The Two Georges

VIII

The airship company and its representatives did everything they could for the RAMs. Later, Bushell would have admitted as much. At the time, converting airship tickets to ones for the railroad, making his way by cab from the O’Hare Airship Port to the La Salle Street Station in the middle of the morning rush hour, and then settling down to wait until the train pulled out at a quarter past twelve all aggravated his liver.

After loading his pockets with so much change that he jingled when he walked, he telephoned the RAM office and local constables in Doshoweh to warn them he’d been delayed. Making long-distance calls from public phones was an exasperating process at the best of times, too. You stood there drumming your fingers against the glass of the booth, waiting for your call to be transferred from one operator to another. Calling into the Six Nations added a new layer of frustration, for some of the operators seemed to have only an imperfect grasp of English. But at last he managed to leave his messages, one after the other. He fed shillings and florins and heavy silver crowns into the public telephone until the local operator pronounced herself satisfied.

The Twentieth-Century Limited rolled through the provinces of Tippecanoe and Miami. Doshoweh lay ten hours away. As soon as Bushell left the dining car after a luncheon of chicken pot pie and apricot and almond custard, he pulled out his pocket watch, glowered at it, and said, “If we’d caught the Six Nations Special, we’d be there by now.”

“I know,” Samuel Stanley said, and wisely let it go at that.

Bushell sat down and stayed in his seat, making himself hold still though he wanted to get up and pace. Every so often, the train rolled through another industrial town with smokestacks vomiting forth the waste of the factories that made the NAU one of the marvels of the world. To compensate for that smoke, almost every motorcar on the roads was a clean electric.

Stanley noticed that, too. “Good thing towns are packed so close together hereabouts,” he said.

“Electrics are fine for the short haul, but steamers have it all over them when it comes to going a long way.” He looked out the window, drummed his fingers on the table. “If it weren’t for all the electricity from the big grids in the coal-mining provinces, this part of the NAU would be too dirty for anyone to want to live here.”

“That’s true,” Bushell said. “But Pennsylvania and western Virginia and eastern Franklin are filthier than they would be otherwise, to make up for it.”

After cutting across the neck of the Huron Peninsula, they reached Toledo on the shore of Lake Erie a little before six o’clock. From then on, they had the lake on their left hand as they steamed east toward Doshoweh. After a brief pause there, the Twentieth-Century Limited would swing inland through the Six Nations and then into New York province, pulling into New York City twenty hours after leaving Astoria.

For supper, the dining car offered a lobster a la Newburg that would have done a Boston seaside restaurant proud. Cream and sherry and noodles and sweet chunks of lobster meat helped soften Bushell’s resentment at being delayed. When he lighted a cigar afterwards, he was, if not at peace with the world, at least willing to declare a temporary cease-fire.

Thanks to the lobster, the very good Le Montrachet that went with it, and, most of all, what seemed like an endless stream of days on the road, Bushell was yawning when the train pulled to a stop in Doshoweh a few minutes after eleven. The conductor announced the stop not only in English but also, reading from a card, in the Iroquois language. Most of the people who got up to leave the train along with Bushell and Stanley had straight black hair and coppery skins, though they dressed like anyone else. In most respects, the train station was a train station, and might have been in any part of the NAU or, indeed, in any part of the British Empire. But underneath the English-language signs directing passengers, people waiting to pick up passengers, and visitors were what Bushell guessed to be their equivalents in Iroquois.

Samuel Stanley nodded toward one of those signs. “Doesn’t seem quite right,” he remarked, his voice so low only Bushell heard him. “They’re part of the Empire; they should use English.”

“So long as they’re loyal, I don’t think the King-Emperor cares what language they speak,” Bushell answered.

“Can’t fault ‘em for that. The Iroquois Scouts rank right up there with the Gurkha Rifles,” Stanley said: a soldier’s assessment. His mouth twisted as he went on, “They aren’t like the Frenchies in Quebec, giving aid and comfort to the Holy Alliance every chance they get. Good thing the Sons of Liberty can’t stand the idea of Frenchies in their new, ever-so-free country; if the Sons would have ‘em, they’d sure as hell join, and make our lives even more miserable.”

He left off grumbling then. Two white men and an extraordinarily well dressed Iroquois stood together talking; one of the whites was holding up a cardboard sign that read, TOM SAM. Bushell nodded approval as he walked up to greet them: his last name had been bandied about in the newspapers altogether too much lately. Tom and Sam, though, might be anyone.

The two white men were local RAMs, a captain and a lieutenant named Sylvanus Greeley and Charles Lucas. Greeley, who wore a mustache waxed to handlebar perfection, said, “And let me introduce you to Major Shikalimo of the Doshoweh constabulary.” He noticed Bushell’s surprise at being presented to a local major instead of the other way around, and added, “Shikalimo here is nephew to Otetiani, the Tododaho - the Grand Sachem, you might say - of the Iroquois.”

As far as Bushell was concerned, that explained why Shikalimo had made major at such an early age he couldn’t have been much past twenty-five - but not much more. The Iroquois, though, accepted the order of the introductions as if he’d imagined nothing else.

He was gracious enough, saying, “Delight to make your acquaintance, gentlemen,” in an accent that shouted Oxford or Cambridge and made Bushell feel decidedly - and unexpectedly - colonial. Yet despite the cool elegance of his speech, his black homburg, and his pinstriped suit and waistcoat, he had a twinkle in his eye and a smile that flashed all the brighter because of his dark skin.

“You chaps will be about done in, I expect,” Greeley said when the introductions were done. “We’ve booked you into the Hotel Ahgusweyo, which is conveniently close to our headquarters, and also to the constabulary station.”

“The Better Hotel, you would say in English,” Shikalimo said, flashing that dazzling smile again. “We leave it partly in our language to make it seem exotic for sightseers. We get a good many here, some curious about us, others about Niagara Falls. If you like, gentlemen, I should be delighted to drive you to the hotel.”

“If it’s no trouble - “ Bushell began.

Shikalimo waved that aside. “It would be an honor, not an inconvenience. We of the Hodenosaunee the Iroquois, as you call us - take the theft of The Two Georges most seriously, I assure you; it is a blow at us no less than at the white citizens of the North American Union. Any assistance we can render in its safe return will be a privilege, not a duty.” His face went grim. “I was outraged to learn the Sons of Liberty may be secreting the painting here. That our land was used to abet this crime in an insult that cries out to be avenged.”

Bushell would not have wanted Shikalimo interested in taking vengeance on him. He had a florid way of speaking, but seemed a fine figure of a man all the same. Bushell decided to take him up on his invitation:

“If you’re sure it’s no bother, I thank you very much.”

“No trouble at all.” Shikalimo pointed toward one of the exit doors. “If you bring your baggage there, I’ll go reclaim my steamer from the carpark and meet you in a moment.” Without waiting for a reply, he hurried away.

“He’s bloody sure of himself, isn’t he?” Samuel Stanley remarked when Shikalimo had got out of earshot. “By his manner, you’d think he was the Grand Sachem’s son, not just his nephew.”

Sylvanus Greeley and Charles Lucas exchanged glances. “My dear sir - “ they began together, and both laughed. “Go ahead, Charlie,” Greeley said.

