“Colonel, I trust you know what you are about,” Major Harris said in a tone that belied the words. “I wash my hands of the responsibility for injecting a civilian into the middle of a police investigation. Let me call a steamer to take you to your hotel and then to the scene.” He executed a military about-turn of alarming precision and stalked away.

“Well, well.” Bushell make hand-washing motions. “I didn’t know Pontius Pilate had joined the RAMs.”

Sam Stanley tried to suppress a snort and ended up with a coughing fit instead. When he could speak again, he said, “Go easy on him, Chief. He’ll do what you told him to do, and that’s what counts.”

Major Harris reappeared. “If you will come with me, Colonel, Captain . . . Dr. Flannery.” He might have carved her name from ice. He wasn’t looking at her, though; he was looking at Bushell. Giving your lady friend a thrill, are you, and a chance to see how brave and clever you are? his eyes said. Bushell tried to make his own face answer, It’s not like that, dammit. He didn’t think he had any luck getting the silent message across. He couldn’t say it out loud, either, not without getting into more hot water. Shrugging, he followed Harris down to the underground carpark: space for such amenities of modern life was far tighter here than in New Liverpool.

“This is Sergeant Scriver,” Harris said, nodding to a fellow at the wheel of a Morse steamer that had seen better days. “He’ll take you to the Parker House, and then on to Back Bay. I shall go there directly.” He did another about-turn, this one as sharp as the last; he must have been practicing.

“You bit him like a flea, didn’t you?” Scriver remarked, not sounding altogether dismayed at seeing Major Harris irked. “Pile on in, folks; the teakettle’s all nice and hot and ready to roll.”

Scriver pulled up in front of the Parker House a couple of minutes later. Bushell and Stanley got out. A valet came over to warn Scriver away from the restricted parking area. He routed the functionary with his badge.

Bushell belted on his pistol, then hurried back to the bank of lifts to go downstairs again. He’d moved as fast as he could, but found Sam Stanley there before him. Stanley was tugging at his jacket, trying to make it do a better job of concealing the telltale bulge on his hip. He wasn’t having much luck.

“I already gave up on that,” Bushell said. “We’ll have to look like a couple of bandits till we get out to the motorcar.”

They did, too; both the lift operator and the elderly woman in mourning black who was already in the car drew back in alarm and stared at the two RAMs with frightened eyes. Bushell recognized the temptation to draw his revolver and put a round through the ceiling of the lift as the ignoble impulse it was, which didn’t stop him from enjoying it.

He enjoyed almost running into Michael Shaughnessy halfway across the lobby much less. Whatever you cared to say about his politics - and Bushell might have said a great deal, however little of it would have been complimentary - the reporter had sharp eyes. “Armed, are you?” he said, spotting the pistol under Bushell’s herringbone coat. “And whose funeral are you off to arrange?”

“Yours, maybe, if you don’t move aside,” Bushell answered. He didn’t sound as if he relished the prospect, whatever he might have thought. But he didn’t sound as if he’d shrink from it, either. Shaughnessy got out of his way in a hurry. The man from Common Sense scowled, perhaps angry at his feet for being faster to heed Bushell than the rest of him had wanted. “You’re worse than Bonaparte’s dragoons,” he shouted, shaking his fist. “Doing a tyrant’s bidding was all they knew, but you - “

“Why, Mr. Shaughnessy,” Bushell said, his eyes wide and innocent, “haven’t I heard you apply that name to His Majesty the King-Emperor? You use his laws to protect yourself, and at the same time want to overthrow him? What a surprise when you find you can’t do both at once.” He strode out the door, ignoring the people Shaughnessy’s shout had startled.

Sergeant Scriver made a turn into oncoming traffic that had Bushell cringing and laughing at the same time - police officers everywhere drove as if they were exempt from the traffic laws they upheld for everyone else. Blaring horns and rude gestures expressed the Bostonians’ opinion of the maneuver. Ignoring the unsolicited editorials, Scriver steamed past Kings Chapel, a stately church that had gone up in colonial days, then swung left onto Beacon Street. The turn was not a neat perpendicular, as it would have been in New Liverpool or Doshoweh or even Charleroi. The streets of downtown Boston seemed to have been laid out by someone who’d never heard of neat perpendiculars. They intersected one another at seemingly random angles and, for good measure, changed name every block. When Bushell remarked on that, Sergeant Scriver laughed out loud. “From all I’ve heard, nobody ever laid these streets out, Colonel. They used to be cattle tracks, till one day they paved ‘em.” He sounded serious. Boston was old enough that the story had a chance of being true. Once they rode past the broad meadow of the Boston Common, the streets did begin to follow a grid pattern that made some sort of sense. Back Bay, though, was a newer part of the city, which lent some backhanded support to Scriver’s tale.

At the western edge of the Common, the sergeant swung south on Arlington to Boylston and then west again. “We’ve got ourselves a couple-three miles to go,” he said. “Address Major Harris gave me is Lansdowne near Ipswich, way out in the Fens.” He sighed. “Not much good happens in that part of town, and hasn’t for a long, long time.”

He turned right onto Lansdowne and pulled to a stop in the middle of a block full of shops that looked dedicated to one purpose and one purpose only: separating the none-too-discriminating customer from whatever small store of shillings he might possess without giving him anything worth having in return. Bushell stared in pained disbelief at the bright red socks on display in a haberdasher’s window. Who would wear such things, and why?

George Harris, looking altogether too dapper to belong on Lansdowne Street, came up to Scriver’s motorcar. “Kilbride was observed going into Yawkey’s Tea Shoppe” - he pronounced the last word as if it had two syllables, so the name of the place nearly rhymed - “by Senior Constable McGinnity, as I told you back at the station, Colonel. He has not been observed to leave.”

“Has the place got a back door?” Samuel Stanley asked.

“It does, but the alley on which it opens has only one egress” - Harris pointed to show where that was “and McGinnity has been able to keep it and the front entrance to the tea shop under observation at the same time.” Now the RAM pronounced shop in a normal fashion. Bushell glanced over at McGinnity, who was leaning against a lamppost trying to pretend he wasn’t doing anything in particular. The pretense wasn’t worth much: if you needed a stage Irishman to play a constable, McGinnity would have been your man. He was big and beefy, red-faced and knobby-cheekboned, with red hair now drifted with gray. Throw in his uniform and he was about as inconspicuous as a chimp in church.

In thoughtful tones, Bushell asked, “Could Kilbride have gone into the Yawkey’s place, out the back door into the alley, and then into another shop on Lansdowne here?”

Harris glanced over to Senior Constable McGinnity. He might not approve of having Kathleen Flannery along here, but he was no fool. “That would complicate our lives, wouldn’t it?” He glanced back over his shoulder. “We’ll have the manpower to find out, though.”

Several constabulary steamers rolled to a stop. Big, burly men in uniform piled out of them. By their looks, a fair number could have been McGinnity’s cousins. More motorcars pulled up at the corner of Lansdowne and Ipswich. The men who got out of them wore suits and waistcoats. Bushell had seen several of those fellows at the RAM station.

“All right, we can search the area,” he said. He unbuttoned his jacket so he could get at his revolver in a hurry. Sam Stanley had already done the same thing. Bushell said, “Let’s have a look at Yawkey’s Tea Shoppe, Sam.”

“Right, Chief,” Stanley said.

“You want backup?” Harris asked quietly.

He’d had all the backup in the world at Buckley Bay. “We’ll go first, anyhow,” he answered, and started down the street. Stanley matched him stride for stride. Harris waited behind him, respecting his judgment. Kathleen Flannery, on the other hand, started after him. Hearing her footsteps on the paving slates behind him, he turned around. “Go on back, Kathleen. This is what they pay us to do. It’s not your job.”

“It’s my painting,” she said stubbornly. “I won’t get in your way, but I want to do whatever I can to help.”

Bushell exhaled through his nose. “The last time I went after the Sons of Liberty, I watched a good man get killed before my eyes because he didn’t take them seriously enough. I’m not keen to run the same risk twice. Now will you go back, or shall I get a pair of manacles from Senior Constable McGinnity?”

Kathleen glowered fiercely, but halted. Bushell wouldn’t have bet that she was going to. He and Stanley walked past a chemist’s, a bakery, an ironmonger’s shop, and a cabinetmaker’s establishment that looked too fine for the neighborhood. A very fat, very blond man was examining the inlay work on a table by the front window.

A tavern, a tobacconist’s, a fish market. . . Yawkey’s Tea Shoppe was only a few doors away now. Bushell heard the sound of a woman’s pumps clacking up the street after him. Samuel Stanley sent him a glance that said only one thing: I told you so.

“God damn it,” he muttered under his breath. He didn’t know whether he was angry at Kathleen for not listening to him (though when had she ever listened to him?) or at Major Harris for not keeping her in better check (though Harris undoubtedly figured she was Bushell’s problem). Then he realized he didn’t have to divide things up. He could be angry at both of them at once - and he was. If he caused a scene on the street, he was liable to spook Kilbride - assuming Kilbride wasn’t spooked already, a dubious proposition at best. Ignoring Kathleen also gave him the chance to savor his anger and let it grow. He stalked on toward the tea shop.

He’d just set his hand on the door latch when Kathleen stopped. That made him turn around where anger hadn’t - had she had a sudden rush of brains to the head? He supposed stranger things had happened, though he was hard-pressed to think of one offhand.

Kathleen was staring into the window of the cabinetmaker’s shop. She can’t possibly be shopping, ran through Bushell’s mind, though he didn’t know what else she could be doing. After a moment, she started running again, not back down toward the steamer that had brought her, but up Lansdowne toward Bushell. Scowling, he turned away from her and started to go into the tea shop. “Wait, Tom!” she called urgently. “Please wait!”

“Why the devil should I?” he demanded as she came panting up to him. “I told you to - “

“To hell with what you told me,” she said. She’d calculated that nicely; hearing her swear startled him into brief silence. She took advantage of that to go on, “That fat man in the front of the cabinetmaker’s - I know him.” She corrected herself: “I’ve seen him before, anyhow. I don’t know who he is, but I’ve seen him.”

Bushell believed her. He’d noticed the fat man himself. If you’d seen him once, you’d remember him. Whether that meant anything was a different question. “Where did you see him?” he asked. Kathleen didn’t even take any vindictive pleasure in dropping her bombshell: “At the showing of The Two Georges in Victoria, just after it got here from London, and then again when the exhibition moved up to Philadelphia.” She surprised Bushell by laughing. “In a cutaway, he looks rather like a penguin that’s swallowed a watermelon.”

Bushell brushed at his mustache with a forefinger. Then, almost absentmindedly, he leaned forward and kissed Kathleen half on the mouth, half on the cheek. “And how will he look in a different suit?” he said, his voice musing. “One decorated with the broad arrow, I mean.”

“Shall we go find out, Chief?” Stanley said.

“Yes, I think we’d better,” Bushell said. “We’re liable to come up with Kilbride at the same time, too, with only a little bit of luck.” He turned to Kathleen. “Will you please wait here now?”

“After I’ve come this far? Not bloody likely.” Again, her deliberate vulgarity surprised Bushell, but it didn’t make him change his mind. The only way he could keep her back, though, was to have Sam hold her, and he didn’t want to do that. Shoulder to shoulder with Stanley, he started down Lansdowne toward the cabinetmaker’s. He hoped Kathleen would at least have the sense to walk behind the two of them rather than alongside.

He didn’t get much chance to test that hope, because he’d taken only a couple of strides when the fat man came out onto the pavement. He looked down the street toward Kathleen. “He recognized her, too,” Stanley said softly.

“So he did,” Bushell answered, his voice just as quiet. Of itself, his right hand slid to the butt of his revolver. The fat man had his right hand jammed down in to the right outer pocket of his jacket. Bushell wouldn’t have liked that under any circumstances. After the gun battle at Buckley Bay, he liked it even less.

The fat man looked at him and Stanley and Kathleen, and at the carloads of RAMs behind them at the corner of Lansdowne and Ipswich. He turned his head, a quick, nervous gesture, and spotted the Boston constables down toward Boylston. Even at a distance of thirty or forty yards, Bushell saw him lick his lips: his tongue was very wet and pink.

“Sir, we’d like to talk with you,” Bushell said, taking another step or two toward him. “Do you know a man named Joseph Kilbride?”

“I don’t have to talk to you,” the fellow answered, his voice a foghorn bass. “I don’t have to do anything you tell me to, not one damn thing, do you hear me?”

“Careful, Chief,” Stanley muttered out of the side of his mouth. “He’s as ready to go as a handful of fulminate.”

“Don’t I know it,” Bushell whispered back. He raised his voice and spoke to the fat man again: “Take it easy, pal. Nobody’s going to - “

“I’m not your pal!” the fat man shouted. He looked back over his shoulder at the constables. They’d moved toward him while his attention was fixed on Bushell. He made as if to retreat back into the furniture shop.

“Hold it right there!” Bushell said sharply.

Instead of obeying, the man yanked his hand out of his pocket and hurled what looked like a large, dun-colored egg at Bushell. “Grenade!” Samuel Stanley shouted, yanking out his pistol and throwing himself flat at the same time.

Bushell used his forearm to knock Kathleen Flannery to the pavement. She screamed. He didn’t care. He dove down on top of her, shielding her with his body. As it had in the Queen Charlotte Islands, time seemed to stretch like taffy. He drew his own revolver, clenched left hand on right wrist as prescribed in the manual of arms, and aimed the weapon at the fat man.

Stanley fired. The grenade exploded. Instead of stretching, time suddenly crumpled in on itself, so that everything happened at once. Bushell squeezed the trigger. The revolver roared and bucked in his hand at the same instant as what felt like a couple of red-hot needles drilled into his right leg and Kathleen screamed again.

The fat man jerked as if stung. He performed an awkward pirouette, his arms flailing to help him keep his balance. Stanley fired again. So did Bushell, at almost the identical moment. One of those shots Bushell was never sure which - caught the fat man in the side of the head. He crashed to the pavement, surely dead before he hit it. Bright red in the summer sun, a pool of blood spread beneath him and poured over the kerb into the gutter.

Bushell’s ears rang. The stench of smokeless powder was thick in his nostrils. His heart pounded crazily. Kathleen Flannery writhed beneath him. All unbidden, his thoughts went back to the night before. How different that had been! He scrambled to his feet. “You all right?” he asked, including both her and Sam in the question.

“Yes, I’m fine,” Stanley said. “God in heaven, gunplay twice now - three times, if you count Tricky Dick.” He rose too and, revolver still in hand, walked toward the body of the fat man. Kathleen took stock of herself. The green dress was filthy and had a hole above one knee. Her elbow was scraped raw, and a fragment of grenade casing had scored a bleeding furrow along one arm. “I’m all right,” she said, as if she didn’t quite believe it herself. “Thank you, Tom.” Then her eyes went to the corpse on the pavement. “Oh, God,” she whispered. She’d seen violent death twice now in a matter of weeks, twice more than the average civilian saw in a lifetime. Still whispering, she asked, “How are you, Tom?”

“I’ll find out.” Bushell’s trousers were out at the knee, too. He wasn’t sure he would be able to put weight on his right leg, but it held him as he walked, though blood ran down into his shoe. He pulled up his trouser leg. Like Kathleen, he had gashes from grenade fragments, but they didn’t look deep or serious.

