The Two Georges

XI

Looking around Boston made Bushell despair of ever finding Joseph Kilbride there. It wasn’t that no one would recognize Kilbride; they had the photograph of him back from Chief Lassiter, and local RAMs and local constables were taking copies of it to every hostelry Boston boasted - and it boasted a lot of them.

But Boston was a great city in its own right, and Kilbride had a multitude of places where he might stay that had nothing to do with hotels. And Boston was also one of the places where sentiment against the British Empire ran strong. Someone who quietly sympathized with the Sons of Liberty could keep Kilbride under wraps indefinitely.

“It’s liable to be useless, Sam,” Bushell said as they walked back into the Parker House. “All he has to do is sit tight. Time’s on his side, not ours. The King-Emperor will be in the NAU before long, and if we haven’t got The Two Georges back by then ...” He made himself say it: “They’ll ransom the bloody thing and keep the Sons in business for the next hundred years.”

“We’ll catch him,” Stanley said. “Somebody at the train station will remember him, or the hackman who took him wherever he went, or - “

Bushell made a slashing motion with his right hand. “Odds are, one of his charming friends picked him up when he got off the train, just so he wouldn’t have to take a cab.” He was bound and determined to be gloomy, and would let no ray of hope penetrate that gloom.

The Parker House was the oldest hotel in Boston, which meant it was one of the oldest in the NAU. It had recently been refurbished in gaudy Rococo Revival style, full of gold leaf, ornate woodwork, and walls and ceiling painted with damsels in long, flowing gowns. Kathleen Flannery’s lip curled, ever so slightly, as it did every time she walked into the hotel.

As soon as he was well into the lobby, Bushell’s lip curled, too. The quality - or lack of same - of the place’s decorations, though, had nothing to do with his reaction. Springing up from a tufted, overstuffed sofa and hurrying his way came Michael Shaughnessy and Jerry Doyle.

“Welcome to Boston,” Shaughnessy said, as if he really meant it.

“What are you doing here?” Bushell asked. Even as he asked it, he knew the question wasn’t altogether fair. If the two reporters worked for Common Sense, they likely lived in Boston. But being in Boston was not the same as being in the lobby of the Parker House.

Smiling, Shaughnessy answered, “Why, the very same thing we were doing in Charleroi: watching you bumble about and waste the ratepayer’s hard-earned money. It’ll make quite an interesting little study for the magazine, that it will.”

“How did you know where to find us?” Samuel Stanley asked.

Jerry Doyle stuck his tongue in his cheek. “We have our ways,” he said airily, and then added, “and we don’t have to tell them to the Crown’s hounds, either.”

Any of several people in Charleroi could have put the men from Common Sense on their trail: the ticket seller at the train station, the desk clerk at the Ribblesdale, or one of the miners with whom Bushell had spoken. He wasn’t much concerned with how Doyle and Shaughnessy had learned he was in Boston, or even at the Parker House - if someone here recognized him (and he was all too recognizable these days) and passed the word on to the Sons of Liberty, it would get to Common Sense, too.

“Impeding an investigation is a crime,” he remarked, “but of course you fine, upstanding chaps would never do anything like that.”

“Of course not,” Doyle agreed; he could rise to irony, where Shaughnessy was just choleric. “We didn’t bother you even a little bit down in Charleroi, now did we? Answer true.”

The true answer was that they really hadn’t bothered him in Charleroi. He didn’t care to admit that, however. And, before he could say anything, Michael Shaughnessy put in, “We’ll be watching you closer here, though, and not just us, either. You’ll never know when the folk you’re dealing with are friends of Common Sense, so you’d best be on the up and up every waking moment.”

“Is that so?” Bushell purred. Jerry Doyle looked ready to haul off and belt his partner. Bushell didn’t blame him. Doyle had done his best to publish his harmlessness, and now Shaughnessy was making out that Common Sense wasn’t so harmless after all.

Samuel Stanley caught that, too. “You know, Chief, these gentlemen certainly sound like people who want to impede our investigation,” he said happily.

“Don’t they?” Bushell agreed. He glanced over at Doyle, who was shaking his head, as if to say such a thought had never entered his mind. Bushell went on, “They’re only trying to do their jobs, though.” At that, Doyle must have got a crick in the neck, so swiftly did he shift from shaking to nodding. Bushell took no notice of him: “If we want to get them off our backs, telling them to go away won’t work. They don’t take orders from us, they take orders from their publisher. If we want to get anywhere with them, we have to talk with him.”

Michael Shaughnessy laughed in his face. “If you think Mr. Kennedy will hear a word that comes from your lying mouths, you can go and think again. He’s been standing up to the lackeys of oppression his whole life long, and made Common Sense what it is today.”

“Reason enough to blame him, don’t you think?” Bushell said. Shaughnessy blinked; before he could answer, Bushell continued, “Do you want to know the truth, Mr. Shaughnessy? I don’t much care whether he heeds me or not. But for most of my whole life long, I’ve wanted to let him know how much I - mm, shall we say admire? - him. And now you’re given me the chance. Thanks very much. I never expected you to do me such a favor.”

He stepped forward, seized Shaughnessy’s hand, and vigorously pumped it before the startled reporter could snatch it away. Then, trailed by Samuel Stanley and Kathleen, he made for the bank of lifts, leaving the two men from Common Sense staring after him. Their dismayed confusion was as enjoyable as anything that had happened to him since The Two Georges disappeared. Boston had its share of modern buildings, whose architects tried to make up in curlicues and contrasting patterns of stone and brickwork what they lacked in imagination. Walking past one, Bushell turned to Kathleen Flannery and, pointing, said, “Is it my bad taste, or it that very ugly?”

“It’s certainly very busy,” she answered after judicious consideration. “That’s not quite the same thing, but it’s close.”

He looked ahead. “Now that’s more like it,” he said enthusiastically. “It has to date from before the days of the Union.”

“That’s Faneuil Hall,” Kathleen said. “You’re right; it was built in the 1740s. Boston has more colonial architecture left than any other city in the NAU. It’s a good deal - cleaner in line, isn’t it?”

“Just a bit, yes,” Bushell said, his voice dry. Verticals, sharp angles, straight lines - who needed more, except some overeducated tomfool who wanted to impress a client with his own cleverness?

“I like it,” Sam Stanley said. “It looks like a building where you’d go to get something done, not a gingerbread house or a fruitcake.”

With dark red brick and white marble trim, the office building across Dock Square from the noble Faneuil Hall did look like a gingerbread house. That was where Common Sense had its headquarters, though, and so it was where Bushell reluctantly betook himself.

The painting of a bald eagle behind the receptionist’s desk did not show the bird in a static, almost overstuffed pose, as it appeared on the Independence Party flag. Instead, the eagle’s eyes blazed and its beak gaped wide and fierce: it looked, in fact, a good deal more ferocious than its kind really were. The receptionist, an attractive blonde with her hair in a shingle bob and her cheeks red with rouge, said, “Welcome to Common Sense. How may I help you further the cause of freedom?”

