“I’m sure we’re both doing what we think is right and proper,” Ranklin said stiffly.
Looking very much like a frock-coated cobra, tall, stooped and poisonous, Jarvey glared the big car out of the gate and on its way.
“Mutiny?” Lady Kelso asked cheerfully.
“Just a little disagreement on protocol.” Ranklin was trying to wriggle back into the persona of Snaipe, like donning an overcoat while sitting down. “I say, have you heard what that fool of a manservant of mine has done? . . .”
* * *
The room had the dark, crammed look of a bygone European age, but – apart from antimacassars and such – most of the cramming was Eastern. There were carpets and rugs everywhere and half the furniture was heaps of cushions. The few chairs and tables were of elaborately carved wood with the legs in the wrong places, and every surface was scattered with brass bowls, ashtrays and paraffin reading-lamps. A large cast-iron stove sat under a tiled conical flue in one corner. They hadn’t let O’Gilroy near the windows, but if the corner of building he could see was part of this house, it was all made of green-painted wood and he was on the first floor.
He was still alone with his guard, who didn’t look like the average Turk, being bulky, bearded and wearing some sort of turban rather than fez, a padded and embroidered jacket and baggy white trousers. These were probably clues enough for an old Eastern hand to say “Ah, a Hobgoblin from the Blarney region” but O’Gilroy had regressed to his Army days and saw him as just another bloody native.
The Hobgoblin hadn’t displayed a pistol, but had made a point of expertly-casually carving up an orange with his curved knife, and O’Gilroy had got the message. But the man’s build would have made him a handful anyway.
So he just sat and smoked and thought through his headache. He had to start with the idea that he had made a mistake. But Bertie had been following him anyway – or been close behind some inconspicuous Hobgoblin who had followed him to the Bazaar – which meant he had been suspect already. So was it Bertie’s men who had been watching the launch last night and brought back a description of him? Probably; firing off that pistol had spoiled his pose as a tourist. And there didn’t have to have been only two of them: maybe another on the waterfront, studying him as he talked to the Germans afterwards.
But then where had he gone wrong? He reckoned he had played his part cleverly enough in the Bazaar coffee-house, hinting at his own corruptibility, ready to listen as Bertie revealed his own schemings . . .
And that, he suddenly saw, had been wrong. He hadn’t hit a false note, he’d been playing the wrong tune. Instead of being upright, loyal to his master, touch-me-not, he’d been clever. One hint of cleverness was all Bertie had needed to confirm his suspicions – and here he was.
So now would they really let him go? The French – still assuming Bertie really was working for them – were allies, of a sort, and maybe they just wanted him out of the way while they got on with their own plans. But he wasn’t going to count on it. He wasn’t going to count on anything but his own nastiness from now on.
* * *
Wherever they were going, it didn’t seem to be to the crossing to Haydar Pasha station; the car was heading north-east alongside the Bosphorus.
“I can tell you now,” Dahlmann told them now, “that you do not go by railway: we said that to deceive anyone who . . . anyone. Instead, you will go in the Loreley, the stationnaire. You understand?”
Lady Kelso seemed to, Ranklin didn’t. “When I come first to Constantinople,” Dahlmann explained, “all the Powers had stationnaires here. Yachts for the Ambassador, like Herr Billings’s yacht, but sailed by the Navy.”
“Are we catching her at Therapia, then?” Lady Kelso asked, looking out of the car windows.
“That is correct, Lady Kelso. I hope you do not object to sea travel.”
“I’m sure it’ll be more comfortable than the train – but how long will it take?”
“Perhaps three days. But by the Railway to the camp on the north of the mountains needs also a long time, more than a day, by horse. And more uncomfortable for you.”
He smiled at her but got only a twitch of a smile back. She might be feeling a bit like a secret parcel. And that reminded Ranklin: “So we’ll arrive on the south side of the mountains; what about the gold?”
Dahlmann peered at the glass partition that kept the driver in his place but seemed reassured. “Always it was to go in the Loreley. The boxes Dr Streibl sent to Haydar Pasha were – how do you say?”
“Dummies?”
“Yes. Dummies.”
“Very clever,” Ranklin said. “But if you do have to give Miskal this ransom, I assume you’ll want him to sign something saying he promises to leave the Railway alone in future?”
After a moment, Dahlmann said: “That is a matter for the Railway.”
“Quite an important matter, I’d think.” He’d more or less raised this on the train; he was interested to see if they’d followed it up. It seemed not.
Lady Kelso said: “If he gives his word, that’s what matters. Not legal agreements.”
“Honourable man, is he?”
“Yes . . . In his own way,” she conceded.
“Oh, I think that’s true of most people,” Ranklin said blithely. “Just odd how often that way turns out to be what they want to do anyhow.”
He felt her, sitting next to him on the car’s back seat, lean away so that she could stare back at him more intently. He went on smiling innocently straight ahead.
Therapia was perhaps ten miles up the Bosphorus, a one-time fishing-harbour which had become a resort since the nations began building their summer embassies there, away from the heat, smells and infections of Constantinople. The German one was a whole walled compound of white-painted wooden buildings, now shuttered and looking empty, just across the road from the water. Moored a hundred yards off-shore was what must be the Loreley.
She had the sleek beauty of all steam yachts, with a clipper bow and overhanging stern, but in her case a rather middle-aged beauty (later, he learnt she had been launched nearly thirty years ago at Glasgow as the Mohican). The single funnel was rather tall and thin and she had three masts with sails furled along their booms, so probably she wasn’t shy of using some help from the wind. Being Navy, there were two tarpaulined shapes right forward and aft – probably small-calibre quick-firers – and despite being Navy she was painted white with yellow funnel and masts and some gold fiddlededee around her bows.
There was a large steam launch waiting beside a wooden quay and sailors immediately started putting their luggage on board, so perhaps there really was some hurry. When they had got out of the car, Dahlmann announced: “I shall leave you here. Dr Streibl is now your guide.”
Nobody said how much they regretted the parting, so he went on awkwardly: “I must wish you much luck in your errand of. . . mercy. Mercy,” he repeated, trying to convince himself he’d got it right.
Lady Kelso looked to Ranklin and the Foreign Office for some appropriate and flowery words.
“Jolly good,” Ranklin said, and they all shook hands and climbed down into the launch. Before they even reached the yacht, its funnel had begun to boil black smoke.
* * *
Bertie reappeared after about an hour, along with a second Hobgoblin carrying something that O’Gilroy didn’t recognise but did not like at all.
“All is arranged,” Bertie smiled. “I am afraid tonight you must spend under my poor roof, and tomorrow you will be free. And so you will not be tempted to flee, and to make life simpler for my servants, I must ask you to wear this. . . rather medieval object.” It looked like a hinged dog-collar and chain but made of old and heavy iron. “I believe it is a true antique, at least two hundred years old, so perhaps you will regard wearing it as historical research and do not resist?” O’Gilroy had already decided not to: the two Hobgoblins would get it on him anyway, plus perhaps a broken arm. “Ah, splendid. I can assure you that Ibrahim has just cleaned it, quite possibly spoiling its value. . . I will not ask if it is comfortable, but it is quite becoming. And who knows what famous prisoners of past sultans may have worn it? You may care to feel honoured – but I will understand if you do not. But I forget my manners: Ibrahim I have named, your other guardian is known as Arif the Terrible.”