The Case of the Misplaced Hero

man. "They said they would keep us informed!"

  "Patience, Freddie," said the woman with the feather. "They can't give us word if they don't have word to give."

  "We haven't seen hide nor hair of them since those security fellows arrived."

  "Excuse me," said Alex. "You said you tried to get into the building too. Why?"

  "We haven't got any luggage," began the shorter fellow. "We haven't got any rooms, or any tea--"

  "Basil!" said the other sharply. "I think our cousin is more important than your tea!"

  "Sorry, Freddy," said Basil, and he turned back to Alex. "As it happens, we're also out of baronesses."

  "Our cousin is the Baroness of Beethingham--"

  "A baroness in her own right, no less," interjected Basil.

  "--and she has been kidnapped by those bandits who derailed the train."

  "Or perhaps killed by them."

  "Basil!"

  Alex looked around at the people standing there. They looked uncomfortable and disgruntled and worried. Disgruntlement is a powerful force.

  "I've got a friend who's missing too," he said slowly. Then he raised his voice so they all could hear him. "Are there a lot of people missing?"

  "My companion, Miss Vilthrop, for one," said an elderly woman.

  "And Emmett, the undersecretary to Lord Blinkersley," said a man. "Nobody has seen him."

  "Lord Blinkersley is missing!"

  "No, I just saw him. He's just behind the building, having a smoke.

  "Well, I haven't seen anything of my footman...."

  Voices were calling out about people and luggage and sore feet. All sorts of complaints. They were ready to turn into a mob. Alex felt guilty for even thinking of taking advantage of that. Still you can't incite anybody who doesn't want to be incited, and their complaints were legitimate.

  The question was how to take advantage of it? A diversion, maybe. Or just a covering crowd....

  "When you were inside just now," said Freddie, "did they tell you anything at all?"

  "No," said Alex. "I only talked to the cook. The place seemed practically empty."

  "They've got everybody up at the wreck, I expect," said the woman with the broken feather.

  An older man pushed his way to the front. "You're telling me they've got room in there for us?"

  "Well, I only got a glimpse. I mean, I didn't see upstairs or into the guest rooms, but there's a parlor and a tavern room which are just completely empty."

  "Sounds a darned sight more comfortable than here," said the older gentleman.

  "Listen," said Freddie. "Did you see that brute of a captain? The gimpy one with the walrus mustache? He's in charge, you know. We should march in there and take him hostage until we get some answers!"

  "Freddie," said the woman. "You're beginning to sound like Basil."

  "Not me!" said Basil, "Takin' a hostage sounds like jolly fun, but it also sounds like work."

  Alex took a deep breath. Here goes his plan....

  "What we should do is take the tavern hostage," said Alex. "As a group -- all of us just troop in there and occupy it. You know, like a flash mob."

  Which, of course, they didn't know, but they seemed to understand the concept anyway.

  Episode 14

  Rozinshura is Disappointed

  Professor Thornton was feeling the signs of impending sobriety, and he didn't like that one little bit. And when Captain Rozinshura took Thorny's arm and hurried him out of the tavern room and away from that lovely old rustic bar... well, Thorny liked that even less.

  Even with the limp, the captain moved faster than Thorny could manage, just like the soldier who had arrested him.

  "You people are in too much of a hurry!" said Thorny.

  "This is not a hurry," said Rozinshura. "This is the pace of revolutionary progress." He then paused for effect and added, "Also, I am frightened, and you are drunk."

  The captain pulled open a door and pushed Thorny into a tiny room packed with boxes, barrels and baskets. There was just space for a desk and a comfortable chair with extra cushions. The captain sat in the chair and propped his bad leg on a barrel. He indicated that Thorny should find a perch on a box opposite him.

  One of the soldiers showed up with a mug and a bucket. He emptied the bucket onto the desk. It contained a scattering of personal items, including Thorny's wallet, keys and watch.

  Rozinshura took the mug and handed it, along with the now empty bucket, to Thorny.

  "Drink this. Try to keep it in."

  Thorny took a sip. It was a horrible sludge, and he immediately threw up into the bucket.

  "Try harder," said Rozinshura.

  Thorny drank again, and it didn't taste quite as bad. He struggled a little, but kept it down, and after a moment, both his stomach and his head felt better.

  "You are a doctor," said Rozinshura. "What sort of doctor? You are a specialist?"

