When he had recovered enough to speak, the General spluttered: “That was not a noble coup.”
“It was bayonet-fighting,” Ranklin said.
Sergeant Clement looked at O’Gilroy, then Ranklin, and said coldly: “Never a soldier, hein?” and went back to reassembling Humpty Dumpty.
“I thought your cigar-peddler did pretty well, too,” Ranklin said to the General, but loud enough for Gunther and Clement. “Must be his training as a salesman. Much the same thing as bayonet-fighting, don’t you think – sticking people with something they don’t want?”
The General turned away, unamused, and Ranklin took out his watch. It was now over two hours since Mrs Finn had driven off for Rouen, which wasn’t much more than twenty miles away, by his guess.
He walked back to O’Gilroy, who had slipped his jacket back over his shoulders and was doing a shuffling dance step to keep warm.
“Are we going on, Captain?”
“I think so. How’s Gunther doing?”
“He knows the game. Some officers have to.” As a Gunner, supposed to despise rifles and rifle drills (it was odd how much time the military spent despising other parts of itself) it hadn’t occurred to Ranklin that bayonet training couldn’t just be left to sergeant instructors. If a soldier got punctured, there would have to be some officer who knew enough about it all to confuse a court of inquiry at least.
Clement was calling them back to the centre of the courtyard again. “When he goes down this time,” O’Gilroy said, “ye grab hold of his rifle and we’ll both go for the Sergeant. That pistol in his pocket’s enough key for any door at all.”
Gunther was already in position, his shirt smudged with mud and now a dogged hatred shining through his spectacles.
“Commencez.”
This time, Gunther let O’Gilroy make the moves, and after a moment of fencing, O’Gilroy backed off and began circling left, as if looking for an opening on Gunther’s right. It is easy to swing a rifle to your left, across your body, but far harder to swing right because the butt jams on your right hip. Gunther had to keep turning.
Then O’Gilroy thrust to draw a parry, disengaged and thrust for real, his bayonet skidding down the stock of Gunther’s rifle – and then he stopped, tried to recover, and Gunther’s bayonet slashed across his forearm.
“Degagez!” ordered Sergeant Clement.
“First blood,” the General grunted happily.
Ranklin rushed up to O’Gilroy, who was swearing down at his left arm as if it were some cheap, faulty piece of machinery. The cut was neither long nor deep but was bleeding showily.
“Tie the damn thing up.”
The doctor arrived with his bag and started fussing. “Monsieur est blesse.”
“If he means I’m lucky, tell him …”
“He means you’re blesse, wounded.”
“Jayzus, I know that. Tell him to tie it up.”
“Why did you check?”
“Because I’d have cut his hand and given him first blood and calling it all off.” He stared angrily at the little group around Gunther. “We’re going on, Captain. Tell them that.”
“I’ll talk to the General.” He saw that the doctor knew more or less what he was up to, and walked across the courtyard.
“It is completed honourably,” the General said.
“Really?” Ranklin exaggerated his surprise. “We agreed, you recall, that the one who was wounded would decide that.” Gunther looked sharply at the General. Ranklin pressed on: “Of course, I can understand that your principal would prefer to escape without either harm or honour, but may I express my sympathy, mon General, that your King should be represented by so timid a champion?”
If you, Herr Gunther, can play on the old warrior’s muddle-headedness, then so can I.
The General’s face cleared and his shoulders tried to square themselves. “Your principal desires to continue?”
“He feels that his honour demands it.” And if I live through tonight, he thought, I shall never be able to use the word “honour” again without thinking what I really mean by it.
But then there was the clatter of a motor-car engine and a moving glow behind the east wing. The police, Ranklin thought, and thank God for that. It’s all going to need some explaining, but now nobody’s going to get killed.
The lights flared in his eyes and, squinting, it seemed to him to be a small yellow Renault just like the one Mrs Finn had …
She was out before the engine had died, her glare searching the throng and fixing on Ranklin. “You! Yes, you. What the hell do you mean by giving me your stupid code book? D’you think I’m a God-damned messenger for your God-damned British Empire? That got settled more’n a hundred years ago …” Then her gaze expanded to take in the whole scene. “What in jumping Jesus is going on here?”
“Why didn’t you just tell the gendarmes as my note said?” Ranklin groaned.
The General shuffled towards them, raising his silk hat. “Madame, I must apologise, but this is no spectacle for a lady.” His mind hadn’t taken in her outburst about the code, but Gunther and Clement had: they were glancing tensely from her to Ranklin to the Renault and back.
She walked forward into the centre of the courtyard, surrounded on three sides by wavering lamplight, seeing the little group of spectators by the main door, the rifles, the white shirts of Gunther and O’Gilroy – and the stain on O’Gilroy’s bandage.
“Have you two been fighting? Have you been shot? What’s going on?”
O’Gilroy said: “It’s nothing, ma’am, jest a bit of a cut. I’ve been learning about affairs of honour.”
“Duelling?” She whipped round on the General, who had shuffled after her. “Have you all lost your little tinpot minds?”
The General stiffened to rather stooped uprightness. “Madame, I must beg of you not to concern yourself with this matter. Which is, I am happy to say, completed.”
“The devil it is,” O’Gilroy said. “Ye said it ended with first blood only if the fella’s bleeding wants it to. Ye try to stop me carving that fat bastard into dog meat and I’ll serve ye up for afters.”
I rather doubt, Ranklin thought, that he spoke to many generals like that in his Army days.
Corinna, far from being startled, took O’Gilroy’s hardly honourable ambition as more natural than the whole duel. “Not until I’ve had a look at that arm, you won’t.” She brushed the doctor aside, asking: “What’ve you got in that black bag?” and, when she had looked: “Lordie, was your last patient a dodo? I’ve got some stuff in the automobile. Unwrap that … deroulez ce bandage.”
Ranklin watched her go back to the Renault; now it had no luggage strapped on behind and, obviously, no maid. So she had driven to Rouen, then turned around when she found the code and note. Only why didn’t women ever do as they were told?
The General was back with Gunther. O’Gilroy glanced at the doctor, remembered he didn’t understand English and whispered fiercely: “Ye gave her one of the codes? – and wasn’t telling me?”
“I slipped it into her muff – with a note telling her to go to the police. That was the important thing.”
“’Cept she didn’t and came back to banjax things more’n ever. D’ye think Gunther reckons he’s got to kill her, too?”
That was something Ranklin preferred not to think about. “Well, it gives him a problem.”
Which was true enough. It was one thing for the two of them to vanish or be found in a fatal “accident”, but something else for a daughter of Reynard Sherring. And meanwhile O’Gilroy was giving him a look of pure contempt.
Corinna came back with a small travelling bag and began smearing something medical on O’Gilroy’s arm. He squeaked.
“Try to be brave,” she said reassuringly. “But if you will go playing rough games with the other boys … Now tell me what the hell this is all about?”