“Not half an hour ago, sir,” the operator answered. “He’s one of the men questioning the traitor now.”
His voice showed cold fury. No longer was Lieutenant General Sir Horace Bragg the longtime, well-respected commandant of the Royal American Mounted Police. He’d found a shorter, harsher label, the one he’d take down in history.
“Ring me through to him,” Bushell said.
“Stay on the line, sir. Someone will have to call him out of the interrogation room, which may take a minute or two.”
Bushell stayed on the line. Within the promised interval, Micah Williams picked up a telephone. “Here’s to cabals, Colonel,” he said; his gruff voice had a purr in it, like that of a lion that has made a kill. Then, quickly, the purr changed to concern: “How’s Captain Stanley?”
“He should be all right. He’s come through surgery, and I’ve spoken with him.”
“Thank God for that,” Williams said. “I thought you and he and Kittridge had lost your minds, running out on us like that. But you knew what you were doing, all right, and thank God for that, too.”
“It was a damned near-run thing even so,” Bushell said. “What has Bragg got to say for himself?”
“Not much,” Williams answered. “Why should he talk? They’re going to stretch his skinny neck already, so he hasn’t got a thing to gain by speaking up. The bugger actually seems smug about what he’s done, as if he were proud of himself, as if he hadn’t lost the game.”
“Well, he bloody well has,” Bushell said. “After His Majesty speaks tonight at six - hell, by now, I suppose, what with the news going out over the wireless - it’ll be worth a man’s life for anyone to find out he’s a Son of Liberty.”
“And a good thing, too, says I,” Micah Williams answered. “Of course, I’ve been saying it’s a good thing these past twenty years, same as you. But now people will listen when we say it.”
“If that happens, it will be pretty fine,” Bushell said before returning to the business at hand. “Have you found out yet where Bragg was when he said he was at the dentist’s?”
“Not yet,” Williams said. “We’ll grill him through the full forty-eight, though, before we let him ring his solicitor. We’ll see what comes of that. It worked with the villains we rounded up in Georgestown, even if we did have to squeeze ‘em like a bid-whist player trying to get a last trick out of a hand.”
Bushell thought of something else. “How’s Sally Reese taking this?”
“I wasn’t here, of course, when news of what happened down by the docks came in,” Williams said, “but they tell me the shriek she let out frightened people on three different floors. She’s crushed, Colonel - flat as a griddle cake. Somebody - I think it was Patricia Oliver, but I’m not certain - took her home a little while ago.”
“Whoever it was should stay with her for a while, make sure she doesn’t slash her wrists or stick her head in the gas oven,” Bushell said. “I was afraid you’d say something like that. She’s just had her world cave in. And what about Cecilia Bragg?”
“I don’t know about her,” Micah Williams said. “We’re going to have to question her, I suppose, and find out whether she knew anything. Lord, what an ugly mess this will be when all’s said and done.”
“Isn’t that the sad and sorry truth?” Bushell agreed. “My guess is that Bragg kept things from her, the way he did from everyone else.” He remembered what Irene had told him of that party he’d thrown for Bragg on the occasion of his knighthood. “He was always good at that. But you never can tell. Cecilia might have been good at it, too. As you say, we’ll have to sweat her to know.”
“Yes, sir,” Williams said. “What are you going to do now, sir?”
“Me?” Bushell was only just beginning to think about that. “Get some sleep, maybe, and see how Sam is doing after that, and then - I don’t know. Maybe I’ll get one more ride from Sergeant Kittridge and come back to headquarters to help you people sort through things.”
“If it hadn’t been for you, sir, we’d be out fifty million pounds, and God only knows what would have happened to His Majesty.”
“Stubborn counts,” Bushell said. “Sometimes I think it counts more than anything else.”
Micah Williams laughed. “You’re talking to a police officer. Tell me something I didn’t know.”
“Never mind that,” Bushell said. “If you can’t tell me something I didn’t know, I’m going to ring off and see if they’ll give me someplace where I can close my eyes for a while - and see how big a fit they pitch when I ask for it.”
To his surprise, almost to his disappointment, the powers that be in the hospital didn’t pitch a fit. Instead, a nursing sister led him to a room currently without any patients. When he walked in, he understood. There on one of the beds lay Ted Kittridge in his stocking feet, derby down over his face to hold daylight at bay. From under the derby came more than respectable snores.
Bushell got out of his own shoes and lay down on the other bed. He feared Kittridge’s racket would keep him awake. And so it did - instead of falling asleep in thirty seconds, he tossed and turned for sixty, or perhaps even ninety.
The first thing he noticed when he woke up was that the light had changed: the sun had traveled across the sky and was no longer shining in the window. The second thing he noticed was that Sergeant Kittridge was sitting up in the other bed. “What time is it?” he asked, hearing how blurry his own voice sounded.
Kittridge took out his pocket watch. “Quarter of five,” he answered. He glanced over at Bushell. “You snore . . . sir.” •
“So do you,” Bushell said. Both men chuckled. Bushell swung his feet down onto the floor. He went on, “I feel much better now. I’m all the way up to ancient and decrepit.”
“Uh-huh,” Kittridge said - as much a grunt as a word. Sam, now, would have given an answer worth having. Sam, though, wasn’t in hospital to catch up on his rest, though Bushell hoped he was able to do that, too.
Bushell’s backbone crunched and creaked as he bent to pick up his shoes. “You suppose they’ll throw us out on the street if we try to see Sam again?”
“No,” Kittridge said: an economy of expression difficult to match.
Under other circumstances, Bushell might have contemplated grabbing a bite to eat before he went to visit his adjutant. Given the quality of the hospital cafeteria, he decided to do without. He clapped a hand to his forehead. “Lord, if that’s what they serve the guests and the doctors, what do the patients get?”
“Slop, I expect,” Kittridge answered.
The broth and stewed prunes on a tray set on Stanley’s bed fit Kittridge’s definition well enough. “I want a beefsteak,” Stanley said, “a big, juicy beefsteak. Beef builds blood. Doesn’t that quack of a dietitian know anything about how to feed a man?”
“Me, I wouldn’t fancy a hospital beefsteak unless my shoes wanted resoling,” Bushell said. “But even if they gave it to you, how would you cut it?”
Sam mournfully contemplated his wounded arm. “If I had a good, true friend, I suppose he might give me a hand,” he said. “It would take a mighty good friend, but - “
Bushell laughed. “You don’t want a friend. What you want is a slave.”
“No, no, that’s Bragg,” Stanley said, laughing, too. But he quickly sobered. “He really does, you know. If the Sons ever got their way, I wouldn’t care to be the color I am, not in the North America they’d give us.”
“It’s fifty million pounds and one painting further from happening than it was this morning,” Bushell said.
“Now we need to find out if it was Russia backing the Sons all through this plot, or if the Holy Alliance was trying to pull a fast one on us.”