“Thanks, Captain,” the younger man replied. He turned to Stanley and Bushell. “The Iroquois, they do things differently. Captain Greeley and I, we’ve been here a while, and we’re used to it. Sometimes we forget outsiders aren’t. The Iroquois, they reckon descent through the mother. The Tododaho’s sons, they aren’t of his clan: they belong to the one his wife is in. But the Sachem’s sister’s son, now, he’s - “

“He’s the heir, you’re saying,” Bushell put in, fitting the puzzle pieces together. “Well. No wonder he acts as if he’s someone, then. He is”

“Yeah, and we’d better not keep him waiting, either.” Samuel Stanley picked up a suitcase. “Come on.”

No sooner had they stepped outside than Shikalimo pulled up in a Supermarine saloon so low and rakish, it looked ready to spit fire. The Iroquois nobleman - or so Bushell classified him - didn’t seem unduly impressed with his own importance: he helped the RAMs load their luggage into the boot and held the passenger-side doors open so they could get in.

The Supermarine glided away from the kerb. Shikalimo was an expert driver, going through the gears so smoothly, Bushell had trouble noticing the shifts. He wasn’t paying a great deal of attention to such things in any case. He’d never been in the Six Nations before, and wondered how Doshoweh differed from the town it might have been had Englishmen built it.

He couldn’t see much difference. The people on the street - not many, at an hour marching toward midnight - wore clothes that wouldn’t have been out of place on a warm summer night in New Liverpool, although he wouldn’t have spotted men wearing earrings there. The buildings looked like buildings, not wigwams. Only the bilingual signs really told him he was in an unusual part of the NAU. Shikalimo said, “I want you to know, Colonel, Captain, it’s an honor for me to be working so closely with you. I expect to learn a great deal from this. Your techniques are a model of what investigation should be. If we here had access to facilities like yours in Victoria -“ He let out a long, envious sigh. Bushell realized that, while he was trying to isolate what made the Six Nations unique, Shikalimo was looking out from his limited perspective toward the wider, more cosmopolitan world of the NAU as a whole, which Bushell took as much for granted as Shikalimo did the narrow view from Doshoweh. What you wanted to see depended on where you were standing.

He said, “We’ll cooperate with you in any way we can, Major. Having someone so prominent in the community here working alongside us will help make witnesses more willing to talk.”

To his surprise, Shikalimo lifted one hand off the steering wheel, then angrily slammed it down again.

“Greeley and Lucas are good enough fellows in their way, but they talk too bloody much,” he said. “I hope you will not be offended when I say I have noted this flaw regrettably often in white men.”

“Doesn’t offend me one bit,” Samuel Stanley said with a chuckle.

“A distinct point, Captain Stanley.” Shikalimo laughed, too. But he quickly grew serious again: “I wish your fellow RAMs had not gone into detail about my social rank here, as opposed to that in our constabulary, because I want you to think of me as a colleague to be judged like any other colleague. Social rank and ability do not necessarily go hand in hand.”

“Seems to me your people are doing things the same way the royal family does,” Bushell said. “Give the heir something worthwhile to do before he gets stuck with the top job and he’ll generally handle that one pretty well, too.”

Shikalimo glanced over to him. “That is precisely the paradigm my uncle cited, Colonel,” he said, respect in his voice.

Otetiani sounded like a sensible chap. Bushell couldn’t figure out how to say so without seeming to make too much of himself. He covered his brief confusion with brusqueness: “To business. You’ve had a couple of days now to search for the Sons of Liberty here. Any luck?”

“None to speak of, unfortunately,” Shikalimo answered. “Somewhere between a fourth and a third of the populace of Doshoweh is white. With such a large haystack to sift through, we’ve yet to come across our poisoned needle.”

“Have a care as you sift,” Samuel Stanley warned. “If you want to learn from us, for God’s sake learn that. The Sons will hurt you badly if you run up against them unprepared.”

“For this word of caution I thank you, and I shall convey it to my comrades and superiors,” Shikalimo said. He pulled to a stop in front of the Hotel Ahgusweyo, which, unlike the other buildings Bushell had seen, did have the look of a longhouse writ large, in stone and concrete rather than wood and bark. Shikalimo remarked, “Sightseers expect certain things of us. We make an effort to satisfy them, even if their expectations do not always match modern reality.”

A servant came with a cart to take the baggage from the boot of Shikalimo’s Supermarine. Recognizing the driver, he nodded deferentially and murmured something in his own language, to which Shikalimo responded. Bushell concluded not all the old ways of the Iroquois had fallen into desuetude. As had that of the Skidegate Lodge, the lobby of the Hotel Ahgusweyo tried to show the traveler he had came to someplace out of the ordinary. Colorful dried ears of maize were displayed on the walls, along with war clubs, tobacco pipes, and baskets and medicine masks of dried ash splints. A dugout canoe hung from the ceiling on stout chains.

When he got up to his room and flipped on the light, the first thing he noticed was a large print of The Two Georges hanging over the bed. It surprised a snort of laughter out of him. “What is funny, sir?” the bellhop asked, setting his suitcases down on the floor.

He pointed to the print. “That. Anywhere else in the NAU, I would have expected it. But here - “

“George Washington is very important to the Hodenosaunee, too, sir,” the bellhop said, sounding indignant Bushell had doubted it. “Those of us who follow Hawenneyu, the Great Spirit, and not your Christian God” - with a slight motion of his hand, he included himself among that number - “we say Washington is the only white man who has joined Hawenneyu in his heaven.”

“The rest of us are in hell?” Bushell asked, bemused.

But the bellhop shook his head. “No, sir. Hawenneyu takes no notice of you, for good or ill. But Washington was such a noble man, the Great Spirit smiled on him no matter what his color.”

“Is that a fact?” Bushell said. It wasn’t a fact, of course; it was a theological opinion, than which nothing was less susceptible to proof. But it was a theological opinion that stuck his fancy. He tipped the bellhop a pound, twice the going rate. The man bowed and slipped away.

On the wall across from the bed hung a smaller print, this one of a man with dark, Red Indian features and extraordinarily intelligent, probing eyes. There were letters underneath the print. Walking up to it, Bushell saw that they spelled out what looked like an Iroquois name: Sosehawa. He wished the bellhop hadn’t left. Most bellhops knew where the good restaurants were or how to find a companion for the evening if you were so inclined. This fellow had seemed well informed about other matters as well.

Bushell shrugged. Shikalimo would know who Sosehawa was. All that could wait till morning. He unpacked his pyjamas, put them on, and went to bed.

Samuel Stanley stared at the breakfast menu with a dismay Bushell found incomprehensible. “Hommony cakes!” Stanley exploded. “In this day and age they expect people to eat hommony cakes - and pay hotel prices to do it? They won’t get ‘em from me, by God!”

“What the devil are hommony cakes?” Bushell asked, once the offending item was identified.

“Hommony is maize treated with lye to hull it and then ground into flour. You can make it into cakes or you can serve it up as porridge - but you’d better not, not if you want to keep your Negro trade,” Stanley said.

“Sorry, Sam - I’m still not following this.”

