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Stanzer smiled as O’Gilroy seemed to bare his twisted soul. But he could hardly say that O’Gilroy himself was only any use as a channel to Ranklin, not if the man was too stupid to realise it already.

“Perhaps,” he temporised, “but not yet. So why does Herr Ranklin argue with the Professor?”

“Mrs Finn told him to. What does he care about Americans? – and him tearing to be away to see this feller, and taking the code book and the Consul besides …”

“What fellow is this? Your master is sending a message in code?” Galloping down the new track, Stanzer couldn’t hide all his eagerness.

“Ah, jest some feller … mebbe Russian, or was it about Russia? What’s the big town down the river, Bel-something? Is that in Russia?”

“Belgrad? In Serbia?”

“That’s the place, sure – something about Russia from there. Jayzus! – d’ye think he tells me these things? He’s more like tell his dog.”

Stanzer would probably have disbelieved a clear-cut tale; certainly he would have picked it apart with suspicion. But leave him to work it out for himself, now … And Stanzer was working, all right: Belgrade was a cesspit of Russian influence and intrigue – so a message from there – then the code book … and the Consul to authorise the telegram …

“Where is the telephone in this hovel?” he demanded.

“Holy Mary!” O’Gilroy took fright. “Yer never turning us in to the police?”

“No, no, no. You are safe – if what you tell me is true. You are my secret now. You do not leave Budapest soon? I send you a message … I call myself …” He thought quickly. “Danilo. You know that? Danilo. But – ” he felt a reminder was called for; “I do not forget all my duty. Now, telephone.”

As Stanzer hurried off, the pastry cook announced that it must all have been about money: no Englishman nor Austrian got that excited about women. The vegetable cook thought it had been about horses, but kept the thought quiet; pastry cooks have artistic temperaments.

Strolling back to the more recently painted side of the hotel, O’Gilroy reckoned they were safe – for the moment. Stanzer clearly thought he had recruited O’Gilroy as an informer, what with all that talk of “Danilo” as his code-name for messages. And that meant Stanzer would protect him: not mention him to whoever he was telephoning, nor to the Baroness. Spies, they had been told, are very possessive about the agents they collect. Perhaps it was a desire to build their own secret empire, not merely be part of someone else’s.

But moments, like codes, don’t last for ever. And now he had no need to hide from Stanzer, he could go, anywhere – even, eventually, to the lecture at the Palace. He went up to his room to change. And once there, he unwrapped his pistol. Unlike Ranklin’s distinctively British “Bull-Dog” revolver, this weapon had no nationality. It was an American design manufactured in Belgium and, O’Gilroy felt sure, quite untraceable. Little things like that could sometimes be quite important.

52

If it had really been used as a Royal Palace, it would have been a good one: a warren of offices, barracks, kitchens, stables, treasury – anything and everything as well as the royal apartments – a grandiose village with corridors for streets. Use and bustle would have been everything: unused, it had little more elegance than a deserted village, since its only grandeur was its hilltop site, and that less than half a mile from the Panna Tavern. The rest was a neo-Gothic pile of statues, carved stonework, wrought-iron gates, lamps and fountains, and a big bronze bird that Ranklin knew wasn’t an eagle but couldn’t remember what it really was.

As they got out of the car they were saluted by two Palace Gardeoffiziere in uniforms so embroidered, even on the breeches, that they reminded Ranklin of the Cockney “Pearly Kings” in suits covered with shiny buttons.

“Nice of them to lend Hornbeam this little place,” Corinna observed. “But I wonder what they’re doing with the other eight hundred and fifty-nine rooms tonight?” Unlike the other women of the audience, whose clothes showed they expected an evening of the very best boredom, Corinna was dressed for death or glory. She wore a very simple off-the-shoulder gown of her favourite dark red silk with a gold-mounted ruby dangling above her breast, and a white fur stole that she treated like a dishrag. Whatever happened, she was ready to go down with flags flying, and Ranklin glowed with pride as a man and cringed from the limelight as a spy.

As they paused by the great doorway – nobody was rushing to claim a front seat – Dr Klapka scurried up.

“Do you talk with the Herr Professor?” he asked anxiously. “Is he to say …” But he choked on the dreaded words.

“We talked to him,” Ranklin said, “but …”

“Stupid old goat,” Corinna said.

Klapka interpreted this correctly and his already drooping moustache sagged further. “And so he will …” He shook his head. “And I have thought. I think now the Archduke cannot know of this. Perhaps it is someone who thinks to do a good thing for the Archduke who is so stupid … Or someone who wishes to do him harm, even …”

“Did you learn anything about the Baroness Schramm?” Corinna asked.

Klapka shook his head again. “I look in Almanac de Gotha, but … it is perhaps a French title, or even Belgian, or – ”

“Or the lady’s just dreamt it up,” Corinna said crisply. “She could get away with it – if barons come by the cartload, as you said.”

Ranklin, who hadn’t quite said that, looked embarrassed. But Klapka reverted to gloom. “It will be a most terrible thing.”

And they couldn’t even share their one hope with him. “Perhaps he’ll have second thoughts after all,” Ranklin offered feebly, but Klapka went away still shaking his head.

A car rolled up bringing the Baroness, Lucy and a clean-limbed young lawyer whom the Budapest Bar had deputed to squire her. The Baroness ignored Ranklin and Corinna, but Lucy clearly hadn’t heard of the disagreement with her father because she started chattering immediately. Ranklin’s gaze wandered until he picked up the jaunty figure of Major Stanzer striding across the courtyard. He was at first surprised Stanzer wasn’t in Cuirassiers’ mess kit, then realised he would probably want to ask his question anonymously, not implicating the Army.

But anyway, he didn’t look as if he’d just got a bad news telegram from Vienna. Yet.

Lucy was saying: “… going to be the most important lecture he’s ever given, but he won’t tell me why! Isn’t that exciting? Come on.” She dragged her squire inside.

Corinna looked at Ranklin. “Well, once more into the breach, dear boy … No, that isn’t quite apt. Something from Dante, maybe. Abandon hope all ye who enter here … No, I’m damned if I will. Shall we go in?”

“A Turul,” Ranklin said suddenly.

“What?”

“That bird on the plinth back there. It isn’t an eagle, it’s a Turul. Legendary or mythical.”

“And what’s it supposed to do?”

“Sit on plinths outside Royal Palaces, as far as I can tell.”

They walked in just behind Stanzer.

“The Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 put an end to the destructive and, above all, undisciplined wars which had wracked Europe in the preceding century. It did this by acknowledging the existence of a number of relatively stable nation states, most obviously France, which shared common values and hence customs. Thereafter the Law of Custom was to …”

Hornbeam’s voice produced a slight but clattery echo, perhaps more so because he was speaking in German. Ranklin knew he must read the language in which so much philosophy and law (including the Habsburg Family version) was written, but hadn’t guessed he would dare lecture in it. But it made it easier to stop listening and gaze around.