The Two Georges

III

Long before he got to the RAM headquarters in downtown New Liverpool, Bushell knew what sort of day it would be. Newsboys on every other street corner waved papers with screaming headlines. The big one was always the same, regardless of the daily: TWO GEORGES STOLEN! The number of exclamation points following the head did vary, from none in the staid New Liverpool Tory to four in the Citizen-Journal.

Subheads also varied. SHAME! cried one. Another wailed, MONSTROUS CRIME! And a third declared, THE EMPIRE MOURNS! Some mentioned the Steamer King’s demise (only the Citizen-journal called him Tricky Dick, while the headline man for the Ledger was clever enough to link his murder to the theft of The Two Georges), while others went on talking about the theft itself. The newsboys were doing a land-office business. Men and women crowded round them, pressing shillings into their hands. Several of the boys sold every copy they had and stood disconsolate, waiting for a steam lorry to bring them more from their paper’s printing plant. Bushell stopped and bought a copy of every newspaper. Reporters were detectives of a sort; he’d often heard things from them that he hadn’t been able to find out for himself. But each new inky-smelling daily he tossed onto the front seat of his steamer was also a fresh goad to get the painting back. In spite of his stops, Bushell pulled into the RAM carpark at five minutes to eight, as usual. He nodded to the men coming in to work with him, and to the night workers leaving their shift. Few greeted him in return, and no one seemed to know what to say.

He walked into the little kitchen down the hall from the main entrance. They had a coffeepot there, too, along with hot water for tea. He was anything but surprised to find Samuel Stanley pulling a cardboard cup from the box between the hot-water dispenser and the coffeepot. Beneath his brown skin, Stanley looked gray. He normally favored tea, as did Bushell, but not today.

“You’d better leave some of that for me, Sam,” Bushell said.

“Depends on how much I need.” Stanley yawned enormously. “Way things worked out, I’m just as glad Phyllis had to drive me here today. I was so deep underwater, I probably would have crashed the steamer.” He poured cream into his coffee, stirred it with a wooden stick. “I haven’t been that tired since the last time we had a baby in the house.”

“When I was what they called a flaming youth, I’d stay up till all hours and be fresh the next morning,” Bushell said, reaching for the coffeepot when his adjutant put it back on the hotplate. “No more.”

“Lord, no.” Samuel Stanley blew on his coffee, then drained half the cup. “When I was in the army, nights I got leave I’d be drinking and playing the piano and watching the sun come up. I just wanted to do things all the time. If I lose that much sleep now, I’m a dead man the next day.”

Bushell didn’t say anything about his own aborted tries at slumber. There wasn’t enough difference between one hour of sleep and three hours’ worth to talk about. You were a shambling wreck either way.

The coffee burned his mouth when he gulped it down. He didn’t care. If he drank enough, he could build a brittle crust of energy over his exhaustion. That might get him through the day, and, if he was lucky, he’d go home and collapse when evening came. He poured the cardboard cup full again. Samuel Stanley was right behind him. “What’s first on the list, Chief?” he asked, as he held the cream pitcher over his cup.

“I’m going to tell the public information officer to arrange a press conference for me in the afternoon.”

Bushell sighed. “I’m looking forward to that. Then I want to ring up the Victoria office and get everything they have on Kathleen Flannery and the rest of the people who were traveling with The Two Georges.”

His adjutant nodded. “Makes sense to me. The Sons of Liberty would have had an easier time of it with inside help.”

“Just what I’m thinking,” Bushell said. “After that, I think I’ll pay a call on Independence Party headquarters - ”

“They’ll deny everything,” Samuel Stanley said.

“Of course they will. Has to be done, though. There’s always that one-in-a-hundred chance. And then,” Bushell said, as much to get things straight in his own mind as to keep on talking with Stanley, “I’ll pull the files on some of the Sons of Liberty and see what we can pry out of them. We’ll visit them warrants in hand, I think. Every so often, they get sloppy and we learn something. Make sure we have the papers we need, will you? Judge Huygens cooperates with us pretty well.”

“Yes, I’ve gone to him before. That sounds good to me,” Stanley said. “If I may make a suggestion . . .?” He waited for Bushell to nod, then went on, “You might do well to have me or one of our other colored RAMs along when you question the Sons of Liberty. Just because they look down their noses at us, they might let something slip that they’d keep a secret from a white man, because they’d assume we wouldn’t notice it anyway.”

“That is a devilish notion,” Bushell said with a slow smile, “and I shall take you up on it. If the foe offers us his petard, the least we can do is hoist him on it.” He drank the last of his coffee, crumpled the cup, and chucked it into the rubbish bin by the door. “And now, off to public information.”

The public information officer was a young lieutenant named Robert Thirkettle. “When would you like to take questions from the press, sir?” he asked.

“When would I like to? Ten years from Tuesday strikes me as a good date,” Bushell said. Lieutenant Thirkettle looked pained. If he’d had his way, Bushell would have spent so much time talking with reporters that he’d have got precious little actual work done. Sighing, Bushell said, “Set up the conference for late this afternoon - three would be fine, four would be better.”

“Four won’t let your remarks get into most editions of the afternoon dailies,” Thirkettle pointed out.

“Oh? What a pity.” Bushell strode out of the public information officer’s cubicle without giving him a chance to reply.

On his way up to his own office, he paused to light a cigar. His hand quivered as he brought the lucifer up to the tip of the tobacco tube. That told him how much coffee he’d poured into himself. He got the cigar going and gratefully sucked smoke. It relaxed him and left him alert at the same time. The Jameson in his desk couldn’t match that. Pity, he thought.

He couldn’t lock the world away from him now, as he had the evening before. He set his sword on the closet shelf, took the trousers and tunic of his dress uniform out of the carpetbag, and set them on top of a file cabinet. If they were someplace where he could see them, maybe he’d remember to take them down to be cleaned if he had a spare moment.

He telephoned the RAM headquarters in Victoria and asked for Sally Reese, Lieutenant General Sir Horace Bragg’s longtime secretary. “Everything’s all in a twitter here today, Colonel,” she said; Bushell wondered whether she’d borrowed the phrase from Bragg or the other way round. “How can I help you?”

“I assume you people have compiled full dossiers on Dr. Flannery and the others traveling with The Two Georges ,” he said.

“Oh, yes,” Sally Reese answered at once. “Scotland Yard wouldn’t let any colonials” - she sniffed - ”get within ten yards of the painting till they’d been fully vetted.”

“Good. Do you have those where you can get your hands on them?”

“Oh, yes,” Sir Horace’s secretary repeated. “Wait there just one minute.” Bushell duly waited. He heard a faint thump, as of a thick pile of manila folders landing on a desk. Sally Reese returned to the line:

“Here they are. Now what do you want me to do with them?”

“Two things,” he said. “First, skim through them and tell me over the phone anything that makes you think of a connection to the Sons of Liberty.”

“I can do that,” she said. “It’ll take a while, but I can do it.”

“You’re a sweetheart,” Bushell told her, which made her giggle. “After you’ve done that, send carbons or your originals, if you don’t have carbons - to me by military aeroplane. Sometimes speed does matter. I want them here tomorrow, or next day at the latest.”

