The Two Georges

XV

Every day, the wireless brought word of the progress of the yacht Britannia. The dailies printed front-page maps that showed nothing but the mother country, the eastern coastline of North America, and a dot on the Atlantic Ocean. Every day, the dot moved closer to the coastline. The Jack and Stripes of the NAU normally fluttered from a plethora of poles all over Victoria. Great Britain’s Union Jack was far from rare, either. In the days before Charles III reached the North American capital, workmen spread red-white-and-blue bunting, either striped or in crosses, over every available vertical surface. If a man had to stand too long waiting for an omnibus, he risked being decorated.

Hawkers with trays or handcarts sold little flags and other allegedly commemorative items on every other street corner. One hair salon offered to dye patrons’ locks in the colors and pattern of the Union Jack. From what the papers said, it stayed open almost around the clock to keep up with demand. Bushell viewed the story with amused tolerance: mankind kept coming up with new foibles. (The first time he saw one of the dye treatments, a couple of days after the story broke, he viewed the results with amazement, but that was another matter.) He took a slightly dimmer view of the hawkers, many of whom were petty grifters who probably wouldn’t be averse to picking a customer’s pocket if opportunity beckoned.

And he worried about the swarms of workmen prettying up Victoria, and especially the routes along which the King-Emperor would travel. “Damn it, Sam,” he burst out as he and Stanley combed through papers seized under search warrant, “how the devil are we supposed to keep an eye on all of them?

Some of them have to be Sons. They could be planting bombs behind the bunting, they could be picking the manhole cover from which a rifleman will pop out, they could be doing - anything.”

“That’s true,” his adjutant said, and then paused for the ritual of lighting a cigar. “And do you know what you can do about it?” he went on once he’d puffed out a good cloud of aromatic smoke. “Nothing, near enough, not by yourself. They’ve got plenty of other RAMs to worry about things like that, Chief. You can’t carry the whole world on your shoulders.”

“No, eh?” Bushell said with a wry grin. “When did they go and change the rules again?” After that, though, he buckled down and attacked the papers once more. But, for all he gleaned from them, they might as well have been written in Hindustani.

That evening’s reception was at the Austrian embassy. The Hapsburgs’ ambassador to the NAU, Graf Friedrich-Maria von Hotzendorf, was a short, thin, weary-looking man with impressive mustachios, a stiff brush of iron-gray hair, and eyes even more sorrowful than those of Sir Horace Bragg.

“I wish you good fortune, Colonel, in your quest to recover your missing imperial treasure,” he told Bushell in fluent but gutturally accented French as the RAM went through the reception line. “In your large realm here, the miscreants who absconded with it have all too many places in which to keep it concealed.”

“As I know all too well,” Bushell replied.

Only after he’d passed on to bow over the hand of the ambassador’s wife did he fully appreciate the longing Hotzendorf had packed into large realm. Austria was a European power but, because of its position on the map, would never be a world power. It intrigued against the Holy Alliance in the Italian states, and against the Franco-Spaniards, the Prussians, and the Russians in the Germanies, but its only real avenue for expansion, toward the southeast, was blocked by the British protectorate over the Ottoman Empire. When Hotzendorf contemplated a nation that stretched from Atlantic to Pacific and was but a part of a larger empire, he had to contrast that with the straitened horizons of his own homeland. No wonder he looked sad.

Duke Alexei Orlov and Comte Philippe Bonaparte had gone into the Austrian embassy by the time Bushell, Stanley, and Kathleen Flannery arrived. Envoys from the minor German states danced attendance on the two powerful envoys; the Bavarian minister, for instance, hung a pace and a half to the left and rear of Bonaparte, as if he were a wife following her husband in some backward part of India or China.

As they had at the Russian embassy, diplomats gave Bushell their sympathies and good wishes. All the same, he got the feeling that here they thought more about their ancient, almost ballet-like maneuverings against one another than they did of the affairs of a latecomer to the game like the NAU. Kathleen Flannery saw the same thing. “We won’t learn anything here tonight,” she said.

“Not from the ambassadors, anyhow,” Bushell agreed. “You never can tell what our own people might give away, though.”

He was watching Sir David Clarke being charming to the wife - the young, pretty wife - of the chargé d’affaires from some minor German principality. As people sometimes will, Sir David sensed that eyes were on him. He kept glancing around till he spotted Bushell. He smiled: a wide, political smile made to conceal whatever was going on behind it. Bushell’s answering upturn of lips should have displayed a hunting tiger’s fangs, not merely human teeth.

Sir Horace Bragg came up, a glass of white wine in his hand. “By God, Tom,” he said, “I shouldn’t want to be on the other end of that look.”

Sir David evidently did not like it, either. He gulped down his drink and purposefully headed toward Bushell. “You see,” Bushell murmured to Kathleen.

Then he nodded to Clarke, affably enough now, waiting to learn whether the governor-general’s chief of staff was far enough gone to create a scandal in front of most of Victoria’s diplomatic corps. If he wasn’t, Bushell intended to give him a helping hand.

Clarke thrust out a forefinger, saying, “Have you discovered anything entitling you to stare at me in that fashion, Colonel?”

The question was too much to the point. Bushell hadn’t - nothing, at least, pertaining to The Two Georges. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Irene come back into the room, perhaps wondering what had detained Sir David. Spotting him with Bushell, she hurried in their direction, alarm on her face. Before Bushell could say anything, Sir Horace spoke in his place: “A man who has covered his tracks may look innocent, but that doesn’t prove he is.”

Sir David’s eyes widened slightly. “ Et tu, Brute?” he said to Bragg. “I thought you shied away from slander yourself.” He turned to Bushell. “As long as I’m flinging Latin about, here’s a tag you ought to remember: quis custodiet ipsos custodies!”

Sir Horace understood the thrust of that as well as Bushell did. His sallow cheeks went red. “ ‘Who will watch the watchmen’?” he growled. “I’ll watch you, you son of a -“ He took a step toward Clarke. Bushell got between them in a hurry - this wasn’t the scandal he’d had in mind starting. Irene reached them just then. Bushell thought of how the scene had to look through her eyes: her ex-husband keeping her former lover from hauling off and punching her husband. The absurdity of it hit him harder than Sir Horace had wanted to hit Sir David. In spite of himself, he started to laugh. Bragg and Clarke both stared at him as if he’d taken leave of his senses.

“We’re all letting this rot our brains,” he said. “Let’s have a drink and try to remember we’re supposed to be on the same side.”

Sir Horace Bragg calmed himself at once. “You’re right, Tom,” he said sheepishly. “The strain is telling on everyone, me included.”

“It must be,” Sir David Clarke said. “Without it, I can’t imagine Colonel Bushell inviting me to have a drink with him.” His eyes flicked to Bushell. “If I sound surprised, Colonel, it’s only because I am.”

Thinking about it, Bushell was surprised, too. He shrugged. “I said it, Sir David,” he answered. “I’m not going to back away from my word.” He raised an eyebrow and raised his voice: “Unlike certain politicos I could mention.” He’d said things like that before, commonly with intent to wound. Now he was joking, and made that plain.

Irene was not only surprised but also, by the look on her face, greatly relieved. “What has come over you, Tom?” she asked.

He set a light hand on Kathleen Flannery’s arm. “Must be love,” he answered, not joking at all. Kathleen stiffened. She couldn’t have been easy about being used as a weapon against his ex-wife. Bushell realized he’d also told Sir Horace Bragg what he’d asked a couple of days before. The RAM commandant’s shaggy eyebrows flew upward.

