LITMIR.BIZ

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was that someone had spotted me, someone who was striding toward me with a scowl that I’m sure matched my own.

      It is not difficult to describe Sharon Haines, because we’ve all seen the likes of her plenty of times. Bad mothers are like old newspapers. No one has need of them, but they’re everywhere, blowing around town. Sharon Haines was the mother of two children—a daughter named Lizzie, who had been kidnapped by Hangfire, and a son named Kellar, who had joined us to fight him. Sharon, on the other hand, had joined the Inhumane Society in a misguided effort to please the villain holding Lizzie captive. “Misguided” is a word which here means that it wasn’t going to work, but even with her treachery revealed she continued to stride toward young people, barking orders and questions.

      “Come over here, Snicket!” she barked. “What are you doing at Stain’d Station?”

      “Being a child, a pest, and a nuisance,” I said. “What are you doing here, Mrs Haines?”

      “I might ask you the same thing,” she said haughtily.

      “You already did,” I said, and she gave me another scowl, although her heart wasn’t in it. Her fingers fiddled nervously at her sides, one hand more nervously than the other, and her eyes were scanning the enormous room, back and forth like anxious pendulums. “I’m looking for someone too,” I told her. “Wouldn’t it be funny if we were both looking for the same person?”

      Sharon gave me one more scowl and a gasp and then yet another scowl for good measure.

      “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’re not. You’ve already found the person I’m looking for. That’s how you got your skeleton key back.”

      Sharon’s hands raced to their pockets, but one pocket wasn’t big enough. The skeleton key stuck out like a feather in a bad hat. It would be an easy caper to steal it like that. “You’d better get it back to Hangfire,” I said. “I’m sure he has no idea you lent it to a friend.”

      “I’ll thank you,” she said sternly, “to stop interfering.”

      “Oh, you don’t have to thank me, Mrs Haines.”

      “Get out of here, young man. You have no idea what is going on.”

      “That’s why I’m here,” I said, but she gave me a little growl of frustration and stalked off. She came over to you, I told myself, and now she can’t wait to walk away. A rude buzzer was ringing from someplace, and the station grew louder and busier. There were calls of “All aboard!” from the conductors, and passengers raced past me like I was nothing but an obstacle. A young woman stepped on my toe without apologizing, and my elbow got walloped by a suitcase carried by a man I probably should have looked at. The train was leaving shortly, and I wasn’t on it. Think, Snicket. This is the train’s only scheduled stop in town, and your only chance. How can you make your way onto that train?

      “We have to get on that train!” exclaimed a voice near me, and a tall woman hurried through the crowd, followed by a porter who looked about my height and about my age. But it was the woman I recognized. Sally Murphy was once Stain’d-by-the-Sea’s most celebrated actress and more recently had been among those who had fallen under the power of the Inhumane Society. Some time ago Ms. Murphy had put on a very convincing performance as the original owner of the statue of the Bombinating Beast, and at the moment appeared to be doing a very good imitation of someone very nervous.

      “You,” she said, very nervously.

      I stood in her way and wouldn’t budge. “Me,” I agreed.

      “I suppose you want me to thank you for your actions when we saw each other last.”

      “It is traditional to thank the person who rescues you from drowning in the basement of an abandoned mansion,” I agreed. “In fact, it might be said that you owe me a favor.”

      She tried to step around me this way and that. “Maybe I can buy you an ice cream cone sometime,” she said quickly.

      I kept on not budging. “That’s not what I want.”

      “All children want ice cream.”

      “What I want is to get aboard that train,” I told her.

      “It’s a very popular night to leave town.”

      “So I’ve noticed,” I said, watching Sharon Haines disappear into the crowd. “Can you tell me why you’re leaving?”

      Sally Murphy took a quick look at her porter. “Please don’t ask me that.”

      “If you’re doing more work for the Inhumane Society,” I said, “then you’ll need to explain yourself to the police.”

      The actress looked wildly around her, like a field mouse in the shadow of a hawk. Even Sally Murphy’s porter looked a bit frightened. “Not so loud!” Sally hissed to me. “I’ll thank you to stop interfering.”

      “Why does everyone keep wanting to thank me for the same thing?” I asked, but the porter stopped the actress from answering my question.

      “We’d best be getting on, ma’am,” the porter said. “We don’t want to miss the train.”

      “I don’t want to miss it,” Sally Murphy corrected, and I took a better look at the person she was speaking to. The porter had wide eyes and a mustache that quivered. It was a striking mustache, I noticed—so perfectly square that it looked more like a piece of paper. Of course, I thought, a person my age with a mustache was already striking. The porter’s hair was striking too, with hairpins poking out here and there all porcupiney, and the uniform was the right one—a bright blue jacket with a thistle on the lapel—but fit all wrong. Uniform, I thought. Disguise. But it certainly wasn’t my chaperone I was looking at. There weren’t enough hairpins in the world to tame the mane of S. Theodora Markson.

      “Tell me,” I said to the actress, “are you helping Hangfire or escaping him?”

      Sally Murphy looked down at me, and I saw one tear in her eye, slow and bright, looking down at me too. “I’ll never escape from Hangfire,” she said quietly, “but perhaps an actress can manage the most important performance of her life. Come now, porter.”

      “Yes, ma’am,” the porter said, and then finally I budged. I budged to the left and Ms. Murphy and the porter budged over to where a conductor was standing. Ornette’s folded sculpture crinkled in my pocket again. A paper train, I thought. Sharon Haines. Sally Murphy. S. Theodora Markson. I knew there was a mystery here, but the mystery mystified me.

      With a click!, the conductor punched the actress’s ticket, and Sally Murphy and the porter walked toward The Thistle of the Valley. “Excuse me,” I said to the conductor, quickly and desperately. “I need to get on that train, but I’m afraid I don’t have a ticket.”

      “Then you’re out of luck,” the conductor said. “That’s standard policy.”

      “Pretty please?” I asked, which never works, and sure enough the conductor shook his head.

      “Another train will come along before too long, sonny boy,” he said.

      “I need to be on tonight’s train,” said sonny boy.

      “Why tonight?”

      “I’m not sure,” I admitted, and he gave me the look adults give to children they call sonny boy. I frowned back at him, but it didn’t help. Sally Murphy disappeared into the train, and I watched her porter follow with the bags. He’s right, Snicket. The conductor is right. You’re out of luck.

      The buzzer buzzed again, and the conductors began to shut the doors of the train. The Thistle of the Valley blew its whistle, loud and bright like an adventure was starting. The heavy wheels began to move, a clackety racket that echoed everywhere, first slowly and then quicker and quicker. The engine grumbled its way out

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