He reached down and helped her to her feet. Almost absently, he asked, “Now do you see why I asked you not to come with me?”

She nodded, but then she said, “If I hadn’t, you never would have recognized the fat man, would you?”

“No, I don’t suppose we would,” Bushell admitted. His tone of voice changed as he added, “I’m glad you’re not badly hurt.” He didn’t care to think about what might have happened had they been standing up when the grenade went off.

He followed Sam Stanley toward the fat man’s corpse. All along Lansdowne Street, shopkeepers had come out of their establishments to see what the gunfire meant. They stared in disbelief at the body on the pavement. Had they heard gunfire more often, they would have had the sense to take cover instead of running out to investigate. Bushell envied them their quiet, secure little worlds. Major Harris was also approaching the cabinetmaker’s shop. “Have you got a weapon?” Bushell called to him. When he shook his head, Bushell waved him back: “Then get out of the line of fire.” Whoever ran the cabinetmaker’s hadn’t come out with the rest of the local merchants. Bushell did not think that boded well.

Stanley had not gone right up to the dead body; he’d halted where nobody could shoot at him from the doorway of the cabinetmaker’s. The door was slightly ajar. Bushell glanced at Stanley. “We go in?” he said. It sounded like a question, but it wasn’t.

“We go in,” Stanley said with a nod. “We’ve got the guns, looks like we’ll need them, and it doesn’t look like anybody else thought to bring any.”

“Nobody believes it till it happens in his backyard.” Bushell tried to remember what he’d seen about the layout of the cabinetmaker’s shop when he walked past it on his way to Yawkey’s. He said, “I’ll go in first and break to the left. You’re taller than I am; that’ll give you a shot over my shoulder.”

“Got it.” Stanley shook his head. “And I thought I was done with combat. On three?” He didn’t wait for Bushell to agree, but started counting: “One, two ... “

Yelling like fiends, they ran for the door. Bushell hit it with his shoulder. It flew open. He dashed inside. Behind the counter stood two men. He recognized Joseph Kilbride’s tough Irish face, twisted now into a grimace of hate. “Hold it!” he screamed.

Kilbride was already holding it - a grenade like the one the fat man had thrown. He’d pulled the pin; he was holding the detonator down with his thumb. He drew back his arm. Bushell remembered a Franco-Spanish grenadier springing up from behind a rock, somewhere near the Nuevespañolan border. The man standing beside Kilbride - perhaps the proprietor of the shop - dropped to the floor. As Kilbride’s arm started to come forward, Bushell and Stanley both fired. One slug hit Kilbride in the chest, the other in the flattened bridge of the nose. He let out a grunt of astonishment and toppled. His grenade fell beside him - and beside the man who’d taken shelter in back of the counter. A moment later, the grenade detonated. Casing fragments rattled off the walls and ceiling. A bubbling shriek burst from the throat of Kilbride’s companion, then faded.

Pistols still at the ready, Bushell and Stanley ran around the counter to see what they could do to keep the fellow from expiring on the spot. As soon as they saw him, they looked at each other in dismay. The grenade had fallen by his face and neck. Fragments must have cut his carotids, for he was bleeding like a butchered hog.

“We’ll never save him,” Bushell said. “No point to trying.”

Stanley looked down at his face once more - or rather, the shattered bone and burnt and diced meat where his face had been. “You’re right, Chief,” he said in a faraway voice. “Lucky for him that we can’t, too.”

Bushell made himself turn away from the horridly compelling sight. He waved the barrel of his revolver toward the open door to the back room. “We’d better see if we’ve missed anyone,” he said, adding, “It would be nice if we had someone left alive to question, don’t you think?”

“Could be useful, yes,” Stanley answered, matching him dry for dry. “Shall I go first this time?”

“I’m still shorter than you are,” Bushell said. “One, two ...” They ran through the doorway one after the other.

Instead of powder and blood and the latrine stink of bowels loosed in sudden death, the back room smelled of sawdust and varnish and turpentine - clean, friendly odors that grated on Bushell’s keyed-up senses. He spun wildly, looking for an enemy who was not there. Sam Stanley kicked over what was going to be a tabletop that leaned against the wall. No one crouched behind it. Bushell went to the door leading to the alley. He opened it and peered outside. No one waited with a gun or another grenade. The alley was as empty as it might have been at midnight.

“I think that’s everybody,” Bushell sounded disbelieving, even to himself. He closed the alley door again and locked it.

“I think you’re right.” Stanley shook his head. “Dear sweet Lord, what a mess we have here.” With a soldier’s practicality and a baring of teeth that was not a grin, he added, “We came out on the right end of it this time, too.”

Bushell was about to nod when voices came from the front of the store. He and Stanley stared at each other. Neither Kilbride nor his chum could possibly be breathing - could he? One thing Bushell remembered from his army days was that human beings could be devilishly hard to kill. Even so “Impossible,” he mouthed to Stanley. His adjutant nodded, but then waggled his hand back and forth, downgrading the word to something like damned unlikely.

Moving quietly as they could, they went back to the door that had admitted them to the room on the alley. Bushell’s gun barrel went into the doorway before he stuck out his head.

“Major, you’re very brave, but you’re also very foolish,” he said, standing straight and showing himself. George Harris had just come into the shop by the street entrance, a constabulary truncheon clutched in his right fist. Bushell pointed the index finger of his left hand at the RAM. “Bang! You’re dead.”

Harris shrugged. “The chance one takes in this business now and again.” Bushell admired his nonchalance, if not his good sense.

Behind Harris crowded a couple of other RAMs, a couple of uniformed constables, and Kathleen Flannery. One corner of Bushell’s mouth turned down. As he’d told her, mixing it with villains was not her business. Then his expression cleared, to be replaced by one of mild surprise. Villains might not be her business, but after last night he definitely was.

She pushed her way up to stand at Major Harris’s elbow. None of the police officers seemed to have the nerve to stop her. Bushell understood that down to the ground. “Are you all right?” she demanded, and started to shove past Harris.

“Not a scratch on me or Sam, except from where we hit the pavement,” Bushell assured her. He held up a hand. “You don’t want to come any farther, Kathleen. It’s - not pretty back of the counter there.”

For a wonder, she heeded him. Major Harris did come up to look at the carnage. He went faintly green.

“Good heavens,” he murmured. “We’ve not seen anything like this in a good many years.” He ran a finger under his collar, as if to loosen it. “I tell you frankly, I could have gone a good many more years without it, too.”

“There is that,” Bushell agreed. “Here we have the late Mr. Kilbride.” Nodding at the other corpse, he added, “Could Constable McGinnity tell us if this is - or rather, was - the proprietor of the establishment here?”

Major Harris looked at that body, then averted his eyes. “At the moment, I doubt whether his mother could tell who he was. McGinnity may perhaps know him by his clothing, though, so we’ll find out about that.”

“Careful there!” someone out on the sidewalk exclaimed, at the same time as someone else was going,

“Watch out!” That sounded interesting - and alarming - enough to send Bushell and Stanley out to see what was going on. The RAMs had been searching the pockets of the fat man. One of them held in the palm of his hand a khaki-painted metal spheroid a bit bigger than a cricket ball. “Grenade,” he said unnecessarily.

“Russian Army model,” Samuel Stanley put in.

“If you say so,” the Boston RAM answered with a shrug. “Far as I’m concerned, it’s bad enough no matter who made it.” For him it was just evidence of depravity, not evidence in a case. His colleague had found a wallet in the fat man’s left hip pocket. He opened it. “Here’s his permit to operate a motorcar,” he said, drawing forth one of the documents within. “Gives his name as Eustace Venable; his home address is in Georgestown, province of Maryland.” He pawed through the wallet. “A little stack of business cards in here, too: Eustace Venable, Fine Cabinetry, and another Georgestown address, with a telephone number.”

“Georgestown.” Bushell tasted the word. “Right next door to Victoria. Why does that not surprise me?”

He glanced up to the heavens, as if expecting a choir of angels to come down and announce he ought to be surprised.

Instead, Sam Stanley said quietly, “We should have known the trail would lead us there sooner or later.”

“That’s true,” Bushell said. The King-Emperor was coming to Victoria - coming all too soon now. Bushell still had no idea whether The Two Georges was in or around the capital, but it seemed inevitable that some of the people who had stolen it would be there.

“Begging your pardon, sir,” someone said behind him. He turned. It was Senior Constable McGinnity. The big Irishman went on, “Sir, I think that’s Mr. Cavendish in there, though with him so torn up and all I’ve the devil’s own time being sure.”

“His papers and his fingerprints will identify him for certain,” Bushell said. “Do you know whether he’s got a wife or children?”

“Neither the one nor t’other,” McGinnity answered. “He lived by his lonesome, Mr. Cavendish did. I’ve heard tell he was - you know” - a delicate shrug of the shoulders conveyed what Bushell was supposed to know - “but I can’t say for a fact that that’s so.”

“If he was, he won’t have let the other Sons find out,” Bushell said. “They’re harder on that sort of thing that the Crown’s law courts ever dreamt of being.”

A couple of constables came toward the cabinetmaker’s shop along with a red-faced, gray-haired man with broad shoulders. One of them said to Bushell, “Sir, here’s Mr. Yawkey from the tea shop back yonder. Reckoned you might be interested in having a word or two with him.”

“Why, so I might,” Bushell said, as if the notion hadn’t crossed his mind till that moment. But his air of nonchalance fell away like a discarded cloak when he rounded on Yawkey. “So - you and Joseph Kilbride were friends, eh?”

“You might say so,” Yawkey answered. “We’ve always got on well, anyway.”

Bushell rubbed at his mustache. He hadn’t expected such a forthright admission. Maybe Yawkey would sing like a crooner on the wireless. “And what did your friend” - he fought hard to keep an ironic twist off the word - “talk about when he dropped in on you today?”

“Why, tea, of course,” Yawkey exclaimed, his shaggy eyebrows rising in surprise at the question. “What else?”

“Tea?” Bushell echoed, taken aback.

“Sir, if a man comes into a tea shop to ask after shoe-blacking, wouldn’t you say he’s in the wrong place?” Yawkey inquired with exaggerated patience; he’d evidently decided Bushell was on the slow side. “I’ve been selling tea to Joseph Kilbride for more than twenty years. He came in to ask after some Orange Pekoe.”

Bushell muttered something under his breath. If all you thought about was Joseph Kilbride the Son of Liberty, you were liable to forget Joseph Kilbride the grocer. “Has he been traveling to Boston to buy from you in person for all that time?” he asked after pausing to think. Yawkey shook his big, blunt-featured head. “Up until three or four years ago, we dealt entirely by post. But he’s come into Boston several times now. I enjoy his company.” He chuckled at Bushell’s expression. “Oh, I’d guess he’s not the easiest sort for most to get along with. But him and me, we were both in the prize ring a time or three, and we tell stories long into the night. Him and Phineas Stanage, the brewer down in Victoria, it’s the same thing with them.”

So Kilbride hadn’t got his nose bent by accident then. But that was only a small part of what went through Bushell’s mind. “Three or four years?” he murmured, as much to himself as to Yawkey. Business trips into Boston would have given Kilbride a perfect cover for any other visits he made here. And Stanage wasn’t just a brewer; all the RAMs in Victoria knew perfectly well he was a Son of Liberty, though nobody had been able to prove a thing - not till now, anyway.

“I can give you exact dates, if you like,” Yawkey answered. “I’ll have ‘em all written down in my account books.”

“I may take you up on that,” Bushell said, his voice still abstracted. Had the plot to steal The Two Georges been ripening for four years? Or had Kilbride got involved in it only lately? He couldn’t ask the man now.

Samuel Stanley said, “Why did you let Kilbride go out your back door and down the alley?”

“We spent a deal of time in the storeroom in back of the shop,” Yawkey answered. “He was buying in bulk and seeing for himself what all I had back there. Let me think back, so I can tell you just how it was.

. . . We’d come close to finishing when he went to the front for a moment. Then he came back and just sort of asked if he could stroll out that way. I told him there wasn’t anything to see in the alley but rubbish bins, but I didn’t think much about it at the time.”

“He must have spied McGinnity being inconspicuous,” Stanley said to Bushell, who nodded.

“Can I go back to my shop now?” Yawkey asked. “I’m the only one minding it, and I’m apt to be losing trade standing around here making chitchat.”

“A couple of more questions,” Mr. Yawkey,” Bushell said. The merchant’s brows came down like shutters; he wasn’t used to hearing no. Bushell pointed over to the cabinetmaker’s shop in front of which they all stood. “How long has Mr. Cavendish been in business here?”

“Him?” By the tone, Yawkey’s opinion of the late cabinetmaker was not high. Part of the reason emerged in his reply: “He’s a Johnny-come-lately, he is: bought the place from old Fred Jenkins maybe four years back. Hasn’t done any too well with it, either,” he added with a certain somber satisfaction.

“Isn’t that interesting?” Sam Stanley said, and Bushell nodded again. If the timing was coincidental, it made for a very large and robust coincidence.

“Did Joseph Kilbride ever go into Cavendish’s shop before or after he came to yours?” Bushell asked Yawkey.

“I never saw him do it, but I don’t know what that proves. I’m better at minding my own business than my neighbors’.”

Most of the time, people who said things like that were lying through their teeth. Bushell got the feeling Yawkey was telling the truth. He said, “That’s all for now. We may have more questions for you later.”

“If you do, ask ‘em in the shop,” Yawkey said firmly. “Good day to you.” He stumped on up Lansdowne Street as if it had been made for no one but him.

Major Harris came out of the furniture shop. “We’ll need a statement from you, Colonel, and one from Captain Stanley, and one from Dr. Flannery, too. The forms must be observed, as you know.”

“Oh, indeed they must,” Bushell said. “In triplicate.” It would be a long afternoon’s journey into night. And the Boston papers would have a field day, too. Three men killed in the course of an investigation?

Gunfire? Hand grenades? Newsboys would be shouting extras on the street corners tomorrow morning no, more likely tonight. Well, soonest begun, soonest done. “Let’s go,” he said. Sitting on the edge of Kathleen Flannery’s bed, Bushell blew a smoke ring up toward the ceiling. She made silent clapping motions, which set her bare breasts bobbing prettily. Bushell didn’t feel like applause. He walked over to the bottle of Jameson he’d ordered from room service, poured a glass three-quarters full, and then, after due reflection, used silver-plated tongs to add a couple of ice cubes.

Standing there naked by the chest of drawers on which he’d put the bottle, he said, “Victoria,” and then drank. It was not a toast. It was nothing like a toast. It was more on the order of getting the taste of the word out of his mouth.

But neither the whiskey’s complex, smoky flavor nor the burning it set up in his belly could take away that taste. No matter what happened here in Boston, no matter what the local RAMs and constables turned up, his trail, as best he could see it, led straight on toward the capital of the NAU. He hated the idea.

Kathleen watched him gulp down the glass of Jameson, pour himself another, and pour that one down, too. “Fix me a drink, please,” she said. “With some water, not just ice.”

“I thought you’d sooner have gin,” he said.

“I would,” she answered, “but this will be all right. After the grilling in the RAM offices, anything this side of chloroform would be all right.”