Irene saved the moment, saying, “I hope you’ll be happy together,” sincerely enough that, if it happened not to be the complete truth, no one could call her on it. Then she had another inspiration: “What about that drink?”

Bushell hadn’t said anything about drinking with her. Having agreed to drink with Sir David, though, he could hardly get up on his high horse now. “Onward!” he said, as if leading a cavalry charge on the Northwest Frontier, and headed off in a soon-successful search for the bar. None of the gossip he soaked up along with several drinks over the course of the rest of the evening amounted to much. With detached amusement, he watched Sir David start another conversation with that German chargé’s attractive young wife, and watched Irene draw him away from the woman with an ease that bespoke considerable practice.

“I didn’t think we’d learn anything much there,” Kathleen said as Sergeant Kittridge drove her, Bushell, and Sam Stanley back to the William and Mary.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Bushell answered thoughtfully. “I found out a thing or two about myself, which is worth doing.”

“Ah, but will it help you solve the case?” Stanley asked.

Bushell made a sour face. “That’s another question altogether, worse luck for me.”

RAM headquarters and the streets of Victoria and Georgestown by day. The glittering social whirl of the embassy circuit by night. A little sleep, stretched by endless cups of tea and coffee and a great fragrant bonfire of cigars. A dot on the newsprint Atlantic, moving inexorably closer to the Chesapeake Bay and the capital.

“They’re a step ahead of us, maybe two,” Bushell said wearily, pouring milk into yet another cup of Irish Breakfast. “We’ve only got a couple of days left, and they’re still ahead of us.”

“No ransom demand yet,” said Samuel Stanley, whose own cup of tea sat gently steaming in front of him. He shook his head. “When you haven’t got much in the way of good news, you look hard for the silver lining, don’t you?”

“That you do.” Bushell sipped at his tea. “Maybe they won’t ransom it after all. Maybe they’ll pour paraffin on it in front of America’s Number Ten and light it off. Or in front of the All-Union Art Museum, say, when His Majesty’s in there giving his address in front of a blank wall.”

“What a horrid idea,” Kathleen said. She didn’t have a desk in the office she shared with the two RAMs; Sir Horace took the position that granting her such a boon would in some way force him to recognize that she was there. Bushell had liberated a table no one seemed to be using. She had papers piled high on it. Sir Horace, in his mercy, had not complained about her using official Royal American Mounted Police foolscap and pencils.

The telephone on Bushell’s desk rang. He tensed. Any message right now was liable to be bad news. Maybe the Sons of Liberty wanted their fifty million pounds after all. He picked up the handset. “Hullo, Bushell here.”

“Colonel Bushell? This is Operator Perkins, down in Communications. I have a long-distance call for you from New Liverpool: a Captain Macias. Shall I ring him through, sir?”

“By all means.” Bushell covered the mouthpiece with his hand and spoke to Sam and Kathleen: “It’s Macias.” Both of them showed the same relief Bushell felt. No ransom demand, not yet, nor news even worse.

After a couple of clicks and a loud pop, Jaime Macias came on the line. Across a continent and a static-filled telephone line, his excitement came through loud and clear: “We’ve got him, Tom! We dropped on the villain not half an hour ago. And with everything we found when we did, Mr. Zachariah James Fenton will hang higher than Haman.”

“By God!” Bushell said. He spoke again to his colleagues. “He’s pinched the villain who shot Tricky Dick.” Kathleen let out a war whoop; Stanley slammed his hand down on his desk, making a noise like a gunshot. Through the racket, Bushell returned to the telephone: “You have the weapon, too?”

“We have a Nagant we think is the weapon, at any rate,” Macias said. “Ballistics will let us know about that before long: before the day is out, with luck. But that’s not half - that’s not a tenth part - of all we have.”

“Tell me,” Bushell urged, but then broke in before Macias could speak. “No. Wait. Let me guess. You’ve got boxes with lots more Nagants in them, enough Russian roubles to start up what would be about the third-largest bank in New Liverpool, and maybe, if God is kinder to us than He has been lately, a proved connection to the Okhrana. Stinking Russians - “

“Exactly what I was expecting to find when we served the warrant and made the arrest,” Captain Macias said. “Not exactly what we found, though. No, not exactly.” He sounded like a stage magician distracting his audience with a clever line of patter so they’d be surprised when he pulled a rabbit out of his hat.

“All right, Jaime, I’ll bite,” Bushell said, willing to be surprised. “What exactly did you find?”

Over the wire, he heard shuffling-paper noises; Macias was going to tell him exactly what he’d found. The New Liverpool constable said, “We found ... let me see . . . forty-eight Lebel revolvers, thirty-five Eibar revolvers, and twenty-seven Astra Modelo 200 pistols, each with its appropriate ammunition in large quantities - I’m assuming you don’t need the precise number of boxes and rounds for each, or I would give them to you. We also found twenty-nine Lebel military rifles with bayonets and three Chauchat light military machine guns, again with large quantities of the cartridges those two weapons share.”

“You found enough for a small war - no, a medium-sized war,” Bushell said, almost dazed. “And all Franco-Spanish stuff?” He scratched his head. “That doesn’t fit in with anything else we’ve turned up.”

“Everything in that house but for the one Nagant and the unexpended rounds in its magazine is from the Holy Alliance,” Macias said. “And I’m not done with the list, either. In gold and silver currency, we found the sum of £219,827,15 shillings, ninepence, ha’penny, most of said currency being in the form of livres d’or or pesos: again, from the Franco-Spanish Empire.”

“Two hundred twenty thousand pounds?” Bushell let out a low whistle. Sam Stanley jerked in his seat and stared at him. Kathleen sprang to her feet. Bushell waved her down - by the sound of things, Macias still wasn’t through. “What else have you got?”

“Subversive literature in large quantities, both the usual sort the Sons turn out and some in Spanish calling on people who’ve come to New Liverpool from the Franco-Spanish provinces of Nueva España to rise and restore the land to its rightful owners and the true faith - “

“I wouldn’t have thought you’d find both those kinds of documents in the same house,” Bushell observed.

“I wouldn’t have thought it, either, but find them I did,” Macias said. With the air of a man producing a fifth ace, he said, “And I also found 943 pounds, 8% ounces of purified extract of coca leaf, number one quality, shipped into the NAU in sealed coffee tins from the province of Nueva Granada.”

“Haifa ton of coca extract?” Bushell whistled again. So did Stanley, the second he heard. “That’s enough to keep half the coca-sniffers in New Liverpool happy for - a long time, anyway.” Some people used coca extract like snuff, the only trouble being that it wasn’t mild like snuff, and had been illegal in the NAU since the early days of the twentieth century. Coca-sniffers would pay through the nose to get it, though, which probably explained a lot of the money Macias had found.

“Half a ton,” Macias confirmed. “And all the firearms. . . I’ve never imagined the Sons having such good connections with the Holy Alliance. They . . aren’t usually what you’d call fond of Franco-Spaniards in general and Nuevespañolans in particular. I’m not fond of them, either,” he added. Bushell wondered whether he was speaking as a constable or as a man of Nuevespañolan blood. That didn’t matter. What did matter was the news Macias had. “Anything else?” Bushell asked.

“Nothing yet,” Macias answered. “Fenton and his common-law wife are denying everything at the top of their lungs - they had no notion any of that stuff was in the house, they say.” The constabulary captain snorted. “They won’t convince a jury with that tale, not for a minute they won’t. But so far they’re refusing to say anything till they’ve spoken with a solicitor, and we’re going to hold them for the full legal forty-eight hours before we let them do that. If they do decide to open up while we’re grilling them, you’ll be the first outside New Liverpool to hear.”