As he had so often in this case, Bushell took out his badge and displayed it. “I am furthering the cause of freedom,” he said. By her expression, the receptionist did not agree. Her opinion worried him not a bit. He said. “I want to see Mr. Kennedy. I’m sick and tired of his running dogs sticking their noses into my investigation, and I expect him to call them off.” He relished using the rhetoric of the Sons of Liberty against Common Sense.

“One - one moment, sir,” the receptionist said, reaching for the telephone. “Let me speak to Mr. Kennedy’s secretary. Your name is - ?” Bushell gave it, and those of his companions. The receptionist dialed a number and talked in a low voice on the phone for a few minutes. While she did that, Bushell studied the alphabetical listing of Common Sense employees on the wall near the picture of the eagle. The publisher’s office was on the sixth floor. The receptionist hung up. With a bright smile, she said, “Mr. Kennedy will be able to see you at eleven o’clock this morning.”

“That’s nice,” Bushell said, and started for the lift down the hall. “I’m able to see him now.”

“Sir,” the receptionist called after him, “didn’t you hear me? Mr. Kennedy won’t be able to see you until- “

“Oh, I heard you,” Bushell said, stepping aside to let Kathleen precede him into the lift car. “I’m just not listening to you.” The lift’s sliding doors cut off the receptionist’s protests. In the Charleroi coal mine, Bushell had taken a lift that dropped him into the bowels of the earth. This one rose far more sedately, and carried him to what was, if not the earthly paradise, a good first approximation for it.

Somewhere in the background, a phonogram softly played Handel’s Water Music. Bushell’s feet sank deep into the thick, luxurious pile of the carpet. The secretary who guarded the way into the office whose doorway read JOHN F. KENNEDY, PUBLISHER made the receptionist in the lobby seem dowdy by comparison, something Bushell would not have imagined possible. Her perfume teased his nose. She frowned when he identified himself. “I distinctly told Roxanne Mr. Kennedy was not available till eleven this morning.”

“What a pity - we must have misunderstood,” Bushell said. “Since we’re here, maybe he’ll see us now.”

That could have sounded contrite. On the surface, it did. But when the secretary studied Bushell’s face, she realized he wasn’t asking a favor. He wasn’t waiting, either. He went to the door of John Kennedy’s office, opened it, and went in.

Kennedy was in a meeting with two men and two women, the oldest of them less than half his age. He was smiling; they were all laughing. “That will give them something to think about, Mr. Kennedy,” one of the women said in a low, throaty voice that struck Bushell as more appropriate for the boudoir than the office.

“Then it’s wasted, Dorothy, for I doubt any of them can think,” Kennedy said, his own New England-accented voice strong and younger than his years. That got more laughter. But then his associates - Bright Young Things, Bushell mentally tagged them - turned their heads to the doorway. So did he. For a moment, anger sparked in his green-blue eyes. “Who the devil are you?” he demanded.

“Colonel Thomas Bushell, Royal American Mounted Police.” As he had so many times, Bushell showed his badge. “I have some questions about The Two Georges.”

“And you think you’ll get answers from me?” Now Kennedy sounded amused. “Good luck to you.”

“You don’t have to tell him anything, Mr. Kennedy,” one of the Bright Young Men said fiercely, “except to go away.”

If Kennedy did that, Bushell knew he had little recourse. But the publisher of Common Sense waved a hand, a gesture full of careless confidence. “I’ll talk to him. Why not? I have nothing to hide.” He projected so much charm that even Bushell, who knew better than to trust him, wanted to believe. “Go on,” Kennedy told his colleagues. “We were about finished here, anyway, weren’t we? I’ll be all right. I may even convert this fellow here to - common sense.”

The Bright Young Things left the office one after the other, each glaring in turn at Bushell, Stanley, and Kathleen Flannery. A couple of them muttered under their breath. Luckily for them, Bushell ignored the mutters.

“Well, come in, Colonel,” Kennedy said in that resonant voice, coming to the door and extending his hand. “Please introduce me to your friends - especially the charming lady here.”

With a mental sigh, Bushell shook hands with the publisher. Kennedy’s grip was firm, though he had to be well into his seventies. He did his best to deny his age, partly helped by nature, as with his voice, and partly by artifice: his hair showed silver at the temples, but the rest was a not altogether convincing red-brown. His teeth were whiter and more perfectly even than any not supplied by a dentist. With its peaked lapels and wide-legged pants that hung straight from the waist, his suit might have belonged to a university undergraduate - but few undergraduates would have had the taste to choose his Donegal tweeds... or the money to afford them.

He shook hands with Samuel Stanley, then made a production of meeting Kathleen Flannery: he pressed her hand between both of his before raising it to his lips. “Always a pleasure to make the acquaintance of such a fair flower from the Old Sod,” he said, overlaying the New England accent with a brogue obviously donned for the occasion. When he moved back to let Kathleen enter his office, he didn’t move quite far enough, so that they brushed against each other as she stepped in. Where his clothes did not, his office seemed made for a captain of industry. The only missing touch was a print of The Two Georges behind his desk. Instead, he had a picture of uniformed RAMs wading into a crowd of striking coal miners sometime in the early days of the century. No one who looked at it could doubt the artist’s sentiments; the RAMs were portrayed as bestial brutes, some of them grinning with ghoulish glee as they belabored the saintly-seeming miners with truncheons.

“Tea?” Kennedy asked, nodding to a silver service in the corner of the office. “Or would you rather have coffee? I prefer it myself - less British.”

“Just business,” Bushell said.

The publisher shrugged. “As you like.” He took a cigar from a humidor, held it up to get permission and to admire it - and then lighted it. The smoke he blew made Bushell’s mouth water; they didn’t grow tobacco like that anywhere in the British Empire, worse luck. After a couple of lazy puffs, Kennedy asked, “Well, what is it that’s so important it won’t wait till eleven this morning?”

“Conducting any investigation is hard,” Bushell said. “Conducting one with reporters dogging your heels is worse; they enjoy printing things you’d sooner see quiet a while longer. Conducting one with reporters working to make you fail. . . a little of that goes a long way.”

“I can see that it might,” Kennedy said. “But what has it got to do with me?”

“I knew you were going to say that,” Bushell told him. “Do you know how I knew?”

“No, but since you’re going to tell me, I have the feeling I will,” Kennedy answered. Bushell’s smile was hard and bright and cold, like February sunshine in Boston. “Because one of your demon reporters told me that was what you’d say. He tells us all sorts of interesting things about you. Would you like to hear some of them?”

“One of Shaughnessy and Doyle, do you mean?” Kennedy shook his head. “I don’t believe it, not a word. They’re good lads, honest lads, both of them, and I won’t let your lies come between me and them.”

“One of your reporters, I said,” Bushell answered. “I named no names, and I didn’t intend to. But if you think you can spy on the Royal American Mounted Police as we go about our business, why shouldn’t you expect us to spy on you as you go about yours?”

Kennedy glared at him. Bushell had been on the receiving end of some fearsome scowls in his time, but this ranked among the leaders. It was both full of hate and restrained, an unsettling combination. The man would make - probably did make - a bad enemy. Thanks to Common Sense, he’d been a bad enemy to the Crown for close to half a century.

Perhaps trying to defuse the moment, Kathleen Flannery said, “I think I’d like a cup of tea after all, please, Mr. Kennedy.”

