Spy’s Honour

23

Ranklin was already shaved and half-dressed when a servant brought in a tray of coffee and bread. He took his cup out on to the little balcony, nodded Guten Morgen to a clubman in a Chinese dressing-gown on the next balcony, and leant on the railing to sniff the air.

It was a perfect sailing day, blue and sparkling. Already there was a crowd on the quayside across the road, with yachts flapping and fluttering away from the mooring poles to join others already jinking full-sailed among the graceful white steam yachts. He still couldn’t identify Kachina, but knew the Kaiser’s Hohenzollern by its size, twin yellow funnels and old-fashioned ram bow. And, in the middle of the channel, rigid and many funnelled, the German fleet at anchor.

Suddenly he realised somebody had been pounding on his door and hurried inside just as Mr Cross stumped in. He was dressed in what could only be “travelling” tweeds, and was followed by Hauptmann Lenz. Cross looked as if he’d had a restless night, Lenz restless in a different way, suspicious and annoyed.

“I’ve got Richard’s kit all packed.” Ranklin gestured at the bags. “There’s only …”

“May as well take them with me, then. I’m heading for home. Nothing for me to do here, and his mother …” Cross put a pipe in his mouth but didn’t light it, just stared around, discontented.

“If there’s anything more I can do …” Ranklin said.

“Yes there is,” Cross burst out. “You can ask some questions about this damnable business. I’m just not satisfied. Are you?”

“Ah …” Ranklin was conscious of Lenz’s glower.

“Well, I’m not,” Cross said firmly. “Why the devil should Richard get drunk – and that’s what you were implying,” he snapped at Lenz, “and go fooling around those locks in the middle of the night? It’s ridiculous: he wasn’t some idiot midshipman. I want you to look into it, for his sake if not mine.”

Ranklin had no idea of what to say. Both professionally and personally, his first instinct was not to offend Lenz.

However, it was a bit late for that. “Herr Spencer is not befugt – he has no rights to – ”

“Oh, get out!” Cross barked. “Buzz off. Go and arrest a stray dog.”

You do not speak to Prussian policemen like that. An English one might have apologised, saluted and buzzed; Lenz just goggled at Cross as if he’d spat on the flag.

“Herr Cross is distressed,” Ranklin said anxiously. “If you could leave us alone for a minute …”

Clearly unable to believe what he was doing, Lenz turned and slow-marched out.

“Bone-headed flatfoot,” Cross said loudly.

“Quite, but he’s not a village bobby. He could be back with the Horse Marines. Before he is, is there anything specific that makes you suspicious?”

“Just what I said: why should Richard behave like a backward schoolboy? If you want to know what I think, that pompous dog-catcher decided Richard was a spy and he and his bullyboys – and, damn it, the last thing I want said of my son is that he was a filthy spy.”

“Quite,” Ranklin said again, but more faintly.

“But there is something odd …” Cross took a sheaf of cablegrams from an inside pocket. “I was getting these all last week – all from a place called Korsor in Denmark. Only about eighty miles from here. They don’t make sense to me, but obviously something Richard arranged.”

“Have you shown these to Lenz or anybody?”

“No. They’d just make something nasty out of them.”

Ranklin pocketed them quickly. “Thank you. I’ll do what I can, but you heard Lenz, and it’s his town. One thing – ” he offered the bond; “ – does this mean anything?”

Cross frowned at the stained, crumpled document. “I can see what it is, but … was it …?”

“He had it with him when he died, yes. But you can’t think of any connection with the firm, or that line of business?”

“Nothing. Richard was never interested in speculation – or in building.”

“What was his line, in the Navy?”

“Signals, mostly.”

Not a bad background for … He said quickly: “The bond’s part of his estate, but I’d like to hang onto it just to see if …”

“Good God, man, do what you like with it.”

“Thank you. Here’s the rest of his stuff, passport and so on. I didn’t have to burn anything. Richard had nothing to hide.”

