“You don’t understand.” Thomas was trying to be heard over the murmurs of the gathering crowd and static from the police radio and the continuous gushing of the water. Time was pouring, pooling away. “That was Rattigan. You should be going after him.”
“Slow down, slow down.” Gilhooley, now soaked, looked like a rat that had been dragged up from the sewer. Water was running down his long nose.
“Start at the beginning,” Schroeder said, pointing his club threateningly at Thomas’s chest, “and don’t even think of stopping till you get to the end.”
“There’s no time!” Thomas felt panic building up inside him, a deep well of it. With every passing second, Dumfrey was in danger.
Would Rattigan make good on his threat? Had he already? “Aren’t you listening to me? You’re letting Professor Rattigan get away!”
“Rattigan?” Gilhooley scratched his head. “The kook from the news?”
“He was trying to kidnap us,” Pippa broke in. “He killed Bill Evans.”
Schroeder’s lips thinned to a skeptical frown. “That’s quite a story.”
“I’m not making it up,” Pippa cried. “It’s the truth.”
“You see, officers?” Andrea von Stikk was shaking. Thomas didn’t know whether it was because she was wet or outraged or both. She flicked the feathers out of her eyes. “You see how these children have been hopelessly warped? It’s all because of that monstrous caretaker of theirs—Dumfrey. If you release them to my care—”
“Hold up, lady. Who are you, anyway?”
“Who am I? Who are you, sir?”
As Andrea von Stikk and Schroeder began to argue, the crowd around them grew even denser, until they were hemmed in on all sides. Some were carrying umbrellas. Others were craning their necks to see what the excitement was about. One woman had even brought out a box of Raisinets, as if she were at the movies.
Thomas was getting desperate. They would never get out of here at this rate. He had to do something. They had to get back to the museum before Rattigan could get to Dumfrey.
“Now you listen here, lady—”
“That’s Miss von Stikk to you!”
Thomas moved. Sensing a slight shift in the pattern of the crowd, a momentary break, he slipped into the narrow space between two bodies while the cops’ attention was distracted. He sucked in a breath, making himself as thin as possible, pretending to be invisible—a speck of dirt, a floating dust mote. He spun and ducked and slid and broke through the crowd at last. In the street, the cop car was still sitting with its doors open, radio crackling, as water rained down on the windshield.
The car.
Thomas slipped into the passenger seat and released the safety brake. He sprang back as the car began rolling—slowly, at first, then with increasing speed.
“Look!” someone cried out.
“The car! It’s getting away!”
“It’s going to crash!”
Then the crowd was turning, and surging around him, and everyone was pointing and laughing as the cop car, unmanned, barreled down the street. Sergeant Gilhooley hurtled past Thomas, one hand gripping his hat, long legs pumping. Sergeant Schroeder huffed after him, shouting instructions, wet shoes slapping on the pavement. Like magic, the crowd followed them, flowing like a stream down Ludlow Street. Even Andrea von Stikk hurried to keep up, holding her skirt up to her knees as she sloshed through the gutter.
Thomas, Pippa, Sam, and Max were forgotten.
“Let’s go!” Thomas said. But the others were already moving, turning instinctively in the direction of the subway station that would carry them uptown and to the museum. They had no time to lose.
If they weren’t already too late.
The ride back to Forty-Second Street had never felt so long. The subway seemed to be inching, crawling, oozing through the darkened tunnels, as if its wheels were coated with molasses. Thomas knew that on average, subway trains took three minutes to move from one station to the next, but it felt to him like three hours. Anxiety was crawling through his whole body, as if a thousand ants were marching under his skin. Every time the train stopped at a station and the doors slid open to admit a shuffling mass of passengers, Thomas had the urge to scream. Max bit her nails to shreds and Sam gripped one of the handrails so hard, he left an enormous dent in the metal.
Had they done the right thing by running away from Rattigan? He didn’t know. He couldn’t think clearly. For once in his life, his brain could produce not a single useful calculation or statistic. He couldn’t imagine what Rattigan wanted with them in the first place.
All he knew was that he would never forgive himself if anything happened to Mr. Dumfrey.
Finally, they were only one stop away. But halfway to Forty-Second Street, the train gave a jerk and a groan and shuddered to a stop. The lights flickered and then went off; the car was plunged into darkness. The passengers in the car began to mutter.
“Last week I got stuck right here for forty-five minutes,” someone said with a sigh. “Engine problems.”