Several teams of RAMs had already returned from their raids when Bushell and his companions got back to headquarters. They cheered when they found he’d come back with something worth pursuing; most of them had had little luck. “From what we found by looking, you’d think the miserable Sons were all deacons and altar boys,” a disgruntled RAM complained.
Bushell took the paper with the single typewritten line on it to Captain Oliver. He explained where he’d found it and what he thought it was. “Very good,” she said with a brisk nod, and examined the line. “Yes, that’s a Quiet Writer, a popular brand here in Victoria. I use one myself, as a matter of fact.”
“And Victoria’s the typewriter capital of the NAU, along with every other kind,” Bushell said. “How can you be a bureaucrat if you don’t have a typewriter? That makes things harder.”
“Not necessarily.” Patricia Oliver reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a jeweler’s loupe, which she set in front of her eye to look at the characters more closely. “Yes, I thought so. The C rides slightly above the line, and the H slightly below. And there is - I think there is - a slight flaw in the left-hand stem of the M. If this comes from any machine Sir David Clarke was likely to be able to get his hands on at the governor-general’s mansion, we should be able to identify it.”
“Good. I hoped you’d say that.” Bushell paused for a moment. “If he has a typewriter at home, you might want to check that, too. Discreetly, of course.”
She took off the loupe and glanced up at him. “So discreetly he never finds out about it? So discreetly a judge never finds out about it?” Bushell didn’t answer. He made a point of not answering. Patricia Oliver gave him a knowing smile different from the one she’d used in the Grosvenor Hotel bar on the other side of the continent. “That might be arranged . . . discreetly, as you say. If we learn anything interesting from it, I expect we’ll be able to bring it to the attention of the proper authorities . . discreetly, again.”
“Fine,” he said. “I thought you’d be able to manage something along those lines. Getting type samples from machines you want to check must be hard sometimes.”
“Sometimes,” she agreed. “One way or another, though, I generally manage to get what I want.” When Bushell didn’t rise to that, she said, “I must introduce you to my husband one day while you’re here.”
“I’d like that,” Bushell said. “I suspect he’s a luckier man than even he knows.”
Patricia Oliver laughed. “You’re so quiet most of the time. That makes you twice as dangerous when you do let fly.” An expression he couldn’t quite read replaced the amusement on her face. “I gather your current . . friend wasn’t hampered by the inconvenient presence of a bit of jewelry?” She spread the fingers of her left hand. The diamond on the fourth one sparkled: a large stone, and a fine one, if Bushell was any judge.
“No, Kathleen’s not married,” he said steadily.
“Not yet,” Patricia murmured. More directly to him, she went on, “I hope you end up happy, however that turns out.”
Bushell hadn’t thought about being happy in a long time, not as a continuous as opposed to a momentary condition. He found the notion unlikely. “I suppose stranger things have happened,” he said, and left before Patricia Oliver found a reply.
More teams of RAMs were coming in, bringing with them little evidence but a lot of unhappiness. “By what my gang found, you’d think the bloody Sons knew we were coming,” growled a major with a beard that didn’t quite hide a scar on his right cheek.
He might not have meant his words literally, but they produced an appalled silence from his colleagues. Then, from the doorway, Sir Horace Bragg said, “I heard that.” The local RAMs were appalled all over again; several of them seemed to be looking for places to hide. Bushell didn’t blame them. Sir Horace might be good at holding things in, but when he lost his temper, the results could be memorable. Remembering what Irene had flung in his face, Bushell realized just how good Bragg was at holding things in. For one frightening instant, Bushell teetered on the edge of throwing himself at the man who had cuckolded him and then gone on about his business as if nothing had happened. His right hand twitched, starting to make a fist; the muscles in his shoulder bunched, as if he were about to throw a punch. Making himself ease away from that animal rage was one of the harder things he’d done. Not now, dammit, he told himself fiercely. No matter how good it would feel, not now. Bragg, oblivious - as Bushell had been oblivious for so long - looked around with his large, sad eyes and said, “Williams, I fear you may be right.”
“My God, sir,” said the scarred major - Williams, evidently. “That would mean the Sons have a source here.” He turned through 360 degrees, as if to scan everyone’s face to try to spot the traitor.
“The day before yesterday,” Bragg said, biting his lip in anger, “I had the distinct displeasure of sacking a pair of Royal American Mounted Policemen at our Richmond office, on the grounds that they had cooperated with the Sons of Liberty there to impede investigation of several local crimes of which various Sons were suspected. This cooperation had apparently been going on for some time before it drew notice. If it happened there, it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that it could be happening here. I have instituted an investigation to determine whether that is in fact so.”
Now every RAM was looking at all the others. No one bore the mark of Cain on his forehead. Bushell rubbed at his mustache. If the RAMs couldn’t trust their own friends in the investigation, that would make things a lot harder. You wouldn’t want to share what you’d learned. You’d hold it and keep it to yourself. And if Fred over there might usefully have combined it with something he knew . . . well, too bad.
“Sir, I hope you find the - “ The presence of Kathleen and a couple of RAMs of the female persuasion inhibited Bushell in his choice of words, but he packed as much temper into that silence as Phineas Stanage had into a whole string of incandescent obscenities.
“So do I,” Sir Horace said wearily. “I heard on the wireless this morning that the Britannia has set sail for the NAU. We haven’t much time left.”
The gathered search teams broke up after that, some to examine the meager haul of evidence they’d found, others to pursue new leads. Bushell went off to find a telephone. The busier he kept himself, the less chance he’d have to think about what Bragg had said. He didn’t want to think about that. He couldn’t do anything about it anyhow, except to be careful to whom he spoke. Trying to get The Two Georges back before Charles III arrived and trying to make sure Victoria was safe for him when he did arrive would keep him busy enough, or rather more than busy enough.
He rang Captain Jaime Macias back in New Liverpool. A few days before, Macias had been on the point of telling him something important, and he still didn’t know what. Time to find out, he thought. The connection went through smoothly. Given Victoria’s massive telephone exchange building, he would have been surprised and annoyed if it hadn’t. And, for a wonder, Jaime Macias was at his desk. “Tom!” he said when Bushell reached him. “Good to hear from you, friend. By what I see in the papers and hear on the wireless, you’re not having a dull time of it.”
“That’s a fact,” Bushell agreed. “This case has given me a whole new appreciation of what a lovely word routine is, let me tell you. You sit at your desk, you sift through the clues, you go out and arrest the villains, and you fling them into gaol where they belong. That’s the way it’s supposed to work. Having the buggers greet you with bullets and grenades isn’t.”