The Two Georges

II

Along with Bushell and Stanley, the miners stared in horror at the crumpled corpse of the Steamer King. One of them, his eyes wide, his mouth an O of dismay, looked from the still-spreading pool of blood beneath Honest Dick’s head to the tunics of nearly identical hue the two RAMs wore. Seeing those tunics, recognizing them for what they were, may have helped him build up steam to talk.

“Wasn’t us, sirs,” he said. “Wasn’t none of us who done him, swear to God it wasn’t.”

“That’s right,” another picketer said amidst a growing mutter of agreement. “Wouldn’t have minded breakin’ the handle of my sign here over the damn fool’s head, that there’s a fact. But to blow it off like this here - ” He gulped and turned away, as if about to be sick.

Two miners pointed north toward the brush-covered knoll across Sunset Highway from the grounds of the governor’s mansion. “Shots came from over there somewheres,” one of them said.

“That’s correct,” said one of the blue-suited New Liverpool constables who’d been making sure the picketing coal miners didn’t do anything more than march and chant. “Tricky Dick - uh, Honest Dick came out here to the location of his decease and began a, well, a harangue, to which some of these here gentlemen responded, mm, intemperately. He was just commencing his reply when the perpetrator caused him to expire.”

Another New Liverpool constable trotted toward the mansion, saying, “I’m calling Captain Macias.”

Bushell nodded to the New Liverpool constable who’d spoken first. “This is your case, sir. RAMs have no primary jurisdiction in homicide cases, even if the homicide is by gunfire. My adjutant and I will, of course, help you in any way we can.”

The other constable was having a tough time pushing his way into the mansion against the stream of distinguished people emerging to gape at the murder that had been done. “Fools,” Samuel Stanley said.

“If that maniac is still out there, he can pot anybody he pleases.”

“Jesus God, you’re right,” the New Liverpool constable near him exclaimed. He turned to a couple of his comrades. “Hank, Mortimer, go cross the highway and see if you can flush the bugger out.”

Hank and Mortimer obeyed with an alacrity that spoke well of their training and their courage. Bushell wouldn’t have cared to try chasing down a man with a rifle who’d already proved he wasn’t afraid to use it, not in pitch darkness and carrying nothing more lethal than a truncheon. A newspaper photographer touched off a flashbulb next to him, then another reporter on the far side of the Steamer King’s corpse used one, too. That second flash made Bushell blink, filled his eyes with tears, and left a glowing purple spot in the center of his vision. More and more flashbulbs went off; Honest Dick would have nothing to complain about over the publicity his passing would get.

“We’ve got to dust off the obit and bring it up to date,” one of the reporters said to the photographer beside him.

“Yeah,” the photographer answered, squatting to find the shot he wanted. As with policemen, his trade made him think of violent death as part of business, something to be dealt with rather than exclaimed over. “Who d’you suppose would want to do in old Tricky Dick?”

“Somebody who bought a car from him,” the reporter said with a cynical chuckle. He saw Bushell’s uniform and asked him, “Who would want to kill Honest Dick, anyhow?” He poised pencil over pad to take down the RAM chief’s reply.

“I wouldn’t try to guess - that’s your job,” Bushell said. The reporter snorted. Bushell went on, “I’m sure the New Liverpool constabulary will investigate the case most thoroughly - murder by firearm is as vicious a crime as the statue book knows.”

“We’ve already five of ‘em here this year, and it’s only June,” the reporter said. “What do you think of that?”

“I’m against it,” Bushell answered solemnly. “I’m also against cannabis-smuggling and the white slave trade, and for motherhood, the King-Emperor, and the right of trial by jury. Go ahead and quote me on any of those.”

The reporter snorted, then scraped a lucifer against the sole of his shoe and used it to light a cigarillo. When he had the nasty little cheroot going, he said, “Awright, Chief, I oughta know better than to expect a straight answer from you. Next time I will.”

“Fat chance,” Bushell said. The reporter laughed out loud.

Headlamps glowing, a steam lorry chuffed around from behind the mansion and rolled slowly out toward Sunset Highway. The driver stared back at the murder scene and paused to talk for a moment with the lantern-carrying New Liverpool constable at the end of the driveway before vanishing into the night. Governor Burnett came up to Bushell. He was not used to sudden and violent death, and averted his eyes from Honest Dick’s body as he asked in a shaken voice, “Colonel, what does this, this tragedy do to the showing of The Two Georges?”

“I don’t know how interested people will be in the painting now, but you may carry on for all of me,” Bushell answered. “Since the victim here was murdered from a distance, none of your guests is a suspect. I do suggest, though, that you keep everyone downstairs until the New Liverpool constables finish taking statements. They’ll want to know what made Honest Dick go outside just then, what he said, things of that sort.”

Samuel Stanley said, “I wish the fellow out there hadn’t let that lorry leave, not that the driver would have told us anything we won’t hear from half a dozen other people.”

“Maybe more than half a dozen.” Bushell pointed back toward the mansion. Governor Burnett’s guests crowded the entryway, jostling one another to get a better view of a spectacle vastly different from the one they had been invited here to see. Moreover, servants’ staring faces - like those of the laborers at the airship port, a mixture of light and dark - filled every ground-floor window. The mansion staff and the chauffeurs who had brought some of the richer guests and those more enamored of display were also getting an eyeful.

Burnett, on the other hand, still seemed unable to look at the corpse. “Someone will have to telephone his daughters,” he said.

“You’ll have their numbers?” Bushell asked.

The governor nodded. “My secretary will have them in his files.” He turned back to the mansion, shouted, “Wilberforce!” After some delay, a tall, thin, dignified black man made his way out through the crush. Burnett explained what he wanted.

“I shall locate those numbers directly, excellency,” Wilberforce said. He glanced down at Honest Dick’s body for a moment, then delicately looked away. “You’ll not want me to place the telephone calls, though?”

“No, no.” Burnett sighed. “It’s my responsibility, and I shall attend to it. I just wish to God I didn’t have to.” There, for once, Bushel! believed him perfectly sincere. The governor clapped a melodramatic hand to his forehead. “What else can go wrong now?”

As if to answer him, a loud, insistent bell began to ring, somewhere deep inside the mansion. People looked around and stared at one another, trying to figure out where the noise was coming from and what it meant. A woman shrieked, then cried out, “Mother Mary, that’s the alarm!” It was Kathleen Flannery’s voice.

Bushell threw himself into the crowd at the entranceway, Samuel Stanley beside him. “Move!” they shouted. “Make way, there!” Some of the guests would have moved if they could, but everyone was too tightly packed to make that easy for anybody. Bushell knifed through the crush like a Rugby three-quarterback. He realized he’s stuck an elbow in the ample belly of the lieutenant governor of Upper California only when that worthy grunted and folded up like a concertina. At last he got past the knot of people gathered in the front door to the mansion. He sprinted down the hall toward the stairway. Though he ran with everything he had in him, Samuel Stanley passed him ten yards before the foot of the stairs. His adjutant might have carried a few extra years, but he also had longer legs.