Now doubt filled her voice: “Oh, I don’t know about that, Colonel. It’s not normal procedure at all.”

Sally Reese was a spinster but, like a great many secretaries, wedded to routine. Bushell said, “These aren’t normal circumstances, either. And when I spoke to Sir Martin last night, he promised me all the cooperation the NAU could give. If that doesn’t include an aeroplane to carry important documents, it isn’t worth much, is it?”

“I don’t know .. .” Sally Reese said again. Bushell wanted to shake some sense into her, but couldn’t, not across the continent. At last she said, “All right, Colonel, since it’s you that’s doing the asking. You and Sir Horace have been friends for so long, I know he’d want me to do whatever I can for you.”

“Thank you, darling,” Bushell breathed. “You’re doing the right thing.”

“I hope so,” she answered, not altogether convinced despite the endearment. “Here, let me give you some of this over the wire now.”

Bushell spent the next forty-five minutes taking notes. The pace was less frantic than it had been the night before: Sally Reese would find a tidbit, pass it on, and then continue for another couple of pages before finding another.

Not all of what she found struck him as relevant, either. That Dr. Malcolm Desmond, the Gainsborough scholar, had been expelled from a preparatory school for unnatural vice might have been important in a different case. But the Sons of Liberty despised that sort of thing far more than the authorities did. Dr. Desmond was unlikely to be one of theirs.

Dr. Walter Pine, the historian of George Ill’s long reign, had signed several petitions protesting the conciliatory stance the NAU had taken in the latest round of border talks with the Holy Alliance. The Independence Party had circulated some of those petitions. How much that meant, Bushell couldn’t say. The scene designer (Bushell snorted when he heard that - as if The Two Georges needed a fancy setting for display!), Christopher Parker, had two arrests for driving a steamer while intoxicated. Sally Reese made little clicking noises at such depravity, but Bushell didn’t think it was the sort of thing likely to turn a man into a Son of Liberty.

Then Sir Horace’s secretary got to the dossier on Kathleen Flannery. The first thing she reported was Kathleen’s broken engagement to Kyril Lozovsky. “Yes, I know about that,” Bushell said. “She mentioned it last night.”

“She must have reckoned you’d find out anyway,” Sally Reese said, accurately enough, but in a way that irked Bushell. She flipped through pages one after another. After a moment, she let out a little hiss of almost malicious triumph. “Here’s something else. She’s been subscribing to Common Sense for the past eight or nine years. Did she mention that, Colonel Bushell?”

Bushell pursed his lips, as if tasting something sour. “No, as a matter of fact, she didn’t.” He wished Kathleen had told him that. Common Sense was as near to an official journal as the Sons of Liberty had. With Boston Irish money behind it, it lambasted the Crown and the Empire every month, but somehow managed to stay just this side of open treason.

“You want to know what I think, Colonel, I think that’s a disgraceful rag, and anybody who puts down good money to buy it ought to be ashamed of himself.” Sally Reese was a little on the deaf side, and spoke loudly over the telephone. She also had a harsh prairie accent that took any possible element of compromise from what she said: she sounded like a preacher sure of his own righteousness.

“You may be right,” Bushell answered. Had anyone asked him he would have said much the same thing himself. But hearing it in tones Moses wouldn’t have presumed to use coming down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments reflexively made him want to disagree. He didn’t; he couldn’t afford to argue with her, not when he needed her help. “Can you arrange for those to go out by air today?”

“I’ll do it, Colonel,” she answered. “I’ll do it right now, and take my luncheon later. We have to get The Two Georges back.”

There he found no room for disagreement. “Thank you, Sally,” he said. “Good-bye.” He hung up and lit a cigar. “Common Sense,” he muttered, shaking his head. She should have told him that. Maybe she’d assumed the RAMs wouldn’t know. Or maybe she’d thought it nothing out of the ordinary. He couldn’t decide which idea bothered him more.

He got no time to brood about it. Samuel Stanley walked into the office. Bushell waved him to a chair. His adjutant took out a cigar, too. When he lit it, the lucifer in his hand shook. Bushell nodded, recognizing the symptoms. “How much coffee have you had this morning?” he asked.

“Enough to let me live through the day - I hope,” Stanley answered. “With the sort of luck we’ve been having, enough to keep me from sleeping tonight, so I can start the same way tomorrow.”

Bushell looked up to - and through - the ceiling. “Don’t listen to him, God. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

Samuel Stanley chuckled. He blew a smoke ring. “Here’s hoping you’re right. A couple of things I need to ask you, Chief: who’s going to head up the investigation team for The Two Georges, and whom will you send out into the held to interview the Independence Party people and whatever Sons of Liberty we can get to in the next couple of days?”

“Me,” Bushell said.

Stanley nodded. A good many years in the army had taught him to think well of officers who led from the front. But, in the reasonable tones he would have used to remind a subaltern to think things through before he started spewing words, he asked, “You for which, sir? You can’t do both.”

Bushell was in no mood to be reasonable. “The hell I can’t,” he said. “I was personally responsible for The Two Georges’ going missing, and I am personally responsible for getting it back. I have no intention of sitting here on my arse shuffling papers at a damned desk.” He looked up at Stanley, who was grinning. “Does that particular speech remind you of anyone you know, Sam?”

“You mean me?” His adjutant’s brown face was a study in innocence. Nonetheless, he persisted, “If you’re going to be in the field, Chief, we’ll need somebody back here coordinating what everybody’s doing. You won’t have the time to handle both assignments at once.”

That was common sense, too, and of a better sort than came out of Boston. Bushell yielded - up to a point. “All right, Sam, here’s what I’ll do: I’ll make, hmm, Major Rhodes headquarters coordinator for the investigation. I like Gordon, and he’d be right for the job - he’s patient, he doesn’t panic, and he has an eye for detail. But when I’m in the office, things will go to me before they go to him.”

“Yes, sir,” Samuel Stanley said, as Bushell had to Sir Martin Luther King. “I hope it works out all right.”

That was as close to criticism as he would come.

Bushell got up from behind his desk. He walked over to a bookcase and pulled out a telephone directory: not an obvious tool of police work, perhaps, but an important one. Sure enough, Independence Party headquarters had a listing. He scrawled the address down on a sheet torn from a scribbling-block.

Samuel Stanley read over his shoulder, as he had when Bushell unfolded the note from the Sons of Liberty. That had been only half a day earlier; it seemed half a lifetime. Stanley grunted. “They’re out there in the back of beyond, are they? Good place for them.”

“Isn’t that the truth?” The valley north and west of the central city of New Liverpool was still half given over to farming: oranges and lemons, strawberries and maize, chickens and turkeys and pigs. But more and more homes had gone up there in the past generation, and business districts to serve their needs. The people in the valley, or many of them, had a clannish streak: no wonder the Independence Party was trying to take root there.

Stanley said, “You’ll be an hour getting out and another hour coming back. That won’t leave you a whole lot of time for work this afternoon before your press conference.”

“What a pity,” Bushell said, as he had to Thirkettle. He sighed. “This once, the reporters get a fair shot at me. From now on, God willing, I’ll be too busy.”

“That’s why you want to spend all your time in the field,” Samuel Stanley said, with the air of a man who has had a revelation.

