“Still no word?” he asked Sam Stanley, who was smoking a harsh-smelling cigarillo he must have borrowed from Ted Kittridge.
“Still no word.”
“Have we gone through the prisoners’ effects for keys that might lock up storage cubicles?”
“Oh, yes.” Sam looked pained. “But you know how those places operate, Chief. You buy your own lock and you put it on the door. So long as you pay ‘em your fiver every month, or whatever the freight is, you’re fine. If you don’t pay, they haul out the bolt-cutters and fling your stuff in the street. So the villains have a good many keys that might be the right one, but so what? How do we find out?”
“Damn good question,” Bushell took out his own key ring. “Hell, I’ve got a couple of keys that might be the right ones myself - except they aren’t. I’d wager you have, too.”
“Oh, yes,” Stanley said again, even more mournfully than before. “If we can catch a break some other way, we have a chance of learning which key is the right one - if any of them is - but that hasn’t happened. The only break we’ve had - and believe me, I count my blessings - is that Sir Martin hasn’t had to shell out fifty million quid to get the bloody painting back yet.”
“Or if he has, we don’t know about it,” Bushell said. “That’ll do - for now.”
They went on with the interrogations. It got dark outside. Bushell wished for a chance to sleep, to bathe, to change the clothes he’d had on for a day and a half now. Lieutenant Toby Custine did fall asleep, right in the middle of a question he was putting to Stanage. Bushell and Maxwell Hammond got him to his feet and half dragged him out to one of the chairs in the hallway. He woke up enough to mutter an incoherent protest, then was gone again.
The clock chimed ten, eleven, twelve. “Deadline’s past,” Samuel Stanley muttered. Bushell shook his head. “The deadline’s not past till His Majesty makes his speech tonight without The Two Georges on the wall behind him.” He rounded on Cameron Moffett. “You might as well tell the truth for a change. That’ll give you some chance of seeing the outside of a penitentiary before you’re ninety-one.”
“You can go to the devil, you bloody tyrant,” Moffett returned. “You have to let us call our solicitors this afternoon, and after that we’ll be free men again - the way all Americans should be free.”
The clock chimed one, two, three. The round of interrogations resumed. Hammond brought in Morton Johnston. In spite of a rumpled suit and stubble on his cheeks, the Independence Party man from New Liverpool remained an imposing figure. “How did I miss you before now?” Bushell said, fighting back a yawn.
Snug in his cell, Johnston had had more rest. “I don’t know and I don’t care,” he snapped. “The rest of your band of desperadoes has harassed me more than enough to make up for your absence.”
Bushell did yawn, half exhaustion, half contempt. “That was then, Johnston. This is now. Things have changed since the last time we put you through the wringer - you’d better believe they have.”
“How?” Johnston retorted. “Have you tortured a false confession out of one of my fellow detainees?”
“We don’t need their confessions, not anymore,” Bushell answered. “We certainly don’t need them to sink you. Down in Victoria, Sir Horace Bragg is talking, and when he’s through there won’t be a Son free from here to the Pacific.”
Morton Johnston went white. “No,” he said in a voice that meant anything but no. “I don’t believe you.”
The RAMs all looked at him. None of them looked at Bushell, none of them looked at one another, fearing any change of expression would give the game away. Bushell, having finally broken through, wished he knew more than he did. Showing ignorance now would prove to Johnston he was running a bluff. He picked his words with great care, and took even greater care to ensure that they sounded artless, casuaclass="underline" “Yes, you can come off it now: when the head goes, the body dies. The head’s in the Victoria gaol, and we’ve got our lads heading to the storage cubicle to pick up The Two Georges right this minute.”
Lieutenant Hammond stuck his head into the interrogation chamber. “Telephone for you, Colonel, from the Victoria gaol.”
He couldn’t have delivered a better-timed message if he’d tried for a year. “That must mean they have the painting back,” Bushell said happily. “We’ll leave you alone for a few minutes, Johnston, let you think about just how much trouble you’re in.” He gathered up his colleagues by eye. They all got up and came out with him. He closed the door on Morton Johnston.
Without a word, Samuel Stanley set a hand on Bushell’s shoulder for a moment. But Bushell had no time to savor the breakthrough. He hurried to Maxwell Hammond’s office and picked up the telephone.
“Bushell here.”
“Walter Manchester.” The RAM major spoke in a quick, worried voice: “Colonel, I hate to tell you this, but I just got the word myself: the ransom demand went in at a minute before midnight. Has to be paid by eight this morning, or else. I’m sorry. If I’d known sooner, I would have called sooner. Word just got here.”
“Damnation!” Bushell exploded. “And the King-Emperor’s due when? Ten?”
“His arrival’s been moved up,” Manchester said. “Security, don’t you know? He’ll be here at nine now.”
“Damnation,” Bushell said again, this time dully. He looked at the clock in Hammond’s office. It was a little before four. “The payment is going forward?”
“I don’t know that for certain, but I gather it is.” Manchester sounded disgusted.
“All right, Major, thank you. I’ll do what I can.” Bushell hung up. He sat staring at the wall - through the wall - for half a minute. Then he grimaced, as if a regimental surgeon were about to probe for a bullet without anesthetic. He picked up the telephone and rang America’s Number Ten. When the operator answered, he said, “Put me through to Sir David Clarke - at once.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but -“ the operator began.
“Tell him it’s Colonel Bushell. He’ll speak to me.”
“One moment,” the operator said doubtfully. Bushell drummed his ringers on Maxwell Hammond’s desk. Then the operator came back on the line. “Go ahead, Colonel.”
Bushell did, without preliminaries: “Buy me an hour, Clarke.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible, Colonel,” Sir David answered, matching his directness. “You heard Sir Martin’s declared policy at the same time I did: if you had not recovered The Two Georges before a final ransom demand arrived, he would pay the required sum. You have not, it has, and he will.”
“I’ve never begged any man for anything in my whole life,” Bushell said heavily, “and God knows I’d start with somebody else if I had a choice. But I don’t. So ... I beg you, Sir David, buy me an hour. Buy me two if you can. I’m that close. I might not even need the hour - but I might. The one thing you can do is talk. So talk. Buy me that hour, I don’t care how.”
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. At last, Sir David said, “I’ll . . try, Colonel. I can’t promise anything. We’re to deliver a lorry bearing the sum to New Leicester Square, and then - “
“Arrange boiler trouble,” Bushell broke in. “Arrange a punctured tyre. Arrange something, for heaven’s sake.”
“I’ll try,” Clarke said again, more firmly this time. He coughed, then went on, “This can’t be easy for you, Colonel. I respect your courage and your patriotism, and I - “
“To hell with that.” Bushell slammed down the phone. Getting The Two Georges back had become his hunt for the great grey whale in the famous novel of the same name, and he knew it. He went out into the hallway and quickly briefed the other RAMs, Kathleen, and Lieutenant Hammond.