Both RAMs bounded up the stairway two and three steps at a time. Halfway up, Bushell wondered what sort of weapon he’d use to stop the thieves. He yanked his ceremonial sword out of its scabbard. He was no fencer, but the thing had a point. It might frighten someone, if nothing more. The idea of actually having to use such a silly toy certainly frightened him.

As he ran in dress uniform down the first-floor hall toward the Cardigan Room, he thought of how much he looked like the British marines in the patriotic mural on the wall. The marines, though, had had the sense to carry rifles.

Stanley stopped dead in the doorway to the Cardigan Room. Stumbling to a stop behind him, Bushell almost ran him through. “Let me by,” he panted. Silently, his adjutant stood aside. The wall on which The Two Georges had hung was bare. Bushell took in that single catastrophe first. Everything else followed, a piece at a time.

One of the RAMs guards sprawled on the floor, unconscious or dead. Unconscious - he was breathing. The other guard seemed to be holding himself up by main force of will. He staggered toward Bushell, croaking in a thick, slurred voice, “Sh-sir, regret to report that - ” He clutched his stomach, doubled over, and was noisily sick on the fine Persian carpet.

The stink of the vomit mixed with another odor, strong, heavy, sweetish. Bushell had smelled it before, but couldn’t place it. Stanley did. “Chloroform!” he exclaimed.

“You’re right,” Bushell said. “I had a dentist use it to pull a wisdom tooth, years ago. That explains what happened to these poor devils, but not how.” He turned to the conscious guard, who was wiping at his mouth with a pocket handkerchief. “How did they get close enough to chloroform you?” How did you let them get that close?underlay the question.

“We heard the shots outside, sir, and then everyone raising the most hellish commotion.” The guard still spoke slowly, often pausing between words, partly from the direct effect of the anesthetic, partly because his memory was still blurred. Gathering himself, he went on, “Hiram and I, we stuck to our post here, of course. Then these three RAMs came running into the room.” He grimaced ruefully. “Or men in RAM uniforms, I should say. We found out about that.”

Behind Bushell, someone let out a gasp of horror. He spun around and saw Kathleen Flannery staring at the blank wall in the Cardigan Room with as much horror as the cloakroom girl had shown at Honest Dick’s bleeding corpse. “Yes, it’s gone,” he said roughly, and turned back to the guard. “Did you recognize them?”

“No, sir.” The guard started to shake his head, then stopped abruptly; it must have hurt. “But we didn’t think anything of it. I don’t know what went through Hiram’s head, but my guess was that they were boys from out of province, here along with The Two Georges.”

Kathleen shook her head. “We relied on the authorities in each town for security personnel. Up to now, everything had gone perfectly.” She withered Bushell with a glance.

He wanted a drink - Christ, he wanted a bottle. The first interesting woman he’d met in a long time, and now she had to hate him. And, he realized, he had to suspect her.

The guard said, “We found out what they were, sir, when one of them pulled out his revolver and told us to put up our hands and freeze if we wanted to go on living. The other two went round behind us and jammed these stinking sponges over our faces. They were professionals, sir, nothing else but. We never had a chance to try and fight back, and next thing I knew, I was lying on the floor and the painting was gone. I hit the alarm button, and - ” He shrugged helplessly.

A flashbulb went off behind Bushell, printing his shadow for a moment on the wall where The Two Georges had hung. Some of the reporters had broken away from the murder in front of the mansion, then. He turned around and said, “Boys, no more of that. This is a crime scene under investigation. No photographs in the papers.”

“Why the devil not?” The photographer who’d just shot was screwing in a new bulb, and hissing between his teeth because the old one was hot. “How can photos from out in the hall here mess up your investigation?”

“Because if they’re published, they’ll help tell the criminals what we know,” Bushell answered. “You know me, most of you. You know I play fair. I tell you what I can as soon as I can. Till then - ” He gestured to Kathleen Flannery to come inside, then closed the door to the Cardigan Room in the reporters’ faces.

“They won’t be happy,” Samuel Stanley warned.

“Too bad for them,” Bushell answered. Then something new occurred to him. “Sam, go and tell those New Liverpool constables not to let anybody else off the mansion grounds, no matter what.” He slammed one fist into the palms of his other hand in lieu of swearing. “What do you want to bet that lorry pulled out of here withThe Two Georges in its bed?”

Stanley groaned. “I have the terrible feeling you’re right, Chief, but just in case you’re wrong, I’ll go talk to the New Liverpool men.” He opened the door. The hubbub outside doubled. When he closed it again, the noise redoubled, angrily.

Bushell took another look around the Cardigan Room. Close to the wall opposite the one on which The Two Georges had hung sat a lacquered metal box with a crank on one side and a trumpet-shaped speaker coming out of another: a wind-up phonogram, of the sort a young man and his sweetheart might take on a picnic in the country.

“That has no business being here,” Kathleen Flannery said, pointing to it.

“No business of ours,” Bushell said in abstracted tones; he’d seen such portable phonograms at crime scenes once or twice before. “But I know what tune the platter inside will play.”

“What tune is that?” The vertical crease between Kathleen’s eyebrows said she didn’t know what Bushell was talking about, or care.

“An old one called ‘Yankee Doodle,’“ he answered, and watched her narrowly.

“God in heaven,” she said quietly. “The Sons of Liberty. Our worst nightmare.” The Sons of Liberty had been a tiny splinter group for more than a century, and seldom impinged on the awareness of the average citizen of the NAU, who was not only content but proud to be a subject of the British Empire. But a curator in charge of The Two Georges had to know extremists might want to strike at the symbol of imperial unity. No, not might - did.

If she was faking, she was a good actress. A couple of hours before, she’d just been K. FLANNERY on a list to Bushell; for all he knew, she was a good actress. Someone knocked on the door to the Cardigan Room. Bushell was ready to ignore it, but Samuel Stanley called, “It’s me, Chief.” For his adjutant, Bushell opened the door. Stanley came in with two men: a dark-skinned fellow in New Liverpool blues, complete with a turban matching his uniform, and a graying blond man wearing a doctor’s white coat with several fresh bloodstains on it. Stanley pointed first to one, then to the other. “This is Sergeant Singh, a New Liverpool forensics specialist, and here we have Dr. Foxx, the coroner.”

“We’ve met, I think,” Bushell said to Foxx, who nodded. The RAM colonel turned to Sergeant Singh.

“Can you dust that phonogram for fingerprints, Sergeant?” He pointed to the wind-up machine by the far wall. Samuel Stanley had not noticed it before. Recognizing it for what it was, he whistled softly.

“Oh my yes, I shall certainly do that,” the forensics sergeant said, his words precise but his accent singsong and nasal.