  "English," said Thorny. "I'm a doctor of English."

  The captain leaned forward as if he hadn't quite heard.

  "Angliss? What is that? Is it good with injuries? Bones?"

  "Only the bones of literature."

  "Lita... ligaments?" said the captain. "An expert in ligaments is good! We have injuries and --" He paused to rub his bad leg. "You can do operations, yes?"

  "No, no," said Thorny. "You've got it wrong. I'm not a medical doctor. No bones. No ligaments, and I faint at the sight of blood. I'm a doctor of philosophy."

  "Philosophy," said the captain, and he stared for a moment, and then he seemed to deflate into his chair. He made a rude noise and said a number of things in his own language which Thorny was sure were not polite.

  "We have injuries. We need doctors. Awarshi doctors are butchers. Worse than butchers. I would trust my butcher before I would trust an Awarshi doctor."

  "I am very sorry," said Thorny. "I don't know anything about butchery either."

  "Then go away," said Rozinshura. "I shall call on you if my philosophy becomes broken. Go!"

  Thorny paused. "What about Pooki-whatsis? He'll want to arrest me."

  "If you sneak out quietly, he may not see you."

  "And...." Thorny paused a moment longer. "What about the girl? Her only crime was helping me."

  The captain let out a slow sigh and shook his head.

  "No, her only crime is that she is pretty," he said. "There is nothing I can do for her. He is a colonel, I am a captain. I could only help you because you are a foreigner, and I thought you are doctor."

  He looked down at the wallet and keys and things, and shoved them across the desk. Thorny grabbed his keys and watch. There was a small book lying half across his wallet, and he started to reach for that -- just to push it aside -- when the captain leaned forward.

  "Wait!"

  Rozinshura was looking at the book. There was a bit of paper sticking out among the pages.

  He gestured for Thorny to sit down again and took up the paper. He squinted at it and moved his lips as though deciphering something in his head.

  Then, with a gasp, he half rose out of his chair, and then settled back into almost a crouch. He looked up at Thorny through narrowed eyes.

  "I think, Doctor Specialist of Drunken Philosophy, that you are a spy after all."

  Episode 15

  But Not a Professional Spy

  Rozinshura held his life in his hands. That little bit of paper with scrawled notes in a childish code: It held the lives of perhaps hundreds or thousands of people. Perhaps the future of all of Awarshawa.

  A coup, it said. And names -- but no indication of what the names meant. Were they perpetrators of the coup, or targets? And even if he knew which, the conspirators would certainly have allies who were close to the targets.... Who could he trust?

  This bit of paper was a bomb, and if he handed it to the wrong person, it would be a disaster. War. A firing squad. Defeat for Awarshawa at the hands of foreign oppressors. Or perhaps lo
cal oppressors. He could not know what to do without more information.

  He had to find out where this paper came from, and where it was going to.

  And the answers lay across the desk from him, in the fuzzy head of that drunken, water-logged old man. Professor Thornton looked back at him with bleary but earnest gray eyes.

  "I couldn't be a spy," he said. "If I were I spy, I would know how to get out of this, and I don't."

  "Not a professional," said Rozinshura. "When a real spy uses a traveler such as yourself as a courier, that makes you a spy too."

  "But I'm not a traveler," protested the professor. "I never go anywhere." The man seemed genuinely bewildered. Rozinshura was nearly sure that he had no idea what he was carrying.

  "Where did you get this?"

  "I don't know.

  "You were drunk. Perhaps another passenger on the train gave it to you?"

  "I don't think so. I was never on a train. I was walking home from the restaurant, and I jumped in the river instead, and I came up in a different river altogether."

  Rozinshura struggled to understand what the man said. Was he simply too drunk to make sense, or did Rozinshura himself simply not speak Imprish well enough to understand?

  "By restaurant you mean the dining car? You were drinking, yes?"

  "I was drinking, yes."

  "Perhaps you were with someone. Someone spoke to you while you were drinking?"

  "Just Alex. And the waitress, but she was too angry to speak with me."

  "Who is Alex?"

  "Oh, he's a student. But not an ordinary student. Not ordinary at all." The professor leaned forward confidentially. "He's invisible. Not literally, of course -- you can't see through him -- but he blends in until you find out he's a hero. Like Zorro."

  "Like a spy."

  "I suppose it is like a spy."

  "Did he give you anything? Papers? A