The Two Georges

XVI

“No word we’ve heard, anyhow.” Bushell didn’t want to call back to RAM headquarters to confirm that, or to America’s Number Ten, either. “So we go on.” He turned to Lieutenant Hammond. “If nobody else is grilling Michael O’Flynn, fetch him in here.”

“Right,” Hammond said, and, to Stanage, “Come along, you.” The brewing magnate went with him. He looked as worn as Bushell felt, but hadn’t yielded anything. Maybe that was because he didn’t know anything, but Bushell didn’t believe it for a minute. For once in his life, he wished he were an Okhrana man, to feel easy about using more than a slap in the face to squeeze answers from prisoners. Michael O’Flynn looked sleepy and rumpled when Hammond brought him into the interrogation room. He nodded to Bushell, then glanced around the room at the other RAMs and constables. “One of me and a lot of you this time,” he remarked to Bushell. “All right, have your innings.”

Bushell nodded back, not quite happily. Down a quarter-mile under Charleroi, O’Flynn and the other miners could have done anything to him; if they all told the same story afterward, they might well have got away with it, too. They’d let him do his job and go back above ground. Did he owe O’Flynn anything for that? Nothing he would ever have admitted. Even so ...

“What are you doing in Georgestown?” he demanded.

“Visiting my cousin,” O’Flynn answered. “His name’s Dermot Coneval; he sells ale for Stanage Brewery.”

They could check that. Bushell had the bad feeling it would turn out true. The Sons had shown enormous skill at nesting their lies in defensible truths. He said, “You just happened to be here now, the same way you just happened to have driven Joseph Kilbride to the Charleroi train station.”

“That’s right,” O’Flynn said. “Pure chance, every bit of it.”

“That’s your story?” Bushell stood up and stepped closer to the miner, leaning over him and staring down. O’Flynn waited for the hand or the fist or the sap he so plainly expected. Go ahead, his eyes said. Renege. Both Bushell’s hands stayed by his side. “I say you’re a liar.”

“You can say it,” O’Flynn answered. “I’m not calling the shots here.” He laughed wryly. “Not hardly, not me.”

“I say you’re a liar,” Bushell repeated, “and I say I can prove it. You don’t understand the fix you’re in, O’Flynn. We haven’t just netted up you little fish. We’ve got Sir Horace Bragg himself.” Fire for effect.

“He’s down at RAM headquarters, leaking like a cheap roof in the rain.”

“Who?” O’Flynn said. “I never heard of any Sir Horace Whoozis.” Bushell thought he was telling the truth again, but had trouble being sure. Everything the Sons of Liberty did fit into intricate patterns, and when you tried sorting out what was true and what wasn’t, as with O’Flynn’s cousin, you found yourself wandering bewildered after something briefly glimpsed in a maze of mirrors.

“Why did you try to run away from me, then?” he asked. On something like that, he had hope of a straight answer.

O’Flynn looked at him as if he’d just come out of the - what did they call the local bedlam house? - the Yellow Brick, that was the name. “Wouldn’t you?” the miner demanded.

“Not if I hadn’t done anything,” Bushell replied.

“The more fool you,” O’Flynn said. “You should see poor Percy McGaffigan after Chief Lassiter and his bully boys got done pounding on him. He’s lost four teeth, the sorry devil, and he’s limping still. I’ve got a family, too, I do. I didn’t want to go home to ‘em all crippled up.”

“Who’s this Lassiter?” Lieutenant Hammond asked, and then let out a huge yawn.

“Charleroi constabulary chief,” Bushell told him. He shook his head, not just tired but also frustrated. O’Flynn was answering too well. No matter how well he answered, though, he was in too deep to be believable. Bushell swung back to him. “You’re telling me you happened to know Joseph Kilbride, and you happened to know Phineas Stanage - “

“I never told you I knew Phineas Stanage,” O’Flynn shot back. “I told you my cousin works for him, and he does.”

“And you just happened to be there with Stanage, and on the day Stanage went over to talk with another damned Son?” Bushell shook his head. “It won’t wash, O’Flynn. Not a jury in the world would buy it, even for a minute.”

“Then they’ll put the broad arrow on me, but not for anything you can prove I deserve,” Michael O’Flynn replied. Like Hammond, he yawned. “Can you let me go back to my cell now? I was asleep when your Cossacks came and got me.”

“He talks like a Son,” Sam Stanley observed.

“So he does,” Bushell said. “He’s had more sleep then either one of us, too.” As he had with Stanage, he hammered away at O’Flynn. The coal miner projected an air of stubborn ignorance. Without getting rough, Bushell had no hope of penetrating it. Finally, when the noisy wall clock showed it was nearly six, he gave up and sent O’Flynn away.

He walked into the hallway himself. Kathleen Flannery sat dozing in a chair. Ted Kittridge was sitting, too, working on a cheap cigarillo and yet another cup of coffee. No matter how strong and black Bushell drank it, he could feel it wasn’t helping him hold his eyes open any more. If he didn’t sleep a little now, he’d collapse soon. Stanley looked to be in the same straits.

Bushell sat down next to Kathleen. He started to close his eyes, then jerked them open again. “Turn on a wireless, somewhere where the Sons can’t listen to it,” he told Lieutenant Hammond. “If word comes that The Two Georges is ransomed, we’ll - hell, I don’t have the faintest idea what we’ll do, but I want to know.” Hammond nodded. Bushell’s eyes did close.

Next thing he knew, someone was shaking him. He jerked in startlement and almost fell off the chair.

“I’m sorry,” Kathleen Flannery said. “Here. Try some of this.” She held a mug full of coffee under his nose.

The rich, earthy smell filled his nostrils. “An angel of mercy, only slightly disguised,” he said, taking the mug. “No wonder I love you.” Even in the dim light of the hallway, he saw Kathleen flush. He gulped down half the mug. It was as bad as constabulary-station coffee usually is, but it was hot and strong, which also counted. He finished it in another couple of long swallows, then said, “What time is it, anyhow?”

“A little past ten,” Kathleen said.

Bushell got up. An ache in the small of his back said he’d been sleeping in that awkward position for a while. He rubbed at his eyes. If Kathleen hadn’t wakened him, he might have gone on sleeping quite a while longer. “Any word of anything?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “No news of a ransom on the wireless, no reports from Major Manchester, nothing.”

“I’d better ring him,” Bushell said, and went off to use the telephone in Lieutenant Hammond’s office.

“I was just going to phone you,” Manchester said when the connection went through. “We had to be awfully persuasive” - Bushell suspected he wouldn’t have cared to find himself on the receiving end of that persuasion - “but we’ve had a break. One of the lads I dragged in says The Two Georges was in a storage cubicle, somewhere not far from here. No matter how persuasive we got, though” - yes, that was a euphemism - “he didn’t know where, and neither do any of the other buggers we have here.”

“And there are only about ten thousand of those bloody cubicles around - if the painting is still in one, which it’s liable not to be,” Bushell said, resolutely refusing to be optimistic. “Still, it’s something. We’ll see what we can get out of the dear lads we have here.” He glanced up at the clock in Hammond’s office: half past ten now, a few minutes later, actually. “The Ides of March have come, but they have not yet gone,” he muttered.

Micah Williams had been interrogating Cameron Moffett. He came out of the chamber looking depressed, so Bushell had a go at the Independence Party man. Moffett, who was large and beefy and looked like one of Morton Johnston’s distant cousins, proved to be the sort who did not easily yield ground.