“Thanks, Jaime,” Bushell said, and hung up. He looked to Sam and Kathleen. “A break at last - and a big one.” He frowned. “I wish I knew what it meant, though. After all the Russian connections we’ve unearthed, this one doesn’t fit.”

“It probably also doesn’t get us any closer to The Two Georges,” Kathleen said. “I know it’s important for us to catch the man who shot Honest Dick, but that’s not the half of the case we need right now.”

“You’re right,” Stanley said in mournful agreement. “They’re too smart to have told the shooter much, I’m sure.”

“Yes, that’s so.” Bushell rubbed at his mustache. “It must be why Sir Horace didn’t want me to spend time on the Tricky Dick end of things. Even if it did crack open, it might not help us soon enough. But this is still something he has to hear straightaway.”

He dialed Bragg’s office number. “I’m sorry, Colonel,” Sally Reese blared in his ear. “You can’t talk with Sir Horace right now. He’s gone to the dentist again this morning - that crown just isn’t right. He said he didn’t sleep a wink last night, and he’s getting it seen to.”

“This is important, Sally,” Bushell said.

“I understand that, Colonel, but I can’t make him be here when he isn’t, now can I?” Bragg’s secretary laughed her loud, scratchy laugh.

“No, you can’t do that,” Bushell admitted. He rubbed his forehead. Bragg had mentioned the dentist’s name a few days before, he was sure of it. He snapped his fingers in triumph. “He goes to Dr. Pendleton, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, he does,” Sally Reese laughed again. “I think he swears at him more than he swears by him, but he’s kept going back all these years.”

“Give me Pendleton’s telephone number, then,” Bushell said, reaching for the pencil he’d used to make notes on what Jaime Macias had told him. “If Sir Horace isn’t under general anesthetic, he needs this news now.”

“Well, since it’s you as asks,” Sally said. “Let me go through my pile of cards here. I’ll have it for you in a jiffy, yes I will.”

“You’re a sweetheart, Sally,” Bushell said with all the charm he had in him. In his ear, Bragg’s secretary giggled like a schoolgirl. From behind her table, Kathleen Flannery made as if to retch. Bushell stuck out his tongue at her.

“Here it is,” Sally Reese said, ignorant of the byplay on the other end of the line. “It’s AGincourt 4873.”

“Unless he’s unconscious, Sir Horace will want to know what I’ve got to tell him,” Bushell assured her.

“And if he is unconscious now, he’ll be sorry he was when he wakes up.”

“All right, Colonel. You sound like you know what you’re talking about.” Sally Reese slammed down the phone. She did even that with unnecessary vigor. Before he rang the dentist’s office, Bushell paused a moment to dig a finger into his ear. Kathleen looked puzzled. Samuel Stanley, who’d had more dealings with Bragg’s longtime secretary, chuckled softly.

Bushell dialed the number Sally Reese had given him. A woman’s voice came on the line: “Offices of Dr. Spencer Pendleton, member of the Royal North American College of Dentists and Oral Surgeons. How may I help you?”

The best way for her to have helped a man with a bad toothache, Bushell thought, would have been to shorten the introduction. He let that alone, though, merely giving his own name and title and saying, “I need to speak to Lieutenant General Sir Horace Bragg immediately.”

He waited for the receptionist to tell him Bragg was trapped in the chair and unavailable. He’d settle that in short order. But the woman answered, “I’m sorry, Colonel, but Sir Horace isn’t here.”

“Really?” Bushell said, sitting up straighten “Has he already left? That means he’ll be back at the office soon.”

“I’m afraid you misunderstand, sir,” the receptionist said. “He’s not been in this morning. He has no appointment scheduled, he has not asked to be seen on an emergency basis, and, if you’ll forgive me, I’ve no notion why you believe he would be here.”

“Why?” Bushell said. “To get something done about the crown Dr. Pendleton put on him last week. He’s done nothing but complain about it ever since.”

“Sir?” If that wasn’t honest bewilderment in the receptionist’s voice, she belonged in front of a cinema camera. “Sir Horace wasn’t in here last week to have a crown fitted or for any other reason. Let me check to be absolutely certain -“ Bushell heard flipping pages, presumably from Dr. Pendleton’s appointment book. The receptionist came back on the line: “No, sir, the last time Sir Horace saw Dr. Pendleton was last February 19, to have him replace a filling that had fallen out of a bicuspid. He’s not been here since.”

“You’re sure of that?” Bushell demanded.

“Sir!” The receptionist remained polite, but unmistakable frost came into her voice. “Our records are most exact, I assure you. If there’s nothing more -“ When Bushell didn’t answer, the woman hung up as emphatically as Sally Reese at her best.

Bushell gently replaced in its cradle the handset he was holding. He sat staring at the telephone. Samuel Stanley, of course, had heard only his side of the conversation with Dr. Pendleton’s receptionist. “Sir Horace is on his way back here?” he said. “When did he leave the dentist’s?”

“He didn’t,” Bushell answered. “He wasn’t there. He hasn’t been there since February, as a matter of fact.”

Stanley and Kathleen exclaimed together at that. “Where the devil has he been, then?” Sam burst out.

“If I knew, I would tell you,” Bushell said. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“Do you suppose he keeps a mistress?” Kathleen asked.

Samuel Stanley burst into rude, raucous laughter at that idea. Flustered, Kathleen looked down at the table. Bushell held up a hand. “It’s - not as unlikely as you think, Sam,” he said slowly.

“Oh yes, it is,” Stanley said, laughing still. “That miserable, dried-up -“ He cut himself short, no doubt remembering - a couple of words too late - Bushell’s friendship with Sir Horace. But Bushell hadn’t spoken to defend Bragg. “It’s not as unlikely as you think,” he said again, and then did something he’d thought he’d never do: he repeated what Irene had said at the Russian embassy about Sir Horace.

“Good God,” Kathleen whispered.

“Good God is right,” Sam Stanley said in an altogether different tone of voice. “I was at that party, Chief. The nerve of the man - not just for doing it, but for doing it there. I wouldn’t have guessed he had it in him, not in a thousand years.” He probably would have elaborated on that theme had Kathleen not been in the room, and had Bushell’s ex-wife not have been involved in the affair.

“I wouldn’t have, either,” Bushell said. “I didn’t. But then, Irene turned out to be ... susceptible to men with titles. I didn’t find out about that till later on, either.” Sounding dispassionate about the breakup of his marriage came easy by now; he’d had practice. Not having to hide internal anguish, though, was new.

“What do we do now?” Kathleen asked. “Come up to him when he does get here and say, ‘We know you didn’t go to the dentist, so where were you?’“

“If he’s visiting a kept woman at a time like this, he ought to be horsewhipped,” Stanley said, sounding as if he wouldn’t mind being the fellow cracking the whip. Then he looked thoughtful. “Do you suppose Sally knows? If she does, would she tell us?”

Bushell shook his head. “If it’s true, and if she does know, she’ll deny it to her dying day. She thinks the sun rises and sets on Sir Horace. And if we do ask her, it’s sure to get back to Bragg.” He listened to himself in surprise once more. He’d never spoken - he’d never thought - of Sir Horace by his unadorned surname.

“Sir Martin ought to know about this,” Kathleen declared.

“So he should,” Bushell said. “There’s a problem, though. If I ring up America’s Number Ten, or even if I hop in a steamer and go over there, they won’t just escort me into the Green Room or wherever Sir Martin happens to be. I’ll have to get past the top flunky, who happens to be - “

“Sir David Clarke,” Samuel Stanley finished for him.

Kathleen winced, but said, “You’d better do it.”