Dr. Foxx stooped by Hiram, the still-unconscious RAM. “Pleasant, working on a live one,” he remarked, seizing the fellow’s wrist. “Makes for a bit of a change.” He glanced at his pocket watch for a measured half minute, then stowed it in his waistcoat. “Pulse is a firm seventy, respiration also normal. Nothing to do but wait till he comes round, I’d say.”

“Closest thing to good news I’ve had tonight, I’d say,” Bushell answered. “They called you out to look at Honest Dick?”

“Just so.” With a grunt, Foxx got to his feet. “He might have survived the throat wound; witnesses say that one was first. But the bullet to the head - ” He held out his hand, fingers in a fist, thumb pointing down. “Nasty thing. Glad I don’t see those every day, that I tell you.”

Sergeant Singh said, “No fingerprints do I find on the outer casing, no, none.”

“In that case - ” Bushell took out his pocket handkerchief and covered his own fingers with it as he worked the catch that held the phonogram closed. He opened the lid. Inside, along with the labelless shellac platter he’d expected, was a sheet of cheap notepaper. He glanced to Sergeant Singh. “May I?”

The forensics man nodded. Taking care not to touch the paper with his bare fingers, Bushell unfolded it. Singh read the two-line typed message with him. So did Samuel Stanley and Kathleen Flannery, who had stood over him while he opened the phonogram.

THE COLONIES SHALL BE FREE.

WASHINGTON WAS A TRAITOR.

“Bastards,” Stanley muttered, and then, “I’m sorry, ma’am; I’m upset.”

“It’s all right,” Kathleen Flannery said, her voice quivering with suppressed fury. “They are bastards. To steal The Two Georges . . .”

“It’s a blow at the Empire itself,” Bushell said grimly. On his knees, he moved backward, away from the phonogram. He took out his cigar case and showed it to Kathleen Flannery. After a small, helpless shrug, she nodded. She had no reason to keep him from smoking in the Cardigan Room now. Sergeant Singh dusted the inside of the phonogram case and the platter with a fine white powder, then used what looked like a miniature badger-hair shaving brush to sweep it away. “Also I see no fingerprints here,” he said when he was done. His liquid brown eyes were gloomy. “Very careful they must have been.”

“The Sons of Liberty? They’re good at what they do.” Bushell looked round for an ashtray. Not finding one, he knocked his ash onto the floor. Samuel Stanley ground it into the carpet with his heel. Bushell wrapped his handkerchief around the crank and wound up the phonogram. When he released the crank, the platter began to spin. He picked up the tone arm, again without touching it with his bare skin, and set the needle in the outer groove of the platter.

“Yankee Doodle” blared out. Bushell listened to a few bars of the jaunty, hateful tune, then lifted the needle off the platter and flicked the catch that kept the spring from unwinding further.

“You didn’t need to do that, Chief,” Samuel Stanley said quietly. “The phonogram here, the note inside they tell us it was a Sons of Liberty job. Even without ‘em, I’d have bet it was, just from how the villains carried it off.”

“Maybe I’m thorough, the way Dr. Flannery said. Or maybe I just like hurting myself.” Bushell shook his head like a man emerging from cold, deep water. “That’s about all we can do here right now. We’ll keep this room sealed off until Sergeant Singh and our own people can go over every inch of it, top to bottom. I want to talk with this Captain Macias before I call Sir Horace Bragg back in Victoria.”

“But he’s just here for the mur - ” Kathleen Flannery stopped. When she began again, she sounded almost accusatory: “You think there’s a connection.”

“Between blowing Tricky Dick’s head off and stealing The Two Georges , you mean? No, just a coincidence.” Bushell’s tone belied his words.

“But what if he hadn’t decided to come out just then?” she asked, frowning. “They couldn’t have known he would.”

“They probably would have shot someone else,” Bushell answered. “One of the picketers, one of the constables, one of the reporters out there . . .” He shook his head. “No, no one would have cared if they shot a reporter.” At Kathleen’s scandalized expression, he added, “Joke,” and knew he was telling some of the truth.

Leaving Samuel Stanley to hold the fort in the Cardigan Room, Bushell went out into the hallway and fought through the mob out there toward the stairs. Photographers fired enough flashes to make him think he’d been looking straight into the sun. Reporters yelled questions at him. He tried to limit his answers to the obvious: yes, The Two Georges was gone; yes, he thought there was a connection between the shooting of the Steamer King and the theft; no, he had no idea where the purloined painting was at the moment.

“Do you think a group you know stole the painting?” someone asked. “Or was it somebody, say, who wanted The Two Georges for itself and would try to pass it off as a copy or something like that?”

“We’ll be investigating that for some time,” Bushell answered, wishing he thought he was dealing with a fanatical art collector.

“Are the Sons of Liberty involved?” another reporter called.

“We’ll be investigating that for some time,” Bushell repeated in carefully neutral tones. “Now if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen - ”

He had to answer the same questions from the herd of dignitaries who now would not be seeing The Two Georges. Men and women of wealth, power, and influence, they waxed indignant when he was no more forthcoming with them than he had been with the press. Jonas Barber shook a forefinger in his face and almost stuck it in his eye. “See here, Colonel,” the little bald town council president snapped, “you have an obligation to make amends for your incompetence.”

“My only obligation, Your Honor, is to get The Two Georges back.” Bushell pushed past, leaving the politico dissatisfied.

The New Liverpool constables had cordoned off the area around Honest Dick’s corpse. They did not object, though, when Bushell stepped over the tape they’d laid down to keep back curious civilians. A brown-skinned man in a wide-shouldered, double-breasted suit of brown worsted came up to him, hand extended. “You would be Colonel Bushell?” he asked. “I’m Jaime Macias, captain of grand felonies.” Macias was a handsome man in his mid-thirties - young for a captain - with black hair so thick it amounted almost to a pelt and bushy black side whiskers and mustache. He glanced up toward the first floor. “I think we are going to be living in each other’s pockets with this investigation.”

“I think you’re right, Captain,” Bushell said, shaking the New Liverpool man’s hand. He glanced toward the body. “Found out anything past the obvious here?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” Captain Macias answered. He had an intonation, the ghost of an accent, that said his family had spoken Spanish in the not too distant past. “We’ve recovered one of the bullets.”

“The devil you say!” Bushell burst out. “That is good news.”

Macias nodded. His hair, shiny with pomade, glistened under the lights of the mansion. “We were lucky, too - it’s not badly damaged,” he said. He glanced down at the rubberized sheet someone - probably one of the coroner’s aides - had thrown over Honest Dick’s body. “Likely to be the one that made the neck wound, I’d say. A bullet hitting bone would have taken much more deformation.”

“No doubt.” Bushell nodded, too. When Macias didn’t go on right away, the RAM chief said, “All right, you found it. What does it tell you? Spill, Captain.”

“Interesting caliber,” Macias remarked. “It’s not a .303, which is what we thought it was when we first came upon it.”