“Who, me?” Bushell said. “While I’m gone this morning, Sam, I want you to give your notebook from last night, and mine, too, to Gordon Rhodes. Tell him I want him to put all the pieces together by the time I get back, so we know who was where and who saw whom.”

“That’s a lot of work for a few hours,” his adjutant said doubtfully.

“Gordon will figure out a way to do it,” Bushell predicted. “He’s the best-organized man I know.”

He grabbed two pens, a notebook, and his hat, and was out the door and heading for the stairs before Sam Stanley could say anything else. The drive up through the Cowanger Pass was pleasant enough (Bushell idly wondered, as he had once or twice before, what Spanish name had been corrupted to give that English version). Even before the narrow, winding road reached the top of the pass, he’d left most of New Liverpool behind. Tumbleweeds and yuccas clung to the hills on either side of the road. Butterflies flitted from one plant to another. Birds pursued them. He normally sympathized with the butterflies. Today, a pursuer himself, he pulled for the birds.

From the top of the pass, the valley spread out before him. Most of it was a study in green and brown: the dark shiny green of citrus groves; a lighter shade for growing maize; gray-brown dirt not under irrigation; dark, rich earth that felt the life-giving touch of water. A grid of widespread streets carved the farm country into squares, as if it were a draughts board.

Independence Party headquarters lay on Laurel Canyon Highway, though well to the north of the eponymous canyon. It was a neat, one-story white stucco building with a red tile roof, vaguely Spanish in style, with the party’s name painted above the large window that fronted the street in big black letters that might have come off a Roman inscription.

But for that name, and for the flagpole that took the place of a red-and-white striped pole, the place resembled nothing so much as a moderately successful barbershop. Bushell glanced at the flag rippling in a light breeze atop that staff. A moment later, his eyes snapped back to it. It was not the NAU’s Jack and Stripes, though it resembled the dominion’s flag. But instead of the superimposed crosses of St. George, St. Andrew, and St. Patrick, the dark blue canton bore a bald eagle, wings outstretched, beak agape.

He shook his head as he walked toward the doorway. There was nothing illegal about that flag. It offended him all the same.

He’d visited Tory and Whig headquarters before. This one was much like those, if smaller: women at typewriters, men and women talking on telephones, some private offices toward the back of the building for more important functionaries. The place smelled of tobacco smoke, coffee, and sweet pastries. All the faces that looked up at him when he came in were white. That was out of the ordinary, especially in New Liverpool. Blacks here, as elsewhere, were mostly staunch Tories; people of Nuevespañolan and East Indian blood most often backed the Whigs.

“How may I help you, sir?” asked a middle-aged woman in a gingham frock.

“Take me to the chairman: that would be Mr. Johnston, would it not?” Bushell could see she was going to say the illustrious Mr. Johnston couldn’t speak to just anyone. He held up a hand and beat her to the punch. “I am Colonel Thomas Bushell of the Royal American Mounted Police. I am here to investigate last night’s theft of The Two Georges .”

Everyone in the office stopped talking and stared at him. The woman in gingham had spunk: “We had nothing to do with that, and you have your nerve insinuating that we did. The very idea!” She sniffed indignantly.

“The very idea, madam, has probably crossed the minds of half the people in New Liverpool this morning,” Bushell answered.

“Then half the people in New Liverpool are mistaken,” a big, beefy man said, emerging from one of the offices in the back. “I’m Morton Johnston, Colonel - Bushell, was it? Come with me, if you please, sir.”

“Thank you,” Bushell said, and took a seat across from Johnston’s desk. The Independence Party chairman looked like a prosperous barrister or a politico: handsome, ruddy, mustachioed, his graying brown hair combed across his scalp to try to conceal a growing bald spot. He dressed the part: white shirt, wing collar, black bow tie, dark blue pin-striped suit and waistcoat; a black homburg hung on a rack to one side of the desk.

His office also resembled that of a typical barrister or politico, with one exception. Where a reproduction of The Two Georges would normally take pride of place, he had instead a lithographic copy of the flag that flew outside the building.

“Tea, Colonel, or coffee?” he asked. When Bushell said he wanted coffee, Morton Johnston called to one of the secretaries out front. She fetched in a cup. It was not very good coffee, but it was strong. At the moment, that counted for more. Johnston let Bushell sip for a moment, then said, “Colonel Bushell, I can authoritatively state that the Independence Party had nothing whatever to do with the unfortunate disappearance of The Two Georges .”

“I can authoritatively state a lot of things,” Bushell answered. “That doesn’t make them true, just authoritative.”

Johnston went from ruddy to unabashed red. “You would be hard-pressed, sir, to find a more law-abiding group of citizens than the members of the Independence Party.”

“That’s true,” Bushell said. “You make a point of it. But I’d also be hard-pressed to find a nastier bunch of thuggees than the Sons of Liberty - and they and you are ... how shall I put it? Half brothers, perhaps?”

“Colonel Bushell, I resent that remark,” Johnston said, donning an expression of such stern rectitude that Bushell was convinced he had to make his living as a barrister. “No formal connections whatever exist between the Independence Party and the Sons of Liberty.”

“None we’ve proved, anyhow,” Bushell said cheerfully. “But I didn’t come here to talk about proof. I came to talk about help. If the Independence Party is as simon-pure as you’ve always claimed, you’ll want to do your duty and help us recover The Two Georges. You said yourself it was unfortunate that someone stole it. We have excellent reason to believe the someone belongs to the Sons of Liberty. We also have excellent reason to believe you’re in a good position to know more about the Sons than, say, the local Tory chairman. So share what you know with us, Mr. Johnston.”

Johnston licked his lips. After a moment, he said, “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Colonel Bushell. I’ve told you what I know and what the Independence Party knows, which is nothing. You aren’t interested in my guesses - ”

“Who says I’m not?” Bushell broke in.

“ - and, given His Majesty’s statutes on slander, I don’t care to make them,” Johnston went on, as if he hadn’t spoken. “Even if I did, they would be my guesses, not the party’s. We aim to free North America from the British Empire by peaceful means, not the violence the Sons of Liberty use.”

“You want to get out of the Empire,” Bushell said, “but you hide behind its laws while you’re in it.” He hadn’t expected anything else, not really, but disappointment ate at him all the same. He’d hoped for better, even from the Independence Party, in a crisis like this.

Morton Johnston stood and glowered down at him. “Good day, Colonel,” he said pointedly. Bushell rose, too. He turned and pointed to the eagle on the banner with which the Independence Party wanted to replace the Jack and Stripes. “You’ve chosen a good mascot.”

“What do you mean?”

“That bird is a carrion-eating scavenger that makes a good part of its living by stealing fish from seahawks honest and hardworking enough to do their own hunting. I can find my own way out, sir.”

He felt Johnston’s eyes boring into him as he strode toward the door, but did not look back. He was on his way to his steamer when his stomach growled angrily. It wasn’t happy anyway, not with all the black coffee he’d poured into it. He looked at his pocket watch. It lacked but a few minutes of noon. There was a fish-and-chips shop a few doors down, and a Nuevespañolan-style cafe across the street. After a few seconds’ hesitation, he decided on fish and chips. The fish was Pacific red snapper, not the cod it would have been in London, but the two elderly Scotsmen - brothers, by the look of them - who ran the shop knew their business. They dipped the fillets in batter and fried them just firm, wrapped them in newspaper, and handed them to him along with a generous helping of golden-brown fried potatoes.

