“I don’t like thinking of anything that’s happened here tonight,” Macias said somberly. “Homicide by firearm is bad enough. But The Two Georges on top of it - ” He broke off, anger distorting his regular features. Nuevespañolan blood might run through his veins, but he had any British subject’s outrage at the theft of the famous painting.
“Yes,” Bushell said. “The next thing to worry about, I suppose, is what they’ll do with - or to - the painting now that they have it.” He twisted away, more from that thought than from Macias. “As you said, Captain, we’ll be seeing a lot of each other in days to come. I’d sooner have met you under more pleasant circumstances, but - ”
“If we required pleasant circumstances, Colonel Bushell, we should have chosen a different line of work, you and I,” Macias said, and Bushell nodded.
He stepped out over the tape that fenced off the spot where Honest Dick had fallen. Most of the dignitaries had gone back inside the governor’s mansion. Bushell went inside, too, and headed for the Drake Room: with a bar set up there, that was where people - including Governor Burnett, for whom he was looking in particular - were likely to be.
He was halfway down the hall when he spotted the governor’s secretary, who would do as well as Burnett. “Mr. Wilberforce!” he called.
“How may I be of assistance to you, Colonel?” the Negro asked gravely.
“I need a telephone,” Bushell said.
“Let me take you to my office,” Wilberforce said at once. “You may use my private line for as long as you like.” He hesitated, then drew out his pocket watch. “It will be well after midnight in Victoria, Colonel. Will whomever you call be glad to hear from you?”
“With all this? Not bloody likely,” Bushell answered. “But my boss will be more angry if I wait than if I wake him.”
“The proper sort of a superior to have,” Wilberforce said, approval in his voice. He led Bushell to his office, unlocked it, and stood aside to let the RAM chief precede him in. The engraved ebony plaque on his desk proclaimed that his Christian name was Harrington. Nodding to Bushell, he said, “This, no doubt, is a conversation you will wish to conduct in privacy.” He left the office, closing the door behind him as he went.
He was the proper sort of aide to have. Bushell wondered how fully Governor Burnett realized that. He shrugged; it wasn’t his affair, and he didn’t have time to worry about it anyhow. He sat down behind Wilberforce’s desk and picked up the telephone.
A woman’s voice came on the line. “Operator Fitzwilliams speaking. How may I help you?”
“I need to place a call back to Victoria, operator. The number I want is PLassey 4782. My name is Thomas Bushell.”
“PLassey 4782,” the operator echoed. “Very good, Mr. - Bushell? Do I have that right? Mr. Bushell, yes. Your call will take a few minutes to complete, sir.”
“Then you’d better get busy, hadn’t you?” Bushell listened to the call wending its way from one phone corporation to the next across the NAU: hisses, pops, and the faint voices of operators talking to one another over the miles. His time in the army had taught him how to wait. At last, faintly, a bell chimed in his ear.
It chimed several times before a southeastern-accented voice, sodden with sleep, mumbled, “Hullo?
Bragg here.”
“Mr. Bragg, sir, I have a call for you, from Mr., uh, Thomas Bushell in New Liverpool, Upper California,” operator Fitzwilliams said.
As if he were focusing field glasses, Lieutenant General Sir Horace Bragg made his voice sharper. Sleep audibly fell away from him: “Yes, I’ll accept that call. Thank you, operator.” A click announced the woman leaving the circuit she’d completed. “All right, Tom, what’s gone wrong?” Bragg demanded.
“You wouldn’t have called at this ungodly hour if it weren’t something dreadful.” He took his mouth away from the handset; rather more faintly than he’d spoken before, he said, “It’s business, I’m afraid, Cecilia. Go back to sleep if you can.” Then, louder again: “Sorry. I’m back.”
“ The Two Georges has been stolen from Governor Burnett’s mansion, sir,” Bushell said baldly. “Almost at the same time, and probably as a diversion, Honest Dick the Steamer King was murdered by rifle fire when he stepped outside the mansion to continue a quarrel with a group of picketing coal miners parading there.”
After several seconds of silence broken only by the gentle hiss of the telephone line, Bragg whispered, “My God.” He was not an easy man to take aback, but Bushell had done it. The RAM commandant recovered quickly. “Give me all the details you know.”
“Yes, sir,” Bushell said, and obeyed. He told Bragg what he’d learned in the Cardigan Room, and what Captain Macias had told him about the murder of Honest Dick.
“Never mind the late, not particularly lamented Steamer King,” Bragg said when he was done. “We have local constabularies to run murderers to earth. I want you - in fact, I order you - to concentrate all your efforts on recovering The Two Georges. If anything happens to that painting, the NAU won’t be the same.”
“You’re right, sir,” Bushell said. On the wall to one side of the desk, Harrington Wilberforce had a fine print of The Two Georges. Till that moment, Bushell hadn’t truly noticed it: he took its presence in any official setting altogether for granted. He went on, “That was what I was going to do, anyhow.”
“Only possible course to take,” Bragg said. “RAMs deal with crimes of an interprovincial nature. If the NAU has anything more interprovincial than The Two Georges, I’m damned if I know what it is.” From his choice of words, Bushell inferred that Cecilia Bragg had gone back to sleep. Sir Horace continued, “What do you intend to do now?”
“You mean, besides slitting my wrists? Get statements from all the people here, find out where they were, whom they were with, what they saw - probably not much, but you never can tell. I especially want to talk with Hiram, the other guard who was chloroformed, when he comes around. He really may have seen something worth knowing.”
“Might could be you’re right.” Bragg hesitated, then laughed at himself. “You know I’m all in a twitter when you can hear backwoods North Carolina in the way I talk.” Bushell nodded; he couldn’t remember the last time Sir Horace had slipped so. Bragg asked, “Have you telephoned the governor-general yet?”
“No, sir. You’re the first call I’ve made; Sir Martin was next on my list.”
“I’ll ring up Sir Martin,” Bragg said. “You sound as if you have quite enough on your hands out there as things stand.”
“Thank you, sir. Please tell him I take full responsibility for the theft.”
“Don’t beat yourself too hard, Tom,” Bragg said. “If you were perfect, they wouldn’t have got away with it. You’re not perfect. Nobody is. If the world were a perfect place, we wouldn’t need police, and then you and I would both be out of a job.”
Easy enough for you to say, Bushell thought. Your career hasn’t just fallen into the jakes. But Bragg was trying to help, as best he could across close to three thousand miles. “Thank you,” Bushell repeated.
“If you’re going to ring the governor general, I’ll get back to it here.”
He hung up and started out of Wilberforce’s office to begin asking questions. Before he got to the door, he stopped and frisked himself. His snort was rueful. In dress uniform, he had neither notebook nor pencil. When he left the office, he was anything but surprised to find Governor Burnett’s secretary waiting in the hall. He explained his plight. Wilberforce ducked into the office next to his own - ”My clerk’s, you understand” - and returned with two stenographic notebooks and a pair of already sharpened pencils.