Flight From Honour

by Gavin Lyall

  “But you’re telling me . . .”

  The Commander smiled sunnily. “Thought you’d have spotted it by now. After all, you’re one of ’em. Two, if you include your bandit chum O’Gilroy. Why did you think I came after you?”

  Because you got the wrong end of the stick, Ranklin’s whirling thoughts protested. My bankruptcy was all my brother’s doing, I am a decent upright English gentleman . . .

  . . . well, of course, I’ve learnt to be a bit suspicious and devious and a little bit unscrupulous, just to survive in this business, but—

  “It’s all in your report, you know.” The Commander waved it. “Have another look, if you’ve any doubts about who you really are. Oh, I’m sure you’ve got your self-justifications, we all need ’em, long as we keep ’em quiet and just do the damn job. Have you thought what you did at the end? – when you’d worked our what those Lewis guns were really for? You could have tried persuading Major Dagner quietly and privately. I don’t say you’d have succeeded, but you chose instead to humiliate him in front of the others, destroy him.”

  There was a long silence. The Commander struck a match, lit the report and dropped it into his big glass ashtray. “Frankly, I’m very glad you did; it got rid of him, and I don’t know how I’d have done it otherwise.” He struck another match, put it to his pipe and said between puffs: “But who knows? – perhaps he was right, and we’re wrong. But then, spying’s wrong, ain’t it? So probably it’s best done by us wrong ’uns.”