He grunted, took another crystal tumbler from its silver tray, put in ice and poured Jameson over it, then had to walk into the bathroom for some water. When he came back and handed Kathleen the glass, she murmured a word of thanks and patted the mattress beside her.

Bushell sat down. She sipped her drink. Her eyes widened slightly. “You didn’t put in much water.”

“You didn’t ask for much,” he said. After a moment, he pointed a finger at her. “I know what you’re doing.” Two fast knocks of Jameson hadn’t fuzzed his thoughts, but they might have made him less reticent about letting her know what those thoughts were: “You’re distracting me.”

“Why, Colonel Bushell, sir, I certainly do hope so,” she said, and stretched just enough to make his eye travel the whole long, smooth length of her: a length marred at the moment by gauze pads and adhesive tape on both knees, a forearm, and one elbow. Bushell was similarly decorated. He grunted again, this time in amusement. “Not what I meant - and you know it,” he added, stabbing out that accusing forefinger once more. “If I’m making drinks for you, I can’t very well be making any for me, and if I don’t make them for me, I can’t very well drink them, and if I don’t drink them I can’t very well get drunk - now can I?”

“No,” she answered, a little angrily. “And why should you want to, anyway? The only people I knew who turned the name Victoria into a swear word were the Sons of Liberty - till you.”

“And do you know what else?” he said after mulling that over. “We have the exact same reason, too.”

He waited for her to gape at him, and was not disappointed. Then he explained: “The Sons think Victoria, just by existing, puts a control on them they don’t want to accept.”

“Yes, of course they do,” she said. “But if there’s any man in the NAU more loyal to Crown and Country than you, I haven’t met him.”

“For which I thank you,” Bushell said, even if he wasn’t altogether sure she’d meant it as a compliment.

“And as long as I’m in Prince Rupert or Doshoweh or Charleroi or even here in Boston, I’m the man who’s in charge of getting The Two Georges back for Crown and Country, too.”

He wondered if she would understand what he was driving at. She did: a point for her. “I see,” she breathed, nodding slowly and thoughtfully. “When we get to Victoria, you won’t be able to handle the case your way anymore. You’ll be under orders from your - commandant, is that the right title?”

“That’s the right title,” Bushell agreed. “Lieutenant General Sir Horace Bragg and I are old friends, but that makes things worse, not better. When Sir Horace gets orders from the governor-general, he has to hit me with them twice as hard as he would otherwise, just to let people know his friend isn’t getting any special treatment. I understand why he does it, but that doesn’t make life easy for me.”

“A man of antique virtue,” Kathleen said. Was she being ironic? He couldn’t tell. She drank from the tumbler again. “That’s not bad,” she murmured, her voice judicious. “Different from Scotch. But what sort of orders that you won’t like is the governor-general likely to give Sir Horace to pass to you?”

“Arrangements for paying ransom for The Two Georges comes to mind,” Bushell answered bleakly. He wondered how she’d take that; given her position, she was liable to want the painting back at any price. What she said, though, was, “Sir Martin Luther King strikes me as having more spine than that.”

“If we were speaking only of Sir Martin, I’d say you were right,” Bushell answered. “But his chief of staff is Sir David Clarke, and Sir David has all the spine of your average - actually of your rather sub-par

- blancmange.”

Kathleen’s eyes glinted; maybe it was the Irish in her reacting to the prospect of a feud. “You don’t sound as if you like Sir David Clarke,” she observed, drawing out like to exaggerate the innuendo in her words.

“As a matter of fact, I don’t,” Bushell said. He regretted those two drinks; without them, he wouldn’t have spoken so much of his mind. Now, unless he got lucky, he was going to have to say a lot more. He didn’t get lucky. “And why is that?” Kathleen asked. Sure enough, she did scent a feud, and she wouldn’t be happy - more to the point, she wouldn’t shut up - till she found out what was going on, and why.

Bushell got up from the bed and poured himself another tumbler of Jameson. In spite of Kathleen’s disapproving look, he drank it down in a couple of swallows. Two drinks weren’t enough to ready him for what he had to tell her. By the time he was through with the sordid story of Irene and Sir David, he’d had more than three, also.

He smiled crookedly at Kathleen. “Now you know how I come by the uneven tenor of my ways.”

“So I do,” she said, and then went on in a meditative voice, “When I found out Kyril had another fiancée, at least I didn’t do it by finding him in bed with that other fiancée. I hadn’t thought my situation had much to recommend it, but I see I had something to be thankful for after all.”

“That’s true.” Bushell’s words came out clear enough, but slightly lower than they should have, as if emerging from a wind-up phonogram whose spring was starting to wear out. Ever so casually, he scratched at the tip of his nose. He couldn’t feel it. Yes, he’d had considerably more than three drinks. He waited for Kathleen to say something sympathetic, or possibly - and even better - something unkind about Sir David Clarke. But the way she cocked her head to one side and studied him made him remember how much less she’d drunk than he. She asked, “Why do you suppose your wife - your ex-wife, I should say - chose to be unfaithful to you!”

That was a question he’d avoided asking himself for years; what had happened was far easier to understand than why. He didn’t like facing it now. Slowly, he answered, “I took her for granted, I expect. You don’t think that can possibly happen, not when you first meet, but it does - unless you know enough to watch out for it. And I won’t deny being married to what I do, either.” He turned and patted the side of the whiskey bottle; a lot of the whiskey was out of it and inside him. The crooked smile came back. “In Jameson veritas.”

“Maybe,” Kathleen said. “And maybe your Irene wasn’t altogether blameless, either - in fact, she couldn’t have been, or she wouldn’t have been doing what you caught her doing.”

Absurdly, that angered Bushell for a moment. He’d concentrated all his fury on Sir David Clarke. In clinging to his memories of happier times with Irene, he’d forgotten - he’d made himself forget - he hadn’t walked in during the middle of a rape. Women had been deceiving their husbands for as long as men had been straying from their wives. But he hadn’t strayed, he hadn’t wanted to stray, and he hadn’t let himself think Irene would have.

“I certainly don’t think well of Sir David for taking advantage of your situation, whatever the reasons for it,” Kathleen said. Bushell nodded, glad for the chance not to think about Irene. Kathleen went on, “How could he be Sir Martin’s chief of staff with that on his record?”

“Three reasons.” With drunken precision, Bushell ticked them of on his fingers: “First, he did marry her. Second, chief of staff is not an elective post, of course. And third,” he finished reluctantly, “he’s good at what he does.” One side of his mouth twisted into a wry smile. “Irene certainly thought so.”

“Good you can joke about it,” Kathleen said.

Bushell stared owlishly at her, then went back and listened to what he’d just said. “I did, didn’t I?” he said in some surprise. “It’s the first time I ever have, I’ll tell you that. That calls for another drink.” He picked up the bottle of Jameson, looked at it, and set it down. “As a matter of fact, maybe that calls for not having another drink.”

“Yes, maybe it does,” Kathleen said, with so much enthusiasm that Bushell knew she thought he’d already had one - or several - too many. Perhaps ill-advisedly, she asked, “And what is Sir David so good at?”

“Besides adultery, do you mean?” Bushell said. Snide comments about Sir David Clarke didn’t count as jokes to him - nor, evidently, to Kathleen, either. She sat quietly, waiting for his answer. After a bit of thought, he said, “What he’s good at, what he’s good for - however you like - is keeping his boss out of trouble, making sure Sir Martin doesn’t do anything to offend any large number of his constituents. In small doses, that’s all well and good. But Sir David thinks - or I think Sir David thinks - that if a small dose is good, a large one will be better. If Sir Martin listened to him all the time, he’d be so bland he couldn’t possibly lead us anywhere. He’d follow whichever way the people blow, and the people, given half a chance, blow every which way.”

“He’s more interested in having Sir Martin look good than in having him be good, you’re saying,”

Kathleen remarked.

Bushell looked at her in an admiration that had nothing to do with the physical charms she still displayed so invitingly. “That’s just what I’m saying. It’s just what I would have said, as a matter of fact, if I had my wits about me.” He smiled that lopsided smile again. “Must be love.”

“If you weren’t drunk, you wouldn’t talk foolishness.” Kathleen was brisk almost to coldness. He remembered life had bruised her, too. She went on, “Tell me that when you’re sober and I’ll - I’ll think about believing it.”

Thinking about being sober made him think about the morning, and about black coffee and paracetamol. By the way he felt now, he knew how he’d feel then, and how little the pain relievers would help. Well, he’d been through that before, too, more times than he cared to recall. “I think I’d better get back to my room and get what sleep I can,” he said.

“Good,” Kathleen answered. “For a moment there, I thought you had no common sense left at all.”

“Hrmp,” he said in mock dudgeon. He’d draped his clothes neatly on a chair. As he walked over to it, Kathleen rose from the bed to go over to the chest of drawers. He reached out and swatted her lightly on her bare backside when she bent to open a drawer. She straightened with an indignant squeak. “There, you see?” he said. “If you insult me, I beat you.”

“And here I’d been thanking God I left Anthony Rothrock behind in Charleroi,” she said, pulling out a pair of cotton pyjamas comfortable and sensible for someone traveling by herself. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Shall I scream for the police?”

“If you do, you’ll probably find an officer close by,” he answered. They both laughed, as easy with each other as if they’d been together a long time. Bushell took that for a good sign. Now, he thought, if the damned case would only give me one . . .

Several large, muscular men stood in front of the lifts when Bushell, Stanley, and Kathleen Flannery walked over to them to do downstairs for breakfast. They did not have the look of men waiting for a car themselves. After a moment, Bushell recognized one of them. “Hullo, Scriver,” he said. “What’s all this in aid of?” He spoke as softly as he could; the paracetamol he’d gulped in his first waking action hadn’t yet started taking the edge off a headache that bored through his skull like the electric bandsaw slicing into a seam of coal deep down under Charleroi.

The RAM who’d driven him to Lansdowne Street answered, “We’re here to keep the reporters away from your room, sir. Major Harris asked the hotel to stop incoming calls last night, too, to give the three of you some rest. But you’d better know there’s a great ravening pack of newspapermen down in the lobby, just waiting for you to show your faces.”

Bushell groaned. “They would be there, wouldn’t they?” Samuel Stanley said. “Death by gunfire, hand grenades - all sorts of juicy things to put on the front page.”

“Right,” Bushell said in a tight, controlled voice. The prospect of facing the press never sent him into transports of delight. Facing them with a hangover, and with them standing between him and several cups of black coffee - He groaned again. What did Marlowe have the devil say in The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus? Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it: that was the line. At the moment, he had considerable sympathy for the devil.

“Shall we go back and ring down for room service?” Kathleen asked.

Bushell thought of the devil again, this time as tempter. Reluctantly, he shook his head - only a little, because it hurt. “Go ahead, if you like,” he told her. “You’re not officially part of the case. Me, I’d have to face them sooner or later anyhow. It might as well be now.” With a martyred sigh, he turned back to Scriver. “Tell Major Harris I only regret I have but one life to lose for His Majesty.”

“Er - right sir,” Scriver said. “It won’t be so bad as that.”

“No - it’ll be worse.”

“I’ll come with you,” Kathleen declared, in a tone that said she didn’t want him to go down there and die alone. It touched him absurdly; he wasn’t used to having anyone but Sam cover his back. A bell clanged and a light came on to signal the arrival of the lift. Scriver and his companions let Bushell, Kathleen, and Stanley board ahead of them, then climbed on themselves. On his little stool in one corner of the car, the operator muttered something about crowding. When no one paid him any attention, he sighed, closed the doors, and let the lift descend to the lobby.

More RAMs guarded the bank of lifts down there. Bushell idly wondered how a genuine guest of the Parker House was supposed to get up to his room. He found out when one such guest used his doorkey as a talisman to get him past the warders of the way up.

Bushell had hoped he wouldn’t be recognized the instant he stepped out of the lift. That hope proved forlorn. “There he is!” half a dozen voices cried from all parts of the lobby, and reporters stampeded toward him. The Boston RAMs got in front of him like rugby forwards battling to keep the nasty devils on the other side away from the three-quarterback with the ball.

Getting from the lifts to Parker’s was a pretty fair approximation of a scrummage. Elbows flew; some of the reporters were as big and burly as the RAMs. Neither Jerry Doyle nor Michael Shaughnessy was, but the two reporters from Common Sense made up in stridency what they gave away in pounds and inches.

“How does it feel to be a murderer of innocents?” Shaughnessy screamed into Bushell’s ear.

“I don’t know,” Bushell answered. “If I ever try it, you’ll be the first to hear.”

“Most places I go to, innocents aren’t in the habit of carrying hand grenades,” Samuel Stanley said.

“Or throwing them at people,” Kathleen added. Shaughnessy sent her a pained look, perhaps because she’d abandoned a cause he thought she held, or perhaps because the foot Bushell was stepping on belonged to him.

“Why were you armed when you went in search of Joseph Kilbride?” a reporter asked, notebook poised to receive Bushell’s pearls of wisdom.

“If you’re trying to arrest a gun runner, there is some small possibility that he might have a gun - or some other bit of nasty pyrotechnics - concealed about his person,” Bushell answered.

“Pyro - “ the reporter muttered, and sent Bushell a wry grin. “Why the devil didn’t you pick a word I can spell?”

“Why the devil can’t you spell the words I pick?” Bushell retorted. The reporter was only a little more than half his age. He rubbed it in: “Sorry state our schools have got to these days, isn’t it?”

“I did that story last week, pal,” the reporter said, not a bit put out. “You’re what’s news today.”

Another newshound said, “What’s the connection between Kilbride, Venable, and Cavendish on the one hand and The Two Georges on the other?”

“We’re still investigating that,” Bushell answered, a reply that had the twin virtues - as far as he was concerned - of being true and altogether uninformative. He’d hoped none of the reporters would make the connection, but what you hoped for and what you got too often had only the most distant relationship to each other.

“What’s this I hear about your firing at poor Kilbride without even the slightest reason for it?” Jerry Doyle shouted.

“What is it?” Bushell said. “It sounds like a lie to me.”

His voice an angry growl, Samuel Stanley added, “I suppose you think we dropped the hand grenade that blew Cavendish’s face to bits. I hate to tell you, Mr. Doyle, but hand grenades aren’t standard RAM

issue - and how would we know to have them handy after Venable flung the first one at us?”

“ If that happened,” Doyle said stubbornly.

“Of course, if,” Bushell agreed, reaching out to pat the man from Common Sense on the shoulder.

“And if the sun goes down tonight - just on the off chance, mind you - it’ll get dark in Boston.”

“Give it up, Jerry,” one of the other reporters told Doyle, his tone half amused, half sympathetic. “It really happened, and there’s damn all you can do about it but take your lumps and come out fighting the next time.”

Doyle frowned and didn’t say anything. Michael Shaughnessy did: “If it was a RAM told me the sun was setting, I’d step outside before I believed him.”

If Common Sense claimed the sun was setting, Bushell was ready to take that for proof it wasn’t. He didn’t bother saying so. For one thing, he and the men from John Kennedy’s magazine would have sounded like a pack of five-year-olds. “If you say this - “ “Oh, yeah? Well, if you say that -“ For another, the RAMs had finally waded through the press of the press to the entrance to Parker’s. Given the choice between arguing with reporters and getting some hot coffee outside, Bushell didn’t think twice. Some of the reporters did get into Parker’s, but only as customers. The waiters there were more zealous in keeping them away from Bushell’s table than were the RAMs. “Sirs, ma’am, if you come in here, we assume you want the chance to take things at your own pace and enjoy your meal,” one of them said.

