Spy’s Honour

4

Only matters didn’t, because at that moment three men stepped quietly from behind the curtains covering the French windows. They carried, respectively, a shotgun, a pistol and a rifle.

“If ye’ll be keepin’ quiet, gentlemen,” the one with the shotgun said, “we’ll be doing jest the same.” And he patted the shotgun barrels. He had a long face, mostly hidden by a tangle of black moustache and beard, and wore a short seaman’s jacket over whipcord breeches. As his glance searched Ranklin he seemed to hesitate, frowning, and Ranklin had the absurd idea that they had met somewhere before.

The man with the rifle moved quickly to check the doors to the dining room and corridor; the third man made sure the curtains were properly closed, then turned, and Ranklin certainly knew him, although only from photographs: the man he had come to Queenstown to collect.

Then the Secretary decided he owed it to his age and rank to say something useless: “What the devil d’you think you’re …”

“Be quiet, Admiral,” the man with the pistol – Peter, as Ranklin was thinking of him – said with a faint accent.

The shotgun man chuckled. “Ah, he’s no admiral. But he should be knowing how many’s in the house.”

“If you think …” the Secretary began.

“Tell them,” Ranklin said. “It’ll be safer for the servants.”

“Yer a wise man.” But the dark eyes under the matted black hair were still puzzled about Ranklin.

The count came out as the butler, a footman and a kitchen maid; the cook lived out and the Admiral’s servant and his wife’s maid had gone to Dublin with them. That sounded right to Ranklin, and he let his nod of agreement show.

At a word from Peter, the man with the rifle laid it aside – cautiously; he wasn’t used to firearms – and began searching them. He was young, not yet twenty, Ranklin guessed, and probably very scared under his aggressive pose; that made him dangerous. Then he found Ranklin’s card case, opened it, and read out his rank and name.

The shotgun man gave a little satisfied grunt, then: “And now put it back. It’s got a badge on it, d’ye want that and the story of it showin’ in the pawnshop window?”

Reluctantly the younger man handed the case back. “And if he’s a captain, where’s his uniform? A spy, more like.”

“Sure, sure,” the other soothed. “And carryin’ his cards and eatin’ at the Big House for disguise.” He smiled through his beard at Ranklin.

So he knows me, and knows I can’t remember him, Ranklin thought. But he doesn’t want to announce that; could there be an advantage to me there?

Then Peter took charge. “You will go and imprison the servants. Here, I am on guard.” He was both taller and younger than Ranklin and held his sharp-faced head with a high, nervous pride. His dark hair and moustache were neatly trimmed, and when he stripped off his shabby overcoat he was wearing evening dress and, more surprisingly, a crusting of elaborate foreign decorations and honours.

This display enraged the Secretary. “How dare you, sir!” he erupted. “You’re nothing more than a damned bandit!”

The pistol jabbed towards his stomach. “Do not make me angry,” Peter said. “I need you for my plan but I can make a new plan.” It was the very lack of anger that made them all, even the Irishmen with their own guns, hold their breath. They might kill if it meant something, Ranklin thought; Peter will kill because it means nothing.

The Secretary swallowed and shut his mouth. “Sit yourself,” Peter ordered, waving the pistol to include Ranklin. They sat in deep chairs from which sudden movement was impossible.

The other two went out; Peter stationed himself by the fireplace holding the pistol – a pocket-size semi-automatic type – loosely by his side. “You,” he said to Ranklin, “you are a captain of artillery. What do you do here?”

Ranklin remembered to be properly reluctant and sparse in his answer. “I’m here to inspect the guns in the forts.”

“And then?”

“I report back to my superiors.”

“Report what?”

“I don’t know yet. I only got here this afternoon.”

Peter nodded, not really interested, and then looked at the Secretary, who clenched his mouth firmly. Peter smiled. “I do not ask your secrets – I know them already. I just tell you what you must do. I tell you, and you will have time to think how to cheat me. Think carefully. Think how, when you try to cheat me, you can stop me killing you. All of you: him, the servants, the sentries at the gate – yes, I know of them – the men who bring the gold. All of them. We have enough bullets.”

The gold? Ranklin felt his ears peaking like a rabbit’s. What gold? Whose? – presumably the Navy’s, certainly the government’s – But where, how …?

He hadn’t controlled his expression and Peter was smiling at him. “Yes, Captain: you did not know about that. Twenty thousand gold sovereigns for the fleet out there. You think your big guns rule the world, but no: it is small guns – ” he gestured with the pistol, “ – and gold.”

The butler came in, high-coloured and highly indignant, ushered by the black-bearded man who was now carrying the rifle. He held it with familiar ease at the high port position, finger clear of the trigger – and that way, Ranklin remembered who he was. Or had been. This time, he kept his face expressionless, but nobody was looking at him anyway.