“That’ll be ten and sixpence, sir,” one of the brothers said. “Half a guinea, if you like.” He laughed. A fish-and-chips shop was hardly the sort of establishment where prices were quoted in guineas. Bushell doused the fish and chips in malt vinegar and spread salt over them from a big tin shaker. They burned his fingers through the newspaper. One of the stories that wrapped his fish was about The Two Georges. He was just as glad when spreading grease made it illegible. He ate quickly, gulped yet another cup of coffee, wiped his hands on a brown paper serviette, and headed for his car, well enough pleased with his luncheon. Had the brothers’ shop been downtown rather than in this backwater, he thought, they would have been well on their way to being wealthy men. The breeze had picked up while Bushell was eating. The Independence Party flag flapped loudly on its pole. He gave it one last scowl as he turned up the burner and headed back toward the office. When he got there, he went straight to Major Gordon Rhodes’s office. As he’d expected, he found Rhodes and Sam Stanley there. The major was a few years younger than Bushell, on the chunky side, with blond hair and a face as florid as Morton Johnston’s, but scholarly rather than bluff. From somewhere, Rhodes had commandeered a big table and spread a sheet of white butcher paper over it, holding the paper down at the corners with knickknacks from his bookshelves. He’d used a yardstick to rule the paper into small squares. As Bushell came in, he was asking Stanley, “Who’s next?”

Stanley turned the page on one of the notebooks he and Bushell had used the night before to interrogate the people at the governor’s mansion. “Malcolm Desmond,” he answered.

“Very good.” Rhodes ran his finger down the names written in the left-hand cells until he came to Desmond’s. “And whom did he see?”

“He was still back in the Drake Room,” Stanley answered, checking his notes. “He saw Gavagan the bartender, three of the four people in the string quartet, and Mrs. Town Councilman Gilbert. Some others, he said, but he’s not sure of them.”

“Very good,” Rhodes repeated. “We have other testimony that Jorkens was by the entranceway, so that leaves Brassman, Cooper, and Campbell, along with Gavagan behind the bar.” He bent over the spread sheet. Bushell saw names at the top of the columns, too. Rhodes put marks in the appropriate columns along Desmond’s row. “And I shan’t forget Mrs. Gilbert, either.”

The chart was already well measled with checks. Bushell studied it with nothing but admiration. “This is splendid, Gordon,” he said. “We should have your sheet here photographed when you’re done, and reproductions furnished to everyone working on the case.”

“You were right, Chief,” Stanley said. “I didn’t see how he’d do it, but he worked out this scheme almost as fast as we’re talking now.”

“You’re too kind, both of you.” Rhodes had a way of taking what he did for granted, not thinking it anything out of the ordinary. Maybe that was one of the reasons he remained a major. He said, “When we’re done here, we’ll make a similar chart showing everyone’s location when the alarm bell began to ring. Between the two of them, they may tell us quite a lot. Or, of course, if no one in the mansion was involved in the plot, they may well tell us nothing.”

“Nothing else had told us anything thus far,” Bushell answered. “Why should this be any different?”

“It’s not so bad as that, Chief,” Samuel Stanley said. “We know a Russian rifle killed Tricky Dick, and we know the Sons of Liberty stole the painting. Put those two together and we have - ”

“Inference,” Bushell said. “Nothing else but.”

“Pretty solid inference, I think,” Gordon Rhodes protested.

“I’d rather have evidence,” Bushell said.

“We are working on it, Chief,” Samuel Stanley reminded him. “The damned painting’s been gone less than a day, after all. You ask me, even having the start of an idea about which way we’re going is one for our side. Oh.” He paused. “Speaking of going, we got a ring this morning from one of those coal miners who were picketing out in front of the governor’s mansion. They’re all booked aboard a train that heads east tonight. He wanted to make sure it’s all right for them to leave. I didn’t see any reason why not, but I told him I’d have to check with you.”

Bushell considered. “I think we can let them go,” he said at last. “As the constable in front of the mansion said, some of them are probably Sons themselves, but they weren’t directly involved in the theft or the shooting, so we can’t in law hold them. We might do well, though, to telegraph lists of their names back to the RAMs in their home provinces.”

“I’ve already taken care of that,” Stanley said without a hint of smugness.

“Have you?” Bushell said. “Well, good. I’m going back to the files, remind myself what the Sons have been up to lately, and pick out a few lovely chaps to question this afternoon - ”

“The press conference,” his adjutant broke in.

“Damnation take the press conference,” Bushell snapped. But damnation would take him if he wasn’t there to give it. Press and politicos would band together to howl for his head. He didn’t need his elbow joggled that way, not now. And so, this afternoon, he would be questionee, not questioner. Sighing, he yielded: “I’ll pick out a few lovely chaps to question tomorrow, then.”

Samuel Stanley nodded approvingly. He and Rhodes went back to work on their butcher-paper chart. Bushell went down to the RAM record room, which took up most of the first floor. The musty smell of old paper wrapped itself around him as he went inside. The record room was nothing but old paper, and cabinets to hold it. It was also the only room in headquarters where smoking was forbidden: one not-quite-extinguished lucifer or a carelessly dropped coal from a cigar or pipe could spark a conflagration.

The Sons of Liberty had a couple of file cabinets all to themselves. Bushell pulled open the top drawer of the wrong one, only to be confronted by yellowing file folders and the old-fashioned typewriter letter styles and copperplate handwriting of the end of the last century. One corner of his mouth twisted. The Sons had a long and dishonorable history.

He got the right cabinet and drawer on his next try. He pulled out the half-dozen most recent folders (which, but for their fresh manila board and the more modern typefaces on their labels, looked all but identical to their centenarian ancestors) and carried them over to a table. When he opened the first one, an unflattering police photograph of a Son of Liberty stared out at him. Peter Jarrold had been arrested the winter before on suspicion of setting fire to a synagogue in the eastern part of New Liverpool. Bushell’s mouth twisted again. Jews were so thin on the ground in the NAU that only a madman could reckon them any sort of threat to anyone. Peter Jarrold didn’t look like a madman, but he didn’t look particularly bright, either. He looked like what he was: a street tough in his early twenties, with a scar over one eye and another on his chin. Like a lot of the younger Sons of Liberty, he wore his hair cropped short. The Roundhead look, they called it, after the followers of Oliver Cromwell the regicide. To the Sons, that made Cromwell a hero. Bushell flipped through the folder. Jarrold was currently starting ten years’ penal servitude, so he hadn’t had anything to do with stealing The Two Georges.

The pair of men in the next folder seemed more interesting. The year before, Titus Hackett and Franklin Mansfield had been charged with printing and distributing an obscene publication: a lampoon of the marital troubles of the grandchildren of George, Duke of Kent, the younger brother of Edward VIII. A copy was in the file. Bushell glanced at it. It had funny spots, but looked obscene to him, too. A jury, though, had disagreed, and let Hackett and Mansfield go free.