“I like this place,” Samuel Stanley declared in ringing tones.

After breakfast, Major Harris laid on a RAM steamer to take Bushell and his companions to the local headquarters. That frustrated the reporters who’d hung about while they ate. Newsboys hawked dailies on every corner. One headline read, BUSHELL STRETCHES TRAIL OF GORE FROM SEA TO

SHINING SEA.

He pointed to it and asked the driver, “That would be the New England Courant?”

“Yes, sir,” the local RAM answered. “Heard of it already, have you?”

“How could I keep from hearing about such a fine patriotic paper?” Bushell asked. The driver chuckled. When they got to the RAM headquarters, Major Harris met them again and said, “I expect you’ll want to telephone Victoria from a more secure line then you could hope to get at the hotel.”

“Yes, just so,” Bushell agreed. Fear of listeners on the line wasn’t what had kept him from ringing up Sir Horace Bragg the night before. He’d unburdened himself to Kathleen instead. Rather than dwelling on what that might mean, he asked Harris, “Have you already made a preliminary report to the capital?”

“Oh, yes, sir, that I have.” Harris stifled a yawn. He’d probably been up till all hours. “But you know more of the picture - and you can take that any way you please - than I do. The commandant’ll be glad to hear from you, I’m sure he will. Why don’t you just come along with me?”

He took Bushell and his companions to the same room they’d occupied the afternoon before when word came that Joseph Kilbride had been spotted. As she had then, Kathleen Flannery sniffed at the photographs of scantily dressed women and then ostentatiously ignored them - not the sort of art of which she was a connoisseur.

The connection to NAU RAM headquarters in Victoria went through quick as boiled asparagus (ah, the classics, Bushell thought). When he identified himself, the RAM operator said, “Yes, sir! I’ll ring you straight through to Sir Horace’s office.”

That didn’t take long, either. “Office of Lieutenant General Sir Horace Bragg, Commandant, Royal North American Mounted Police, Sally Reese speaking,” his secretary said, apparently without pausing for breath. Bushell moved the handset farther from his ear; as usual, Sally spoke as if she held a megaphone in front of her mouth.

He identified himself again, then said, “I’d like to speak to Sir Horace, please.”

“I’m sorry, Colonel Bushell,” Sally blared, “but you can’t.”

“It’s urgent,” Bushell said. “If he’s in a meeting, please pull him out. I’ll take responsibility.”

“It’s not that, Colonel,” she answered, still at the top of her lungs. “I know he’s always ready to talk to you, but he’s not here this morning. He called in first thing to say he wouldn’t be. He broke a tooth on a chicken bone last night, and he’s going in to the dentist to get a crown put on.”

“Oh,” Bushell said, and touched his own jaw in sympathy. The miserable flesh of which men were made had a way of interfering with even the weightiest affairs. “He’s lucky to have got an appointment on such short notice. Must come of being the commandant.”

Sally Reese’s shrill giggle reminded him of a saw blade biting into a nail. “That’s the very same thing I told him myself, Colonel, the very same thing. This is to do with that horrible mess up in Boston yesterday, isn’t it? Do you want I should transfer you to Brigadier Arthurs? He’d be glad to take your report, I know he would.”

“No, never mind,” Bushell said. Benjamin Arthurs was a sound enough man, but Bushell didn’t care to put any more people than he had to between himself and the case. Like every RAM in the NAU, he had Sir Horace Bragg over him, but he wanted the chain to run directly from Sir Horace to him without developing intermediate links. To propitiate Sally Reese, he went on, “I really have little to add to Major Harris’s report, and I’ll ring back this afternoon to make sure I bring Sir Horace fully up to date.”

“Well, I suppose it’s all right, then.” Bragg’s secretary was loudly dubious, but not dubious enough to make an issue of it. “I’m sure he’ll be looking forward to hearing from you. Good-bye for now.” She hung up.

Samuel Stanley had got off his telephone in time to listen to the last part of Bushell’s conversation.

“You’re going to call Victoria this afternoon?” he said in some surprise. “I thought sure we’d be - “

“-On our way to Victoria by then?” Bushell interrupted. “Of course we will, Sam; don’t be absurd. And when we get in to the capital, I’ll be so apologetic; it would make a dog lose his lunch to watch me. I had to get on the train or the airship or whatever the devil we’ll get on. I couldn’t possibly stay around the office to telephone. Oh, please, Sir Horace, won’t you find it in your heart to forgive me this once?” He let out an alarmingly convincing sob.

Kathleen had been talking with one of her associates, not paying much attention to Bushell or Stanley. She looked up in surprise and concern at that sob. Bushell winked at her. She stared, then stuck out her tongue and went back to her own conversation.

Sam Stanley laughed, but quickly sobered. “Sir Horace isn’t going to buy it, Chief. He’s no fool” - whatever else you can say about him, his eyes added silently, letting Bushell ignore him if he so chose: and he did - “and he’ll know just what you’re up to.”

“I don’t care,” Bushell said, so gleefully that now he startled his adjutant. “What he knows and what he can prove are two different beasts.”

A slow smile spread across Stanley’s face. “That’s no pipsqueak lieutenant talking,” he said. “You sound like any sergeant who’d been around the block with his superiors too bloo - ah, blinking many times. My hat’s off to you.” His hat was already off, sitting on the desk in front of him. He lifted it in salute, then set it down once more.

“Where d’you think I learned such things?” Bushell said. “Once upon a time I was straight and true as could be, and they put me in your hands, and you - you twisted me.” He showed how with his hands; he might have been wringing out a washrag. Then he picked up his own hat. “Thanks, Sam.”

“Any old time,” Stanley said. “Who’s next on your list?”

“I thought I’d call Shikalimo,” Bushell answered. “He’s the mover and shaker in the Six Nations, not the RAMs. I want to see if he’s found anything at Joseph Kilbride’s house yet.”

“Yes, that will be interesting,” Stanley agreed. “If we’re lucky there -“ his shoulders sagged. “We haven’t been lucky so far, not this case.”

Bushell glanced over toward Kathleen Flannery. She was concentrating on her telephone conversation, paying him no heed whatever. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said quietly. “It all depends on how you look at things.” He contemplated that as if it were some new cocktail, then nodded in slow approval. “Yes, it all depends on how you look at things.”

He called the Doshoweh constabulary station. Shikalimo was already on his way out to Kilbride’s house. Bushell muttered in frustration, then remembered that Jaime Macias had been on the point of telling him something interesting when Major Harris brought work Joseph Kilbride had been spotted. But when he telephoned New Liverpool, he found that, despite the early hour back there, Macias, like Shikalimo, was out on a case. “Can we have someone else help you, sir?” the constabulary operator asked.

“No, that’s all right; I’ll ring back tomorrow,” Bushell answered, and hung up. “Can’t get hold of anyone this morning,” he grumbled in not-quite-mock indignation. “The constables are all out working for a living, and Sir Horace no doubt wishes he was.”

He had to explain that to Samuel Stanley, who clapped a hand to his jaw. “I’d sooner be working, if you gave me those choices,” Stanley said. “And speaking of which, how are we going to get to Victoria?”

“Let’s check the schedules,” Bushell answered. “I’m sure there’ll be plenty of trains; it’s just a question of whether they have airships leaving at a convenient time - and how long we’d have to spend floating above the airship port before we could land.” The time wasted over Astoria remained burned in his memory.

That turned out not to be an issue. Trains ran almost as fast as airships, and so many of them traveled the crowded Boston-New York-Philadelphia-Victoria corridor that he had only to pick a departure time that would let him and his companions finish up their work here, collect their belongings and check out of the Parker House, and reach the railway station. A young, eager lieutenant made the arrangements and volunteered to chauffeur them to the station.

When they left the RAM offices, newsboys were still shouting about the bloody events on Lansdowne Street, but they had another headline to cry, too: KING-EMPEROR PREPARING TO SAIL FOR

VICTORIA. One of the papers - Bushell didn’t notice which one - ran a subhead just below: TWO

GEORGES STILL MISSING.

He turned to Stanley. “We’re running out of time.”

XIII

The sun was sinking in the west when the Union Lifeline, air brakes chuffing, pulled into Victoria Station. Several times during the eight-hour journey, Bushell thought about the yacht Britannia. When it sailed for Victoria, it would travel far more slowly than the train, and have to come much farther, but it would reach the capital all the same.

A captain in dress reds met them at the station. He introduced himself as John Martin. “Welcome to Victoria, Colonel, Captain,” he said to Bushell and Stanley. Then he seemed to notice Kathleen was not standing at Bushell’s side merely on the off chance a cab might materialize out of thin air somewhere nearby.

Bushell remembered he hadn’t told Sir Horace he’d included Kathleen in the investigation. He smiled to himself. The next few days were liable to be ... interesting. He thought of how she teased him for all the interesting - ways he used that word, and his smile got wider. He said, “Captain Martin, let me present you to Dr. Kathleen Flannery of the All-Union Art Museum.”

He waited for them to clasp hands and exchange polite phrases, then went on, “Dr. Flannery has greatly helped the investigation. Since she was curator of the traveling exhibition of The Two Georges, she has at least as great an interest as we do in safely recovering the painting.”

There. The cat was out of the bag. Captain Martin was three grades and fifteen years his junior, so he had to smile and make the best of it. When word got back to Sir Horace Bragg, though . . . Well, that could wait. His voice grew brisk: “I presume, Captain, you’ve made arrangements for us to stay somewhere besides this train-station corridor?”

“Uh, yes, sir,” Martin said. “It wasn’t easy, but I managed to book two rooms at the William and Mary.” That again reminded him of Kathleen. “If Dr. Flannery is with the All-Union Museum, I presume she’ll have digs of her own here in town? With the King-Emperor coming soon they’re - blasted hard to come by.”

“I do,” Kathleen said, “but I’ve worked so well with Colonel Bushell and Captain Stanley that I’d hate to be separated from them at this crucial stage of the case.” She batted her eyes at Captain Martin. “Do you think you could by any chance manage to arrange one more room at the William and Mary?”

The captain looked quite humanly harassed for a moment, then regained his professional impassivity. “I’ll see what I can do when we get there, Dr. Flannery,” he answered, his voice wooden. She set a hand on his arm. “Oh, thank you very much,” she purred. The good Captain Martin, as most males would have, thawed like an icicle on a warm spring day. He picked up her bags and led the way toward his motorcar. As soon as his back was turned, Kathleen winked at Bushell.

“Not cricket,” he murmured to her. She winked again. If I laugh out loud, he told himself, if I howl like a wolf or giggle like a loon, Martin will either decide I’ve lost my mind or figure out what’s funny. Neither choice looked good. He kept quiet. It wasn’t easy.

Victoria lay along the southern shore of the Potomac, on the other side of the Long Bridge from Georgestown, Maryland (local historians, Bushell had learned in his earlier stay at the capital, said Georgestown had formerly honored only one George, but pluralized itself after George III and George Washington reached their historic accord). In a way, it was an artificial city: it had gone up when the separate colonies fused into the North American Union, and would wither if ever government should leave it. Bushell peered out across the carpark at the scores of gleaming marble buildings dedicated to administering the broad expanse of the NAU. Victoria seemed in no danger of withering any time soon. It had some of the advantages of artifice. Its streets, for instance, were laid out in a sensible grid: none of the twisting ex-cowpaths that had grown into Boston boulevards. Along with trolleys and an efficient underground, they let you get around with ease in the capital.

Bushell knew where the William and Mary was: only a block and a half from RAM headquarters. He’d made the trip from Victoria Station to headquarters scores of times, either in a cab or in his own motorcar. Despite his years in New Liverpool, going uptown felt intimately familiar. Here came the North American Mint, the great Telephone Exchange Building, the “Hullo!” he said in surprise, pointing to a large new structure with a yellow brick facade. “What the devil’s that?” The reality of change had taken a swipe at his memories.

“The Imperial Asylum for the Insane and Feebleminded,” Captain Martin answered. “Opened only a few months ago. You may hear someone say, ‘Ahh, send him to the Yellow Brick,’ if he thinks a chap’s boiler hasn’t got all the steam pressure it might.”

“I did hear that when I was here last month,” Bushell said. “Didn’t know what it meant, but they’re always coming up with new slang.”

“I hadn’t heard it,” Kathleen said, “but I’ve spent a lot of time lately on the road, either with The Two Georges or searching for it - and we’re a fairly stolid lot at the Museum, too.”

“One day soon it’ll go out on a wireless broadcast, and then people will be saying it from one end of the NAU to the other,” Samuel Stanley said.

“Yes, and as soon as they are, Victoria will come up with something new,” Bushell said. “Wouldn’t do to have hoi polloi learn the insiders’ secret language, now would it?”

“Feeling cynical tonight, Tom?” Kathleen asked.

“No more than usual,” Bushell said. His eyes flicked to Captain Martin. The RAM’s ears didn’t flick to attention, but they might as well have. That casual use of his Christian name would get back to Sir Horace, too. Well, if it does, it bloody well does.

The William and Mary Hotel sprawled inside elegantly landscaped grounds. A light-skinned Negro clerk clucked in distress when Captain Martin tried to arrange a room for Kathleen Flannery. “That will be difficult, sir,” she said. “I’m surprised Mr. Bushell and Mr. Stanley were accommodated.”

“It has to do with the search for The Two Georges,” Bushell said.

“Sakes alive, why didn’t you say so?” The woman shuffled through a file box of registration cards like a professional vingt-et-un dealer at a casino in the south of France. By the time she was through, she’d gone from a frown to a smile so white and wide and dazzling that Bushell wondered whether her teeth were her own. “I’ve got you in room 527 now, Mr. Bushell, and you’re in 529, Mr. Stanley - and Dr. Flannery, I’ve put you in 525. We’ll worry about where the marchioness stays when she actually gets into town. I hope that’s all right?”

“Couldn’t be better,” Bushell said solemnly. He turned to Kathleen. “Well! The marchioness will be most vexed, I’m certain.”

Kathleen snorted at his languid, affected drawl. The desk clerk giggled. “You are a wicked man, Mr. Bushell,” she said severely, shaking a finger at him. He bowed in gratitude. She giggled harder. Captain Martin said, “I’m glad that’s worked out. Someone will be by tomorrow to take you and Captain Stanley - and Dr. Flannery - wherever you need to go. Don’t hesitate to ring me if there’s anything I can do.” He brushed a finger against the brim of his cap and hurried off.

“We’d better get up to our rooms right away,” Bushell said. “We’re only just around the corner from RAM headquarters. As soon as he gets back there, I expect my telephone to start ringing.” The registration clerk ran the little chime that sat on the front desk. The bellman who had been hovering in the background swooped down on the travelers’ bags.

