“Usually that’s true,” Moxie agreed, “but not tonight.”
“Not tonight,” I repeated, and then I asked her the question found on the cover of this book. It was the wrong question, and it was wrong again later, when Hangfire asked it of me. The right question was “Where had the train been before it stopped at Stain’d-by-the-Sea?” but not until it was too late did I think to ask it.
“Take a guess,” she said.
“The lawyer does his best at the trial, but the town finds Tom guilty just the same.”
Moxie gave me the frown my guess deserved. “Tonight the train is making an extra stop,” she said, “and a very important passenger is getting on.”
“Is that so?” I asked.
“That is so,” Moxie replied. Her eyes sparkled with excitement, and the parcel crumpled a little in her jittery hand. I noticed the scar on her arm. A knife wound had made the scar during a time of danger, and it would likely never fade completely. It was a mark in her skin that would last forever, even if it didn’t hurt anymore. But Moxie wasn’t worried about getting hurt. She grinned at me as she loosened the string around the package so she could unfold the newspaper a little and show me what was inside.
“Who is this important passenger?” I asked, but I almost forgot the question as soon as it was out of my mouth. I was looking at something. The parted newspapers revealed a face to me, the fierce and angry face of an animal. It looked a little like a sea horse and a lot like a monster. The monster was a source of mystery and terror in ancient myths, and the statue of the monster was a source of mystery and terror to me since I had arrived in Stain’d-by-the-Sea to investigate its disappearance. And now here it was, in a train compartment. I stared and stared at the item in my associate’s hands, and knew the answer to my question even as Moxie said it.
“Hangfire,” she said, but I kept staring at the Bombinating Beast.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Was that a knock on the door?” Moxie asked me.
I looked up impatiently from the Bombinating Beast. “Was what a knock on the door?”
Moxie was wise to ignore me, and got up to slide shut the window, making it considerably quieter. Stain’d-by-the-Sea rattled by softer in the dark, and we listened until it happened again. It was a knock on the door. We looked across the compartment. The door had a little latch that worked a little lock, but Moxie hadn’t thought to lock the door, and neither had I.
The knock knocked again. I looked at Moxie and she looked at me. “Yes?” she called out.
“Conductor,” said a woman’s voice. It wasn’t Theodora’s. This doesn’t mean I didn’t recognize it.
“I’m also a conductor,” said another voice. This one was a man. “We’re here to check everyone’s tickets.”
“Just a moment,” Moxie answered, and gave me a panicked look.
“Let them in,” I whispered to her.
“But you don’t have a ticket,” she whispered back, quickly tying the parcel shut again. “That looks suspicious.”
“Not as suspicious as standing on the other side of the door whispering,” I told her, and she put the Bombinating Beast back on the shelf and opened the door.
The woman and the man came in. She was old enough to be my mother and he was old enough to be my father, but neither of them were either of them. Moxie was quick to take her ticket out of her pocket, and then both conductors turned to me. The train rounded a slight corner, tilting the compartment for a second as they looked. People in our organization have been taught how not to seem surprised, which is as important a part of disguising yourself as stealing a uniform, but I could see that this woman and this man had not learned this skill very well. They stared at me like toddlers at a clown.
“Yes, it’s me,” I told them.
“I should introduce myself, too,” Moxie said quickly, and reached down to the floor to hand one of her cards to each of them. “I’m a journalist, and this gentleman is an associate of mine.”
“Moxie Mallahan,” the woman read out loud. “The News.”
“What’s the news?” the man said.
“The news is that I lost my ticket,” I said, “but Ms. Mallahan can vouch for me.”
“But this is just a business card,” the woman said.
“You can get anything printed on a card like this,” the man said. “It’s the easiest disguise in the world.”
“Putting on a uniform might be easier,” I said.
Both adults gasped, and then remembered that they weren’t supposed to gasp in such situations. “We are real live train conductors,” the man said, which is no way to convince someone you are a real live train conductor.
