The silence on the other end of the line lasted long enough for Bushell to pull out his pocket watch and see ten or fifteen seconds go by. At last, Kathleen Flannery said, “How in God’s name did you find that out? Next thing you’ll tell me is what sort of underwear I have on.”
Under other circumstances, Bushell might have been pleasantly distracted thinking about Kathleen Flannery in her underwear - or out of it. As things were, his main thought was that she was trying to distract him so. “Just answer the question.”
“If you must know, Colonel, my father buys a subscription for me every year,” she answered.
“Common Sense suits his politics, not mine. I hardly ever look at it. If you know I subscribe, you can probably find out that the cheques to the magazine are always in his name - Aloysius Flannery - and drawn on his bank.”
She was right; the RAMs could do that. Bushell wondered if it was worthwhile. Probably not, he judged, at least not yet. “You were so open with your failed engagement, I wondered why you didn’t mention the other.”
“It didn’t cross my mind,” Kathleen said “Half the time I toss Common Sense into the rubbish without even opening it.” Which meant that half the time she didn’t, but Bushell held his peace. She asked, “Is there anything else?”
“Does the name Skidegate mean anything to you?” he asked idly.
He’d expected her to say no, or to ask who Skidegate was. But she answered, “That’s the chief town of the Queen Charlotte Islands, I believe. The Queen Charlottes and southern Alaska are, or rather were, home to the Haida Indians. The All-Union Museum in Victoria has an extensive collection of Haida totem poles and other wood carvings. They were masters of the craft.”
“Why do you say ‘were’?” Bushell asked.
“White men’s diseases hit them hard,” Kathleen said, “and that disrupted their way of life. And a lot of the survivors were resettled to the mainland when the naval base was built there, so few of them still follow their old tribal habits. It’s a pity; as I say, they produced some wonderful woodcarvers.” She paused and came up with a question she might have found sooner: “What on earth does Skidegate have to do with The Two Georges?”
“I don’t know yet,” Bushell said. And if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. Aloud, he went on, “Thank you for your time, Dr. Flannery. And please, for the sake of the painting, don’t do any more investigating on your own. The odds are ten to one - a hundred to one - you’ll do more harm than good. Do you understand me?”
“You make yourself very clear, Colonel. Good morning.” Kathleen Flannery hung up. Bushell stared at the telephone, then uttered a pungent phrase that would have been more appropriate in the barracks than in the office of the chief of the New Liverpool RAMs; a chief, after all was supposed to maintain a certain dignity. The barracks comparison was apt in another way, too: Kathleen sounded like a soldier intent on evading an order that didn’t suit him. Short of having the telephone torn out of her room, Bushell didn’t know what he was supposed to do about that.
He growled the phrase again, louder this time. Just as he was about to pick up the telephone to call Captain Jaime Macias, it rang. He stared balefully at it before he picked it up. “Bushell.”
One of the switchboard operators said, “Colonel, I have on the line a man who claims to have The Two Georges. He’ll only talk to you, he says.”
“Put him on.” Excitement tingled through Bushell. What now? A ransom demand? A threat? A couple of clicks and the operator was off the line. “Hullo?” Bushell said, and gave his name and rank.
“Yeah, uh, Colonel Bushell?” The man talking to him, even though he’d just heard the name pronounced, put the accent on the wrong syllable. “You listen here, Colonel, you ever want The Two Georges back, you got to pay me fifty thousand pounds. You hear me, Colonel? Fifty thousand quid or that there painting’s catmeat.”
You contemptible fraud, Bushell thought. A vulture and a piker at the same time. “How do I know you have it?” he said. “What did you leave behind in the governor’s mansion?”
“What did I leave behind?” the man on the telephone echoed. “Why, uh, that is - ”
“Sir,” Bushell said coldly, “you should be aware that all telephone conversations in this building are routinely traced. You should also be aware that seeking money under false pretenses is a felony. And, sir, you should also be aware that a pair of RAMs will be at your home within the hour to place you under arrest.”
The only answer he got was a loud click! as the man hung up on him. Bushell laughed. He hoped he’d given the bloody fraud an anxious half hour or so. He could see the fellow tiptoeing over to the front window every so often, peeling back the drapes perhaps a finger’s width, and peering out to make sure no RAM steamer had just pulled up in front of his house. If a constabulary car happened to cruise down his street in the next hour, the man might stay panicked for days.
But more calls like this one would come. Some of the liars would have brains as well as gall. Finding out what the Sons of Liberty did to mark their crimes wasn’t impossible. If you knew where to look, it wasn’t even difficult. As if life weren’t hard enough already, it would get harder. If Bushell called out, he wouldn’t have to worry about anyone else calling in for a while. He dialed the number of the New Liverpool constabulary, and was quickly connected to Captain Macias. “Tell me, Colonel,” Macias said, “is my beard black or gray?”
“You don’t wear a beard,” Bushell answered. A split second later, a flashbulb exploded in his head.
“You’ve had cranks ringing you up, too!”
“Haven’t I just,” Macias said ruefully. “You’re the third person this morning who’s claimed to be you and the first one I think may be telling me the truth. What can I do for you, Colonel?”
“You need to know there may be more Nagant rifles floating around in New Liverpool, and not among people you’d want having them.” Bushell explained how his men had found the firearm in Joseph Watkins’s room. “It hadn’t been there long, or he’d have used it: he’s that type. But how many others may have come down from Skidegate, or who has them - I just don’t know yet.”
“We’re liable to find out, you’re telling me. Aii! ” Hit where he lived, Macias sounded for a moment like a man of Nuevespañolan blood, just as Sir Horace Bragg showed he was indeed a Carolinian. “All right, Colonel, we shall do what we can to deal with this.” After the one exclamation, he sounded like a constabulary man again.
“You have anything for me?” Bushell asked.
“Autopsy report: Tricky Dick was shot,” Macias answered laconically. “No, in fact, there’s a bit more. The pathologist found a big enough piece of the bullet that blew out his brains to match it to the other one we recovered. They both came from the same weapon: only one gunman up on the knoll.”
“That is worth knowing,” Bushell said. “It doesn’t surprise me. The fewer people in on a plot, the likelier it is to stay tight. But thinking something is so and having evidence it’s so are different.”
“So is having evidence and having suspects,” Macias said, his voice mournful.
“I know.” Bushell sighed. “And having, say, two dozen rifles loose in New Liverpool doesn’t strike me as any too appetizing, either. Fanatics with guns could kill dozens of people over the next few years. And this used to be such a peaceful city.” He sighed again. Nothing seemed good any more. Captain Macias echoed his gloom: “Some of the people they kill will be my constables, too. We can’t stand up against that kind of firepower.”