The picketers shouted back: “Go peddle your steamers, Tricky Dick!” “Keep your pointy nose out of what you don’t understand!” “If we’re so all-fired important to the NAU, how come nobody treats us decent?” “How’d you like to cough yourself to death before you’re fifty, like two of my brothers did ?”
Honest Dick ignored the jeers and kept walking. Behind him, Samuel Stanley said, “He’s heard worse than that from maybe one customer in three.” Bushell clicked his tongue between his teeth, as if to a naughty child, but he also nodded.
The columned entranceway was surmounted by a severely classical relief of the Hesperides, the nymphs who guarded the golden apples of the sun in their far western land. The golden apples of the sun also appeared on the green field of Upper California’s provincial flag, which rippled with the Union Jack and the NAU’s Jack and Stripes in spotlighted splendor out on the lawn.
Just inside the entranceway, a RAM sergeant apologetically asked Bushell and Stanley to show their identification - ”I know you’re really you, Colonel, Captain, but I’m checking everybody” - then lined through their names on a list he held on a clipboard.
“If you hadn’t asked for my papers, Jim, you’d have been in my office tomorrow morning,” Bushell said. The sergeant nodded; he knew how his boss did things.
The RAM chief and his adjutant checked their service caps. The servant who took them hung them on pegs in the crowded cloakroom. She pointed down a hall. “The receiving line and cocktail reception are in the Drake Room, sirs.”
“To the Drake Room we shall go, then,” Bushell said agreeably.
The hallway was paneled in gleaming mahogany and decorated first with portraits of previous governors of Upper California and then, after it had jogged to the right, with the heads of deer, bears, and catamounts some of those governors had slain. A rising tide of talk came from the Drake Room, almost enough to drown the Vivaldi a string quartet was softly playing.
Going down the reception line was like running the gauntlet: Governor John Burnett, bluff, ruddy, and florid, with a fringe of gingery beard; his wife, Stella, in a gown of mulberry silk that did not quite suit her sallow complexion; Jonas Barber, head of the New Liverpool town council, a plump little man with a shiny bald head who in formal attire lacked only orange shoes to make a perfect penguin; his wife, Marcella, several inches taller, looking elegant in a flowered print dress with a bow at the bodice and shirred flyaway sleeves; and the lieutenant governor and other six town councilmen with their respective spouses.
Thomas Bushell shook the men’s hands, bowed over those of the ladies. Small talk set his teeth on edge, but no man who led a large organization could afford to be without it. At the end of the receiving line he looked for one more man, the K. FLANNERY who, documents said, headed the staff of curators and historians of art traveling with The Two Georges.
To his surprise, though, at the end of the line stood not a man but a woman. The dark green gown with thin, matching satin stripes in inverted V’s showed off a figure which left no possible doubt of that. As soon as he saw her face, he had no doubt she was the K. Flannery in question, either. Porcelain-pale skin, high, strong, forward-thrusting cheekbones, and narrow jaw proclaimed her Irish blood, as did green eyes and red-gold hair spilling down over her shoulders in elaborately casual curls.
“Glad you’re on the job, Colonel,” one of the town councilmen said as Bushell moved past him. “The Two Georges’ll be as safe here as back at the Victoria and Albert in London, eh?”
“Good of you to say so,” Bushell replied, but he’d only half heard the councilman’s remark. His eyes kept sliding back toward the startling curator of The Two Georges. They met hers for a moment. She smiled at him. At first he thought that very forward of her, but then he realized she would have recognized his uniform as that which belonged to the local head of security. She doubtless had her itinerary, as he had his.
The town councilman wanted to blather on about a large load of cannabis the RAMs had recently captured. Bushell had written up that report aboard the Upper California Limited, but he answered in monosyllables till the councilman gave up and let him reach the end of the receiving line.
“You must be Colonel T. Bushell,” the Irish-looking woman said, smiling again. “May I ask what the T. stands for?”
“If you’ll tell me what the K. is for in K. Flannery,” he answered, and added, “The same clerk must have typed both our lists.”
“I shouldn’t be a bit surprised,” she said. “My Christian name is Kathleen. And yours?”
“Thomas,” he said. She nodded slightly, as if in approval. He took her hand and bowed over it, as he had for the other women - overstuffed dowagers, the lot of them, he thought - in the receiving line. He held hers a bit longer and a bit tighter, though: not enough to be in any way offensive, but plenty to convey a small message of admiration. Her eyes said she’d received it.
“Now that you’re here,” she said briskly, “I have leave to quit this line and take you straight upstairs to show you the arrangements we’ve made for displaying The Two Georges here tonight. Or, if you’d rather mingle for a time before you make your inspection, that would be all right, too.”
“Business first,” he said at once. Again she gave him that approving nod. He went on, “As part of that business, allow me to present my adjutant, Captain Samuel - who is probably S. on your list - Stanley. Sam, this is Kathleen Flannery, curator of the traveling exhibit.”
“Pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” Stanley said. He turned to Bushell. “I hope you’ll excuse me for a bit, sir? I see Phyllis in the crowd there.” He pointed. “Odds are, she’s been waiting for me since half past two. She’s more excited about this than I am; seeing The Two Georges isn’t something you get to do every day. Of course, she’s not here on duty, either.”
“Give her a kiss for me,” Bushell said, and Samuel Stanley slid through the crush toward his wife. Bushell dipped his head to Kathleen Flannery. “At your service.”
“I hope I haven’t been rude,” she said. “If your wife is here also, don’t let business get ahead of that. The Two Georges can certainly wait a few minutes.”
“I’m - not married,” he said shortly. As a single man’s will, his eyes slipped, almost of themselves, to the fourth finger of her left hand. It bore no ring. He wondered why - unless he was mistaken (and about such things he seldom was), she’d passed thirty by a year or two. Married to her career, maybe? He gave a mental shrug. None of his business - and The Two Georges was. As they walked to the curving stair of polished marble, he heard Honest Dick the Steamer King complaining to anyone who would listen about the “band of damned Irish hooligans parading outside. Not a one of them with an ounce of respect for the law or an ounce of appreciation for their place in society. Riffraff, the lot of them.” Bushell didn’t need to turn around to imagine the steamer magnate’s jowls wobbling in righteous indignation.
Kathleen Flannery didn’t turn around, either, but her back, already straight, got straighten Quietly, Bushell said, “Landing the position you have now can’t have been easy, not when you’re Irish and a woman both.”