“You’re right, worse luck,” Bushell said with a sigh, and picked up the telephone. He rang the governor-general’s residence, asked to be connected to Sir Martin Luther King, and, sure enough, found himself talking to Sir David.

“Yes, Colonel?” Clarke said coolly. “I trust this is of some importance?”

“I think so, yes,” Bushell answered, fighting understatement with understatement. In an abstract way, he was tempted to tell Sir David what Irene had told him - Clarke might have worried about Sir Horace Bragg from time to time, but never, Bushell was sure, in that way. But the public good sometimes meant forgoing private pleasure, and so he stuck to business: “I need to speak to Sir Martin at once - I have new evidence about who is, or may have been, leaking information to the Sons of Liberty.”

Sir David Clarke asked the question Bushell had known he would ask: “And that person is -?”

“I’ll tell Sir Martin. I won’t tell you,” Bushell said. Clarke was still a suspect in his own right, which meant that, if Bragg was involved, too, they might have been working together. Alerting Sir Horace was the last thing Bushell wanted.

“You’re going to tell him it’s me,” Sir David said. “No matter what I try to do to convince you I am no traitor, you refuse to believe me, and you carry on this vendetta as if you were from the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, not the NAU. Deny it if you can.”

“I -“ Bushell shut up. Even denying it would have given Sir David enough information to let him draw his own conclusions - if he didn’t reckon the denial an outright lie.

After the silence had stretched for half a minute or so, Clarke said, “Good day, Colonel,” and hung up the telephone.

“I knew this was going to happen. I couldn’t tell him,” Bushell said, recounting the conversation for Samuel Stanley and Kathleen. “I couldn’t. He does remain our principal suspect at the moment.”

“Right now, Chief, I’d say we have two principal suspects,” Stanley remarked.

“And I’d say you may well be right,” Bushell craved a drink. If Sir Horace was in league with the Sons of Liberty, that was a betrayal worse then Irene’s. “But if Bragg is working with the Sons,” Bushell went on, thinking aloud, “why is he so willing to shut up the Russian embassy when the King-Emperor gets into Victoria? I’d worried about him before, but you know that set my mind at ease again.”

“True,” Stanley said, drumming his fingers on the desktop.

“But what if the Russians haven’t got anything to do with the theft of The Two Georges?” Kathleen Flannery said. “I know both of you have been focusing on the Russians since Tricky Dick got shot, but look what they found in the house where they arrested his killer. Maybe the Holy Alliance planted the other evidence to make you look away from France and Spain.”

“Mm - maybe,” Bushell said. “That’s as much as I’d give it.” He glanced over to Sam Stanley, who nodded. Having concentrated so long and hard on the Russian connection, both men were reluctant to abandon it without overwhelming evidence to prove they should.

“Where do we go from here, though?” Stanley said. “We can’t trust Sir Horace, who’s over us, and we can’t trust Sir David, who’s between us and Sir Martin. What does that leave? Not bloody much, if you ask me.”

“Oh yes, it does,” Bushell said. “It leaves us. All right - we can’t trust anybody over us. But I can think of a couple of people here I’d trust: that Major Manchester, for one. The way he jumped on those warrants I pulled out of my briefcase was a joy to watch. Williams, too - the fellow with the beard and the scar. Remember how he wondered about a leak here at RAM headquarters? They’ll know others we can count on, too.”

“Sergeant Kittridge,” Stanley said, his face lighting up. “Always ask a sergeant about officers if you want a straight answer.”

“We’re forming a cabal,” Kathleen said in tones of wonder.

“That’s just what we’re doing,” Bushell said, and picked up the telephone. Major Manchester was the first one to get to the office they were using. Bushell would have been surprised had it worked out otherwise - Manchester, whose Christian name proved to be Walter, seemed to rush headlong into everything he did. He fidgeted impatiently when he had to wait for his two colleagues to arrive.

Sergeant Kittridge (his first name, Bushell learned on asking, was Ted) arrived next. Whatever he was thinking, his face showed none of it. Bushell wouldn’t have wanted to play cards against him. He took out a cigar case, used his eyebrows to get permission from Kathleen Flannery, and lit up a cheroot so vile that Bushell wished she hadn’t granted it.

A minute or so later, Major Williams walked in. He nodded to Ted Kittridge, whom he evidently knew well, and introduced himself as Micah to Major Manchester. Then he rounded on Bushell, asking, “Well, what’s all this?”

Bushell got up and shut the door before answering. That bit of theatrics earned him stares from all three newcomers. Then he borrowed Kathleen Flannery’s word: “This, gentlemen, is a cabal.”

More stares. Walter Manchester found his tongue first: “What kind of cabal?”

“One to get The Two Georges back in spite of everything,” Bushell answered.

“What’s everything?” Williams asked, at the same time as Manchester was saying, “Why do we need a cabal for that?” Sergeant Kittridge, who spoke as if he had to pay a shilling for every word he used, stood quietly, smoking and listening.

Bushell explained, telling the Victoria RAMs of the evidence that pointed toward Sir David Clarke Williams already knew some of that - and what he’d just learned about Sir Horace Bragg. As he set it out before strangers, it seemed much less substantial than it had when he was hashing it over with Sam and Kathleen. He finished, “As far as I can see, we can’t trust either one of them. Let’s go on as if they weren’t there anymore and do this job the way we know it ought to be done.”

He waited. Having thrown the dice, he had no idea what he’d do if they turned up a losing number. After three of the longest heartbeats of his life, Major Manchester said, “I’m with you, Colonel. When you came up with those warrants after the judges had gone to chambers, I knew you were somebody who could get things done.”

“Count me in, too,” Micah Williams said. “That operation we ran against the Sons last week - that was a shame and disgrace, nothing else but. And we’ve just been running around since. If we can’t do better than this, we don’t deserve to find The Two Georges.” When he frowned, his scar pulled one corner of his mouth out in a sinister grimace. “Count me in, but there’s not much time left.”

Everyone looked at Ted Kittridge. The sergeant stubbed out his cheroot, then said, “Captain Higgins and Lieutenant Custine will lend a hand, I expect.”

“Good choices,” Major Williams said, nodding. He turned back to Bushell. “We can come up with men who’ll want to be turned loose against the Sons - no doubt of that, Colonel. But how are we going to get search warrants on the quiet?”

Walter Manchester let out what sounded alarmingly like a giggle. He pointed to Bushell’s briefcase. “The man is armed - and dangerous.” Williams lifted a questioning eyebrow. Bushell opened the briefcase and displayed the warrants he’d been carrying since New Liverpool. Both of Micah Williams’s eyebrows rose then. Sergeant Kittridge lighted another cheroot. This one sat at a much jauntier angle than its predecessor had.

“If we can get the men, we can legally do the job,” Bushell said. “Well, legally enough, anyhow. The other question is, what job do we do? I haven’t got an unlimited number of these” - he pointed to the warrants - “and we ought to hold a couple in reserve to follow up on whatever we find in our first sweep. We have to make that one count.”

“You know what I’d do if it was up to me?” Williams said. “I’d go back to a lot of the places we hit last week. Those buggers - beg your pardon, ma’am - they had to know we were coming. We only found what they wanted us to find, not one thing more. If we hit’em when they aren’t looking for us, though - “

Bushell weighed that. After a few seconds, he nodded. “We’ll do just that, then. I wouldn’t mind finding out what Phineas Stanage really has in his files, I’ll tell you that.”

“But that paper I found taped to the file-cabinet drawer - “ Kathleen began.

“May mean exactly what it says, or may have been planted there to make us think it means what it says,” Bushell said. “By the end of today, if we’re lucky, we’ll have some idea which.”

