“Nobody can be sure of things like that.”
“He’d be alive,” O’Gilroy insisted. “Only I stopped ye going for Mrs Langhorn and-”
“I’m in command,” Ranklin said sharply. “I decide things like that.” And will people just stop reminding me of “ifs”? The man is dead. Let him lie.
After a time, O’Gilroy muttered: “Stupid honourable bastard of an officer.” Ranklin chose not to hear.
Soon after that, the first journalists arrived. First came obvious “lines-of-communication” people, a couple of youngsters and an elderly chauffeur, setting up trays of drinks, establishing there was a telephone, interrogating the proprietor. His instinct was to be taciturn and surly, but as he saw Corinna’s predicted fortune coming true, he began to flower; Ranklin overheard several dramatic and imaginative details. Whether the young reporters believed him or not, they wrote it all down.
After maybe half an hour, a bunch of more seasoned reporters hurried in and, without seeming to try but rather as if it was their right, took the place over. They had clearly been up as near to the action as the Surete allowed, had got little but statements from police officers and some villagers’ rumours, and immediately, to Ranklin’s surprise, sat down to swap notes. Where was all this deadly rivalry and “scoops” he had heard so much about?
Mostly they ignored Ranklin and O’Gilroy, but eventually a middle-aged man strolled over and said: “D’you mind if I join you?”
He had an American voice, and Ranklin said: “If you want,” but the man had already sat down.
“Wendell Lewis, Associated Press.” He stuck out a hand, and they both shook it. He hung on to O’Gilroy’s hand a moment too long, then asked: “What’s your connection with all this?”
“Just innocent bystanders.”
Lewis smiled quickly. He was in his thirties, with a narrow, sharp face and heavy glasses that gave him the look of a scholarly fox. “His hand’s all scratched up and you’ve got a fresh cut on your cheek.” Ranklin instinctively touched his face; it had just been some thorn, and he had washed the smear of blood off in the toilette, but it still stung. And showed, it seemed.
“Why aren’t you beavering away like your colleagues?” Ranklin asked.
“Time difference. Those boys are up against edition times, but I’ve got five hours’ leeway. I needn’t file for our East Coast papers until five in the morning French time. D’you think it’ll last out until then?”
“I’ve really no idea . . .” It hadn’t occurred to him that Kaminsky might time his Last Stand to suit newspaper schedules, and he doubted it had occurred to Kaminsky either. But this raised a thought . . . “But d’you mean that if it doesn’t end soon, they won’t have anything to write?”
“Hardly that. A shoot-out with dozens of police is quite a story; it’s just if you don’t have the ending it’s a bit like writing up a ball game without the box score. We’ll all be filling in with background and colour, who they are, how did it start.”
“Do you know most of the journalists here?”
“Most.” Lewis looked back over his shoulder. The room was full and busy, particularly for the proprietor and his wife. For the moment the telephone had been taken over by a uniformed Surete officer but there was a pack of young reporters behind him, ready to pounce.
Lewis peered through the wreathing tobacco smoke. “There’s Lebrun of Figaro, and Davidier from he Matin, and he Gaulois, Echo de Paris, and Jake Jacobs of our Herald, and a couple of stringers for your Sunday papers . . . pretty good turnout, for a Saturday night. It must be the rumour they’re anarchists – are they?”
“You shut your mouth, Connelly,” Ranklin suddenly told O’Gilroy. And since O’Gilroy hadn’t been about to say anything, and he’d never used the name Connelly, he looked briefly surprised. But then decided he’d better be abashed and sullen until he found out what the hell Ranklin had in mind.
“They may call themselves anarchists,” Ranklin told Lewis, “but for my money, they’re just trouble-makers and crooks. Pure rabble, no matter what Connelly says.”
Nothing had changed in Lewis’s face, but at the same time everything had. He was now twice as alive.
“Connelly” muttered: “Bloody English bastard,” a comment that was, in context, non -committal.
“Shut up, you damned Irish renegade.”
“I could tell ye a tale-” “Connelly” ventured.
Ranklin snatched his pistol from his pocket and thrust it in O’Gilroy’s face. “I said shut up!”
Lewis’s chair clattered backwards on to the floor, stopping the room in mid-gabble. A couple of dozen faces turned to the banquette in the corner, but saw no more than Ranklin’s back and a glimpse of his gun as he whispered fiercely at O’Gilroy.
Then Lewis, who’d backed away several steps and felt somehow responsible for this outburst, said: “Hey, I didn’t mean to start anything . . .”
Ranklin straightened up and turned to face the other journalists past him. “My name’s Spencer from the British War Office and that’s all you need know about me. This gentleman wants to say a few words to you gentlemen of the Press, and I’ve agreed he can do so on his promise that he’ll then accompany me – voluntarily and quietly – back to London. Now say your piece.”
The Surete officer, who’d felt he should have something to say about a flourished pistol, paused uncertainly.
O’Gilroy shambled to his feet. As the would-be-inconspicuous O’Gilroy, he would rather face the Inquisition than this group. But he was no longer O’Gilroy. As Ranklin watched and listened, he gradually became Connelly. It was like seeing a man become possessed, in this case by an Irish braggart who would far rather talk than do.
“Yer here because of some fellers I know holed up in a house by the canal ’n like to gettin’ theirselves killed. I don’t say Good Luck to ’em, I’d jest say God go wid ’em – whether they believes in Him or not. Meself, I’m no sort of anarchist, ’n niver was. I’m a good Irish republican that wants no truck wid kings ’n queens ’n all of the aristocrats that’s been bleedin’ Ireland white for centuries past. The only raison I’m not home in Ireland now is the traithors av the Irish poliss that hounded me out av family ’n home ’n if ye think yer gettin’ me rightful name, good luck wid it.
“So I’m livin’ in stinkin’ lodgin’s in La Villette wid a bunch that calls thimselves anarchists. ’N mebbe they are: seems ye can call yerself an anarchist long as ye believe the world’s an unfair place ’n better off wid no laws ’n nothin’. Meself I believe in Irish laws made by Irish folk for the runnin’ av a proper free Ireland.”
“Get on with it,” somebody called.
O’Gilroy looked sullenly truculent, paused, then hit them between the eyes. “All right. So it began wid this feller claims he’s the bastard son av King George ’n the next king av England by rights. Said his mother’d told him so.”
That hushed them. It was a hush of disbelief, but most of the audience scribbled a note or two. Some of the French journalists who couldn’t follow his “English” demanded what he’d said and were themselves hushed. Ranklin saw the Surete officer slip out into the street.
“So ye let loonies like this,” O’Gilroy continued, “in ivry pub in the world. But the feller Kaminsky gits to hear av ut – he’s one av the fellers shootin’ at the poliss right now, runs the Cafe des Deux Chevaliers in La Villette. ’N he told Feodor Gorkin, the intellec’chul feller that came down slummin’ at the place. So they got the idea they’d use this to show what a rotten place England was. Have ut all come out when the King was visitin’ Paris.
“ ’N sure, I wint along wid that. But I didn’t know what I was gittin’ meself into. Anyways, this young feller was the waiter in Kaminsky’s cafe ’n he’d bin workin’ on Kaminsky’s barge, puttin’ an injin in ut-”