“Good choices,” Major Williams said, nodding. He turned back to Bushell. “We can come up with men who’ll want to be turned loose against the Sons - no doubt of that, Colonel. But how are we going to get search warrants on the quiet?”
Walter Manchester let out what sounded alarmingly like a giggle. He pointed to Bushell’s briefcase. “The man is armed - and dangerous.” Williams lifted a questioning eyebrow. Bushell opened the briefcase and displayed the warrants he’d been carrying since New Liverpool. Both of Micah Williams’s eyebrows rose then. Sergeant Kittridge lighted another cheroot. This one sat at a much jauntier angle than its predecessor had.
“If we can get the men, we can legally do the job,” Bushell said. “Well, legally enough, anyhow. The other question is, what job do we do? I haven’t got an unlimited number of these” - he pointed to the warrants - “and we ought to hold a couple in reserve to follow up on whatever we find in our first sweep. We have to make that one count.”
“You know what I’d do if it was up to me?” Williams said. “I’d go back to a lot of the places we hit last week. Those buggers - beg your pardon, ma’am - they had to know we were coming. We only found what they wanted us to find, not one thing more. If we hit’em when they aren’t looking for us, though - “
Bushell weighed that. After a few seconds, he nodded. “We’ll do just that, then. I wouldn’t mind finding out what Phineas Stanage really has in his files, I’ll tell you that.”
“But that paper I found taped to the file-cabinet drawer - “ Kathleen began.
“May mean exactly what it says, or may have been planted there to make us think it means what it says,” Bushell said. “By the end of today, if we’re lucky, we’ll have some idea which.”
“If we haven’t got some ideas by ten o’clock in the morning, day after tomorrow, it won’t matter anymore,” Samuel Stanley said. “That’s when the King-Emperor gets here.”
Sergeant Kittridge drove Bushell, Stanley, Kathleen Flannery, and Lieutenant Toby Custine back to Phineas Stanage’s house. “Can’t wait to have a go at this blighter,” Custine said, for the third or fourth time. “Can’t wait.” He was very young, very blond, very enthusiastic. Bushell thought Kittridge had made a shrewd choice with him. Point him at a target, turn him loose, and he’d bring it down. When Bushell knocked on the door to Stanage’s, the same maidservant who’d answered before opened it. She drew back in dismay when she recognized him. “Oh, dear sweet suffering Jesus, not again,” she moaned. “We’re just starting to get picked up from the last time.”
Bushell displayed the warrant. “Afraid so, Miss. Now if you’ll stand aside and let us do our job - “
“I can’t stop you,” the woman said bitterly, “but Lord, I wish I could.”
The RAMs swarmed into Stanage’s house. Bushell wondered how long they’d have today till the brewing magnate showed up in full wrathful glory. Or maybe, hearing the RAMs were back again, he’d flee instead.
One advantage of searching a place for the second time was that you had some notion of where things were. Bushell headed for the file cabinets up on the first floor. They were locked. Toby Custine produced a little leather case from an inside coat pocket. Out of the case he drew some highly specialized metal tools.
Glancing over to Bushell, he said, “I wanted to be a safecracker when I was a boy, but my dear old father convinced me that, while I’d take long holidays with a trade like that, they wouldn’t be at places I much fancied visiting.”
“Your dear old father was a man of sense,” Bushell said solemnly.
“So he was, so he was,” Custine replied. “That once, anyhow, I listened to him.” He got to work with his lock picks. In moments, the file cabinet opened. Whether or not he’d fancied larceny as a career when he was young, he would have been good at it.
“Hullo!” Sam Stanley said, reaching in and snatching out a folder. “This wasn’t here last time we came calling.”
“Are you sure?” Bushell asked. “He had a lot of Independence Party material then, too.”
“Yes, and that’s how all of it was labeled - INDEPENDENCE PARTY, I mean,” Stanley said. “Not a folder in the bunch just said INDEPENDENCE.”
Lieutenant Toby Custine muttered something pungent under his breath. Aloud, he said, “Looks like you were right, Colonel. If this wasn’t here the last time you came through the place, somebody’d tipped Stanage off beforehand.”
“Let’s see what we’ve got,” Bushell said. Samuel Stanley set the folder on a nearby table and flipped it open. Staring up at him was a scribbled note from Eustace Venable to Stanage. The note was headed PHIN and had nothing to do with cabinetry, nor was the tone that of artisan to client: It’s ready and waiting. I’ll be heading up to Boston tomorrow to talk things over with Joe. He and the boss have cooked up three or four different ways to play it. I want to know for certain which one they intend using. Will inform you when I learn.
“Not much there you could take to court,” Custine observed.
“That’s true,” Bushell said, “but it puts old Phin in the picture all the same - and if Joe isn’t Joseph Kilbride, who is he?”
“Who’s the boss?” Custine asked.
Sam Stanley started going through papers. “Maybe these will tell us.”
But they didn’t. Phineas Stanage’s correspondents had been maddeningly - and, in their shoes, sensibly - elliptical. Nowhere was there an overt mention of The Two Georges: the letters talked about it and the thing.
One of those letters came from Michael O’Flynn in Charleroi. Bushell clicked his tongue between his teeth. “I hope Chief Lassiter has him locked up good and tight. Have to make sure about that - in a bit. First things first.”
“I know what happens next,” Stanley said. “We head off to Stanage’s brewery and find out he’s not there. He’ll have left for Astoria twenty minutes before we show up, and he’ll be back in six weeks.”
“Not this time, Sam,” Bushell predicted. “He won’t go far from the capital, not two days before Charles III gets here.” Toby Custine nodded vigorous agreement. Of course, Bushell realized after the words were out of his mouth, for Stanage to be in and around Victoria was not necessarily the same as his being in his office waiting for the RAMs to scoop him up. He tried to pretend he hadn’t had that thought things were starting to go his way now, after so long favoring the villains. He went downstairs. Ted Kittridge proved to have an unexpected talent for devastation; Stanage’s living room looked as if a Cossack cavalry voisko had galloped through it. Kathleen Flannery was lending spirited help, using a sharp little knife to slit furniture linings so she could peer inside. Stanage’s servants stood watching and wringing their hands.
“Anything we need to know about?” Bushell asked. Kittridge and Kathleen shook their heads. “Let’s go then,” he said, and turned to Stanage’s domestic staff. “Thank’s for your help this morning.”
“You took a big chance there, Chief,” Stanley said as they piled back into the RAM steamer. “If old Phineas had some Nagants that we didn’t find stashed in his basement, one of the footmen might have shot you.”
“Mm, something to that, I shouldn’t wonder.” Bushell checked a sheet of stationery he’d taken from the home. “The Josiah Stanage Brewing Company, Ltd. is on Tilden Way. That’s not far from here, is it, Sergeant?” He’d been away from Victoria long enough to make him distrust his memory for directions.
“Fifteen minutes,” Kittridge said, and put the motorcar in gear.