Bushell thought that unfortunate, but it wasn’t what really interested him about the case. The rascals’ pamphlet had got a surprisingly wide distribution around New Liverpool; they’d been able to afford to print a lot of copies. At Mansfield’s house, the arresting officer had found out how they’d been able to do so: with a goodly supply of gold Russian roubles.

No one had been able to prove Mansfield came by those roubles illegally. At the time, they hadn’t seemed to mean much. But when you put them together with a three-line rifle, you had to start wondering what the Russian Empire was up to in and around New Liverpool. Bushell noted Mansfield’s home address, and Hackett’s, and that of the print shop they ran together. Come the morning, he would have some questions to put to them.

He flipped rapidly through the rest of the folders, noting down names of other Sons - some Roundheads, some not - who had been charged with relatively recent offenses. Most of the crimes of which they’d been accused were of a simpler nature than that of Hackett and Mansfield. One Joseph Watkins, for instance, had been charged with heaving a brick through the front window of the local office of the League of Colored Citizens, but was released before trial for lack of sufficient evidence. Looking at Joseph Watkins, Bushell would have bet he was guilty of something. He had the same tough, violent stare as Peter Jarrold and, the report noted, a large eagle tattooed on his chest and a smaller one on his right bicep. But the law couldn’t prove beyond reasonable doubt that he’d committed this particular crime, and so he was free.

A couple of other Sons had stomped a Nuevespañolan man nearly to death outside a tavern. They were behind bars; witnesses had identified them beyond doubt. Another gentleman, the late Andrew Kincaid, had tried cracking a Sikh’s skull with a length of lead pipe while shouting, “Go back to India, you stinking wog!” The Sikh, true to the martial tenets of his faith, had been armed with a dagger, and had let the air out of Mr. Kincaid for good.

“And we don’t miss him one bloody bit, either,” Bushell murmured.

When he was done, he stacked the folders in a single pile and stared at them. They’d helped less than he’d hoped. For one thing, the Sons were a close-mouthed bunch. Even when they were caught, they didn’t rat on their friends.

For another, few of the locals, at any rate, seemed to have the brains to have pulled off anything like the theft of The Two Georges. They were bruisers, ruffians, men who couldn’t succeed and sought someone outside themselves to blame for their failure. They knew how to hate, but not how to think. The thieves at the governor’s mansion had been brilliantly effective.

The door to the records room opened. “Colonel Bushell?” someone called. Bushell recognized Lieutenant Thirkettle’s voice.

“I’m here,” he answered mournfully. “Let me refile these. Is it that time already?”

“Yes, sir, it is.” Thirkettle sounded indecently cheerful, but then, he wasn’t about to face a firing squad, or, worse, a pack of ravening reporters. He asked, “Can I get you anything before you speak to the press, sir?”

“A cup of hemlock?” Bushell suggested.

“Sir?” Thirkettle didn’t understand. Bushell shook his head. They weren’t training them in the classics the way they had in his day.

Once, in the cinema, Bushell had watched wolves pull down a moose. They’d flung themselves on the poor beast and started to feed while it still lived. He’d never thought to find himself playing the role of that moose until he walked into the press briefing room and stood before the reporters and photographers from all over the NAU. They jammed it to the point where the New Liverpool fire marshal should have taken notice and ousted a third of them.

The fire marshal and his minions were nowhere to be seen. Even had they been around, throwing out a third of the reporters, however gratifying Bushell might have found it, wouldn’t have done him any good. The survivors would have been plenty to pull him down and eat him alive. A fusillade of flashbulbs greeted him when he entered the briefing room and followed him to the podium. The big tin reflectors behind the flashbulbs sent all their light straight into his face and left him dazzled. By this time tomorrow, his visage would be splashed across half the dailies in the country. His Hawthorne neighbors would no longer be in doubt about what he did for a living. He tapped at the microphone. It was live. Whether it would help him overcome the din - the baying, he thought - of the press was another question. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, and then again, louder:

“Ladies and gentlemen.” The din diminished, but did not vanish. After half a minute or so, Bushell concluded it wouldn’t vanish. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you’ll bear with me, I have a brief statement I’d like to make. Then I’ll take your questions.”

A rather loud quiet descended. Into it, Bushell said, “Last night, Honest Dick the Steamer King was murdered by gunfire outside Governor Burnett’s mansion here in New Liverpool. Not long thereafter, an alarm inside the mansion went off. It was discovered that a gang of at least three individuals had succeeded in absconding withThe Two Georges, which was then on private display at the mansion and was soon to have been shown to the public. At present, the perpetrators remain at large. We have had no communication from them since the painting was stolen. This morning, a spokesman for the Independence Party formally denied any connection between his organization and the theft of The Two Georges.”

His pause told the reporters he had finished. Hands flew into the air. Men and women shouted at the tops of their lungs. Bushell heard not a word of it. He cupped his hand behind his ear. The racket abated. The reporter asked his question again: “The Independence Party denies involvement. What about the Sons of Liberty?”

“No spokesman of theirs has denied involvement,” Bushell said dryly. That drew scattered laughs, but also calls for more detail. Reluctantly, Bushell added, “We did find at the crime scene certain things which are consistent with its being the work of the Sons, yes.”

“What sort of things?” four people shouted at the same time.

“I’d rather not discuss that publicly,” Bushell said. “Some people like to imitate infamous crimes or pretend they were involved, and we’d sooner have an easy time than a hard one sorting out imitators from the real Sons of Liberty.” He mentally crossed his fingers. Sometimes that sort of appeal worked, but sometimes it just fanned the hunger of the press.

This time, it worked, at least for the moment. A woman in a royal-blue silk dress asked, “Are you certain there’s a connection between Tricky Dick’s murder and the theft of the painting?”

“As certain as I can be without interrogating the perpetrators, yes,” Bushell answered. “Using a diversion is a common military trick.” He spread his hands. “This time, unfortunately, it worked against us.” He pointed to a man in the third row wearing a gaudy silk cravat. “Yes, sir?”

The reporter preened a moment on being recognized, then said, “We are given to understand that The Two Georges was taken from Governor Burnett’s mansion in a lorry. Why was that lorry allowed to leave?”

“I wish it hadn’t been,” Bushell answered. “No, wait - I know that doesn’t answer your question. When the lorry left, no one outside the mansion had the slightest notion The Two Georges was in it. We did know, however, that Honest Dick had been shot at long range, from the brush-covered knoll across Sunset Highway from the governor’s residence and its grounds. The New Liverpool constable at the turnoff to Sunset Highway reasonably concluded the lorry driver could not have been involved in the murder, and let him go. Reasonable conditions, worse luck, aren’t always right ones.”

“Did the lorry go east or west after it left the mansion grounds?” someone asked.

“East, back toward the central city,” Bushell said. “I personally saw that lorry leave, and I could not tell you of my own knowledge whether it turned right or left. I was concerned about Honest Dick, and paid the lorry little attention. The witnesses who did notice which way it went, though, unanimously say it turned right.”

A man with a military bearing gained his attention. “Up on this grassy knoll, sir: have they recovered the cartridge casings from the rifle that killed Honest Dick?”