Bushell unpacked with practiced ease and speed. His suitcases were not so full as they had been when he set out, either; he’d gone through a lot of clothes in chasing after The Two Georges. He’d have to do something about that - in his copious spare time. He laughed at the absurdity of the notion. After he’d moved things out of cases and into drawers and closet, he rang room service and ordered a couple of buttered scones, jam, and a pot of blackcurrant tea for an evening snack. Then he sat down on the bed and stared at the telephone. The watched pot stubbornly refused to boil. “If you’re going to be that way about it - “ he said, and, when it still didn’t ring, he stripped off his clothes and headed for the showerbath.

He thought the cheerful splash of hot water would be plenty to tempt the phone to life, but he got to finish bathing in peace. He was toweling his hair dry when the telephone finally rang. Wrapping the towel around his middle, he hurried over to the nightstand. “Hullo? Bushell here.”

“Hullo, Tom. Welcome back to the capital,” Sir Horace Bragg said. “You’ve taken a roundabout route getting here, haven’t you?”

“You might say so, sir, yes,” Bushell answered. “I’ve left so much behind along the way, too - I only hope none of that turns out to be crucial.”

“One of the things you’ve left behind you is a trail of blood,” Bragg said. “The papers are screaming their heads off. We’ve never had a case like this before, and I hope to heaven we never have another one like it again.”

“Amen to that,” Bushell said. “We weren’t the ones who blew off the back of Tricky Dick’s head, though. We weren’t the ones who fired first at Buckley Bay, either. And I promise you I didn’t throw the first grenade at the late, unlamented Mr. Venable. No, not unlamented: I take that back. I wish he were alive - or Kilbride, or Cavendish - so I could ask questions. Lots of questions.”

“Yes, and the papers are screaming about that, too.” Lieutenant General Sir Horace Bragg often sounded harassed, or at least dyspeptic, even when he wasn’t. When he was, his voice turned downright lugubrious. “One of the dailies here ran the story under the headline, ‘Dead Men Tell No Tales,’ which doesn’t make us look good.”

“To hell with the papers,” Bushell said, and was briefly glad Lieutenant Thirkettle couldn’t hear him committing such blasphemies. “I want The Two Georges. That Venable comes from Georgestown, just over the river from here. Are your people turning the place upside down yet, grilling everybody who ever met him?”

“They will be, as of tomorrow,” Bragg said. “I still don’t know as much about this business in Boston as I’d like.” His tone sharpened. “I would have expected, Tom, that you have rung me last night with a full report.”

“I tried to reach you this morning, sir, but you were already at the dentist’s.” Bushell felt guilty about not telephoning the RAM commandant, but less than he’d expected. And if Bragg wasn’t getting investigators into Georgestown till tomorrow, he wasn’t as energetic as he might have been, either.

“Well, let that go, then,” Sir Horace said, though by the sound of his voice it was far from forgotten. He paused, coughed, and then resumed: “What’s this I hear about your associating Dr. Flannery with the investigation?”

“Oh, yes, sir, I’m very glad I did that,” Bushell said brightly. “She was the one who identified Joseph Kilbride for us back in Doshoweh, and she was the one who spotted Venable in the cabinetmaker’s shop, too. Without her, we’d be much farther from The Two Georges than we are.” I have other reasons, too, but those are none of your business - sir.

“You can’t possibly trust her,” Bragg said. “I still find her involvement in the case suspicious, and to say that putting her on the investigatory team is irregular merely serves to weaken the power of language.”

“I worried about it, too,” Bushell said, which was true. “I had her join Sam and me not least to keep her from haring off on her own.” That was also true. “The help she’s given us, though, has justified the step I took.”

“Most irregular,” Bragg said, like a judge passing sentence. If we don’t come up with The Two Georges , you’ll be my scapegoat because of this. Bushell could hear the threat in his voice. He sighed. Had Sir Horace despaired of finding the painting? It sounded that way. Or maybe commanding the RAMs had finally made him come to think like a bureaucrat, not a soldier, with procedure ranking ahead of everything else, even results.

He’s old!. Bragg couldn’t have had more than a year or two on Bushell, but he sounded like a man ready for his cane and slippers. The thought saddened Bushell, who felt a long way from the boneyard himself. He said, “We’ll find it yet, sir. No new ransom demands, are there?”

“Eh? No.” Bragg hesitated, then said. “See here, Tom, are you involved with the Flannery woman?”

“I want to get a good night’s sleep tonight,” Bushell said, “and maybe you can tell me what’s on the agenda for tomorrow.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Bragg said. Bushell didn’t answer again. After a silence that stretched for more than a minute, Sir Horace sighed. “If you walk a tightrope long enough, Tom, sooner or later you fall off.” Bushell still didn’t say anything. Bragg sighed again. “First we meet with Sir Martin Luther King. He’s scheduled us for two hours, starting at ten. He’s been following your work with great attention, I assure you.”

“I believe that,” Bushell said. “He’s a politician, and he’s got the shadow of the King-Emperor’s visit hanging over him, too.”

“Right on both counts,” Sir Horace said. “I thought you’d spend the afternoon at headquarters - unless you plan on going out and shooting someone then.”

Bushell rubbed at his mustache, which was unruly from the showerbath. Sir Horace waxed sarcastic only under great strain. “It’s not on my calendar, so I guess I can let it go,” Bushell said, even as the image of Sir David Clarke appeared in his mind for a moment.

“Heh, heh,” Bragg said, just like that. “Well, keep tomorrow night open, too, if you’d be so kind. There’s a reception laid on at the Russian embassy.” He muttered something under his breath; Bushell thought he heard damn Russians. In an ordinary voice, Sir Horace went on, “We’ll go there, too, and to all the other receptions and parties and banquets the ambassadors and ministers and charges will be putting on before the King-Emperor’s visit. We’ll probably learn damn all at any of them, but we have to make the effort.”

“The Russians,” Bushell said dreamily. “Russian rifles, Russian roubles, Russian grenades. ... Do you know, sir, I’m almost tempted to be undiplomatic when I get inside the Russian embassy. But, of course, I’d never do anything like that.”

“Of course not,” Sir Horace Bragg said. He might have been trying to sound hearty, but uneasy better described his tone. “I’ll send a driver around for you and Captain Stanley - “

“-And Dr. Flannery,” Bushell reminded him.

This time, the silence was on Bragg’s end of the line. At last, Sir Horace said, “Very well, Tom. And Dr. Flannery. The driver will swing by a little before ten. On your head be it.” He hung up, which effectively kept Bushell from getting in the last word.

He ran a hand through his hair. It was mostly dry by now; to make it lie flat, he’d have to oil it more heavily than he liked. He got up off the bed and started back to the bathroom. He hadn’t taken more than two steps when someone knocked on the door.

“About time with the bloody scones,” he muttered, and turned toward the doorway. He’d have been astonished if the room-service waiter hadn’t seen patrons wearing nothing but a towel. He opened the door. For a moment, he and Kathleen Flannery stared at each other. In accusing tones, he said, “You’re not room service.”

Her eyes sparkled. “I could be,” she said. “It depends on what you ordered.” She stepped into the room, closed the door behind her, and undid the towel.

The governor-general’s residence, familiarly known as America’s Number Ten, lay across Victoria from the William and Mary Hotel. The RAM driver who took Bushell and his companions there, a stolid veteran named Kittridge, refrained from pointing out all the scenic wonders they passed en route. For that alone, Bushell would gladly have promoted the sergeant to any rank this side of brigadier. Maybe Kittridge remembered him and Sam from the days when they’d worked out of the capital and knew they knew the sights. He got the feeling, though, that Kittridge would have been as taciturn if he’d come from Mars rather than New Liverpool.

They purred down Union Avenue - otherwise known as Embassy Row - on the way to the residence. Far and away the two biggest buildings there housed the Franco-Spanish and Russian legations: the fleur-de-lis of the Holy Alliance and the Russian tricolor and two-headed eagle flew only a couple of blocks apart, separated, appropriately enough, by the smaller missions of several of the German states.

“Miserable Russians,” Bushell muttered, glancing toward the ornate brick pile they inhabited. Sam Stanley was thinking along with him. “What, just because they’d fit into a building half that size if they didn’t send so many spies over here?”

“Something like that,” Bushell answered. Sergeant Kittridge still didn’t say anything, but he did nod so vigorously that the waxed tips of his handlebar mustache quivered.

America’s Number Ten was a two-story structure of white marble, with long north and south wings and a colonnaded main entrance. Exchanging small talk outside that entrance as Kittridge stopped the steamer were Sir Horace and Sir David Clarke.

Clarke clasped Kathleen’s hand for what Bushell thought was an unduly long time when she got out of the motorcar. He wondered whether that was simple mistrust of Sir David, or whether what Kathleen had said of her experience with John Kennedy made him more alert to such things. “Ah, Dr. Flannery,”

Sir David said. “Sir Horace was telling me how you and Colonel Bushell had joined forces. I wondered how he meant that.” His smile was broad and pleasant.

“Nastily, I suspect,” she answered, which froze that smile on his face and made Bragg look even glummer than usual.

“It’s just ten now. We shouldn’t keep His Excellency waiting,” Stanley said, doing his best to spread oil on troubled waters.

Bragg also seemed willing to make peace. “By all means,” he said. Bushell shrugged and nodded. Without a word, Sir David Clarke turned and led them into the residence.

“Some splendid paintings on the walls here,” Kathleen murmured.

“Yes, you can trace the history of the NAU as you walk down the halls,” Bushell agreed. Colonial days gave way to the emancipation of the southern Negroes, the expansion across the prairies and then to the Pacific, the rise of factories, all punctuated with portraits of governors-general past. There was Jackson, looking grim enough to enforce the freeing of the slaves prescribed in London; there was short, roly-poly Douglas, under whom the NAU had spilled west over the Rockies; and there was Martin Roosevelt, shown at the controls of his personal airship. Rumor said he’d sometimes taken pretty girls up into the sky with him, but rumor said lots of things.

“I was thinking of the art, not the history,” Kathleen said.

“I know,” Bushell replied. “There’s room for both.” Kathleen considered that, then nodded. Bushell smiled, pleased they’d found something over which they didn’t have to argue. Over his shoulder, Sir David Clarke said, “We’re meeting with Sir Martin in the Green Room. Don’t be surprised when you find it’s appointed in blue, because - “

“-Politicians have a habit of saying one thing and doing another,” Bushell put in. Clarke looked pained. “Because it was done deliberately, I was going to say, to show the mother country she hasn’t got a monopoly on eccentric institutions.”

“Why have I got the feeling our British cousins could figure that out for themselves?” Stanley said. Again, though, he spoke disarmingly.

A servant in black tie opened the door to the Green Room, which was, as Sir David had said, done in shades of blue. Sir Martin Luther King rose from his chair and walked over to the newcomers.

“Welcome, gentlemen, Dr. Flannery,” he said. He nodded to Sam. “You would be Captain Stanley. I don’t believe we actually met when I was in New Liverpool.”

“No, Your Excellency, we didn’t.” Stanley extended his hand. “I’m delighted to meet you now, though.”

“As all of us have said throughout this sorry affair, I wish it were under more pleasant circumstances.”

Sir Martin’s deep, rich voice filled the Green Room. Even here, in a gathering altogether un-public, his every gesture seemed - not calculated, precisely, but a little stagier than it might have been, showing how conscious he was of eyes upon him. “Shall we get to work?” he said, indicating chairs with a smooth motion of his hand. “We haven’t much time, as I’m sure you know. His Majesty’s yacht sails tomorrow, and arrives - all too soon.”

“And still no further ransom demands from the Sons of Liberty?” Bushell asked.

“Only a silence as of the tomb,” Sir Martin answered. “They’re playing their cards very cagily indeed: calculating how best to force us to go along with their demands when they do finally make them.”

“When they do, we’ll have little choice but to comply if we want The Two Georges back again,” Sir David Clarke said. “Our own investigations seem better at strewing corpses over the landscape than finding the missing painting.”

Bushell contemplated one corpse not currently strewn over the landscape, and what a pity that was. He declined to rise to Clarke’s bait, though, saying, “We’ve made considerable progress tracking down the Sons involved in the theft, even if we don’t yet have the painting itself. The chap who tossed a grenade at me yesterday, for instance, came from Georgestown.” He turned a mild and thoughtful eye on Sir Martin’s chief of staff. “You live in Georgestown, don’t you, Sir David?”

That pierced Clarke’s armor of affability. “I resent the insinuation, Colonel,” he said coldly.

“Am I to take that as an affirmative?” Bushell asked.

Sir Horace Bragg said, “Disunion among us gives aid and comfort to our enemies. Russian rifles, Russian gold, now Russian grenades as well - and the Russians are masters of long, deep-seated plots. The Empire would do well to worry more about the Russians.”

“So you have said these past weeks - repeatedly,” Sir Martin Luther King observed.

“I don’t think we worry enough about the Russians, either, Your Excellency,” Bushell said. Bragg gave him the first warm look he’d had from his commandant and old friend since he got to Victoria. “Thank you, Tom,” he said. A moment later, he got to his feet and took a small bottle of paracetamol tablets from his trouser pocket. “Excuse me just for a second, if you please. This miserable tooth is killing me.” He left the room.

Sir Martin Luther King turned his narrow, clever eyes toward Bushell. “It may be that you and Sir Horace are perfectly correct about the Russians, Colonel,” he said. “Nevertheless, you must know the fable of the boy who cried wolf. I am sick to death of Sir Horace’s harping on the Russians. He is as tiresome about them as he used to be about his family’s past and vanished glories. I finally had to let him know that, since those glories were based on a plantation deriving its wealth from Negro slavery, his tales did not strike the chord with me for which he might have hoped.”

“Oh, dear,” Bushell said. He glanced at Sam Stanley, who nodded. “Oh, dear,” he said again. “He does want to restore the family’s former position, for which you can hardly blame him.” He’d never thought he’d feel awkward defending Sir Horace, but he did now. Bragg had been . . . gauche was the politest word that sprang to mind.

“His remarks were, shall we say, not the most effective way of having his name placed on the Honors List Sir Martin submits annually to His Majesty the King-Emperor,” Sir David Clarke observed. Bushell wanted to resent that, but found he couldn’t, not even coming from Clarke. If Sir Horace had in mind ending his days as Baron or even Baronet Bragg, offending the man who recommended names for such titles was not the way to go about it.

Bragg came back then, cutting the thread of conversation as with a knife. “I am sorry,” he said. “I think that dentist of mine should have been a butcher instead. He promised the pain would go away in a few hours, but my guess is that he was just trying to be rid of me.” He chuckled dolefully. “Of course, the procedure hurt him not a bit.”

“You should have bitten him, sir,” Samuel Stanley said. “That would have taken care of that.”

“If I ever submit to his ministrations again, Captain, I assure you I will keep the option in mind,” Bragg answered.

“We all sympathize with Lieutenant General Bragg, I am sure,” Sir Martin Luther King said, “but we have not come together here this morning to discuss dentistry. What I want to know is, what impact have recent events in Boston had upon the likelihood of recovering The Two Georges ? I tell you frankly, gentlemen and you, Dr. Flannery, if that chance seems to me unlikely and the Sons of Liberty make their ransom demand as His Majesty Charles III is approaching Victoria Harbor, I shall have little choice but to comply.”