The publisher went from glowering magnate to kindly host in the space of a heartbeat. He had charm in abundance when he wanted to, no doubt of that. “My pleasure,” he said, rising from his seat. “It’ll be Irish Breakfast, of course, but then you won’t mind that, being Irish yourself. Do you take sugar, Dr. Flannery? - Kathleen, if you’ll let me? No? I shouldn’t be surprised; you must be sweet enough and to spare on your own. Would you care for a biscuit with it? I have vanilla wafers there that go very nicely.”

“No, thank you,” Kathleen said. “Just the tea, please.”

Kennedy filled a bone-china cup from the samovar, then lifted a silver pitcher of milk from the ice-filled bowl in which it sat. Bushell had been wondering if he assumed everyone drank tea Russian style, but no, evidently not. The publisher carried cup and saucer over to Kathleen Flannery. “Here you are,” he said, patting her on the shoulder.

“Thank you,” she replied, her voice quiet.

After fussing over her a while longer, Kennedy went back behind his desk. “Where were we?” he asked Bushell, sounding affable enough. “Oh, I remember - you were telling me lies about my reporters.”

“No, you were telling me lies about not knowing what they’re up to and why,” Bushell answered with another of those wintry smiles. “Me, I’m not a reporter; so I’m more likely to be telling the truth.”

“A RAM a truthteller?” Kennedy shook his head; his wattled jowels wobbled slightly. “That’s funny enough for a joke, or would be if it weren’t so sad.”

Samuel Stanley bristled. “What the devil have you got against the Crown and the British Empire?” he demanded. “What’s the Empire ever done to you - aside from making you rich, I mean?” He waved a hand around to call attention to the splendid quarters in which they were conversing.

“The Empire hasn’t made me rich.” Anger sparked in Kennedy’s eyes, too. “I made myself rich, and the way I did it shows the Empire’s not so beloved nor so perfect as some blind fools think. America would be better off with its chains broken.”

“Nothing’s perfect,” Bushell said, uneasily remembering the slums of Charleroi and the low, dark tunnels underneath them.

“The Empire does things pretty well, though.” Stanley set his right forefinger on the back of his left wrist to remind Kennedy what color he was. “Britain freed the black slaves all through the Empire - even the southern provinces of the NAU, where the masters bawled like branded calves, screaming they couldn’t raise their cotton without us. For that alone - “

Kennedy slammed a fist down on the desk. “Yes, England freed the black man - and left the Irishman in chains. Oh, we were free in law: free to starve when the potato failed. One of my several-great-grandfathers was down under seven stone when he dragged himself aboard ship for what he hoped might prove a better life. They made him a factory hand here in Boston instead of the farmer he had been, but he kept right on starving.”

Bushell stood up and dug in his trouser pocket. “And you’re still starving to this day.” He found a shilling and tossed it onto Kennedy’s desk. Silver rang sweetly off polished walnut. “Here, you poor man, buy yourself a crust of bread.”

The publisher looked at the coin without picking it up. “Give me another one of those, and I’ll save both to put on your eyes after America is free,” he said softly.

Bushell threw another shilling on the desk. “Save them for yourself.”

“One fine day - oh, and it will be a fine day - the Crown will go into the bonfire,” Kennedy said. “And when it does, it will light our country - America, our country - and all who serve it, and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.”

“My country,” Bushell answered, “is the British Empire, ruled by His Majesty the King-Emperor, Charles III. If the rest of the NAU didn’t feel the same way, the Independence Party would win elections and no one would need to read Common Sense .”

“Elections are bought,” Kennedy said with a scornful sniff. “That works - for a while. But those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

“Mr. Kennedy - “ Bushell let it drop. The publisher had composed so many editorials for his magazine, he even talked like one. You’d make Kennedy’s brother the archbishop a Baptist before you convinced him the British Empire did more good than harm, and persisted for that very reason. Perhaps a straight search for information might yield something. “Do you know a Joseph Kilbride, Mr. Kennedy?”

“The art collector? Yes, I’ve met him,” Kennedy answered. “Why?”

“Do you know his present whereabouts?” Bushell asked, not responding to the counter-question.

“He lives in the Six Nations, doesn’t he?” Kennedy made a dismissive gesture. “I don’t know him at all well, I’m afraid.”

“I didn’t ask if you knew where he lived,” Bushell said. “I asked if you knew his present whereabouts.”

Kennedy rewarded him with a hooded look that pleased him more than the glares he’d earned before: he’d been intended to take that as a fully responsive answer. The publisher spoke carefully now: “No, I do not know his exact whereabouts. I do know I have not seen him or talked with him in two or three years, so I’m afraid I can’t help you further.” He took a pocket watch from a waistcoat pocket. “Have you got a lot of other questions, Colonel Bushell? I have another meeting in five minutes. If there are more, perhaps we could resume this afternoon with my solicitor present.”

“Fascinating how someone who despises good British law is so quick to shelter behind it,” Bushell remarked to no one in particular. With his solicitor present, Kennedy would say nothing of any consequence, and would have the best legal advice his money could buy justifying that nothing. The man had developed skating on thin ice into an art, but he’d never yet gone through. Sighing, Bushell said, “I think that’s all.”

Kennedy got to his feet. Just for a moment, he looked smugly patronizing: a prominent men who’d fended off an impertinent busybody who had almost - but not quite - managed to become an annoyance. Then the friendly, smiling mask slid back into place, and Bushell, against his will, found himself smiling back. Whatever else you said about the man, he did have charisma.

Kennedy extended his hand again. “I don’t wish you ill, Colonel, not personally.”

On that basis, Bushell clasped it without hesitation. “No, not personally, Mr. Kennedy.” An open enemy, unlike the hidden terrorists who called themselves the Sons of Liberty, could deserve respect. Kennedy shook hands with Samuel Stanley, too; Stanley also seemed to accept him as a declared foe but not necessarily a villain because of that. As he had when they were introduced, the publisher lingered over Kathleen Flannery. “A pleasure to meet you, my dear,” he said. “I’d like to see more of you, if you’ll be in Boston long.”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “I expect I’ll be very busy, however long I am here.”

“What a pity.” Kennedy finally let go of her hand. He held the door open so she, Bushell, and Stanley could leave. “Good luck, Colonel,” he told Bushell, “but not too much of it.”

Someone was sitting on the couch by the secretary’s desk. Bushell glanced over at the man. Had this been the cinema, the fellow would have been Joseph Kilbride. Bushell had no idea who he was, but Kilbride he wasn’t. Bushell clicked his tongue between his teeth in regret, then headed for the lift. He and his companions spent the rest of the morning at the Boston RAM offices on Parliament Street. That proved as frustrating as the interview with Kennedy had. Like Pennsylvania, Boston was a stronghold of the Sons of Liberty, but if any of the local Sons had anything to do with the plot to steal The Two Georges or any knowledge of it, the RAMs hadn’t been able to prove it. They hadn’t found any sign of Joseph Kilbride, either. He might have dropped off the face of the earth or Michael O’Flynn might have been lying, down there in the coal mine. When church bells chimed noon, Bushell threw his hands in the air. “Where can we get something to eat?” he asked Major George Harris, the RAM who’d been helping in what looked more and more like a fruitless search.

