McGuffin, had been following Charon’s trail but he hadn’t been working alone. Waverly had mentioned a Dutch secret agent. A man with no name — but a number. Seventy-six or eighty-six…
Eighty-six! It meant something to me. I was sure of it. I had seen or heard the number somewhere before. And sitting there on the lumpy mattress, I suddenly remembered where.
“Tim!” I exclaimed. I stood up and pulled the ticket out of my pocket. This was the ticket to the ice-rink that I had found in McGuffin’s hotel room. And I was right! There was a number printed in the left-hand corner.
The number was eighty-six.
I showed it to Tim. “Don’t you see?” I said. “I think this is a ticket to an ice-rink in Amsterdam. McGuffin and the Dutch agent must use it as a meeting place.” I pointed at the two words at the top of the ticket. “Amstel Ijsbaan. Do you think that sounds Dutch?”
“It’s all Greek to me,” Tim said.
“Amstel…” Just for once I wished I’d concentrated more in geography lessons. “Isn’t that a river,” I said. “In Amsterdam?” It was all beginning to make sense. “We have to go there.”
“To Amsterdam?”
“We’ll find the ice-rink. We’ll find 86. And he’ll help us find Charon.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know, Tim. I’m completely in the dark…”
That was when the lights went out.
Suddenly it was pitch black in the room. At the same time there was a click and a rush of cool air as the door was opened and even as I stood up to take my bearings, I felt myself grabbed and thrown back on the bed. I heard Tim cry out. Then someone grabbed my hand and I felt a circle of cold metal closing around my wrist. There was a second click, closer this time and more distinct. I tried to move my hand and found that I couldn’t.
And then the lights went back on and I found myself staring at Mrs Jackson and two of her lodgers — Mr Webber and Mr Ferguson. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Tim was lying next to me and now I saw that they had managed to handcuff us together. And, most bizarre of all, Mrs Jackson was holding a gun.
A moment later, Mr Blondini came into the room. He had obviously been the one controlling the main fuse. “Did you get them?” he asked.
“Oh yes!” Mrs Jackson pursed her lips. “Who’d have thought it?” she went on. “A dangerous criminal sleeping in my house!”
“It’s not true!” I said.
“That’s right!” Tim agreed. “I hadn’t gone to bed yet.”
“He’s not a dangerous criminal!” I explained. “He hasn’t done anything!”
“Then why is his face here?” Mr Ferguson asked. He produced a copy of that day’s Evening Standard with Tim’s face on the front page. So that was how they had recognized us.
“We’d better call the police.” Mrs Jackson was still aiming the gun at us. She turned to Mr Webber. “Do you know the number?”
“Nine, nine, nine,” the German said.
“All right,” she muttered. “I’ll look it up in the phone book.”
“I’ve already called them,” Mr Blondini said. “They’re on the way.”
“Good!”
I looked around me, trying to find some way out of this situation, but there was nothing I could do, not while Mrs Jackson had the gun. The gun… I’d been held up at gunpoint quite a few times in my life. The Fat Man, Johnny Powers, Big Ed — they’d all tried it at one time or another. But now I looked at her, I saw there was something wrong about Mrs Jackson. It wasn’t just her. It was the way she was holding the gun. Or perhaps it was the gun itself…
And suddenly I knew. “Have you got a cigarette, Mrs Jackson?” I asked.
“You’re too young to smoke,” she scowled.
“Then why are you offering me a light?” I pointed at the gun. My hand was chained to Tim’s and he pointed at it too.
“What…?” Tim began.
The front doorbell rang. The police had arrived.
“Move!” I shouted.
We leapt off the bed and pushed past Mrs Jackson and her friends, making for the door. They were too surprised to do anything and a moment later we were out of the room. I could feel the chain straining at my wrist as Tim hesitated. I suppose he was afraid that we were about to get shot. But I knew better. It hadn’t been a real gun at all but a fancy cigarettelighter. And how had I guessed? Maybe it was just intuition. But the single word “Dunhill” printed on the barrel had probably helped.
Down below, the police were hammering at the door. That meant we could only go up. We found a second staircase and clambered up it, arriving on the second floor. This was also the top floor. We had nowhere else to go. Behind me I heard Mrs Jackson hurrying down to let the police in. We had maybe ten seconds before we were taken.
There was a window at the end of the corridor. Pulling Tim with me, I went over to it. The window was at the back of the house. There was a narrow alley — about two metres across — and then a lower building. The roof of the other building was a few metres below us. It was flat, covered in black asphalt.
“We can jump,” I said.
“We can’t,” Tim quavered.
“We’ve got to.” I opened the window and Tim and I crawled out onto the sill. The handcuffs didn’t make it easy. We hovered there for a few seconds. Behind us, I could hear the police racing up the stairs.
“Jump!”
I launched myself into space. Tim did the same. Like some sort of clumsy, prehistoric bird we soared out of the house. For a horrible moment I thought I wasn’t going to make it. And if I didn’t make it, nor would Tim. The chain would drag him back and we’d both end up as so many broken bones on the pavement below. But then the asphalt roof rushed up and hit me in the chest. My legs still hung in space but enough of me had reached the building to save me. I twisted to the right. Tim was lying beside me.
“Close…” he rasped and wiped his brow. He used the chained hand and I had to wipe his brow too.
The building was some sort of office block. We found a skylight in, a flight of stairs down and a glass door out. Nobody saw us go. There were about a dozen police cars parked in the street at the front but everybody was concentrating on Mrs Jackson’s guest house so we simply walked away. We held hands until we were round the corner. But then, of course, we were still very much attached.
TRAIN REACTION
Getting across London again wasn’t easy — but we had no choice. If we really were heading for Amsterdam, that meant a ferry from Dover. If we wanted to get to Dover we had to start at Victoria. And that meant holding hands through Hyde Park and on through Knightsbridge to the other side of London.
The chances of our reaching Victoria without being seen must have been a thousand to one against, but somehow we managed it. We emerged in front of the main forecourt where the taxis and buses were locked into what had become a frozen mosaic of black and red. All we had to do now was to find the right train.
“Where’s the ticket-office?” I muttered the question more to myself than to Tim but unfortunately he heard me.
“I’ll ask,” he said. He turned to someone standing nearby. “Excuse me,” he went on. “Can you tell me where the ticket-office is?”
“Certainly, sir. It’s through the main entrance and on the left.”
It was the “sir” that alerted me. I looked round and nearly died on my feet. Tim had just asked a policeman.
Even then we might have slipped away. But Tim had realized what he had done. He went bright red. He squeaked. He hid his head behind his arm. If the policeman hadn’t noticed him before, he couldn’t help but look