“Hommony was slave food. It was cheap, it would keep a man going . . . it still will, come to that, and poor people in the southeastern provinces eat it to this day. But for a Negro family that’s come up in the world, as most of us have - “ Stanley shook his head. “My folks got some in the house just once that I remember, when I was about fourteen. They served me up a big bowl of the porridge and made me eat it all. My father said my grandpa had done the same for him, and so on as far back as any of us remember. He called it knowing what we’d got away from.”

Bushell had been curious about the hommony, but after that impassioned speech he decided he’d be wiser leaving it alone. He chose griddlecakes from good old unabashed wheat flour instead, and maple syrup to go with them. Sam Stanley ordered bacon and eggs, with chips on the side. Their breakfasts had just arrived when Bushell stiffened as a waiter led a new patron to a table. He caught Stanley’s eye. The adjutant followed his gaze. A forkful of eggs halted halfway to Stanley’s mouth. “What do you know about that?” he said softly.

“I don’t know a bloody thing, but I’m going to find out.” Bushell rose from his seat and strode over to the woman who had just come into the dining room. “Won’t you join me for breakfast, Dr. Flannery?” he said with an ironic courtesy that masked the anger and suspicion he felt. Kathleen Flannery looked up in surprise that rapidly became alarm. “Why, Colonel Bushell,” she said.

“How ... pleasant to see you again.” Color rose from her throat to her cheeks to her forehead.

“Won’t you join me for breakfast?” Bushell repeated. It was phrased as a request, but not meant as one. She bit her lip, nodded, and rose. Bushell paced beside her, as if to make sure she didn’t cut and run. He pulled out a chair for her. “I’m sure you also remember Captain Stanley?”

“Of course,” Kathleen answered, nodding. “How are you this morning, Captain?”

“Curious,” Stanley said bluntly. That made her look down at the linen tablecloth in confusion - or was it embarrassment? Bushell couldn’t tell.

A waiter came to the table where Kathleen Flannery had been seated. He scratched his head for a moment, then smiled when he saw her sitting with Bushell and Stanley. “Ah, you have friends here,” he said. “How nice.”

“Yes,” she answered, her voice brittle. When he expectantly poised pencil above pad, she ordered the hommony porridge with a small pitcher of cream. Bushell waited for Samuel Stanley to detonate once more, but his adjutant put on a poker face instead. Stanley knew when not to show his cards. Bushell waited till everyone had finished eating before he lighted a cigar and asked, “And what brings you to Doshoweh at such an, mm, opportune time, Dr. Flannery?”

Kathleen had recovered her spirits. “I don’t have to answer your questions, Colonel,” she said, and started to rise. “If you will excuse me - “

“Sit down.” Bushell’s voice was very quiet; no one two tables over would have heard him. But he’d learned, first in the army and then in the RAMs, to put the snap of command into what he said. Kathleen Flannery returned to her chair before she quite realized she’d done so. Bushell went on, “Would you sooner discuss this at the Doshoweh RAM headquarters? They’re around the corner, I’m told. Or perhaps the local constables would be curious to know why you came into Doshoweh only days after The Two Georges did.”

She stared at him. “Then it’s true,” she breathed. “It did come here.” She reached out to set her hand on his. “Have you got it back?”

“No, we haven’t got it back,” Bushell said roughly, and she took her hand away. “My best guess is that it’s not here now.” He grimaced, wishing he hadn’t told her even that much. Covering annoyance by pouring himself more tea, he continued, “How the devil did you know it was in the first place? What are you doing chasing it after I told you to stay out of the case?”

Kathleen answered the second question: “I’m not your servant, Colonel, no matter what you may think, and I am not obliged to act on your say-so. Serving as curator for the traveling exhibition of The Two Georges would have been a highlight of my career, something to build on for years to come. Having the painting stolen while touring - Think what that does for my prospects.”

Bushell thought about it. She would carry the same sort of black mark on her record as he. “That doesn’t tell me what you’re doing here,” he said. “It took a lot of police work - it took a man dying, for God’s sake - to get us here . . . and we find you in Doshoweh ahead of us. How did you know The Two Georges was here?”

“I don’t know anything about police work,” she said. “I don’t know what you found or where you found it. What I know is art. Every time a major painting is stolen, there’s always a flood of rumors about where it’s gone and who has it. This time we know who has it, and - “

“ - And they made sure there wouldn’t be any rumors about where it was,” Bushell interrupted. “So what are you doing here, Dr. Flannery? Answer me, please.”

“I am trying to answer you,” she said. Now the color that rose to her cheeks was anger, not embarrassment. “It’s much more difficult for me to do so when you keep breaking in.”

“Go on, then,” he told her.

“Thank you so much,” she said icily. “As I think I told you during one of your interrogations in New Liverpool, the All-Union Museum has an extensive collection of Red Indian artifacts. Our associate curator of Iroquois art, Dr. Gyantwaka, recognized that the headline the villains showed with The Two Georges came from the Doshoweh Sentinel. Actually, he wasn’t quite certain, but I decided to take the chance and see what I could find here. And so I arrived day before yesterday.”

Bushell and Samuel Stanley conducted a short conversation that consisted entirely of twitching eyebrows, lip corners moving up and down, and small hand gestures. “It could be,” Bushell said at last, delivering the verdict with obvious reluctance. “Let me ask you another question, then: once you learned this, why did you go haring off on your own? Why didn’t you pass on what you’d learned to the RAMs in Victoria?”

Her green eyes widened slightly. “You mean you didn’t know? Surely, with RAMs from all over the NAU, some of them would have noticed the same thing Dr. Gyantwaka did.”

“We don’t have a lot of Iroquois in the RAMs, I’m afraid,” Stanley said, his voice grave. “No one recognized the headline as coming from his hometown newspaper. We had to dig the information out the hard way. We didn’t discover the source ourselves until a couple of days ago.”

“Oh, dear,” Kathleen Flannery said. “No wonder you were surprised to see me.”

Surprised wasn’t the word. Mistrustful was. Everything Kathleen Flannery did or said seemed perfectly innocent, and everything required checking. Bushell supposed he could ask Major Shikalimo about Dr. Gyantwaka; if Shikalimo didn’t know him or know of him, he’d know somebody who did. Very likely Gyantwaka would check out fine, as the other things Kathleen had said proved for the most part to be as she’d said them. But that everything needed checking bothered Bushell no end. So did the simple fact of her presence here. “Dr. Flannery,” he said, “don’t you know that an amateur can - “

“ - Evidently discover some things about as fast as the entire corps of the Royal American Mounted Police? Is that what you were going to say, Colonel?” Kathleen smiled at him. It was a very sweet smile. It also had razors in it.

Bushell opened his mouth. He closed it again. Damn it, she had found out that The Two Georges was in Doshoweh as fast as the entire corps of the Royal American Mounted Police. He glanced over to Samuel Stanley for support. Stanley was looking down into his teacup. Bushell thought he was trying not to chuckle. That didn’t help him muster the crushing reply he was looking for. Kathleen Flannery didn’t give him much time to gather his wits, either. “You were about to say, Colonel?” she prompted, smiling again with that sweet ferocity.