“They’re all locked up,” the man reported, “and the maid so sniffling scared she’d have the footman wrapped round her like a blanket and welcome – if Mick wasn’t watching. I’ll be taking the Captain now, then.”

Peter nodded. “Yes, take him … Ach, Captain: as an officer, it becomes your duty to be sure the other prisoners stay quiet – and alive.”

As Ranklin was marched out, Peter began giving instructions to the Secretary and butler: “Remember now, I am Count Viktor de Bazaroff of the Imperial Russian Embassy, asked by your Foreign Minister to give information – most secret – to the Admiral who sails with the fleet …”

The only basement room with a proper lock was the wine cellar, lit by a single unshaded light bulb and, of course, unheated. The kitchen maid, pale, wide-eyed and tear-stained, sat huddled in a nightgown and a blanket at the end of a rack of dusty bottles. The footman, in his shirt sleeves and collarless, leapt up from his seat on a wine box as Ranklin came in. He was little more than a boy and it was only the audience of the kitchen maid, Ranklin guessed, that was keeping him calm.

And perhaps only these two who are keeping me calm, Ranklin’s thoughts confessed. But of course he had to take charge of them: it was expected of him, no matter that they weren’t his servants and the situation wasn’t of his making nor understanding. No matter how badly he did it.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” he announced, then corrected himself. “Nothing that worrying will improve, anyway. We just have to wait – and keep quiet. I’ve been nearly twenty years in the Army and I know there’s times not to try and be clever. This is one.” He realised he was speaking mostly for the two Irishmen behind him, and hoped they were listening. “Now, lad, if that’s a case of brandy you’re sitting on, get out a bottle. There must be a corkscrew around somewhere, so we’ll all have a tot to keep us warm.”

“A thoughtful deed, Captain,” the black-bearded voice said over his shoulder. “Though when was drinking permitted in cells?”

“Just a mouthful. And for yourself?”

“Thank ye, Captain, but I’ll get by a while without. Step into the corridor when ye’ve finished dispensing rations.”

The corridor was just as dimly lit and a waggle of the shotgun – they had swapped weapons again, and “Mick” with the rifle had gone back upstairs – suggested he shut the cellar door behind him. They stared at each other.

“Well, now, Captain …”

“Well, Private O’Gilroy.”

A long sigh. “So ye remembered – only it was Corporal and an honourable discharge wid two good conduct stripes – afterwards.” Was it odd that a man could be so flagrantly outside the law and yet remember, with precision and pride, his loyal Army service? Perhaps not: they had been things he had set out to do, and done; real achievements.

O’Gilroy took a paper packet of Woodbines from a pocket and tossed them to Ranklin. “Light me one – and yeself, if yez a mind. I fancy I owe ye more’n one, not counting the ones we rolled of tea leaves.”

Ranklin lit two cigarettes and placed one delicately in the muzzle of the shotgun offered towards him. O’Gilroy transferred the cigarette to his mouth, then leant against the flaking whitewashed wall and breathed smoke for a while. “Garrison Artillery, is it now? Isn’t that a bit of a comedown?”

“As pure gunnery it’s a step up, all barrel wear and air pressure and magazine temperatures – ”

“ – and beer and more beer; I’ve seen them, bare able to stand for the weight of their bellies even whiles they’re sober. That’s garrison gunners.” He breathed smoke for a while, then said slowly: “I don’t know what to be doing wid yez, Captain, and that’s a fact. I’m not fool enough to take yer parole, nor yet believe ye’ll forget me face oncest we’re gone – so I jest don’t know.”

“Is it your decision? The foreign gentleman upstairs seemed to be doing the deciding.”

O’Gilroy’s face was shadowed in the dusty light, but Ranklin saw him stiffen. “Jest helping, Captain, as a friend of Ireland.”

“Really? He’s certainly a friend of gold.”

O’Gilroy lifted his face to show his frown, but said nothing. Ranklin went on carefully: “I’ve seen his photograph on posters in London. He’s wanted in Russia, as well, and maybe France and Portugal. I don’t think he was helping Ireland in those places.”

“I’m no child to think we’re the only ones in the world wid troubles – nor yet that I’d be better off a Russian peasant. He’s talked of them, and I believe him. But there can be friendship in adversity; I fancied ye knew that yeself oncest.”

“There can be pilfering and hoarding and swindling, too, that doesn’t get into the heroic stories in the newspapers and official histories, and you know that. What’s he taking as his cut?”

“Are ye trying to spread disaffection in the ranks, Captain? He’s taking no cut.”

“And that doesn’t make you suspicious? The labourer’s worthy of his hire.”

