He had finished the sums. “If you were to buy a bicycle – ”
“A bicycle?”
“Yes. And if the price of a good second-hand machine were the same as in Britain – let us say one hundred and twenty-five francs – then with the saving on motor-taxis, you would have fully recouped the cost of the bicycle in just twelve and a half days – by your own figures.”
“Quite often O’Gilroy’s with me in those taxis,” Ranklin pointed out.
“Ah yes. Then it would have to be two bicycles and an amortisation period of twenty-five days. Of course, that isn’t quite …”
“I AM NOT GOING TO A RECEPTION AT THE AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN EMBASSY ON A SECOND-HAND BLOODY BICYCLE!”
The hotel cat, which had been asleep in the one dry corner of the courtyard, sprang up and gave Ranklin an outraged look, then began to lick itself. The accountant seemed just mildly surprised. “Are you going to a reception at the Embassy?”
“Tomorrow night.”
“Do you consider it wholly necessary?”
“If you know anything about the political situation in … Look, it’ll cost just two taxis. And I get a free supper.”
“Aren’t you forgetting the laundering of the collar of your dress shirt? Perhaps even the whole shirt? You see? – it’s these little overlooked matters which can add up to considerable sums. I fully appreciate the, ah, peculiarities of your work and that I have to take many things on trust. But trust, I say, has to be earned. And what better way to earn it than assiduous attention to details such as these?” He smiled amiably, even trustingly.
The hotel waiter, thinking Ranklin’s shout had been for him, had decided after two minutes to come and see what he wanted.
“Let me pay for this,” the accountant said, reaching for the wallet that held his personal money. “Would you like another lemon tea?”
“No, thank you. I would like a large cognac.”
“That might turn out to be a very expensive drink,” O’Gilroy said judiciously.
“Be damned to it. Saying I should earn the trust of a snotty little clerk! He was questioning my integrity! I’ve spent half my Army life having rows with the Quartermaster and Ordnance branches about pennies, but they were conducted as between gentlemen!”
O’Gilroy, who believed the solution to a storm in a teacup was to steal a new teacup, asked: “What’s the damage, then?”
“About half of what we paid to replace the kit left at the General’s Chateau, no first-class travel for you when you were being a manservant, about half our taxi fares disallowed – we’ll be living out of our own pockets for months unless they send us on a new task. Damn it all, we didn’t join the Bureau to lose money.” He was stumping angrily around his small bedroom, picking up and throwing down clothes.
“We know where he’s staying,” O’Gilroy said. “So, jest suppose he met a young lady tonight, and suppose there was something in his drink to make him especial careless, and suppose ye happened by his room and found them in bed – a respectable man like himself, ye’d have him by the balls.”
“The very last place I’d want to touch him in that circumstance. And you’d need to hide a whole rhinoceros in his drink, not just a bit of horn, to bring him to life …” But the very thought had calmed him; he sat down and mused, smiling. “It’s a pity blackmail can be so unpredictable … isn’t there any other crime we can commit?”
“It’s come to that, has it?”
“We’re learning to be a sort of criminal, aren’t we? And we can’t go on doing our job without proper financing, so let’s use what we’ve learned.”
It was logic that O’Gilroy accepted without a blink, but knew Ranklin would have rejected it out of hand a few weeks ago. We’re learning, all right, Captain, dear – but I wonder if ye realise how much?
“Think, man, think,” Ranklin urged him. But in the end, he thought of it for himself.
“To count all acts of war as normal because all must be driven by necessity, to count none as exceptional, resorted to only in extremis, in short to deny the existence of Kriegsraison and say that all is Kriegsmanier, is to me to deny the role of conscience in the waging of war. And yet this is what Professor Westlake would have us do. But it is my profound and considered belief, ladies and gentlemen, that when we lose conscience we lose judgement – no inconsiderable trifle in matters of law. Professor Lueder has drawn the analogy with the criminal law: that a man may commit acts contrary to that law, yet be excused on grounds of dire necessity such as self-preservation. This does not destroy the law. So it is with nations: we must continue to recognise the Kriegsraison, to accept the exceptional for what it is, and still call it for judgement in the forum of conscience.”
All this was rather far removed from the battlefields Ranklin had known, and his attention was wandering around the room – the ballroom, presumably, since the Hotel de Matignon had been built as a private house – practically a palace – and become the Austro-Hungarian Embassy only thirty years before. Now the room was crowded with spindly gilt chairs (not enough: Ranklin was leaning against a pillar), the Diplomatic Corps, Parisian lawyers and distinguished guests to whom the Dual Monarchy was showing off its latest catch.
He himself was there because of Corinna, now sitting a few yards away wrapped in green watered silk and a modest spattering of rubies and listening with a bright but rather fixed smile to Professor … er … let me think … oh yes, Hornbeam, Gerald Hornbeam. The American expert on international law, you know. You must have heard of him.
Well, I have now, and would have spotted him for an American lawyer anyway, he decided. Pink-cheeked, comfortably stout, with a full white moustache, and mane of hair (it was odd how successful lawyers kept their hair; Hornbeam must be past sixty), the dress clothes slightly out of date and rumpled to show academic soundness.
He had moved on while Ranklin’s thoughts had sneaked out for a smoke, though still in pursuit of Professor Westlake. “In the event of an uprising in a neighbouring state, he would brand as lawless any intervention to quell what he is pleased to call ‘the mere contagion of principles’, citing as his authority the famous despatch by Canning in 1823 which justified intervention only in the face of a physical threat. Yet what navy or army today could mount an invasion more potent than one manned solely by principles? And in denouncing one side of the coin, he fails entirely to observe what is inscribed on the other: that if we grant principles the power of evil, may we not also grant them the power of good? And if this indeed be so, may it not also be so of intervention in support of principles? Or must we shackle ourselves with laws obdurate to the finer judgements of conscience?”
He ended amid a burst of eager applause, a few cheers and a grim mutter from behind Ranklin: “Parce que c’est fini.” Hornbeam took one question, phrased as if it were being read from an old parchment, and then several women in the audience simply stood up, forcing the men round them to do the same, and in a moment the talk was over and supper could begin.
Ranklin hung back, waiting for Corinna and watching a small crowd gathering to congratulate Hornbeam. Among them was a shortish, slightly dumpy girl, perhaps in her middle twenties, who was nevertheless dressed to stand out anywhere – except a Paris reception. She took Hornbeam’s arm and smiled possessively out at the crowd.
“Matt, come here and meet Mr Temple,” Corinna called. She was with a lanky bespectacled young man – American, from the way his figure drawled as his voice might.
“From our Embassy,” Corinna confirmed, introducing them.
“And what did you think of Professor Hornbeam’s address, sir?” Temple asked politely.
“Most interesting,” Ranklin said promptly, and left to himself he would have said no more. But he owed it to Corinna not to be too much the country clodhopper, as her expression was now pointing out. So: “I think his lectures should be well received in Austria-Hungary.”