He recognized the interrogation technique. If you hurried somebody, made him respond to you instead of picking his own pace, you seized the initiative. He’d used the technique himself, hundreds of times. It worked. It was working on him now. That smile made it all the more devastating; it made him want to tell Kathleen everything she wanted to hear. Too bad that was a variant he couldn’t use against villains, few of whose pulses quickened at the sight of his pearly whites.

Kathleen tapped her long nails on the tabletop in obvious, and irritating, impatience. That made Bushell want to laugh; if she hadn’t got the gesture from the cinema, she truly was an inspired amateur. And if she was “Here’s what we’re going to do, Dr. Flannery,” he said, as if he’d had it in mind all along. “You have done better than I thought you could back in New Liverpool. I admit it. Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” she said, but she now sounded more wary than relieved. Samuel Stanley also looked puzzled, though he was doing his best not to show it. Bushell wasn’t in the habit of giving in so tamely. He didn’t intend to give in now, either. Doing his best to match Kathleen’s smile, he said, “Since you’ve proved yourself such a fine amateur detective, Dr. Flannery, it’s only right that you move up into the first division and join the professional team. If you’re going to look into the theft of The Two Georges, you can lend your talents to Sam and me and accompany us on our investigations.” That way we can keep an eye on you all the time, he didn’t add, not aloud. “What say you?”

Kathleen Flannery might have been headstrong, but she was anything but a fool. Her eyes sparked angrily as she saw the trap Bushell had set for her. “What happens if I say no, Colonel?”

“Most likely, you’d be investigated as a material witness,” Bushell answered. “I expect the questioning would be most thorough. You’d certainly have to leave off chasing The Two Georges.”

Her lips silently shaped a word he would not have used in her company. She had sand, though. “My solicitor would prepare a brief for a barrister to take to court to stop this harassment.”

“Harassment?” Bushell’s eyes were large and round and innocent. “You are a material witness, Dr. Flannery. Finding out what you know and how you know it may well prove relevant to this case.” That was all too true, any which way. “As for any court action, well, you can’t do much investigating while you’re testifying.”

She looked as if she hated him. She probably did. Somewhere back in his mind, that hurt, more than he wanted to admit even to himself. He was used to ignoring that kind of hurt, though, ignoring it and going forward. Getting The Two Georges back came first. If you didn’t do your duty, you didn’t deserve the privilege of citizenship in the British Empire.

“Very well, Colonel,” she said at last, her voice wintry. “If this is the only way you will permit me to do what I should be doing, I must agree.” The expression on her face told how happy she was about agreeing.

Bushell sent her a thoughtful look. She too took the concept of duty seriously. To him, that was one in her favor ... for the moment. Elgin Goldsmith and his comrades had fought as bravely as any soldiers for what they saw as their duty, too. Maybe duty, like an electric torch, needed to be pointed in the right direction before it could illuminate the path one should take. He shook his head, unhappy at the thought. Duty should be simple, straightforward.

“What’s first on the list for today, Chief?” Samuel Stanley asked. “Shall we visit the RAMs or Major Shikalimo?”

“Shikalimo, I think,” Bushell answered after a moment’s thought. “One thing Dr. Flannery has done for us is show us that we RAMs don’t know everything we should about what’s going on in the Six Nations. If anyone does, it’ll be the local constabulary.”

“I saw a public telephone just outside the restaurant,” Stanley said, pointing. “Let me go ring him up. How soon do you want to see him?”

“As soon as he’ll see us,” Bushell said.

“Right. If you’ll excuse me . . .” Stanley hurried out of the room. When he came back a couple of minutes later, he said, “Half past nine. And I have exact directions on how to get there - it’s about a five-minute walk, they say.”

“Good enough.” Bushell dipped his head to Kathleen. “Shall we meet in the lobby at nine-twenty, then?”

“Of course,” she said. He winced at the distaste she packed into two words. As he and his companions walked to the Doshoweh constabulary station, Bushell watched the Iroquois watching them. He drew no special notice himself; a fair number of white men were on the streets. But Kathleen Flannery’s auburn hair made people give her second looks, and several frankly stared at Samuel Stanley.

That amused Stanley more than it annoyed him. Chuckling, he said, “Not a whole lot of Negroes in the Six Nations, looks like. Maybe I ought to do a little dance, to give them something to remember me by.”

Some of the locals spoke English, others their own purring tongue. Newsboys hawked papers in both languages. Now that it had been brought to his notice, Bushell saw that the typefaces the Doshoweh Sentinel used were like those on the photograph the Sons of Liberty had sent with their ransom demand. He slapped his hand against the side of his leg. If only someone had noticed earlier!

The constabulary station was a nondescript four-story building of muddy yellow brick. Bushell’s first thought was that it would fall down in an earthquake. Doshoweh, though, didn’t need to worry about earthquakes the way New Liverpool did.

Some of the constables inside the station were using the Iroquois language. Bushell noticed that. A lot of Spanish-speakers lived in Upper California, but English was the universal language of government there. But the affiliation of the Six Nations to the NAU was looser than that of ordinary provinces. Major Shikalimo met them in the lobby. When he saw Kathleen Flannery, he looked a question to Bushell. After introducing her to him, Bushell said, “Dr. Flannery has been conducting her own independent investigation of the theft of The Two Georges. Now that we’ve run into each other here, we’ve decided to join forces.” He spoke in carefully neutral tones, hiding both his annoyance that Kathleen hadn’t listened to him and her resentment at being forced into an alliance.

“I see,” Shikalimo said in a voice just as neutral, and then, as if reminding himself, “Well, this is an unusual case in almost every way.” He knew Bushell hadn’t told him anywhere near the whole story, then. When he saw he wasn’t going to get any more of it, he gave half a shrug and went on, “If you’ll come with me to my office, I’ll show you what we’ve been doing here the past few days.”

His office was bigger than the one Bushell had back in New Liverpool, but Bushell wasn’t the chief’s nephew, either. On the wall opposite Shikalimo’s desk was a large print of The Two Georges; on the wall in back of his desk hung a copy of the same portrait of Sosehawa as the one in Bushell’s hotel room. He pointed to it. “By the way it’s displayed, that picture is as important here as The Two Georges is all over the NAU. Who was Sosehawa, if I may ask?”

Kathleen Flannery stirred, as if she knew the answer. But Bushell had aimed the question at Shikalimo, and she left the reply to him. He said, “He was the man who made my people what we are today. He went east, into the province of New York, in 1821, and there he had a - well, you might call it a religious revelation.”

“He was a prophet, then?” Bushell had already heard that some of the Iroquois still followed their Great Spirit, so it stood to reason that they’d had prophets.

But Shikalimo smiled. “Only in a manner of speaking. Sosehawa saw all the new things brewing in New York province: the steamships in New York harbor, the very beginnings of the railroad, things like that. He realized we of the Hodenosaunee did not even know how to smelt iron. If we needed guns to defend ourselves, we had to buy them from white men, for we could not make them ourselves. We were living on the white man’s sufferance, for if whites wanted to brush us aside, they had the power to do it.”

“And Sosehawa changed all that?” Bushell said.

“Exactly. Thanks to him, schools went up all through the Six Nations. We brought in smiths and craftsmen of all sorts, and learned from them all we could. It did not happen overnight, but in a couple of generations’ time we took our place beside the white man as full equals, and no longer had to beg scraps from his table.”