“If we haven’t got some ideas by ten o’clock in the morning, day after tomorrow, it won’t matter anymore,” Samuel Stanley said. “That’s when the King-Emperor gets here.”

Sergeant Kittridge drove Bushell, Stanley, Kathleen Flannery, and Lieutenant Toby Custine back to Phineas Stanage’s house. “Can’t wait to have a go at this blighter,” Custine said, for the third or fourth time. “Can’t wait.” He was very young, very blond, very enthusiastic. Bushell thought Kittridge had made a shrewd choice with him. Point him at a target, turn him loose, and he’d bring it down. When Bushell knocked on the door to Stanage’s, the same maidservant who’d answered before opened it. She drew back in dismay when she recognized him. “Oh, dear sweet suffering Jesus, not again,” she moaned. “We’re just starting to get picked up from the last time.”

Bushell displayed the warrant. “Afraid so, Miss. Now if you’ll stand aside and let us do our job - “

“I can’t stop you,” the woman said bitterly, “but Lord, I wish I could.”

The RAMs swarmed into Stanage’s house. Bushell wondered how long they’d have today till the brewing magnate showed up in full wrathful glory. Or maybe, hearing the RAMs were back again, he’d flee instead.

One advantage of searching a place for the second time was that you had some notion of where things were. Bushell headed for the file cabinets up on the first floor. They were locked. Toby Custine produced a little leather case from an inside coat pocket. Out of the case he drew some highly specialized metal tools.

Glancing over to Bushell, he said, “I wanted to be a safecracker when I was a boy, but my dear old father convinced me that, while I’d take long holidays with a trade like that, they wouldn’t be at places I much fancied visiting.”

“Your dear old father was a man of sense,” Bushell said solemnly.

“So he was, so he was,” Custine replied. “That once, anyhow, I listened to him.” He got to work with his lock picks. In moments, the file cabinet opened. Whether or not he’d fancied larceny as a career when he was young, he would have been good at it.

“Hullo!” Sam Stanley said, reaching in and snatching out a folder. “This wasn’t here last time we came calling.”

“Are you sure?” Bushell asked. “He had a lot of Independence Party material then, too.”

“Yes, and that’s how all of it was labeled - INDEPENDENCE PARTY, I mean,” Stanley said. “Not a folder in the bunch just said INDEPENDENCE.”

Lieutenant Toby Custine muttered something pungent under his breath. Aloud, he said, “Looks like you were right, Colonel. If this wasn’t here the last time you came through the place, somebody’d tipped Stanage off beforehand.”

“Let’s see what we’ve got,” Bushell said. Samuel Stanley set the folder on a nearby table and flipped it open. Staring up at him was a scribbled note from Eustace Venable to Stanage. The note was headed PHIN and had nothing to do with cabinetry, nor was the tone that of artisan to client: It’s ready and waiting. I’ll be heading up to Boston tomorrow to talk things over with Joe. He and the boss have cooked up three or four different ways to play it. I want to know for certain which one they intend using. Will inform you when I learn.

“Not much there you could take to court,” Custine observed.

“That’s true,” Bushell said, “but it puts old Phin in the picture all the same - and if Joe isn’t Joseph Kilbride, who is he?”

“Who’s the boss?” Custine asked.

Sam Stanley started going through papers. “Maybe these will tell us.”

But they didn’t. Phineas Stanage’s correspondents had been maddeningly - and, in their shoes, sensibly - elliptical. Nowhere was there an overt mention of The Two Georges: the letters talked about it and the thing.

One of those letters came from Michael O’Flynn in Charleroi. Bushell clicked his tongue between his teeth. “I hope Chief Lassiter has him locked up good and tight. Have to make sure about that - in a bit. First things first.”

“I know what happens next,” Stanley said. “We head off to Stanage’s brewery and find out he’s not there. He’ll have left for Astoria twenty minutes before we show up, and he’ll be back in six weeks.”

“Not this time, Sam,” Bushell predicted. “He won’t go far from the capital, not two days before Charles III gets here.” Toby Custine nodded vigorous agreement. Of course, Bushell realized after the words were out of his mouth, for Stanage to be in and around Victoria was not necessarily the same as his being in his office waiting for the RAMs to scoop him up. He tried to pretend he hadn’t had that thought things were starting to go his way now, after so long favoring the villains. He went downstairs. Ted Kittridge proved to have an unexpected talent for devastation; Stanage’s living room looked as if a Cossack cavalry voisko had galloped through it. Kathleen Flannery was lending spirited help, using a sharp little knife to slit furniture linings so she could peer inside. Stanage’s servants stood watching and wringing their hands.

“Anything we need to know about?” Bushell asked. Kittridge and Kathleen shook their heads. “Let’s go then,” he said, and turned to Stanage’s domestic staff. “Thank’s for your help this morning.”

“You took a big chance there, Chief,” Stanley said as they piled back into the RAM steamer. “If old Phineas had some Nagants that we didn’t find stashed in his basement, one of the footmen might have shot you.”

“Mm, something to that, I shouldn’t wonder.” Bushell checked a sheet of stationery he’d taken from the home. “The Josiah Stanage Brewing Company, Ltd. is on Tilden Way. That’s not far from here, is it, Sergeant?” He’d been away from Victoria long enough to make him distrust his memory for directions.

“Fifteen minutes,” Kittridge said, and put the motorcar in gear.

It turned out to be more than twice that long; a nasty accident snarled Tilden Way only a mile or so from the brewery. Constables were busy taking statements from those in a condition to give them. Red lights flashing, an ambulance sped off with a couple who weren’t. Wreckers labored to pry apart the vehicles that had come together. Firemen spread sand on spilled paraffin.

Bushell drummed his fingers on his thigh as they crawled along. They’d got trapped in traffic before they discovered how bad the wreck ahead was. “Nothing we can do but wait,” Stanley said. Bushell grudged every second that sped past; he knew he had none left to spare.

Once past the wreck, Sergeant Kittridge practically flew to the brewery, a large brick building with advertising signs painted on all four sides:

JOSIAH STANAGE CO.

PROUD BREWERS OF BALD EAGLE ALE, YANKEE STOUT, AND FREEDOM BEST BITTER.

“Bilgewater,” Kittridge declared. Bushell didn’t know whether he meant the political sentiments proclaimed by the brand names or the quality of the beers produced inside those walls. The rich, nutty odor of malted barley clogged the air. Stanley laughed. “You can get a buzz just breathing,” he said, and inhaled deeply.

A guard in a red-coated uniform that looked a lot like a RAM’s stood in front of the entrance. “Help you gents?” he asked, adding, “And you, ma’am?” a moment later.

Bushell and his male companions flashed their badges. As had often happened before, their display of glittering metal blinded the guard to the fact that Kathleen bore no such talisman. The not-quite Redbreast touched a forefinger to the bill of his cap in a not-quite salute and held the door open so the newcomers could enter the brewery.

A series of questions to employees within led them to Stanage’s office. Bushell would have guessed that to be on the topmost floor, so the magnate could look out a window and savor the view - or perhaps just watch lorries hauling barrels of nice, profitable beer off to be quaffed. Instead, though, Stanage quartered himself in the basement. His secretary, a gray-haired woman who looked even sterner than Sally Reese, glared at people with the temerity to interrupt her typing. “No, you can’t see Mr. Stanage now,” she snapped, and started clattering away at a letter once more.

“It’s urgent,” Bushell said, showing his badge again.

“I don’t care,” the woman said. “You still can’t see him.” She paused. He got the idea she hoped he’d shout at her, so he didn’t. Faint disappointment in her voice, she went on, “Reason you can’t see him is, he’s not here.”