“Interesting, indeed.” Bushell combed at his mustache with a forefinger. “Not a rifle from the British Empire, then.”

“No, not our standard caliber,” Macias agreed.

“Let me guess,” Bushell said: “A .315.”

Captain Macias shook his head. “No, it’s not a weapon from the Holy Alliance, either. With Nueva España so close, that was our next guess.”

“Well, where is it from, then?” Bushell demanded. “Prussia? One of the other German states? An Italian kingdom?”

Macias shook his head again. “It’s what some people would call a three-line rifle. Do you happen to know what a line is?”

“A tenth of an inch,” Bushell answered. “So it’s exactly .30-caliber, is it?” He ran a ringer over his mustache once more. “You don’t often see a rifle from the Russian Empire in this part of the NAU.”

“I’ve never seen one,” Jaime Macias said. “Franco-Spanish stuff, yes, that comes over the border all the time. But the Russians? No.”

“I don’t think we worry enough about the Russians, myself,” Bushell said. “The Holy Alliance is an obvious rival: France and Spain so close to England, all the wars between us and them, the long border between the NAU and Nueva Espana, the rivalries in Africa. . .. But the Russians aren’t our friends, either. They want to dominate the Germanies, they bump up against us and the Japanese in China, they loom over India and the Ottoman protectorates, and they keep that foothold along our northwestern frontier, too.”

“Alaska,” Macias said.

“We started offering to buy Alaska from them back in Victoria’s day,” Bushell said, “but the tsars kept saying no. Russians are good at no. But why would a Russian or somebody with a Russian rifle want to gun down the Steamer King?”

The New Liverpool constable glanced up toward the first floor of the governor’s mansion. He picked his words with some care: “Did I hear rightly that the Sons of Liberty may have had a hand in tonight’s events?”

“You heard rightly, Captain.” Bushell scowled. “And you have a point, too, worse luck. The Sons of Liberty will take anything they can get from anybody who will give it to them.” He scuffed a foot on the pavement; the toe of his shoe just missed a small, drying puddle of blood. “I don’t like thinking of the Russians and the Sons operating hand in glove here in New Liverpool.”

“I don’t like thinking of anything that’s happened here tonight,” Macias said somberly. “Homicide by firearm is bad enough. But The Two Georges on top of it - ” He broke off, anger distorting his regular features. Nuevespañolan blood might run through his veins, but he had any British subject’s outrage at the theft of the famous painting.

“Yes,” Bushell said. “The next thing to worry about, I suppose, is what they’ll do with - or to - the painting now that they have it.” He twisted away, more from that thought than from Macias. “As you said, Captain, we’ll be seeing a lot of each other in days to come. I’d sooner have met you under more pleasant circumstances, but - ”

“If we required pleasant circumstances, Colonel Bushell, we should have chosen a different line of work, you and I,” Macias said, and Bushell nodded.

He stepped out over the tape that fenced off the spot where Honest Dick had fallen. Most of the dignitaries had gone back inside the governor’s mansion. Bushell went inside, too, and headed for the Drake Room: with a bar set up there, that was where people - including Governor Burnett, for whom he was looking in particular - were likely to be.

He was halfway down the hall when he spotted the governor’s secretary, who would do as well as Burnett. “Mr. Wilberforce!” he called.

“How may I be of assistance to you, Colonel?” the Negro asked gravely.

“I need a telephone,” Bushell said.

“Let me take you to my office,” Wilberforce said at once. “You may use my private line for as long as you like.” He hesitated, then drew out his pocket watch. “It will be well after midnight in Victoria, Colonel. Will whomever you call be glad to hear from you?”

“With all this? Not bloody likely,” Bushell answered. “But my boss will be more angry if I wait than if I wake him.”

“The proper sort of a superior to have,” Wilberforce said, approval in his voice. He led Bushell to his office, unlocked it, and stood aside to let the RAM chief precede him in. The engraved ebony plaque on his desk proclaimed that his Christian name was Harrington. Nodding to Bushell, he said, “This, no doubt, is a conversation you will wish to conduct in privacy.” He left the office, closing the door behind him as he went.

He was the proper sort of aide to have. Bushell wondered how fully Governor Burnett realized that. He shrugged; it wasn’t his affair, and he didn’t have time to worry about it anyhow. He sat down behind Wilberforce’s desk and picked up the telephone.

A woman’s voice came on the line. “Operator Fitzwilliams speaking. How may I help you?”

“I need to place a call back to Victoria, operator. The number I want is PLassey 4782. My name is Thomas Bushell.”

“PLassey 4782,” the operator echoed. “Very good, Mr. - Bushell? Do I have that right? Mr. Bushell, yes. Your call will take a few minutes to complete, sir.”

“Then you’d better get busy, hadn’t you?” Bushell listened to the call wending its way from one phone corporation to the next across the NAU: hisses, pops, and the faint voices of operators talking to one another over the miles. His time in the army had taught him how to wait. At last, faintly, a bell chimed in his ear.

It chimed several times before a southeastern-accented voice, sodden with sleep, mumbled, “Hullo?

Bragg here.”

“Mr. Bragg, sir, I have a call for you, from Mr., uh, Thomas Bushell in New Liverpool, Upper California,” operator Fitzwilliams said.

As if he were focusing field glasses, Lieutenant General Sir Horace Bragg made his voice sharper. Sleep audibly fell away from him: “Yes, I’ll accept that call. Thank you, operator.” A click announced the woman leaving the circuit she’d completed. “All right, Tom, what’s gone wrong?” Bragg demanded.

“You wouldn’t have called at this ungodly hour if it weren’t something dreadful.” He took his mouth away from the handset; rather more faintly than he’d spoken before, he said, “It’s business, I’m afraid, Cecilia. Go back to sleep if you can.” Then, louder again: “Sorry. I’m back.”

“ The Two Georges has been stolen from Governor Burnett’s mansion, sir,” Bushell said baldly. “Almost at the same time, and probably as a diversion, Honest Dick the Steamer King was murdered by rifle fire when he stepped outside the mansion to continue a quarrel with a group of picketing coal miners parading there.”

After several seconds of silence broken only by the gentle hiss of the telephone line, Bragg whispered, “My God.” He was not an easy man to take aback, but Bushell had done it. The RAM commandant recovered quickly. “Give me all the details you know.”

“Yes, sir,” Bushell said, and obeyed. He told Bragg what he’d learned in the Cardigan Room, and what Captain Macias had told him about the murder of Honest Dick.

“Never mind the late, not particularly lamented Steamer King,” Bragg said when he was done. “We have local constabularies to run murderers to earth. I want you - in fact, I order you - to concentrate all your efforts on recovering The Two Georges. If anything happens to that painting, the NAU won’t be the same.”

“You’re right, sir,” Bushell said. On the wall to one side of the desk, Harrington Wilberforce had a fine print of The Two Georges. Till that moment, Bushell hadn’t truly noticed it: he took its presence in any official setting altogether for granted. He went on, “That was what I was going to do, anyhow.”

