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.