Samuel Stanley grunted. Bushell had heard that same sound of surprise from a soldier hit by a rifle bullet: it was the sound you made before you felt the pain. He already felt it, and asked, “Well, where is he?”

Maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe Stanage had decided to get out of town. But the secretary said, “He’s up in Georgestown, across the river. There’s a gathering of commercial travelers today.” She sniffed in loud, sharp disapproval. “Excuse for a pack of nasty men to get together, tell filthy stories, and pour down the demon rum, if you ask me. I’m a good Christian woman - I’ve told Mr. Stanage as much, right to his face I have.”

Bushell didn’t doubt it. He knew a first bit of sympathy for Phineas Stanage. Stifling it, he said, “Where is this gathering being held?”

“I told you: in Georgestown.” When that wasn’t enough to send Bushell on his way, she grudgingly pawed through a file cabinet. “Here we are: the Worshipful College of Victuallers” - she pronounced it as it was spelled, not the right way - “at 427 Amritsar Way. Ugly name for a street.”

“Thank you for your unsolicited opinions,” Bushell said. He hadn’t more than half turned before she was pounding away at the typewriter again.

They got back into the battered blue Reliable that Kittridge was driving. Bushell pulled out his pocket watch. “It’ll be after one o’clock when we get there,” he said unhappily. “Less than two days now before His Majesty’s yacht comes into the harbor.”

“Less than half a day from the ransom deadline the Sons set when they took The Two Georges,” Kathleen added, even more unhappily.

“If they were going to ransom it, we would have heard by now,” he said, and hoped he was right. “They have something else in mind. They must.”

“Burning it in front of the All-Union Art Museum, for instance,” she said. “You were talking about that before, and I’ve feared something like it all along.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think they’d throw over the chance at fifty million pounds for the sake of a gesture.”

“They’re fanatics,” Kathleen said bleakly. “What do fanatics care about money?”

The steamer rolled onto the Long Bridge as Bushell answered, “Of course, a lot of the Sons are fanatics. But the leaders of this scheme are plenty shrewd. Fifty million would let them pay for any number of outrages. If that’s not what they’re after, then they have good reason to think they can get something more.”

“Or, of course, they might be holding off the ransom demand to the last possible moment to give us less chance to set a trap for them,” Samuel Stanley said. Bushell nodded. It wasn’t how he read the situation, but it was far from impossible.

Traffic on the bridge slowed down as the steamer neared the checkpoint on the Maryland shore. “Bulk tobacco?” a green-uniformed inspector asked Kittridge. Maryland had a hefty tobacco tax; Virginia didn’t. The revenue inspectors searched motorcars at random to discourage smuggling. Kittridge showed his badge. The inspector nodded, drew back, and waved him through. Kittridge reached into the glove box for a map to guide him to Amritsar Way. They got to the Worshipful College of Victuallers at 1:07. Toby Custine pointed to the building across the street: an Independence Party headquarters. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” he said.

Another steamer that had seen better days came down Amritsar Way from the opposite direction and parked in front of the headquarters building. A burly man with a beard that didn’t quite cover his scar got out of it. “That’s Major Williams,” Bushell and Stanley said together. Kittridge pulled over to the kerb. Everyone got out of the motorcar he was driving. Lieutenant Custine called to Williams and his companions. “What are you people doing here?” Williams demanded. “You come to shake down this place, too?” He jerked a thumb toward the Independence Party building.

“No, we’re after Stanage at the victuallers’ hall,” Bushell answered, pointing toward his own target.

“Had some luck, did you?”

“I should say so!” Williams boomed. “The stinking Sons hadn’t a clue we were coming, not this time. Now I’ve got clues - so many of ‘em, I wish I could be four places at once.”

“Same here,” Bushell said. “What’s going on with the charming Independence Party people? They aren’t in the habit of going out on a limb.”

“Well, they bloody well have now, or at least this batch of ‘em has,” Williams said. “All sorts of lovely correspondence between them and proved Sons about it and how they were going to exploit it - not a word of what it is, worse luck, or where it is, either, but I’ve drawn my own conclusions, and now I’ll see if I can’t get these people to color ‘em for me.”

“Sounds like what I’m doing with Stanage and his crowd.” Bushell thumped Williams on the shoulder.

“Let’s go get ‘em.” He had another thought: “If we make arrests, we’ll take ‘em to the Georgestown gaol. The less we alert the powers that be, the better.”

“Right,” Williams said. “Colonel, I wasn’t sure anything was rotten in Denmark till I went out this morning. Now - I don’t want anyone over you getting wind of any of this.” He laughed, down deep in his throat. “If you hadn’t been the one who put me on to it, I wouldn’t tell you about it, either.”

“Good,” Bushell said. He rounded up his companions by eye, then headed across Amritsar Way to the Worshipful College of Victuallers.

The fellow who greeted him there certainly hadn’t lacked for victuals. The white linen suit he wore had enough material for a four-man tent, or maybe two of them. His pink, pink skin was fine as a baby’s.

“Help you folks?” he asked, then wheezed in another gulp of air.

“Phineas Stanage and the party from the Stanage brewery works,” Bushell said.

“Dining room two,” the fat man answered, pointing.

Dining room two was a raucous place, full of well-hopped good cheer. Bushell understood at once how Stanage’s secretary had acquired her distaste for such gatherings. The room was blue with cigar and pipe smoke, and bluer with coarse language. His head swiveled this way and that. He didn’t see the man he was after. He tapped a commercial traveler in an ugly houndstooth jacket. “Where’s Stanage?”

“Phin?” The man didn’t take him for a police officer. “He stepped out a few minutes ago. Not for lunch, by Jesus!” He patted his abdomen, as if to say no sane man would leave the victuallers’ hall for food or drink.

“Check the jakes,” Bushell told Lieutenant Custine. “Check with that human airship out front, too, and see if he’s left the building.”

Custine hurried away. Bushell wished he had more manpower with him. If he could have descended on this place with a host of RAMs instead of an earful... he was all too likely to have given the game away. But he heard cursing down the hall that was altogether different from the genial sort accompanying the commercial travelers’ tales of conquests over customers or pretty girls. One corner of his mouth quirked upward as he recognized the style: Phineas W. Stanage was unhappy with his world.

“Crackbrained idiotic fornicating Cossack Okhrana inquisitors!” he bellowed as Toby Custine led him back into the dining room. The RAM lieutenant had clapped manacles around his wrists.

“Here, what have you done to good old Phin?” one of the commercial travelers shouted. An angry chorus rose from the company.

“Arrested him,” Bushell answered. The chorus grew louder. In a few seconds, some half-drunk fool would lead a charge to rescue good old Phin. Bushell hadn’t the men he’d need to stop such a charge. Before it could start, he went on, “For conspiracy to steal The Two Georges, and for conspiracy to commit murder by firearm.”

“It’s a lie, a filthy, stinking, goddamned lie,” Stanage roared, sounding very much like a man who’d boxed for pay for a while before taking up the family business. But the men who sold his brews were suddenly silent. Some of them might have sympathized with the Sons of Liberty, but most were probably Tories: commercial travelers were seldom inclined to embrace innovation of any kind.

“Take him away; get him out of here,” Bushell muttered to Custine, who started Stanage down the hall. Stanage tried to kick him in the shins. Custine skipped out of the way and shoved the brewing magnate, hard. Stanage almost went over on his face. To his sales force, Bushell said, “This day’s festivities are over. You’ve had your luncheon and you haven’t had to listen to all the speeches that were coming up. Count yourselves ahead on the bargain: instead, you’ve got the rest of the day off. Enjoy it.”

