Spy’s Honour

by Gavin Lyall

  “And maybe mop the kitchens and clean your boots? – while you great brains play childish games with loaded … bayonets that’ll probably get someone killed. And all because of some jerk who belongs in an asylum for thinking he’s King of France!”

  Let’s say a strategic mistake, Ranklin thought. The General stood there, his mouth opening and closing, then he turned dazedly away.

  Ranklin hurried after him. “Mon Général we wish to go on …”

  “I like that ‘we’ stuff,” Corinna muttered to O’Gilroy, who’d been staring at her in wonder. “I don’t see him doing very much.”

  “Ah, he started it, ma’am. I mean, he challenged Gunther first, only the General said ’twasn’t fair, Gunther not being a gent-at-arms, which is likely all ba – not true, I mean.”

  “Quite so.” Corinna suppressed a smile.

  Ranklin beckoned O’Gilroy to the centre, Clement handed out the rifles and Ranklin came back to Corinna.

  “Couldn’t he just wound Cort?” she asked.

  “No,” Ranklin said firmly. “Oh, it may work out like that, but if you go into something like this without meaning to kill, you’re going to get killed yourself.”

  She watched as the two took their positions. “I just do not believe this.”

  “Gunther admitted he was a spy; he tried to buy the code off me, and …”

  “I don’t mean that. Code-books, international spies – that’s plain ordinary common sense. But all this … tell me you’re really making a cinematograph film. Or I’m having a lobster dream.”

  Ranklin smiled thinly. “The General’s having the dream; we’re just passing through.”

  “Commencez!”

  Again Gunther let O’Gilroy move, and again he moved left. Perhaps he was favouring his left arm, perhaps he was pretending to, but after the first few clashes blood was staining the bandage above his wrist.

  And is Gunther’s mind muddied by thoughts of how he can get scratched, and end the duel, without getting killed? Oh, I hope so, Ranklin thought.

  Then he noticed the change in Gunther’s style: he didn’t seem to be really trying. He was content to stand off, making neither real thrusts nor even feints, and just fencing so that the bayonets constantly clacked on each other. O’Gilroy seemed puzzled, too, trying feints to draw Gunther into a real thrust, then changing to a right-hand circle to see if that made a difference.

  If so, it was only that Gunther fenced harder, really hacking O’Gilroy’s bayonet aside and – almost – leaving himself open to a thrust. Was he trying to tire O’Gilroy? – constantly jolt his wounded arm so that …

  O’Gilroy’s bayonet snapped. It sparkled in the air and clattered on the cobbles, and while everyone waited for Clement to shout “Dégagéz!” Gunther lunged.

  O’Gilroy had half-lowered his rifle. Now he didn’t try to parry: he stepped left, across Gunther’s bayonet, let go of the rifle with his left hand and held it out one-handed just in time for Gunther to ram his ribs onto the remaining three inches of bayonet.

  Gunther’s point, his rifle and then himself brushed O’Gilroy’s right shoulder and crashed onto the cobbles. Clement still hadn’t called “Dégagéz!”

  O’Gilroy yanked his rifle clear and into both hands again. “Ye stinking bastard, ye!” But Clement was busy tugging at his pocket.

  The courtyard exploded with noise; the women – except Corinna – screamed, the men shouted orders and jostled to let each other reach the blood first, the General squawked: “Sergeant! Sergeant!” and Ranklin yelled: “The car! Get in the car!” as he ran to scoop up Gunther’s rifle.

  Corinna grabbed O’Gilroy’s jacket and her bag in one hand, pulled up her skirt with the other and ran for the Renault.

  Clement pulled a huge revolver free as the wave of people broke around Gunther. O’Gilroy threw his rifle, the General slashed with his stick, and Clement dropped the gun – which surprisingly didn’t go off. Ranklin pulled O’Gilroy clear and shouted in his furious face: “In the car!”