Except that he was a filthy spy, of course.

“Thank you,” said his father.

Cross must have passed Lenz and Kapitanleutnant Reimers on the stairs, but any conversation had been brief because Ranklin had hardly got his jacket on when they were inside his room. He braced himself.

But Reimers, wearing his best everyday uniform, was as sunny as the day. “Good morning, Mr Spencer. Now I hear you are to be the Sherlock Holmes of Kiel.”

“Oh, Lord,” Ranklin groaned. “The old man’s taking it very hard and …”

“I get it.” Reimers held up a hand in blessing. “And you are welcome. Unlike your Scotland Yard, Hauptmann Lenz will give you all assistance. Most willingly,” he said to Lenz, who was having trouble with his willing expression. “And maybe it’s best for an Englishman to investigate also. Then there can be no international misunderstandings. ”

It was a shrewd point. He wanted Ranklin to investigate – and find nothing. Which meant he thought there was nothing to find, or nothing that reflected on the German authorities, anyway. But on top of that, he was inviting Ranklin to display snooping abilities that, as James Spencer, he shouldn’t have.

“I am not Sherlock Holmes,” Ranklin said wearily. “But – I’ll go through the motions. For Mr Cross.”

“Excellent. But I am afraid you cannot use the Club as Baker Street (I forget the number). It was a kindness for only one night, but Hauptmann Lenz will find you a hotel room.”

“That’s very kind.” It was nothing of the sort: they just wanted him in a room of their choice, probably with their own man next door, stethoscope pressed to the wall. But at least it meant a place to sleep.

“Now all you need is your Doctor Watson. Hauptmann Lenz has some unhappy news, I’m afraid.”

Looking happy for the first time, Lenz reported: “Room-servant Gorman did not obey your order not to go to Kneipen. Also, he spent more than twenty marks. So he has money of his own.”

“Mine, you mean.”

“Yes, perhaps from you he steals.” That thought made Lenz even happier. “He went to three Kneipen, perhaps more.”

The imprecision of that “perhaps” surprised Ranklin. A little embarrassed but more indignant, Lenz explained: “The detective who was protecting Room-servant Gorman was attacked in the street, from behind, and made unconscious.”

Ranklin froze inside. Surely O’Gilroy hadn’t been fool, or drunk, enough to …

“We hope,” Reimers said sternly, “that Gorman did not arrange this attack.”

Ranklin drew himself up stiffly. “I hardly think that a stranger with barely a word of your language could arrange such a thing, particularly with Captain Lenz’s trained detective looking on. Now, has Gorman broken any law?”

Reluctantly, Lenz had to admit not.

“Very well. Thank you for your information, Captain, but provided no law has been broken, then a servant’s behaviour, no matter how ill-advised, is a matter for his master.”

Lenz might be disappointed, but Ranklin was playing the scene for the more cosmopolitan Reimers, who smiled in his beard and said: “But would the good Dr Watson have behaved so? Now, I think you want to see the locks at Holtenau.”

“Yes, but not until I’ve solved the case of what yachtsmen have for breakfast.”

Over breakfast in the original Club building, he read the Balkan news in the Kieler Zeitung. The Serbs were resisting strongly, and though it said nothing about the Greeks, he was reasonably sure they wouldn’t have been caught dozing. In a few days, Bulgaria was going to regret starting this war, no matter what secret encouragement it had been getting from Vienna. But supposing that encouragement became more open? Austria-Hungary wanted Serbia slapped down, but if one major power joined in, could the others stand idle?

Morosely, he joined a crowd of suntanned men in identical blue blazers and white trousers all harassing the hall porter for their mail. The impact of loud-voiced wealth depressed him further: each man here, he thought, could dip into his pocket and buy all I own. If, that is, I legally own anything but my own clothes. And even they – a dark town suit – aren’t the right ones for this occasion.