Kathleen Flannery said, “Your Excellency, couldn’t you ask His Majesty to postpone his visit until we’ve recovered The Two Georges one way or another? After all, if the Sons killed to steal one symbol of the unity of the Empire, mightn’t they also think of making an attempt on the King-Emperor’s life?”

“As a matter of fact, Dr. Flannery, at Sir David’s urging I sent His Majesty a telegram of this purport the other day,” Sir Martin answered. “That information, by the way, is not to leave this room.” He waited for everyone to nod before continuing, “He replied most promptly, and declined most firmly: he said he should become an object of reproach rather than admiration throughout the Empire if he let concern for his personal safety deflect him from his chosen course.”

“Oh, good show,” Bushell said softly.

As usual, Sam Stanley had a more pragmatic turn of mind. “I wish he would have made an exception, just this once,” he said. “I wouldn’t have thought any less of him for making my life easier.”

“Exactly what was in my mind,” Sir David Clarke said. “Sir Martin predicted he would refuse.” He glanced at his boss with bemused respect. He has no courage himself, so he marvels that Sir Martin recognized it in someone else, Bushell thought.

“We may take it as settled that His Majesty will depart London on the appointed day,” Sir Martin Luther King declared, “and that no one save the almighty God on high will delay him from reaching Victoria, also on the appointed day.” As he did every so often, he fell back into the cadences of the minister of the Gospel he had been.

“We may also take it as settled that we’d better have The Two Georges back by the appointed day or else we start falling on our swords,” Sir Horace Bragg said.

“That’s correct,” Sir David Clarke agreed. “We must obtain the return of the painting by the time the King-Emperor reaches us, and obtain it by whatever means prove necessary.” He talked like a bureaucrat, not a preacher, but here his meaning was perfectly clear even so. Sir Martin said, “Sub Rosa, I will tell you gentlemen - and you, of course, Dr. Flannery - that I have directed the minister of the exchequer to gather together the sum of specie the Sons of Liberty demanded in their note. If ransom becomes necessary for the return of The Two Georges , it shall be paid. I find this course odious but in the last resort unavoidable.”

“We’ll have to make sure we don’t come down to the last resort, then,” Bushell said.

“Unfortunately, while we’ve heard a great many promises to that effect, we’ve seen little that actually appears to lead toward the recovery of The Two Georges,” Clarke said.

“Did you hear that?” Bushell exclaimed. “It’s the last straw. Now he’s accusing me of talking like a politico!”

Samuel Stanley looked up at the ceiling. Sir Martin Luther King looked down at his hands. Lieutenant General Sir Horace Bragg rubbed the side of his jaw. Kathleen let out a tiny yip of laughter that might almost - have been a cough. And Sir David Clarke gaped like a netted bluegill, eyes wide and staring, mouth fallen open. Bushell had gone after him plenty of times before, but never with such genial absurdity. What was the world coming to?

Bushell didn’t quite wink at Kathleen. “Must be love,” he said.

Her expression was unreadable.

If Sir Martin had sounded like a preacher a few minutes before, Sir Horace seemed downright pontifical as he declared, “Given the new evidence Colonel Bushell and his colleagues have amassed - evidence suggesting that The Two Georges may well be somewhere here close by the capital - I firmly believe we shall yet regain it in time for it to grace His Majesty’s arrival, and that we shall do so without having to pay a single sovereign in ransom.”

“A sovereign indeed,” Bushell said. “Considering that the King-Emperor will soon be here in Victoria - “

“We have been considering that possibility,” Bragg reminded him. “I’m confident that, given our heightened concern, we shall be able to protect the person of Charles III adequately while he is on American soil.”

“We never have found out how the Sons - or even if the Sons - learned just when His Majesty was coming to Victoria,” Samuel Stanley observed.

Sir Horace spread his hands in manifest regret. “I’ve investigated vigorously, but the Sons are a tight-knit band, and difficult to penetrate. You and Tom - and, I gather, Dr. Flannery - -came up against three in Boston who must have been of high rank. Had any of them survived the encounter - “

“We probably wouldn’t have,” Bushell said. “But yes, that was unfortunate. We did get some leads to Georgestown that may prove profitable, though.” He wished Sir Horace had immediately sent RAMs out to probe the property and affairs of the late Eustace Venable instead of waiting a precious day. Bragg might be - no, no might be about it: he was - a good administrator, but he left something to be desired as a man to head up a field investigation.

Sir David Clarke caught Sir Martin’s eye. “Your Excellency, if I might speak with you for a moment - “

“Certainly,” the governor-general replied. As he rose, he said, “Excuse me,” to the RAMs and Kathleen. Clarke steered him out a side door in whatever chamber lay beyond it. Bragg sighed and looked even more like a kicked basset than usual. “That’s the way it goes here in Victoria,” he said in a low, furious voice. “They pretend to listen for a while, then they go off by themselves and tell us what we’re going to do and how we’re going to do it.”

“I wouldn’t have your job for all the gold in the Bank of England,” Bushell told his friend. “I’ve probably said that once or twice already, haven’t I?”

Before Sir Horace could answer, Clarke and Sir Martin Luther King came back into the Green Room.

“Here is what we have decided,” Sir Martin said. “You will of course continue the search for The Two Georges up to the very moment of the King-Emperor’s arrival. But if a ransom demand reaches us from this time forth, we shall - regretfully - comply with it in every particular, save only that we shall not require you to call off your search while payment is being arranged. In an ideal world, I would not proceed in this fashion. In an ideal world, though, The Two Georges would not have been stolen. Have you any questions, gentlemen? Dr. Flannery?”

No one spoke. Bushell glanced over to Sir David Clarke. The policy the governor-general had laid down was the one Clarke had espoused from the beginning. Was that triumph in Sir David’s eyes or something else, something more serious? For the life of him, Bushell couldn’t tell. Walking into the RAM headquarters for the NAU felt strange to Bushell, as it had every time he’d visited since going out to New Liverpool. The place of course remained familiar in broad outline, but his memory for which corridors led exactly where had faded. Even when his memory of what had been was accurate, it did not always gibe with what was now. Some faces were familiar; some he thought he should have known but could not match up with names; some, like the paint on the walls and the carpet underfoot, were new and strange.

The same sense of dislocation bedeviled Sam Stanley. “I wish they’d have moved to a new building,” he said, staring around. “Then I’d be honestly sure I was lost.”

Before Sir Horace Bragg got close to his offices, a worried-looking young major bearded him: “Sir, we’re having trouble getting the warrants we need to search this Eustace Venable’s home and business establishment. Something went wrong last night, and the friendliest judges got tied up in their morning casework before we got the chance to petition them.”

Bragg clapped a melodramatic hand to his forehead. “Good God, Manchester, more delay?” he groaned. “We can’t afford that.”

“We don’t have to, sir,” Bushell said. He opened his briefcase and drew forth the signed blank search warrants he’d been given in New Liverpool. “Fill out a couple of these and we’ll find out what we need to know.”

Sir Horace stared at the blank warrants with commingled awe and doubt. “You must have a judge out there on the West Coast who’s a lot more than just friendly to us, Tom.” Bushell nodded, pleased to have pulled a rabbit out of his hat right under his friend’s nose. Bragg went on, “I don’t know about trying to use them here, though. If we get challenged - “

“I’ll take the chance, sir,” Major Manchester said eagerly, peeling a couple of warrants off the top of the sheaf Bushell was holding. “The key thing is speed now, that and gathering the evidence. These will give us just the chance we need to do it.” He pumped Bushell’s hand. “Thank you, sir. You’re a lifesaver, that’s what you are.” He hurried down the corridor, waving the warrants and shouting for a typist to insert the relevant information on them.

“He looks promising,” Bushell said. “Give him the ball and he runs with it.”

“That he does.” Bragg still sounded slightly dazed. He gathered himself. “Tom, you and Captain Stanley haven’t got formal wear for tonight’s gathering at the Russian embassy, have you?”

Bushell shook his head. “No, sir. I thought I’d packed clothes for all occasions, but I didn’t figure I’d need a monkey suit.” Stanley nodded agreement to that.

“It’ll have to be dress uniforms for both of you, then,” Bragg said. “Those are always acceptable. Why don’t we go over to Accoutrements and get you fitted out?”

“Is that still Chalky Stimpson’s bailiwick?” Bushell asked in some concern.

“Yes, but there’s no help for it. Come along,” Sir Horace said inexorably.

“Chalky Stimpson?” Kathleen sounded as if she knew a joke was lurking there somewhere, but couldn’t find it.

“He’s our tailor,” Bushell answered. “He’s been the tailor here since the days of William the Conqueror, as best I can tell. He’s - how the devil do I say it politely? Chalky’s thorough, that’s what he is. You’ll need to amuse yourself for a while, because once he gets Sam and me in his clutches, he won’t let us out any time soon.”

“Isn’t that the sad and sorry truth?” Stanley agreed mournfully. “I had hoped to go over to Georgestown myself, but if I’m in Chalky’s web -“ He shook his head. “They’ll have to do without me.”

“And me,” Bushell said. He turned to Sir Horace Bragg. “Can’t we just snatch dress trousers and tunic that come close to fitting off their hangers for tonight? We’d look good enough - “

Sir Horace overrode him: “I’ve been to too many of these formal affairs. ‘Good enough’ isn’t. You don’t measure up at one, you don’t get invited to another. Remember, Tom, embassies are extraterritorial; we can’t make anyone let us in. They have to think we’re interesting, or we stay off their grounds and twiddle our thumbs out on the pavement. We have plenty of people who can investigate the late Mr. Venable. We don’t have plenty who can hobnob with the diplomats.”

“As if anyone ever accused me of being diplomatic.” But Bushell threw his hands in the air in surrender.

“All right - on to Chalky.”

Marcus Aurelius Stimpson - so the sign on his door proclaimed him to be - might not have been in Victoria since 1066, but he probably had been there longer than Bushell had been alive. He was a thin, pale man somewhere between sixty-five and eighty-five - Bushell wondered if anyone knew exactly how old he was. He had been tall; he was now somewhat stooped, but the gray eyes behind bifocals were still keen, and so were his wits, at least in his chosen field of endeavor.

“Ah, Bushell,” he said. “Been a while, hasn’t it? You were a forty regular. You’d be a forty-two now, I’d say. They feed you well out in New Liverpool, do they?”

“Hullo, Chalky,” Bushell said. “You haven’t changed, anyhow.”

“Haven’t the time for it,” the tailor answered. His gaze swung toward Sam. “And Stanley; I might have known the two of you would hang together. Yes, you’re still a forty-four long; don’t worry about it.”

Stanley smiled. “I wasn’t really losing sleep.”

“Chalky, they’ll both need dress uniforms for tonight,” Sir Horace Bragg said.

“It’s not enough time,” Stimpson grumbled. “Everything is rush, rush, rush these days; people don’t take pains to do things properly.” He heaved a long sigh. “Well, we’ll see what we can manage, so we shall.”

He started with trousers and tunic in the two RAM’s approximate sizes, then used measuring tape and pins and scissors and the tailor’s chalk that had given him his enduring nickname to make alterations. His sewing machine was an ancient model powered by a foot pedal; it would have taken a bolder man than Bushell to suggest that he trade it for one with an electric motor.

“Here.” The tailor thrust trousers at Samuel Stanley. “Try these.” Stanley dutifully donned them. “Turn around,” Stimpson snapped, sounding like a drill sergeant. After Sam turned, the tailor clicked his tongue between his teeth. “No, not quite right. Take ‘em off, take ‘em off. We’ll fix ‘em.” So Stanley stripped to his drawers once more, while Stimpson surveyed Bushell with a critical eye. He made several passes on each pair of pants and each tunic. Bushell tried to short-circuit the process halfway through by peering down at himself and exclaiming in tones of wonder, “This is perfect, Chalky!

Couldn’t fit better!”

“Of course they could,” Stimpson said with messianic certainty in his voice. “Come on, strip off - don’t dawdle.” Clack, clack, clack went that antiquated pedal-powered sewing machine. The next time Bushell was suffered to try on the dress uniform, even he had to admit it did fit better . . . but still not well enough to suit Chalky Stimpson.

Lieutenant General Sir Horace Bragg, of course, had in his closet a uniform meeting Chalky’s exacting standards. That meant he could - and did - go off to do something useful with his afternoon. Every so often, Bushell pulled the pocket watch from his discarded waistcoat, looked at it, sighed, and put it back. At last, though, even Stimpson pronounced himself satisfied. “Now I’ve one more thing to get for the both of you,” he said.

“Chalky, you’ve done too much already,” Samuel Stanley said in some alarm. Bushell was just getting a cigar lighted, or he would have beaten his adjutant to the punch.

Behind the bifocals, the tailor’s eyes twinkled. “But don’t you want the clubs you’ll need to beat back all the pretty ladies?”

Sans clubs, Bushell and Stanley made their way to Sir Horace’s office. Sally Reese greeted them there.

“Hullo, Colonel,” she bellowed at Bushell. She wore bifocals, too, along with too much rouge and hair dyed defiantly black. “That redheaded little hussy left this here for you.” She thrust an envelope his way, not caring in the least that half the floor now knew her opinion of Kathleen Flannery.

“Dear Tom,” the note inside the envelope read in a clear, flowing script, “I’ve begged a ride back to my place. Since your famous tailor can’t work his magic on me, I’ve gone in search of something for the night’s festivities that hasn’t seen the inside of a suitcase too many times over the past few weeks. I’ll be back at the hotel to go to the embassy with you.”

She’d signed it Kathleen. A word in front of the signature was too thoroughly scratched out for Bushell to decipher, try as he would.

“Thank you, Sally,” he said mildly.

“For what?” she blared. “I never throw anything away, you know that, but I wish I made exceptions, yes I do.”

“For being so sweet, of course,” Bushell replied, so persuasively that she took it for a compliment. Back at the William and Mary, Bushell knocked on the door to Kathleen Flannery’s room. No one answered. He waited a moment, then knocked again. Still no answer. “Uh-oh,” Samuel Stanley said.

“That means she’s already down in the lobby waiting for us, and we’ll never hear the last of it, either.”

“If I thought you were wrong, I would argue with you,” Bushell answered. Sure enough, Kathleen walked up to them when they came out of the lift. “Took you long enough,” she said, but then, relenting, amended it: “This afternoon, I mean, with Chalky What’s-his-name. Let’s see what he’s done to you.” She studied Bushell with the serious attention she might have given a Whistler or a Finlay. “Well. I suppose the wait might have been worth it.”

“Thanks,” Bushell said. “That’s the outfit you brought from home, eh?” He nodded in approval. “You’ll do. You’ll definitely do.” The dress was of maize-colored silk, with a V neck and a sheer organdy collar. It had a pleated skirt with horizontal plaits on the sides, and looked summery enough to be comfortable in Victoria’s humid heat. Kathleen set if off with topaz earrings and a pendant that drew the eye to the neckline.

She needed a moment to realize he used understatement in his compliments as elsewhere, then smiled broadly. “Shall we beard the Russian ambassador in his den?” she said.

“I’m given to understand he already has a beard suitable for all ordinary purposes and some extraordinary ones as well, but by all means.” Bushell glanced at the clock opposite the lifts. “We’re right on time.” Offering his arm, he strode toward the hotel’s street entrance. His confidence was justified. Less than a minute later, a steamer driven by Captain Martin pulled up in front of the William and Mary. He opened the door for Kathleen. Bushell and Samuel Stanley got in after her. They glided off toward the Russian embassy.