“Only possible course to take,” Bragg said. “RAMs deal with crimes of an interprovincial nature. If the NAU has anything more interprovincial than The Two Georges, I’m damned if I know what it is.” From his choice of words, Bushell inferred that Cecilia Bragg had gone back to sleep. Sir Horace continued, “What do you intend to do now?”

“You mean, besides slitting my wrists? Get statements from all the people here, find out where they were, whom they were with, what they saw - probably not much, but you never can tell. I especially want to talk with Hiram, the other guard who was chloroformed, when he comes around. He really may have seen something worth knowing.”

“Might could be you’re right.” Bragg hesitated, then laughed at himself. “You know I’m all in a twitter when you can hear backwoods North Carolina in the way I talk.” Bushell nodded; he couldn’t remember the last time Sir Horace had slipped so. Bragg asked, “Have you telephoned the governor-general yet?”

“No, sir. You’re the first call I’ve made; Sir Martin was next on my list.”

“I’ll ring up Sir Martin,” Bragg said. “You sound as if you have quite enough on your hands out there as things stand.”

“Thank you, sir. Please tell him I take full responsibility for the theft.”

“Don’t beat yourself too hard, Tom,” Bragg said. “If you were perfect, they wouldn’t have got away with it. You’re not perfect. Nobody is. If the world were a perfect place, we wouldn’t need police, and then you and I would both be out of a job.”

Easy enough for you to say, Bushell thought. Your career hasn’t just fallen into the jakes. But Bragg was trying to help, as best he could across close to three thousand miles. “Thank you,” Bushell repeated.

“If you’re going to ring the governor general, I’ll get back to it here.”

He hung up and started out of Wilberforce’s office to begin asking questions. Before he got to the door, he stopped and frisked himself. His snort was rueful. In dress uniform, he had neither notebook nor pencil. When he left the office, he was anything but surprised to find Governor Burnett’s secretary waiting in the hall. He explained his plight. Wilberforce ducked into the office next to his own - ”My clerk’s, you understand” - and returned with two stenographic notebooks and a pair of already sharpened pencils.

“Mr. Wilberforce, you are a wonder,” Bushell said.

“I do endeavor to provide what assistance I can, sir,” Wilberforce answered. Now armed, Bushell found Samuel Stanley, gave him a notebook and pencil, and said. “Let’s divide ‘em into two groups and run straight through it: who they are, where they live, telephone number, what they saw, and whom they saw it with. If we have a few people nobody else saw, or a small group who saw only one another - ”

“Then that may give us something to go on,” Stanley said. “Or it may not mean a bloody thing, depending.” He hesitated, then asked. “Have you rung up Lieutenant General Bragg yet?” At Bushell’s nod, he tried another question: “How did he take it?”

Bushell searched for a judicious word, and by luck found one: “Professionally.”

“Could be worse,” Stanley said, nodding. “Did you ring Sir Martin, too?”

“No. Sir Horace told me to get on with the investigation here - he’d telephone the governor himself.”

“Did he? That’s a conversation I wouldn’t mind listening in on. It should be - interesting.” Samuel Stanley’s face bore a peculiar expression, or rather lack of expression: it didn’t quite fit the prospect of the RAM commandant’s having to announce the disappearance of The Two Georges to the King-Emperor’s chief official in the North American Union. Bushell almost asked him about it, but the pressure of other matters of greater urgency and consequence drove it from his mind. The ubiquitous and apparently omnicompetent Harrington Wilberforce found him and Stanley adjoining offices. The New Liverpool constables rounded up the picketers, the reporters, the guests, and the staff of the governor’s mansion and split them into two groups, one for each RAM officer. Then the grilling started.

Hiram, the RAM guard, was the second man Bushell questioned. He was still pale and shaky from the chloroform he’d had to breathe, but eager to tell what he knew. Unfortunately, that added little to what Bushell had learned from his comrade. All three of the false RAMs had been white men. . . . Hiram managed a wan smile. “No surprise there, not if the sons of bitches are Sons of Liberty, eh, sir?”

“No.” Bushell bared his teeth, too, but more in a snarl than a smile. Not only did the Sons of Liberty want North America free from Britain, they wanted it free of Negroes, Jews, East Indians, Chinese . . . everyone but the pure and original settlers of the land - or so they said. Just how they managed to want to be rid of the Red Indians, too, Bushell wasn’t quite sure, but they did; one of their grievances against the Crown was that it had acted to slow white settlement of the continent and let a few Indian nations remain intact and locally autonomous, much like the princely states of East India. Hiram said, “Sorry I didn’t observe more closely, sir, but I didn’t give the buggers a second thought till it was too late.”

“You did the best you could,” Bushell said, sighing. “Go on, get home, get some rest. Your family will be worried about you when they hear the news, I’m sure. If you’re a praying man, spend a minute thanking God you’re alive.”

“Yes, sir, I’ll do that. Thank you, sir.” Still a bit wobbly on his pins, Hiram left the office. Before Bushell questioned the next witness, he slammed a fist down on his borrowed desk, hard enough to make pain shoot up his arm. He had more for which to reproach himself than Hiram did. Sam Stanley had said extra RAMs were about. He’d assumed they’d either come from the New Liverpool office or were traveling with the exhibition. He hadn’t asked any questions about them. That the guards had made the same mistake didn’t excuse his own negligence.

The next person in to see him was Marcella Barber, the wife of the town council head. He threw questions at her until she snapped, “See here, Colonel, I assure you I am quite as sorry as anyone else to see The Two Georges stolen, but you have no cause to address me as if you were certain I personally carried it away in my handbag.”

“How large a handbag do you carry, madam?” he asked, deadpan.

She stared, then laughed, but her eyes were shrewd as she said, “You’d sooner be screaming at yourself, wouldn’t you?”

“Mrs. Barber, whatever makes you think I’m not?” he replied mildly. She pursed her lips, then nodded, like a judge pleased with an obscure but telling citation. Bushell finished interrogating her in a much softer tone of voice.

After her came Kathleen Flannery. He couldn’t take out his anger on her; she had every right to take out her anger on him. “We’re doing everything we can to get that painting back, Dr. Flannery,” he said.

“I’m certain you are,” she said in a tone of brittle politeness. “It should never have been lost in the first place, though.”

He flipped to the next page in the spiral-bound notebook Harrington Wilberforce had given him. Scrawling Kathleen’s name at the top of the page, he asked, “Where are you staying while you’re in New Liverpool, Dr. Flannery?”

“I’m at the Hotel La Cienega, here on the west side of town. They’ve put me in room 268. It’s very close to the mansion here, and . . . Why are you smiling, Colonel?”

“People in New Liverpool have a habit of using Spanish names to make a place or a business sound exotic,” he answered. “They often don’t care what those names mean. That one, for instance, means ‘the swamp.’“

“Does it?” she said. “That is amusing - or would be, under other circumstances.”

