“I understand, sir,” Clarence Malmsey said. “If we don’t come up with any brochure, that’ll mean the bill for it is some kind of blind.” He hurried back into the printers’ shop, calling out new instructions to his comrades.
To Bushell’s surprise and disappointment, they did find photographs and copy and a rough layout for a brochure about the distant islands. Titus Hackett gloated at him. The RAM who brought out what Bushell thought of as the bad news said, “Here’s another account paid in roubles,” and handed his chief the bill. The fellow went on, “And here’s something else we found in the same file folder.”
This photograph showed a different princess, with a reputation perhaps even more scandalous than the others, in a costume that left next to nothing to the imagination. Bushell studied it wistfully, then sighed.
“Thank God the direct imperial line has better sense than the side branches of the house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Must come of the real royals’ having to work for a living.”
“Ahh, they’re all a pack of bleeding parasites, every one of ‘em,” Hackett said contemptuously. He spat again.
“We could jail this chap and the fat one for possession of salacious material,” the uniformed RAM said hopefully. By the way his eyes kept sliding back to the picture he’d given Bushell, he found it salacious enjoyably so. But Bushell shook his head. “That wouldn’t do, I’m afraid. At the trial, their barrister would make a point - a political point - of dragging the imperial family through the dirt.”
“Aye, that’s right, try and hide the truth away,” Hackett jeered. “Whited sepulchers, that’s what the royals are. If the people knew the truth about the whores and perverts who rule ‘em, they’d - ”
“Mr. Hackett, shut your filthy mouth.” Bushell spoke quietly, but with a snap of command in his voice. Hackett stared and said not another word.
“A Russian connection,” Bushell muttered to himself as the steamer rolled down toward St. Peter’s docks, the harbor district of New Liverpool. He’d wondered about that since Captain Macias told him Tricky Dick had been shot with a three-line rifle. The Sons of Liberty in New Liverpool certainly seemed to be getting aid and comfort from the subjects of the Tsar - but what did that prove? Not enough. Joseph Watkins was on the dole, and living in a dingy rooming house whose front hall reeked of hot grease and stale urine. Expecting Watkins to be out at a tavern or something of the like, Bushell served the warrant on the landlord, a ferret-faced fellow who looked imperfectly delighted to have RAMs in his building.
He unwillingly led the RAMs upstairs to Watkins’s first-floor room. Raucous electric Nawleans music spilled into the hall from behind the door at which the landlord pointed. He pressed the search warrant and a skeleton key into Bushell’s hands, saying, “He’s all yours, mate,” and made himself scarce. Since Watkins did appear likely to be in there, Bushell had to serve the warrant all over again. He rapped on the door. Nothing happened. He rapped again, louder. He heard heavy footfalls coming toward the door. It flew open. Joseph Watkins glowered out at the world at large. “God damn it, I told you not to piss and moan about playing the wireless so - ” he began. Then he realized his visitors were not neighbors complaining about the noise. The realization visibly failed to fill him with joy. “Oh. Robin Redbreasts.” He spotted Clarence Malmsey. His mouth narrowed. “And a tame geechee with ‘em. What the hell do you bastards want now?”
The photograph of Joseph Watkins had shown him to be a tough. It hadn’t shown that he was about six foot four and wide through the shoulders, width emphasized by the strapped vest that was all he wore above the waist. He dwarfed the RAMs with Bushell, and none of them was small. Bushell held up the search warrant. “Mr. Watkins, this warrant gives us leave to search these premises pursuant to an ongoing investigation of the Royal American Mounted Police. Stand aside and let us do our job.”
Watkins studied the opposition. He glared down at Bushell. “You didn’t have your bully boys with you, little man, I’d squash you like the bug you are.” Bushell looked back at him, expressionless. After a moment, Watkins got out of the way.
He inhabited one room, with a tiny alcove that could be screened off and held a toilet and stall shower. Greasy newspapers on the table, on the floor, and in the waste-paper basket said he lived mostly on fish and chips. Everything in the room was nasty and cheap except for the fine crystal sculpture of a fierce-looking eagle that perched atop the mantel and almost matched in pose the tattoo on his arm. On one wall, instead of the print of The Two Georges that would have adorned most homes, he’d nailed a large Independence Party flag, also with a rampant eagle.
He caught Bushell looking at it. “Nothing wrong with a man wanting his country free of the bloody Crown,” he growled.
“In itself, no,” Bushell said. “Whether or not it’s foolish is another question. And crimes remain crimes, no matter in what cause they’re committed.”
“Nice when you can make your own rules, isn’t it, and call trying to get free a crime,” Watkins retorted. His head twisted constantly as he watched the RAMs tearing the furnished room to pieces. Watkins had a laundry hamper, but didn’t bother with it. Instead, he just left his dirty clothes wherever they happened to fall. After the RAMs went through the pockets of each pair of denims and overalls and collarless workman’s shirts, they tossed it into the wicker hamper. In that small way, the room got neater. In every other way, a tornado might have descended on the place.
“Watch that, you big ugly buck,” Watkins snarled when Clarence Malmsey tore down his eagle flag to see if he’d secreted anything behind it. He hadn’t. Malmsey smiled sweetly, crumpled the flag in his hands, and threw it on the floor. Watkins took a step toward him, fists clenched. Two other RAMs reached for the clubs on their belts. Watkins subsided, hate smoldering in his gray eyes. The RAMs pulled out the drawers in which he stored his food, turned them upside down to dump out what they held, and peered into the spaces thus opened to make sure he hadn’t hid anything in back of them. One of the men took out his billy club and poked at the plywood behind the drawers, turning his head to listen for any hollows thus revealed.
Bushell went through Watkins’s reading material himself. There was more of it than he’d expected a Roundhead lout to own: Watkins might not be bright, but he was politically conscious. He had a long shelf of cheaply printed political tracts, some from the Independence Party, others out-and-out calls for insurrection. Mixed with them were back issues of Common Sense (Bushell reminded himself to ring up Kathleen Flannery, whose full dossier was sitting, as yet unstudied, on his desk) and several of what were politely called “novels of imagination” describing the Utopia North America would have become had it long ago freed itself from the British Empire. Bushell had perused a great many examples of the genre, and had a low opinion of it. The hacks who perpetrated them were as politically naive as they were illiterate, which was no small claim.
When the door to Joseph Watkins’s room was open, it hid the only closet the room boasted. Clarence Malmsey swung the door most of the way open so he could search the closet. He tossed out trousers and shirts and jackets, creating a new pile to take the place of the one his colleagues had put in the hamper.
“You’ve found damn all,” Watkins said in tones of injured innocence, “and the reason you’ve found damn all is that I haven’t done a bloody thing. So why don’t you bugger off and let me pick up the rubbish pitch you’ve made of my place here?”
“Don’t you think it looks better now?” Bushell asked. Watkins scowled at him. Once the closet was empty, Malmsey did as his colleagues had and poked at the boards of the wall with his stick. Everyone in the room heard the deeper thock! that came from one blow. “Well, well!” the Negro said happily. “What have we here? Somebody hand me a pry bar.”