“I’m not a travelled man meself,” O’Gilroy was saying, “not hardly at all. My little place in the Old Country keeps me tied down. But Captain Ranklin, now – here; Matthew – he’s been the world over and backwards besides.” He was a little touched by brandy, Ranklin thought, but it seemed to do no more than roughen his accent and colour his imagination. “This gentleman’s wanting to know about getting off at – at France.”
Ranklin shook hands with Mr Clayburn of Detroit. “If you’re going to Paris and your baggage is registered through … It is? then you just get on the train at the dock. The delay comes at the Gare St Lazare, the station in Paris. You have to wait about twenty minutes while they organise your baggage and then you clear it through customs and the octroi – all they’re really worried about is tobacco and matches and food. The octroi’s for taxing any food brought into Paris or any French city.”
Mr Clayburn bought them both a drink and withdrew to find his Dear Wife. They moved to a corner table.
“How are you feeling?” Ranklin asked.
“Just don’t mention it, and it won’t mention itself. I’m not thinking Mr Clayburn’s one of them – did ye have any luck yerself?”
“All I got was a fat German – you might have seen him, big moustache, glasses? That was before lunch. He was loaded and primed with beer. But that’s all. I wonder if this whole …” But it wouldn’t do to express his doubts in front of O’Gilroy. “There’s still the train to Paris.”
They went on deck to enjoy the suddenness, like waking from a nightmare, as the steamer finished a roll and, seemingly surprised herself, stayed upright as she slid between the jetties, and into the channel and harbour of Dieppe. Ranklin always enjoyed the sight of a non-British port. For a country that relied so much on its sea trade and Navy, British ports were remarkably surly-looking places. Here, even in the gusting rain, the defiant bright awnings of the cafe-lined quay, the tall houses above them, the arcade at the beginning of the Quai Duquesne, all suggested an interest in the comings and goings of the cosy little harbour. Perhaps “trade” was the key: English ports were tradesmen’s entrances, mere necessities.
The Paris train was puffing impatiently on the dockside, late because they were late themselves in that weather. They got their travelling bags – Ranklin suddenly remembered they had been left unguarded in the cabin, albeit locked – handed the cabin key to the purser, and joined the crowd stumbling across the gangplank.
“Capitaine Ranklin! M’sieur le Capitaine Ranklin!” A uniform waving an envelope.
Ranklin was startled, then embarrassed, perhaps more as an Englishman having to unmask himself in front of a crowd than for his mission. He showed his passport, grabbed the envelope and tore it open.
Would Captain Ranklin urgently and personally telephone Colonel Yarde-Buller at the Embassy in Paris?
Despite his unlikely name, the Colonel was the perfectly real Military Attache to the British Embassy, and the message could only originate with the Bureau, since only it knew … But one thing they had been told about their work was not to rely on military attaches who were appointed by the Foreign Office and totally subservient to their ambassadors. And ambassadors regarded spies as being even worse than warm champagne.
The French official was looking at him with frank curiosity. Damn it, they might as well have laid on a band and flags. He showed the message to O’Gilroy who shrugged and said: “The train’s looking urgent.”
It wasn’t so much the train as the officials and blue-blousoned porters, all enjoying a loud French panic as they bustled passengers aboard. They had already seen Lieutenant Spiers get in.
“Ah, M’sieu, est qu’il y a un telephone?” But, naturellement, all telephones were for official use. However, at the hotel which one could not see because the train was in the way …
“Wait here,” he told O’Gilroy, and galloped off down the slippery cobblestones.
The walk back, when he came out of the hotel, was much shorter because the train was no longer in the way.
“And the Colonel isn’t even in his office this afternoon. What the devil the Bureau’s playing at …”
O’Gilroy took it calmly. “Would it have to be the Bureau at all? It wouldn’t need a genius to find out the Colonel’s name.”
“So you think we’ve been spotted?” The thought was both exciting and sinister. “But we have to pretend we don’t know that. And as real couriers we’d want to get to Paris quickly, but safely. But if we were real couriers we’d be pretending to be tourists, so …” And standing between the scurry of replenishing the steamer and the busy cafes of the quayside, he began to feel the loneliness of his new trade.
“It’s a mite fancy for me too, Captain,” O’Gilroy said dryly. “We’d best remember if it’s them, they’ll play the next card.”
“But we’re cut off from Spiers: have they diverted us from him, or are we diverting them from him?”
“You did not go to Paris, then?” The low, slow Gunther Arnold growl, now wrapped in a flapping grey-green cloak that made him look like a fat Christmas tree. Ranklin couldn’t imagine how he had got so close unnoticed.
“Some silly mix-up made us miss the train,” he said.
“Then we must have another drink! And your friend also. I have a hotel – it is not the Ritz, but – yes?”
Ranklin tried not to stare at him. Gunther was, presumably, the first spy he had met. Apart from himself, of course, and other members of the Bureau whom he couldn’t think of as real spies. But Gunther would hardly have been born into a Fine Old Spy Family, would he?
“That’s very kind,” he said pleasantly. “But we’ll have to find out about the next train, then telegraph to Paris to make sure our luggage …”
“M’sieu?” This time it was a tall man in grey chauffeur’s uniform, a small gold coronet embroidered on his breast and an unfamiliar badge on his cap. He bowed very slightly. “The General le Comte de St Col presents his compliments and wishes to know if he may be of assistance. He wishes your visit to France to be without problems.”
“How thoughtful of him.” Ranklin looked around for the General, feeling but resisting the attraction of a fellow soldier – even a General – in-problem times.
“The General is in the automobile.” It was parked a few yards away, a large white landaulette being gazed at by small and apparently rainproof schoolboys.
“And a very nice automobile to be waiting in,” O’Gilroy murmured, and Ranklin looked at him sharply. He had resisted the temptation, so O’Gilroy could, too. Their task was to stay in Gunther’s clutches but when he looked, the man had faded away again. Trust any general to pop up at the wrong time and mess things up, he thought angrily, then found himself following O’Gilroy towards the car.
The General, obviously well past retirement age, leant forward from the shadowed back seat, gloved hands resting on a walking stick. He had a thin face but puffy red cheeks, a long thinned-out white moustache and damp blue eyes. He shook hands as Ranklin was forced to explain a version of their problem.
“Sergeant Clement will telegraph to St-Lazare for the accommodation of your baggage. It would be an error to take the next trains, they stop everywhere to Rouen. But my house is on the route to there and is at your disposal after such a crossing. Perhaps you would wish to bathe, to take a small repas – and then Sergeant Clement will convey you to a comfortable express from Rouen. There is no problem.”
It wasn’t an order, not quite, and Ranklin was about to refuse politely when O’Gilroy simply climbed into the car. Ranklin now had the choice of getting loudly angry or getting in also. He got in, but he also got quietly very angry as well.
11
As he’d expected, the house wasn’t exactly on the direct road to Rouen, and nor was it a house but a chateau. Not a grand one – it got its size from the height of its witch’s-hat turrets rather than its width – but perfectly sited atop a small hill with a steep lawn down to the road in front and now-leafless forests marching up on either flank. Only as they chugged up the drive which curled round to the back could he see that the lawn needed scything, the creeper on the walls should be cut back and the drainpipes in the courtyard where they arrived were dribbling rustily down the stonework. It was nice to know that it wasn’t only the English landed class that had been ravaged by death duties and the agricultural slump.