“Try Durgin-Park, out in back of Faneuil Hall,” Harris suggested. He was a Bostonian himself, and talked like one: the name of the eatery he proposed came out as an almost unintelligible Duhgin-Pahk. After he said it often enough for Bushell to understand him, he added, “They’ll fill you up there, and they won’t leave you broke.”

Bushell looked at his companions. They nodded. “Why not?” he said. The three of them went out into the humid heat and walked over to the restaurant. He almost left when he found they had to queue up to get into the upstairs dining room, but didn’t know anywhere else to go. The queue proved to move swiftly. Before long, he, Stanley, and Kathleen were sitting at a long table with a dozen other hungry souls.

The place was as far from elegant as could be imagined - and by all appearances deliberately so. Large, noisy fans stirred the warm air. Steam pipes rattled and wheezed overhead. The waitresses came in two varieties: surly and wisecracking.

But the Boston baked beans with salt pork, the corn bread, and the roast beef were uniformly excellent, and, as Major Harris had promised, they gave you enough to feed a regiment. Bushell didn’t know how he managed to find room for Indian pudding, but the cornmeal-and-molasses mix found a corner nothing else was filling. “I wonder what Shikalimo would think of it,” he mused.

“Don’t know,” Samuel Stanley said.”Have you got a wheelbarrow? Dump me in it and roll me back to the hotel.”

“No rest for the weary - nor even the obese,” Bushell answered with a smile. “Back to the RAMs, and then on to the Boston constables.” He turned to Kathleen Flannery. “You see what a dramatic, exciting life we lead.”

She nodded without saying anything. She hadn’t said much since they left the offices of Common Sense. That worried Bushell. Had talking to John Kennedy made her wonder if she was on the right side after all? Was she really on the right side after all? He’d thought so; he’d been - almost - convinced. Now he started wondering again.

By about two that afternoon, Bushell was convinced he wouldn’t learn anything more from the RAMs. He and his companions went down the street to the central constabulary station. When he got there, he wondered if he’d ever seen so many Irishmen all in the same place before. They fell over themselves trying to be helpful; he had no complaint on that score. Even so, he couldn’t help wondering if one or another of Boston’s finest might not occasionally slip a shilling into a telephone at a public box and ring up Common Sense. He tried not to let the thought worry him. However friendly and solicitous they were, the Boston constables had not set eyes on Joseph Kilbride. The number of people who might have been harboring him ran into the hundreds, if not the thousands. Checking out each one would take a long time, time the investigation did not have. “And the worst of it is, there’s sure to be plenty of men without even the littlest record who’d do a Son a good turn,” a constabulary lieutenant said morosely. “If we do land this Kilbride item, it’s as likely to be by luck as by design.”

“The same pleasant thought had crossed my mind, yes,” Bushell said. “But all the luck we’ve had on this case has been bad.” He’d worried about getting stuck on the Queen Charlotte Islands without any idea of where to go next. If you had to get stuck somewhere, Boston was a more pleasant place to do it, but the idea of getting stuck now, with time growing short so fast, chilled Bushell’s blood. He was glum and quiet when he, Sam, and Kathleen went back to the Parker House. Not even the prospect of supper at Parker’s, the restaurant attached to the hotel, did much to cheer him, though Major Harris had implied that you’d die happy if you shuffled off this mortal coil right after a meal there. When he and his companions walked into the dining room, the maître d’ handed Kathleen Flannery a red rose and Stanley and him a cigar. Had it been done showily, he would have thought it theatrical and cheap (though the cigar was anything but cheap). As it was, the man gave the impression that the flower and tobacco were gifts due anyone entering his domain, to be taken for granted. Such understated luxury made Bushell nod in approval: this was how the best places did things. The waiter brought over butter and a wicker basket of rolls. Bushell stared at them. One eyebrow rose. He looked up at the waiter. “These wouldn’t be - “

“Parker House rolls? Why, yes, sir, as a matter of fact they would. This is where they got the name.”

Whatever you called them, they were good. Bushell ate one and sipped at a glass of Jameson. When the waiter returned, he ordered medallions of lobster Parisienne. Samuel Stanley chose Dover sole, while Kathleen ordered scrod. “It’s something you can’t get anywhere but Boston,” she said.

“Oh, you can,” Bushell said, “but they call it young cod anyplace else.”

He took another sip of his Irish whiskey and admired the dining room. They’d had the sense to leave it alone when the Rococo Revival swept through the rest of the hotel. The walnut-paneled walls, well over a century old, complemented the earth tones of the decor. You didn’t want to hurry anything here, not even drinking. Fine English hostelries were supposed to have an atmosphere like this. Bushell hadn’t thought its like existed on this side of the Atlantic.

“Boston has more than three hundred years of history behind it,” Kathleen said when he remarked on that: “time enough for tradition to have taken root here. Oh, set against London, three hundred years isn’t much, but it’s very old compared to most of the NAU.”

“Practically prehistoric when you set it against New Liverpool,” Bushell said. “The Empire’s only been in the southwest a little more than a hundred years. Hardly anything left of old Franco-Spanish Los Angeles, either: street names, not much more.”

Kathleen nodded. “I saw that. I think it’s a pity. If you don’t remember the past, how can you hope to make sense of the present?” She looked down at her gin and tonic. “Spoken like an art curator, I know.”

“It makes sense, any which way,” Bushell said. Samuel Stanley raised his mug of John Adams ale in salute and agreement.

The waiter came back with their suppers. Deft as a surgeon, he boned Stanley’s sole right at the table.

“Something more to drink, madam, sirs?” he asked.

Kathleen Flannery nodded again. “Maybe a little later for me,” Bushell said; his glass remained a quarter full. Sam Stanley looked at him as if wondering if he was well. He grinned at his adjutant. Maybe he wasn’t perfectly predictable after all.

With the first taste of lobster, worries about predictability vanished from his head. For the next little while, a rapturous silence enfolded the table. When at last plates were empty, Stanley raised his mug again: “To two fish and a lobster that did not die in vain.” They all drank, Bushell finishing the last couple of drops of Jameson he still had left.

Instead of signaling for another, he chose a glass of port to go with the tray of cheese and fruit the waiter brought after clearing away the dishes that had held the entrees. After a glance toward Kathleen, Bushell and Stanley lit the cigars the maître d’ had given them. Bushell savored the fine, rich smoke. “The animal part of me is about as content as it could be,” he said.

“Amen to that,” Samuel Stanley declared. “I don’t remember the last time I had a finer meal. All the same, though, I’m going to cut things short, if you’ll forgive me. I want to go upstairs and ring up Phyllis. It’s been too long since I’ve talked with her.”

Bushell waved indulgently. “Go on, Sam. I just hope she knows what a lucky woman she is, to have you still wanting to talk with her after all these years.”

Stanley laughed at that. He rose, dipped his head to Kathleen Flannery, and hurried out of Parker’s. Bushell sampled a ripe Stilton, then took another sip of port.

He glanced over at Kathleen, who had fallen back into the silence that had gripped her since she left the offices of Common Sense . “If you’re content, Dr. Flannery,” he remarked, “you conceal it very well.”