  O’Gilroy stared at him for a blank instant, then ran. Ranklin paused to take the starting-handle from the General’s car, but it wasn’t in place, so he threw the rifle through the windscreen instead. Corinna was already in the driving seat and O’Gilroy pushing the car back one-handed. They got it turned, then rolling forward onto the gravel of the drive and its weight took over as they tipped downhill. O’Gilroy scrambled into the second seat and Ranklin found himself on the running-board on Corinna’s side.

  She let in the clutch, the back wheels skidded, then the engine caught with a bang and the car surged forward.

  “We left our bags. And me overcoat,” O’Gilroy said suddenly.

  “You’ve got your lives,” Corinna pointed out. “Though for how much longer, driving without lamps …”

  “Just guess,” Ranklin said impatiently.

  She slowed right down where the drive met the road by the unlit gatehouse, but even then Ranklin’s weight nearly toppled them into the ditch.

  She stopped. “There’s a rumble seat back there, you know.”

  Ranklin was baffled, then realised she must mean a dickey seat under lids where the luggage had been strapped. He had only ridden in one a couple of times before: usually it was for children and servants. He lifted the lids with more haste than enthusiasm, but it would be better than clinging on the running board.

  “And light the lamps while you’re out there,” Corinna said.

  “No. Find a side road, then if we’re being chased they’ll go right past.”

  He sat down and they rattled off again; Renaults were known for their reliability but not, obviously, for their silence, and Ranklin’s view forwards was just the back of the canvas hood.

  Inside the hood, Corinna asked O’Gilroy: “You didn’t kill Cort, did you?”

  “Never at all. But that doctor’s got his chance yet. Just cut him along his ribs. With what I’d left of me bayonet ye couldn’t slice bread.”

  “Yes, what happened there?”

  “That bastard the Sergeant – begging your pardon, ma’am …”

  “That’s okay. It sounds quite accurate.”

  “He must’ve filed me bayonet across, or more like put on one he’d got filed already. When ye was helping to fix me arm – and that was a real kindness of ye, ma’am.”

  “Any time. And Cort knew this?”

  “And him hammering away at me bayonet like ye saw? And me wondering what he was doing? Ah, he knew. An affair of honour. Jayzus and Mary.”

  “Do you think the General knew?”

  O’Gilroy thought about it. “No, not him. Not with him getting angry with the Sergeant taking out his pistol. No, he was being honourable enough. And bloody barmy besides, begging your pardon.”

  “Stop apologising. It was more than bloody barmy: Prospero’s isle with the duel scene from Hamlet thrown in.”

  But she couldn’t show off any more because O’Gilroy didn’t ask what she meant.

  They were almost in sight of the local village, showing as a faint glow on the low clouds and flickers of light through the windswept trees, before she found a track to turn into.

  Ranklin clambered down stiffly to put a match to the acetylene lamps.

  “What’s it like back there?” Corinna asked cheerfully.

  “Cold, thank you.”

  “I guess it’s lucky you’re – not too tall. You’ve lost your hat.”

  It had come off in the scuffle of their escape, and Ranklin felt horribly naked without it. One simply did not go out without some sort of headgear, and his natural instinct combined with his new trade to make him shrink from being conspicuous.

  Of course, O’Gilroy was in a worse state, being without a collar, tie and overcoat as well. Any gendarme with a proper sense of values would probably arrest them on sight. But they wouldn’t have to worry about that until they reached Rouen.

  Corinna promptly cancelled that: “I should tell you we’ll run out of gas at any time. I figu
red on getting filled up at the Château.”

  “Out of what?”

  “Petroleum, benzine, the stuff automobiles drink. Any idea where we can get some at this time of night?”

  The French countryside didn’t go in for garages, except on a few main roads. A go-ahead blacksmith or ironmonger might stock a few tins at an inflated price, but Ranklin didn’t fancy the delay of routing out one of them, not in the village of which the General was the squire. By themselves, he and O’Gilroy might have chanced it, but not with Corinna … She had provided the wheels, but also a brake.

  “Keep going,” he decided. “But head for the railway line. We’ve got to reach Paris tonight.”

  “To hand over the code? I must give it you back. But don’t you want the local gendarme first?”

  “Not in the General’s own village. Nor anywhere in the countryside, not now. I’ll explain it to people who’ll understand in Paris. But why didn’t you get the car filled up in Rouen?”