O’Gilroy had smoked his cigarette down to a glowing fragment; now he flicked it against the wall and said firmly: “And I think that finishes everything in orders for the day, Captain, so if ye’ll be getting back to cells …”

Ranklin didn’t argue with the gesturing gun. The cellar was windowless but had a rusty punched-metal grille in the door, impossible to see through, to let some air in to circulate around the racked bottles. Ranklin stayed close to it, listening to the key creak in the lock and then O’Gilroy’s footsteps fade back along the corridor.

The footman was sitting so far from the kitchen maid that he’d obviously been much closer before Ranklin came in; now both looked at him with the hope on their faces as thin as the light. Ranklin tried a reassuring smile. “So now we go back to waiting. Did the brandy help at all?”

They over-enthused their thanks, the kitchen maid adding: “But I don’t like to think what the butler will say.” She was a local girl, the footman was English.

“He’s got other things to worry about. And that being the case, I might take a drop myself. And for you?” From the level in the bottle, they’d had no more than a spoonful each.

The footman didn’t mind if he did, but the girl shook her head. “Thank ye kindly, sir, but it’s terrible strong stuff.”

It was also terribly nice stuff, and Ranklin looked for the first time at the label: a forty-year-old Hines worth about twenty-five shillings a bottle, so they’d each drunk a day’s wages already. Well, it was a rare luxury for himself these days, and if the Admiral really wanted to bring the matter up … though his years in uniform had convinced him that a few shillings’ worth of misappropriated brandy was exactly the sort of thing senior officers did like to concentrate on in a crisis.

“What are your names?” He should have asked that before, if he was in charge. The footman was Wilks, the kitchen maid Bridget.

“And I’m Captain Ranklin, Royal Garrison Artillery. But I’m afraid I forgot to bring any of our big guns with me tonight.” No, he wasn’t good at this sort of thing. But they ha-ha’d dutifully.

“Wilks – upstairs there was talk of gold, twenty thousand pounds worth. Do you know anything about it?”

Wilks shrank back from the thought. “It’s not for me to listen to what the officers are saying, sir.”

Bridget looked at him with contempt. “No, but ye do, me little man, and blether it to the likes of me to show yer importance. Now be telling himself that really needs to know.”

It was possible, Ranklin reflected, that Bridget’s virtue didn’t need as much protection as everyone seemed to assume.

“Well, sir, it’s for the squadron. The cruiser squadron in the harbour. There’s talk of them being sent to the Mediterranean.” Ranklin was snobbishly surprised that Wilks pronounced the word perfectly – but of course this was a Naval household where such names were as common as … as gold, apparently. And with a new outbreak of fighting in the Balkans the Admiralty might well be sending flag-showing reinforcements. But …

“But twenty thousand pounds: how on earth are they going, in taxis?”

“Ha, ha, sir. No, it’s for the captains, sir. They always take golden guineas to foreign parts.”

Of course. A warship commander was far more on his own than his Army equivalent. He might need repairs in some out-of-the-way port, or supplies, or just the latest rumours – all easiest bought with gold sovereigns that were recognised worldwide. “But … is it being brought here? Hasn’t the Paymaster got a safe somewhere?”

“He must do, sir, but it seems it isn’t as safe a safe as the Admiral’s here.”

So it was all a cunning plan to defeat the very robbery that was now going on. And he could guess at how cunningly it had itself been defeated: the embezzling clerk in the Paymaster’s office had found the money to repay his theft from the sale of that information. Finding such men and exploiting their weaknesses sounded like Peter’s doing. It was just such work that spies and their ilk were expected to be good at.

But that still left the robbers with a problem: “I wonder how much it all weighs?”

Wilks shrank back again. “I’m sure I don’t know, sir.”

“No, no, sorry. I was just thinking aloud.” He took three sovereigns from his pocket and clinked them in his palm: small but heavy, weighing – as much as an ounce? Then he remembered how recently he had been concerned with the price of gold on the market. Depending on its “fineness” it ranged from just under to just over four pounds an ounce. Perhaps that was troy weight, but he only wanted a rough figure. So four pounds times sixteen divided into twenty thousand is just over three hundred pounds in weight. Even split into three loads, no one man was going to stroll out of here with over a hundred pounds of gold in his pockets. They must have a cart or carriage nearby. Or a car.

Then they heard a car – just a distant growl filtered through an airbrick high on the outside wall. The door creaked open behind them and O’Gilroy was standing there. Holding the shotgun one-handed, he pointed it silently at each of them in turn and held a finger to his lips. It was a macabre little performance.

Then, above them, the front door slammed and footsteps – many of them – creaked the ceiling. The gold had arrived.