“What’s finest about that is how you’ve kept your own traditions, too,” Kathleen Flannery said. “You’ve taken what you found useful without throwing away everything you had before.”

“That’s what we’ve tried to do, at any rate,” Shikalimo said. “It’s not always easy. With so many more of you people, with your books and films and wireless, we sometimes feel swamped. But we can speak of history another time. On to the matter at hand.”

Bushell leaned forward in his chair. “Good. What have you done since you learned the Sons of Liberty have been operating out of Doshoweh? How do we go about discovering who they are and where in the city they might have concealed The Two Georges?”

“That is the question,” Shikalimo said, with an intonation that left no doubt he was quoting from Hamlet. He spread his hands. “So long as they stab sub rosa, it’s - difficult. What we’ve begun to do is look close at those white men named Joe and Joseph and even Josiah who have let their distaste, shall we say, for the Iroquois become obvious to us. Things would be easier if your letter writer had a name less common among you.”

“Don’t I know it,” Bushell said. “That is a place to start, I suppose, but the Sons, at least the ones involved in this crime, are liable to be too clever to give themselves away so readily.”

“I am assuming as much,” Shikalimo answered. “I don’t look to find them among the men who are outspoken in their scorn. But like associates with like. Some of the men who loudly hate us will have quiet friends who are more dangerous.”

Samuel Stanley glanced over at Bushell. He nodded slightly. Bushell nodded back. Sachem’s nephew he might be, but Shikalimo thought like a police officer. Kathleen Flannery was looking out the window at Doshoweh and missed the bit of byplay. Shikalimo didn’t. He said nothing, but glanced down at his desk as any well-bred man might have on finding himself praised.

He said, “I gather from your colleagues, gentlemen, that you RAMs identified the headline in the newspaper pictured with The Two Georges as coming from the Doshoweh Sentinel, and that is what brought you here.”

“In part, yes,” Bushell said. “Dr. Flannery made the identification independently, with help from an associate of hers, Dr. Gyantwaka - I hope I’m not pronouncing that too badly.”

“You’re understandable,” Shikalimo said: faint praise. “Yes, Gyantwaka is from my clan. We’re all very proud of him, though he and I are only distantly related.” Bushell felt the triumphant smile Kathleen sent his way. Before he could respond to it, Shikalimo went on, “That photograph, by the by, was not sent to the Sentinel, or to any other part in Doshoweh.”

“As I said, the villains here are clever,” Bushell answered. “They tried to delay recognition of the headline for as long as they could.”

“Yes,” Shikalimo said, drawing the word out into a thoughtful hiss. His eyes suddenly came to intent focus on Bushell - he had the makings of a formidable interrogator. “You say you came to Doshoweh in part because of the headline from the Sentinel. The rest would have involved your discovery of the note signed by the man named Joe?”

That led to Bushell’s recounting yet again the story of the gunfight at Buckley Bay, and of finding the envelope postmarked Doshoweh and the note among the rubbish the Sons of Liberty had thrown away. Shikalimo clicked his tongue between his teeth, not quite in the same way a white man would have. “Not only clever men, but terribly in earnest,” he observed. That intent look returned to his long, high-cheekboned face. “Did you bring the envelope with you when you came here? Perhaps by studying the postmark, we can learn from which part of the city it was sent.”

“Major Shikalimo, I was hoping either you or the local RAMs would say something like that.” Bushell reached into the inner pocket of his jacket. “Here you are.” He handed the Iroquois constable the envelope.

Shikalimo looked at it for a moment, then set it on his desk and picked up the telephone. He spoke rapidly in his own language, paused to listen, spoke again, and hung up. A couple of minutes later, another Iroquois whose neat queue contrasted oddly with his spotless white laboratory robe came into Shikalimo’s office. The major’s guests might as well not have been there for him; he had eyes only for the envelope. Carrying it with the care another man might have given the Holy Grail, he departed.

“If it can tell us anything, Ganeodiyo will make it speak,” Shikalimo said.

“Shall we invite Captain Greeley and Lieutenant Lucas here, so they can learn whatever your man finds out?” Bushell said; he was not about to try to pronounce the name of the Iroquois technician on one hearing.

“Very well, since you ask,” Shikalimo said, and rang the local RAM offices. When he got off the telephone, he glanced Bushell’s way in some amusement. “You seem surprised at my hesitation.”

“Not at all,” Bushell said, though astonished would more accurately have described his feelings. Anywhere else in the NAU, constables would have leaped to seek help from the RAMs. Shikalimo spoke to precisely that point: “Within our borders, Colonel, the Six Nations are autonomous, and we take that seriously. From time to time, officials of the Crown, no doubt with the highest of motives” - an eyebrow-twitch showed irony - “have tried to lessen that autonomy. As might not surprise you, we’ve also been training lawyers since Sosehawa’s time.”

They made idle chitchat while waiting for Greeley, Lucas, and Ganeodiyo. Bushell said, “I heard last night that Washington” - he nodded toward the print of The Two Georges - “is reckoned the only white man to reach your heaven.” When Shikalimo nodded, the RAM went on, “How did he earn such a literally singular honor?”

“Not least by enforcing, for a while at any rate, the ban on white settlement west of the Appalachians His Majesty’s government had laid down in 1763,” Shikalimo answered. “Eventually, of course, even King Canute couldn’t have held back the tide, and the ban was lifted. But the thirty-five years it was in force enabled us to consolidate as a nation, and set the stage for Sosehawa’s reforms. Washington could have turned a blind eye to the ban; it would have been a popular thing to do. But he upheld the law. We honor him for that.”

It occurred to Bushell that the Iroquois no doubt viewed the spread of British settlers and provinces in a light different from the one shone on it during his school days. Who could say which perspective, if either, was the true one?

Sylvanus Greeley and Charles Lucas arrived just then, making him lose that train of thought. “Thanks for including us,” Greeley told Shikalimo; he recognized he was here with the Iroquois’s permission. Both local RAMs accepted Bushell’s introduction of Kathleen Flannery with what he thought of as polite horror. Since he outranked them, though, they had to make the best of it. Ganeodiyo returned a couple of minutes later, triumph lighting his solemn features. “Deohstegaa district, on the lakeshore,” he declared. “Now we know where to focus our efforts.”

“Good work,” Shikalimo said in English, and then added several sentences in the Iroquois language. Then Sylvanus Greeley spoke in the same tongue, not with great fluency but plainly making himself understood. Ganeodiyo answered; they went back and forth for a minute or so. Greeley turned to Bushell. “I’m conveying our gratitude.”

“Thank you,” Bushell said. He was impressed the local RAM could do so in the language of the Six Nations. He’d picked up a fair amount of Spanish since coming to New Liverpool, but Spanish came easy to a man who spoke French and had had Latin drilled into him since boyhood. Acquiring Iroquois struck him as an altogether more difficult undertaking.

“That will help us narrow down our search, as Ganeodiyo said.” Shikalimo spoke with great satisfaction.

“We shan’t neglect the rest of Doshoweh, but we will concentrate on men with homes or businesses in that part of the city.”