“And what real live train conductors do,” the woman said, “is check everyone’s tickets. Do you have one?”
“Of course I have a ticket.”
The man sighed and put his hands on his hips, a gesture I’m sure you recognize from all the times you lied badly to an adult. “Well, where is it?”
“I ate it,” I said. “It reminded me of breakfasts I’ve had at the Hemlock Tearoom and Stationery Shop. Those are pretty awful.”
She blinked and the man blinked with her. Moxie blinked too, and gave me a look that was both furtive and incredulous, words which mean she couldn’t believe I was saying such things.
“Particularly the tea,” I couldn’t help adding.
“That’s enough out of you, sonny,” the man said.
“I’m not your son,” I said, “although I suppose people might think so, if they saw us together. Perhaps we should ask Ms. Mallahan what she thinks. As a reporter, she’d be most interested in what is going on. Wouldn’t you, Moxie?”
Moxie grasped the handle of her typewriter case. She still looked furtive and incredulous, but now she also looked eager and investigative and full of questions. “I most certainly would,” she said, but the two adults backed away from her typewriter as if it were a powerful weapon, which in some ways it is. The man fiddled with the latch on the door, but the door was already unlocked, so he managed to lock it again, making it difficult to open, rather than unlock it, making it easy, and the woman was meanwhile turning the knob of the door this way and that. It was an awkward dance, made more awkward by the silence in the compartment. Finally the man managed to unlock the door and the woman managed to open it and the two adults walked through, first simultaneously, a word which here means they tried to walk through the door at the same time and got tangled up, and then ridiculously, a word which here means that the man stepped through the door and closed it behind him, catching it on the woman’s fingers, and she shrieked and the door opened again and she stepped through after him and the door shut again and at last they were gone. Moxie stared after them like they were a circus leaving town.
“What was that?” she asked.
“That,” I said, “was a man named Gifford and a woman named Ghede. They’re both members of my organization.”
“V.F.D.?” she said in astonishment.
“Not so loud, Moxie.”
“Sorry. But they’re like you?”
“Gifford and Ghede are not at all like me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Not long ago they spiked my tea with laudanum,” I said.
“Why would members of your own organization try to knock you unconscious with a dangerous chemical?”
“Why would my own chaperone break into a department store and steal a uniform?” I asked her back. “Why would Sharon Haines be lurking around Stain’d Station? Why would a celebrated actress board The Thistle of the Valley with a suspicious-looking porter? And why would my prime associate be on board the same train with the Bombinating Beast wrapped up in newspaper and string without my knowing what she was up to?”
“Do you really think of me as your prime associate?”
“That is hardly the point.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about this,” she said, “but you’re the one who said we should work in the shadows and comm
unicate as quietly as possible.”
“That was before I had an early bedtime, followed my chaperone to Diceys to steal a uniform, and almost fell off a speeding train.”
Moxie put a gentle hand on my shoulder. “You’ve been through a rough scrape, haven’t you? You need something restorative. Let me see what Jake Hix fixed up.”
She opened the typewriter case with a click. It was a new typewriter—Hangfire had confiscated her old one—and the new case had more room in it, enough space for a lumpy paper sack. My stomach told the sack to hurry up. After my experience on the railing, a Hix meal would hit the spot.
“The Thistle of the Valley used to have a grand Café Car,” Moxie said, “with poppy seed bagels and almond pound cake and verbena tea and root beer floats in frosted glasses. But as the town faded away, the Café Car was replaced by a Café Compartment, but it’s just coffee and tired fruit served on the honor system. So I asked Jake if he’d whip up a few things for the journey.”
Sure enough, a few things emerged from the bag. Moxie laid them on the bench one by one. There were two little glass bottles, narrow at the top and wide on the bottom, and a big hunk of what smelled like gingerbread, and a paper box with a folded lid that opened to reveal a small tomato salad. I knew the tomatoes were from the garden Jake tended with his sweetheart, Cleo Knight, a brilliant chemist and another associate of mine. The last item was wrapped up in wax paper and looked for a moment like a small stack of pages, as if Jake had given Moxie the manuscript for a miniature book.