He waited. If he wasn’t lucky, he’d have a riot on his hands. Well, he told himself, that would get the Georgestown constables over here in a hurry. But luck, for once, was with him. The first commercial traveler who spoke up said, “I hope you get the painting back, pal. If Phin knows somethin’ about it, go on and make him sweat.” A new chorus rose, this one of agreement. If anyone in the dining room held a differing opinion, he made sure he held it close.

You had to have discipline if you were going to survive traveling from town to town and drumming up sales wherever you could. Once it became clear to the assembled multitude that no one was going to try breaking Stanage free of the RAMs, the men gulped down a last few bites, upended their pint pots, and started filing out toward Amritsar Way.

Most of them were chattering about what they’d just seen, and most of those were professing loud and sometimes profane (though not so ingeniously profane as Phineas Stanage) hope The Two Georges would soon be back in proper hands. In that milieu, the strapping, black-haired fellow who kept quiet and kept his head down while he tried to edge away from Bushell succeeded only in making himself conspicuous. Bushell might not have paid him any mind he had tramped along with his comrades. As it was, he took a second look.

“Mr. O’Flynn!” he exclaimed gleefully. “You’ll come along with us, too.”

The miner from Charleroi tried to bolt, but a commercial traveler half his size leveled him with a tackle that would have drawn a red card on any football pitch in the Empire. Bushell jumped on him and manacled his hands behind his back.

As Phineas Stanage had, O’Flynn tried to kick. “Naughty,” Bushell said, and bounced his face off the tile floor of the hallway, not so hard as he might have done. “As I said, you’ll come along with us.” He yanked the miner to his feet.

Because of the struggle, he didn’t get out to the street as fast as he might have. When he did, Major Micah Williams greeted him with a glad cry. “Thanks for the bonus,” the bearded, scarred RAM said. “I never expected Christopher Cole to walk by me bold as brass. I was going after him later on.”

“Who’s Christopher Cole?” Bushell said, and then, “Never mind. He was a villain masquerading as a commercial traveler, was he?” Williams nodded. Bushell went on, “I nabbed one of those, too. Nice little gathering Stanage had here, wasn’t it? And a nice cover, too; he could meet the other Sons and plot anything he liked with no one the wiser.”

“He could write it off his taxes, too,” Samuel Stanley said. “If that’s not adding insult to injury, I don’t know what is.”

“One more charge to throw at him,” Bushell agreed. “Something will have to stick.” He turned to Williams. “How’d you do?”

“Got my man,” the major answered. “Cameron Moffett is another one we’ve suspected for years without being able to lay hands on proof. I found it earlier today, and now I’ve found him.” His face darkened with anger. “The Sons must have had a pipeline into our office for years, too, same as they did down in Richmond. This time, thanks to you, we really did catch them napping.”

Several man had emerged from Independence Party headquarters to argue with the RAMs who’d come with Williams. Bushell glowered at them. They were all plump, prosperous, middle-aged, with the sleek look of solicitors to them. He could understand why a Michael O’Flynn might wish the NAU different from what it was. But the Union and the British Empire had done things for these men, not to them. Where was their gratitude?

The breeze picked up; it flipped the homburg off one of the Independence Party men, then flung awry the few straggling strands of hair he’d combed over a wide expanse of scalp. That floating, wispy hair was what drew Bushell’s gaze to him. One eyebrow rose. “Well, Major,” Bushell said softly, “I think you’ve just returned the favor you say I did you.” He raised his voice: “Mr. Johnston! How good to see you again.”

Morton Johnston started. If the Independence Party leader from New Liverpool thought it was good to see Bushell, his face didn’t know it. For a moment, before the lawyerly mask dropped over his features, he looked uncommonly like a boy caught with his hand in the biscuit tin. Bushell waved to him. “Why don’t you come over here, Mr. Johnston, and tell me what you’re doing three thousand miles from home.”

Johnston did come over, gathering himself as he did so. “I haven’t got to tell you a bloody thing, sir, as you know very well. But I shall tell you: I am here to help my colleagues plan protests against the tyrant’s visit to our shores.”

It was a plausible answer, plausibly delivered. But Johnston hadn’t been glad to see Bushell, not even slightly, and it was the day before the deadline the Sons of Liberty had given for ransoming The Two Georges, two days before Charles III arrived. Bushell asked, “If I ring up your headquarters in New Liverpool and ask them where you are, what will they tell me?”

Had Morton Johnston been in Victoria on legitimate Independence Party business, he would have told his fellow enthusiasts exactly where he was going, and why. He might have told them where he was going, but lied about his reasons. But when he took a couple of seconds too long to come up with any sort of answer, Bushell concluded he hadn’t told them even part of the truth.

“I shall make that telephone call, Mr. Johnston,” he said happily. “Meanwhile, you can come along to the station and answer some questions for us.”

“Am I under arrest, and if so, on what charge?”

Lieutenant Toby Custine had ducked into the Independence Party building. He came out in time to hear Morton Johnston’s question. In a studiously neutral voice, he remarked, “Three of the clerks in there say Phineas Stanage visited you this morning, and that the two of you spent some time alone together.”

“Vile, treacherous dogs!” Stanage roared. Johnston said nothing, but the glare he sent though the plate-glass window was homicidal in intent if not in effect.

“On a charge of conspiracy to aid in the commission of a felony, namely the theft of The Two Georges,” Bushell answered.

Now Johnston found a bellow to match Stanage’s: “You’ll never hang that on me!”

“Maybe I will, maybe I won’t,” Bushell answered, “but I’ll have fun trying.” He turned to Ted Kittridge:

“Ring up the Georgestown constables, Sergeant, and have them send some motorcars here. We’ve gathered in a bigger haul than I thought we would.”

“Right,” Kittridge said, still speaking as if words were at a premium. Bushell had expected him to go back to the Worshipful College of Victuallers and use the telephone there. Instead, he strode into Independence Party headquarters. The clerks and functionaries there were going to get an earful of the doings of their superiors. Bushell hoped they enjoyed it.

Enough RAMs were on the scene to make sure the prisoners didn’t try to escape. Bushell took Lieutenant Custine off to one side and said quietly, “Those Independence Party people are fanatics. How the devil did you get three of them to point the finger at Stanage and Johnston?”

“It was simple,” Custine said with a wink: “I didn’t. But the reactions we got from those two were most satisfactory, don’t you think?”

“You’ll go far, Lieutenant,” Bushell predicted. He thumped the younger man on the back. Custine grinned from ear to ear.

Within a couple of minutes, several Georgestown constabulary steamers rolled up. The constables who got out of the gold and black checked motorcars stared in considerable curiosity at the crowd of RAMs and suspects waiting for them. “What the hell is going on here?” demanded a burly fellow with a lieutenant’s pips on the shoulder boards of his khaki uniform.

“These charming individuals” - Bushell pointed to Stanage, Johnston, O’Flynn, and the rest - “are charged with conspiracy to abscond with The Two Georges, among other things. We’d like to interrogate them and hold them at your gaol, Lieutenant - “

“Hammond. Maxwell Hammond,” the Georgestown constable said. Bushell introduced himself. After the formalities, Hammond said, “See here, Colonel, why don’t you just take them back to Victoria and grill them over your own fire?”

“Come along with me, Lieutenant.” Bushell walked slowly down Amritsar Way. Hammond followed, his heavy features frowning and suspicious. When they were effectively alone, Bushell went on in a low voice, “I’m not taking them back because I don’t want my superiors or the politicos at America’s Number Ten to know I’ve got them. If I have to draw you a picture, I will.”

