“Right.” Kittridge used a couple of precious syllables’ worth of laughter. Everything ahead swelled as if a cinema camera were moving in fast for a tight shot. There stood His Majesty Charles III, head turned toward the onrushing motorcar but features schooled to calmness even so. There beside him stood Sir Martin Luther King, looking quite humanly astonished. And there, coming up to protect, or rather as if to protect “It’s Bragg!” Stanley yelled. Lieutenant General Sir Horace Bragg did indeed carry a revolver on his hip, along with his dress sword. He drew the pistol as Kittridge screeched to a stop not ten feet away. “Halt or I’ll shoot!” he shouted, his Carolina accent broad and harsh.
Bushell and Stanley flung themselves out of the steamer before it stopped rolling. Bragg’s face worked horribly when he recognized them. Bushell sprinted toward him, shouting, “He’s the one! He led the plot, he - “
With a wordless scream of hate, Sir Horace fired at him at point-blank range - and missed. The report of the pistol and the crack of the bullet past his ear almost deafened Bushell. He’d been in enough combat to know how hard it was to shoot straight when your heart pounded and your hand shook. Bragg whirled, swinging the muzzle of the pistol toward the King-Emperor. Before he could shoot, Bushell jumped on his back and dragged down his arm - no time for him to yank out his own weapon. They crashed to the ground together in a cursing, clawing heap. Bragg tried to knee Bushell in the crotch. He twisted to one side just in time and took the blow on the hip, all the while hanging on to Bragg’s pistol arm like grim death.
“Let go of the gun,” Bushell panted. Bragg snarled an obscenity and rabbit-punched him. He grunted in pain. His grip weakened. Shouting in triumph, Bragg jerked the pistol free. He fired - just as Samuel Stanley landed on top of him and Bushell.
Stanley cried out, in pain rather than triumph. But his weight knocked the pistol from Bragg’s hand. Bushell kicked at it. It spun out of Bragg’s reach. The RAM commandant howled like a lost soul. Lost or not, the RAM commandant fought on. As Bushell had back in New Liverpool the night The Two Georges was stolen, he tried to draw his ceremonial sword and use it as a real weapon. A muscular man, a long-faced fellow in his mid-forties, clamped both hands on Bragg’s wrist and kept the sword in its scabbard. “Thanks,” Bushell gasped. After a moment, he added two more startled words: “Your Majesty.”
“My pleasure,” Charles III said, and sounded as if he meant it.
The dignitaries and uprushing red-uniformed RAMs swarmed onto Sir Horace Bragg and pinned him as much by sheer weight of numbers as by skill and prowess. Bushell didn’t care how the job was done, so long as it was done. Still woozy and sick from the rabbit punch, he rolled away and sat up. Sam Stanley had his right hand clenched tight around his left forearm. Blood dripped through his fingers. His lips were skinned back in a grimace that showed all his teeth. “Damnation,” he muttered. “All those years as a RAM made me forget how much I didn’t like getting shot.” He shook his head. “The memory comes back mighty fast, though.”
The RAMs dragged Bragg away. Several of them looked as if they wanted to drag Bushell and Stanley after him, but when the King-Emperor came over and set his right hand on the shoulder of one and his left on that of the other, the RAMs subsided - except for one who undid a clasp knife and came up to Stanley, saying, “Let me cut away your shirt and jacket, sir, so we can have a look at that wound.”
“Just a second,” Stanley told him. He glanced up to Charles III. “Your Majesty, please step back. Can’t know what this fellow’s going to do if he gets close to you, not after Sir Horace.”
“I’m no traitor!” the RAM cried indignantly.
“I’ll cover you even so,” Bushell told him, freeing his own pistol from its holster. He too looked toward the King-Emperor, and went on in pointed tones, “After His Majesty withdraws.”
“What sort of monarch am I, to have my subjects order me about?” Charles III demanded in what Bushell hoped was mock indignation.
“A live one,” he answered, and the King-Emperor stepped away from Stanley. The RAM with the knife did as he’d said he would, quickly and skillfully. “Through and through,” he said, stating the obvious. “Can you move your arm, sir?”
Stanley tried to rotate it, winced, and shook his head. “I’ve got a bone broken in there, sure as the devil.”
“Afraid you’re likely to be right, sir.” The RAM took out a white handkerchief and began bandaging the wound. It quickly became obvious he’d need more material than one handkerchief could provide. Bushell gave him his. The King-Emperor also drew an immaculate square of linen from his breast pocket and handed it to the RAM.
Sir Martin Luther King came up. Bushell blamed him not in the least for missing the brawl; he was far from young and, as a former minister, had trained in the arts of peace rather than those of fighting. His deep, rich voice more than a little shaken, the governor-general said, “Your Majesty, allow me to present to you Colonel Thomas Bushell and Captain Samuel Stanley of the - of your - Royal American Mounted Police.”
“In a manner of speaking, we’ve already been introduced, wouldn’t you say, Sir Martin?” Charles III answered. He turned to the two RAMs and said, “Thank you, gentlemen.”
In a different tone of voice, that would have been perfunctory. As Charles III said it, it covered all the ground needed and then some. Not even Bushell’s cynicism was proof against the living centerpiece of the Empire. “It was a pleasure, Your Majesty,” he said, and Sam Stanley, wounded arm and all, nodded. Bushell went on, “If it hadn’t been for Sergeant Kittridge there” - Kittridge had got out of the steamer when the fight started, and now was one of the men holding Bragg down - “we never would have got here on time.”
“Sergeant, I thank you, too,” Charles III said warmly.
Ted Kittridge sprang to his feet, and to stiff attention. “Your Majesty!” he said. He was still sparing of words, but looked about to burst with pride.
To Bushell, the King-Emperor said, “Just before this - unpleasantness - began, didn’t Sir Martin mention your name in connection with the recovery of The Two Georges!”
“We do have it back, Your Majesty,” Bushell said. “It should be at the All-Union Art Museum in a few minutes; it’s on its way there now.” What Sir Martin had said of him he did not know, and so did not speak to that.
The governor-general said, “Sir David Clarke rushed out to my limousine with the good news as I was about to depart to meet His Majesty here. He spoke most highly of you, Colonel, and I was delighted to relay his praise to the King-Emperor.”
Charles III nodded to confirm that the praise had indeed been relayed. Sir Martin Luther King’s narrow, slightly slanted eyes were inscrutable as he studied Bushell. Bushell understood that. He’d have bet it would have taken more than getting The Two Georges back safe and sound to squeeze praise for him from Sir David.
“You never can tell, Your Excellency,” he said, and then glanced over to Sir Horace Bragg. “You never can tell.”
First faint in the distance, then swelling rapidly, came the urgent clang of an ambulance’s alarm bell. To Bushell, Sir Martin said, “You will of course honor us with your presence at the All-Union Art Museum, having made it possible for the happy event there to proceed as originally planned.”
But Bushell shook his head. “Your Excellency, you’ll have to do without me. Making sure Sam is all right comes first. After that -“ He shrugged vaguely. At the moment, the prospect of lying down on a real bed in real pyjamas and sleeping felt far more attractive than listening to a speech from anyone, the King-Emperor included.