“Flying back to London!” he said. “The Mayor’s Parade is today! The streets will be filled with city officials and hundreds of innocent bystanders! Ha ha!!”
Alice paused, but he did not continue. Finally, she prompted him: “And?”
He frowned. “And what?”
“And what is your plan? Really, Doctor, if you want to be a professional villain, you need to fully reveal your plan.”
“I say!” He rubbed his mustache gleefully, then pointed across the room. “That crate is an atrocity!”
“It certainly is,” Alice said, eyeing the crate set before the sofa in lieu of a table, its wooden sides gritty and stained.
“I mean,literally, Miss Dearlove! Inside is a special device incantated to detonate upon contact with the ground!”
“Huh,” Alice said. She thought back to her first day in the cottage, opening the crate and seeing what she had supposed to be a fire extinguisher. She’d fiddled with one of its switches and, at the resulting internal clatter, had assumed it broken.
“Well, I do concede that is fiendish indeed,” she said.
“Yes! Jolly fiendish! And it was under A.U.N.T.’s noses for weeks, in my lab. No one appreciated my genius enough to suspect me.”
“But Jane said there was no weapon.”
“None thatsheknew about,” Snodgrass scoffed. “It’s true that, when she approached me with her nefarious commission, I was inspired to create The Big Banger™. But, I say, why would I waste it on merely assassinating one person? Jane Fairweather’s silly little plot gave me practice with villainy, but ultimately I have bigger fish to fry!”
Alice frowned in confusion. “You want to take up cooking?”
“What? No! I’m going to drop my bomb on the Mayor’s Parade,killinghundreds. Then no one will ignore me! I shall be instantly inducted into the Hall of Infamy! What!”
Alice shrugged with professional nonchalance. “I will stop you.”
“I’m afraid I can’t take that chance.” He yanked the black tie from around his neck and dropped it to the ground.“Descendeo rapido!”
Alice had just enough time to think fiddlest—
And the ceiling fell on her.
23
daniel meets his match—the gang-up—lethal looks— a sudden caterpillar—the big banger— midair collision—eviction notice
If Daniel had a flower for every time he thought of Alice as he searched Starkthorn Castle for Dr. Snodgrass, he would not have been able to walk at all, due to being completely overladen with roses. He did not consider it in such terms, of course; rather, he calculated his thought-to-step ratio as being so high it overwhelmed decent mathematics.
He could not regret making love to her last night. To have had just that small part of her—that physical pleasure, between one mission and the next—even knowing he could never have the whole. To have told her a mere whisper of the truth about how he felt for her. These had seemed like impossibilities even a day ago. Like a dream, a year ago. And now they would live forever in his heart, behind barricades, barbed wire, machine guns, where not even A.U.N.T. could get at them. Strictly speaking, he should not have done any of it. But he found he could not disapprove of himself.
That was all he found, however. Ten minutes’ effort did notuncover Dr. Snodgrass (although he did come across the Earl of Sandwich, trussed up in the laundry room, impatiently awaiting a ransom). Frustrated, bemused, and hearing the pirates begin to arise, cries oftally hoooo!resounding through the castle, he decided to join Alice in the cottage to discuss their next move.
So focused was he on seeing her again, touching her hand, inhaling the serene freshness of her scent, watching the slow, lush sweep of her eyelashes as she—
“Hello there,” said a cheerful male voice.
Daniel reacted instinctively, as a consequence of which he discovered, when next he blinked, that he was pushing a man against the frame of Starkthorn Castle’s open front door, one knee shoved into the fellow’s back while a carotid restraint around his neck wordlessly promised unconsciousness or death at any moment Daniel wished to advance it.
“Nice reflexes,” the man remarked, and Daniel realized he’d just attacked Ned Lightbourne. He would have apologized and stepped back at once, but a gun barrel pressing against his spine recommended against this.
“Good morning, Bixby,” Cecilia Bassingthwaite said behind him. Her tone was cool, pleasant, but the metal of her gun was also cool, significantly less pleasant, and Daniel knew she’d shoot under the least provocation. “If you would like to die some other day than this one, I suggest you release my husband.”
Daniel removed his arms from around Ned’s throat and held them up in surrender. “I do beg your pardon,” he said. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
The gun was lifted away, and Ned turned with a smile. “Don’t worry, old chap. Who amongst us hasn’t almost murdered an acquaintance while lost in thought?”