Under other circumstances, Bushell would have tried to find out where she was staying for reasons which had nothing to do with police business. As it was, he said, “I know you were part of the crowd at the entrance to the mansion when the alarm went off. I saw you there, and heard you cry out.”

“That’s correct,” she said tonelessly.

Bushell jotted the information on the page under her name. He already knew it, but his would not be the only eyes examining these notes. He asked, “Whom did you recognize as also being there?”

She frowned in thought. “So much has happened since then - Let me see. The lieutenant governor had just stepped on my foot, and apologized very handsomely for it. One of the town councilmen was right in front of me, blocking my view. I don’t recall his name, but he was the wide-shouldered chap with the walrus mustache.”

“That’s Lionel Harris,” Bushell said, writing it down. “Was his wife with him?”

“She was in the teal, wasn’t she? Yes, she was there. And I remember noticing the viola player from the string quartet, and thinking he shouldn’t have left the Drake Room.”

“I agree with you. You’re certain it was the viola player?” Bushell had enjoyed the Vivaldi, but hadn’t paid much attention to the musicians performing it.

Kathleen Flannery nodded decisively. “Yes - he was the blond with the hair spilling down over his collar.”

“I shall take your word for it.” Bushell wondered if she’d noticed the man because she found him attractive. She had the right, of course. Somehow that only made the idea more irksome. “Anyone else?” he asked. “Any of your colleagues from the exhibition?”

“No, I didn’t see any of them,” Kathleen said, “but I resent the implication that they might somehow be involved in this, this - horrible crime.”

“Dr. Flannery, you may condemn me for allowing The Two Georges to be stolen, or you may condemn me for being too zealous in pursuit of the thieves.” Bushell held the pencil between his two index fingers, one at the point, the other at the rubber. “In logic, though, I truly don’t see how you can condemn me for both those things at once.”

“Logic, at the moment, has very little to do with it,” she retorted. “I do know, though, that my assistants would no more harm The Two Georges in any way than I would.”

Bushell looked down at his notes. He wished he could be sure she was above suspicion. He knew too well that he couldn’t. Answering her indirectly, he said, “Many of the most infamous crimes are committed by people in positions of trust. Because they’re trusted, they can do things more ordinary criminals can’t.”

“Not this time, Colonel Bushell,” Kathleen Flannery said through tight lips and clenched teeth.

“I hope you’re right, but I can’t overlook the chance that you might be wrong,” Bushell said. “Not very long ago, if you’ll remember, you called me thorough. I was pleased to take it for a compliment.”

That reached her. Her nod was reluctant, but it was a nod. “All right, Colonel, I understand that. As you’ve said, you have your job to do. It’s just that - ” She didn’t go on, but buried her face in her hands. She saw her career crashing in flames like a hydrogen-filled airship from her great-grandfather’s day, just as Bushell did his. He said, “I - will - get - it - back, Dr. Flannery.”

She looked up at him. “You sound like the Lieutenant Colonel Bonaparte, blasting the rabble away from the Bastille. He must have used that same tone of voice when he said, ‘Ils ne passeront pas.’ “

“He made himself a great man in France that day,” Bushell answered. “I don’t care about being a great man. I just want to beat those” - the presence of a lady inhibited him in language - ”individuals who are laughing up their sleeves because they got the better of me here tonight.”

“That’s all well and good, but what will they do with The Two Georges while they have it?” Kathleen asked. “If any harm should come to the painting - ”

“What will they do with it?” Bushell had already started thinking about that. He rubbed at his mustache.

“One of two things, I think. They may destroy it, perhaps publicly, to show what they think of the British Empire and of the NAU’s being part of it.” At that, Kathleen Flannery looked physically ill. Bushell went on, “Or they may try to ransom it. That might fit their sense of humor, to get some great sum of money for The Two Georgesand then turn around and use that money to subvert the union the painting symbolizes.”

“That would be - better,” Kathleen Flannery said. “The NAU can defend itself; the poor painting can’t.”

She hesitated. “The Sons of Liberty seem to have quite enough money for subversion already. Where do they get it?”

“Their political wing, the Independence Party, isn’t clandestine; we’re sure some party dues end up with the Sons, though we’ve never been able to prove it in a court of law,” Bushell answered. “But they’ll take money from whoever will give it to them. The Holy Alliance and the Russians both funnel gold their way now and then: if we’re tied up with troubles inside the Empire, that works to their advantage.”

“The Russians?” Kathleen Flannery bit her lip. Bushell nodded. She said to him, “Because you’re thorough, you’ll be investigating me in more detail than just these few questions, won’t you?” He nodded again. She sighed. “In that case, let me tell you now that a few years ago I was engaged to be married to a gentleman named Kyril Lozovsky. He was the assistant commercial secretary at the Russian ministry in Victoria.”

Bushell wrote the information down without changing expression. “You were engaged, you say? The marriage did not take place?”

“No.” Kathleen looked down into her lap. A blush mounted from her throat to her forehead. “A couple of weeks before we were to wed, I learned Mr. Lozovsky was also engaged to a young woman back in Tsaritsin. I’ve heard he married her after he went back to Russia, but I don’t know that for a fact.”

“I - see,” Bushell said. “Thank you for telling me. If Mr. Lozovsky already had a fiancée in Russia, he was less than a gentleman to acquire one here.” And if something like that had happened to her, no wonder she hadn’t married since. One rotten apple must have spoiled the barrel of men for her. He shook his head. Too bad. Flipping his notebook to the next empty page, he said, “I think that will be all for now. I have a great many more people to question tonight.”

“I understand,” she said. “I’ll do everything I can to help get The Two Georges back.”

Bushell was in the middle of his next interview, this one with a plump pastry chef, when someone knocked on the closed door to the office he was using. He frowned. “Excuse me,” he told the chef, and went to the door, expecting some impatient dignitary demanding his turn at once. But instead of an indignant politico or a wealthy baronet, he found himself face to face with Harrington Wilberforce. “I beg your pardon for interrupting, Colonel,” the Negro said, “but the governor-general has telephoned Governor Burnett, and also expresses the desire to speak with you. If you will please follow me?”

“Of course,” Bushell said, and hurried with Wilberforce past the line of prominent people, coal miners, mansion staff members, and reporters outside the office he had commandeered. A couple of them called after him as he went. “Back as soon as I can,” he said several times. Governor Burnett’s office was decorated and furnished in the same gaudy Rococo Revival style as the observation lounge in the Upper California Limited had been. It was also big enough to swallow both Wilberforce’s and Bushell’s offices with room to spare. The governor sat behind an oak dreadnought of a desk. He spoke into the telephone: “Here he is, Your Excellency.” He thrust the handset at Bushell.

“Your Excellency?” Bushell said. “How can I help you?”