  “Because,” she said crisply, “I was so damned mad at a certain party for using me as a messenger girl that I turned right around and headed back. Does that answer your question?”

  “I said you should go to the gendarmerie there.”

  “Hey, that’s great. A total stranger tells me I should go to the cops and tell them to raid a château – a place I know, I’ve been staying in – for no reason at all.”

  “Well, I couldn’t say much on the back of a card. And it would have solved all our problems.”

  “And if you’d been strangled at birth we wouldn’t have any problems. Now, d’you want to stand here debating it until the motor runs dry?”

  Ranklin climbed back into the dickey seat. “Stay warm,” Corinna called. “I can go fast now.”

  “If Englishwomen do what they’re told just like that,” she said to O’Gilroy amidst an angry clashing of gear-wheels, “then … then they deserve Englishmen.”

  16

  The car didn’t die until they were through the village and coming down into the valley of the Scie, with the lights of little villages strung along the railway to Rouen. Corinna let it roll as far as it would – about half a mile from the nearest village.

  “End of the line,” she announced. “Change here for Rouen, Paris and the British Empire. All ashore that’s going ashore. A good brisk walk will soon warm you up.” Watching Ranklin climb, cramped and cold, out of the servants’ seat had put her in a good humour.

  O’Gilroy turned off the lamps, Corinna lent him a silk scarf to replace his collar, and they began walking.

  After a while she said suddenly: “But if Cort and Clement were really going to kill you – us – it would have looked awful suspicious, wouldn’t it?”

  “Not necessarily,” Ranklin said grumpily.

  O’Gilroy said: “Ye could make an accident, with our necks broke in a car crash. Or drowned driving into a river. Or burned up.”

  “Or hit by a train on a crossing,” Ranklin said in the tone of somebody who’d just had it happen.

  “Ah, now that’d be a grand sight to see. Better’n being poisoned from smoking French cigarettes. Begging your pardon, ma’am, but ye don’t happen to smoke yeself?”

  “Sorry, no.”

  “And even if we’d been shot,” Ranklin wound up, “and they had to explain away bullet-holes, they could have blamed it on French motor bandits.”

  “I suppose in your job you carry lists of such thoughts. And I get the general idea – but you think that’s all over?”

  Ranklin instinctively looked behind, but there was only darkness. “I hope so. They probably want to get Gunther to hospital. But we did mark the road for them by leaving the car back there.” There hadn’t been anywhere to push it off the road. “I’d rather keep worrying a little longer.”

  “Suit yourself.” They came into the village and a patch of light from a busy café. “You know something? You two do look kind of funny, outdoors without hats. If anybody asks, you better say you’ve been playing tennis.”

  They walked on through the village to the station and found there was a stopping train to Rouen in a quarter of an hour. And yes, monsieur would find a train on to Paris tonight, pas de problème.

  “It would take us longer to find petrol – if there is any – and walk back to the car. And if we are being chased, I’d rather they didn’t catch us out there on the road, alone.”

  Corinna seemed about to suggest something, paused, and changed her mind: “Forget the automobile; I’ll tell them where they can find it.” And since she was the daughter of Reynard Sherring, they wouldn’t raise a peep, although they’d certainly raise the bill. Ranklin bought one first-class ticket for Rouen, where Corinna’s maid and luggage were, and two for Paris.

  Then she went off to find the ladies’ lavatory: “I was planning for that at the Château, too. Now, on a French railroad station. Lord, the things I seem to be doing for your Empire.”

  O’Gilroy gave Ranklin a puzzled look. “Are we in so much of a rush now? Ye really think they’re chasing after?”

  “We can still wreck the mission if we don’t get the code to Paris tonight – now we’ve got the real code. It was something Gunther said to me in our private chat: that the War House wouldn’t trust the code if it had vanished, from their point of view, for a few hours. Perhaps the War House doesn’t know about the mix-up, but the French’ll have the other two parcels by now and they’ll damn well know. D’you think they’ll trust it if the third copy doesn’t arrive until sometime tomorrow? So they’ll politely ask the War House to make up a new code please, and with two years’ work down the drain the War House will have words with the Bureau, and what the Commander says to us ….”

