“What?”
“So many cats, so few recipes,” I said, pleased that I had figured out who’d been talking earlier.
Pickwick looked at me disdainfully, muttered “amateur” and marched out.
“The investigation is still on,” I said to Mrs. Malaprop as soon as Pickwick had gone, “but keep it under your hat, will you?”
“Squirtainly, ma’am. I found this note pinned to the newel post.”
Gone to find Horace, back in half an hour.
P. S.: I don’t care what Pickwick thinks.
“Horace?”
“The goblin.”
I wasn’t particularly annoyed with Carmine for chasing after the goblin—as long as he wasn’t invited back in again—but I was very annoyed that she had gone AWOL. It meant that for the past ten minutes there’d been no one here to play Thursday. If word had gotten out, there might have been a panic from the other characters, and it was against at least nine regulations that I could think of.
“Do we report her as absinthe without leaf?” asked Mrs. Malaprop.
I scrunched up the note. Reporting her as missing would get Jurisfiction involved, and Carmine would probably be shipped off to spend the next decade in Roger Red Hat.
“No,” I said, “but let me know the moment she gets back so I can give her a ticking off.”
Sprockett knocked and entered, his eyebrow pointing firmly at the “Worried” mark.
“Excuse me, ma’am, but the Men in Plaid are back.”
“So soon? You better admit th—”
“Thursday Next?” said the first of the MiP as he walked in the door.
“Yes?”
“You’re coming with us,”
said the second.
“I can’t leave the series,” I said. “My understudy is at lunch.”
“That’s not what the board says,” observed the first, pointing at Carmine’s status on the indicator board, which was now blinking an orange “at readiness” light, despite the fact that she was out looking for Horace. “Is she AWOL?”
“No,” I lied.
“Then she’s in?”
“Yes,” I lied again.
“Then you can come with us.”
I looked at Malaprop and Sprockett. They knew what needed to be done—find Carmine at the earliest opportunity.
The Man in Plaid who seemed to be in charge jerked a thumb in the direction of the front door, and we walked outside. Predictably, there was a Buick Roadmaster, but that wasn’t the end of the story. The left-hand mudguard was dented and streaked with yellow paint—the sort of yellow paint that taxis are finished in. This was the car that had forced us off the road and into the mimefield.
“Am I in some sort of trouble?”
“You are if you don’t come with us.”