He shook a well-manicured forefinger in Bushell’s face. “This is character assassination you’re engaged in, sir, nothing else but - character assassination and interference in the affairs of a legitimate political party, to say nothing of illegal and amoral suppression of dissent.”

“I thought you said it was nothing but character assassination,” Bushell answered. Moffett stared at him.

“Never mind,” he growled. “I didn’t come in here to waste my time listening to your drivel. If they don’t hang you, you’ll spend the rest of your natural life in gaol. Sir David Clarke has told us everything he knows, and he knows plenty.”

“That toffee-nosed little weasel?” Moffett jeered. “Past getting the unmentionables off half the women in this town, he couldn’t tell manure from mayonnaise.” That was also Bushell’s judgment, but he did not find it reassuring to have a Son agree with him.

Bushell turned away so Moffett wouldn’t see him scowl. He’d tried that gambit or the one with Sir Horace Bragg on every prisoner he’d questioned, and every man had been convincing in his rejection of it. The Sons were getting information and protection from somewhere high up, though. Past Sir David and Sir Horace, Bushell couldn’t imagine any other one man well enough positioned to give them both. Sir Martin Luther King? The notion was absurd. Sir Devereaux Jones? No, he didn’t have enough clout to know of upcoming searches in time to warn the Sons of Liberty about them. Besides, any Negro who backed the Sons belonged in the Yellow Brick.

Medium-ranking RAMs might have heard of the searches and passed the word to the Sons, as had happened in Richmond. But medium-ranking RAMs wouldn’t have known of Charles Ill’s impending visit soon enough to get that word to the Sons in time for them to steal The Two Georges and demand its ransom. It all added up to - nothing that made any sense.

If you believed Cameron Moffett, he didn’t know anything, he’d never known anything, and he wouldn’t know anything if he lived to be a hundred and twelve. Bushell didn’t believe him, but couldn’t shake him, either.

It was nearly four when he gave up and sent Moffett back to his cell. At some time in there, someone had gone out for more fish and chips. They’d saved him a portion. It was long since cold, and greasy enough to lubricate a steamer’s differential. He ate it anyhow.

“Still no word?” he asked Sam Stanley, who was smoking a harsh-smelling cigarillo he must have borrowed from Ted Kittridge.

“Still no word.”

“Have we gone through the prisoners’ effects for keys that might lock up storage cubicles?”

“Oh, yes.” Sam looked pained. “But you know how those places operate, Chief. You buy your own lock and you put it on the door. So long as you pay ‘em your fiver every month, or whatever the freight is, you’re fine. If you don’t pay, they haul out the bolt-cutters and fling your stuff in the street. So the villains have a good many keys that might be the right one, but so what? How do we find out?”

“Damn good question,” Bushell took out his own key ring. “Hell, I’ve got a couple of keys that might be the right ones myself - except they aren’t. I’d wager you have, too.”

“Oh, yes,” Stanley said again, even more mournfully than before. “If we can catch a break some other way, we have a chance of learning which key is the right one - if any of them is - but that hasn’t happened. The only break we’ve had - and believe me, I count my blessings - is that Sir Martin hasn’t had to shell out fifty million quid to get the bloody painting back yet.”

“Or if he has, we don’t know about it,” Bushell said. “That’ll do - for now.”

They went on with the interrogations. It got dark outside. Bushell wished for a chance to sleep, to bathe, to change the clothes he’d had on for a day and a half now. Lieutenant Toby Custine did fall asleep, right in the middle of a question he was putting to Stanage. Bushell and Maxwell Hammond got him to his feet and half dragged him out to one of the chairs in the hallway. He woke up enough to mutter an incoherent protest, then was gone again.

The clock chimed ten, eleven, twelve. “Deadline’s past,” Samuel Stanley muttered. Bushell shook his head. “The deadline’s not past till His Majesty makes his speech tonight without The Two Georges on the wall behind him.” He rounded on Cameron Moffett. “You might as well tell the truth for a change. That’ll give you some chance of seeing the outside of a penitentiary before you’re ninety-one.”

“You can go to the devil, you bloody tyrant,” Moffett returned. “You have to let us call our solicitors this afternoon, and after that we’ll be free men again - the way all Americans should be free.”

The clock chimed one, two, three. The round of interrogations resumed. Hammond brought in Morton Johnston. In spite of a rumpled suit and stubble on his cheeks, the Independence Party man from New Liverpool remained an imposing figure. “How did I miss you before now?” Bushell said, fighting back a yawn.

Snug in his cell, Johnston had had more rest. “I don’t know and I don’t care,” he snapped. “The rest of your band of desperadoes has harassed me more than enough to make up for your absence.”

Bushell did yawn, half exhaustion, half contempt. “That was then, Johnston. This is now. Things have changed since the last time we put you through the wringer - you’d better believe they have.”

“How?” Johnston retorted. “Have you tortured a false confession out of one of my fellow detainees?”

“We don’t need their confessions, not anymore,” Bushell answered. “We certainly don’t need them to sink you. Down in Victoria, Sir Horace Bragg is talking, and when he’s through there won’t be a Son free from here to the Pacific.”

Morton Johnston went white. “No,” he said in a voice that meant anything but no. “I don’t believe you.”

The RAMs all looked at him. None of them looked at Bushell, none of them looked at one another, fearing any change of expression would give the game away. Bushell, having finally broken through, wished he knew more than he did. Showing ignorance now would prove to Johnston he was running a bluff. He picked his words with great care, and took even greater care to ensure that they sounded artless, casual: “Yes, you can come off it now: when the head goes, the body dies. The head’s in the Victoria gaol, and we’ve got our lads heading to the storage cubicle to pick up The Two Georges right this minute.”

Lieutenant Hammond stuck his head into the interrogation chamber. “Telephone for you, Colonel, from the Victoria gaol.”

He couldn’t have delivered a better-timed message if he’d tried for a year. “That must mean they have the painting back,” Bushell said happily. “We’ll leave you alone for a few minutes, Johnston, let you think about just how much trouble you’re in.” He gathered up his colleagues by eye. They all got up and came out with him. He closed the door on Morton Johnston.

Without a word, Samuel Stanley set a hand on Bushell’s shoulder for a moment. But Bushell had no time to savor the breakthrough. He hurried to Maxwell Hammond’s office and picked up the telephone.

“Bushell here.”

“Walter Manchester.” The RAM major spoke in a quick, worried voice: “Colonel, I hate to tell you this, but I just got the word myself: the ransom demand went in at a minute before midnight. Has to be paid by eight this morning, or else. I’m sorry. If I’d known sooner, I would have called sooner. Word just got here.”

“Damnation!” Bushell exploded. “And the King-Emperor’s due when? Ten?”

“His arrival’s been moved up,” Manchester said. “Security, don’t you know? He’ll be here at nine now.”

“Damnation,” Bushell said again, this time dully. He looked at the clock in Hammond’s office. It was a little before four. “The payment is going forward?”

“I don’t know that for certain, but I gather it is.” Manchester sounded disgusted.

“All right, Major, thank you. I’ll do what I can.” Bushell hung up. He sat staring at the wall - through the wall - for half a minute. Then he grimaced, as if a regimental surgeon were about to probe for a bullet without anesthetic. He picked up the telephone and rang America’s Number Ten. When the operator answered, he said, “Put me through to Sir David Clarke - at once.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but -“ the operator began.

“Tell him it’s Colonel Bushell. He’ll speak to me.”