She had a glass of port in front of her, too. It was more than half full. She lifted it and knocked it back as if it were a shot of rotgut. Bushell flinched; discontented or not, she had no business treating the lovely stuff that way. “Why on earth shouldn’t I be, Colonel?” she said. “It’s not every day, after all, that I have the privilege of abandoning my own will and following someone else’s.”

“We’ve been over that ground before,” he said. “If you’re going to help with the investigation - and you have helped, and I thank you for it - you need to come along with Sam and me so - “

“ - So you can take me to be pawed like a cut of meat, and a cheap one at that,” she broke in.

“Going in to talk with Tony Rothrock was your idea, not mine,” Bushell said, “and you told me he hadn’t pawed you, just made himself otherwise offensive. If we’d known differently, we’d have - “

Kathleen interrupted him again: “Rothrock? I’m not talking about Rothrock. I’m talking about John Kennedy this morning. Didn’t you notice anything, Colonel?” By her tone, her opinion of his skill as an observer had just dived like a submersible.

“I saw he was attentive to you, but - “

“Attentive!” Kathleen said, loud enough to make people a couple of tables over look her way. Bushell resigned himself to never getting a word in edgewise, which had happened before in conversations with Kathleen. She went on, “I’ve not been treated like that in - oh, a very long time,” and then added, in what was not quite the non sequitur it first seemed, “I shall have my father cancel my subscription.”

Bushell scratched his head. “How did I miss this? I was in the same room with you, and I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.”

“You wouldn’t have,” Kathleen said. “For one thing, you weren’t looking for anything like that, and for another, he’s smooth. Usually, those unwelcome approaches are much more blatant.”

Instead of salving Bushell’s pride, that irritated him further. He made his living by noting what others failed to see. Now he had failed. “What the devil did he do?” he asked, and then held up a hand before Kathleen could answer. “Wait.” He called up the mental image of them going into Kennedy’s office.

“You were introduced to him, and he took your hand.”

Kathleen nodded. The expression on her face said she’d just turned over a flat rock and found something slimy and pallid underneath. “He certainly did . . . and as he clasped it, he used his middle finger to offer an invitation which I was not in the least interested in accepting.”

“Did he?” Bushell rubbed at his mustache. “That’s crude.” He ran the mental cinema forward a few frames. “You brushed against him as you walked past. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but I do remember that.”

“No, he brushed against me,” she corrected. “I wouldn’t have thought much of that, either, except for what had just happened before, but he pushed his hips forward so that he brushed against my backside. It put me in mind of a dog in the street, if you must know.”

“Then what happened?” Bushell took a certain morbid delight in seeing Kennedy in a less than favorable light, and by talking about it Kathleen was venting some of the fury she’d bottled up all day.

“When he came around with the tea and put his hand on my shoulder, he just happened to slide it under the material of my dress and onto my skin. Purely a matter of chance, of course.” Her snapping eyes gave the lie to her words.

“Why didn’t you call him on it?” Bushell asked. “That was what, the third time by then?”

“What would the point have been?” she said with a bitter shrug. “I couldn’t prove anything, and all he would have done was apologize - most handsomely and most insincerely, I have no doubt. I’ve heard such before - “

“Have you?”

“Oh, yes.” Kathleen’s nod was emphatic; she was feeling the port. “Apologies of that sort aren’t worth having, and demanding them only makes you an enemy.” She laughed, briefly and bitterly. “Now you’re hearing the secrets of women in the professions. Any one of us could tell you the like.”

“Really? The first assumption is that because something isn’t talked about, it doesn’t happen. I suppose I ought to know what that one’s worth, being a policeman - of sorts. But, as you said, I’ve never looked for anything of the kind. Perhaps I should.”

“Yes, perhaps you should,” Kathleen said sharply. Then she bit her lip. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean that personally, or at least not in the way it must have sounded. Heaven knows we’ve had our disagreements- “

“Really?” Bushell’s voice was bland. “I hadn’t noticed.”

She started to explode, then pointed an accusing finger at him instead. “No, you won’t get my goat that way; you’ve done it too often already. As I was saying - “ She waited for him to interrupt her again. When he didn’t, she went on, “We’ve had our disagreements, but you’ve been a gentleman about them.”

“And the distinguished publisher of Common Sense was not?”

“No,” Kathleen said, like a judge passing sentence. So, in a way, she was. The world was a smaller, quicker, more complicated place than it had been in the days of the two Georges or of Victoria, but the old standards of behavior still had some life in them. A man against whom the public rendered a verdict like the one Kathleen had delivered on John Kennedy would never again be taken seriously as a shaper of opinion.

At any other time, the prospect of that happening to the publisher would have filled Bushell with fierce glee. So it did now, but only in a small part of his mind. He said, “You’ve not had much luck with the male of the species, have you, Kathleen? Your fiancé and this and - “

“In the scheme of things, this was just a nuisance.” She cocked her head to one side, studying him. He hadn’t used her Christian name before. After a moment, she went on, “As for the other, he was handsome, he was persuasive, and I - “ She shrugged. “I was foolish.”

“If they built enough gaols to hold all the foolish people, the outside world would be a pretty empty place. Lord knows I’d be wearing the broad arrow myself.” Bushell was not usually a man in the habit of hesitating, but now he paused. After what he’d known with Irene had collapsed like a block of flats in a strong earthquake, he’d been hesitant (he wouldn’t use the word frightened, even to himself) about revealing much of himself to - leaving himself vulnerable to - anyone else. When he did speak again, it was almost abstractly: “I’ve often wished we’d met under other circumstances. It would have been interesting.”

“You use that word to serve such a lot of ends,” Kathleen remarked. She looked down at her hands.

“There have been times I wished the same thing myself.”

“Have there?” Bushell said. “I must say, you’ve hidden it very well.”

“So have you,” she answered. “I suspect our reasons aren’t very different.”

Bushell raised an eyebrow. “Is that so? You were afraid I sympathized with the Sons of Liberty, too?”

Kathleen stared at him, then started to laugh. “Oh dear, Tom,” she said after a moment. “You did get me that time.”

He set his hand on hers. “Not yet,” he said.

The waiter had been coming up to their table, no doubt to ask if they wanted anything else. He was well trained; seeing what looked to be unfolding ahead of him, he abruptly found something else to do. The unsleepingly observant part of Bushell noticed him sheering off out of the corner of his eye. He was forgotten an instant later.

“Well,” Kathleen said, as if it were a complete sentence. “Let me go powder my nose. I’ll be back directly.” She got up. “And then - “ That also might have been a full thought. No sooner had she headed for the door than the waiter appeared as if by magic, this time bearing the check: not only well trained but efficient. Bushell rewarded that efficiency with a tip larger than he usually paid. The waiter returned, scooped up the banknotes with a murmured word of thanks, and vanished once more.

Kathleen took longer to return than Bushell had expected. He drummed his fingers on the tablecloth. Had she decided he was as irksome as Kennedy and picked a discreet way of avoiding him, as she’d been discreet in the publisher’s office? Had she - ?

