Joseph Watkins made a run for it.
Had the door been open rather than almost shut, he would have got out into the hall, and might even have escaped. As things were, Clarence Malmsey sprang out and grabbed at him just as he seized the doorknob. He needed a second to hurl Malmsey aside with a sweep of his thick arm, and the second let another uniformed RAM and Bushell pile onto his back.
Watkins was big and strong and fierce and tough, all of which availed him little. The RAMs were far from weaklings, they outnumbered him, and they had learned to fight in a school every bit as nasty as his and a good deal more skillful to boot. Before long, he lay flat on his belly, still swearing at the top of his lungs, hands manacled and ankles shackled behind him, blood from a cut above one eye running down his face and onto the cheap, already stained carpet.
“Mr. Watkins, sir, in case you didn’t notice, you are under arrest,” Bushell announced. He looked down at himself. In the struggle, one sleeve of his jacket had torn loose. “Damnation!”
Clarence Malmsey said, “Shall we find out what dear Joey boy didn’t want us to find?” He got the pry bar he’d asked for and ripped away with a will. Boards came up with a splintering crunch and the squeal of stout nails pulling loose from wood. The RAM yanked the boards out further, reached into the space behind them.
He brought out a long, thin, rectangular package, wrapped in thick brown paper for passage through the mails. “What’s the postmark?” Bushell asked.
Malmsey turned the package to peer at the blurry inked handstamp. “Place called Skidegate,” he answered. “Don’t know where the devil that is. Wait a moment, there’re more letters here.” He held the package up to his face so he could examine the mark more closely. His voice rose with excitement.
“Here we are: Skidegate, QCI.”
For a moment, that meant nothing to Bushell. Then it did. “Skidegate, Queen Charlotte Islands,” he whispered.
One of the other RAMs asked, “What’s in there? I can make a guess from the shape, but - ”
The top of the package had been neatly slit open. Clarence Malmsey flipped up that end, pulled out some excelsior, and then, with a sigh like a lover’s when he encounters his beloved, a rifle, the yellow wood of the stock polished till it gleamed, the barrel glistening with gun oil. “Not a model I recognize offhand,” he said.
“I do,” Bushell said. “It’s a Nagant.”
IV
Bushell sat down at his desk and slammed his fist down hard enough to make pen stand, inkwell, cigar case, and wooden IN tray jump. “God damn it to hell, Sam,” he ground out, “I thought we had the case half broken, right then and there. I’d have given a thousand pounds for that, just to be able to drop it in Sir Horace’s lap - and Sir Martin’s - when they get into town this afternoon.”
“Would have been fine, Chief,” Samuel Stanley agreed. “Too bad that rifle had never been fired, let alone at Tricky Dick.”
“Too bad, the man says.” Bushell looked up to the ceiling, as if someone invisible up there would nod and tell him he was right. “The other question is, how many more Nagant rifles are sitting in flats and hidden away in houses, just waiting to cause us more trouble? Every time things look bad in this case, they get worse, not better.”
“That’s so,” Stanley said. He looked better for a couple of nights’ sleep. “Other thing is, of course, the Sons may just have set a lucifer to The Two Georges the minute they got out of sight of Governor Burnett’s mansion.”
“Yes, that’s possible, but I don’t believe it,” Bushell said. I won’t believe it, he thought. But he had reasons for doubt: “If they’re going to destroy it, they’ll do that publicly: smuggle it into a city square someplace, maybe, and then touch it off. I still think they’re likelier to be holding it for ransom. They could bring in enough gold to keep themselves in business for years. They might even collect goodwill that way, too.”
“I thought the same thing, right after the painting was stolen,” Samuel Stanley answered. “But if they planned to ransom it, wouldn’t we have heard from them by now?”
“That worries me, too,” Bushell admitted. “It’s still early, though. Maybe they’re waiting for Sir Martin to get here, so they can present the demand directly to him. After all, we’re just police; if anyone is the painting’s patron here in the NAU, he’s the man.”
“Mm, there’s a point,” his adjutant said judiciously. “I hadn’t thought it through like that. I was there when The Two Georges disappeared, so I just assumed the ransom note would be heading in my direction. But it ain’t necessarily so.” Just for a sentence, he dropped into the heavy farm-Negro patois of the southeastern provinces, a dialect his family hadn’t used for four or five generations.
“Go chop your cotton,” Bushell said with a snort. “See if you and Rhodes can pull any magical answers out of that fancy chart the two of you made. I’ve got enough of my own work to do, I can tell you that.”
With a laugh, Samuel Stanley got up and went out the door. He let one hand linger for moment in a wave, then headed down the hall toward the stairs. Bushell lit a cigar. He looked longingly at the locked desk drawer. A good knock of Jameson would make him feel like a new man. But then the new man would want his own knock, and then . . . Regretfully he shook his head. He flipped through a telephone directory until he found the number of the Hotel La Cienega, where Kathleen Flannery was staying. He dialed it, then went through the hotel switchboard to reach her room. He wondered if he’d catch her out for breakfast, but she answered the phone on the second ring:
“Hullo?”
“Dr. Flannery? This is Tom Bushell, from the local RAM office.” Not until he’d introduced himself did Bushell notice he’d used the diminutive for his name. He hadn’t planned to do that. Shrugging in his seat, he went on, “How are you this morning?”
“I’m well enough, thank you, Colonel. And you?” When Bushell admitted he was also well, Kathleen continued, “How can I help you today? Have you learned something important about The Two Georges?”
“I’m afraid not. I just have some more questions for you.”
“Oh.” As it had risen, her voice fell. “I don’t have anything much new to tell you, either. I was hoping I would. I’ve been ringing up some people I know in the art business - auctioneers, agents, curators, people like that - in the hope they might have heard something about where The Two Georges might be. But I’ve had no luck, and I was wishing you’d call me to tell me you had.” She laughed sadly. “So much for wishes.”
Bushell took a deep breath, slowly let it out. He said, “Dr. Flannery, do not - I repeat, do not - pursue any independent investigations of your own. You may muddy the waters for me, you may alert the thieves, and you may also put yourself in danger. I really must insist.” And besides, you’re already an object of suspicion. Who knows what you were doing with your telephone calls!
“I am sorry, Colonel,” she said. He could all but see her green eyes going wide with surprise. “I didn’t mean any harm, please believe me.”
I wish I could. I wish I could be sure of you. Instead of saying that, Bushell struck hard: “Dr. Flannery, when I questioned you after The Two Georges was stolen, why didn’t you tell me you subscribed to Common Sense! ”