The headache with which Bushell woke soon yielded to a couple of paracetamol tablets. He called the hotel’s housekeeping service and gave them the clothes he’d worn the day before. A couple of hours later, a young woman returned the garments. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said, “but you can still see the stain on your anorak from the deer or whatever you killed. We did our best, but - “ She spread her hands.
“Thanks for trying,” Bushell said, and tipped her ten shillings. After he shut the door, he wadded up the anorak and threw it into a corner of the closet. If one of the cleaning men wanted it, he could take it, and welcome.
He jumped when the telephone rang. It was Commander Hairston. “We’ll have Lieutenant-Colonel Crooke’s body at the dock in a Navy coffin to meet the ferry. I’ve rung up the Prince Rupert RAMs, too, let them know what’s happened. Someone will be waiting for you there when you make port.”
“I’m grateful for your help,” Bushell said, though he dreaded spending hours having to bear the silent reproach of the plain pine box and what it bore.
He and Stanley took a cab to the harbor - by chance, the same cab that had taken them to the Skidegate Lodge when they reached the Queen Charlotte Islands. As the desk clerk had, the driver said, “Weren’t there three of you gents before?”
Unlike the clerk, he wasn’t being snide, merely curious. After a moment of awkward silence, Samuel Stanley answered, “Our friend - will be waiting for us there.” Bushell bit his lip. A long queue of happy sailors bound for leave waited for the ferry to board passengers for Prince Rupert. A couple of minutes after Bushell and Stanley arrived, a Navy lorry pulled up at the dock. Half a dozen redcaps lifted the coffin down from the bed of the lorry. The sailors stared. Commander Hairston got out of the left side of the driver’s compartment and walked over to Bushell and Stanley. “I’m sorry it turned out this way, gentlemen,” he said heavily. “That’s all I can tell you.”
When the crew of the Northern Lights moved aside the light metal gate from the dock end of the gangplank, the sailors stood aside to let the military police carry Felix Crooke’s body aboard the ferry. Some of them took off their caps in token of respect for the dead. They would have heard about what happened up at Buckley Bay; that story must have gone through barracks and ships at the speed of light. Bushell stood by the bow rail most of the way across the Hecate Strait, as if he did not want to look back at the islands he was leaving. Once or twice, sailors started to come up to him, whether to ask questions about the gun battle or to offer their sympathies he could not guess. None actually got close enough to speak to him; as he had on the Grampus, he made it very plain he wanted to be left alone. On this journey, Samuel Stanley respected his privacy, too. Stanley, no doubt, did not want sailors importuning him, either.
The sun still stood high in the northwest when the Northern Lights got into Prince Rupert a few minutes past eight in the evening. On the docks waited six RAMs in dress reds - more pallbearers, Bushell thought - along with another, older man in civilian clothes. After the sailors streamed off the ferry, the RAMs boarded and came up to Bushell and Stanley, who met them beside Crooke’s coffin.
“Colonel Bushell?” The man in mufti held out his hand. “I’m Major Winston Macmillan, commandant here. Commander Hairston rang me up this morning. Terrible thing.” His eyes flicked to the coffin. “I can’t believe it.”
“Thank you for your help, Major.” Bushell was sick of saying that. He didn’t want to be the object of anyone’s help; he just wanted to get on with the business of cracking his case. But what he wanted and what he got had swung away from each other in the old logging town.
“I gather you’ll want us to take charge of arrangements for transportation of the body and such.”
Macmillan again glanced down at the box that held the mortal remains of Felix Crooke.
“If you’d be so kind.”
“We are at your service, Colonel - and at Lieutenant-Colonel Crooke’s.” He looked at the coffin once more. His voice went heavy and full of grief: “He’s one of ours, after all.” After a moment to collect himself, he continued, “If you two gentlemen will be so kind as to accompany me? No matter what has happened here, of course, your duty does not cease. The Two Georges - “ As he had before, Macmillan murmured, “Terrible thing.”
By the size of the headquarters he commanded, Macmillan had been hard-pressed to collect half a dozen men to bear away Felix Crooke’s coffin, though he had responsibility over an area the size of Upper California. He did, however, possess an abundance of railroad and airship schedules, and pored over them with Bushell and Stanley.
“The train rolls out of here at half past five tomorrow morning,” he said. “That’s the one fixed point amongst the variables. It’s bound for Wellesley, of course, and would put you there late tomorrow evening. The next airship out of Wellesley wouldn’t be till the morning after, though. You could change trains in Prince George and go east over the Rockies that way. From Regina, you could take an airship to Astoria on Lake Michigan and make your connection for Doshoweh there. If all goes well, I believe that is your fastest route to the Six Nations.”
“Let me see the schedules once more,” Bushell said, and he and Stanley spent the next hour or so in calculation. At some time during that interval, roast-beef sandwiches on sourdough bread appeared as if by magic. Bushell had his two thirds eaten before he fully realized it was there.
“Going to be very tight, Chief,” Stanley said. Bushell looked for him to complain about having to rise early yet again to catch the eastbound train, but he was all business. “We don’t have much time to get from the train station to the airship port in Regina, or from one airship to the other in Astoria. If we run even a little late, we lose half a day, and you know what they say about the Astoria airship port.”
Bushell did know. O’Hare Airship Port was the busiest one in the NAU. Astoria, being centrally located, lay at the heart of several airship companies’ routes. Delays there were legendary.
“Safer just to take the train all the way from Regina,” Stanley went on. “We could just as easily get into Doshoweh later as earlier if we gamble on the airships.”
“You’re right - it would be safer,” Bushell said. His adjutant started to brighten, but then he went on, “All the same, we’ll gamble. If we’re late, we’re late, but I want the chance to be early.” He turned to Major Macmillan. “Have your people make the arrangements.”
“Yes, sir,” Macmillan said, in the tone of voice juniors use to betoken obedience to their superior’s foolish orders. Samuel Stanley said nothing, but the expression he wore was eloquent. Bushell didn’t care. He felt all too acutely time’s hot breath on the back of his neck. Anything he could do that might wring out a few more precious hours in which to pursue The Two Georges, he would. He and Stanley waited at the headquarters building until their travel plans were set up. Then Macmillan, as if washing his hands of them, had them motored to the Highliner Inn. It was after eleven, but through scattered clouds twilight remained bright in the west and north. As it did at any other hour, the air smelled faintly of halibut.