She came back into Parker’s then, and his worries evaporated. He got up and walked over to her. When he offered her his arm, she took it as if it were the most natural thing in the world. They went over to the bank of lifts opposite the registration desk. “Fourth floor,” Bushell told the operator.

“Yes, sir,” the fellow said, touching a forefinger to the shiny leather brim of his cap. His eyes twinkled. He’d taken Bushell and Kathleen - and Samuel Stanley - down to Parker’s for supper. The two of them hadn’t been arm in arm then.

The fourth-floor hallway was long and quiet, the carpet thick and soft under Bushell’s shoes. The electric lamp fixtures protruding from the walls resembled the gaslights they’d replaced in the early days of the century.

Stanley’s room was closest to the lifts, Bushell’s next to it, and then Kathleen’s. They both smiled when they walked past Bushell’s room. Kathleen took the key to hers from her handbag, set it in the lock, and turned it. The door opened. She went in. Bushell followed her. He closed the door after himself and made sure it was locked.

Kathleen turned on a lamp by an overstuffed chair. The shade was of thick parchment. The light that came from the lamp was brighter than any candles could produce, but the shade gave it some of that rich, buttery quality.

Slyly, Kathleen asked, “What would Doyle and Shaughnessy say if they knew the chief investigator in this case was alone in a hotel room with someone he’d suspected of sympathizing with the Sons of Liberty? It sounds like a compromising position to me.”

“I don’t much care what other people say,” Bushell answered with a shrug.

“Yes, I had noticed that,” Kathleen answered as he took her in his arms. Some time later, Bushell leaned up on one elbow and studied Kathleen by the warm light of that one lamp. She stirred under his gaze, as if lying on a bed naked and lazy in the afterglow were somehow more intimate than the act itself. Maybe, to her, it was: while you were actually making love, you weren’t thinking about what you were doing and what it might mean. That came afterward. He stroked her hair, smiled crookedly, and nodded. Then he gave a gasp of theatrical exhaustion, flopping limply back onto the linen sheets.

Kathleen reached out and poked him in the ribs. She happened to hit a ticklish spot; he wriggled and tried to get away. She laughed. “If you let yourself, you can be a very foolish man.”

His head whipped around, as if in alarm. “My secret’s out! You can blackmail me forever now. I’m putty in your hands.”

“Hardly putty,” she said, looking at him from under half-lowered eyelids. Then she poked him again. Her finger slid into a shallow groove in his flesh that ran along one rib. “What’s this?”

“I’d say it was an old war wound, except, of course, we’ve never been at war with the Holy Alliance.”

Bushell’s raised eyebrow told how seriously he expected her to take that. He shook his head in some bemusement. Going out onto the frontier showed you how very much the safe, contented Empire was really worth . . . but when you came back with that new understanding, you found you didn’t quite fit into safety and contentment any more.

After a moment, he went on, “It was a worthless little skirmish down near the border with Nueva España - which side of the border we were on depends on whether you like British maps or the ones the Franco-Spaniards print. Of course, if you get killed in a worthless little skirmish, you’re as dead as if it were a real war. One of my men got hit. I was a raw subaltern, green as paint, but I knew I had to go out and pick him up. So I did - and I got this. Sam Stanley brought us both back alive.”

“A couple of inches farther in” - she ran her hand up toward his heart - “and it might have killed you.”

“Really? The thought never crossed my mind.” He waited half a beat, then added, “And if you believe that, I have in my suitcase a fine perpetual-motion machine and an elixir to turn lead into gold.”

She stretched languorously. “After tonight, nothing you say you have would surprise me too much.” She glanced over at him out of the corner of her eye.

He cupped her left breast in his hand. Her nipple grew hard against his palm. She arched her back and made a small noise deep in her throat. He caught her to him. Her mouth was seeking his as his sought hers. “Well!” she said a little later, when their lips separated for a moment: the second time that night she’d freighted the word with more than it was meant to bear. She amplified it: “So soon?”

“Hush,” he said roughly.

Despite that admonition, the second time was slower, less urgent than the first had been. Bushell wondered if his body would betray its promise to him, but it didn’t. When Kathleen’s breath came quick and short and she quivered beneath him, he said “Yes!” to her or himself or possibly God, and yes it certainly was.

“Well,” Kathleen said for the third time, and then, in a much more pragmatic voice, “You’re squashing me.”

“The romance is over so soon, is it?” he said, had had to pull back in a hurry before she could bite him in the shoulder. Their skins, slick with sweat, slid against each other as he went back to his own side of the bed.

Kathleen leaned over, kissed him gently on the lips, curled up beside him, and, in what couldn’t have been more than ninety seconds, fell asleep. He watched and listened to that happen in some bemusement: legend claimed it was a male prerogative. He snorted - softly, so as not to bother Kathleen. He should have known better than to expect her to pay any attention to legend. He lay on his back, fingers interlaced behind his head, staring up at the ceiling, trying to find patterns in random roughnesses of plaster. Even if he hadn’t been celibate these past few years, he hadn’t gone to bed with a woman who might also matter to him outside of bed, either, not till now. That thought brought fright with it, fright hardly less than he’d known with bullets flying at Buckley Bay. He could see into the future, could see himself giving her his heart - and see her breaking it, a month from now, or a year, or five years, or fifteen. He’d been through that once. Next to it, a bullet that slid along a rib was a small wound. After a while, the bleeding stopped and the scar grew old and pale. You could prod that scar, as Kathleen had, and never feel a thing.

The other, though - A man who laid himself open to being twice wounded in love was a fool. But what was a man who, having been wounded once, forswore love afterward?

“A different kind of fool,” Bush murmured, and then, after a moment, “A bigger fool.”

Kathleen stirred and muttered at the sound of his voice. He lay still again, waiting for her to be quiet. Was what he’d said right, or was he just trying to convince himself? He had trouble being sure. At last, though, he nodded. Oh, if you lived your life in a shell, nothing could hurt you, but it was cramped and drab and lonely in there. Yes, you ran risks if you came out, but the world outside the shell was a nicer, freer place - and the company was better.

He slid out of bed and began to dress. The motion made Kathleen stir again. Lying there asleep, she looked absurdly young. Bushell sighed and shook his head. He wondered if he ought to wake her so she could put on whatever night-clothes she wore - and chuckled wryly as he realized he had no idea what those were. Silk negligee? Cotton nightshirt? Flannel pyjamas? So much he still had to learn about her. He decided he didn’t have the heart to disturb her. She was sleeping too contentedly, and he knew from too many long and wakeful nights how precious that was. He slipped toward the door. He started to set his hand on the knob, then turned back and blew Kathleen a kiss. No one saw it, not even her.

“You’re alarmingly cheerful this morning,” Samuel Stanley said as he and Bushell waited for the lift to take them down to breakfast.

“Am I?” Bushell thought about that for a couple of seconds. “Well,” he said, and smiled right in Stanley’s face. His adjutant gave him a suspicious look; neither of them was normally at his best without a couple of cups of tea inside him.

Stanley peered down the hall. “The illustrious Dr. Flannery seems to be sleeping in this morning,” he remarked. “She’s just as likely to be up ahead of us, from what I’ve seen since Doshoweh.”

Bushell nodded. “How’s Phyllis doing?” he asked. That and the arrival of the lift served to distract Sam from thoughts of Kathleen Flannery.

