“Word out.”
“Please, my mate, word out. Again. It’s urgent. Very, very urgent.”
“Give twenty-four. Forty-eight.”
Two days? Gus dropped his forehead to the old, scarred planks of the bar. “I don’t have twenty-four hours, minutes—not even seconds.” His very heartbeat seemed to count the time he raced against. He raised up, his hand around the pint glass, too weak to lift it, too full of angst to drink it. “Ernst, find him. There’s a Queen’s Medal in it for you. I’ll see to it myself.”
Ernst propped his wide girth on the bar. “And princess?”
“Princess? What are you talking about?”
“Daffy. Pretty. Hair.” Ernst waved his broad hand about his head.
“Why do you call her a princess?”
“Because you love her.”
“You know?”
“Ernst see.”
Gus swilled his pint. “I do love her, but the queen is angry. We… I lost theKing Tituschair and now Daffy is sacked and on her way to Port Fressa. I think she’s changed her mind about me.” Of course she had. This was his lot in life. The Love ’Em and Lose ’Em Prince.
His phone buzzed from his pocket. Let it be Daffy from the train telling him she was all right. That she believed in their love.
But it was an incoming message from Helene. A picture of Adler holding her lime-green Frisbee.
I miss u. Come play wiff me.
Miss you too, Adler. Tell your mom to teach you to spell.
Helene answered with a simple,Ha!
Another text came in. This one from Hemstead.
I don’t know where you’ve gone but I don’t care. I resign.
Great. Perfect ending to a rotten day. With a solo sip of his pint, so as not to offend Ernst, he reminded the proprietor to “word out” for Emmanuel and headed back to Hadsby.
He gathered the staff and interrogated them, beginning with Cranston, who assured him the chair was in Gus’s apartment.
“I don’t even have a key, sir.”
Stern was clueless. And not surprised when Gus announced Hemstead had resigned.
“If you don’t mind me saying, it’s time to remember who and where you are, sir,” Stern said when they returned to his apartment.
“You sound like Daffy.” This should’ve been a night of dining with the woman he loved, not fighting with the world and fearing for his heart.
After shoving down a cold meat pie he’d carried to his quarters from the kitchen, Gus ambled to his parents’ apartment and knocked.
Dad let him in with a grumble. “She’s on the phone. Still quite angry.”
“Do the words, ‘It was an accident,’ mean nothing?”
Dad held up his hands. “Save your case for her. You know she has to process. But she’s extremely disappointed in you and Daffy.”
“Daffy is innocent. I did all the breaking and deceiving.” Gus sat in the nearest chair and slumped forward. “Ernst is the only man I know who can find the carpenter. He’s on the task.”
