“Never a word,” O’Gilroy agreed, and walked out thoughtfully and slowly enough to save his follower from hurry.
Ranklin had just finished packing Cross’s luggage when a servant knocked and asked if the Club could offer him anything? Ranklin said that was very civilised of them, and asked for a Pils and a sandwich – no, of course, this was Germany – well, just something to nibble on. So why had the Kaiser, in his youthful passion for things British, imported such useless ideas as a navy and a yacht club but ignored the vital concept of the sandwich?
When the beer and a plate of cold ham, sausage and black bread arrived, he asked about communicating with the yachts. It turned out to be very simple: the Club acted as poste restante for them all, and owners sent boats ashore to pick up the day’s post. As to finding out who was on any one yacht, that was in its own way just as simple: impossible. People came and went and didn’t always want their comings and goings noticed.
Alone again, Ranklin took a sheet of the Club’s writing paper, thought carefully and wrote:
Dear Mrs Finn
,
You may recall our taking tea at the Ritz in Paris after you kindly helped me secure a rare first edition before it came on the market, and solved a travel problem in an admirably practical fashion. It would give me the greatest pleasure if I might call on you to repeat my heartfelt thanks for your beneficence. Many things change but not the deepest gratitude of
James Spencer
PS My man Gorman wishes me to convey his humble respects
.
German drinkers didn’t prop up the bar the way British ones did: they sat down at tables and got on with it. It wasn’t so far to fall, perhaps, but it made making new friends a more deliberate effort. It ran against O’Gilroy’s grain not to conform and try to be inconspicuous, but he was there to make his presence known. So he usually started by asking the barman for the lavatory – to check the back way out, just in case – and then asked what to drink and as much more as he could without seeming too suspicious.
The snag was that the barman usually assumed he was shyly asking for a brothel, and when O’Gilroy refused that, he was offered more expensive and startling alternatives. He had thought himself a man of the world, but realised he wasn’t a man of Baltic seaports.
Then he just sat, drank and smoked. So did his policeman, only he had his newspaper – though by now he must be reading the Lost Dogs column.
At the third tavern, a youngish Nordic-looking seaman came in soon after him and went round the room trying to sell dirty pictures. He got a lot of comment but no takers until he reached O’Gilroy. The women in the photographs were voluptuous and apparently very happy, but when the seller hissed: “This one your master like,” he flashed a postcard of warships firing their guns. And, with his back to the room, turned the card to show a number pencilled on the back.
Without knowing the phrase, O’Gilroy knew all about agents provocateurs, and that this could be evidence being “planted” on him. He decided he’d swear he thought he was buying only “artistic poses” and the seller had cheated him, so paid a few coins for three pictures. The seller tossed a coin on the bar as commission and scuttled out, leaving the other drinkers chuckling contemptuously at O’Gilroy’s naivety.
He brazened it out for a while by studying the pictures happily, but then pocketed them and left.
The streets were emptier but the Old Town wasn’t asleep yet: singing, loud voices and laughter seeped out from ill-fitting shutters and scanty curtains. At one corner he was nearly trampled by a group of, presumably, visiting yachtsmen in evening dress, slumming and drunk, but still sensible enough to stick together as a group. And always, behind him, the copycat tread of his follower.
Then suddenly there were other footsteps, a scuffle, a squawk, and O’Gilroy turned to face two men running at him. Behind, his follower was slumping onto the pavement. He got his back against the wall.
But the nearest man just grabbed at his arm as he rushed past, yelling: “Komm schnell!” As O’Gilroy’s childhood training had been strict on not lingering near beaten-up policemen, he ran too.
They had rounded two corners and he was just thinking of not lingering near the beaters-up of policemen either, when they grabbed him. Looking back, he admired their planning.
One held his upper arms from behind, the other poked a knife against his side, and between them they forced him on round another corner and into a narrow alley. It was a breath of perfume rather than what he could see of the stocky dark figure that told him the person waiting there was a woman. They were crowded close in the alley, the breath from the man behind rasping in O’Gilroy’s ear.
The woman spoke in a low growly voice and the man with the knife passed her something – a box of matches, since she struck one to peer at O’Gilroy.
He shut his eyes to avoid the dazzle, but caught just a glimpse of her wide face and the glitter of green stones at her ears. She said something else and O’Gilroy felt a hand go into his jacket pocket. His eyelids darkened and he opened them just as the knife man took away the photographs.
The man then tried to see what they were in the darkness – a mistake, since O’Gilroy promptly kicked him in the balls. The reaction of the kick threw O’Gilroy backwards, squashing the man holding him against the wall and loosening his grip. O’Gilroy jabbed his elbow back, twisted, and stiff-armed the heel of his hand into the man’s face, slamming his head onto the wall again.
Then he grabbed the photographs and ran.
Five minutes later he walked into Paddy’s and said: “Gimme an Irish whiskey and I’m not asking what it costs.”
Instead, Paddy passed him a bar-rag. “I should get the blood off’n yer hand first. Ye didn’t go and hit that policeman?”
“I did not. But somebody else did.”
“Would he think it’s you?” Paddy poured the whiskey and O’Gilroy gulped it.
“He was still watching me back when they caught him.”
“And what’ll ye be doing now?” Paddy was obviously worried it might involve his premises.
“Go back to me hotel, lock me door and sit with an open knife in me hand. Ye keep a rough town, here.”
Relieved, Paddy nodded absently. “If it means anything, I’ve heard there’s a feller called Dragan el Vipero around.”
“Who?”
“The feller that killed the King of Greece just the other month. So they say. Mind, I’ve said nothing.”
23
Ranklin was already shaved and half-dressed when a servant brought in a tray of coffee and bread. He took his cup out on to the little balcony, nodded Guten Morgen to a clubman in a Chinese dressing-gown on the next balcony, and leant on the railing to sniff the air.
It was a perfect sailing day, blue and sparkling. Already there was a crowd on the quayside across the road, with yachts flapping and fluttering away from the mooring poles to join others already jinking full-sailed among the graceful white steam yachts. He still couldn’t identify Kachina, but knew the Kaiser’s Hohenzollern by its size, twin yellow funnels and old-fashioned ram bow. And, in the middle of the channel, rigid and many funnelled, the German fleet at anchor.
Suddenly he realised somebody had been pounding on his door and hurried inside just as Mr Cross stumped in. He was dressed in what could only be “travelling” tweeds, and was followed by Hauptmann Lenz. Cross looked as if he’d had a restless night, Lenz restless in a different way, suspicious and annoyed.
“I’ve got Richard’s kit all packed.” Ranklin gestured at the bags. “There’s only …”
“May as well take them with me, then. I’m heading for home. Nothing for me to do here, and his mother …” Cross put a pipe in his mouth but didn’t light it, just stared around, discontented.