Down in Parker’s, Bushell was pouring milk into a cup of Darjeeling when Kathleen stood in the entranceway, looking around to spot him and Samuel Stanley. Both RAMs got to their feet as she came up to the table. Bushell pulled out a chair for her. “Thank you,” she said brightly.

“My pleasure,” Bushell answered, not least to see how she’d react. If she wanted to pretend in public that nothing had happened in the nighttime, that was her privilege.

Stanley grumbled something unintelligible down into his teacup, then spoke to the world at large: “Two grinning loobies at the table with me, no tea in ‘em, no eggs, no bacon. If I didn’t know better, I’d say both of you were smoking something you shouldn’t be.”

“You can check my cigar case if you like, Sam,” Bushell said. Kathleen snorted a not quite ladylike snort.

The waiter came, took breakfast orders, and vanished as quickly and smoothly as if he’d fallen through a trap door. Samuel Stanley gulped down his tea, poured himself another cup, and pondered the peculiar breakfast riddle posed by companions who were not scowling and speaking in monosyllabic grunts. Sam’s ruminations were quite visible. He was, Bushell realized, very likely to come up with four when he added two and two. What would happen then would be ... interesting - one way or another. Bushell was cutting a small, spicy pork link in half when Stanley let out a low, soft whistle. Being more inclined to meet difficulties head-on than to wait for them to come to him, Bushell asked, “Are you planning a second career as a steam locomotive, Sam?”

“Who, me?” His adjutant’s face was the picture of innocence. “There’s got to be more money in it than in what I’m doing now. I was going to say more travel, too, but that’s not necessarily so, not when you think about how far we’ve been lately.” Stanley didn’t want to make an immediate issue of it, then. Just as well, Bushell thought, and ate the rest of the little sausage. A few minutes later, Kathleen said, “Excuse me, please,” and got up from the table. As she walked past Bushell on her way out of the restaurant, she let her hand rest affectionately on his back for a moment. Samuel Stanley let out that low, thoughtful whistle again. Bushell glanced over at him, one eyebrow raised. Stanley began, “None of my business, but - “

“How right you are,” Bushell cut in, hoping to nip things in the bud. It didn’t work. Stubbornly, Stanley went on, “If you’d met her in the regular way, I’d be cheering you on. I think she’s good for you, and I think she’s good people. But that’s just it - I think those things. I don’t know them. Are you sure of what you’re doing, Chief? I mean, considering that - “ Now he did stop.

“Considering that she’s still a suspect of sorts,” Bushell finished for him. “Is that what you mean?” Sam nodded, looking unhappy. Bushell said, “No, I’m not sure, and do you know what? I’m damned glad I’m not.”

His adjutant frowned. “I don’t follow.”

“Every time I’ve been sure in this stinking case, I’ve been wrong,” Bushell said. “So no, I’m not sure about Kathleen. I’m going to do whatever I do, and we’ll just have to bloody well see how it works out in the end. If it doesn’t - “ He drained his own teacup. He knew too well that things didn’t always work out to order. If this one didn’t he wouldn’t need to worry about Kathleen, or about the rest of his career, or about much of anything else, either.

He waited for Sam to scream at him, or take the more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger tone he used when he’d caught Bushell obviously in the wrong. Instead, to his amazement, his adjutant nodded. “You put it that way, Chief, all right. If you don’t bet, you can’t win.”

That so closely paralleled Bushell’s own thinking of the night before that he stared at Stanley. Before he could answer, Kathleen came back, her light green silk frock flowing about her as she walked. She pointed a finger at him as she sat down once more. “The two of you have been talking about me again, haven’t you? You dummy up like a couple of schoolboys whenever I get close enough to hear.”

Without pausing to let either Bushell or Stanley answer, she went on, “I suppose I’ll just have to give you something to talk about, then, won’t I?” She leaned forward and brushed her lips against Bushell’s. Her eyes sparkled with amusement. “What do you think of that?”

“I,” Bushell said solemnly, “like it.”

Samuel Stanley took a slow, deliberate sip of tea. “The only times I’ve been sorry I was born a Negro,” he declared, “are the ones when people can’t see me blush.”

Kathleen stared, convinced for a moment he was serious. In a severe voice, Bushell said, “You, sir, have been associating with me altogether too long.”

The laughter from the table made heads turn all through Parker’s. Bushell couldn’t have cared less. Boston’s muggy heat made the walk from the hotel to the RAM offices oppressive, even if it wasn’t very long. Bushell envied Kathleen her cool silk dress. In his suit and waistcoat, cravat and fedora, he felt as if he were wearing his own portable steam bath.

Samuel Stanley was also sweating. He paused briefly to fan himself with his hat. Setting it back on his head, he said, “I think I may buy myself a straw boater. That might help fight the humidity a little.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Bushell answered, “but if I do get myself a straw, the next clue we find will take us straight to Newfoundland, and I’ll need a greatcoat instead.”

“Things have worked out that way, haven’t they?” Stanley said with a theatrical sigh. He touched the brim of his dark homburg. “First decent reason I’ve heard for keeping this.”

Fans at the RAM offices stirred the sticky air without doing much to cool it. Indoors, though, Bushell and Stanley could take off their hats, which helped a little. Major George Harris greeted them with spread hands and a mournful expression. “Still no sign of your Kilbride, I’m afraid.”

Bushell bit down on his cigar so that it jerked in his mouth. “I feared as much, the moment I came into town. Boston’s too big; it has too many places to stay; and it has too many people who like the Sons of Liberty too well. What do we do next?”

Harris spread his hands. He was a slim fellow in his late thirties who wore muttonchop whiskers that didn’t suit the shape of his face. “We keep looking, Colonel. I don’t know what else we can do. If you have any suggestions beyond that, I’d be delighted to hear them.”

“I’d be delighted to make them, too.” Bushell tugged his shirt cuff away from his wrist and peered toward his elbow. “Nothing up my sleeve, worse luck.”

“We have to do it the hard way,” Samuel Stanley said. “Good old-fashioned police work, nothing else but.”

The cigar jerked again. “We haven’t got time for good old-fashioned police work,” Bushell said. “The King-Emperor’s yacht sails before long. The politicos will pay ransom to get The Two Georges back, sure as the devil they will.”

“You’re too right about that,” Stanley said. He started to add something, then paused and scratched his head. “Matter of fact, I’d have expected more ransom demands - or at least threats - by now.”

“Do you suppose the Sons have made some and they’re keeping them quiet in Victoria?” Harris asked.

“They wouldn’t be proud of paying, even if - maybe especially if - they had to.”

“It could be so, but I doubt it,” Bushell said. Surely Sir Horace would have told him if the Sons had sent any messages either to RAM headquarters or to Sir Martin Luther King. When he went on, though, he picked a more publicly plausible reason: “If the Sons were making demands at the capital, they’d be making them in the newspapers, too.”

“Yes, that’s true,” Harris said. “They’ve always been better at getting ink than they deserve. Pack of - “

He glanced over at Kathleen Flannery; you could see him decide not to talk like a police officer. Instead, he went on, “In aid of which, any more thoughts on how you fared at Common Sense yesterday?”

