O’Gilroy looked disdainfully at the grubby ten- and twenty-korona notes. “I know,” Ranklin said, “but the bank was short of gold coins.” He paused. “And that’s not a good sign, either.”
42
The New York cafe occupied the ground and basement corner of the New York building, mostly taken up by newspaper and publishing offices which liked the flavour of the name. America was clearly the Promised Land of Hungary and for hundreds of thousands who had emigrated there (some must have done welclass="underline" how about persuading them to invest in their old country, with Sherring as the middleman? Damn it, Ranklin thought, I’m thinking like a blasted financier now. He dropped the idea).
Corinna and Lucy were drinking coffee at a small marble table under cascading chandeliers and the most thoroughly neo-Baroque ceiling Ranklin had ever seen; even a South American general couldn’t have more twiddly gilt bits on him. Nor did it do anything to hush the political arguments which raged in normal Budapest fashion at most of the other tables without quite drowning the gypsy band.
“Is New York really like this?” Ranklin bellowed.
“No,” Corinna shrieked back. “There you get silence at these prices. Hold it – ” to a waiter who was bringing more chairs; she pointed to the floor; “ – let’s go downstairs and eat.”
Down there, at least the political debate was interrupted by chewing and swallowing, though they were nearer the band.
“And how was the morning?” Ranklin asked politely. “I don’t see you weighed down with parcels.”
“You haven’t seen the cloakroom,” Corinna said.
“There really wasn’t a thing to buy,” Lucy complained.
“But we bought it anyway.”
“What are we eating?” O’Gilroy asked. He had taken one look at the menu and laid it aside; even in translation it would mean nothing.
Ranklin said: “Something with pork and paprika and sour cream. Unless, of course, they’ve got something without pork and paprika and sour cream.”
Corinna laid down her own menu. “I just love decisive men. Go ahead and order for us. Good practice,” she added, “since you’re taking Lucy out to dinner tonight while her father gives the private lecture. And Conall and I go over those import tariff figures.”
Ranklin managed to smile at Lucy and say: “I’ll be honoured,” hoping Corinna got a quite different message about bloody impertinence and impromptu lies.
“I want,” Lucy said, eyes bright, “to see a real gypsy haunt in the old town.”
Well, you’re not ruddy well going to; you’re going to see a faked-up tourist version like everybody else because I’m not eating stewed cat and getting into knife fights just to please you. I need Hazay or Dr Klapka to recommend a place.
He smiled grimly at Corinna and ordered Gulasch for the four of them. “By the way, did you know that the German for ‘field kitchen’ is ‘Gulaschkanone’?”
When they were waiting for an after-lunch coffee, Lucy took herself off to the ladies’ room. Ranklin promptly leant across the table and hissed: “And why am I escorting her this evening? – am I to marry her off to a gypsy fiddler?”
Corinna smiled brightly. “No, no, I just want her out of the way while Conall and I burgle Hornbeam’s room.”
O’Gilroy woke up. “We do?”
“Well, probably more you than me – but I can keep watch, and his suite’s next to mine.”
“And what’ll we be looking for?” O’Gilroy demanded.
“Look,” Corinna turned serious, “Lucy’s been rattling on about the Baroness who’s taking up all of Hornbeam’s time and some document he’s got – probably from her – that’s terribly terribly secret. That he doesn’t want Lucy shouting from the rooftops, anyhow. I just think we ought to know what it is, that’s all, so I thought while he’s out lecturing …”
Ranklin was – had become – in favour of looking at secret documents, but: “Would it be too much of a strain to make ideas like this just suggestions until we’ve actually heard them?”
“Well, I started by suggesting to her that you could take her out and she said ‘Why not just tell him to – he works for you, doesn’t he?’ She has a charmingly direct manner.”
“Splendid. If there’s one thing they appreciate in real gypsy haunts it’s a charmingly direct manner.”
Corinna’s dark eyes got several shades darker. “You bring that dear girl home totally unharmed or I’ll change your marriage prospects with a meat-axe. Is that understood?”
“You make yourself, if I may say so, almost vulgarly clear,” Ranklin said in his most County voice, feeling a little better.
Finding Hazay again was easier than Ranklin had expected, since the cafe upstairs turned out to be infested with writers. This surprised him, but then he wondered if the management regarded them as an attraction to customers and whittled the price of their coffees accordingly; anything was possible in a city which put up statues to poets.
Within moments of the maitre d’hotel passing on his request the room was an uproar of debate about where Hazay was last seen or might now be; within minutes Ranklin was speaking to him (where, he never knew) by telephone.
“I know of the place you must go,” Hazay assured him. “The Panna Tavern.”
“Splendid; would you care to join us?” Ranklin was eager to share the load of entertaining Lucy. “With Mr Sherring paying, of course.”
“I begin to like your millionaire. Thank you, it is most kind. The Tavern is on Castle Hill, you go past …”
Ranklin and O’Gilroy got back to Margaret Island by a steam ferry that zigzagged from bank to bank just as the Kiel harbour ferries had done. Despite the river’s width, they were butting against a fierce current – five knots, O’Gilroy estimated – and Ranklin noticed that the few rowing boats crept along in the shelter of the banks and jetties. How on earth had they managed in the days of sail?
The ferry put them down on a jetty only a brief walk through the trees from the hotel. There Ranklin announced they were back, in case anybody wanted them, then went outside again and flopped at a cafe table, already exhausted by the sun and the prospect of the evening.
O’Gilroy had managed to order lemon tea and cream cakes. “Lot of old folk around,” he commented.
“Probably taking the cure.” Ranklin nodded towards the upstream tip of the island: “The building over there is a hot springs bath-house; Budapest’s full of them. And the villas on the other side are probably mostly nursing homes.”
“What does it cure?” O’Gilroy asked uneasily, having a primitive fear of illness.
“Your cash surplus.” Ranklin’s prejudices were more modern.
O’Gilroy smiled and relaxed. Hornbeam and the Baroness Schramm came out of the hotel, chattering like old friends, and sat at a nearby table.
“Good afternoon,” Hornbeam called cheerily, at peace with the world. “Are you finding any time for sight-seeing?”
“Fitting it into the cracks, sir,” Ranklin the diligent businessman called back, and smiled at the Baroness. But whoever she was at peace with, it wasn’t him.
“Old biddy,” O’Gilroy muttered. He sipped his tea. “So what’ve we learnt to keep Uncle Charlie happy?”
“Not much,” Ranklin admitted. “The Redl case is still making news, people are hoarding gold; I wonder if the price of horses has gone up? – that’s the other sign of a belief in war. No, it’s the Consulate’s job to report things like that. Perhaps you’ll turn up something interesting in Hornbeam’s papers tonight.” Although privately he doubted it. “Perhaps we should be taking the business side and the Sherring link more seriously; such people have already got the international links and quick communications that the Bureau needs. Big money carves deep and secret rivers.”
“I’m thinking ye mean ‘canals’, but ‘rivers’ is more of poetry.” O’Gilroy was secretly amused at seeing the reluctant spy getting involved in how the Bureau was run.
“You know what I mean.” Ranklin was annoyed at himself for the flowery phrase. “My God, if we had the spy service people like the Rothschilds must have …”