"I never knew you have a private plane," I say, sitting next to him in the comfortable seat as the private jet takes off. It looks like an exceptionally sunny day for this time of year. The Pillar says that the flight should only take twenty-nine minutes.
"You don't know anything about me, Alice," he surfs the internet on his phone, gathering more information about Kattenstoet. "If Tom Truckle is cheap with airplane tickets, then I'd rather use my plane. I have a hookah lounge in here."
“The Emirates Airlines also had a hookah lounge. You weren’t impressed with it,” I comment.
“Wonderland hookah is something else. Lewis Carroll will tell you about it one day,” He tilts his head, offended by my comparison.
"And if I may ask, does your chauffeur have a name?”
“I never asked. I call him Chauffeur. Does he remind you of Ratatouille the anime?” He says nonchalantly. “He doesn’t speak much, if you haven’t noticed. He is dear to me. He works for free, as long as I protect him from the Cheshire.”
“Cheshire? What would the Cheshire want to do with your whimsical chauffeur?"
“My chauffeur is very mousy if you haven’t noticed. Cat and mouse aren't the best of friends,” the Pillar winks. “Enough about him. You were telling me Waltraud and Ogier claim Christ Church was closed yesterday, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then what do you call this?” he shows me the news coverage from TV on his phone. It shows all that happened, and the footage of me eating cheese in the Great Hall. “You’re very famous on Youtube, by the way. Boy, you love cheese so much.”
“So Waltraud is playing games with me, right?”
“Listen, Alice,” the Pillar is impatient. “If you’re going to question your sanity whenever someone tells you you’re insane, you’ll spend your life in misery. For instance, all this, including the video, could all be happening in your mind. Right?”
“You got a point.”
“Then how do you really know what is true and what is not?” he says. “A friend of mine called Einstein once said, ‘Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.’”
“Einstein was your friend?” I narrow my eyebrows.
“And he's an excellent hookah smoker. He puffed faster than the speed of light, relatively speaking of course,” the Pillar leans back in his seat. “How do you think he came up with his genius madness?”
“One last question,” I say. “Why doesn’t the FBI, Interpol, or any authority do anything about the killings? I mean, my picture is all over the world and no one interrogated me or bothered even finding me.”
“Do you really want me to answer that?” the Pillar stares at the ceiling.
“Because I am mad?”
“That’s a possibility of course, but not the real reason.”
“Then what is it?” I am feeling helpless. “Are you working for the Interpol?"
“Me? Of course not,” the Pillar chuckles. “Intercontinental, maybe. For two days, and they fired me for teaching customers how to smoke. Your problem is that you’re always asking the wrong questions Alice.”
“How so?”
“A sane person would want to figure out who works for the Interpol or the FBI," he says. "But an insane person would ask who the FBI, Interpol, and the British Parliament really work for.”
I turn and pull out a magazine to read. I am not even going to go there and ask who the FBI works for. Let’s just stick to the Cheshire’s mystery.
“By the way,” the Pillar says. “The grinning cat carving in St. Christopher in Pott Shrigly was stolen this morning.”
Chapter 54
“What?” I put the magazine back. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
"You're always asking, Alice. I thought I'd feed your curiosity first.”
“The whole statue was stolen?”
“It wasn’t a statue, but a grinning cat carved in the wall,” the Pillar says. “It turned out this carving was removable. It’s practically a mask, disguised as a carving in the wall. That Richard Westmacott was a genius.”
“So what does this mean?”
“It means the Cheshire stole it,” the Pillar says. “And it means your theory is right. Somehow, the Cheshire was after the one grinning cat carving in those churches that was secretly a mask. My bet is he didn't know which one it was. Knowing how Carroll implanted secrets in everything, I bet it took the Cheshire some time to steal the right mask without messing things up."
"What do you mean?"
"Carroll was meticulous. I am not surprised if stealing the wrong mask would have resulted in the destruction of all the other masks by some Carrollian magic."
“So the Cheshire has the power Lewis Carroll deprived him from now?” I am disturbed by even thinking about it.
The Pillar nods. He looks more annoyed with the Cheshire getting the power than concerned with humanity’s fate. “The Cat is out of the bag. The White Queen said it wouldn’t be good if he got that power.”
“Adam told me the same thing in my dreams,” I mumble. “He said it would be the end of the world.”