Maxwell Hammond stared at him. “Good God,” he said, also quietly. “What is the world coming to?”

“Whatever it thinks it’s coming to, I don’t aim to let it,” Bushell answered. “Are you with me, or not?”

“Oh, I’m with you, all right.” Hammond rumbled laughter. “Never thought I’d help a RAM put one over on his own people. Like a dream come true, this is.” Local and provincial constables often envied RAMs their resources and authority. Taking advantage of them now had to feel sweet to Hammond, who labored almost in the shadow of the NAU headquarters for the Royal North American Mounted Police. Far from allergic himself to tweaking the nose of authority, Bushell said, “Enjoy it.”

“Oh, I shall. I shall.” Hammond turned and hurried back to his men. By the grins that broke out on their faces, he was telling them what Bushell had told him. They hustled the prisoners into their motorcars and sped away. The two steamers full of RAMs followed.

“Better not lose ‘em,” Sergeant Ted Kittridge muttered under his breath. “Damned if I remember where the Georgestown constabulary station is at.”

It proved to be a grimy building in a grimy part of town, far from the elegant district where Sir David Clarke made his home. Kittridge’s call had alerted the constables at the station, and they awaited the newcomers’ arrival with obvious impatience. The gaoler, a tall, skinny Negro named Olmsted, patted down the prisoners, turned out their pockets, and put their personal effects - including belts, shoes, and cravats - in paper bags. He required them to sign itemized receipts he’d prepared.

“This is an outrage!” Morton Johnston cried.

“Law doesn’t say you have to be happy about it,” Olmsted answered imperturbably. He’d heard it all, no doubt more times than he could count. “Law does say you have to sign, so we can show the court we kept all your goods safe.”

“I know the law, you -“ But Johnston stopped there. He might know the law, but he’d never before been in its clutches. He was smart enough to see that antagonizing a man who meted it out here was less than wise.

Bushell turned to the gaoler. “Put them in separate cells. In fact, can you keep them far enough apart from one another that they won’t be talking back and forth?”

“Oh, yes, sir, we’ll take care of that,” Olmsted answered. “Gaol’s not what you’d call crowded right now. Maybe the usual lags are on their best behavior.” He laughed to show how likely he thought that was. “Or maybe they’re waiting for more toffs to show up when His Majesty comes into Victoria so they’ll have more fine stuff to steal.”

The paperwork that went with arrests was mind-numbing. Here the forms were even more complicated than usual, precisely because the RAMs were using constabulary facilities under the jurisdiction of the sovereign city of Georgestown to house prisoners arrested not because of city ordinances but as a result of the violation of All-Union statutes. By the time the last i was dotted and the last t crossed, twilight was settling outside.

A constable went out and came back with a pasteboard box full of greasy, newspaper-wrapped packets of fish and chips. “This side has vinegar, the other one doesn’t,” he said, pointing to show which was which. “Take your pick.”

After all the fine meals Bushell had eaten lately, vinegar-sour fried fish and potatoes were like a slap across the face with a cold, wet towel. He gulped them down, then lifted a mug of strong tea in salute.

“To dyspepsia!” he said.

He rang up the William and Mary and asked if any messages had come in for him. “Yes, sir,” the hotel operator said. He heard papers being shuffled. “One from Sir Horace Bragg . . . another from Sir Horace Bragg . . . and a third from - Sir Horace Bragg. The last was not fifteen minutes ago. Do you require the number for a reply?”

“No.” Bushell hung up. So Bragg wondered what he was up to? Well, he wondered what Bragg was up to, too, and wouldn’t ring him right back. Instead, he dialed RAM headquarters and asked to be connected to Major Walter Manchester.

“I’m sorry, he’s not at his desk,” the RAM operator answered. “Who’s ringing, please?” Warily, Bushell gave his name. “Oh, very good, Colonel,” the operator said. “He gave me a number where you could reach him: it’s FLodden 2127.”

“Thanks.” Even though he hadn’t been in Victoria for some years, he knew what that number was: the central station for the Victoria city constables. Major Manchester must have made arrests of his own, and must have been as leery as Bushell of bringing his prisoners back to RAM headquarters. Bushell rang the FLodden number and spoke briefly with Manchester, letting him know where he could be reached. “We did catch ‘em napping,” the major said, as Micah Williams had. “I’ll ring you directly I squeeze anything worth knowing out of these chaps.”

“Right. I’ll do the same for you.” Bushell set the phone down. He wondered if he’d done the right thing by telephoning into RAM headquarters. Word that he’d done so was liable to get to Bragg. Still, no one there knew how to reach him. If the men he’d recruited into the cabal - and the men they’d recruited kept quiet, they could operate unsupervised a while longer. God willing, they wouldn’t need much more time. Under his breath, Bushell muttered, “We’d better not.”

The only thing left to do was use the time he’d bought as best he could. The interrogation room had old, battered furniture and walls that needed painting. It stank of stale sweat, stale tobacco, stale coffee. In his expensive tweeds, Phineas Stanage looked out of place there, like a petunia in an onion patch.

“Let me call my solicitor,” the petunia growled.

“We can hold you forty-eight hours first,” Bushell said, “as I’m sure you know perfectly well.” Stanage grunted. Bushell said, “What were you doing, meeting with Michael O’Flynn?”

“Who?” Stanage said. “Never heard of him.”

“How did a Charleroi coal miner get invited to a gathering of commercial travelers from your brewery?”

“Since I never heard of him, how can I tell you that? For all I know, he sneaked in for a pint or two and a bite to eat.”

Bushell glowered. He’d feared Stanage would be tough. “What was Eustace Venable talking about when he said he was going up to Boston to see Joseph Kilbride about it?”

“Probably a cabinet I’d ordered from him,” Stanage answered in offhand tones. “And who’s this Kilbride item? I don’t recall Venable’s ever mentioning anyone by that name.”

The note the RAMs had found referred to Joe. Bushell glowered harder. Stanage was tough. Contemptuously, Bushell said, “Don’t play stupid games with me. You tell me you don’t know Kilbride and I’ll call you a liar to your face. The two of you ran in the same pack.”

“Well, what if I have heard of him? So what? I don’t know that Venable was going up to Boston to see him. If he was, I don’t know why. And I haven’t a clue about what it is.”

“It’s The Two Georges, Mr. Stanage,” Samuel Stanley said, his voice quiet, reasonable. “We know that. You know we know that. Why not make it easy on yourself and tell us what you know?”

Stanage laughed at him. “You dumb smoke, I’ve had enough nosy police officers poke their snouts into my business to know when I’m getting whipsawed between the rough one and the sweet one. Go peddle your papers.”

Stanley walked over to him and backhanded him across the face. “Which one am I now?” he asked, quiet still.

Phineas Stanage’s head snapped back. His cheek glowed red. “I’ve had tougher louts than you work me over, too,” he snarled. “Try some more. Maybe you’ll bugger the job and leave marks my solicitor can see and take to a judge.”

“You may as well give it up,” Bushell told him. “Sir David Clarke’s spilling his worthless guts at RAM headquarters right now.” An artillery unit would sometimes let fly a few shells to see what response they drew. Firing for effect, the gun bunnies called it. Bushell was firing for effect now. Stanage shrugged. “I’ve not done anything, so he can’t hurt me.”

Like a dreadnought’s armor, he turned every question fired at him. The hands of the loudly ticking clock on the wall went round. It chimed the hours, one by one. When midnight came, Samuel Stanley said, “This is the deadline the Sons gave us. Still no word, though - I hope.”