Gavin Lyall - Flight From Honour

“That is most kind, but I must consider. If I do not see you again, where do you stay, may I ask?”

“The Excelsior.”

The tunnel was only a quarter-mile long and growing lightness showed they were coming to its south end.

“I will not detain you with effusive thanks, however much you deserve them,” the Count effused. “Save only to wish you a pleasant – and safe – stay in Venezia Giulia.”

‘Julian Venice’, the Italian name – and claim – to the region. And that gave Ranklin an opening. “Is there anybody in particular I should beware of?”

“Ah . . . I think only Police Captain Novak. A suspicious man. And unscrupulous on behalf of his Slovene brothers. But how to beware of him is by no means so easy.”

Ranklin stepped down just inside the south entrance and had to stop himself peering suspiciously around. God save him from people who loved deviousness and darkness; they shone like lighthouses in the world of drab, unnoticed skulduggery.

Corinna swept into their hotel suite without knocking. “Are you going through with this Venice business?” she demanded.

“Sure. Why not?” Andrew was surprised. “It’s only two hundred and twenty-seven miles and all over land-”

“I don’t mean that. I mean . . . all this chopping and changing. First it’s going to be Turin, then-”

“If you’ve tied yourself into a publicity stunt with a nutty poet like d’Annunzio, you got to expect some flim-flam.”

“Sure, and it’s just lucky they happen to have a villa near Venice-”

“Corrie,” Andrew said firmly and (perhaps he thought) soothingly, “you’ve been too much tied up with the finance end of things. When it comes to selling hardware out in the real world-”

“The real world ? – you blinkered bird-man-”

O’Gilroy had been trying to merge into the furniture; not easy, since it tended to mock Louis XVI rather than oil-stained tweed. But he felt there were limits to what even a spy should overhear. “I think I’ll be having a jar downstairs,” he said.

Corinna glared from one to the other of them. “I’ll come with you,” she decided. “And to Venice besides.”

She had dropped below boiling-point by the time they were seated in the lounge and had ordered drinks.

“We came more’n two hundred miles jest getting to Paris,” O’Gilroy said reassuringly.

“Only this time it’s two hundred miles nearer Trieste, where Matt’s up to some Bureau shenanigans,” she said grimly. “Let me tell you, if you’re trying to involve young Andrew in any of that, I am going to set up a scream. And when I scream, factories in the next county think it’s quitting time. Is that clear?”

“Surely. But like ye said-” The waiter put down two small glasses of what looked like red wine and O’Gilroy sipped cautiously. “What’d ye say this was?”

“Sweet vermouth. D’you like it?”

“It’s new. Funny, the flavours people think up . . . But ye’ll be there yeself, and if they’re wanting anything ’cept a demonstration of the aeroplane, ye can scream then.”

“Only,” she said grimly, “the boy so much wants to make this airplane a success he could get talked into anything.”

“But with yet own screaming ’gainst their talking, I know which me money’s on.”

Ranklin got back to the hotel feeling more tired than the efforts of the day warranted. He thought of sending a second cable, but what could he say? All he’d learned from the Count was that the aeroplane was involved – but not how – and that they seemed confident that the workers could be roused. By the sight of an aeroplane? By something it would bring? And how could that pass in a cable for economic chit-chat?

He was still worrying about this when he let himself into his room – and found it had been searched.

Ranklin didn’t rush to check if the intruder(s) had found this or that; by now he was experienced enough not to have a this or that. He sat down on the bed to think.

To report it or not? The search had been thorough, but not blatant; his things weren’t strewn about. A careless man might not have noticed it had happened – but only a guilty man could notice and not report it. That was the deciding fact. He sighed at the prospect of official entanglement ahead, but perhaps that had happened already.

The office had been carved out of one comer of a bigger room, partition walls chopping off the once-elaborate cornice moulding at two places and making it awkwardly high-ceilinged for its size. Too awkward to reach the cobwebs on the electric fan up there, anyway. After he had waited alone for some minutes Ranklin wondered if this were a test to see if he went snooping on the cluttered desk. After another few minutes, he did go snooping, but only for an ashtray. Perhaps that did the trick, because almost immediately a man in uniform bustled in.

Police Captain Novak was barely taller than Ranklin but built like a bear, with a deep chest, sloping shoulders and very quick, powerful movements. His squarish face would have been stolid if it, too, wasn’t always moving in small expressions and chewing or lip-pursing. He wore a neat middle-ranking moustache, neither too grand nor too humble. And he spoke no English.

But he had to speak German, the language of his Austrian masters, and they got along slowly in that. Their very different accents excused the slowness, but weren’t the real cause: Ranklin was thinking carefully before he spoke and he suspected that, despite his apparent impetuousness, so was Novak.

He started off with much shuffling of blank forms, then decided there was none that suited this occasion and carefully wrote down James Spencer’s details on a writing pad. “And you say nothing was taken? Most curious. In fact, an insult. To be robbed is shocking, terrible, but in a city full of Italians, quite normal. But to be robbed yet robbed of nothing is a trampling of your honour. Did you have anything worth taking?”

Ranklin shrugged. “A pair of gold cuff-links, not much more.”

Novak threw up his hands. “Not even taking gold cuff-links! Italian thieves are getting so rich! Or poor – perhaps he didn’t have any cuffs. Are you sure he didn’t steal any cuffs?”

“I didn’t really count them.”

“But then he would have taken the cuff-links as well, so we deduce that he most likely did not.” He smiled very quickly. “We progress . . . What have you been doing since you arrived in Trieste?”

Ranklin blinked. “Ah . . . talking to some gentlemen at the Exchange, lunching – alone – and wandering around the city.”

“And where did you have lunch?”

“At the Cafe San Marco. What does this have to do with my room being ransacked?”

“Ah!” Novak said explosively. “I am trying to establish a pattern. Men are creatures of routine, police work is mostly routine. If a thief should know that every lunchtime you are at the Cafe San Marco-”

“But I’ve been in Trieste less than a day. How can I have established any routines?”

“Ach, then my theory fails. No matter. Did you meet the Conte di Chioggia at the Cafe?”

“Is he an elderly gentleman? Dressed a little . . . artistically?”

“A most charming man and a truly great conspirator.”

Ranklin raised his eyebrows. “Is that so? What does he conspire?”

Captan Novak shrugged violently. “Just conspiracies. He has been conspiring for twenty years, and one day he will go too far. Perhaps tomorrow.” He glared fiercely at the pad. “We have not made much progress. You will not be in Trieste for long?”

Ranklin hadn’t said how long, but perhaps he was now being told.