“One moment,” the operator said doubtfully. Bushell drummed his ringers on Maxwell Hammond’s desk. Then the operator came back on the line. “Go ahead, Colonel.”

Bushell did, without preliminaries: “Buy me an hour, Clarke.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible, Colonel,” Sir David answered, matching his directness. “You heard Sir Martin’s declared policy at the same time I did: if you had not recovered The Two Georges before a final ransom demand arrived, he would pay the required sum. You have not, it has, and he will.”

“I’ve never begged any man for anything in my whole life,” Bushell said heavily, “and God knows I’d start with somebody else if I had a choice. But I don’t. So ... I beg you, Sir David, buy me an hour. Buy me two if you can. I’m that close. I might not even need the hour - but I might. The one thing you can do is talk. So talk. Buy me that hour, I don’t care how.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line. At last, Sir David said, “I’ll . . try, Colonel. I can’t promise anything. We’re to deliver a lorry bearing the sum to New Leicester Square, and then - “

“Arrange boiler trouble,” Bushell broke in. “Arrange a punctured tyre. Arrange something, for heaven’s sake.”

“I’ll try,” Clarke said again, more firmly this time. He coughed, then went on, “This can’t be easy for you, Colonel. I respect your courage and your patriotism, and I - “

“To hell with that.” Bushell slammed down the phone. Getting The Two Georges back had become his hunt for the great grey whale in the famous novel of the same name, and he knew it. He went out into the hallway and quickly briefed the other RAMs, Kathleen, and Lieutenant Hammond.

“How do you want us to play it?” Sam Stanley asked.

“Just back me,” Bushell told him. “Johnston should be done to a turn about now.”

When he and his colleagues walked back into the interrogation room, Morton Johnston sprang to his feet. “Now see here,” he said, his jowls quivering in indignation real or manufactured. “I demand to - “

“Sit down,” Bushell said. “Keep quiet.” He didn’t raise his voice. Nonetheless, Johnston, bluster pierced, sank back into his chair. Bushell glanced over at the officers and Kathleen as if they were medicos who’d agreed he had to give Johnston the bad news. Give it he did, in offhand, casual tones that brooked no contradiction: “It’s all over now. We have the painting back, we have the blundering fools you Sons sent into New Leicester Square, we have Bragg’s confession to send you up personally on a charge of treason and conspiracy with the Holy Alliance.” That was a shot in the dark, but a good one, and he added to it, again in the most matter-of-fact way possible: “And we have Zack Fenton out in New Liverpool, too.”

“My God.” Johnston buried his face in his hands. When he looked up again, his features were an overfed mask of tragedy. “I was always afraid Bragg would give us away in the end,” he said, drawing in a long, shuddering breath.

“Oh? Why’s that?” Bushell asked.

Before Johnston could answer, Sam Stanley said, “The old family estates, eh?”

“You’d know, wouldn’t you, being the color you are?” Johnston said bitterly. “Of course, the old family estates. When the Crown made the planters turn their Negroes loose, a lot of good men were ruined.”

“A lot of good men were freed,” Stanley answered.

And a lot of things Sam had said, things that hadn’t made sense to Bushell, suddenly became clear.

“Lord!” he burst out. “You said back in New Liverpool that Bragg wouldn’t mind seeing the plantation days come back again, but I never dreamt you meant it literally.”

“I didn’t think you did.” Stanley sighed and spread his hands. “What can I tell you?” He might have known Bragg’s opinion of Negroes, but how was he supposed to say anything like that to a man who counted himself Bragg’s friend? Bragg hadn’t given Bushell any sign that he held those views, but then, he wouldn’t have. For how many years had he been leading a double life?

No time to worry about that now. Bushell turned back to Morton Johnston.

“So you’ll talk now, will you? It might keep them from putting a noose around your fat neck. Of course, it might not.”

Johnston licked his lips. “What does anything matter anymore? It’s all ruined. Go ahead, ask your questions.”

“As if we can rely on everything you tell us,” Bushell said scornfully. “How do we know you won’t try feeding us more lies?”

The Independence Party leader drew himself up with dignity more pathetic than impressive. “I am a solicitor, sir.”

Sam Stanley let out a raucous laugh. “Proves the colonel’s point, doesn’t it?”

Morton Johnston looked indignant. Bushell flicked Sam a warning glance. He didn’t want Johnston mulish and defiant; he wanted him soft and squishy as a blancmange. After a moment’s thought, he told the lawyer, “I’m going to test you: I’ll give you a question where I already know the answer. If you give me that answer back, I’ll pass on to my superiors that you were cooperative. As I say, it may help you. If you lie to me -“ He made hand-washing motions.

“Go ahead,” Johnston repeated in a voice like ashes.

“All right.” Bushell worked to keep his voice light, easy: “Give me the name of the storage facility where you people had hidden The Two Georges.”

Anguish crossed Johnston’s plump face. “I don’t know it. I’m from New Liverpool, remember? As God is my witness, Colonel Bushell, I don’t.”

Bushell shrugged and turned to Lieutenant Hammond. “Take him back to his cell. We’ll deal with him in the ordinary way.”

“Wait!” Johnston howled as the Georgestown constable strode toward him. “I don’t know the name of the place, but I know where it is.” He sent Bushell a beseeching look. Bushell nodded to Maxwell Hammond, who stopped. Rapidly, almost babbling in his haste to get the words out, Johnston went on, “It’s down by the docks, on the Victoria side of the river - not far from where the Britannia will land. Don’t ask me if there’s any connection to that, because I don’t know, truly I don’t.” He stared anxiously at Bushell.

“Take him back to his cell, Lieutenant,” Bushell said to Hammond. “He may as well get used to it, for he’ll be in one for some time to come. He’d have got out sooner if he’d gone through the trapdoor of a gallows, but I don’t suppose that will happen now.” Morton Johnston sagged with relief; he seemed to become shorter and wider, as if his bones had turned to jelly. When Hammond led him away, he went with willing step.

As soon as the door closed behind him, Kathleen Flannery threw her arms around Bushell’s neck. “We have it!” she exclaimed exultantly.

“We may have it,” Bushell corrected. Even the feel of her against him could barely penetrate the grey haze of exhaustion in which he moved. Nerves and coffee and cigars kept a man going only so long. He could feel how close to the edge of the cliff he walked. The clock said it was a little past four. He’d last long enough. He had to last long enough. Slowly, he went on, “There are a good many storage places down by the docks. Finding the right one will take time - time we haven’t got.”

He went back to Lieutenant Hammond’s office and rang America’s Number Ten again. This time, he had no trouble getting through to Sir David Clarke. “They’ve agreed to another hour,” Sir David said without preamble. “If I ask for anything more, they say they’ll touch a match to the painting. I believe them.”

“All right. You did what you could,” Bushell answered, and then surprised himself by adding, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Clarke also sounded surprised.

Bushell hung up, then called Maxwell Hammond. “Have you got a city directory for Victoria here?” he asked. Hammond yanked open a desk drawer, pulled out a fat paperbound book, and dropped it in front of Bushell with a thud. “First-rate,” Bushell said. He flipped to the index, then to the section on storage facilities. “Half these places didn’t exist when I was working out of Victoria,” he muttered as he scribbled down names and addresses. He suddenly seemed to remember Hammond was there. “Go round up all the keys that are liable to open a storage cubicle.”

“Right.” Hammond paused for a moment at the doorway. “We’re going to have to be lucky, you know.”