“Jake has started naming his sandwiches,” she told me. “This is the Highsmith. It’s roasted peppers, apricots, and walnuts, with Stilton cheese and some kind of lettuce I’m forgetting. It’s either endive or escarole.”
“That’s the second most interesting thing you’ve unwrapped this evening,” I said, and took half. “Now why don’t you show me the first again?”
Moxie took down the parcel and unwrapped it as I took the first bite. Jake Hix had never let me down before, and he still hadn’t. It was escarole and I couldn’t eat it fast enough.
“It’s not what you think it is,” she said, when I could see its angry face again. The Bombinating Beast stared at me with its empty eyes and bared its teeth at me—small, straight, sharp teeth that clung to my nightmares. “It’s not a statue of a monster.”
“It must be more than that, if Hangfire wants it,” I said, with my mouth full. “Now that we have the Bombinating Beast, maybe we can finally figure out its secret.”
“You misunderstood,” Moxie said. “Take it and you’ll see.”
I took it and I saw. As soon as I hefted the statue into my hands I could tell it was wrong. It was far too light, like a box with nothing in it, instead of a strange item heavy with sinister secrets. I looked more closely and saw that it wasn’t carved out of wood, or out of anything at all. I was holding something fashioned from stiff black cardboard, folded intricately into the shape of the Bombinating Beast.
“Ornette Lost,” I said.
Moxie nodded. “I told you she could make anything out of a scrap of paper,” she said, “although in this case it’s black cardboard, from the laudanum boxes at Wade Academy. Ornette came over to the lighthouse to look at all the beast souvenirs we have lying around, and she finished putting this together late last night.” She took a bite of tomato salad and gave me a wicked grin. “I’m going to fool Hangfire,” she said. “I managed to get a message to him at Offshore Island this morning telling him that the Bombinating Beast could be delivered to him if he came on board The Thistle of the Valley tonight.”
“Does he know you’re doing the delivering?”
“Of course not,” Moxie said. “He would never trust me. I escaped from Wade Academy, and he knows I’m a member of the press. I just told him which compartment I had reserved. He took the bait, Snicket. As soon as The Thistle of the Valley started its journey, the conductors announced an unscheduled stop at Offshore Island. It’s got to be Hangfire, coming aboard to meet me.”
“But what will you do when he’s here?” I asked, after a sip of fizzy water. “Ornette’s creation looks very much like the real statue, but once it’s in Hangfire’s hands he’ll know it’s a fake.”
“Once Hangfire comes aboard,” Moxie said, “he’ll be caught like a rat in a trap. The Thistle of the Valley won’t stop again until it reaches the city, where all the prisoners on board will be brought to trial. I have all our notes on what Hangfire’s been doing in this town. Once the authorities read my report, they’ll arrest Hangfire, and Dashiell Qwerty will go free.”
“You think Hangfire’s going to walk onto this train at Offshore Island, and end up in the hands of the authorities?” I asked doubtfully, my mouth busy with the last bite of Highsmith. “He seems far too clever for that.”
“He’s too greedy to be too clever,” Moxie said. “He framed Dashiell Qwerty. He captured all those children and is holding them captive at Wade Academy. He stole equipment from the aquarium, and honeydew melons from Partial Foods. Everything’s ready for his terrible scheme, whatever it may be. All he needs is the statue of the Bombinating Beast. If he thinks it’s here on the train, he’ll come aboard tonight to get his hands on it.”
Moxie took a sip of fizzy water and then unwrapped the gingerbread and gave me a piece. It was sweet, but not too sweet, like all of my favorite desserts and people. We ate in silence for a moment, and then Moxie licked her fingers and looked at me.
