Free Honourable Intentions by Gavin Lyall

me. But she does talk to people. More importantly, people talk to her.”
    “So she remains,” St Claire said, “a weak link.”
    “If we’re looking for weak links,” Ranklin said evenly, “we’ve got the boy himself, his mother and the girl Berenice Collomb. God knows what they’re going to do.”
    “But in the short term,” St Claire said, “that seems to depend on the outcome of the case. It was going on this morning, wasn’tit?” He glanced towards his table and sighed. “I’m sure the world thinks that all I have to do is lift that telephone and I’m immediately in touch with the wisdom of Solomon. Whereas most of the time I daren’t even suggest the Palace wants to know something without starting a riot of speculation.”
    “Let Ranklin call our office,” the Commander said promptly. “We’ve got a man in court and they should be breaking for lunch about now.”
    So Ranklin found himself speaking to first the Palace switchboard lady and then the Bureau’s, both chosen for well-bred reticence rather than technical skill.
    Behind him, St Claire was saying: “If it comes down to it, at least the current Home Secretary is a lawyer. And in my experience, lawyers seldom see the law as something rigid. More like a palette from which they can select the right colours for any situation. I’m sure that if he had a word with the Lord Chancellor – if that’s the right person – Bow Street would quickly get the idea that a verdict
against
extradition would be preferred. Even better if the verdict seems to hang in the balance, as you say.”
    You can’t do that,
Ranklin thought instinctively. But why not? He himself broke or ignored laws all the time, usually other countries’ but sometimes Britain’s as well; that was now his job. How was this different? Were there any lines to be drawn? And why was he drawing one at someone seated beside the fountain-head of justice itself proposing to rape the law and then pretend it was still
virgo intacta?.
    “It might get the French up in arms,” the Commander observed. “There’s an appeals procedure, I understand, which could spin it out another two weeks or more.”
    “Hm. I’ll think about that . . . How am I to keep in touch with you, by the way?”
    “I’ve decided to revive the old Steam Submarine Committee. Good practice to cloak a new purpose in an existing body and I think I’m still chairman of it, though it hasn’t met for ten years. Not since we decided that steam-powered submarineswere pure balls, in fact. Ranklin here is the new secretary.”
    Still muddled by his own emotions, Ranklin barely registered that he’d got a new job he hadn’t been told about. Then Jay came on the other end of the telephone.
    “So,” the Commander went on, “if you mention the Committee in any telephone call or message, we’ll know exactly what you’re talking about.”
    “And vice versa. Excellent,” St Claire murmured.
    Ranklin put down the telephone and said tonelessly: “The case was adjourned for another day. The meat porter, Guillet, has gone missing.”
    *           *           *
    Sitting in a rocking corner of the “express” to Portsmouth, Ranklin watched the gentle Hampshire countryside unreeling past and thought of what he should have said to avoid being sent on this futile jaunt. Too late now, of course. And he couldn’t even alter the minutes of the meeting to make the injustice plain, because the Bureau kept no minutes. Good for secrecy, bad for clarity. People unconsciously developed what had been said until they were convinced that it
had
been said. Or agreed, or decided. Good minute-keeping prevented that.
    Once, he’d been good at minutes himself. Of mess meetings, staff pow-wows and the like. Could he still do it?
    The Steam Submarine Committee met in Whitehall Court at approximately 12 noon on April 16 1914.
    In the chair: Commander
C.
    In attendance: Capt. R, Secty; Lieut. Jay; Mr O’G.
    A selection