“The greatest service you can do me, Colonel Bushell, and do the people of the North American Union, is to recover The Two Georges unharmed, and quickly.” Even across a telephone connection spanning the continent, Sir Martin Luther King’s deep, rich voice was unmistakable. It made Bushell want to push the investigation even harder than he was already.

“I’ll do everything I can, Your Excellency,” he said. He had to fight down the urge to hang up on the governor-general and rush back to interrogating the pastry chef.

“I’m sure of that, Colonel, and I shall pray for your success.” A minister before he entered politics, Sir Martin was able to imbue that sentiment with far more sincerity than most officials could have conjured up. He went on, “Lieutenant General Bragg gave me a brief summary of what happened in New Liverpool, and Governor Burnett has told me more. I want to hear the details from the man on the spot, however.”

“Yes, sir.” Bushell knew he was the man on the spot in more ways than one. Unconsciously, he drew himself up to attention, as if reporting to a military superior. He gave Sir Martin Luther King the same account he had to Horace Bragg, and also described what he was trying to learn from questioning the people who had been in and around the mansion: “I have no direct reason to suspect anyone here of aiding the thieves. I’m trying to eliminate indirect reasons as well.”

“A prudent course, Colonel.” Sir Martin sighed. “You are certain the Sons of Liberty are responsible for this - outrage?”

By way of reply, Bushell whistled the opening bars to “Yankee Doodle.” Not recognizing the song from that snatch, Governor Burnett looked puzzled. Harrington Wilberforce’s lean features contracted further: he knew what Bushell was whistling.

So did Sir Martin Luther King. “When Rome fell, Colonel, the barbarians poured in from over the borders,” he said, sighing again. “We raise up our own barbarians inside the nation.”

“That’s true, Your Excellency. What comes over the border for our barbarians is money and guns,” Bushell said.

“Yes, you told me they used a Russian rifle to murder the Steamer King,” Sir Martin said, as if reminding himself. He clicked his tongue between his teeth. “That grasping little man courted fame all too successfully, I fear.” Bushell did not answer; the governor-general seemed to be talking more to himself than to anyone else. When Sir Martin resumed, he was brisk once more: “Carry on there, Colonel. All the resources of the North American Union shall be at your disposal. And as a symbol of that and a show of the national government’s concern for this horrendous crime, I, Lieutenant General Bragg, and leading members of our staffs will depart by train for Liverpool as soon as dawn breaks here, to lend you our support in this time of shock and crisis.”

“That’s kind of you, Your Excellency, but, between the RAMs and the New Liverpool constabulary, we have everything we need here for the time being,” Bushell replied quickly.

“Good of you to say so, but my plans are already in motion,” Sir Martin answered. Bushell said the only thing he could: “Yes, sir.” Without a doubt, Sir Martin would make a speech every time the train stopped. Without a doubt, he would arrange for it to stop a great many times. Without a doubt, once he got to New Liverpool he would not only make more speeches but spend the time when he wasn’t making speeches looking over Bushell’s shoulder. Without a doubt, Sir Horace would be looking over Bushell’s shoulder, too. And, without a doubt, so would all the bright young solicitors on Sir Martin’s staff and all the bright young investigators on Sir Horace’s. And, as if that weren’t enough, Sir Martin’s chief of staff was Sir David Clarke. Had Bushell thought Sir David Clarke would stay back in Victoria, he would have been willing to put up with the rest. But he was grimly certain Clarke would accompany the governor-general.

Sir Martin said, “I know you still have a long night ahead of you out there, Colonel, so I shan’t keep you any longer. I’ll see you in three days’ time. Good night.” He hung up. The line went dead. Bushell hung up the telephone. “Is there anything I should know from that?” Governor Burnett asked.

“As a matter of fact, there is: Sir Martin will be coming out to lend his support to the investigation. He’ll be here in three days.” Bushell bared his teeth in what a wolf might have used for a smile. “Huzzah.”

He found his own way back to the office he’d borrowed from Wilberforce. For some time, he became an interrogating machine, asking questions and scrawling down answers with next to no conscious thought in the process. Finally, to his exhausted surprise, he discovered no one left waiting outside to be interviewed.

Two people were still standing in front of the office Samuel Stanley was using. Bushell took one of them back into his own temporary office and grilled her. The moment she’d left, he realized he didn’t remember a thing she’d said, not even her name. Shaking his head, he glanced at the notebook. No, it didn’t matter. The notes were there.

He walked out into the hallway again. Now only Stanley stood there, looking as worn as Bushell felt.

“What time is it, anyway?” Stanley asked. He shook his hand, trying to work feeling back into it. Bushell took out his pocket watch. “Quarter to two,” he answered. “God, what a night.” The hall, the whole mansion, was eerily quiet. The two RAMs were a goodly chunk of the people still awake inside the massive building.

Stanley held up his notebook. “I didn’t get anything that leapt right out at me. How about you?”

“The same, I’m afraid. A lot of people who didn’t see anything much.” Bushell sighed. Witnesses so often disappointed. Then, remembering, he held up a forefinger. I don’t suppose you’ve heard this yet - ”

He recounted his conversation with the governor-general.

“Sir Martin and Sir Horace and their staffs?” Samuel Stanley said when he was done. He rolled his eyes. “They’ll all just stand around telling us what to do, and then they’ll blame us when their brilliant ideas don’t work.”

“You wouldn’t expect them to blame themselves, would you?” Bushell said. “No help for it, either. They all outrank us.” He covered a yawn with his hand. “Lord, I’m worn.”

“Me, too,” Stanley agreed. “Phyllis is resting in one of the guest rooms. I’ll wake her up and take her home in our car. You ought to go back to your flat and get a little rest.” He assumed Bushell intended to be at RAM headquarters at eight o’clock. He was right.

Even so, Bushell protested. “Then she’ll have to bring you in tomorrow - your steamer’s still downtown. I’ll take you back there to pick it up.”

“No, sir,” his adjutant said firmly. “That would cost us close to an extra hour apiece before we finally got to bed. We’ll be running on coffee and smoke tomorrow as is; we’ll need as much sleep as we can find.”

He spoke with a platoon sergeant’s insistence.

Bushell surrendered. “You’re right.” Learning when to obey your sergeant was not part of the standard officer’s training course, but Bushell, like any subaltern with promise, had picked it up in a hurry. “Tell Phyllis I’m sorry I ruined her evening.”

“She’ll be all right,” Stanley said. “The bed in there looked more comfortable than the one at home.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Bushell’s voice went bleak. “She didn’t have the chance to see The Two Georges.”

“Oh.” Samuel Stanley looked down at his shoes. “We’ve been friends a long time now. She’ll probably forgive you in eight or ten years.”

His delivery was so perfect that Bushell flinched before he saw the smile his adjutant was hiding. He wagged a finger at him. “God will get you for that, Sam, and if He doesn’t, I will.”

“Go home and go to bed, Chief.”