“They hadn’t as of last night,” Bushell said. “At the moment, that’s all I know. I haven’t had the chance to speak with the New Liverpool constables today, and they are primarily responsible for investigating the murder. Our efforts - that is, those of the RAMs - will concentrate on recovering The Two Georges.”

“Why aren’t you looking into Tricky Dick’s murder yourself?” three reporters asked, while two others said, “It’s part of the same case, isn’t it?”

“Technically, no, it is not a part of the same case,” Bushell answered. “However much we believe the murder of the Steamer King and the theft of The Two Georgesto be related, we have not proved that to be so. And homicide without flight across provincial lines, even homicide by means of a firearm, is not a crime that comes under the jurisdiction of the Royal American Mounted Police. It falls under the authority of the constabulary of New Liverpool and of the province of Upper California.” He smiled wryly.

“Anyone who thinks we’re not going to be working very closely with the New Liverpool constabulary, though . . .”

After that, the questions began to get repetitive: reporters were looking for new ways to say old things. Finally, one overstuffed fellow with a monocle asked, “D’you you think Tricky Dick was involved in the plot to steal The Two Georges and killed to keep him quiet?”

“In a word, no,” Bushell said. “If you are reduced to questions of that sort, I think, the proceedings are at an end. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.” He stepped away from the podium. Lieutenant Thirkettle rushed up to spread a cloud of politeness over the press conference. He was good at what he did. By the time he’d finished, even the reporters whose questions Bushell hadn’t answered or to which he’d given short shrift were in a happy mood. They chattered among themselves as they hurried out of the briefing room to write and file their stories.

The vaults of the Bank of England did not hold enough gold sovereigns to make Bushell take over Thirkettle’s job.

When the last reporters were gone, the public information officer came up and said, “On the whole, that was very nicely done, Colonel, although I do wish you’d been a touch more ... diplomatic there at the end.”

“I was patient as long as I could manage,” Bushell said, meaning as long as I could stand. “I never have suffered fools gladly, though, and I didn’t aim to start with that fat donkey.”

“Er - yes.” Lieutenant Thirkettle looked pained. To carry out his assignment well, he had to get along with the press, which meant getting along with a certain number of fools and donkeys, which meant not referring to them - maybe not thinking of them - as fools and donkeys. Poor sorry devil. Bushell pulled out his pocket watch. It was after five. Yawning, he said, “Lieutenant, with your ever so gracious permission, I’m going upstairs to see how Major Rhodes is doing. Then I am going to go home and, God willing, go to bed. Running on an hour’s worth of sleep is not something I can do every day anymore.” He wanted to laugh at himself for implying once upon a time he’d been able to run on an hour of sleep a day.

Without waiting for Thirkettle’s reply, he headed for the stairs. When he got to Gordon Rhodes’s office, he was surprised not to find Samuel Stanley there. Rhodes said, “He went home about an hour ago, sir said he was so tired, he couldn’t see straight. The way he was acting, I believed him.”

“I know just how he feels,” Bushell said sincerely.

Major Rhodes handed him a manila envelope. “He picked these up for you from Judge Huygens. Says they’re a present to be used carefully.”

Bushell undid the metal clasp on the envelope. Inside were a dozen search warrants, all signed by the judge. The lines for the date and the name and place of the person to be served with the warrants were left bank. Bushell whistled softly. He asked Gordon Rhodes, “Have you seen these documents?”

“No, sir,” Rhodes answered. “What are they?”

“Never mind.” Bushell hadn’t seen many blank warrants, not in all his years as a RAM, and he’d never seen so many together at once. Judge Huygens had indeed given him a present. If any word ever got out about what sort of present it was, though, it would be useless - worse than useless, for it would turn into a weapon against him. If you used shortcuts in the legal system very often, pretty soon you wouldn’t have a legal system. But if you let yourself get hamstrung on time-wasting technicalities, you had problems of a different kind. Being trusted with blank warrants was a compliment, of sorts. Major Rhodes was a smart officer in more ways than one. Some men would have asked questions after that “Never mind,” and found out things they were better off not knowing officially. The only question Rhodes asked was, “What now, sir?”

“Now I’m going home and going to bed,” Bushell told him. “If Sam threw in the sponge an hour ago, I’m entitled to do it myself. That damned train is on the way here from Victoria. It’ll be here day after tomorrow, I expect, and I’ll have to be at my best to deal with Sir Horace and Sir Martin. See you in the morning.”

He almost fell asleep in his car, waiting for steam pressure to build so he could drive home. He drove carefully, as if he’d had too much to drink: not very fast, not very close to the car in front of him. He knew his reflexes weren’t all they might have been.

The early editions of the evening papers didn’t yet have his picture in them. One more day of anonymity, he thought. When he got home, he had to park down the street from his block of flats everyone else was returning from work, too. He picked up his mail - a couple of bills, a couple of advertising circulars, a letter from an old friend from his army days who by now assuredly would have heard about him if not from him - and went upstairs.

He busied himself in the flat’s little kitchen. After tossing a spud in the oven, he made a green salad and pan-broiled a beefsteak he took from the icebox. He also took out some ice, put it in a tumbler, and poured Jameson over it.

He had the tumbler about half empty by the time his supper was ready. The whiskey made him even more tired than he had been, undercutting the layer of alertness he’d borrowed from the coffee to get through the day. He no longer cared. “I made it,” he said to the wall. After he’d washed and dried and put away the dishes, he lit a cigar, pulled out a copy of Pope’s translation of the Iliad, and turned on the wireless. He spun the dial, looking for news. He skidded past a pianist playing theWaldstein sonata, an advertisement for Bovril, some syncopated electric Nawleans music that made him curl his lip, and the postmortem of a rugby match before he finally found some.

“In Pittsburgh earlier today, Governor-general Sir Martin Luther King again pledged every possible effort to recover The Two Georges, stolen last night in New Liverpool in a crime of appalling brazenness,” the newsreader said.

Bushell sighed as he sat down on the couch. He’d been sure Sir Martin would say something like that. It sounded good, didn’t cost anything, and didn’t mean anything, either. The newsreader went on, “In New Liverpool, however local RAM commandant Colonel Thomas Bushell stated that, while the clandestine organization known as the Sons of Liberty is believed to be connected to the theft, no specific clues as to the identity of the criminals or the whereabouts of The Two Georges have yet come to light. It is to be hoped that this unfortunate situation will soon be remedied, as the disappearance of the painting has sent shock waves through both the NAU and the mother country. In London, the prime minister said - ”

With a grunt, Bushell opened his book. He didn’t care what the prime minister said. She was six thousand miles away and knew even less about the matter than he did himself, which, considering how little he knew, was saying something. He smiled at the elegant Augustan verse into which Pope had rendered the Iliad. It wasn’t Homer - he’d read Homer in the original - but it was fine poetry. He wouldn’t have minded a god coming down from Olympus to give him a hand in the investigation. “Why Achilles and not me?” he murmured.

Zeus didn’t answer. Instead, the telephone rang. He went into the bedroom and answered it. It was a reporter. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get to the press conference, Colonel, but if you’d be so kind as to tell me - ” Bushell hung up. If the fellow couldn’t get where he was supposed to be on time, to hell with him.

