“Good,” Bushell said. He rounded up his companions by eye, then headed across Amritsar Way to the Worshipful College of Victuallers.
The fellow who greeted him there certainly hadn’t lacked for victuals. The white linen suit he wore had enough material for a four-man tent, or maybe two of them. His pink, pink skin was fine as a baby’s.
“Help you folks?” he asked, then wheezed in another gulp of air.
“Phineas Stanage and the party from the Stanage brewery works,” Bushell said.
“Dining room two,” the fat man answered, pointing.
Dining room two was a raucous place, full of well-hopped good cheer. Bushell understood at once how Stanage’s secretary had acquired her distaste for such gatherings. The room was blue with cigar and pipe smoke, and bluer with coarse language. His head swiveled this way and that. He didn’t see the man he was after. He tapped a commercial traveler in an ugly houndstooth jacket. “Where’s Stanage?”
“Phin?” The man didn’t take him for a police officer. “He stepped out a few minutes ago. Not for lunch, by Jesus!” He patted his abdomen, as if to say no sane man would leave the victuallers’ hall for food or drink.
“Check the jakes,” Bushell told Lieutenant Custine. “Check with that human airship out front, too, and see if he’s left the building.”
Custine hurried away. Bushell wished he had more manpower with him. If he could have descended on this place with a host of RAMs instead of an earful... he was all too likely to have given the game away. But he heard cursing down the hall that was altogether different from the genial sort accompanying the commercial travelers’ tales of conquests over customers or pretty girls. One corner of his mouth quirked upward as he recognized the style: Phineas W. Stanage was unhappy with his world.
“Crackbrained idiotic fornicating Cossack Okhrana inquisitors!” he bellowed as Toby Custine led him back into the dining room. The RAM lieutenant had clapped manacles around his wrists.
“Here, what have you done to good old Phin?” one of the commercial travelers shouted. An angry chorus rose from the company.
“Arrested him,” Bushell answered. The chorus grew louder. In a few seconds, some half-drunk fool would lead a charge to rescue good old Phin. Bushell hadn’t the men he’d need to stop such a charge. Before it could start, he went on, “For conspiracy to steal The Two Georges, and for conspiracy to commit murder by firearm.”
“It’s a lie, a filthy, stinking, goddamned lie,” Stanage roared, sounding very much like a man who’d boxed for pay for a while before taking up the family business. But the men who sold his brews were suddenly silent. Some of them might have sympathized with the Sons of Liberty, but most were probably Tories: commercial travelers were seldom inclined to embrace innovation of any kind.
“Take him away; get him out of here,” Bushell muttered to Custine, who started Stanage down the hall. Stanage tried to kick him in the shins. Custine skipped out of the way and shoved the brewing magnate, hard. Stanage almost went over on his face. To his sales force, Bushell said, “This day’s festivities are over. You’ve had your luncheon and you haven’t had to listen to all the speeches that were coming up. Count yourselves ahead on the bargain: instead, you’ve got the rest of the day off. Enjoy it.”
He waited. If he wasn’t lucky, he’d have a riot on his hands. Well, he told himself, that would get the Georgestown constables over here in a hurry. But luck, for once, was with him. The first commercial traveler who spoke up said, “I hope you get the painting back, pal. If Phin knows somethin’ about it, go on and make him sweat.” A new chorus rose, this one of agreement. If anyone in the dining room held a differing opinion, he made sure he held it close.
You had to have discipline if you were going to survive traveling from town to town and drumming up sales wherever you could. Once it became clear to the assembled multitude that no one was going to try breaking Stanage free of the RAMs, the men gulped down a last few bites, upended their pint pots, and started filing out toward Amritsar Way.
Most of them were chattering about what they’d just seen, and most of those were professing loud and sometimes profane (though not so ingeniously profane as Phineas Stanage) hope The Two Georges would soon be back in proper hands. In that milieu, the strapping, black-haired fellow who kept quiet and kept his head down while he tried to edge away from Bushell succeeded only in making himself conspicuous. Bushell might not have paid him any mind he had tramped along with his comrades. As it was, he took a second look.
“Mr. O’Flynn!” he exclaimed gleefully. “You’ll come along with us, too.”
The miner from Charleroi tried to bolt, but a commercial traveler half his size leveled him with a tackle that would have drawn a red card on any football pitch in the Empire. Bushell jumped on him and manacled his hands behind his back.
As Phineas Stanage had, O’Flynn tried to kick. “Naughty,” Bushell said, and bounced his face off the tile floor of the hallway, not so hard as he might have done. “As I said, you’ll come along with us.” He yanked the miner to his feet.
Because of the struggle, he didn’t get out to the street as fast as he might have. When he did, Major Micah Williams greeted him with a glad cry. “Thanks for the bonus,” the bearded, scarred RAM said. “I never expected Christopher Cole to walk by me bold as brass. I was going after him later on.”
“Who’s Christopher Cole?” Bushell said, and then, “Never mind. He was a villain masquerading as a commercial traveler, was he?” Williams nodded. Bushell went on, “I nabbed one of those, too. Nice little gathering Stanage had here, wasn’t it? And a nice cover, too; he could meet the other Sons and plot anything he liked with no one the wiser.”
“He could write it off his taxes, too,” Samuel Stanley said. “If that’s not adding insult to injury, I don’t know what is.”
“One more charge to throw at him,” Bushell agreed. “Something will have to stick.” He turned to Williams. “How’d you do?”
“Got my man,” the major answered. “Cameron Moffett is another one we’ve suspected for years without being able to lay hands on proof. I found it earlier today, and now I’ve found him.” His face darkened with anger. “The Sons must have had a pipeline into our office for years, too, same as they did down in Richmond. This time, thanks to you, we really did catch them napping.”
Several man had emerged from Independence Party headquarters to argue with the RAMs who’d come with Williams. Bushell glowered at them. They were all plump, prosperous, middle-aged, with the sleek look of solicitors to them. He could understand why a Michael O’Flynn might wish the NAU different from what it was. But the Union and the British Empire had done things for these men, not to them. Where was their gratitude?
The breeze picked up; it flipped the homburg off one of the Independence Party men, then flung awry the few straggling strands of hair he’d combed over a wide expanse of scalp. That floating, wispy hair was what drew Bushell’s gaze to him. One eyebrow rose. “Well, Major,” Bushell said softly, “I think you’ve just returned the favor you say I did you.” He raised his voice: “Mr. Johnston! How good to see you again.”
Morton Johnston started. If the Independence Party leader from New Liverpool thought it was good to see Bushell, his face didn’t know it. For a moment, before the lawyerly mask dropped over his features, he looked uncommonly like a boy caught with his hand in the biscuit tin. Bushell waved to him. “Why don’t you come over here, Mr. Johnston, and tell me what you’re doing three thousand miles from home.”