The guards at the door outside the embassy wore ceremonial uniforms patterned after those of the Life-Guard Dragoons of Tsar Alexander I. Surveying them standing there stiff and motionless, Bushell consoled himself with the thought that their dress uniforms were even more uncomfortable than his. They wore long, heavy coats of dark green wool, with matching trousers reinforced with leather. Over their green tunics they had red shirtfronts held not only with buttons but also with a white satin sash. Their shakos had both plumes and tassels. Sweat gleamed on their broad, ruddy faces. Their only concession to modernity was carrying bayoneted bolt-action rifles instead of sabers. Bushell glanced toward those rifles and then toward Sam Stanley, who nodded. They’d seen essentially identical Nagants in New Liverpool and up at Buckley Bay.

Inside the embassy, Sir Horace Bragg was talking with a Russian in tailcoat and knee breeches. Sir Horace looked up and saw Bushell and his companions. He waved, then turned back to the Russian.

“Here they are now, Mikhail Sergeyevich,” he said. “Colonel Bushell, Captain Stanley, Dr. Flannery.”

“Very well, Lieutenant General Bragg,” the Russian answered with a nod, checking off three names on a list - evidently he was chief of protocol or something of the sort. After he’d made his checks, he dabbed at his broad, bald forehead with a linen handkerchief: St. Petersburg did not prepare a man for the climate of Victoria.

“Come along, come along,” Bragg said to Bushell. “We’ll make our way through the reception line and then mingle and see what we can learn.” He sent Bushell a hooded glance. “Be circumspect, Tom.”

“What big words you use, sir,” Bushell said with a grin. Bragg’s demeanor did not significantly lighten. But for the fact that a large number of conversations were being carried on in French - and even a few in Russian - the rituals of the reception were remarkably similar to those at Governor Burnett’s residence in New Liverpool. Bushell made his way down the line of dignitaries, shaking hands and murmuring polite phrases as he did so. A small gap in the line developed behind him; the Russians had a way of lingering over Kathleen’s hand that surprised him not at all.

At the end of the reception line stood Duke Alexei Orlov, the Tsar’s ambassador to the North American Union. Orlov’s magnificent silver beard spilled halfway down his chest, concealing some of the decorations that he wore. Bushell sometimes thought that, if a Russian noble got out of bed on the same side three days running, the Tsar would pin a medal on his chest to celebrate the achievement.

“I am pleased to meet you, Colonel,” Orlov said in good English. “I have been following your exploits with great interest in the newspapers. I wish you the best of good fortune in recovering The Two Georges from the uncultured bandits who so wickedly stole it.”

“Thank you, Your Excellency,” Bushell said. “Having met Russian guns, grenades, and gold during those exploits, making your acquaintance brings things full circle, in a manner of speaking.”

Sir Horace Bragg had already gone through the line, but was hovering not far away. He frowned. Duke Orlov laughed. The shining waves of his beard bobbed up and down. “It is a pleasure to complete your experience, Colonel,” he said. Bushell dipped his head, acknowledging the man’s unflappability. A servant came by with a tray of champagne flutes. Bushell took one and sipped. He made for the nearest table, to deposit the glass as unobtrusively as he could.

Behind him, a man spoke in French: “Ah, Colonel, I see you have a discriminating palate. That sweet Crimean swill the Russians lyingly call champagne is fit only for the fattening of hogs.”

Bushell turned, replying, also in French, “I think you have reason, monsieur,” as he did so. His eyes widened slightly. “Pardon me, but are you not - ?”

The Frenchman bowed. “I do indeed have the honor to be Comte Philippe Bonaparte, ambassador of His Majesty Francois IV Bourbon, King of France and Spain and their territories over the sea to your North American Union.”

Bushell bowed back. The count was a short, slim, swarthy man in his mid-fifties, with wavy hair dyed black as Sally Reese’s and a chin beard and mustaches whose points were waxed sharp enough to draw blood. He wore a white shirt with a stiff front, wing collar, and black butterfly cravat, and over it a jacket cut like an English tailcoat but, rather than being somber black, made of bright blue velvet embellished with gold thread. His flared trousers were also of blue velvet, his pointed-toed shoes of white patent leather.

As Duke Orlov had, Bonaparte said, “I tell you that I wish you a speedy recovery of your stolen treasure, Colonel.”

“That’s generous of you, monsieur, when your country would be better served if the Sons of Liberty managed to bring chaos to the British Empire.” Bushell stuck up a forefinger. “Wait. Because you tell me this does not mean it is true.”

Bonaparte bowed again, his eyes twinkling. “Few men discern subtleties even when their proper language is being spoken. It is the rare individual indeed who hears them in a tongue not his own. You are a gentlemen of considerable resource, Colonel.” He laughed in elegant, insincere self-deprecation. “And I, alas, am but a poor diplomat who has proved not diplomatic enough. I tell lies for politeness’ sake and I am found out.”

“Sometimes you may have to do things for reasons of state that you would not do in your own person,”

Bushell said.

“If you understand this, Colonel, you understand a great deal,” Bonaparte said, more seriously than he had spoken till then.

Kathleen Flannery, having at last escaped the receiving line and the elephantine attentions of Duke Orlov, came over toward Bushell. Like him, she took a glass of sparkling wine from a passing servant; also like him, she found one sip more than sufficient. “That’s pretty bad,” she said in English, and then switched to French more fluent than Bushell’s: “Monsieur le Comte, I am pleased to see you again.”

‘‘Mademoiselle Docteur Flannery, I am always pleased to see you.” Bonaparte kissed her hand. He might have been a stock silly-ass Frenchman in a cinema farce, except he really did radiate the charm a comic Frenchman only thought he had. “I am given to understand you and Colonel Bushell have associated yourselves in the search for Les Deux Georges.”

“We have associated ourselves, yes,” Kathleen said.

Bonaparte glanced from her to Bushell and back again. “How am I to construe this, if I may make so bold as to inquire?”

“Why, however you like, of course,” Bushell said. “You will anyhow.”

“This is an excellent answer,” Bonaparte exclaimed, spreading his hands wide to show how fine it was.

“Excellent! How is it that you are a mere colonel of police, Monsieur Bushell, when you show wit in even your common utterances, when your commander - you will, I trust, forgive me - while he may be sound enough, cannot be described as anything but stodgy? Perhaps it is that in the British Empire wit is a hindrance rather than an advantage?”

“How is he supposed to answer that without getting into trouble?” Kathleen asked. The Franco-Spanish ambassador bared his teeth in what was not quite a light, amused grin. “I have not the slightest idea, Dr. Flannery. I leave it up to the colonel’s ingenuity.”

Bushell knew he was expecting a frivolous reply, and so answered seriously: “I think it is that we respect competence more than wit, monsieur. To us, wit seems dangerous, for it suggests solid abilities a man may in fact fail to possess.”

“Well said.” Kathleen nodded vigorous approval.

But Philippe Bonaparte shook his head. “I regret that I must disagree with you in particular and, if you are correct, with the British race as well. The competent man can be far more dangerous than the witty one. No one detects his malfeasance till too late, for nothing about him is worthy of notice. The wit, on the other hand, always draws attention to himself. Because he is under so many eyes, he has no choice but probity.”

Bushell rubbed at his mustache. “I’m going to have to think about that one before I decide whether I agree with it.”

“Colonel, I assure you that I have reason,” Bonaparte said. “Perhaps life has not demonstrated as much to you, but it shall, as it does to everyone.” He bowed. “And now, if you will excuse me, I must demonstrate to the wider world how charming and sociable I am. Do be certain I wish you my personal best in your efforts to recover your missing work of art.”

“Interesting fellow,” Bushell remarked thoughtfully. “More to him than you’d guess from that gaudy jacket. I wonder just how he meant that.” He chuckled. “You see? There I go again, putting substance ahead of sparkle.”

“You’d be a failure at the Court of Versailles,” Kathleen said.

“I do hope so,” Bushell said. “And speaking of failures -“ He glanced at the two abandoned glasses of sparkling wine. “They must have something better somewhere. Shall we investigate?”

“That’s what we’re here for,” Kathleen answered.

The investigation was hardly one to go down in the annals of the Royal American Mounted Police. A red-faced Englishman came out of the next room holding a tall glass with whiskey in it. “I deduce the presence of a bar,” Bushell said happily.

“Astonishing!” Kathleen exclaimed. “A lesser mind would have been incapable of it.” They both laughed. Sure enough, in that next room three bartenders struggled mightily to hold thirst at bay tor a host of dignitaries. Bushell’s laughter dried up. There at the bar stood Sir David Clarke, talking animatedly with a Russian a head shorter than he was. As far as Bushell was concerned, Sir David was the triumph of surface over substance - he would have been a smashing success at Versailles or St. Petersburg or wherever flattery and fawning held the keys to advancement.

As a matter of fact, he was a smashing success here in Victoria - and what did that say about the NAU?

Rather than contemplating such an unpleasant question, Bushell made his way through the crowd toward the fortified position the bartenders held. Kathleen Flannery followed in his wake. He suspected that the soles of his shoes took the gleam off some patent leather, but he got stepped on himself a couple of times, too, so that game was even.

“Jameson over ice,” he said when at last he reached the bar, “and ... a gin and tonic?” He glanced back over his shoulder at Kathleen to make sure that was really what she wanted. She nodded. “A gin and tonic,” he repeated, more firmly.

“Da,” the bartender said, and built the two drinks with offhand skill. Bushell had heard that the Russian embassy brought its entire staff, right down to the lowliest sweeper, from the rodina, the motherland, the better to keep spies from gaining access to whatever secrets it held. The tale was evidently true. He knocked back his Irish whiskey and called for another one. Kathleen looked from the empty glass to him and back again. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to say anything. She’d barely tasted her own drink.

“It will be all right,” Bushell assured her. Maybe he was assuring himself, too. The bartender set the second glass of Jameson in front of him. Instead of disposing of it all at once, as he had the first one, he sipped sedately. Kathleen didn’t say anything. He liked her better for that. Had she made approving noises, the imp of perversity that dwelt in his breast might have made him get drunk for no better reason than to show her she couldn’t make him do everything she wanted. He took a step back from the bar. Someone else instantly usurped his place. He would have liked nothing better than finding someplace to sit and chat with Kathleen, but this was liable to be his only chance inside the Russian embassy, and he had to make as much of it as he could. When he turned to tell her that, he found her in earnest conversation with a heavyset fellow who spoke French with a Russian accent. They were both talking about Les Deux Georges. Bushell sipped at his drink. Evidently, he didn’t need to tell her anything.

“Good evening, Colonel.” Sir Devereaux Jones made his way through the crowd toward Bushell.

“Congratulations on your progress toward recovering The Two Georges. ”

“I could wish I’d made more, but thanks all the same,” Bushell answered. As Tory Party chairman, Sir Devereaux naturally put the best possible face on things. That came with his job, just as running miscreants to earth came with Bushell’s.

“You’re too modest,” Jones said now, as much to the room as a whole as to Bushell. In less public tones, he went on, “Allow me to introduce you to my wife. Alexa, this is Colonel Thomas Bushell, of whom you’ve seen so much in the papers.”

Alexa Jones, a striking blond woman in her early forties, extended a slim hand. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Colonel,” she said. By her soft accent,

Bushell guessed she was from Georgia, or perhaps one of the Carolinas. “You’ve certainly had an exciting time on the trail of The Two Georges.”

“Much more exciting than I wanted,” Bushell answered. “I greatly prefer cases where the villains do something stupid right at the start, so we can scoop them up without ever leaving our desks.”

She laughed more than the joke was worth, proving herself a politico’s wife. Sir Devereaux Jones laughed, too, but not for long. “Very important to the Union, very important to the Empire, that we get the painting back safe and sound, Colonel,” he said. He glanced over toward a couple of members of the Whig shadow cabinet, whom the Russians, in what Bushell thought at best questionable taste, had also invited to the reception. “Not that all the esteemed members of the, ah, loyal opposition would concur, their own interests being affected here, too.”

“I understand,” Bushell said, hearing what Jones wasn’t adding: very important to the Tory Party. To him, that was of small consequence. “If The Two Georges is destroyed, we lose something precious and unique.” He dropped his voice. “And if we pay ransom for it, we lose our peace of mind from now till I don’t know when. But then, I daresay you’ll have heard my views about that.”

“I have had them reported to me in detail, Colonel,” Jones replied, deadpan. His wife started to say something, then prudently held her tongue. The two people who would have told Sir Devereaux about Bushell’s opinions were Sir Martin Luther King and Sir David Clarke, neither of whom was likely to have been an objective witness.

Jones steered Bushell away from the thickest part of the crowd. Under a somber-faced icon in a frame encrusted with pearls, he said, “Do you think you’ve been led here as a ruse, or is The Two Georges somewhere nearby?”

“That is the question,” Bushell said, doing his best to sound like a melancholy Dane. “We’ve certainly suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune - “

“-And you’ve taken up arms against a sea of troubles,” Jones put in, not to be outdone. “But, the Bard aside - “

“The Bard aside, Sir Devereaux, my opinion is that The Two Georges is somewhere not far from here. Whatever the Sons of Liberty intend to do with it is tied to the King-Emperor’s arrival in Victoria. And if they were only playing for the fifty million pounds, wouldn’t we have heard more about arranging a ransom for the painting?”

Sir Devereaux Jones drew a snuffbox from the inner pocket of his tailcoat. The lid to the box was an enamelwork miniature of The Two Georges, brilliant as a jewel. He flipped it open, took a pinch of powdered tobacco, and placed it between his gum and cheek. Then he held out the snuffbox to Bushell, who shook his head. Jones flicked the lid with his thumb; it snapped shut. He put the box back into his pocket.

“That’s - a disturbing thought, Colonel,” he said at last, his broad face tired and worried. “Having the painting stolen was quite embarrassing enough - “

“More than embarrassing enough,” Bushell said.

“Indeed,” Sir Devereaux said. “I admit that paying ransom for its return strikes me as being equally unappetizing.”

“I hope to God you’ve told that to Sir Martin,” Bushell said. “All he’s been hearing is that paying is the only thing he can do.”

“And the reasons he’s been hearing that is that not paying and having The Two Georges destroyed is also a consummation devoutly not to be wished,” Jones replied. “I assure you, Colonel: weighing advantages is much more pleasant for a working politico than trying to decide which disadvantageous course has the fewest repugnant consequences. And now you’ve given me something more to worry about, which may prove even more unfortunate than either of the two previous unpleasant possibilities. I’ll remember you in my nightmares.” With great determination, he made his way toward the bar, using his wide shoulders to advantage in forcing his way through the crowd. A string quartet that had been playing arrangements of Russian folk melodies suddenly switched first to

“God Save the King” and then to “To Anacreon in Heaven,” the old tune to which the NAU’s national hymn was sung. Bushell strode back into the room that held Duke Orlov’s receiving line: if he could get a chance to speak to Sir Martin Luther King without Sir David Clarke there to whisper into the governor-general’s other ear, he would seize it.

Sir Martin and his wife were working their way down the receiving line. Bushell took a strategic position near the end of it. He saw Sir David Clarke appear in the doorway, drawn as he had been by the charge in the musicians’ tunes.