“Really? That never occurred to me,” Bushell said. The Georgestown constable stared at him, shook his head, and hurried away. When he returned with the keys, Bushell took them, stuffed them in his pocket, and said, “Keep sweating the other Sons. Let ‘em know how much we know. With luck, one of ‘em’ll give you the name of the storage facility they’re using. I’ll ring you every so often. If you get it out of them, you’ll let me know.”

“I do the work, you RAMs get the glory,” Hammond said, not altogether in jest. “Seems like that’s the way it always goes.”

“Cut the shit,” Bushell said succinctly. “You haven’t got jurisdiction south of the Potomac anyhow. And if we get The Two Georges back without having to ransom it, there’ll be glory enough to go around, I promise you.”

Hammond considered, then slowly nodded. “How persuasive with these bastards you want me to get?”

“Don’t ask me questions like that.” After a moment, Bushell went on, “I owe one to O’Flynn. Otherwise-“ He made the same hand-washing gesture he’d used in front of Morton Johnston, but added, “Don’t get stupid, either.” Hammond nodded again.

Before setting out into the cool quiet of the wee small hours, Bushell made sure everyone in his steamer and Micah Williams’s was armed. Though Kathleen was entirely unofficial, he tried to get her to draw a revolver from the constabulary armory. She refused, saying, “I’d be more dangerous to myself with it than without it.” When he tried to argue, she stuck out her chin and looked stubborn. He shrugged and let her have her way.

The streets of Georgestown and then of Victoria were as quiet and empty as those of New Liverpool had been the early morning after The Two Georges was stolen. Bushell tried not to think of that early morning, and the night before it. With luck (and how right Hammond had been to say he’d need it!), he’d soon make it as if that night had never happened.

Sergeant Ted Kittridge pulled up in front of the Precious Treasures Storage Corporation, Ltd., at a little past five. The eastern horizon was bright with sunrise soon to come. Bushell paused to scribble the name and address of the storage corporation on one of the last few blank search warrants. He bounded out of the steamer with pistol drawn. His head swiveled every which way. If the Sons of Liberty wanted to fight to keep The Two Georges, they had plenty of cover here. But the only person who came up to see what a couple of carloads of RAMs descending on his storage center meant was a grey-bearded night watchman who carried an electric torch with failing cells and who exuded a powerful odor of cheap whiskey.

Bushell showed him the hastily prepared warrant. After shining the flickering torch on it, the watchman touched a forefinger to the shiny brim of his cap. “Go right ahead, pal,” he said, breathing more whiskey fumes into Bushell’s face. “Hope you find what you’re looking for.”

“Not half so much as I do,” Bushell said.

Samuel Stanley carried the keys they’d taken from the Sons of Liberty at the Georgestown station. Bushell had to hope one of those keys would open the cubicle where The Two Georges was hidden. He didn’t have time to test anything else. Picking locks was too slow. Even bolt-cutters would be too slow when there were so many locks that had to be checked. If he was wrong in his hope, the NAU would be out about fifty million pounds, and he and Kathleen Flannery out a career apiece - small change in the register of history, but not to him.

He took the keys from Sam, kept one himself, and gave out the rest, one to a RAM, as far as they went: except for the last, which he handed to Kathleen for luck. “Now we go down the cubicle doors, one at a time. If your key turns a lock, sing out.”

He could tell at a glance that his first key would not fit the first lock, a stout Harvard. He tried it anyhow, a measure of his desperation. When it wouldn’t go in, let alone turn, he hurried along to the next cubicle to test it there. Again, no luck. On to the next. Then the other key-bearers formed a line behind him, Kathleen bringing up the rear.

The sun rose, almost blinding him, as he was trying his key in the last lock. He waited for the others to try theirs, too, then did his best not to sound discouraged. “We go on to the next storage company,” he said. Then he pulled out his pocket watch, grimaced, and put it back. Almost six o’clock. Not much time left at all now.

Seeing the telephone in the night watchman’s office reminded him to ring back to the Georgestown constabulary station, in the hope of cutting short the search from storage firm to storage firm. But Maxwell Hammond had no good news for him: “Colonel, we’ve been working hard since the minute you left, but we haven’t got anything out of any of ‘em. Maybe they really don’t know.” He made the admission as if he hated it.

“Keep working.” Bushell slammed down the phone.

He expected building traffic to slow the steamers as they headed for Bedrock Storage, Ltd., but he got there quickly through streets still almost deserted. “Holiday today,” Ted Kittridge reminded him when he remarked on that. He thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. For once, Charles Ill’s arrival was bringing him something other than trouble.

The watchman at Bedrock Storage resembled the one at Precious Treasures, from shiny-brimmed cap to grizzled beard to whiskey aroma. The only differences Bushell could see were that he’d put away his torch since the sun was up and that he was Negro rather than white. He looked at the hastily written search warrant Bushell gave him, said, “I hope you folks find whatever you’re looking for,” and leaned back against the side of the building. As Bushell passed him by, he drew a pint flask from his hip pocket, raised it to his mouth, tilted his head back, and swigged noisily.

Bedrock Storage had more cubicles to check than Precious Treasures. It was almost seven before the RAMs and Kathleen discovered none of their keys opened any of the locks on those cubicles. Bushell’s shoulders slumped when he went into the storage-company office to telephone the Georgestown constables. Again, Lieutenant Hammond had no good news to give him. He went back out to his comrades.

“It’s all up to us,” he said. “We can check one more place, maybe two, and then we turn into pumpkins. I’ve got half a dozen on this list.” He took it out of his inside coat pocket. “I’m going to read them off. If any of you can think of a reason we should go to one instead of another ... I’d be awfully glad to hear it. All right? Here: Crown Jewel Storage, Douglass Storage Cubicles, Keep Keepsakes Safe (don’t ask me to repeat that one), Adler Cubicles, NAU Special - something, Kathleen?”

“Maybe.” She bit her lip. “It isn’t much, but - “

“Spit it out,” Bushell said harshly. “Nobody else has any bright ideas. Whatever it is, it can’t hurt now.”

“All right,” she said. “Adler means eagle in German.”

“Does it?” Bushell said. He had French and Spanish and some Russian, but he’d never found a reason to learn German. “After all the eagles we’ve seen in this case - maybe one more?” He looked around at the other RAMs. “Anybody have a better idea? Anybody poke a hole in this one?” Nobody spoke. Bushell stuck the list back into his pocket. “Let’s go. Adler Cubicles, on Calhoun Street down close by the Potomac.”

As he had before, he prepared a search warrant as Sergeant Kittridge drove the steamer to the new target. He had only one more warrant left in his briefcase, too. Out of time, out of paper . . . out of luck?

Wouldn’t be long before he knew.

He got to Adler Cubicles at 7:11. Maybe that was luck. When he saw the bald eagle daubed on the front wall of the place, he began to think it was. His eyes flicked up to the roof. If this was the place, the Sons of Liberty were liable to have riflemen up there. He didn’t spot any. Even so, when he got out of the steamer, he crouched behind the wing for a moment, pistol in hand, wondering if he would draw fire. He didn’t. The only thing that happened was that a fat, bald clerk with a neat little mustache came out of the front office and said, “Hullo! Are you filming a cinema here?” Behind steel-rimmed spectacles, his eyes sparkled with excitement.

“In a word, no.” Bushell presented him with the search warrant.