“All things considered, quite well,” Kathleen answered before either Bushell or Stanley could speak. Bushell raised an eyebrow; his adjutant coughed. Ignoring them both, Kathleen finished, “There was a good deal to consider, though.”

“Er - yes.” Major Harris sounded unenlightened. Bushell sympathized with him; he’d had that feeling after conversations with Kathleen, too. Valiantly, Harris tried to stay with her, asking, “Got some useful information, did you?”

“Not a bit,” she said, her voice cheery.

Harris looked more bewildered than ever. Seeming to give up his questions for Kathleen as a bad job, he turned to Bushell and said, “We can put Kilbride’s name and picture in the paper ourselves. If he’s here, someone must have seen him.”

Stanley looked worried. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “The ransom note they sent us said we weren’t supposed to go after The Two Georges. If we did, something bad would happen to it. Having the Sons destroy it would be almost as bad as paying them their fifty million pounds.”

“Officially,” Bushell said in a musing voice, “officially, mind you, we don’t know that Kilbride’s involved with the theft of The Two Georges. Officially, we just suspect him of being involved with running Russian rifles from the Queen Charlotte Islands down to New Liverpool. If we were on the lookout for a gun runner, don’t you think that would be news important enough to make the local papers?”

Harris’s eyes gleamed. “That’s perfect, Colonel. We’ll play it exactly like that, as if we didn’t have any other cares about him.”

“Are you sure it’ll be all right, Tom?” Kathleen Flannery asked anxiously. “The Sons of Liberty will know Kilbride’s involved with more than the rifles. Won’t they assume we know as much, too? And if they do assume that, what will they do to The Two Georges’!” Keeping the painting safe plainly remained uppermost in her thoughts.

George Harris reached for a sheet of foolscap and a pencil and scribbled a note to himself. As he did so, he glanced over at Kathleen from under lowered lids. Bushell could all but read Harris’s mind: she hadn’t called him by his Christian name the day before. RAMs were trained to notice such things.

“I don’t think they’ll destroy The Two Georges till they’re sure they won’t be able to ransom it,” he said. “If they were going to do that, they would have done it already. Am I sure it’ll be all right, though?”

He shook his head. As he had with Sam Stanley, he answered, “In this case, I’m not sure of anything. There’s too much that doesn’t add up yet.”

“Do we dare take the chance, then?” Kathleen said.

“In my judgment, we haven’t got any other choice,” he said, and waited to see if that would make her boiler burst. She bit her lip but finally nodded. Whether that had anything to do with the previous night, he couldn’t guess. He didn’t know her well enough yet. Looks as if I’m going to, though, he thought, and she me. He hadn’t felt that particular nervousness since he was in his twenties. He’d been comfortably intimate with Irene, and with no one else since he’d divorced her. He contemplated shells - and coming out of them.

“I’ll plant the story in the Globe,” Major Harris said. “That’s our solid Tory paper, and I know the perfect fellow to ring up. The Pilgrim would likely give it the right slant, too. If it’s all the same to you, though, I’ll steer clear of the New England Courant. It’s not that Common Sense owns the miserable rag, but it takes that kind of line.”

“I leave the details in your hands,” said Bushell, who hated leaving details in anyone’s hands but his own.

“You know Boston; we don’t.”

Harris scrawled more notes. “Let’s see,” he said, obviously thinking aloud, “do I want to ring Bill Tobin or Gabriel Pruitt over at the Pilgrim? Bill will run anything that has a juicy crime angle to it, but Gabe’s less likely to ask me a pack of questions I can’t conveniently answer.”

That was a calculation with which Bushell could help. “Go with the fellow who doesn’t ask questions,” he said at once. “You’re right - we can’t afford to answer them.”

“Good enough, Colonel. I’ll tend to that directly,” Harris said. “And, as I told you, I’ll talk with Michael Young at the Globe, too. There won’t be any difficulties with him; he’s our unofficial mouthpiece in this town.”

“Useful sort of fellow to have around,” Bushell observed. He had his own pet reporters in New Liverpool - not that that had done him much good, since he hadn’t had any good, or even interesting, news to give them after The Two Georges disappeared.

“That he is,” Major Harris agreed complacently. “And what will you be doing while we wait to see if the stories flush our bird?”

“You mean, aside from gathering moss?” Bushell said, which got him a chuckle from Harris. “I expect I’ll be on the telephone a good deal myself. Have you someone’s desk I could usurp for the afternoon?”

“Two desks,” Sam Stanley corrected. “I can split that load with you, Chief. We’ve left a trail all the way across the NAU.”

“Three desks,” Kathleen Flannery said. “I’ve been out of touch with my own colleagues since I left Doshoweh, and they may have come across something that hasn’t reached the RAMs.”

“I hardly think that’s likely, Dr. Flannery,” Major Harris said. He glanced toward Bushell, confident his fellow RAM - his fellow man - would support him.

“I don’t know whether it’s likely or not,” Bushell said, “but it’s already happened once with Kathleen.”

There - now he’d used her Christian name in public, too, and yes, Harris had noticed, and yes, Harris was drawing his own conclusions. Now that Bushell had shared a bed with Kathleen, he was in a way less eager to back her than he might have been before, for he knew he wasn’t disinterested. Nevertheless, he was scrupulous about giving credit where due, so he went on, “Kilbride’s an art collector, too. She may just come up with a line on him where we can’t.”

George Harris looked as if he’d bit into a lemon while expecting an orange. He put the best face he could on it, though, saying, “I’ll see what I can find for you. If you’ll wait here for a few minutes - “

By the look and smell of it, the room he got for the three of them probably belonged to sergeants or other such easily displaced types. Though they were gone, the memory of their cheap cigarillos lingered in the air. Their desks were old and battered; one of them had a paperbound novel stuck under a leg to hold it level. Some of the photographs on the walls, Bushell judged, were of suspects from cases that belonged to the RAMs here. Some were of crime scenes. And some, lovingly clipped from magazines, were of pretty young ladies - women, anyhow - wearing a good deal less than they might get by with in public.

Kathleen glanced at those, let out a loud sniff, and turned the battered desk chair in which she sat down away from the wall, letting her look out the window instead. As far as Samuel Stanley was concerned, the pretty girls might as well not have been there; he had eyes only for Phyllis. Bushell gave one smiling brunette a thoughtful and thorough inspection before he sat down and placed a call to Jaime Macias in New Liverpool.

He’d got used to waiting for a long-distance call to go through. When you made long-distance calls from places like Prince Rupert and Charleroi, you had to get used to waiting. But Boston was an important commercial hub, and had plenty of long-distance lines. Only a couple of minutes after Bushell picked up his telephone, the one on Macias’s desk rang.

“Good to hear from you, Tom,” the constabulary captain said when Bushell identified himself. “I was meaning to try to get in touch with you, because I have some news for you - “

George Harris burst into the sergeant’s room. “Hold on a second, Jaime,” Bushell said.

“Just got word,” Harris exclaimed. “We’ve spotted Kilbride, over in Back Bay.”

Bushell brought the handset back up to his mouth. “Jaime, I’ll have to talk with you later,” he said, and hung up.