Bushell and Samuel Stanley conducted a short conversation that consisted entirely of twitching eyebrows, lip corners moving up and down, and small hand gestures. “It could be,” Bushell said at last, delivering the verdict with obvious reluctance. “Let me ask you another question, then: once you learned this, why did you go haring off on your own? Why didn’t you pass on what you’d learned to the RAMs in Victoria?”
Her green eyes widened slightly. “You mean you didn’t know? Surely, with RAMs from all over the NAU, some of them would have noticed the same thing Dr. Gyantwaka did.”
“We don’t have a lot of Iroquois in the RAMs, I’m afraid,” Stanley said, his voice grave. “No one recognized the headline as coming from his hometown newspaper. We had to dig the information out the hard way. We didn’t discover the source ourselves until a couple of days ago.”
“Oh, dear,” Kathleen Flannery said. “No wonder you were surprised to see me.”
Surprised wasn’t the word. Mistrustful was. Everything Kathleen Flannery did or said seemed perfectly innocent, and everything required checking. Bushell supposed he could ask Major Shikalimo about Dr. Gyantwaka; if Shikalimo didn’t know him or know of him, he’d know somebody who did. Very likely Gyantwaka would check out fine, as the other things Kathleen had said proved for the most part to be as she’d said them. But that everything needed checking bothered Bushell no end. So did the simple fact of her presence here. “Dr. Flannery,” he said, “don’t you know that an amateur can - “
“ - Evidently discover some things about as fast as the entire corps of the Royal American Mounted Police? Is that what you were going to say, Colonel?” Kathleen smiled at him. It was a very sweet smile. It also had razors in it.
Bushell opened his mouth. He closed it again. Damn it, she had found out that The Two Georges was in Doshoweh as fast as the entire corps of the Royal American Mounted Police. He glanced over to Samuel Stanley for support. Stanley was looking down into his teacup. Bushell thought he was trying not to chuckle. That didn’t help him muster the crushing reply he was looking for. Kathleen Flannery didn’t give him much time to gather his wits, either. “You were about to say, Colonel?” she prompted, smiling again with that sweet ferocity.
He recognized the interrogation technique. If you hurried somebody, made him respond to you instead of picking his own pace, you seized the initiative. He’d used the technique himself, hundreds of times. It worked. It was working on him now. That smile made it all the more devastating; it made him want to tell Kathleen everything she wanted to hear. Too bad that was a variant he couldn’t use against villains, few of whose pulses quickened at the sight of his pearly whites.
Kathleen tapped her long nails on the tabletop in obvious, and irritating, impatience. That made Bushell want to laugh; if she hadn’t got the gesture from the cinema, she truly was an inspired amateur. And if she was “Here’s what we’re going to do, Dr. Flannery,” he said, as if he’d had it in mind all along. “You have done better than I thought you could back in New Liverpool. I admit it. Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” she said, but she now sounded more wary than relieved. Samuel Stanley also looked puzzled, though he was doing his best not to show it. Bushell wasn’t in the habit of giving in so tamely. He didn’t intend to give in now, either. Doing his best to match Kathleen’s smile, he said, “Since you’ve proved yourself such a fine amateur detective, Dr. Flannery, it’s only right that you move up into the first division and join the professional team. If you’re going to look into the theft of The Two Georges, you can lend your talents to Sam and me and accompany us on our investigations.” That way we can keep an eye on you all the time, he didn’t add, not aloud. “What say you?”
Kathleen Flannery might have been headstrong, but she was anything but a fool. Her eyes sparked angrily as she saw the trap Bushell had set for her. “What happens if I say no, Colonel?”
“Most likely, you’d be investigated as a material witness,” Bushell answered. “I expect the questioning would be most thorough. You’d certainly have to leave off chasing The Two Georges.”
Her lips silently shaped a word he would not have used in her company. She had sand, though. “My solicitor would prepare a brief for a barrister to take to court to stop this harassment.”
“Harassment?” Bushell’s eyes were large and round and innocent. “You are a material witness, Dr. Flannery. Finding out what you know and how you know it may well prove relevant to this case.” That was all too true, any which way. “As for any court action, well, you can’t do much investigating while you’re testifying.”
She looked as if she hated him. She probably did. Somewhere back in his mind, that hurt, more than he wanted to admit even to himself. He was used to ignoring that kind of hurt, though, ignoring it and going forward. Getting The Two Georges back came first. If you didn’t do your duty, you didn’t deserve the privilege of citizenship in the British Empire.
“Very well, Colonel,” she said at last, her voice wintry. “If this is the only way you will permit me to do what I should be doing, I must agree.” The expression on her face told how happy she was about agreeing.
Bushell sent her a thoughtful look. She too took the concept of duty seriously. To him, that was one in her favor ... for the moment. Elgin Goldsmith and his comrades had fought as bravely as any soldiers for what they saw as their duty, too. Maybe duty, like an electric torch, needed to be pointed in the right direction before it could illuminate the path one should take. He shook his head, unhappy at the thought. Duty should be simple, straightforward.
“What’s first on the list for today, Chief?” Samuel Stanley asked. “Shall we visit the RAMs or Major Shikalimo?”
“Shikalimo, I think,” Bushell answered after a moment’s thought. “One thing Dr. Flannery has done for us is show us that we RAMs don’t know everything we should about what’s going on in the Six Nations. If anyone does, it’ll be the local constabulary.”
“I saw a public telephone just outside the restaurant,” Stanley said, pointing. “Let me go ring him up. How soon do you want to see him?”
“As soon as he’ll see us,” Bushell said.
“Right. If you’ll excuse me . . .” Stanley hurried out of the room. When he came back a couple of minutes later, he said, “Half past nine. And I have exact directions on how to get there - it’s about a five-minute walk, they say.”
“Good enough.” Bushell dipped his head to Kathleen. “Shall we meet in the lobby at nine-twenty, then?”
“Of course,” she said. He winced at the distaste she packed into two words. As he and his companions walked to the Doshoweh constabulary station, Bushell watched the Iroquois watching them. He drew no special notice himself; a fair number of white men were on the streets. But Kathleen Flannery’s auburn hair made people give her second looks, and several frankly stared at Samuel Stanley.
That amused Stanley more than it annoyed him. Chuckling, he said, “Not a whole lot of Negroes in the Six Nations, looks like. Maybe I ought to do a little dance, to give them something to remember me by.”
Some of the locals spoke English, others their own purring tongue. Newsboys hawked papers in both languages. Now that it had been brought to his notice, Bushell saw that the typefaces the Doshoweh Sentinel used were like those on the photograph the Sons of Liberty had sent with their ransom demand. He slapped his hand against the side of his leg. If only someone had noticed earlier!