A lot of the men in overalls and boots and cloth caps and collarless shirts spoke with a brogue. Bushell glanced over to Kathleen. Her English was almost as elegant as Shikalimo’s. He wondered what her father sounded like.
From Pittsburgh to Charleroi was a journey of less than half an hour, and would have taken only half that time had the train not made several stops at other industrial and mining towns along the way. The laborers who packed the club car drank with a grim intensity that made even Bushell raise an eyebrow. No men who were happy with their lot would have needed so much anesthesia before they got home. Some of the drinkers had their hair cropped short in the Roundhead look that set his teeth on edge. Others rolled up shirtsleeves to show off eagles tattooed on forearms or biceps. He wondered how many of them were Sons of Liberty and how many just venting frustration at life in the NAU. They were fools if they thought breaking away from England would get them out of the mines and foundries. An independent North America would need coal and steel no less than the NAU did. He shrugged and knocked back the last of his Jameson. Some people thought change automatically led to improvement. Having been through a great many changes in his own life - and ended up half drunk on a nameless train rattling south toward a grimy coal town - he wondered about that.
“Charleroi!” the conductor called. “All out for Charleroi!” He pushed his way through the club car to make the announcement in the next one back.
The train squealed to a stop. The Charleroi station hardly rated the name. It boasted a ticket booth, an awning over the tracks to keep rain off arriving and departing passengers, and not much more. Bushell, Stanley, and Kathleen Flannery got their bags and then stood under the awning for a moment, wondering where to go next. They drew guarded looks from the miners and the women and children who came to meet them: not only were they strangers, but their clothes proclaimed them to be of a different class from the locals.
Bushell walked over to the ticket booth. “If I want a good hotel, where do I go?”
The ticket seller shifted a pipe to the corner of his mouth and answered, “Somewheres else.” When that failed to shift Bushell, he sighed and pointed south. “Down there just a couple buildings, that’s the Ribblesdale House. Best we got. It ain’t much, and that’s a fact.”
Despite its fancy name, the Ribblesdale House proved to be a down-at-the-heels building with tired wallpaper and carpeting grey with ground-in grime. “Yes, sir, we have plenty of rooms,” the desk clerk said. The unspoken question in his eyes was, Why the devil were you stupid enough to come to Charleroi?
“Do you have a Joseph Kilbride registered here?” Bushell asked.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t give out that information,” the clerk answered. Bushell laid his badge on the counter. The clerk’s eyes went large and round. “Uh, let me check.” He flipped through the registration book. “No, no one by that name here. I didn’t think so.”
“Well, where is he, then?” Samuel Stanley burst out. He rounded on the clerk. “Does this godforsaken hole in the ground have any other hotels?”
The young man’s skin was fair enough to let Bushell see his flush. “There’s the Hastings Arms,” he said, with the clear implication that anyone who’d register at the Hastings Arms was a savage irremediably beyond the pale of civilization.
“We’ll check it in the morning,” Bushell decided. “He may be staying with friends, too. If he has any friends in this town, he deserves to stay with them, and they deserve to have him.”
“Here are your keys, sirs, ma’am,” the clerk said. “I’ve given you three adjoining rooms right upstairs on the first floor: 135, 137, and 139.”
“Thank you, Mr. - “ Bushell peered toward the name badge the fellow wore on his right lapel. “Mr. Devlin. Those will do nicely.”
The Ribblesdale House had an attached dining room. It did not come up to Bushell’s standards. The eggs were greasy, the bacon overcooked, and the pot of English Breakfast he ordered had been steeped so long, it was bitter. The toast came to the table cold, but that was common practice at hotels that tried to ape those of England, so he didn’t know whether to blame it on mere fecklessness or social climbing. He and his companions stolidly worked their way through breakfast, imperfectly satisfactory though it was. He was lighting his first cigar of the morning to get the bitter taste of the tea out of his mouth when a couple of young men in suits and waistcoats paused at the entrance to the dining room. At first he pegged them for businessmen, but their lapels were too wide and too sharp, their trousers too baggy, to let them fit into most reputable businesses. He sucked in more aromatic cigar smoke. Charleroi might not have any reputable businesses.
The pair spotted him, Stanley, and Kathleen - not hard, since they were the only people in the dining room. Side by side, the newcomers walked over to stand close by the table where Bushell and his companions sat. Except to blow cigar smoke in their direction, he ignored them. Samuel Stanley and Kathleen followed his lead, save that they did not have cigars.
One of the two young men had a receding hairline. The other wore a close-trimmed, gingery beard. The balding one whipped out a notebook and fountain pen. In portentous tones, the other asked, “You’re the RAMs who came into Charleroi last night?” The chap with the pen and notebook started scribbling before Bushell spoke a word.
“If you already know the answers, why ask the questions?” Bushell said mildly. Reporters, he thought, in lieu of a stronger pejorative. “Let’s try it the other way: who are you?”
“Michael Shaughnessy,” said the one with the notebook, at the same time as the bearded one was saying, “Jerry Doyle.” Bushell expected them to announce the name of the Charleroi - or possibly Pittsburgh - paper that employed them. Instead, they chorused, “We’re with Common Sense.”
“Are you?” Bushell said, still not sounding very interested. “If you had any, you wouldn’t be.” While the two reporters were adding that up and discovering that it came out to something less than a ringing endorsement, he let his eyes stray casually to Kathleen Flannery.
She was looking straight at him, perhaps expecting that questioning gaze. “I didn’t call them,” she declared. “I’ve never set eyes on them before, I’ve never heard of them, and I didn’t know they were going to be here.”
“Did I say you did?” Bushell answered. But her quick, vehement denial rekindled the doubts that had died to smoldering embers. The edge of a headache he had from last night’s whiskey got worse. He didn’t let any of that show, but nodded affably enough to Doyle and Shaughnessy. “I might have known Mr. Kennedy would send out a vulture, but I didn’t think he’d put a bald eagle on the train with him.”
Michael Shaughnessy reddened as easily as a woman might have. “Now see here, you tyrant’s slave - “
Doyle set a hand on his companion’s arm. “He’s trying to get your goat, Mike, and by the sound of you he has it.” Like Shaughnessy, he had a vanishing trace of a brogue, almost swallowed in a flat New England accent. Turning to Bushell, he said, “We’ll come to keep an eye on the monstrous waste of public money you RAMs are making of the search for that ugly daub, The Two Georges.”
“Isn’t it nice, Sam?” Bushell steepled his fingers. “Common Sense sends the art critics to look after us.”
Samuel Stanley was too angry to enjoy irony. “How the devil did that blasted rag know to send them here? We just got here ourselves.” His not looking at Kathleen was as pointed as the glance Bushell had sent her. Then he glowered up at the reporters. “Who tipped you off?”