His eyes got even wider and brighter. “My goodness!” he said. “What are you looking for? Are people moving great piles of contraband tobacco again? I remember last year when -“

Bushell didn’t care a farthing for the clerk’s reminiscences, and the only thing talk of contraband tobacco did was to remind him he wanted a cigar. Still wary, he pushed forward into the long, narrow courtyard around which the storage cubicles themselves were placed. His colleagues followed and fanned out in a skirmish line, but everything seemed quiet and peaceful.

Hardly daring to believe the tranquility he found, he reholstered his pistol and took out the key he’d got from Samuel Stanley. He walked over to the cubicle with a tarnished brass 1 screwed into the plywood door, put the key in the lock, and tried to turn it. It would not turn. The other keyholders lined up behind him. They tried one by one to open the cubicle. They all failed. Bushell went on to the second cubicle, then to the third, then to the fourth. . . . He was on the seventy-eighth when, from two behind him, he heard a sound he had begun to believe he would never hear: a soft click. His head whipped back to the right. Lieutenant Toby Custine stood in front of cubicle 76, his mouth gaping foolishly wide, staring down at the lock that had just come open. Kathleen Flannery stood between him and Bushell. “Mother Mary,” she whispered.

“From whom did your key come, Lieutenant?” Bushell asked as everyone converged on the storage cubicle.

Custine glanced down at the tag taped to the key. “From O’Flynn, sir,” he answered in a slightly dazed voice. He took off the lock and opened the door to the cubicle.

Kathleen screamed and threw her arms around his neck. Bushell was not the least bit jealous. Had Kathleen not beaten him to it, he would have hugged Custine himself. There against the back wall of the storage cubicle leaned The Two Georges in its heavy, elaborately carved gilded oak frame. A lamp with a dangling chain hung from the cubicle’s ceiling. Kathleen yanked that chain. The lamp came on, filling the shadowy cubicle with harsh yellow light. Kathleen knelt by The Two Georges. “This is the painting, not a copy,” she said at once. She cocked her head and studied it. “It seems to be in good condition, too. It seems to be.” She sounded as if she hardly dared be more certain than that. Samuel Stanley pulled out his pocket watch. “We did it, by God,” he said, “and with a good hour and five minutes to spare, too.”

That reminded Bushell he had other things left to do, things he’d almost forgotten in the desperate race to find The Two Georges. “The ransom!” he exclaimed. “I’ve got to block it.” He dashed out of the storage cubicle and up to the company offices. The clerk was on the telephone, telling someone named Marge about what was happening. He got off an instant before Bushell yanked away the handset and brained him with it.

Bushell rang America’s Number Ten. The operator put him through to Sir David Clarke at once. “Don’t pay the bastards a ha’penny,” he barked when he heard Sir David’s voice. “If anybody shows up in the square, arrest him. We’ve got The Two Georges back, and it’s not harmed.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he noted the clerk’s stunned expression: the fellow evidently hadn’t known everything that was going on. “Colonel, I wouldn’t have believed it,” Sir David said. “I’ll pass your wonderful news to Sir Martin immediately. I can’t afford to wait a moment - he’s about to leave for the Britannia’s berth. He’ll greet the King-Emperor with a glad heart now. On his behalf, let me say that you have the Union’s gratitude. And, for whatever it may be worth to you, you have mine as well.”

“Never mind that,” Bushell said. “The important thing is to have the painting behind His Majesty when he speaks tonight, and we’ve done it.” He glanced up. “Now I’d better get off the line. Here comes Kathleen. She’ll need to talk to the people at the All-Union Art Museum to arrange to get The Two Georges back where it belongs in time for the speech.”

Kathleen took the phone from Bushell as peremptorily as he’d taken it from the storage-company clerk. She dialed a number. When someone answered, she exclaimed, “We’ve got it!” Bushell could hear the shout of joy on the other end of the line. She gave her colleagues at the museum the address of Adler Cubicles, said, “Good,” and hung up. She turned to Bushell. “The lorry to take the painting home will be here in half an hour. Home!” She laughed at herself, and seemed to sag slightly. “You know what I mean. I’m so tired. I must look a fright, too. I’ve been living in these clothes.”

“You’ll always look good to me,” Bushell said, which made her smile. He rubbed his bristly chin. “You don’t need a shave, that’s one thing. Another is, as long asThe Two Georges looks all right, nobody’s going to notice you.”

“Mm, I daresay you’re right,” Kathleen answered. “Now whom are you ringing?”

“Major Walter Manchester, the RAMs he has with him, and the Victoria constables,” Bushell said.

“That lorry of yours is going to have itself a nice, strong escort on the way to the All-Union Art Museum. Now that we’ve got the painting back, I don’t aim to let it be stolen again.”

“I hadn’t even thought of that.” Kathleen rubbed her eyes. “I have the feeling I’m only thinking about half as well as I ought to be.”

“I know what you mean,” Bushell said. “Let me just ring Manchester here, and then we can go back and stare at the painting till they take it away.” When he got through to the major, Manchester bellowed in his ear, almost as if he were a male Sally Reese. Bushell finished giving him the news and turned to Kathleen.

“Reinforcements on the way.”

She nodded, then rubbed her eyes again. “I’ll be so glad when this is all over. After tonight, I intend to sleep for about a month straight.”

“What a wonderful idea,” Bushell said. He headed back toward The Two Georges. In spite of the other RAMs standing in front of and inside the storage cubicle, he feared something dreadful would happen to the painting if it left his sight even for a moment.

The little bald clerk tagged along. He was all but bouncing with excitement.

“The Two Georges was here all the time, right under my nose? I can’t believe it. Marge won’t believe it. I want to see it, just so I can tell her I did.”

Bushell found it hard to imagine this eager nonentity a Son of Liberty, but he managed. He let the man have the briefest of glimpses, ready to jump on him if his hands went into his pockets. Then he said, “Go back to your office. You can take a better look when they load it onto the lorry, and you can see it at the AU-Union Art Museum. No more now.”

Looking like a kicked puppy, the clerk turned away. Kathleen said, “Don’t feel bad, sir. If you come to the museum, have me paged.” She gave him her name. “I’ll see that you and, uh, Marge are admitted free of charge, and I’ll shoot you both to the front of the queue to view The Two Georges.”

“That’s very kind of you,” he said, and walked off a happier man.

“That is very kind of you,” Bushell said.

Kathleen shrugged. “It’s safe. It’s been safe here. No rats in the cubicle, the roof doesn’t leak - he deserves something for that, even if he didn’t know what was in cubicle 76.”

“We did it,” Sam Stanley said again, when Bushell walked into the cubicle. “You make sure we aren’t going to be out fifty million?”

“You’d best believe I did,” Bushell replied with feeling. “Sir David and I were even civil to each other. Will wonders never cease?”

“Two miracles in one morning.” Stanley didn’t sound as if he was joking. Bushell looked at him sharply. He didn’t look as if he was joking, either.

Every so often, Bushell’s hand would fall to the butt of his pistol. He had trouble believing the chase was over at last, The Two Georges recovered, the Sons of Liberty thwarted. He kept expecting an attack, kept waiting for gunfire to break out, bullets to fly, men to fall.

The courtyard was very quiet, very peaceful. The day gave every promise of being hot and muggy, like most August days in Victoria. A pigeon flew down and landed on the concrete in the middle of the courtyard. It peered at the RAMs out of one orange eye. When it decided they weren’t going to throw it any crumbs, it took off again. The wind whistled through its wings.

Constabulary steamers started pulling up in front of Adler Cubicles at a quarter past eight. The tight knot inside Bushell began to ease. It would take an army to getThe Two Georges out of safe hands now, and the Sons of Liberty, whatever else they were, were not an army.

