At the sideboard, Corinna was saying quietly, “I think you are being a very naughty man, Mr Billings.”
Billings, back to the table, flashed a vast froggy grin. “It shook the bast-boys, didn’t it? And wouldn’t your father like a piece of a Turkish railroad?”
“He’d bust an artery. Are you serious about buying four per cent bonds?”
Another grin. “It all depends on the price, doesn’t it? There might be something in it, short term. Never mind the Baghdad end, I’m not interested in that, it’s the stretch they’re building now. It hasn’t gotten anywhere, so nobody uses it, there’s no return on what they’re spending. But once they bust through the mountains, they’ll have linked up the north and south coasts, and that’s got to be worth something in new revenue. So it could push up the price of those bonds.”
“I hope you’re right. I’ll start finding out what the current price is first thing tomorrow. But-”
“Thank you. Anyhow, I don’t like being used, Mrs Finn.”
“I can understand that. But. . . Mr Billings, I have a feeling this Railroad has troubles it can’t even guess at.” She was looking straight at Ranklin. “What do you think, Mr Snaipe?”
Ranklin tried a vacuous smile. “Just couldn’t say . . . but I’m off to see where they’re building it in a day or two, perhaps I’ll have a better idea when I get back.”
Billings nodded, intent now. “Of course, you’re going with Lady Kelso – That can’t be far from the sea, there?”
“I think where they’re tunnelling through the coastal range is about twenty or thirty miles inland.”
“Were you thinking of taking this yacht on down for a look?” Corinna asked.
“If I was staying longer . . . But I want to be in London next week . . .” He came to a decision. “If I went back by the Orient Express, would you like to take this boat down there and look for me?”
“Me? But I don’t . . .” Then Corinna seemed to remember something. “Sure. Sure I’ll go – if you trust my judgment of railroads.”
“Fine. That’s settled, then.”
It’s odd, Ranklin thought sadly, how seldom people lend me their steam yachts.
16
Corinna and Ranklin shared another cab to the Pera Palace. For a long time, she sat silent and Ranklin just watched the lights of the city jolt past. Not as many lights as he’d find in London or Paris, but the European part of Constantinople certainly wasn’t all in bed yet.
At last he said: “I wonder why Bertie invited me onto Billings’s yacht?”
“No idea.” She went back to silence.
“It can’t have been to introduce him to Dr Dahlmann, because that was going to happen anyway . . .”
More silence, except for the rumble of wheels and the clop of the horse. Then she sighed and said: “I suppose I can’t ask you what the hell you’re planning to do to that Railroad?”
“Me? What can one man do about a railway?”
“You and Conall. God knows. But knowing you two . . . I wouldn’t bet on the Railroad.”
“D’you think Mr Billings is serious about buying Baghdad Railway bonds?”
“Could be . . . I don’t usually discuss our bank’s clients’ business with you.”
“Yes you do, when you think it might help,” Ranklin said blithely. “What I don’t see is why Dahlmann cares who owns the bonds. Bondholders just get an income, they don’t own the Railway the way shareholders do.”
“Bondholders can be a big pain in the backside when things go wrong. Like the company defaults or wants to spend its money a new way . . . I’d guess Dahlmann wants to get those bonds into German hands, for safety’s sake.”
“Not in the hands of a neutral American?”
“It might be a problem – in a war.”
“Well,” Ranklin said soothingly, “Billings hasn’t committed himself, you think it’s a rotten investment anyway – and you’re going to be there to see for yourself, aren’t you?”
He had the feeling she was eyeing him sceptically through the darkness of the cab. “A remark like that doesn’t exactly convince me your intentions are wholly honourable. Yes, I’d like to be there, but mostly to provide a back door for Lady Kelso in case you land her in something.”
So that was why she’d suddenly taken to the idea. Ranklin was startled, though not for the first time, at how strong the bonds of disparate womanhood could be. And how quickly they could grow. It was an uneasy reminder that under his rock-solid masculine world were shifting feminine sands.
Obliquely, he said: “Mr Billings seems a nice chap . . . Seems to take advice from you quite happily.”
“It’s Pop he really trusts. And maybe as a Chicagoan he likes to show he’s more open-minded than the staid old New York crowd. That’s why he’s here and they aren’t.”
Then they reached the hotel. There were a couple of messages for Corinna and she stood reading them while the night clerk told Ranklin that his long-lost manservant had turned up and would be waiting dutifully in his room.
The lift was a Jules Verne contraption run by an old man whose control of gravity took so much concentration that Ranklin felt queasy. As much to distract his own feelings as Corinna’s, he said: “A good-looking chap, Edouard D’Erlon.”
“Yes, isn’t he?” Her smile was brief and flat. The lift stopped at her floor. “Well, I guess I’ll see you at the Imp Ott Bank in the morning. Good night, Mr Snaipe.”
She left him to creak and shudder on up to the smaller rooms above.
As he had more or less expected, “waiting dutifully” to O’Gilroy had meant filling the room with cigarette smoke, then going to sleep in, not on, Ranklin’s bed.
Ranklin opened the window and when he turned round again, O’Gilroy was wide awake.
Ranklin took a seat. “Please don’t apologise. How did you manage?”
O’Gilroy slid the revolver from under his pillow and passed it over. “I used one shot. Had to,” and began telling his story.
“You think that box was full of explosives?”
“When a coupla fellers drop a box and every soldier goes flat, what d’ye think’s in it? Turkish Delight? Nor machine-gun ammunition, ye could roll that down a mountain and never-”
Ranklin nodded.
“Could be a lot of the other boxes, too.”
“I suppose it doesn’t have to be anything to do with Miskal – but yes, we have to assume it is. So perhaps they’re hoping to blast him out of his stronghold. But if they assume they can get that close, why not just overrun the place?”
“Do we know what this place looks like? Mebbe there’s a cliff, like, they could blow down on his head.”
“Or blow up his water supply, ‘thirst’ him out, as it were . . . No, I don’t know anything about his stronghold, except that it’s an old monastery, so anything might be possible . . . And the launch kept going, straight across the Bosphorus?”
O’Gilroy nodded. So it was almost certainly delivering the boxes to Haydar Pasha station, start of the Baghdad Railway. “And you’re sure these other two, the Turks who attacked you, were also watching?”
“Certain sure. Mebbe they was down on the quay before, watching the loading close up. There was a lot of coming and going.”
“But we don’t know who they are, or working for . . . What can they report about you? Did you say anything?” O’Gilroy shook his head. “Then only your general build and that you wore a bowler hat. . . just for safety, scrap that. Have you got a cap? Then wear it. I give you special dispensation.”
“Yer too kind. And what happened to yeself?”
“Nothing urgent – I think. I’ll tell you in the morning. But now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get some sleep in my own bed.”
“Sure, and I was jest warming it for ye.”
* * *
Constantinople got its weather either from Russia or the Mediterranean, according to the wind. But that morning it had got muddled and was offering bright blue sky with a northeast wind like a Tartar sword. After a late breakfast, Ranklin went back to his room to meet O’Gilroy and run through events at the Embassy and on Billings’s yacht. Then sent him off to buy a coat suitable for the mountains, directing him back across the Galata Bridge to the Grand Bazaar.