“To hell with him anyway,” Bushell said. He stared down at the telephone. After a moment, he took it off the hook and stuffed the handset in the night-stand drawer. He wasn’t supposed to be out of contact with the office, but tonight he needed sleep more than anything else. Reporters were more likely to call than his colleagues, who knew how tired he was. He nodded. He’d take the chance. He went out to the kitchen and poured himself another Irish whiskey. He drank it, washed the glass and put it away, replaced the volume of Pope on the shelf, and switched off the wireless. Then he changed into his pyjamas and got into bed. He remembered nothing more until his alarm clock jerked him headlong out of sleep.

The printing establishment Franklin Mansfield and Titus Hackett ran lay about halfway between downtown New Liverpool and Governor Burnett’s residence in the West End. Two steamers full of RAMs quietly pulled up in front of it. People on the street stared as half a dozen big men in red tunics piled out of the cars and gathered in front of the doorway to the shop. A scrawny bald man in his shirtsleeves threw open the door, not to let them in but to cry angrily, “What’s the meaning of this? Unless you ugly louts have a warrant, sod off and let an honest man carry on with his trade.”

“I have a warrant here, Mr. Hackett,” Bushell said, recognizing the fellow from his photograph in the files. He displayed the official paper. “As you see, it gives us leave to search these premises pursuant to the investigation of the theft of The Two Georges. Now stand aside and let us do our job.”

“Just a bleeding minute.” Hackett snatched the warrant out of his hands. Franklin Mansfield came out to read it with him: a beefy fellow with curly black hair and bushy side whiskers. “Bah!” Hackett said, and shoved the warrant back at Bushell. “You got your trained seal of a judge to sign it, and you have your Cossacks with you, the same as the damned Tsar would do.”

“Cossacks don’t bother with warrants,” Bushell answered. “Now stand aside.”

Scowling, Hackett and Mansfield got out of the way. The RAMs in red swarmed into the shop and began turning it upside down with the practiced efficiency of men who had performed a great number of searches. Franklin Mansfield spoke for the first time: “I shall make certain they’re planting nothing incriminating.” His voice was deep and smooth and rich; but for a slight lisp, perhaps an affectation, he could have been a newsreader himself.

“What are you doing here, anyhow?” Hackett snarled at Bushell. He had no affectations, only rage.

“You’ve got no call to be tossing the place like that.” He pointed to the chaos the RAMs were making in their search for evidence. “You bloody well ought to leave us alone. That jury found us innocent, it did.”

“No, it found you not guilty, which is not the same thing,” Bushell answered. “As for why we’re here where did you and your partner come by those gold Russian roubles you used to spread your filth far and wide?”

“It wasn’t filth - it was the truth. And we came by ‘em legal, in payment for another job,” Hackett answered. “We took ‘em, and glad enough to have ‘em. Weight for weight, their gold’s as good as sovereigns or francs.” The printer spat on the sidewalk. “There! You can run me in for that, if you’ve a fancy.” He clapped a hand to his forehead. “We’ll be days putting back together the rubbish heap your apes are leaving.”

“If we find nothing of interest, you shall in due course receive a formal written apology from the governor-general’s office in Victoria,” Bushell said, knowing that was the last thing the printer wanted. Hackett stared at him, watery blue eyes going wide. He cocked a fist in anger. Bushell hoped he would swing. Conviction on a charge of battery against one of the King-Emperor’s police would put Hackett in a warm, dry place for some time to come. But, with an obvious effort of will, the printer mastered himself.

One of the uniformed RAMs, a muscular Negro named Clarence Malmsey, brought a typed sheet of paper out to Bushell. “Here’s something interesting, sir,” he said: “a bill paid off by seven hundred gold roubles.”

“Let me see that.” Bushell took his reading glasses from their case, set them on his nose. “Queen Charlotte Islands Board of Tourism?” He frowned. “I didn’t think the Queen Charlotte Islands had a board of tourism. Isn’t that where the imperial naval base is, up by Russian Alaska?” He frowned again, trying to be just. “But since they are up by Alaska, that may account for the roubles.”

“First right thing you’ve said today,” Titus Hackett exclaimed.

“It might be so, sir, but I didn’t see anything that looked like the makings for a tourist brochure in there with the bill,” Malmsey said. “What was in there, among other things, was this.” Now he proffered an eight-by-ten glossy photograph.

Bushell clicked his tongue between his teeth. The photograph showed a prince’s skinny, blond, estranged wife frolicking nearly in the altogether through surf on a beach in a climate much more tropical than that boasted by the Queen Charlotte Islands. He held it out to Hackett. “I take it you and Mr. Mansfield are planning to try to repeat your earlier publishing success, sir? And that you will be retaining the same barrister as before?”

“None of your bloody business,” Hackett said.

“No doubt everyone will be curious to learn why the Queen Charlotte Islands Board of Tourism is so interested in this project,” Bushell remarked.

“So we misfiled the bill,” Hackett said. “You’re a RAM, God’s angel in a little red suit, so I suppose you never misfiled anything.”

“More times than I like to remember,” Bushell said easily, “but never such an - interesting juxtaposition.” He turned to the uniformed trooper. “See if you can find anything in there that has to do with the Queen Charlotte Islands and a tourism brochure: that, or any more of this slime.” He held up the glossy photograph.

“I understand, sir,” Clarence Malmsey said. “If we don’t come up with any brochure, that’ll mean the bill for it is some kind of blind.” He hurried back into the printers’ shop, calling out new instructions to his comrades.

To Bushell’s surprise and disappointment, they did find photographs and copy and a rough layout for a brochure about the distant islands. Titus Hackett gloated at him. The RAM who brought out what Bushell thought of as the bad news said, “Here’s another account paid in roubles,” and handed his chief the bill. The fellow went on, “And here’s something else we found in the same file folder.”

This photograph showed a different princess, with a reputation perhaps even more scandalous than the others, in a costume that left next to nothing to the imagination. Bushell studied it wistfully, then sighed.

“Thank God the direct imperial line has better sense than the side branches of the house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Must come of the real royals’ having to work for a living.”

“Ahh, they’re all a pack of bleeding parasites, every one of ‘em,” Hackett said contemptuously. He spat again.

“We could jail this chap and the fat one for possession of salacious material,” the uniformed RAM said hopefully. By the way his eyes kept sliding back to the picture he’d given Bushell, he found it salacious enjoyably so. But Bushell shook his head. “That wouldn’t do, I’m afraid. At the trial, their barrister would make a point - a political point - of dragging the imperial family through the dirt.”

“Aye, that’s right, try and hide the truth away,” Hackett jeered. “Whited sepulchers, that’s what the royals are. If the people knew the truth about the whores and perverts who rule ‘em, they’d - ”

“Mr. Hackett, shut your filthy mouth.” Bushell spoke quietly, but with a snap of command in his voice. Hackett stared and said not another word.

“A Russian connection,” Bushell muttered to himself as the steamer rolled down toward St. Peter’s docks, the harbor district of New Liverpool. He’d wondered about that since Captain Macias told him Tricky Dick had been shot with a three-line rifle. The Sons of Liberty in New Liverpool certainly seemed to be getting aid and comfort from the subjects of the Tsar - but what did that prove? Not enough. Joseph Watkins was on the dole, and living in a dingy rooming house whose front hall reeked of hot grease and stale urine. Expecting Watkins to be out at a tavern or something of the like, Bushell served the warrant on the landlord, a ferret-faced fellow who looked imperfectly delighted to have RAMs in his building.