“You know what I’m going to do as soon as that lorry from the museum steams off with The Two Georges ?” he said to Sam as Victoria constables jostled one another to get a look at the famous painting.

His adjutant nodded. “The same things I am: you’re going back to the William and Mary, you’re going to hop in the showerbath, you’re going to shave, and then you’re going to go to sleep.”

“Your boiler still has full pressure in it, however tired you are,” Bushell answered. “That’s the list, item by item. Sleep.” He spoke of it longingly, as Lancelot might have of the Grail. So many constables and RAMs pounded his back that the continued impacts might have sufficed to keep him awake. He felt drunk without Jameson, a happier buzz than he ever got from Irish whiskey. At 8:35, a couple of minutes later than promised, the All-Union Art Museum’s lorry pulled into the courtyard of Adler Cubicles. Malcolm Desmond and Walter Pine, Kathleen’s assistants on tour with The Two Georges, sprang from the cab along with a couple of stalwart workmen in overalls and cloth caps. They hugged Kathleen, pummeled Bushell some more, and got the painting into the back of the lorry.

“Sir Martin will be able to give the good news to His Majesty, too,” Bushell said. “I got hold of Sir David just before the governor-general was going to leave for the docks. Sir Martin’s probably spreading the word to all the politicos waiting for the Britannia even as we stand here.”

“Very likely,” Stanley agreed. “He’ll probably take all the credit for getting The Two Georges back, too. That’s the way politicos op -“ He broke off when he saw the expression on Bushell’s face. “What’s the matter, Chief?”

Bushell pointed at him. “You didn’t tell anyone Sir Horace was the number one villain in this piece, did you?”

“What?” Stanley stared. “Of course not. Nobody told anybody outside the cabal. If we’d told, it would have got back to Bragg and given the game away.”

“That’s right,” Bushell said. “We were smart. But we were too smart. Nobody except the people in the cabal knows Sir Horace is a villain, right? Which means nobody’s going to keep him from being there when the King-Emperor lands, right? God in heaven, he’s commandant of the Royal American bloody Mounted Police. And here comes Sir Martin Luther King, singing hosannas because we’ve got The Two Georges back and didn’t have to pay a farthing for it. What’s Bragg going to do then?”

Samuel Stanley’s eyes got very big and wide. So did those of Sergeant Ted Kittridge, who was standing nearby. “Jesus,” Stanley said. “He’s probably carrying a pistol, too. He would be - to keep His Majesty safe from the Sons of Liberty.”

Without another word, all three men turned and sprinted for the steamer that had brought them to Adler Cubicles. Bushell heard several questioning shouts from in back of them, including one from Kathleen. He ignored them all. No time for questions now. Maybe no time for anything. They piled into the steamer. Kittridge maneuvered his way through the blockade of constabulary motorcars like a footballer picking his way through a defense toward a shot on goal. Then, that done, he jammed the pedal to the floorboard. “How long?” Bushell asked.

“We’ll be cutting it fine,” Kittridge answered. “Too fine.”

“They’ll have a perimeter around the landing dock sealed off,” Stanley said. “That’ll help us - once we get to the perimeter.”

Around it, traffic moved, but spasmodically. A lot of people had headed toward the docks in hopes of getting a glimpse of the King-Emperor. Signs saying that wasn’t going to be possible turned back some of them. Charles III was arriving an hour earlier than had been announced, too, and that didn’t hurt. The roads were more crowded than usual, but not impossibly so.

All the same, time stretched very tight for Bushell. He’d known that feeling before, but only in combat. Now he sat here, unable to do anything useful, while about a week went by. He pulled out his pocket watch. The week turned out to be seven minutes, not seven days. While he was looking at the watch, the second hand moved at its normal rate. The instant he put it back in his waistcoat pocket, everything slowed down again.

Kittridge grunted and pointed ahead through the windscreen. Bushell nodded. There stood a roadblock, with armed RAMs in dress reds behind it. They waved away the steamer in front of Kittridge’s, then stared suspiciously at the nondescript motorcar with the three dirty, unshaven characters in it. One of the RAMs came up to the driver’s side window. “Sorry, gents,” he said, “no traffic past this point.”

Ted Kittridge spent a word: “Emergency.” He displayed his badge. Bushell and Sam Stanley already had theirs out.

The RAM shook his head. “No traffic of any sort past this point, on Lieutenant General Bragg’s orders. We’re to be alert for infiltrators, he says, and you blokes don’t look a hell of a lot like RAMs to me.”

Bushell started to reach for his pistol, though he knew that was likelier to touch off a firefight than get him through. But to be stopped so close was intolerable. He could see the Britannia ahead, and the gangplank leading down from it to the dock.

Just as his right hand closed on the butt of the pistol, another RAM said, “Let ‘em through, Harry. I know Sergeant Kittridge. If he says something’s an emergency, you can believe it is.”

Harry looked stubborn. “I don’t know him, and I’m damned if I’m going to take chances with His Majesty’s safety.” Up there by the imperial yacht, a band struck up “Hail to the King-Emperor.” A tiny figure that had to be Charles III walked down the gangplank. Another tiny figure that had to be Sir Martin Luther King stepped forward to greet him.

Bushell slapped Kittridge on the shoulder. “Ram it!” he said.

The steamer sprang forward. The barrier - a red-painted plank atop two red-painted sawhorses - went over with a crash. Tyres screaming, the motorcar raced toward the Britannia, perhaps a quarter of a mile away. Shouts rang out behind.

Between them and the imperial yacht were another, similar barrier and more RAMs in dress uniform. “If they shoot us, we won’t get the job done,” Samuel Stanley said. It was more comment than protest.

“Tell me something I didn’t know.” Bushell held his badge out the window, hoping the RAMs would take it as a talisman.

Kittridge never slowed down. Wham! The spurting steamer hit the barricade like an icebreaker smashing a floe. Broken timber flew to either side. Bushell hoped it didn’t hurt any of the RAMs who scattered before him, but he went by too fast to be sure.

“Where do you want to go?” Kittridge demanded, accelerating still. Heads among the assembled dignitaries were turning now. That second barricade smashing had drawn people’s notice. A couple of the more alert were springing to their feet.

“As close to His Majesty as you can get,” Bushell answered. “Try not to run anybody down here. We’d be talked about.”

“Right.” Kittridge used a couple of precious syllables’ worth of laughter. Everything ahead swelled as if a cinema camera were moving in fast for a tight shot. There stood His Majesty Charles III, head turned toward the onrushing motorcar but features schooled to calmness even so. There beside him stood Sir Martin Luther King, looking quite humanly astonished. And there, coming up to protect, or rather as if to protect “It’s Bragg!” Stanley yelled. Lieutenant General Sir Horace Bragg did indeed carry a revolver on his hip, along with his dress sword. He drew the pistol as Kittridge screeched to a stop not ten feet away. “Halt or I’ll shoot!” he shouted, his Carolina accent broad and harsh.

Bushell and Stanley flung themselves out of the steamer before it stopped rolling. Bragg’s face worked horribly when he recognized them. Bushell sprinted toward him, shouting, “He’s the one! He led the plot, he - “

With a wordless scream of hate, Sir Horace fired at him at point-blank range - and missed. The report of the pistol and the crack of the bullet past his ear almost deafened Bushell. He’d been in enough combat to know how hard it was to shoot straight when your heart pounded and your hand shook. Bragg whirled, swinging the muzzle of the pistol toward the King-Emperor. Before he could shoot, Bushell jumped on his back and dragged down his arm - no time for him to yank out his own weapon. They crashed to the ground together in a cursing, clawing heap. Bragg tried to knee Bushell in the crotch. He twisted to one side just in time and took the blow on the hip, all the while hanging on to Bragg’s pistol arm like grim death.

