“Adventures are nasty things that happen to other people, eh?” Macias suggested. They both laughed. Bushell said, “Last time I managed to get hold of you, you sounded like a man on the trail of something good. I never did find out what - that was when I got to make the acquaintance of Mr. Eustace Venable, or rather of his hand grenade. So what’s the word?”
“We have a little more checking to do, to make the case as gastight as a coronium bladder in an airship, but in another few days, we’re going to drop on the chap who shot Tricky Dick. We’ve got him under twenty-four-hour surveillance now; he won’t get away. We need to nail a last couple of things into place before we get out the warrant.”
“That is good news,” Bushell said, leaning forward on the desk as if to go after the villain himself.
“How’d you come to suspect him?”
“We went over every bloody square inch of that brush-covered knoll across from the governor’s mansion about a dozen times,” Macias answered, his voice full of remembered weariness. “Not far from where we think the gunman fired, we found a good, clear footprint of a size eleven and a half shoe. And ever since then, we’ve been following up on Sons of Liberty whose gaol records show they have size eleven and a half feet.”
“Good Lord,” Bushell said in profound respect. “Talk about needles in haystacks! And you found a match, did you? Who is he?”
“His name is Zack Fenton,” Macias said. “He’s not your typical Son, by any means: he has a Nuevespanolan common-law wife, for instance. Only political arrest was for disorderly conduct at an Independence Party rally a few years ago, at which time pamphlets from the Sons were discovered on his person. But he has served two stretches of time for poaching on the property of His Majesty’s Wildlife Parks.”
“He’ll know how to handle a rifle, then,” Bushell said, nodding even though Macias could not see him.
“Good circumstantial evidence. If you can get someone to put him at the scene of the crime at the right time, he’s yours.”
“That’s what we’re working on,” Jaime Macias answered. “He’s supposed to have been at a card game, but one of the chaps there is starting to go, ‘Well, he might have stepped out for a little while, but maybe he didn’t, too’ - you know what I mean?”
Bushell nodded again. “Oh, yes. I don’t think there’s a police officer in the NAU who hasn’t heard that song a time or six. Make this Fenton’s chum sweat - if you can break the case open from that end, it’ll do me a good turn on this one. Let me know whenever something happens. If you can’t catch me here at headquarters, I’m staying at the William and Mary.”
“The William and Mary,” Macias repeated, probably as he was writing it down. “All right, Tom, you’ll hear from me as soon as I know anything.”
“Thanks, Jaime. Good luck - and be careful.” Bushell had given that warning to a great many officers since The Two Georges disappeared. He still lived in the hope that people occasionally listened to what he said, though he hadn’t evidence of it to take before a judge.
He got up and started off to carry the good news to Sir Horace Bragg. Before he made it to the door of the office he’d borrowed, the telephone rang. He frowned, wondering if the call could be for him. Only one way to find out. “Hullo? Bushell here.”
“Colonel Bushell?” a RAM operator asked, confirming that precious few people listened to him. When he’d declared his identity once more, the man said, “Colonel, I have Sir David Clarke on the line for you.”
“The devil you say!” Bushell exclaimed. He was hard-pressed to think of anyone less likely to want to talk to him. “Ring him through, ring him through.”
“Colonel?” Yes, that was Sir David’s pleasant baritone. Bushell admitted he was himself. Clarke went on, “Colonel, why have a squadron of RAMs been tapping at the typewriters in the governor-general’s residence for the past hour? I don’t think they’ve missed a one of them.”
“Good,” Bushell answered. “They’d better not. As for why -“ He hesitated, weighing the pros and cons of telling Clarke what he’d found. To see what reaction he’d get, he explained. A long silence followed. At last, Sir David said, “Colonel, I’ve given you reason to dislike me.” He sighed. “Good God, I’ve given you reason to hate me, and I know it.” He paused, waiting for Bushell response. Bushell didn’t say anything. Sir David sighed again, then went on, “I will be damned, sir, if I know what reason I’ve given you to think me a traitor to my country.”
In Clarke’s shoes, Bushell would have said exactly the same thing in exactly the same tone of voice. Was the chief of staff a good enough actor to put that injured outrage into his words? Did Bushell dare think he wasn’t?
Telephoning him had taken more nerve than he’d supposed Clarke owned. Damn it, he didn’t want to paint the man who’d taken Irene from him in any color but black. He tried to strike a businesslike note, saying, “You understand, Sir David, that, having found the lead, we must pursue it.”
“Colonel, my first thought was that you had planted that lead, intending to use it to destroy me,” Clarke answered.
Bushell looked up at the ceiling. “Had I thought of it, and were the matter on which it bore less urgent, I might have done just that.”
“The second part of your explanation is the one that matters,” Sir David Clarke said, and Bushell found himself nodding, as he had for Jaime Macias. Agreeing with Sir David was a new and disagreeable experience. The governor-general’s chief of staff went on, “I believe you are willing to put your country above personal animus, as I am, so I also believe you when you say you are not trying to frame me. But someone is, by heaven. I held the date of the King-Emperor’s arrival in strictest confidence until its release was authorized. Think of me as you like, but that is the truth.”
“Let everything be exactly as you say,” Bushell replied. “Once I found the piece of paper in Phineas Stanage’s file cabinet, I’d still have to see whether it matched a typewriter to which you had easy access.”
“I suppose you have someone out burglarizing my home even as we speak,” Clarke said bitterly. Since Bushell did - or at least hoped he did - he kept his mouth shut. Sir David sighed once more, then continued, “All right, Colonel, I see your point. But I remind you that I am not the only one with access to that information. Even if you didn’t frame me, someone else certainly has.”
“We’ll look into that possibility, too, I assure you,” Bushell answered. He’d meant that to come out cool and matter-of-fact, but it sounded more sincere than he’d thought it would. He drummed his fingers on the nicked wooden surface of the desk. He couldn’t quite figure out how he’d come to believe Sir David Clarke, but he had. “We’ll look into everything, or as much of everything as we can in the time we have left.”
“Irene has always said you were evenhanded to a fault,” Sir David said. It was the first time he’d ever mentioned Irene to Bushell save to bait him. “I suppose I shall have to hope she was right.” He hung up. After a moment, so did Bushell. He sat staring at the telephone for a few seconds, then got up and went off to see Sir Horace Bragg. The commandant listened to his summary of the conversation with Sir David Clarke and dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “What do you expect him to say, Tom?”
“What he said,” Bushell admitted. “Not a word different. The way he said it, though - I’ve done a lot of interrogations, and if he’s a liar, he’s a bloody good one.”
“He’s a politico. Of course he’s a good liar,” Bragg said, which was hardly a thought alien to Bushell.
“We’ll check the typewriters first,” he said. “That will tell us something, even if not as much as we’d like.” He re-gathered his enthusiasm. “It isn’t really what I came in here to talk about, anyhow.” He told Sir Horace of what he’d learned from Jaime Macias. “We may get help from that side of the case, sir.”