“Right.” Bushell trudged out to the cloakroom. His uniform cap and Samuel Stanley’s were the only ones still on their pegs. The cloakroom girl had long since retired to the servants’ quarters. Bushell retrieved his own cap. He left a couple of shillings under an ashtray, where the girl would be more likely to find them than anyone else, and walked out into the night.

The New Liverpool constables had taken Honest Dick’s body away. Only their tape and the large, dark stain on the pavement spoke of what had happened in front of the governor’s mansion. His Henry and Phyllis Stanley’s little red Reliable were the last two machines left in the visitors’ carpark. He got into his car, turned up the burner to make sure he had plenty of pressure for the trip home, and drove out toward Sunset Highway.

He had the road almost entirely to himself. Few headlamps besides his own were to be seen. The street cleaners and rubbish haulers wouldn’t be out and about for another hour or so, while even the latest of the late-night theater crowd had for the most part sought their beds. Bushell snorted when that thought crossed his mind. The neighborhood in which he lived had a far larger proportion of the late-night hooligan crowd than that devoted to the late-night theater. The suburb of Hawthorne, its bucolic name notwithstanding, was a working-class town not far from the airship port. He’d had a fancier residence before he came to New Liverpool, but. . .

“A single man doesn’t need fancy digs,” he told the black, empty street. It did not argue with him. He parked the steamer in front of his block of flats. When he got out, he made sure the car’s doors were locked. In most neighborhoods, he wouldn’t have bothered, but Hawthorne abounded with light-fingered types. He’d taken a couple of steps toward the entrance when he remembered the bags in the boot. He went back and got them and carried them upstairs.

He was glad no one saw him in his dress uniform. It would have ruined his reputation among his neighbors. So far as he knew, none of them had the slightest idea how he made his living. He preferred it that way.

He set the bags down in front of his door. One key opened the cheap lock the landlord had installed. Another drew back the much sturdier deadbolt Bushell had paid for when he moved into the flat. He plopped the bags down by the door, closed it, and locked both locks. Only then did he reach up and yank the chain on the ceiling lamp near the doorway.

The furnished flat was astringently neat: a soldier’s housekeeping, not a woman’s. Everything was exactly and obviously where it belonged, and it belonged where it was for a reason that was practical, not decorative. The coffee table in front of the sofa and the end table by it were bare and clean, as if waiting to be shown to a prospective new tenant.

Only a wireless receiver, a phonogram, and several bookcases gave the room any individuality. They all belonged to Bushell; he’d brought them into the flat. The bookcases were bare of ornamental gewgaws. The books in them were grouped by subject (police work; militaria; history; half a shelf of Greek and Latin classics from his university days; the works of Pope, Swift, Defoe, and Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson filling out that shelf; a few modern historical novels) and alphabetically by author within each subject.

Bushell opened the suitcases. He put soiled clothes in a duffel bag he kept in the hall closet. Tomorrow no, later today, it was - he would take them to the cleaning establishment around the corner. He stripped off his dress uniform, folded tunic and trousers, and set them in the carpetbag he would take to headquarters come the dawn. The RAMs had their own cleaning establishment for such articles of dress. He laid his sword by the bag.

Undershirt, shorts, and socks went into the duffel bag. The pyjamas he pulled from a dresser drawer in his bedroom were folded as precisely as if they, like his dress uniform, were liable to be inspected without warning.

All the patent medicines on the glass shelves below the bathroom mirror also stood in ranks at attention. He reached for his toothbrush and the red-and-white tin of tooth powder, then drew back his hand. Barefoot, he padded back out to the kitchen. The liquor bottles in the pantry above the sink were lined up in a row. He poured a hefty dollop of Jameson into a tumbler, drank it down, replaced the bottle, washed the glass, dried it, and put it away. Then he brushed his teeth, set the loudly ticking alarm clock on the nightstand by the bed, and settled down for three hours’ sleep. The telephone rang. He jerked bolt upright in bed. He didn’t know how long he’d been asleep. He did know it hadn’t been long. He groped for the telephone with one hand and the nightstand lamp with the other. A call at this time of night had to be important: Sir Martin Luther King, Sir Horace . . .

“Hullo? Bushell here,” he said in a voice that sounded much like his own.

“Good morning, Colonel Bushell.” Whoever was on the other end of the line, he sounded indecently cheerful for the hour. That meant he was a reporter. Reporters thought they could call anyone at any time for any reason. They had stories to write, after all. “This is Ted McKenzie of the New Liverpool Ledger. I wonder if you could give me a brief statement on the murder of Tricky Dick” - he used the Steamer King’s unflattering nickname with relish - ”and the theft of The Two Georges.”

“I can give you a very brief statement: go to hell.” Bushell slammed the handset down on the hook.

“Newshounds,” he muttered. He turned off the light and lay down on his back, hands clasped behind his head. His heart was still pounding in his chest from being jolted out of exhausted sleep. He breathed slowly and deeply, trying to calm himself. Initial startlement faded, but not the anger at Ted McKenzie’s gall. He wondered how long he would need to fall asleep now.

He was still awake fifteen minutes later when the phone rang again. This time it was a reporter from the North American Broadcasting Corporation. Like McKenzie, she put the accent in Bushell’s name on the first syllable, as if it were bushel. He declined to give her a statement, too, though in more temperate terms than he’d used with the fellow from the Ledger. When he hung up after that second call, he felt more resigned than furious. This was the biggest story in the NAU for years. The bright glow of publicity wouldn’t make investigating any easier, either. He wished he could do something about that, and knew he couldn’t.

The real sun would be rising too soon. Bushell turned out the bedside lamp, flipped over onto his side, and did his best to sleep. In his army days, he’d had a knack for dropping off whenever he got the chance. Somewhere, over the years, he’d mislaid it.

Even had he found it, it wouldn’t have done him much good. The telephone rang twice more in the waning hours of the night: a reporter from the New Liverpool Citizen-Journal and another from the Toronto American. “I’ll schedule a press conference for this afternoon.” Bushell said at last, yielding to the inevitable.

Thanks to the interruptions, he’d had a bit more than an hour’s sleep when the alarm clock went off beside his head like a bomb. Groggily, he picked up the telephone. “Bushell.” Only when the clock kept on clattering did he realize what it was and turn it off.

He got into the bathtub and stood under a cold shower for as long as he could bear it. Emerging with the shivers and chattering teeth, he shaved, dressed, and went into the kitchen. He had tea canisters in the same neat row as his liquor bottles - Earl Grey, Lapsang Souchong, Irish Breakfast, vintage Darjeeling, blackcurrant. He ignored them all and made himself a pot of coffee with twice as much of the ground bean as he normally would have used. While it was brewing, he cut two slices from the loaf of egg bread on the counter by the stove, toasted them, and spread them with orange marmalade. He washed down each slice with a large, black cup of the snarling coffee.

Thus fortified, he picked up the carpetbag and his ceremonial sword and went out to face the day.