“Let go of the gun,” Bushell panted. Bragg snarled an obscenity and rabbit-punched him. He grunted in pain. His grip weakened. Shouting in triumph, Bragg jerked the pistol free. He fired - just as Samuel Stanley landed on top of him and Bushell.

Stanley cried out, in pain rather than triumph. But his weight knocked the pistol from Bragg’s hand. Bushell kicked at it. It spun out of Bragg’s reach. The RAM commandant howled like a lost soul. Lost or not, the RAM commandant fought on. As Bushell had back in New Liverpool the night The Two Georges was stolen, he tried to draw his ceremonial sword and use it as a real weapon. A muscular man, a long-faced fellow in his mid-forties, clamped both hands on Bragg’s wrist and kept the sword in its scabbard. “Thanks,” Bushell gasped. After a moment, he added two more startled words: “Your Majesty.”

“My pleasure,” Charles III said, and sounded as if he meant it.

The dignitaries and uprushing red-uniformed RAMs swarmed onto Sir Horace Bragg and pinned him as much by sheer weight of numbers as by skill and prowess. Bushell didn’t care how the job was done, so long as it was done. Still woozy and sick from the rabbit punch, he rolled away and sat up. Sam Stanley had his right hand clenched tight around his left forearm. Blood dripped through his fingers. His lips were skinned back in a grimace that showed all his teeth. “Damnation,” he muttered. “All those years as a RAM made me forget how much I didn’t like getting shot.” He shook his head. “The memory comes back mighty fast, though.”

The RAMs dragged Bragg away. Several of them looked as if they wanted to drag Bushell and Stanley after him, but when the King-Emperor came over and set his right hand on the shoulder of one and his left on that of the other, the RAMs subsided - except for one who undid a clasp knife and came up to Stanley, saying, “Let me cut away your shirt and jacket, sir, so we can have a look at that wound.”

“Just a second,” Stanley told him. He glanced up to Charles III. “Your Majesty, please step back. Can’t know what this fellow’s going to do if he gets close to you, not after Sir Horace.”

“I’m no traitor!” the RAM cried indignantly.

“I’ll cover you even so,” Bushell told him, freeing his own pistol from its holster. He too looked toward the King-Emperor, and went on in pointed tones, “After His Majesty withdraws.”

“What sort of monarch am I, to have my subjects order me about?” Charles III demanded in what Bushell hoped was mock indignation.

“A live one,” he answered, and the King-Emperor stepped away from Stanley. The RAM with the knife did as he’d said he would, quickly and skillfully. “Through and through,” he said, stating the obvious. “Can you move your arm, sir?”

Stanley tried to rotate it, winced, and shook his head. “I’ve got a bone broken in there, sure as the devil.”

“Afraid you’re likely to be right, sir.” The RAM took out a white handkerchief and began bandaging the wound. It quickly became obvious he’d need more material than one handkerchief could provide. Bushell gave him his. The King-Emperor also drew an immaculate square of linen from his breast pocket and handed it to the RAM.

Sir Martin Luther King came up. Bushell blamed him not in the least for missing the brawl; he was far from young and, as a former minister, had trained in the arts of peace rather than those of fighting. His deep, rich voice more than a little shaken, the governor-general said, “Your Majesty, allow me to present to you Colonel Thomas Bushell and Captain Samuel Stanley of the - of your - Royal American Mounted Police.”

“In a manner of speaking, we’ve already been introduced, wouldn’t you say, Sir Martin?” Charles III answered. He turned to the two RAMs and said, “Thank you, gentlemen.”

In a different tone of voice, that would have been perfunctory. As Charles III said it, it covered all the ground needed and then some. Not even Bushell’s cynicism was proof against the living centerpiece of the Empire. “It was a pleasure, Your Majesty,” he said, and Sam Stanley, wounded arm and all, nodded. Bushell went on, “If it hadn’t been for Sergeant Kittridge there” - Kittridge had got out of the steamer when the fight started, and now was one of the men holding Bragg down - “we never would have got here on time.”

“Sergeant, I thank you, too,” Charles III said warmly.

Ted Kittridge sprang to his feet, and to stiff attention. “Your Majesty!” he said. He was still sparing of words, but looked about to burst with pride.

To Bushell, the King-Emperor said, “Just before this - unpleasantness - began, didn’t Sir Martin mention your name in connection with the recovery of The Two Georges!”

“We do have it back, Your Majesty,” Bushell said. “It should be at the All-Union Art Museum in a few minutes; it’s on its way there now.” What Sir Martin had said of him he did not know, and so did not speak to that.

The governor-general said, “Sir David Clarke rushed out to my limousine with the good news as I was about to depart to meet His Majesty here. He spoke most highly of you, Colonel, and I was delighted to relay his praise to the King-Emperor.”

Charles III nodded to confirm that the praise had indeed been relayed. Sir Martin Luther King’s narrow, slightly slanted eyes were inscrutable as he studied Bushell. Bushell understood that. He’d have bet it would have taken more than getting The Two Georges back safe and sound to squeeze praise for him from Sir David.

“You never can tell, Your Excellency,” he said, and then glanced over to Sir Horace Bragg. “You never can tell.”

First faint in the distance, then swelling rapidly, came the urgent clang of an ambulance’s alarm bell. To Bushell, Sir Martin said, “You will of course honor us with your presence at the All-Union Art Museum, having made it possible for the happy event there to proceed as originally planned.”

But Bushell shook his head. “Your Excellency, you’ll have to do without me. Making sure Sam is all right comes first. After that -“ He shrugged vaguely. At the moment, the prospect of lying down on a real bed in real pyjamas and sleeping felt far more attractive than listening to a speech from anyone, the King-Emperor included.

Sir Martin Luther King’s nostrils flared slightly; one eyebrow might have risen a sixteenth of an inch. Without perceptibly changing his expression, he sent Bushell a clear message: you’re making a mistake. Bushell didn’t care. He’d made enough mistakes on this case already. What did one more matter now?

And then Charles III nodded to him. “Stout fellow,” he said. “Your mates come first.”

“Yes, sir,” Bushell agreed enthusiastically. The governor-general was a politico, and thought in terms of protocol. The King-Emperor was a ruler of men, and, by the way he talked, remembered his own regimental service. Sir Martin could run a country, and did a capable job of it. Charles III was more than capable at inspiring the Empire.

The ambulance skidded to a stop behind the steamer Ted Kittridge had driven. Photographers who’d captured on film the seizure of Sir Horace Bragg now spent more flashbulbs as a couple of husky young men in white service caps, white jackets, and black trousers jumped out through the wide doors at the vehicle’s rear.

They were carrying a light stretcher. When Stanley saw it, he tried to wave them away. “Put that back,” he said. “I don’t need it.” He started to get to his feet.

“Stay there on the ground, sir!” one of the young men said, almost as sharply as if he were covering Stanley with a firearm.

The other medical assistant knelt beside him and examined the bandage the RAM had put on his arm. He nodded grudging approval. “Not a bad job. Here, just let us set a light splint on the injured member till we can get you in hospital for a proper setting.”

The assistant who’d told Stanley to stay down went back to the ambulance and returned with a couple of thin boards and some cloth strips with which to tie them. As he got to work, Charles III came over and said, “I want you to see that this man gets the very best of care.”