“The Great Spirit has guided our hunts for longer than the memory of our people reaches,” Ganeodiyo said. “He will smile on our work again.” With a nod to Shikalimo and a grudging one to Sylvanus Greeley, he left the office.

“Forgive him,” Shikalimo murmured to Bushell. “He thinks those who don’t speak our language are slightly less than human. He might almost be an Englishman in that regard.”

The major had a knack for coming up with quietly devastating asides. Having got in the way of one, Bushell felt like an airship with a punctured coronium cell. Rallying, he said, “How can we help you in sifting through whatever evidence you have about white men here who aren’t fond of you Iroquois?”

“Colonel, meaning no disrespect, but that would be difficult for you,” Shikalimo answered. Bushell was irked to see Sylvanus Greeley nodding agreement. Shikalimo went on, “Most of it is not evidence in the proper sense of the word, certainly none that would stand up in a court of law. We know some of the whites who despise us. We’ll ask around in the Deohstegaa district and undoubtedly uncover the names of more. All that, of necessity, is work for our local constables. My people would not be nearly so forthcoming for white men - or even for the charming Dr. Flannery.” He smiled at her. That irked Bushell, too, partly because she was a suspect in his mind and partly because he didn’t want anyone else trying to charm her. He made himself stick to the business at hand. “Very well, Major, you have a point.”

“I’m not putting you out like maize to parch, I promise you that,” Shikalimo said. “Once we have an idea of whose associates may be involved with the Sons of Liberty, we’ll need to avail ourselves of your expertise in picking our most likely targets.” He laughed. “We of the Hodenosaunee have been trying to understand the white man, and the Englishman in particular, for several hundred years now, with results decidedly mixed.”

Bushell got that punctured feeling again. For the most part, Shikalimo behaved like any well-educated subject of the British Empire, but showed now and then that he was at bottom the product of a very different tradition. He seemed to enjoy showing that, rocking Bushell back on his heels and making sure he himself was not taken for granted.

An exceedingly decorative young Iroquois woman in a calico tunic and blue broadcloth skirt, both elaborately embroidered with beadwork, came into the office and smiled at Shikalimo as she set some papers on his desk. Several pairs of male eyes followed her when she swayed away. Charles Lucas laughed. “Ah, Major, it’s a rough duty you have here.”

“What?” For a moment, Shikalimo obviously hadn’t the slightest idea what the RAM was talking about. Then he snapped his fingers. “Oh. I understand. You mean Dewasenta. She is pretty, isn’t she? Till you alluded to it, though, I’d never thought of her that way. She’s of the Turtle clan, you see.”

He spoke as if that explained everything. It evidently explained enough to Lucas, who nodded and subsided. Once again, though, it gave Bushell the feeling that, although Shikalimo spoke impeccable English, he used it to convey alien thoughts. Coughing a little, he said, “Excuse me, Major, but - “ He paused, unsure how to go on.

Shikalimo got him out of the predicament by laughing out loud. “But you haven’t the slightest idea what I’m talking about, you mean. We Hodenosaunee divide ourselves into eight clans, in two groups of four: the Wolf, Bear, Beaver, and Turtle on the one hand, and the Deer, Snipe, Heron, and Hawk on the other. I am of the Bear clan; men of the Bear clan from all the Six Nations are my brothers, and so, in lesser degree, are Wolves, Beavers, and Turtles. And the women of those four clans are my sisters. We do not marry our sisters any more than you do, Colonel.”

Kathleen Flannery nodded along with Shikalimo; she’d known what he was going to say. Bushell hadn’t. Eliminating half the women of your nation struck him as unduly narrowing your choices. . . until he remembered that, with all the women of the NAU from whom to choose, he’d picked Irene. A man could be dead wrong under any circumstances.

Samuel Stanley asked, “Do boys and girls from the wrong clans ever fall in love and run away from the Six Nations to be married?”

“It happens,” Shikalimo admitted, sounding unhappy about it. “Our laws and customs go no farther than our own borders, while the ways of the rest of the NAU seep in. I blame your romantic wireless shows and especially the cinema for many of the troubles of our young people.”

“I blame them for some of the troubles of our young people,” Bushell said. Shikalimo blinked; maybe he’d been expecting an argument. “Will there be anything else, Colonel?” he asked, with a glance toward the papers Dewasenta had brought him.

Bushell wished he could answer yes. No matter what Shikalimo promised, he worried that the Iroquois would put him on the shelf. But, in the end, he had to shake his head, get up, and go. To preserve his sense that he was doing something useful while waiting for Shikalimo to call, Bushell spent a good part of the next three days on the telephone. He rang Major Gordon Rhodes, who had nothing much new to report. He’d grilled Titus Hackett and Franklin Mansfield, but the printers denied any connection between the gold roubles they’d received from the Queen Charlotte Islands and the four Sons of Liberty who’d lived at Buckley Bay. So far, no one had managed to unearth evidence they were lying and bring it to any of His Majesty’s prosecutors.

He rang Jaime Macias, but the New Liverpool constabulary captain had even less to tell him than did Rhodes. The constables had had no luck running Tricky Dick’s killer to earth, and hadn’t turned up any new Nagants used in other crimes, either.

“Knives and coshes and one chap with more imagination than brains who tried to hold up an ironmonger’s shop with a crossbow, but no more rifles,” Macias said. “Can’t say I miss them, either.”

“A crossbow?” Bushell said, bemused. “There’s something you don’t see every day. What happened?”

“He shot his bolt - and missed.” Macias chuckled. “Whereupon the shopkeeper hit him several fine licks with a fireplace poker. He’ll be in hospital for a couple of weeks before they can try him, and in gaol afterwards rather longer than that, unless I’m very much mistaken.”

“Here’s hoping you’re not,” Bushell said. “You haven’t helped me much, but you have brightened up the day. A crossbow!” He let out a highly unprofessional chortle.

His next telephone call went to Victoria. “Dreadful business you went through at Buckley Bay,” Sir Horace Bragg said once the connection was made. “Shocking. A terrible loss, too; Felix Crooke was the best we had when it came to dealing with the Sons.”

“This time they dealt with him,” Bushell said with grim irony. “It’ll hurt us down the line, too. It can’t help but.”

“Try not to take it too hard. From all I’ve heard, you did everything in the most proper fashion imaginable,” Bragg said.

“Yes, and a crown with that will buy me a cup of tea,” Bushell replied. “They don’t pay off for doing things properly. They pay off for getting them done.”

“Doing them properly is most often the way to get them done,” Bragg said. Bushell didn’t answer, since that was true. Bragg went on, “Your investigations certainly seem to be leading you all over the NAU. You’re in the Six Nations now? Who would have imagined the Sons operating there?”

“None of us, evidently,” Bushell said. He didn’t mention Kathleen Flannery. He didn’t want Bragg clucking at him over his mild treatment of her; he had enough on his plate without that. “I feel I’m chasing shapes in the mist, and whenever I get close to one, it disappears. The clock is ticking, too.”

“Well, I can tell you something,” Bragg said in confidential tones. “At a reception at the French embassy last night, Sir David Clarke was seen talking most animatedly with Duke Orlov. Was seen by me, in fact; I was there. Nothing I can prove, nothing I can take to Sir Martin - as if he’d listen to me anyhow - but damn me if I like it.”