A waiter carrying a tray laden with flutes full of nasty Russian sparkling wine came by. “You, there!”

Bushell said. The waiter paused but looked blank. Bushell thought fast. “Parlez-vous francais?” he asked.

Intelligence and comprehension filled the Russian’s face. “Certainement, monsieur.”

“Bon.” Bushell explained what he wanted, pointed discreetly toward Clarke, and pressed a folded red twenty-pound banknote into the fellow’s free hand. The way the waiter made it disappear was marvelous to behold. He made his way toward Sir David, who was beginning to approach the receiving line himself. At precisely the right moment, the waiter tripped over some prominent man’s foot - or so it seemed, at any rate. He stumbled. Crystal flutes flew off the tray. They made sweet, tinkling music as they shattered on the floor. The wine a good many of them had held drenched Sir David Clarke.

“Merde!” he exclaimed into sudden horrified silence: even under the most trying of circumstances, he didn’t quite lose his aplomb.

Servants converged on him as if drawn by a lodestone. Some dealt with the broken crystal; others dabbed at him with thick, thirsty cotton towels and, apologizing profusely, led him away for more comprehensive repairs. Conversation picked up again; someone close to Bushell said in English, “Pity we can’t send our help to Siberia when they blunder so spectacularly, what?” A woman laughed. Bushell sighed. Here and there, you could probably still find people who thought emancipating Negro slaves had been a bad idea, too.

Taking advantage of his stratagem, he approached Sir Martin as the governor-general finally succeeded in emancipating himself from Duke Orlov. King took a glass of sparkling wine from a servitor who hadn’t spilled his. He drank it all down, which bespoke either remarkable diplomacy or a lamentable palate.

“What is the latest word, Colonel Bushell?” the governor-general asked, perhaps seeking to forestall him.

It was a good ploy. “I regret I know little more than I did this morning, Your Excellency,” Bushell admitted, thinking unkind thoughts about Chalky Stimpson and the inordinate amount of time the RAM

tailor had fussed over him.

“No?” Sir Martin’s narrow, almost Oriental eyes hooded over. “A pity. We have little time in which to learn. And now, Colonel, if you will excuse me -“ His wife on his arm, he swept away. Bushell had won the battle but lost the war. He consoled himself by remembering how Sir David Clarke had looked with Russian champagne dripping from him. That had been worth twenty quid, even if it hadn’t let him have the talk he’d wanted with Sir Martin Luther King. His shoulders moved in a tiny shrug. Sir Martin was prejudiced against him anyway.

He headed back toward the bar. One more drink wouldn’t hurt anything. Kathleen might not approve, but Kathleen, he saw, had gone someplace else. Sam Stanley wasn’t anywhere close by, either. Having watchdogs around wouldn’t have stopped him from doing anything he intended to do, but he was slightly miffed to find them falling down on the job.

He got himself another Jameson and then, as if to prove something to people who weren’t watching him as they should have, carried it away with him without sipping from it. He headed farther into the embassy, intent on seeing whatever the Russians were willing to let him see and whatever else he could get away with.

They’d set up a buffet, with delicacies ranging from mushrooms to caviar to pickled herring displayed on glittering ice. Sir Horace Bragg and Sir Martin Luther King both contemplated it. They stood only a few feet from each other, but each man resolutely pretended the other did not exist. Had it not been likely to hamper the investigation that might have been funny. Contemplating it, Bushell decided a knock of Jameson wouldn’t hurt him after all.

He held himself to that one sip, though. Holding his nearly full glass as if it were a talisman, he pressed on. One room down a hallway was fitted out as an Orthodox chapel. The icons there were displayed not as objets d’art bit as objects of reverence. Some of them, nonetheless, were very fine art indeed. He stepped into the chapel to admire an image of the Virgin and Child. The Virgin’s eyes did not meet his or the Christ child’s; they stared off to one side, as if at a holiness and certitude only she could perceive. With a tiny part of his mind, he heard someone - a woman, he thought - come down the hall and pause in the doorway. Absorbed in contemplation of the icon, he did not turn around.

“Tom?” she said. “It is you, isn’t it?”

With a quick, almost convulsive gesture, he raised the glass of Jameson to his mouth and gulped it down. By the time he’d finished swallowing, he had himself back under control. He turned, slowly and deliberately, “Hullo, Irene,” he said. “How are you tonight?”

XIV

Irene Clarke - formerly Irene Bushell - stood poised in the doorway, as if uncertain whether to go up to him or to flee. “I’m fine,” she said after a moment’s hesitation, and then, “You’re looking very dashing in your dress uniform.”

He laughed harshly. “Score one for Chalky Stimpson,” he said.

“My God,” Irene exclaimed. “They haven’t retired old Chalky yet?”

She wouldn’t have heard much about the RAMs since her marriage to Bushell . . ended. He tried another laugh on for size. “Age cannot stale nor custom wither his infinite embroidery,” he paraphrased. The allusion went past Irene. As she often did when momentarily confused, she reached up and patted at her hair with the palm of her hand. Bushell remembered the gesture as if he’d last seen it the day before. But it hadn’t been yesterday; it had been years. Reminded of that, he looked at her as she was now, not with the eyes of memory. She was a little heavier than she had been, he decided. Gray frosted her dark brown hair. She wore more powder and paint than she had, the better to hold Father Time at bay. Still - “You look lovely tonight,” Bushell said, not lying too much.

“Thank you.” She started to smile, but then her red-painted mouth drew into a thin, hard line. “I would have liked hearing that sort of thing more often when we were married.”

“Too late to worry about it now, wouldn’t you say?” Bushell answered. “You made bloody sure it’s too late. Besides, I expect Sir David pays you compliments all the time . . . whether he means them or not.”

“Don’t you start that,” Irene said, her gray eyes snapping. She’d started it herself, but noting such things was not her long suit. She went on, “David has taken good care of me over the years - better than you ever did, that’s certain.”

“Sir David takes care of all sorts of things. It’s what he’s good for.” A little too late - as he’d been too late in everything about their marriage, including realizing anything was wrong with it - he tried to be conciliatory. “I’m glad you’re happy.”

“Happy? I should say so.” She tossed her head, another habit he remembered achingly well. “I’ve seen the world, Tom. I’ve been to London and Paris and St. Petersburg and Vienna. I’ve seen Rome and Athens and Constantinople and Delhi and Honolulu. And David’s a knight, of course, and he’s bound to get a higher title later.” She stared at Bushell with a mixture of scorn and pity. “No knighthood for you yet? No, I’d have heard. None likely, either, I’d say.”

Bushell shrugged. She’d been something of a social climber when she was his wife; being married to Sir David had evidently nourished that character trait. He said, “As long as I know I’m doing my job well, I don’t care whether I have a Sir in front of my name.”

“I know you don’t,” she said with a dismissive wave - almost a push - of her hand. “But what about your, ah, friend with the red hair? Pretty little thing, even if she is rather young.”

What about Kathleen? Bushell didn’t know, but he was damned if he was going to tell that to Irene.

“You’ve got no business taking that tone with me,” he growled. He wished he hadn’t been to the bar before he ran into his former wife. He’d moved into a hotel the very day he’d found her and Sir David Clarke together; after that, their conversation had been entirely through solicitors. He had things - years’

worth of things - he’d never told her. With whiskey in him, with her standing in front of him, all the stored-up anger was liable to come spewing out. He hadn’t known how much there was, not till now, not till it heaved against all the restraints he’d built to hold it back, bubbling upward like lava under a volcano that had been - had been - dormant.

“Why not?” Irene said. She kept her voice down, remembering where they were, but she sounded angry, too. That’s pretty funny, he thought: her angry at me . “Why not?” she repeated. “We’re both in the same place at the same time for once, so you can listen to me for a change.”

“And what the devil is that supposed to mean?” Bushell demanded.

“Just what it says,” Irene answered. “You were never there when we were married, that’s for certain. If you weren’t on the road, you were at the office, and if you weren’t at the office, you were sitting in front of a typewriter, pounding out endless stupid reports no one would ever read. You never gave me the notice you’d pay a florin slug fished out of a stamp-selling machine, not unless you were hungry or you wanted to go to bed with me - sometimes not even then.”

“That’s a lie,” Bushell said, though it had an unpleasant ring of truth. “I did work for a living, you know. I still do, as a matter of fact.”

“God help your pretty little friend, then,” Irene said.

“Leave Kathleen out of it. She’s none of your business - you made bloody sure of that, didn’t you?”

Irene tossed her head. Under her makeup, she flushed; that shot had got home. “I had to do something, didn’t I; to remind myself I was alive. Better than waiting for you to notice me, that’s for sure.” She made a small, purring sound, deep in her throat. “A lot better, let me tell you.”

He wanted to slap her face. Remembering they were years divorced and in public came hard, hard. He shuddered with the effort of not taking a step toward her. “What was the point of talking about my work with you, Irene?” he asked wearily. “You never paid any attention when I did, so I thought I might as well not bore you. All you wanted to talk about was - “

“Life?” she suggested. “Whatever you call it, it was more interesting than the dusty things you were always puttering over.”

“It was my life,” Bushell said. “It is my life.”

“That’s what I said: God help - Kathleen, did you say her name was? What a boring, useless life it was. It’s no wonder that I -“ Irene stopped.

“That you what?” Bushell demanded. He still found himself knowing, as if by instinct, when Irene wasn’t saying something that mattered. She might not have thought he was paying attention to her, but he was, even if not in ways she would have wanted.

“Don’t you badger me,” she said. “It’s none of your affair.” She laughed, unpleasantly. “Certainly not that. Boring.” She gave an emphatic nod, as if that proved the truth of her description. Then she threw more fuel on the fire: “What a gray way to pass the days. Do your work, write your reports, go through forty years, and what do you get? A pension. A gold pocket watch. A funeral, because you hadn’t noticed you were already dead. So what? I wanted someone who would stay interesting, someone who was going somewhere, someone who would take me with him. I found someone like that, too.”

“Oh, yes, you found Sir David,” Bushell said. “You welcomed him with open arms, in fact - and open legs, too.” Irene gasped; that one stung, too. Bushell went on, “You just wanted to live out your silly dreams, even though you knew they were silly. RAMs mostly don’t get knighted, no matter what they do, and you know why. The work is like an iceberg: nine tenths of it never comes up above the waterline to be noticed.”

“What about your dear chum, Lieutenant General Sir Horace Bragg?” Irene said. Bushell didn’t fancy the way she flung the question at him. “There are exceptions to everything,” he answered, trying to take no notice of her tone. His private opinion was that Bragg had got the knighthood by stubbornly going after it till at last it fell into his lap. That was how Sir Horace got everything. A couple of more deserving men might have been up for consideration, but no one would have made the merits he did have more visible to the right people.

“Do you remember the party we had for him when his name went onto the list?” Irene asked. A nasty glow kindled in her eyes.

“Yes, I remember,” Bushell said shortly, as if he were in the witness box, trying to admit as little as possible to a barrister. “So what?”

“So what, is it?” she snapped. Something - unshed tears? - roughened her voice. “After I put up with so much from you, that’s all I get? So what? God damn you to hell, Tom Bushell, I’ll tell you so what.” She took a deep breath. “Do you remember that party? Do you?”

“I already said I did.” Rubbed raw by her tone, he fired back at her: “And I’ll tell you what else I remember: I remember what a shockingly bad hostess you were. You kept disappearing, and I can’t imagine where you got to.” Amazing, he thought, how annoyances from years before could suddenly spring to life again when watered.

He’d thought - he’d hoped - the gibe would anger her even more. To his surprise, she threw back her head and laughed. She was plumper; he took a certain malicious glee in noting the onset of a double chin. But she was still angry, too: she said, “Then you haven’t got much imagination, have you? I’ll tell you just where I was: I was helping Sir Horace celebrate his knighthood with something better than cocktails and canapés.” She twitched her hips to leave him in no possible doubt about her meaning. A reminiscent smile spread over her face. “Quite a lot better, if you must know.”

“I don’t believe you,” Bushell said automatically.

“I don’t care,” Irene answered. “It’s true whether you believe it or not.”

To his horror, Bushell did believe it. Just as he’d always known when Irene was leaving something out of what she was saying, he’d also always known when she was telling nothing but the truth, no matter how crazy it sounded. He heard that ring of truth in her voice now, he felt it in his belly - and how he wished he didn’t.

She sniffed. “I don’t know how you’ve hung on so long in police work, Tom, when you can’t see the nose on your face. All these years, and you haven’t changed a bit. It’s too bad. I’d hoped you might have. It could have been - interesting.”

Dully, he realized he’d borrowed his odd use of that word from her. He also realized she’d been thinking about putting horns on Sir David with him, just as she’d put horns on him with Sir David - and with Sir Horace? The revelation shook him as if the unsteady ground of New Liverpool rocked beneath his feet. Irene twitched her hips again. “Do you want me to tell you all about it?” she asked.

“No,” he said, his voice not angry now, but absentminded: he might have only half heard her. He looked straight through her toward the far wall. He wasn’t ignoring her existence; he’d just forgotten about it. Her mouth narrowed again. She’d seen that faraway look in his eyes during their married days. It meant he was thinking hard about a case, generally to the exclusion of her. She’d made it all too plain she’d had too much of that then. She turned and walked away. Bushell’s eyes never wavered.

“Lieutenant General Sir Horace Bragg,” he said in slow, quiet wonder. “I can’t believe it.” He’d known Horace Bragg for going on thirty years now. He couldn’t imagine his old friend being able to keep that kind of secret from him. And he’d never had the slightest inkling of it, not even after he’d found out Irene was being unfaithful with Sir David Clarke. Good God! If anyone had helped him get through the dark times after his marriage burned like an airship full of hydrogen, Horace Bragg was the man. He blinked, then chuckled softly. He was less angry with Irene now, knowing what she’d spewed out at him, than he had been while they were quarreling. With the quarrel past, it felt over, done, abruptly years old, not immediate, harsh, painful. Maybe taking up with Kathleen really had soothed some of his bitterness there - or maybe he’d needed to get that last fight out of his system. Maybe Irene had, too. But what the devil was he to do when he saw Sir Horace, which he was liable to do in a matter of seconds and would certainly do no later than tomorrow morning? How could he keep working with Sir Horace to recover The Two Georges!

He squared his shoulders. Thinking of it that way helped put matters in perspective. He’d served with plenty of men for whom he didn’t care: he was, after a fashion, even cooperating with Sir David Clarke, whom he despised. He tapped his left hand against the side of his thigh. He still thought Sir David the likeliest conduit through whom the Sons of Liberty might have learned of the King-Emperor’s plans to visit the NAU, but he had only suspicions, no evidence to support them. But this would be different from cooperating with Sir David. He’d never liked Clarke, even before the man took Irene away from him ... or she departed, however that had been. He and Sir Horace, though Something else struck him. He hadn’t seen Cecilia Bragg here at the embassy. She’d always been the self-effacing sort; Sir Horace might not have brought her along tonight. But he’d brought her to Bushell’s house that night years ago. Bushell remembered kissing her on the cheek as she and Sir Horace came through the door.

Where had Sir Horace kissed Irene, later that night?