Jarvey doubted Snaipe’s ability to do even that much. “Frankly, sir, and with all due respect to Snaipe, I wish the Office had sent Lady Kelso all on her own. This way loads us with a responsibility we can’t guarantee to fulfil.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far, Howard. Masculinite oblige, don’t you think?”
* * *
One of O’Gilroy’s great strengths as a liar was his ability to believe – for the moment, anyway – that he was telling the truth. The Turkish policeman spoke no English, and since O’Gilroy was keeping his meagre store of French to himself, questions and answers had to go through the man who had been superintending the work-party along with Herr Fernrick. O’Gilroy assumed he came from the German Embassy.
“He says,” the man said, “that Constantinople . . . I think you say ‘bullies’? . . . they almost never use guns.”
“They used one on me. Ye heard it yeself, didn’t ye?” He shivered at the memory. And all the time Ranklin’s pistol was pressing against his thigh, well hidden by his overcoat. But why should the police search the victim? And double that for a Turkish policeman and a privileged European.
“But you were not hurt?”
“Thanks to the grace of Mary, Mother of God, I was not.”
The Embassy man didn’t translate that, just shook his head. The policeman asked another question.
“And where were you going in that street?”
“From God-knows-where to more of the same. I was lost. I reckoned if’n I was going down hill I’d be finding the quay and mebbe the bridge and know where I was. And I suddenly think Mebbe there’s someone following me and I looks and mebbe there is, so I take a turn or two and they’re still there behind me and God knows now I really am lost and so I’m hurrying, Jayzus, I’d’ve been running if they knew how to make proper streets in this town, and then I see the lights here and mebbe they see them and reckon it’s their last chancst to get me and one of them yells and one of them shoots and I come down that street mebbe faster’n the bullet, for all I know.”
Another of O’Gilroy’s strengths was the apparently random wordiness of his lies.
The policeman was either convinced or overwhelmed, although he’d written hardly any of this down. They were seated at a table in a cafe – not, thank God, the one O’Gilroy had watched from, but the one nearer where the launch had moored: Herr Fernrick, Albrecht, the train guard, the police – man, a couple of Turks – maybe they were something to do with the Embassy, too – and the man asking the questions. Now he had one of his own, not from the policeman: “You did not . . . meet them? They were not waiting in that street?”
You mean watching what you were doing loading that launch?
“Jayzus, mebbe I passed them way back, but I told ye, they was following me. Was a lucky thing ye fellers being here, mebbe they’d’ve followed me right out here, otherwise. Was ye jest passing or having a drink or something?”
Go on, you bugger, let’s hear a lie from you, for a change. But the Embassy man just asked: “Did you see what they looked like?”
“I told ye, they was following me. And have ye seen those alleys back there? – a bat’d be walking in those.” O’Gilroy shrugged. “I think mebbe they had those flowerpot hats on.”
The Embassy man had a conversation with the policeman, perhaps wanting him to ask why O’Gilroy was roaming the streets (O’Gilroy had a story to explain that), but the policeman had obviously heard enough. He finally stood up, not rudely, but decisively.
“How would I be getting a cab in this town?” O’Gilroy asked.
The Embassy man came close to asking a question, then sighed and said: “I will show you.”
“Will he know where the Pera Palace is? Can I be trusting him? How much does it cost?” It was best, he felt, to keep the man smothered with words. And on top of his regret at not being able to tell his story about why he was on the streets, he had suddenly realised that he hadn’t been behaving illegally at all. Apart from shooting a hole in a wall, and that had been justifiable self-defence. He started to feel quite self-righteous. A bit disconcerted, too.
* * *
Bertie, Corinna and Ranklin shared a cab from the Embassy down to the Galata quayside.
“Just who,” Ranklin asked, “is this Mr Billings I’ll be imposing on?”
“To me,” Corinna said, “he’s a client of my father’s bank. To the Turks he’s a rich man who might put together a loan for them. To the United States he’s a Chicagoan turned more-or-less New Yorker, and head of Union Carbide. To you, he’s a good host with a nice line in comfortable steam yachts.”
From the dimness in his corner of the cab, Bertie chuckled. “I pass.”
* * *
O’Gilroy talked his way into the Pera Palace hotel and then, using some of his surplus self-righteousness, into Ranklin’s room (of course he had to arrange his master’s things for him, he’d never hear the last of it, God alone knew how the man had got dressed for the Embassy without him . . .).
Once inside, he locked the door, then sat down and muttered to himself a report of his evening, trying to discard the lies and avoid turning guesses into facts. When he was satisfied, he actually did a bit of re-arranging of Ranklin’s clothes, made up a bundle of laundry, found where Ranklin had hidden his spare ammunition and reloaded the fired chamber of the Bulldog revolver.
What to do with the spent cartridge? – that wasn’t something to be left in a wastebasket. In the end, he pocketed it, planning to throw it in the water tomorrow. And after that. . . His own room was a cubby-hole in the attic, no better nor worse than most servants’ bedrooms, but definitely not within reach of a bath. However, nobody in the place would recognise him yet, so he half-undressed, put on Ranklin’s expensive dressing-gown and strolled along to the guests’ one at the end of the corridor.
15
A man in a private naval uniform met them on the quayside, helped Corinna down and led the way to a white-painted motor-launch waiting near the bridge. From within its cabin, Ranklin couldn’t see where they were going nor where they’d got to except that it must be Billings’s Vanadis and moored not far off shore. They went up a gentle gangway amidships, turned aft, and almost immediately into a big room or cabin or whatever. Big enough to look low-ceilinged, which it wasn’t, and to be lit in pools of light from wall – and reading-lamps.
Billings himself was only a little taller than Ranklin, with a face like a frog. A friendly frog, however, with a wide smile under a large area of clean-shaven upper lip, who seemed pleased to meet them all.
“Mr Snaipe is escorting Lady Kelso on her diplomatic mission,” Bertie said as the only explanation for Ranklin.
“Is that so? You should have brought her along. When I get home, Mrs Billings will be most annoyed not to be able to disapprove of me meeting her.” He had a growly American accent but spoke reflectively, contrasting with Corinna’s crispness. “Now let me introduce you . . .”
There was Dahlmann, whose manner suggested he had hoped for a few Snaipe-free hours, but Ranklin watched Corinna go smiling up to another man and peck his cheek. So this had to be D’Erlon. He was extraordinarily handsome.
Until studied more closely. Then his eyes were too close-set and too pale, his fair hair was too long, his nose should have been more prominent or less so, there was an underlying weakness to his firm chin, and his ready smile seemed untrustworthy.
“-and Monsieur Edouard D’Erlon,” Billings was saying, “a partner in D’Erlon Freres and a director of the Imperial Ottoman Bank.”