“I don’t, either,” Bushell said. “It’s a good job you went back to the capital.” The idea of Sir David and the Russian ambassador to the NAU getting together for a cozy tête-à-tête at some formal reception revolted him. “Pity you couldn’t hear what they were saying.”

“My French isn’t all it should be,” Sir Horace confessed, “and that’s the language they were using.”

Under his breath, he added, “It’s just like Clarke to be fluent in it, too.”

Bushell spoke reasonably good French himself, but he understood what Bragg meant. French was the language of people who called themselves sophisticates the world around, and a good many of the sophisticates were degenerates masquerading under the politer name - Sir David Clarke immediately sprang to mind there. And furthermore, he thought with the British citizen’s almost inborn suspicion for any language not his own, French sounded slimy.

Bragg asked, “How are you doing there, Tom?” Bushell gave him a précis, again not mentioning Kathleen Flannery. When he was through, Sir Horace said, “Sounds like you’re doing a splendid job. Keep up the good work, and by all means keep me apprised of your progress.”

“I shall, sir,” Bushell said, and hung up. He didn’t think he was doing a splendid job. A splendid job would have meant The Two Georges on display back in New Liverpool, and him back there, too, and Felix Crooke in Victoria, worried about the Sons but not too much. He scowled, grimaced, and wished he had a drink.

However mildly he was treating Kathleen Flannery, he didn’t trust her very far. One of the things he didn’t trust her about was going off on her own and learning who could guess what without telling him about it. She’d already shown she did things like that, or she wouldn’t have been in Doshoweh complicating his life.

The only way he saw to be certain she didn’t wander off by herself was to make sure either he or Samuel Stanley stuck close to her all the time. He ended up doing a good deal more of that than Stanley did. He told himself that was because it was part of the case he could personally control. The explanation was true; not even the unsleepingly watchful part of him that demanded perfection could deny it. But neither that part of him nor any other could deny that he found Kathleen attractive, either. He would have seen a good deal of her in the course of duty, had The Two Georges stayed safe in New Liverpool. He might well have tried seeing her off duty, too: who better to show her the sights?

He didn’t know the sights of Doshoweh. The Six Nations had seldom crossed his professional path even before he moved to the southwestern part of the NAU. The Iroquois kept to themselves and stayed out of trouble, characteristics he heartily favored. The only case involving them he remembered was one where they’d asked for RAM help in keeping smugglers from sneaking rotgut into the Six Nations without paying the hefty tax they slapped on it.

Even had he known the sights, Kathleen Flannery likely would have been happier seeing them without him. He’d meet her for breakfast each morning in the restaurant attached to the Hotel Ahgusweyo. The small talk, he thought gloomily, was very small indeed. She had an Irish temper, at least when it came to nursing grudges. He thought it unfair that she reckoned keeping her from hurting the investigation a grudge, but she did.

Another trouble was that Doshoweh itself didn’t have a lot of sights. A museum dedicated to the achievements of Sosehawa took up one day and filled Kathleen with more enthusiasm than she’d shown lately, but left Bushell discontented.

Kathleen noticed. “He was a great man,” she declared, as if he’d denied it. By the light that came into her eyes, she was spoiling for a fight.

“Well, what if he was?” Bushell answered. “The ancient Greeks turned their great men into demigods. From what I saw in there, the Iroquois have done the same thing. You’d think the Great Spirit was whispering into Sosehawa’s ear every step he took.”

“He’s a hero to them - in the mythological sense of the word - and he’s earned it, too,” she said.

“Without him, they might have been overwhelmed, the way so many Indian nations were. It’s only natural for them to make him out to be larger than life.”

Stubbornly, Bushell shook his head. “Remembering the real man and his real accomplishments is more important. Make him out to be half-magical and you take away the chance of having more like him.”

“That’s a reductionist view of history.” By the way Kathleen said it, she might have been accusing him of eating with his fingers.

He spoiled that by ignoring her tone and taking it for a compliment. “Yes, I do try to reduce things to facts. They’re easier to deal with than opinions, and more reliable.” He might have said more than that, but it occurred to him that opinions were meat and drink to the curator of an art museum. How could you objectively decide which painting was better than all the rest? You couldn’t, but people got rich claiming they could. That was a fact, and an unsavory one.

Kathleen said, “If all people thought of when they saw The Two Georges was the painting itself, the Sons of Liberty wouldn’t have bothered stealing it.”

“It’s important because it reminds us of some facts and what sprang from them,” Bushell retorted. “The Sons have a low opinion of those facts.”

“That’s not what I meant.” She exhaled in exasperation. “The opinion people have about The Two Georges - “

“ - Is a fact we need to bear in mind while we investigate,” Bushell broke in. “For instance, I’ll be heartily glad if I never see another reporter again, but I’m sure I will.”

She still glared at him, but now, perhaps, with grudging respect. “You are a very stubborn man.”

“Thank you,” he said, though he knew she hadn’t intended that for a compliment, either. “Shall we head back to the hotel for supper?” After a moment’s hesitation, he offered her his arm. After a longer moment’s hesitation, she took it.

After supper, he spoke to the concierge. The results of the conversation were as he’d hoped they’d be. At breakfast the next morning, he said in elaborately casual tones, “I’m told the hotel operates an omnibus service up to Niagara Falls. The journey takes about forty minutes each way, they say, and gives between two and three hours for sightseeing and a light luncheon. Seems a pity not to see the falls when we’re so close. Would you care to join me on the ‘bus?”

She sipped at her tea before answering, “Well, why not? Since everything here is going at a snail’s pace, we might as well see what we can. When does the omnibus leave?”

“Ten o’clock,” he said, and risked a smile. He was glad she’d said yes, and at the same time angry at himself for inviting her. It wasn’t the right way to go about things, and he knew it: too many unanswered questions still floated around her. But if you’re going to keep an eye on her, you might as well enjoy yourself doing it, he thought. That just made him scowl down at his toast; he knew a rationalization when he saw one, even if he was the fellow who made it.

Samuel Stanley paused at the restaurant entrance to look around, spotted Bushell and Kathleen, and hurried over to them. “Good thing I was still up in my room,” he said. “Shikalimo just telephoned. He wants all three of us at the constabulary building right away - says he has a list of prospects and their friends and acquaintances for us to look over.”

“We’d better go do it, then,” Bushell said, rising from the table. So much for Niagara Falls ran mournfully through his mind. Kathleen Flannery also got up. Bushell turned to Stanley. “We can go on ahead, if you want. Get yourself some breakfast.”

“They’ll be able to feed me something there, I expect,” Stanley said. “As long as it’s not that. . . hommony mush, I’ll be all right.” Bushell suspected he’d swallowed an uncouth adjective, or perhaps even a participle, in the nick of time.

Sylvanus Greeley and Charles Lucas were sitting in Shikalimo’s office when Bushell and his companions got there. He nodded to his fellow RAMs, and to Shikalimo. He gave the Iroquois constabulary major credit for marshaling all his resources no matter how jealously he guarded his own autonomy. Shikalimo said, “I’ve sent out for tea and coffee. Has anyone missed breakfast?” When Samuel Stanley nodded, he asked, “What would you like? I’ll get it for you.” He put his hand on the telephone but waited for Stanley’s reply before picking it up.

