, Quinton stood up slowly and said: “Half-past eleven at night.”

Guillet agreed.

“How did you know the time?”

“I have a watch.” There was a silvery – though probably nickel – chain across Guillet’s waistcoat.

“Good. Will you show us how it works?”

Ranklin looked on, puzzled, as Guillet fumbled the time-piece from his waistcoat pocket and offered it.

“No, show us yourself. Just open it and re-set the time to an hour ahead.”

Then Quinton’s tactic became clear. Guillet took two tries to open the case and was quite unable to set the hands.

The lawyer watched with a slight, patient smile. When Guillet’s struggle had got almost unbearably painful, he asked: “Is that your own watch?”

The relief on Guillet’s face was obvious. “No. I borrowed it. My own is broken. Since two days ago.”

“And is this one very different?”

“Yes, quite different.”

“Perhaps now you would show it to his worship.”

The usher passed it up to the magistrate, who fiddled with it for a few seconds then handed it back impassively. It was quite obviously a standard watch.

But Quinton didn’t labour the point any further. “What time do you start work?”

“At four in the morning. Usually.”

“Yet on that evening, little more than four hours before you were due to start work, you were still out on the street?”

“Sometimes I stay up late.”

“Where had you been that night?”

“In a big cafe in the Rue Manin.”

“Whereabouts in the Rue Manin?”

“Towards the Rue de Crimee.”

Quinton pushed his glasses up onto his forehead and peered short-sightedly at a guide-book map. “Ah yes. And to reach your lodging you turned down the Rue du Rhin . . . Do you then turn left or right into the Rue Petit?”

“Right.”

“And coming up the Rue du Rhin, you saw Mr Langhorn carrying a tin of petrol – is that what you said?”

“Yes.”

“But obviously you could not see the petrol, could you? How do you know it was not an empty tin?”

“He was leaning with the weight of it.”

Quinton appeared foxed by this. He frowned, play-acted himself carrying something heavy, then seemed to get the point. Guillet smiled and relaxed.

“What was the weather like?”

“It was clear. It had rained earlier in the day but not for several hours. Now the streets were mostly dry,” Guillet replied confidently, as if that had been an expected question.

“Why did you say he was going towards the police station rather than anywhere else? Was he on that side of the road?”

“Yes.”

“And you were hurrying home to bed, weren’t you?”

“Not hurrying, no.”

“But you didn’t pass close to him, did you?”

“Yes. Very close.”

“Very close? How close?”

“Less than a metre.”

Quinton nodded. “Why did you cross the road?”

Guillet was baffled and suddenly suspicious. “I did not say I crossed the road.”

“You turned right into the Rue du Rhin, you were going to turn right out of it. Why did you cross to the other side, the police station side, where you said Mr Langhorn was?”

Quinton’s opposite number, the prosecutor whose name Ranklin hadn’t caught, stood up and said mildly: “Your worship, I feel that Mr Quinton is hectoring the witness.”

The magistrate nodded but spoke to Quinton: “May I see your map for a moment?”

Quinton passed it to the usher, pointing out the locality, and it went up to the magistrate. He peered closely for a time, then looked up. “Well, Monsieur Guillet?”

“I made a mistake. Langhorn was on my side of the road. But still going up the hill towards the police station.”

“A mistake,” Quinton said, and after waiting a moment, the interpreter said: “Une erreur.”

Quinton selected one of his papers and glanced at it, then: “The street lighting in the Rue du Rhin is turned off at eleven o’clock, is it not?”

“I do not know . . . No, it can’t have been.”

Quinton frowned and consulted the paper again. “You say it was on?”

“I think so.” Even at that distance, Ranklin could tell Guillet was sweating.

“Now you only think so?”

When Guillet didn’t answer, the magistrate said: “What authority do you have for suggesting that the street was no longer lit at that time, Mr Quinton?”

“None whatsoever, your worship,” Quinton said blithely. “I had hoped to get an official answer to my query to the relevant authorities by this time but, perhaps owing to the Easter holidays . . .”

The magistrate frowned down at his papers, thinking. Finally he said: “So far, I cannot say that this witness has made an entirely favourable impression . . . This seems to me to be one point of fact which we should have cleared up . . . Do you think you would have an answer by tomorrow?”

“I would hope so, your worship, but I am quite prepared-”

“No, I’d like to see this sorted out before we proceed any further. I’ll adjourn the hearing until ten tomorrow morning.”

Quinton bowed perfunctorily, but as he turned away from the bench, his face was a black scowl. He’d had Guillet on the run, and now the witness had time to get his second wind and some intensive coaching. Ranklin sympathised, but had no time to commiserate.