He unwillingly led the RAMs upstairs to Watkins’s first-floor room. Raucous electric Nawleans music spilled into the hall from behind the door at which the landlord pointed. He pressed the search warrant and a skeleton key into Bushell’s hands, saying, “He’s all yours, mate,” and made himself scarce. Since Watkins did appear likely to be in there, Bushell had to serve the warrant all over again. He rapped on the door. Nothing happened. He rapped again, louder. He heard heavy footfalls coming toward the door. It flew open. Joseph Watkins glowered out at the world at large. “God damn it, I told you not to piss and moan about playing the wireless so - ” he began. Then he realized his visitors were not neighbors complaining about the noise. The realization visibly failed to fill him with joy. “Oh. Robin Redbreasts.” He spotted Clarence Malmsey. His mouth narrowed. “And a tame geechee with ‘em. What the hell do you bastards want now?”

The photograph of Joseph Watkins had shown him to be a tough. It hadn’t shown that he was about six foot four and wide through the shoulders, width emphasized by the strapped vest that was all he wore above the waist. He dwarfed the RAMs with Bushell, and none of them was small. Bushell held up the search warrant. “Mr. Watkins, this warrant gives us leave to search these premises pursuant to an ongoing investigation of the Royal American Mounted Police. Stand aside and let us do our job.”

Watkins studied the opposition. He glared down at Bushell. “You didn’t have your bully boys with you, little man, I’d squash you like the bug you are.” Bushell looked back at him, expressionless. After a moment, Watkins got out of the way.

He inhabited one room, with a tiny alcove that could be screened off and held a toilet and stall shower. Greasy newspapers on the table, on the floor, and in the waste-paper basket said he lived mostly on fish and chips. Everything in the room was nasty and cheap except for the fine crystal sculpture of a fierce-looking eagle that perched atop the mantel and almost matched in pose the tattoo on his arm. On one wall, instead of the print of The Two Georges that would have adorned most homes, he’d nailed a large Independence Party flag, also with a rampant eagle.

He caught Bushell looking at it. “Nothing wrong with a man wanting his country free of the bloody Crown,” he growled.

“In itself, no,” Bushell said. “Whether or not it’s foolish is another question. And crimes remain crimes, no matter in what cause they’re committed.”

“Nice when you can make your own rules, isn’t it, and call trying to get free a crime,” Watkins retorted. His head twisted constantly as he watched the RAMs tearing the furnished room to pieces. Watkins had a laundry hamper, but didn’t bother with it. Instead, he just left his dirty clothes wherever they happened to fall. After the RAMs went through the pockets of each pair of denims and overalls and collarless workman’s shirts, they tossed it into the wicker hamper. In that small way, the room got neater. In every other way, a tornado might have descended on the place.

“Watch that, you big ugly buck,” Watkins snarled when Clarence Malmsey tore down his eagle flag to see if he’d secreted anything behind it. He hadn’t. Malmsey smiled sweetly, crumpled the flag in his hands, and threw it on the floor. Watkins took a step toward him, fists clenched. Two other RAMs reached for the clubs on their belts. Watkins subsided, hate smoldering in his gray eyes. The RAMs pulled out the drawers in which he stored his food, turned them upside down to dump out what they held, and peered into the spaces thus opened to make sure he hadn’t hid anything in back of them. One of the men took out his billy club and poked at the plywood behind the drawers, turning his head to listen for any hollows thus revealed.

Bushell went through Watkins’s reading material himself. There was more of it than he’d expected a Roundhead lout to own: Watkins might not be bright, but he was politically conscious. He had a long shelf of cheaply printed political tracts, some from the Independence Party, others out-and-out calls for insurrection. Mixed with them were back issues of Common Sense (Bushell reminded himself to ring up Kathleen Flannery, whose full dossier was sitting, as yet unstudied, on his desk) and several of what were politely called “novels of imagination” describing the Utopia North America would have become had it long ago freed itself from the British Empire. Bushell had perused a great many examples of the genre, and had a low opinion of it. The hacks who perpetrated them were as politically naive as they were illiterate, which was no small claim.

When the door to Joseph Watkins’s room was open, it hid the only closet the room boasted. Clarence Malmsey swung the door most of the way open so he could search the closet. He tossed out trousers and shirts and jackets, creating a new pile to take the place of the one his colleagues had put in the hamper.

“You’ve found damn all,” Watkins said in tones of injured innocence, “and the reason you’ve found damn all is that I haven’t done a bloody thing. So why don’t you bugger off and let me pick up the rubbish pitch you’ve made of my place here?”

“Don’t you think it looks better now?” Bushell asked. Watkins scowled at him. Once the closet was empty, Malmsey did as his colleagues had and poked at the boards of the wall with his stick. Everyone in the room heard the deeper thock! that came from one blow. “Well, well!” the Negro said happily. “What have we here? Somebody hand me a pry bar.”

Joseph Watkins made a run for it.

Had the door been open rather than almost shut, he would have got out into the hall, and might even have escaped. As things were, Clarence Malmsey sprang out and grabbed at him just as he seized the doorknob. He needed a second to hurl Malmsey aside with a sweep of his thick arm, and the second let another uniformed RAM and Bushell pile onto his back.

Watkins was big and strong and fierce and tough, all of which availed him little. The RAMs were far from weaklings, they outnumbered him, and they had learned to fight in a school every bit as nasty as his and a good deal more skillful to boot. Before long, he lay flat on his belly, still swearing at the top of his lungs, hands manacled and ankles shackled behind him, blood from a cut above one eye running down his face and onto the cheap, already stained carpet.

“Mr. Watkins, sir, in case you didn’t notice, you are under arrest,” Bushell announced. He looked down at himself. In the struggle, one sleeve of his jacket had torn loose. “Damnation!”

Clarence Malmsey said, “Shall we find out what dear Joey boy didn’t want us to find?” He got the pry bar he’d asked for and ripped away with a will. Boards came up with a splintering crunch and the squeal of stout nails pulling loose from wood. The RAM yanked the boards out further, reached into the space behind them.

He brought out a long, thin, rectangular package, wrapped in thick brown paper for passage through the mails. “What’s the postmark?” Bushell asked.

Malmsey turned the package to peer at the blurry inked handstamp. “Place called Skidegate,” he answered. “Don’t know where the devil that is. Wait a moment, there’re more letters here.” He held the package up to his face so he could examine the mark more closely. His voice rose with excitement.

“Here we are: Skidegate, QCI.”

For a moment, that meant nothing to Bushell. Then it did. “Skidegate, Queen Charlotte Islands,” he whispered.

One of the other RAMs asked, “What’s in there? I can make a guess from the shape, but - ”

The top of the package had been neatly slit open. Clarence Malmsey flipped up that end, pulled out some excelsior, and then, with a sigh like a lover’s when he encounters his beloved, a rifle, the yellow wood of the stock polished till it gleamed, the barrel glistening with gun oil. “Not a model I recognize offhand,” he said.

“I do,” Bushell said. “It’s a Nagant.”