Behind Bushell, someone let out a gasp of horror. He spun around and saw Kathleen Flannery staring at the blank wall in the Cardigan Room with as much horror as the cloakroom girl had shown at Honest Dick’s bleeding corpse. “Yes, it’s gone,” he said roughly, and turned back to the guard. “Did you recognize them?”
“No, sir.” The guard started to shake his head, then stopped abruptly; it must have hurt. “But we didn’t think anything of it. I don’t know what went through Hiram’s head, but my guess was that they were boys from out of province, here along with The Two Georges.”
Kathleen shook her head. “We relied on the authorities in each town for security personnel. Up to now, everything had gone perfectly.” She withered Bushell with a glance.
He wanted a drink - Christ, he wanted a bottle. The first interesting woman he’d met in a long time, and now she had to hate him. And, he realized, he had to suspect her.
The guard said, “We found out what they were, sir, when one of them pulled out his revolver and told us to put up our hands and freeze if we wanted to go on living. The other two went round behind us and jammed these stinking sponges over our faces. They were professionals, sir, nothing else but. We never had a chance to try and fight back, and next thing I knew, I was lying on the floor and the painting was gone. I hit the alarm button, and - ” He shrugged helplessly.
A flashbulb went off behind Bushell, printing his shadow for a moment on the wall where The Two Georges had hung. Some of the reporters had broken away from the murder in front of the mansion, then. He turned around and said, “Boys, no more of that. This is a crime scene under investigation. No photographs in the papers.”
“Why the devil not?” The photographer who’d just shot was screwing in a new bulb, and hissing between his teeth because the old one was hot. “How can photos from out in the hall here mess up your investigation?”
“Because if they’re published, they’ll help tell the criminals what we know,” Bushell answered. “You know me, most of you. You know I play fair. I tell you what I can as soon as I can. Till then - ” He gestured to Kathleen Flannery to come inside, then closed the door to the Cardigan Room in the reporters’ faces.
“They won’t be happy,” Samuel Stanley warned.
“Too bad for them,” Bushell answered. Then something new occurred to him. “Sam, go and tell those New Liverpool constables not to let anybody else off the mansion grounds, no matter what.” He slammed one fist into the palms of his other hand in lieu of swearing. “What do you want to bet that lorry pulled out of here withThe Two Georges in its bed?”
Stanley groaned. “I have the terrible feeling you’re right, Chief, but just in case you’re wrong, I’ll go talk to the New Liverpool men.” He opened the door. The hubbub outside doubled. When he closed it again, the noise redoubled, angrily.
Bushell took another look around the Cardigan Room. Close to the wall opposite the one on which The Two Georges had hung sat a lacquered metal box with a crank on one side and a trumpet-shaped speaker coming out of another: a wind-up phonogram, of the sort a young man and his sweetheart might take on a picnic in the country.
“That has no business being here,” Kathleen Flannery said, pointing to it.
“No business of ours,” Bushell said in abstracted tones; he’d seen such portable phonograms at crime scenes once or twice before. “But I know what tune the platter inside will play.”
“What tune is that?” The vertical crease between Kathleen’s eyebrows said she didn’t know what Bushell was talking about, or care.
“An old one called ‘Yankee Doodle,’“ he answered, and watched her narrowly.
“God in heaven,” she said quietly. “The Sons of Liberty. Our worst nightmare.” The Sons of Liberty had been a tiny splinter group for more than a century, and seldom impinged on the awareness of the average citizen of the NAU, who was not only content but proud to be a subject of the British Empire. But a curator in charge of The Two Georges had to know extremists might want to strike at the symbol of imperial unity. No, not might - did.
If she was faking, she was a good actress. A couple of hours before, she’d just been K. FLANNERY on a list to Bushell; for all he knew, she was a good actress. Someone knocked on the door to the Cardigan Room. Bushell was ready to ignore it, but Samuel Stanley called, “It’s me, Chief.” For his adjutant, Bushell opened the door. Stanley came in with two men: a dark-skinned fellow in New Liverpool blues, complete with a turban matching his uniform, and a graying blond man wearing a doctor’s white coat with several fresh bloodstains on it. Stanley pointed first to one, then to the other. “This is Sergeant Singh, a New Liverpool forensics specialist, and here we have Dr. Foxx, the coroner.”
“We’ve met, I think,” Bushell said to Foxx, who nodded. The RAM colonel turned to Sergeant Singh.
“Can you dust that phonogram for fingerprints, Sergeant?” He pointed to the wind-up machine by the far wall. Samuel Stanley had not noticed it before. Recognizing it for what it was, he whistled softly.
“Oh my yes, I shall certainly do that,” the forensics sergeant said, his words precise but his accent singsong and nasal.
Dr. Foxx stooped by Hiram, the still-unconscious RAM. “Pleasant, working on a live one,” he remarked, seizing the fellow’s wrist. “Makes for a bit of a change.” He glanced at his pocket watch for a measured half minute, then stowed it in his waistcoat. “Pulse is a firm seventy, respiration also normal. Nothing to do but wait till he comes round, I’d say.”
“Closest thing to good news I’ve had tonight, I’d say,” Bushell answered. “They called you out to look at Honest Dick?”
“Just so.” With a grunt, Foxx got to his feet. “He might have survived the throat wound; witnesses say that one was first. But the bullet to the head - ” He held out his hand, fingers in a fist, thumb pointing down. “Nasty thing. Glad I don’t see those every day, that I tell you.”
Sergeant Singh said, “No fingerprints do I find on the outer casing, no, none.”
“In that case - ” Bushell took out his pocket handkerchief and covered his own fingers with it as he worked the catch that held the phonogram closed. He opened the lid. Inside, along with the labelless shellac platter he’d expected, was a sheet of cheap notepaper. He glanced to Sergeant Singh. “May I?”
The forensics man nodded. Taking care not to touch the paper with his bare fingers, Bushell unfolded it. Singh read the two-line typed message with him. So did Samuel Stanley and Kathleen Flannery, who had stood over him while he opened the phonogram.
THE COLONIES SHALL BE FREE.
WASHINGTON WAS A TRAITOR.
“Bastards,” Stanley muttered, and then, “I’m sorry, ma’am; I’m upset.”
“It’s all right,” Kathleen Flannery said, her voice quivering with suppressed fury. “They are bastards. To steal The Two Georges . . .”
“It’s a blow at the Empire itself,” Bushell said grimly. On his knees, he moved backward, away from the phonogram. He took out his cigar case and showed it to Kathleen Flannery. After a small, helpless shrug, she nodded. She had no reason to keep him from smoking in the Cardigan Room now. Sergeant Singh dusted the inside of the phonogram case and the platter with a fine white powder, then used what looked like a miniature badger-hair shaving brush to sweep it away. “Also I see no fingerprints here,” he said when he was done. His liquid brown eyes were gloomy. “Very careful they must have been.”
“The Sons of Liberty? They’re good at what they do.” Bushell looked round for an ashtray. Not finding one, he knocked his ash onto the floor. Samuel Stanley ground it into the carpet with his heel. Bushell wrapped his handkerchief around the crank and wound up the phonogram. When he released the crank, the platter began to spin. He picked up the tone arm, again without touching it with his bare skin, and set the needle in the outer groove of the platter.