“And what about meself?” O’Gilroy asked.
The General looked at him. “Naturally, you will accompany the Capitaine.”
“Ah, the King wouldn’t want to be bothering with the likes of an Irish squire. I’ll wait here, ’til the Captain gets back.”
Nothing showed in Gunther’s face, but a hesitancy in his movement suggested he saw a problem. Perhaps, if he didn’t want to leave O’Gilroy while he and Clement were away, Clement was the only one of the household truly on Gunther’s team.
“It is many hours to Belgium,” the General said uncertainly. “And perhaps the Capitaine will wish to take the railway from there …”
“I haven’t finished me wine yet,” O’Gilroy said.
“Who is this man?” Gunther took the offensive.
“I’m jest what ye see,” O’Gilroy said contentedly.
“An escort to a courier. L’intelligence? Secret Service – which I think you despise, mon General?”
“Absolument.” The General gave O’Gilroy a despising look.
“Then,” Gunther announced, “you will not want him to remain an instant longer in an honourable house. We will leave him at the station in Rouen.”
“It would be best,” the General said gravely.
“Nobody,” Ranklin said, “has yet asked me if I want to go to Belgium.”
“Mais naturellement …” the General seemed puzzled.
“It will be far too late to wait upon His Majesty by the time we get there tonight – and I have heard he prefers to sleep early.” He hadn’t heard any such thing, but was sure nobody else had heard anything either. “Tomorrow we will go to Rouen, take the train for Paris, and …”
Gunther jumped in. “So you can deliver the code to the traitors in Paris?”
“Mijnheer,” Ranklin said coldly, “you have accused me, an officer in the service of His Britannic Majesty, of treachery and being ready to sell a code for money. There can be no worse insults to my honour, and only one course is open to me. I only regret that I must wait till dawn to receive the satisfaction that is my due.” And reaching across the table he lightly flicked his napkin in Gunther’s pop-eyed face. “Mr O’Gilroy will act as my second.”
Was he right? Was the casual but implacable code of the duel part of the General’s dream that they were all living?
He was right – and wrong. While everybody else was sitting dazed with surprise, the General shook his head. “Capitaine, you dishonour yourself. For a gentleman-at-arms to challenge a bourgeois seller of cigars! – no, this is not permissible. Not in a house of honour.”
A small relieved smile twitched Gunther’s moustache.
O’Gilroy leant back in his chair and drawled: “Meself, I’m no gentleman-at-arms. But I’d be no sort of gentleman at all to hear meself called Secret Service – which, General, ye’ll agree is lower than the lowest thing that crawls in yer sewers – without seeing the foul stain washed out in blood.” And he tossed his whole napkin at Gunther, now totally flabbergasted. “I’m sure the Captain will act as me second.”
14
O’Gilroy flopped onto one of the beds and said mournfully: “I think I saw this play at the Gaiety. It had an unhappy end to it.” He looked up at Ranklin. “Ye’d best tell me jest what I’ve talked meself into.”
“‘Wiping out a foul stain in blood’, that’s what. Did that come from the play?”
“It did.”
Ranklin shook his head, still trying to catch up with the rush of events. “You didn’t have to challenge Gunther like that.”
“Ye did yeself.”
“I was playing for time. Anyway, with my background – ”
“Ah, I see it now.” O’Gilroy’s voice got a jagged edge to it. “Not being an officer and a gentleman, I’m not good enough to …”
“Did you have fencing lessons at your school?” Ranklin asked coldly. “Have you ever fired a black-powder pistol – or any pistol at the sort of distance duels are fought?”
The quivering silence dwindled into the tap of rain on the window, the breath of wind in the chimney. O’Gilroy nodded. “Permission to speak more sensibly, Captain? Does it have to be swords or pistols?”
“It’s traditional. But that’s all duels are, anyway.”
“Are they always having duels in France?”
“Not nowadays. But it’s about the only place on the Continent where they aren’t still common among … among the duelling classes. Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary – I think they’ve all got laws against it. Like the law against distilling poteen in Ireland.”
“I get yer meaning, Captain.”
“Anyway, Gunther doesn’t want a duel any more than we do, so he might just cut his losses and run.”
“I’m not betting on it.”
“Nor I – Entrez!” to a knock on the door.
The manservant brought in a large tray loaded with decanters, glasses, coffee cups and pots – even a silver cigarette box. “Le Comte mon General vous attendra en cinq minutes, mon Capitaine.”
Ranklin studied the man: about forty and thickening up, but burly and stronger than himself. Sergeant Clement might be the only one on Gunther’s side, but this man would be one to worry about if they fell foul of the General. The butler Gaston was strictly supply train.
He nodded, dismissing the man. “Cognac? Brandy to us.”
O’Gilroy took a glass and coffee. “And what d’ye decide when ye parley-vous with the General?” He helped himself to a cigarette from the box.
“Weapons, time, place, any conditions. The useful thing about a duel is that it stops everything in place. The General won’t make any move about the code, you and Gunther mustn’t meet, Gunther can’t meet me – nothing happens until the duel’s over, and if that isn’t until dawn …”
“I see what ye … Jayzus!” He jerked the cigarette from his lips and peered at it. “What am I smoking here? Frogs’ legs? Ye’ll observe me perfect manners in not smoking this thing to the last drag. And when ye see the General, ask if he’s anything else to smoke, some oily rags from the car, mebbe.”
Ranklin smiled and pulled out his watch. “Yes, I’d better go and parley. One thing: Gunther may try to dodge the duel by offering an abject apology.”
“And what then?”
“If you accept – and you’re supposed to if it’s abject enough – then I suppose we’re back where we left off.”
O’Gilroy stretched out on the bed; the window was darkening, the room growing colder. He started to get his overcoat, then remembered it was downstairs: the butler had taken it. And he had finished his own few cigarettes – few because of Ranklin’s warning of French customs laws – so there were only those foul French things.
He could ring the bell and demand his overcoat, perhaps other cigarettes, certainly a hot drink, but didn’t want to make any move without Ranklin knowing. So he stayed as helpless as a man in a cell – or a gentleman without his servants. He smiled, as he had so often before, at that helplessness, at men who couldn’t put a stud into the shirts they owned, nor their own cars into gear. Men who were so proud of despising any skill except horse riding and shooting.
“That’s what keeps us in our place,” an old shipyard worker had grumbled to him once, “pride in our work. That’s what they teach us and all they teach us, so’s we’ll sleep easy and not be dreaming of painting the walls with their blood.”
There had been a lot of truth, as well as porter, in that remark.
He got up and poured lukewarm coffee into his cup, then added a dash of brandy, something he had only heard of doing before. It certainly tasted warmer, though in truth it must be colder. And was that being an English gentleman – just a feeling of being better than most, and probably brought on by brandy besides?
Holy Mary, and he had offered to fight a duel for such people and their damned Empire! No! He threw that thought away immediately. Anybody who thought that didn’t know Conall O’Gilroy. He was fighting – if it got that far – for himself, and fighting Gunther because he was Gunther.