“Everybody we treat gets the best of care, pal,” the medical assistant said without looking up. His partner kicked him in the ankle. When he did see who had spoken to him, he went pale. “Uh, Your Majesty, I, uh - “

“Never mind,” the King-Emperor said. “Your answer was as it should have been.” The medical assistant went back to work. His hands were shaking so much, he had to try two or three times before he could get the ties as he wanted them.

“Here, sir, if you’ll slide onto the stretcher -“ his partner said, and Stanley did. As the two men lifted him, that same one asked, “Have you got anyone to go with you to hospital?”

“Right here,” Bushell said, taking a step after them.

“Good enough.” The medical assistants slid Sam Stanley into the back of the ambulance, then climbed up after him. One of them waved Bushell forward. “Mind your head, sir. It’s a bit cramped in here.”

“Chief, you’re going to have to ring Phyllis, let her know I’ll be all right,” Stanley said. “If the wireless was carrying His Majesty’s arrival, she may already have heard I got shot.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Bushell promised.

The ambulance driver backed the steamer away from the motorcar in which Bushell and Stanley had arrived, then started toward the hospital, alarm bell clanging. Inside the ambulance, it echoed and reechoed like a warning for the end of the world.

One of the medical assistants took a hypodermic syringe from a compartment set into the side wall of the ambulance. “Would you care for an injection of morphia, sir?” he asked Stanley.

“Why not?” Sam said. “It hurts, and I’m no hero.”

The two assistants looked at each other. “With all due respect, sir, I wouldn’t say that,” the one with the syringe answered as he slid the tip of the needle under Stanley’s skin.

“That’s better,” Stanley said a couple of minutes later, as the drug took effect. He sounded dreamy, far away.

When the ambulance pulled up at the side entrance to the Victoria Memorial Mercy Hospital, the swarm of doctors and nurses waiting for it also argued that, regardless of whether Stanley thought of himself as a hero, the rest of the world did. Some of the assembled medicos also had words of praise for Bushell.

“Never mind me,” he snapped. “See to him.” He jerked a thumb toward the stretcher that held his friend. “I’ve got to ring his wife. What will you be doing to him?”

“We’ll have to open up that arm,” a physician answered. “Any fragments of bone or bullet in there are potential foci for infection. We’ll clean them out as thoroughly as we can, reduce the fracture while the wound is open, and so forth. Should be straightforward enough.”

He spoke with easy confidence. Why not? It wasn’t his arm. Bushell let it go: better a confident medico than a doubtful one, as far as he was concerned. “All right. Lead me to a telephone.”

That produced a small bureaucratic contretemps: allow an outsider to make a long-distance telephone connection from within the hallowed precincts of the hospital? But if the outsider was a hero, even the dragon of bureaucracy slunk back into its cave, vanquished. Installed in the posh office of an assistant director, Bushell rang Phyllis Stanley.

“Oh, thank God it’s you, Tom!” she exclaimed when she recognized his voice. “Edna Allston from next door was listening to the broadcast, and she just rang me in hysterics. What happened? How’s Sam?”

“He’ll be all right,” Bushell answered. “They’re operating on his arm now, but it doesn’t look like a bad wound. They’re just cleaning up in there. He’ll be fine.” He hoped he was telling the truth. He thought he was; he’d seen men with far worse injuries pull through. But septicemia was a risk, and nothing to sneeze at.

Phyllis knew that, too, in spite of his optimistic tone. “I’ll pray,” she said quietly. “Now - how did it happen? Edna’s a sweet lady, but her fiddle is short a couple of strings.”

Bushell explained how they’d recovered The Two Georges, which made Phyllis Stanley exclaim again. Then he told her who had headed the conspiracy to steal the painting. A long silence followed. At last, Phyllis said, “I have to tell you, Tom, I’m not surprised. You look in Sam’s dossier. All the good fitness reports have your name on them. All the ones full of faint praise - you know the kind I mean those are Sir Horace’s, from the days when he supervised both of you. If it hadn’t been for those, I think Sam would have a higher rank today. Sir Horace - he was always smooth, but he doesn’t fancy Negroes, not even a little. You could tell.”

“Maybe you could tell,” Bushell said. “I couldn’t tell. Why didn’t you tell me? Sam said the same sorts of things, too, but only after we found out Bragg was the villain. If I’d known what you just told me, I might have figured that out sooner.”

After another pause, Phyllis replied, “He was your friend. He was your superior, too, and Sam’s. Would you have listened?” Without letting him answer that, she went on, “Anyhow, stirring up that kind of trouble has a way of costing more than it’s worth. This may be a pretty fine country, but it’s not a perfect one.”

Now it was Bushell’s turn to think for a while before he spoke. “Pretty fine is about as much as human beings can hope for, don’t you think? But all right, I take your point. Sam told me the same thing not long ago, as a matter of fact. Still, though, a dossier with saved the life of His Majesty Charles III in it will look, oh, fairly good come the next promotion review. You have to think of these things, Phyllis, so you know how to spend the extra money that’ll be coming in soon.”

“Thomas Bushell, you are impossible? If I were in Victoria right now, I’d -“ Phyllis gave up and started to laugh. “Kiss you right on the cheek,” she finished.

“Promises, promises,” Bushell said. Phyllis laughed louder. He went on, “I’ll ring you back directly Sam comes out of the operating room.”

“Thank you,” she said, and hung up.

That promise meant he had to mollify the assistant administrator’s secretary, who seemed to feel that, while his using the telephone once was a possibly forgivable breach of etiquette, using it twice clearly violated one if not several of the more obscure canons of the Council of Nicaea. The secretary had his revenge by leading Bushell to a waiting room that not only stank of carbolic acid but was so bare, so stark, so grim that any prisoner interrogated in it would have had good cause to complain to a judge through his barrister on grounds of inhumane treatment. The magazine rack held three ragged periodicals, none of them anything Bushell cared to read, none more recent than the previous December’s issue.

A little less than an hour later, a nursing sister escorted Ted Kittridge into the waiting room. The sergeant nodded but wasted no precious words explaining why he’d come - if Bushell couldn’t figure it out, too bad. Instead, Kittridge lit up a cigarillo. The look the nursing sister turned on him would have petrified a basilisk. He seemed to find it mild and benignant. Defeated, and incredulous at being defeated, the nursing sister retired in disorder.

Except for the pungent smoke, waiting with Kittridge was like waiting alone. Bushell stared at the glossy white paint on the far wall and waited for something - anything - to happen. After an hour or so, something did: a doctor in surgical whites came through the door. Bushell bounced to his feet. “How is he?”

“Pretty well, all things considered,” the medico answered. “The bullet cracked the radius, but didn’t splinter it - must have hit at an angle and ricocheted away rather than smashing right through. He should recover full function in the hand, or close to it, at any rate.”

“Good news,” Bushell said. Kittridge nodded again, and lighted another cigarillo. The medico’s glare had no more effect on him than had the nursing sister’s. Bushell went on, “When can I see him?”

“Another couple of hours, I’d say,” the surgeon answered. “He’s still anesthetized now, of course, and we’ll be giving him more morphia when he regains consciousness. But as I told you, absent a wound infection, he should do very well.”

“Good news,” Bushell repeated. “I’ll ring his wife and let her know.” He stretched, noticing for the first time in several hours how worn he was, then shook his head in slight bemusement. “By God, I really do think that wraps things up.”