  O’Gilroy shrugged. “’Twasn’t our mix-up. How’d they blame us?”

  “Did you leave your brains in your overcoat? And your Army experience?”

  “Sorry, Captain. I was forgetting.”

  Corinna came back saying: “Don’t ask,” which deeply shocked Ranklin, who wouldn’t have dreamed of asking.

  “Are you returning to Paris tomorrow?” Ranklin asked, trying to restore some tone to the conversation.

  “That’s right. Are you going home or staying on in Paris for more spying?”

  “Really,” Ranklin protested. “Would an agent announce he’s a British Army officer? And I hope we’ve got real agents who wouldn’t get into the mess we did at the Château.”

  “Oh, I don’t know: I thought it was pretty resourceful, forcing a duel. Just the thing I’d expect spies to do.”

  “Once and for all.”

  But then O’Gilroy, who’d been thinking and not listening, said: “If ye don’t fancy the train, I could mebbe steal a car and go all the way.”

  “O’Gilroy,” Ranklin said with a glare, “has a rather individual sense of humour. And property.”

  Nettled, O’Gilroy sighed: “Ah, to hear the English sorrowing about others’ property is like the tiger saying sorry to the goat. Afterwards.”

  “I’m glad you boys are maintaining a united front,” Corinna said, now thoroughly unconvinced by Ranklin. “But if it doesn’t offend your professional propriety, we’ll be legalistic and take the train. And speaking of tigers and goats, would either of you have a goat to spare?”

  Ranklin puzzled, then realised: “D’you mean you’ve had no dinner?”

  “Thanks to getting mad at you and your code.”

  Ranklin tried to recall if they’d passed an open food shop (they certainly hadn’t passed a hat shop), but O’Gilroy just turned out his pockets. He came up with a bar of chocolate, some boiled sweets and what looked like two of the General’s tea biscuits.

  “Trust an old campaigner,” Corinna said, pouncing. “May I?”

  The train dramatised its arrival with a complete symphony of hoots, squeals, rattles and clanks, then sat steaming like a blown horse. It had only three carriages and barely more passengers; nobody was taking day trips to Dieppe’s beaches yet, and boat passenger
s had their own expresses. They climbed into one of the corridorless first-class compartments, and Corinna plonked her travelling bag on the seat beside her. “Since it seems to be the fashion, does anybody mind if I take off my hat?”

  The train gave a preliminary shudder, then the door swung open and Sergeant Clement swarmed in, holding the big military revolver.

  He slammed the door and sat in the corner beside it, holding the pistol two-handed on his knees. At the other end of the long seat, O’Gilroy was so rigid that he swayed all in one piece as the train ambled away; his face shone with hatred.

  Trying to defuse him, Ranklin said quickly: “I suppose you didn’t think to bring my hat, did you? No? One just doesn’t realise – ”

  “I think you have the code-book, Madame,” Clement said to Corinna. “Please to give it to me.”

  Corinna glanced at Ranklin for guidance. He seemed faintly exasperated. “For heaven’s sake, man, that’s all over. Why didn’t you run when you had the chance – and the car? You still can: I’m not going to report anything until we reach Paris. Nobody around here would believe us.”

  “Please, the code-book.”

  Ranklin sighed and nodded to Corinna. She took the still tape-bound book from her bag and tossed it on the seat beside Clement. He took another, the Y code, Ranklin remembered, from his pocket and compared them, then looked suspicious.

  “These are not the same. I think you have another.”

  Ranklin reached – carefully, because the revolver was watching him – into his own pocket and threw across the third book.

  “This also is not the same!” Clement was baffled and by now trebly suspicious. So was Corinna, but she was keeping quiet about it. “You will tell,” Clement demanded, “which is the right code.”

  “And you’ll believe me?” Ranklin asked. “What happens next, anyway?”

  It was a question Corinna wasn’t sure she wanted answered, and certainly wouldn’t have asked.

  “We get out at the next village.”