Sir Martin Luther King’s nostrils flared slightly; one eyebrow might have risen a sixteenth of an inch. Without perceptibly changing his expression, he sent Bushell a clear message: you’re making a mistake. Bushell didn’t care. He’d made enough mistakes on this case already. What did one more matter now?
And then Charles III nodded to him. “Stout fellow,” he said. “Your mates come first.”
“Yes, sir,” Bushell agreed enthusiastically. The governor-general was a politico, and thought in terms of protocol. The King-Emperor was a ruler of men, and, by the way he talked, remembered his own regimental service. Sir Martin could run a country, and did a capable job of it. Charles III was more than capable at inspiring the Empire.
The ambulance skidded to a stop behind the steamer Ted Kittridge had driven. Photographers who’d captured on film the seizure of Sir Horace Bragg now spent more flashbulbs as a couple of husky young men in white service caps, white jackets, and black trousers jumped out through the wide doors at the vehicle’s rear.
They were carrying a light stretcher. When Stanley saw it, he tried to wave them away. “Put that back,” he said. “I don’t need it.” He started to get to his feet.
“Stay there on the ground, sir!” one of the young men said, almost as sharply as if he were covering Stanley with a firearm.
The other medical assistant knelt beside him and examined the bandage the RAM had put on his arm. He nodded grudging approval. “Not a bad job. Here, just let us set a light splint on the injured member till we can get you in hospital for a proper setting.”
The assistant who’d told Stanley to stay down went back to the ambulance and returned with a couple of thin boards and some cloth strips with which to tie them. As he got to work, Charles III came over and said, “I want you to see that this man gets the very best of care.”
“Everybody we treat gets the best of care, pal,” the medical assistant said without looking up. His partner kicked him in the ankle. When he did see who had spoken to him, he went pale. “Uh, Your Majesty, I, uh - “
“Never mind,” the King-Emperor said. “Your answer was as it should have been.” The medical assistant went back to work. His hands were shaking so much, he had to try two or three times before he could get the ties as he wanted them.
“Here, sir, if you’ll slide onto the stretcher -“ his partner said, and Stanley did. As the two men lifted him, that same one asked, “Have you got anyone to go with you to hospital?”
“Right here,” Bushell said, taking a step after them.
“Good enough.” The medical assistants slid Sam Stanley into the back of the ambulance, then climbed up after him. One of them waved Bushell forward. “Mind your head, sir. It’s a bit cramped in here.”
“Chief, you’re going to have to ring Phyllis, let her know I’ll be all right,” Stanley said. “If the wireless was carrying His Majesty’s arrival, she may already have heard I got shot.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Bushell promised.
The ambulance driver backed the steamer away from the motorcar in which Bushell and Stanley had arrived, then started toward the hospital, alarm bell clanging. Inside the ambulance, it echoed and reechoed like a warning for the end of the world.
One of the medical assistants took a hypodermic syringe from a compartment set into the side wall of the ambulance. “Would you care for an injection of morphia, sir?” he asked Stanley.
“Why not?” Sam said. “It hurts, and I’m no hero.”
The two assistants looked at each other. “With all due respect, sir, I wouldn’t say that,” the one with the syringe answered as he slid the tip of the needle under Stanley’s skin.
“That’s better,” Stanley said a couple of minutes later, as the drug took effect. He sounded dreamy, far away.
When the ambulance pulled up at the side entrance to the Victoria Memorial Mercy Hospital, the swarm of doctors and nurses waiting for it also argued that, regardless of whether Stanley thought of himself as a hero, the rest of the world did. Some of the assembled medicos also had words of praise for Bushell.
“Never mind me,” he snapped. “See to him.” He jerked a thumb toward the stretcher that held his friend. “I’ve got to ring his wife. What will you be doing to him?”
“We’ll have to open up that arm,” a physician answered. “Any fragments of bone or bullet in there are potential foci for infection. We’ll clean them out as thoroughly as we can, reduce the fracture while the wound is open, and so forth. Should be straightforward enough.”
He spoke with easy confidence. Why not? It wasn’t his arm. Bushell let it go: better a confident medico than a doubtful one, as far as he was concerned. “All right. Lead me to a telephone.”
That produced a small bureaucratic contretemps: allow an outsider to make a long-distance telephone connection from within the hallowed precincts of the hospital? But if the outsider was a hero, even the dragon of bureaucracy slunk back into its cave, vanquished. Installed in the posh office of an assistant director, Bushell rang Phyllis Stanley.
“Oh, thank God it’s you, Tom!” she exclaimed when she recognized his voice. “Edna Allston from next door was listening to the broadcast, and she just rang me in hysterics. What happened? How’s Sam?”
“He’ll be all right,” Bushell answered. “They’re operating on his arm now, but it doesn’t look like a bad wound. They’re just cleaning up in there. He’ll be fine.” He hoped he was telling the truth. He thought he was; he’d seen men with far worse injuries pull through. But septicemia was a risk, and nothing to sneeze at.
Phyllis knew that, too, in spite of his optimistic tone. “I’ll pray,” she said quietly. “Now - how did it happen? Edna’s a sweet lady, but her fiddle is short a couple of strings.”
Bushell explained how they’d recovered The Two Georges, which made Phyllis Stanley exclaim again. Then he told her who had headed the conspiracy to steal the painting. A long silence followed. At last, Phyllis said, “I have to tell you, Tom, I’m not surprised. You look in Sam’s dossier. All the good fitness reports have your name on them. All the ones full of faint praise - you know the kind I mean those are Sir Horace’s, from the days when he supervised both of you. If it hadn’t been for those, I think Sam would have a higher rank today. Sir Horace - he was always smooth, but he doesn’t fancy Negroes, not even a little. You could tell.”
“Maybe you could tell,” Bushell said. “I couldn’t tell. Why didn’t you tell me? Sam said the same sorts of things, too, but only after we found out Bragg was the villain. If I’d known what you just told me, I might have figured that out sooner.”
After another pause, Phyllis replied, “He was your friend. He was your superior, too, and Sam’s. Would you have listened?” Without letting him answer that, she went on, “Anyhow, stirring up that kind of trouble has a way of costing more than it’s worth. This may be a pretty fine country, but it’s not a perfect one.”
Now it was Bushell’s turn to think for a while before he spoke. “Pretty fine is about as much as human beings can hope for, don’t you think? But all right, I take your point. Sam told me the same thing not long ago, as a matter of fact. Still, though, a dossier with saved the life of His Majesty Charles III in it will look, oh, fairly good come the next promotion review. You have to think of these things, Phyllis, so you know how to spend the extra money that’ll be coming in soon.”
“Thomas Bushell, you are impossible? If I were in Victoria right now, I’d -“ Phyllis gave up and started to laugh. “Kiss you right on the cheek,” she finished.
“Promises, promises,” Bushell said. Phyllis laughed louder. He went on, “I’ll ring you back directly Sam comes out of the operating room.”