Suddenly Snodgrass lurched forward, taking Alice so much by surprise she could only stare at him, wondering if he was experiencing some kind of seizure. Seconds later, she understood her peril, but by then it was too late: Snodgrass had snatched the gun from the sofa and was aiming it at her.
“Don’t move, what! And—and—put your hands up!”
Alice gave him a long, cool look. He shook the gun, and slowly she obeyed. Her nerves advanced from jangled to outright jittering, for although she’d managed to remove the tape, her fingers were now sticky, and with Snodgrass holding her at gunpoint she could not immediately wash her hands.
Unmoving, barely blinking, she calculated the distance between herself and the kitchen bench with its kettle of water, including the necessary steps—two to the left, seven forward, one leap, a hard step (horizontal) against Snodgrass’s solar plexus, a karate chop to his throat rendering him unconscious, then several more steps to locate a razor so as to shave off his abominable mustache—before arriving at the kettle.
“Don’t try it,” Snodgrass warned with unexpected perspicacity. “I will shoot you. I will.”
“You won’t,” Alice scoffed.
He pulled the trigger.
Horsehair and fabric exploded as the bullet slammed into the sofa. Alice noticed a flash before her eyes—not her life, but sparks produced by a coiled spring within the sofa cushion. She raised one disapproving eyebrow at Snodgrass, who appeared far more startled than her by what he’d just done.
“Deliberately damaging A.U.N.T. property is cause for a fine, perhaps even suspension,” she told him.
He laughed rather hysterically. “I shall soon destroy more than a sofa, Miss Dearlove! Before I am through with my plans, the name Cornelius Snodgrass will become synonymous with Terror (and Quality Devices for the Discerning Villain)! What!”
“What?” Alice asked.
He opened his mouth, then closed it again, clearly blindsided by the question. Then a renewed fervor arose in him. “If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!”
“That’s monstrous,” Alice responded coolly. “And also unethical. If you quote Mary Shelley, you ought to provide an attribution.”
His expression swayed wildly as he tried to process this advice. Alice took the opportunity to re-examine the various clues he had presented over the past week, from his determination to prove himself authorized for the mission to his trying to shoot her just now. “The trap Jane set in the library,” she said, amazed she hadn’t realized earlier. “It was your work. The ribbon in the library ceiling was written over with the incantation, wasn’t it?”
Snodgrass nodded with such excitement, his mustache struggled to keep up. “And the tie around Wordsworth’s bust. Er, that is, the neck of his bust. It was a brilliantly devised deadfall trap.”
“Except it failed.”
“Only because you interfered! I tried for days to assassinate you, but you kept—”
“Wait. Miss Darlington said the pirates hadn’t tried to kill us. I assumed she was lying. But you were responsible for the washroom door explosion after all.”
He jutted out his chin. “It was an excellent piece of magical engineering. Just a little more sensitive to vibrations than I anticipated.”
“So a case of premature explosion? Interesting.”
Snodgrass flushed and shook the gun at her, but Alice was too involved in her deductions to even notice. “You crushed the cake—no doubt testing your plan. And I see now you have a scab on your hand from where you must have cut yourself with the cake knife. And you were the one who shot at Agent B with a crossbow, weren’t you?”
“And I put the snake in your bed!” Snodgrass burst out, as if he could not help himself.
Alice frowned. “What snake?”
“I have all along been a force to be reckoned with, Agent A! You should have feared me! Fear me now!”
“There was a snake?”
Snodgrass made a strangled cry and shook the gun yet again. Alice tried not to roll her eyes at these overwrought dramatics. Her mind was humming with a low, aggravating white noise that she supposed meant an encroaching headache. The stickiness on her fingers would incite her to murder if she could not wash it off soon. And she really wanted some breakfast.
“Look,” she said briskly. “Why don’t we discuss this over a cup of tea? I’m sure Mrs. Kew will release you from your A.U.N.T. contract so you can pursue a career change to Nefarious Criminal. I’d be happy to write you a reference. I can certainly vouch for your expertise in aggravating people.”
“It’s too late for that!” Snodgrass shouted. “If only you and the other A.U.N.T. agents had taken me seriously, I’d not have beenforcedto the recourse of maniacal vengeance! I won’t turn back now. Triumph shall be mine!Aereo!”
Abruptly the house lurched up from the ground, rocking perilously as it ascended without control. As Alice gripped the sofa for support, she realized her mental hum had in fact been magic loitering in the air, waiting for Snodgrass to finish speaking the flight incantation.
“What are you doing, Doctor?” she demanded as the house groaned and rattled around them.
