“Isn’t that partly because you’re the Sachem’s nephew?” Samuel Stanley asked.
“Partly, but less than you’d think,” Shikalimo said. “Among us, your place in the clan dictates possibilities no matter who you are.” He chuckled in wry amusement. “I daresay I have more sympathy for the scandalous princesses on the odd branches of His Majesty’s family tree than the rest of you might. Their kicking over the traces so thoroughly makes me jealous.”
“It also makes them fine targets for the scandal sheets the Sons of Liberty turn out,” Bushell said.
“I wonder what sort of scandal I could essay,” Shikalimo murmured. Bushell wouldn’t have been more than half surprised to find he meant it seriously.
Deohstegaa lay northwest of the center of Doshoweh. The shore of the lake the Iroquois called Doshoweh Tecarneodi and the English-speaking world Lake Erie was rocky thereabouts, but quays running out into the water made for a fine harbor. As Shikalimo raced past that harbor, Bushell saw that most of the men working there were of the blood of the Six Nations.
Perhaps catching his gaze in the mirror, Shikalimo said, “We really are part of the twentieth century these days, Colonel.”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t be so proud of it,” Bushell answered.
The house in front of which Shikalimo stopped was in an enclave of British-style homes that spoke of wealth despite being close to the docks. Had the lawns in front of it been a vegetable garden, the crops it yielded might have fed a fair part of Doshoweh. When Bushell pressed the button by the door, chimes played the opening bars of Beethoven’s Third Symphony, the Fallen Innocents, which the radical composer had dedicated to those who fell to Bonaparte’s guns in the ill-fated French uprising against Louis XVI.
Bushell raised an eyebrow. “If this chap’s not a Son of Liberty, his doorbell doesn’t know it.”
The door opened. A butler in black tie and frock coat peered out at the group on the porch. If he was impressed, he hid it well. “Yes? How may I help you?” he asked, in tones that implied, How may I help you off the property?
Bushell displayed his badge. So did Samuel Stanley. So did the two local RAMs. So did Shikalimo. Kathleen Flannery took something official-looking from her handbag and held it up, too. For all Bushell knew, it entitled her to visit the washroom at her museum. When flashed along with so much highly intimidating and highly genuine tin, it passed muster.
“Where’s Kilbride?”Bushell growled, like a cinema ruffian.
The butler’s mouth worked. For close to fifteen seconds, nothing came out. At last, in strangled tones, he managed, “Mr. Kilbride is not here at present.”
“No reason he should be. I’m sure he’s a busy man,” Samuel Stanley said smoothly. He and Bushell had played nice guy, tough guy at scores of interrogations; they did it now almost without conscious thought.
“Can you tell us where his place of business is?”
“You don’t understand,” the butler said, his voice losing culture and hauteur at about the same speed. “I don’t mean he’s not at home. I mean he’s not in Doshoweh right now.”
“Where’d he go?” Bushell demanded, still sounding tough. “When’d he leave?”
“He’s in Pennsylvania,” the butler answered. “I don’t know anything more about it than that, honest I don’t. He packed up and took off day before yesterday. Nobody knew he was going to do it till he had Foyt drive him to the train station.” He gamely tried to recover his professional persona: “It has thrown the household into rather a muddle.” The persona crumbled again, for he expanded on that, saying, “Everything’s gone to hell in a handbasket, as a matter of fact.”
“Whereabouts in Pennsylvania is he?” Bushell said, at the same time as Sylvanus Greeley was asking, “When will he be back?”
“Don’t know,” the butler replied. He said no more; the answer was evidently intended to be comprehensive.
“Somebody tipped him,” Stanley muttered in disgust. The butler’s face made a fascinating study. Bushell wouldn’t have minded turning Gainsborough loose on him as he tried to figure out what his master might have done.
He agreed with his adjutant: someone had to have warned Kilbride to make himself scarce. And if that was so, Kathleen Flannery really had uncovered a villain - unless this was all an elaborate feint to throw him off the scent. He didn’t find that likely: plans so elaborate had a way of breaking down. Which meant - probably meant - Kathleen was trustworthy.
It also meant they needed to run Joseph Kilbride to earth as fast as they could. “Give me your master’s business address and telephone number,” he told the butler. “Maybe they’ll know there why he’s left town and just where the devil he’s gone.”
The butler plucked a card from a silver box on a table close by the door. “Here is the information you require, sir.”
Bushell put on his spectacles to read the engraved typography on the business card. JOSEPH J. KILBRIDE, PURVEYOR OF FINE FOODS AND SPIRITS, the card declared, and gave the telephone number and an address on Gawehga Road. “Where’s Gawehga Road?” he asked.
“Not far from here,” Greeley, Lucas, and Shikalimo answered in the same breath. Shikalimo added, “Gawehga, in case you’re interested, means snowshoe.” He gave Bushell a mischievous look.
“Actually, it means snowshoe even if you’re not interested.”
Bushell turned back to the butler. “Before we go haring off to this grocer’s shop or whatever it is” - he watched the fellow’s nostrils flare in what might have been anger or might have been half a guffaw “would anybody else around this shack know where Kilbride’s gone? Is there a Mrs. Kilbride, for instance?”
“Sir, if I am not acquainted with Mr. Kilbride’s destination, no one associated with this establishment is, of that I assure you.” The butler had his fancy diction back in place. “And I am not. Mr. Kilbride, furthermore, is a widower. None of his occasional companions is likely to be informed of his comings and goings.”
“Hangs about with tarts, does he?” Bushell waited for the butler’s stilled snort of laughter to prove the guess good, then grinned at Shikalimo. “See if you can run some of them down when you get the chance. Never can tell what a dirty old man might say in between the sheets.”
“Sir!” The butler blushed bright red. But after he glanced back over his shoulder to make sure no one down the hall could hear him, he leaned forward and said, “Not a chance, pal. The boss talks like every word costs him a shilling - and he’s tight with his shillings, he is.” He straightened up and became once more the image of decorum.
That sounded like the truth to Bushell. It also made Kilbride sound like a Son of Liberty, or at least like someone who could be a Son without letting on. If he was a man of that sort, they wouldn’t find out where he’d gone from anyone with whom he worked. They had to try, though. “Let’s go,” Bushell said. He wondered if the butler would slam the door in relief at having them gone, and kept an ear peeled as they walked back toward Shikalimo’s steamer. Rather to his disappointment, he didn’t hear any bang. Kilbride’s Fine Food and Drink, declared the sign above the shop off Gawehga Road. Across the street was open ground, a park or possibly just a meadow. Several dozen people were gathered there, some in clothing that wouldn’t have been out of place anywhere in the Empire, some in Iroquois-style skins and embroidered cloth of like cut, some mixing the two. One of them thrust a torch into a brazier. Whatever was in there burned smokily, a grey-white plume rising toward the sky. The - congregation was the word that sprang to Bushell’s mind - chanted something in the Iroquois language and began a slow, dignified line dance.