He was passed a single envelope and stared gloomily at the SY KACHINA embossed on the flap; if he hadn’t got the right clothes for the Club, they were even less right for a steam yacht. Then the gloom was swept away by pure terror: his own note had been innocent enough if steamed open, but what about her reply? Dear Spy …

No: My dear Mr Spencer – Delighted to hear from you again. If you would care to join us for lunch on board, be at the Club landing at noon. And by all means bring Gorman to carry your umbrella.

Yrs Affectionately, Corinna.

He let his shoulders sag with relief – a mistake in that muscular crowd, since he immediately got squashed flat. Wriggling his way out of the crush, he reflected that it was odd that she didn’t use her married name even to sign letters. American practice, perhaps. But now it was half past eight and time to find O’Gilroy.

There was no hint at all of Army experience in O’Gilroy’s posture: he was upright, but apart from that as relaxed as a tired snake. He barely managed to flick away his cigarette end and raise his bowler as Ranklin came out into the sunlight.

“Stand to attention,” Ranklin muttered, “and look as if I’m taking off your balls with a blunt knife. I’m sure you know you had the police trailing you last night – and what happened to one of them. I’ve been hearing all about it. Don’t answer: they’ll expect me to rave on at you, and we have to assume we’re being watched, everywhere. I think their Naval Intelligence is in on the act, too, and I fancy they got Cross’s number. Now his father wants me to play detective and the police are co-operating. It makes it easier for them to keep an eye on us.”

He remembered to keep his expression angry and to punctuate with savage gestures. By now O’Gilroy was at attention and looking like a dog trying to charm its way out of a whipping.

“One bit of good news is that Mrs Finn’s on her father’s yacht in the harbour and we’re invited to lunch. You’ll probably have to eat with the crew, so d’you want to come?”

“When else would I be seeing the inside of a boat like one of them?” O’Gilroy asked mournfully.

“Fine. Now we’d better take a look at these locks.”

Just then, Lenz came striding out of the Club, touched his hat to Ranklin, gave O’Gilroy a disdainful up-and-down look, and went to a small but well-polished blue tourer that he cranked and drove away himself.

“Lenz,” Ranklin said. “Their captain of detectives.”

“I saw him watching from just inside the Club.

“Assume he’s always around. Get us a cab, please.”

There were plenty of other cars parked at the quayside, but still none of them taxis. So they ended up in another open horse-drawn four-wheeler, O’Gilroy sitting upright under his bowler, Ranklin slumped under his straw boater (at least he had the right hat) and both far enough from the cabby to talk freely, they hoped.

Of course, Sherlock Holmes wouldn’t have taken the first nor the second cab on offer (did the man never miss a train thereby?) but there was hardly any secret about this journey. Still, Ranklin hadn’t realised the Holmes stories were so well-known in Germany – unless they were just prescribed reading for Naval Intelligence.

Watching the harbour jog past, he realised how spoilt he had become by the motor taxis of London and Paris. A few years ago, he would have relaxed, knowing he was going as fast as possible; now, he fidgeted with impatience that slowly dissolved as O’Gilroy reported his night in the Old Town. Ranklin half admired his tenacious depravity, half feared he would have done most of it from choice anyway.

“You seem to have had a most educational time,” he conceded finally. “And about all I did was count Cross’s socks. Would you know either of the two men again?”

“Surely.” O’Gilroy smiled nastily. “One’ll be walking bent over and holding himself private-like, and t’other’s got his nose spread right across his face.”

“Ye-es. I suppose it is more practical to have a description of people after they’ve met you than before. And the woman?”

“Mebbe. The voice I think I’d know. D’ye want to see the pictures?” He passed them over. “That’s the one the feller said ye’d like best.”

“And quite right too.” Ranklin quickly covered some square metres of female flesh with the German High Seas Fleet. It was an ordinary postcard showing a salute being fired at some earlier Kiel Week. Perhaps five ships might, to an expert, have been identifiable through the smoke clouds. So saluting guns didn’t use smokeless charges: the Admiralty wasn’t likely to award him a pension for that news.

