The constabulary steamer was a middle-class Henry. Vining did his best to drive the way Shikalimo performed in his high-powered Supermarine. By the time they got to the station, Bushell regretted his request - he was glad to arrive in one shaken piece.
“What can I do for you now, sir?” the constabulary sergeant asked as he squealed to a stop.
“Nothing, by God,” Bushell said, in lieu of telling the man he was a public menace. “You wait here while I talk to the ticket seller.” He got out of the steamer and headed for the ticket booth before Vining could come up with any convincing arguments for joining him.
The man in the booth was the same sour-faced chap who’d denied the existence of a good hotel in Charleroi when Bushell and his companions came to town. He looked up from the newspaper he was reading and said, “Told you the Ribblesdale House weren’t worth a damn. Now I reckon you’re going to blame me on account of it.”
“Only if you’re the chef there,” Bushell said, which won a startled snort from the fellow. He went on, “Did you sell a ticket to a man answering this description?” and painted the best word picture he could of Joseph Kilbride.
“It ain’t nobody’s business but mine and his whether I did or whether I didn’t,” the ticket seller answered. “How come you get to go poking into people’s business?”
“Best reason of all - they pay me for it,” Bushell answered, and displayed his RAM badge. He’d done that so often lately, he wondered if he ought to have it mounted on his forehead, perhaps with a pair of tenpenny nails.
He watched the ticket seller study the badge, study him, and very visibly decide what to say. In the Pennsylvania coal country, most people were not automatically eager to help the duly constituted authorities. At last, though, in reluctant tones, the fellow said, “Yeah, I sold him one. What’s he gone and done to have you Robins after him?”
“You’re not the first person to ask me that,” Bushell said. “Where’s he going?”
The man inside the grilled cage looked out at him, then chuckled rheumily. “Bet the first fool who asked didn’t get a straight answer, neither. I ought to make you trade me one for one, but you’ll sweat me if I try - and besides, that feller’s as bloody-minded as they come; you can tell it by lookin’ at him. He’s headin’ for New York City, he is.”
“Is he?” Bushell said. “We’ll have to see if he gets there. What time did that train pull out of here?”
“Hour and seventeen minutes ago,” the ticket seller told him. He didn’t look at any timepiece Bushell could see, but sounded very certain all the same. If pressed, he probably could have answered to the second.
“He’ll have been through Pittsburgh already, then,” Bushell said musingly.
“Stops after that are Greensberg, Torrance, Altoona, Tyrone, Huntington, Lewistown, Harrisburg, Lancaster, Downington, and Paoli before you get into Philadelphia,” the ticket seller said, again without consulting any visible reference.
“Had this job a while, have you?” Bushell murmured. He went back to the constabulary steamer and told Sergeant Vining, “I’m grateful for your help. Now I’m going back to the Ribblesdale House - I’ll walk, thank you very much,” he added hastily, before Vining could offer to drive him there. When he got back to the hotel, he rapped on Samuel Stanley’s door and told his adjutant how close he’d come to nabbing Kilbride. Stanley’s eyes glowed. “We can still get him,” he said.
“Don’t I know it,” Bushell said. “I’m going to call Sir Horace and have him arrange to pull Kilbride off the train before he even gets to Philadelphia, let alone New York. Then we’ll see what we shall see.”
“Sounds fine,” Stanley said. “He got away from us once, he got away from us twice, but let’s see him do it three times. Better yet, let’s not.”
Bushell went back to his own room and placed a long-distance call to Sir Horace Bragg’s home in Victoria. It took longer to go through than he thought it should have; both the hotel operator and the operator at the Charleroi exchange seemed startled that anyone inside Charleroi knew anyone out of town. But at last the phone rang. “Hullo? Bragg here.”
“Sir, I have a call for you from Colonel Thomas B - “ the operator began.
“Yes, yes, of course,” Bragg said impatiently. As the operator clicked off, he continued, “Hullo, Tom. Haven’t heard from you in a few days. What’s up?”
Briefly, precisely, Bushell told him what was up. “This could be a major break, sir,” he finished. “If we can pull in Kilbride, he might lead us right to the heart of the plot.”
“You’re right,” Bragg agreed, more enthusiasm in his voice than Bushell usually noted there. “I’ll have men posted in all those stops your side of Philadelphia. Here, give them to me again so I can write them down. If we don’t put manacles on Kilbride, he’s not on that train. I’ll ring you directly we have word.”
“That’s first-rate, sir,” Bushell said. “I’ll be looking forward to your call.”
He thought about going downstairs to celebrate with a drink. He thought about going downstairs to celebrate with several drinks. He could hear Jameson calling to him, a lilt more tempting than any a colleen from the Auld Sod might turn his way. Odysseus had had himself tied to the mast so he could listen to the Sirens sweetly singing. If Bushell heeded Jameson siren song, he’d fling himself into that coppery sea and drown. He made himself get out of his suit and into his pyjamas, made himself get into bed and pretend to read, made himself turn off the bedside lamp and stretch out in the darkness. Try as he would, he could not make himself sleep.
Or so he thought. The chime of the telephone bell made him jerk as if it were a bullet cracking past his head. He pulled the chain that turned the lamp on again, then glanced at his pocket watch. A quarter of three! The phone rang again. He picked up the handset. “Bushell here.”
“Hullo, Tom.” Sir Horace Bragg’s voice dragged with weariness; he undoubtedly hadn’t been to bed at all.
Hearing Sir Horace made Bushell’s own weariness drop away. “Have we got him, sir?” he demanded excitedly.
“No,” Bragg answered: a world of disappointment boiled down to a single word. “We went through that train four different times. When we searched it, nobody answering Kilbride’s description - no one even close to Kilbride’s description - was aboard. He must have left it at some earlier stop.”
“Pittsburgh,” Bushell said. “It has to be Pittsburgh. You should - “
“ - Set some men going through it?” Bragg asked. “Is that what you were going to say? It’s already being done. I don’t know what luck they’ll have, though. That’s a big, busy train station. It’ll be hard to spot someone there, and by now Kilbride could be on his way to - “
Bushell interrupted in turn: “ - Anywhere.”
Lieutenant General Sir Horace Bragg let out a long, somber sigh. “I fear that’s true. They’ve outfoxed us again, dammit. I don’t know about you, Tom, but I’m bloody sick of it.”
“Oh, yes,” Bushell said. “But no matter how sick of it I am, I’m going to run Kilbride and all the Sons of Liberty to earth, and then the shoe will be on the other foot.”
Bragg sighed again. “I wish I had your confidence.”
It wasn’t confidence. After all the setbacks he’d suffered, Bushell had no reason to feel confident. “I’m just stubborn, that’s all,” he said. “Either that’ll be enough, or else - “ He broke off. He didn’t fancy even hypothetical consideration of or else.
“We’re all doing everything we can,” Bragg said: “You and I and the whole corps of RAMs. Whether it will be enough, though . . . We haven’t got a lot of time.”