Harris pulled out his pocket watch and held it close to his face so he could peer at the second hand speeding round its own little dial. “I got it three minutes and - twenty-five seconds ago, now. Boston constable spotted the bugger - I beg your pardon, Dr. Flannery - recognized him from the photograph you’d brought, rang back to his station, and his lieutenant phoned me straightaway.”
“Was he going to try to make the arrest himself?” Bushell demanded. “He won’t be armed, poor devil, and the Sons of Liberty pack a bigger punch than anything a city constable will be expecting.”
To his relief, Harris shook his head. “No, sir. The constables know he’s our fish. The chap who spotted him - McGinnity, his name is - is hanging back, making sure the villain doesn’t come out of the shop he’s gone into.”
“What sort of shop is that?” Bushell said, but then waved the question aside. “Never mind. Take us back to the Parker House so Sam and I can get our pistols, and then to - Back Bay, did you call it?”
Harris nodded. “Otherwise known as the Fens - reclaimed land, you know, the same sort of thing the Dutchmen have done.” He seemed to remember Kathleen was in the room, too. “You’ll want to stay here, of course, Dr. Flannery, until we bag the elusive Mr. Kilbride.”
“In a pig’s ear I will,” she replied politely. “Having come this far, I do not intend to be held away from anyone who may know where The Two Georges is.”
“Now really, Dr. Flannery - “ Harris began. “I’m sure Colonel Bushell will tell you this is no place for - “
“Let her come along, Major,” Bushell said. Harris stared at him as if he couldn’t believe his ears. Kathleen’s face lit up like a sunrise; from the glad surprise she showed, she hadn’t expected him to back her, either. Samuel Stanley could have given the Buddha lessons in inscrutability.
“Now really, Colonel,” Harris repeated; evidently now really was what he said when he meant, Are you out of your mind?.
Bushell also repeated himself: “Let her come along.” Kathleen’s grin made her look very fresh and young; it made him feel like grinning, too. He didn’t. The reasons he wanted her with him weren’t all flattering to her, not by a long chalk. In case he was wrong, disastrously wrong, about her, he didn’t care to leave her here with a telephone and no one keeping an eye on her. If she knew where to call, she could do the case a hideous amount of damage.
“Colonel, I trust you know what you are about,” Major Harris said in a tone that belied the words. “I wash my hands of the responsibility for injecting a civilian into the middle of a police investigation. Let me call a steamer to take you to your hotel and then to the scene.” He executed a military about-turn of alarming precision and stalked away.
“Well, well.” Bushell make hand-washing motions. “I didn’t know Pontius Pilate had joined the RAMs.”
Sam Stanley tried to suppress a snort and ended up with a coughing fit instead. When he could speak again, he said, “Go easy on him, Chief. He’ll do what you told him to do, and that’s what counts.”
Major Harris reappeared. “If you will come with me, Colonel, Captain . . . Dr. Flannery.” He might have carved her name from ice. He wasn’t looking at her, though; he was looking at Bushell. Giving your lady friend a thrill, are you, and a chance to see how brave and clever you are? his eyes said. Bushell tried to make his own face answer, It’s not like that, dammit. He didn’t think he had any luck getting the silent message across. He couldn’t say it out loud, either, not without getting into more hot water. Shrugging, he followed Harris down to the underground carpark: space for such amenities of modern life was far tighter here than in New Liverpool.
“This is Sergeant Scriver,” Harris said, nodding to a fellow at the wheel of a Morse steamer that had seen better days. “He’ll take you to the Parker House, and then on to Back Bay. I shall go there directly.” He did another about-turn, this one as sharp as the last; he must have been practicing.
“You bit him like a flea, didn’t you?” Scriver remarked, not sounding altogether dismayed at seeing Major Harris irked. “Pile on in, folks; the teakettle’s all nice and hot and ready to roll.”
Scriver pulled up in front of the Parker House a couple of minutes later. Bushell and Stanley got out. A valet came over to warn Scriver away from the restricted parking area. He routed the functionary with his badge.
Bushell belted on his pistol, then hurried back to the bank of lifts to go downstairs again. He’d moved as fast as he could, but found Sam Stanley there before him. Stanley was tugging at his jacket, trying to make it do a better job of concealing the telltale bulge on his hip. He wasn’t having much luck.
“I already gave up on that,” Bushell said. “We’ll have to look like a couple of bandits till we get out to the motorcar.”
They did, too; both the lift operator and the elderly woman in mourning black who was already in the car drew back in alarm and stared at the two RAMs with frightened eyes. Bushell recognized the temptation to draw his revolver and put a round through the ceiling of the lift as the ignoble impulse it was, which didn’t stop him from enjoying it.
He enjoyed almost running into Michael Shaughnessy halfway across the lobby much less. Whatever you cared to say about his politics - and Bushell might have said a great deal, however little of it would have been complimentary - the reporter had sharp eyes. “Armed, are you?” he said, spotting the pistol under Bushell’s herringbone coat. “And whose funeral are you off to arrange?”
“Yours, maybe, if you don’t move aside,” Bushell answered. He didn’t sound as if he relished the prospect, whatever he might have thought. But he didn’t sound as if he’d shrink from it, either. Shaughnessy got out of his way in a hurry. The man from Common Sense scowled, perhaps angry at his feet for being faster to heed Bushell than the rest of him had wanted. “You’re worse than Bonaparte’s dragoons,” he shouted, shaking his fist. “Doing a tyrant’s bidding was all they knew, but you - “
“Why, Mr. Shaughnessy,” Bushell said, his eyes wide and innocent, “haven’t I heard you apply that name to His Majesty the King-Emperor? You use his laws to protect yourself, and at the same time want to overthrow him? What a surprise when you find you can’t do both at once.” He strode out the door, ignoring the people Shaughnessy’s shout had startled.
Sergeant Scriver made a turn into oncoming traffic that had Bushell cringing and laughing at the same time - police officers everywhere drove as if they were exempt from the traffic laws they upheld for everyone else. Blaring horns and rude gestures expressed the Bostonians’ opinion of the maneuver. Ignoring the unsolicited editorials, Scriver steamed past Kings Chapel, a stately church that had gone up in colonial days, then swung left onto Beacon Street. The turn was not a neat perpendicular, as it would have been in New Liverpool or Doshoweh or even Charleroi. The streets of downtown Boston seemed to have been laid out by someone who’d never heard of neat perpendiculars. They intersected one another at seemingly random angles and, for good measure, changed name every block. When Bushell remarked on that, Sergeant Scriver laughed out loud. “From all I’ve heard, nobody ever laid these streets out, Colonel. They used to be cattle tracks, till one day they paved ‘em.” He sounded serious. Boston was old enough that the story had a chance of being true. Once they rode past the broad meadow of the Boston Common, the streets did begin to follow a grid pattern that made some sort of sense. Back Bay, though, was a newer part of the city, which lent some backhanded support to Scriver’s tale.