“Anything easy,” Stanley said. “A ham and cheese sandwich, say.”

“However you like,” Shikalimo answered, and made the call. After he hung up, he remarked, “You’re a man of simple pleasures, Captain. I think I’d have chosen something on the order of strawberries in cider and fried lake clams, perhaps with waffles and maple syrup afterwards.”

The proposed combination made Bushell’s mouth water. Along with Shikalimo’s elegant accent, it reminded him of how well the Iroquois had done as clients of the Empire and how, while retaining many of their own ways, they’d also borrowed from the British.

Stanley’s mind ran in more immediately practical channels. “If I ate that much, I’d fall asleep on you. A ham sandwich is working food.”

“Then let’s get to work,” Shikalimo said. “We’ve pinpointed four white men in the Deohstegaa area who, mm, have been known to be imperfectly polite in their references to the folk of the Six Nations.” He coughed discreetly. Bushell could imagine for himself the racialist remarks that cough implied.

“Who are these people?” Sylvanus Greeley asked. “I presume you’ve never had grounds for holding any of them.”

“No, we’ve not,” Shikalimo said. “A man is free to express his opinions, no matter how unpalatable his neighbors may find them. This is a principle of your law, by the way, not our own, and I confess I sometimes wonder as to its wisdom. But I digress. The men in question - the questionable men, if you prefer - are Donald Morton, the lake-shipping magnate; Augustus Northgate, the grocer; Solomon York, who runs a printing establishment; and James Stonebreaker, who is, oddly enough, a mason by trade.”

“There are printers involved with the Sons in New Liverpool,” Bushell said. “York would go to the top of my list just on account of his trade.”

“So far as we know, his shop has not produced anything unsavory,” Shikalimo answered. “How far we know is, of course, an open question. I thought we’d agreed earlier that our likeliest targets were to be among the quiet friends and acquaintances of these men.”

“Yes, yes,” Bushell said.

Shikalimo sensed his urgency. “Here we are,” he said, handing papers to the RAMs and to Kathleen Flannery. “I hope Dewasenta did up enough carbons of these for all of us - ah, good. I also hope that, with the resources you gentlemen enjoy, you’ll be able to tell me if any of these chaps is known to be associated with the Sons of Liberty. We have nothing more on any of them than a few minor traffic offenses.”

Bushell’s eyes went down the list. The names were grouped by the man with whom they were linked. Donald Morton must have known a whole great raft of people, if he knew this many named Joe. Whether these Joes were friends or not was another question, one he couldn’t answer. None of the names on the list was familiar to him.

“Lieutenant-Colonel Crooke, I wish he were here,” Charles Lucas said.

“I’m sure he wishes the same thing,” Bushell said. “But he’s not, so we’ll have to do it ourselves.”

Instead of Crooke’s face, though, what came into his mind was a quart bottle of Jameson, stopper out and lying on the table beside it. He could smell the whiskey, could feel the heft and the round smoothness of the bottle in his hand, sweet to the touch as a woman’s breast, could hear the gentle gurgle as he poured amber fire over ice or straight down his throat.

Someone said something. He looked up, startled. The whiskey vision had been so vivid, he’d almost lost himself in it. There was a hell of a thing. He’d been soberer than usual these past few days, but the bottle had hold of him even when he wasn’t drinking.

Evidently for his benefit, Shikalimo repeated, “Does anyone see any names he recognizes?”

None of the RAMs said anything. Shikalimo looked down at his desk. His faith in the omniscience and infallibility of the NAU’s top police force had just gone down a peg, or maybe two. He was a young man yet, Bushell thought. He had a lot of disappointments ahead of him yet. Then, hesitantly, Kathleen Flannery said, “I don’t know if this is the same Joseph Kilbride as the one I’ve heard of before, but there is a man by that name who collects art from the later colonial period, just before the days when the Union was organized.”

Bushell sent her a sharp glance. He’d been wishing Shikalimo hadn’t given her the list. If she saw on it someone whose name she knew, she could easily keep quiet about it and alert him. Now she’d identified somebody. He didn’t know what to make of that. Maybe she was sincerely trying to help the investigation. Recovering The Two Georges would put her career back on the rails. But if she put suspicion on the wrong man, the right one could carry on unhindered. Sylvanus Greeley had a more basic question: “What does his taste in art collecting have to do with the case?”

Shikalimo shifted in his seat. As clearly as if he’d shouted it, Bushell could read what he was thinking: this man may be a RAM, but he has no imagination. He was thinking the same thing himself. But he let Kathleen explain. She, after all, had raised the issue.

By the tone she took - rather like a teacher explaining fractions to a room full of restive trade-school students - her estimate of Greeley’s candlepower was also none too high. “In the 1760s, there was quite a bit of tension between the mother country and the colonies, and talk of their breaking away. The Sons of Liberty still think that would have been a good idea. It might have happened - or might have been tried, anyhow - if His Majesty’s government and the leaders of the colonies hadn’t worked out a modus vivendi.”

“I still don’t see - “ Greeley began, but then he held up a finger. “Oh, wait. Maybe I do. You’re saying that anybody who’s interested in art from that time would be interested in other things, too, like us breaking off from England.”

Greeley wasn’t an idiot after all. A muttonhead, perhaps, but not an idiot. “And a half plus a half really is one,” Bushell muttered under his breath. “God save the King-Emperor.”

Kathleen sent him a curious look, but then nodded to Sylvanus Greeley. “That’s my idea, anyhow - or that he may be interested in those other things, too. For that matter, I don’t know whether this is the Joseph Kilbride who collects art. It’s not the most common name, but it’s not precisely a rare one, either.”

“I can find out this Kilbride’s avocations, I expect,” Shikalimo said. He too looked toward Bushell, silently asking whether the track was worth pursuing. Bushell sent back an almost imperceptible nod. He didn’t like relying on Kathleen, but he didn’t see that he had much choice. Had she named Joseph Kilbride after someone else had proposed a different target for investigation, he would have thought a red herring more likely.

Shikalimo picked up the telephone. He spoke into it in his own language, but every now and then a name or phrase in English would come through: Joseph Kilbride, colonial art, Sons of Liberty. Hearing them embedded in the throaty Iroquois language bemused Bushell. When Shikalimo hung up, he returned to English to say, “I’ll have four or five people checking on that. We should know soon.”

Sure enough, the phone rang in less than ten minutes. Shikalimo listened, murmured, “Oh, jolly good,” and laid the handset in its cradle. “Hasanoanda gets things done,” he said with a smile. “He rang up the Doshoweh Sentinel, as being most likely to know what hobbyhorses a white man might ride. Sure enough, this is the Joseph Kilbride of whom Dr. Flannery has heard.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Samuel Stanley said.

“I propose we get over to Mr. Kilbride’s residence and ask some questions of him,” Sylvanus Greeley boomed, as if he’d found out about Kilbride through his own skill at detection. Since the move was so obvious even a proved muttonhead could see it, Bushell forbore to argue.