“There’s a number on the back,” O’Gilroy said.

The scrawled figures said 030110. Ranklin looked blankly at them, then blankly at O’Gilroy. “Well? – you bought it.”

O’Gilroy shrugged. “He just said ye’d like it. Didn’t say there was a couple of hard boys outside wanted it as well.”

“Just another damned mysterious bit of paper.” He realised he hadn’t read the cablegrams Mr Cross had given him, not wanting to produce them in the Club breakfast room. He took them out, gave one to O’Gilroy, and they both read for a while. The cab turned inland and began to climb through wooded parkland past the Bellevue Hotel.

Three cablegrams had been sent at two-day intervals during the past week, each from Korsor to Mr Cross Senior at his Essex home. But one was about commodity prices, timber, grain and coal, another gave the results of the early yacht races and the third was about the times of boats and trains for young Cross’s journey home.

They stared at each other.

“Code?” O’Gilroy suggested.

“Yes, except his father couldn’t understand them. Perhaps it was a trial run to see if the cable office accepted such messages.”

“Lots of numbers in them.”

“That’s true.” Ranklin began counting. “Exactly twelve figures in each message, not counting times and dates put on by the cable company.”

“That sounds like something.”

“Damn it, everything sounds like something – even Dragan el Vipero.”

“Ye’ve heard of him, too?”

“Yes – and you? Reimers, their Naval Intelligence, I think, said he was in town.”

“Paddy the barman told me. Said ’twas him killed the King of Greece.”

“Another?” Brussels had been full of stories-for-sale about that assassination. The shot had been fired by a loony, but that left the question of who hired the loony, then who hired whoever hired the loony … Dragan sounded as if he belonged in such rumours; it seemed the sort of name which, mentioned in a Low Dive, would cause half the customers to slink out white-faced and the other half to knife you.

O’Gilroy took a more robust view. “Most fellers call themselves names like that’re just piss and wind. Worry about the ones that tear yer arms off without introducing themselves.”

“I’ll try to remember. Oh, and one other thing.” He hadn’t planned to mention the bearer bond, high finance not being O’Gilroy’s strong point, but if they were sharing paper puzzles … He explained what the bond was, officially.

O’Gilroy looked it over and grunted: “Pretty picture. Is this where we’re going?”

“Yes. Mind, all that isn’t built yet.”

“Tell me something, Captain,” being called that again immediately made Ranklin wary; “are we trying to solve what got him killed?”

“No, we are not. No matter what his father thinks. And quite apart from what it would do to us, we aren’t in the business of revenge. Cross knew the risks he was running, he knew he was on his own.” But, forced to think about it, he realised he was assuming Cross had been murdered – probably because he assumed that spies on active service didn’t die accidentally. But for that very reason, he had to convince Lenz and Reimers that he accepted it as an accident.

“I expect the police did it anyways,” O’Gilroy said equably. “And how would ye prove that?”

“Hold on. The Prussian police have a reputation for thinking with their fists, but they’d rather have the kudos of catching a spy.”

“They was looking for him, just before he got dead.”

“So you said. They didn’t say why they were looking?”

O’Gilroy gave him a pitying look. “Since when did the police say why they was doing anything?” Their different backgrounds had given them very different outlooks on the police – of any country.

“What happened that night that they should suddenly want Cross?” Ranklin mused. “Or had they been watching him and lost him?”

“And him in a pink jacket.”

“That sounds like a Leander Rowing Club blazer.” In Kiel’s Old Town, that would have stood out like a lighthouse on the darkest night.

Ranklin shook his head and summed up: “I’d like to know what Cross was up to; I want to be sure he didn’t leave any dangerous loose ends – the Bureau’ll expect that much. But we may end up just burning all these papers and catching the next train. Or ship.”

“I second the motion – if it comes to a vote.”