“So?” she said.
“So what?”
“So what do you think, Snicket? This will be the greatest journalistic triumph in the history of Stain’d-by-the-Sea. I only wish my mother were here to see it.”
Moxie’s mother, I knew, was a reporter who had left Stain’d-by-the-Sea some time ago, and Moxie had not heard any word from her. “I’m sure she’ll hear about it,” I said, though I was not sure at all.
Moxie reached over and tapped on the window. Outside I could see the dark landscape slipping beneath us as the train’s route rose onto a bridge. Before the sea had been drained away, the bridge had water beneath it, and I thought I saw something flicker where the water had once been, or two somethings, really, two little round lights. But then they were gone. “This bridge leads to Offshore Island,” Moxie said. “We’ll be stopping at Wade Academy any moment. I told Hangfire to come alone, which means the Inhumane Society won’t be able to help him. All I have to do is lie low for a few more minutes so nobody knows I’m on board until the train starts up again. Then Hangfire will be caught at last, and you’ll be here to witness it. After all this time, we may finally be in the penultimate chapter of Hangfire’s treachery.”
“Penultimate is a word I’ve always liked,” I said.
“You like the word,” she said, “but not the plan.”
“You’re right. I don’t like it.”
“Why not?”
“You’re trying to lure Hangfire aboard,” I said. “Usually it’s Hangfire who does the luring.”
“Then maybe this time Hangfire will lose, and V.F.D. will win.”
“I hope so,” I said, “but villainy is like a bad guest. If it accepts your invitation, it leaves its terrible mess everywhere you look.”
Moxie didn’t have anything to say to that, and I didn’t have anything to say to her not having anything to say. But someone else spoke up. It was the voice of a man, raised in anger but muffled by walls. We looked across the compartment. Another voice replied, a woman or perhaps a girl, just as angry and just as muffled. It was an argument, loud but impossible to hear.
“That’s the prison car,” Moxie said, with a nod at the wall. “We’re listening to something one of the prisoners is saying.”
“No, we’re not,” I said, and picked up the bottle of fizzy water. “But we can in a minute.”
I was thirsty, which I regret. If I hadn’t been thirsty, I might have emptied the bottle by pouring it out the window. Instead, I drank the rest of the water and then laid the bottle aga
inst the far wall. An empty bottle or glass is a decent way to hear what is going on on the other side of the wall. A stethoscope would have been better, and of course the best way to hear what is happening in the next room is to walk into it and participate in the conversation. The empty bottle will have to do, I told myself, even though the voices I heard kept fading in and out, like the people talking were ghosts already.
“… before someone else sees you,” the voice was saying, when I pressed my ear against the bottom of the bottle. “I know what I’m doing, Theodora, and I can’t have you mucking it up.”
You cannot work as closely as I’d worked with a librarian like Dashiell Qwerty without recognizing his deep voice, steady and precise. Now it sounded unsteady and imprecise. I didn’t like it. “I’m here to rescue you, Qwerty,” my chaperone replied. “Getting you out of this cell is a good way to get high marks on my evaluation.” Theodora was using a brash, rude voice I never liked to hear, even from the next train car.
She said something else, in a voice that was much calmer, but I couldn’t hear what it was, just the exasperated sigh at the end.
“It’s not proper,” Qwerty said, “to discuss this in front of—”
“Don’t talk to me of proper,” Theodora said. “I know my progress in this town has been monitored, and I know you’ve been monitoring it.” She lowered her voice again, or was interrupted. I leaned closer, but it was just a murmur over the noise of the train.
“You’ve done a lousy job,” Qwerty said, “but that won’t matter, Markson. Once I get to the city, I can tell the others the truth about…” The end of the sentence was swallowed up.
Someone murmured and then Theodora spoke up. “What about my evaluation?”
“Be sensible, Markson.”
“I am sensible, Qwerty. You and all your library books,” and something rattled and I missed it.