eleventh floor sold uniforms. One of the advantages of the organization to which Theodora and I belonged was that there were no uniforms, unless you count a small tattoo on the ankle. I walked quietly between the racks of matching clothing hung up like flattened women and men, and wondered what Theodora was doing there. But she didn’t seem to be there at all. Aisle after aisle of uniforms was empty. I looked this way and that. The uniforms shrugged back at me. Finally I reached the far end of the eleventh floor, where the windows looked down on the street. There was a mannequin dressed like a police officer in one window, and one dressed as a firefighter in the next. Then there was a uniformed nurse, and a cook, and a sailor, and then, standing in a window, there was a mannequin wearing nothing at all. At its feet were a pile of clothes I recognized as Theodora’s. She had stood right there and changed her clothing, putting on whatever uniform had been worn by the mannequin. I did not like to think about it. I was at least relieved that Theodora’s underwear was not in the pile, so she had not been completely naked in the window of a department store.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a familiar light moving on a distant wall. The elevator was heading back down. “Why not?” I said to the bare mannequin. “She’s gotten what she wanted.”
The mannequin didn’t say anything. I didn’t want her job and she didn’t want mine.
It was easier to go down the stairs, as it always is. In no time at all I was hurrying back past the perfume and out Diceys’s front door. My chaperone hadn’t thought to lock it back up again, but the skeleton key was gone. I could hear Theodora’s footsteps and caught her distant silhouette as she rounded a corner, although I couldn’t tell what she was wearing. She didn’t look around. Why should she? She was in disguise and I was asleep in the Far East Suite.
Theodora took me past a diner called Hungry’s, where my associate Jake Hix still occasionally slipped me a free meal, and Partial Foods, a grocery store where Hangfire had orchestrated some recent treachery. She walked quickly through the neighborhood and then past an enormous pen-shaped building, now abandoned, that once had been the home of my associate Cleo Knight, who was working on a formula for invisible ink that was Stain’d-by-the-Sea’s best hope. I silently wished Cleo luck, and then found myself walking past Black Cat Coffee, a favorite haunt of Ellington Feint. I’d sat at the counter many times and watched the shiny machinery make small cups of strong coffee and loaves of fresh, warm bread. Had I known I’d never see it again, I might have taken a closer look. As it was, I hardly glanced inside the place. I knew Ellington Feint wasn’t at Black Cat Coffee. The Officers Mitchum were putting her aboard the train. Soon she’d be in prison in the city, I thought, along with my sister. We walked a little farther, Theodora ahead and me following, until we were both where she wanted to be.
Stain’d Station was the busiest place I’d ever seen in town. The enormous room was thronging with people, and the noise of the crowd echoed up to the ceiling, which was lined with curved iron bars, like a black rainbow hanging in the loud air. Someone had lit torches that lined the walls, and by the flickering light I could see the train, twenty or thirty cars in length, at rest on one of the station’s many tracks. Most of the train’s cars were cargo cars, with INK INC. stamped on the sides and the tops open, to hold the ink extracted from octopi by enormous mechanized needles. But Ink Inc. was no longer a thriving business, and the octopi were scarcer and scarcer, so the cargo cars sat empty, ready to rattle through the fading town on tracks hardly used anymore. Behind the cargo cars were some passenger cars, decorated with wooden curlicues over the windows and old-fashioned railings bolted below and brightly painted designs everywhere else, and up front was a huge, tired engine, where people in black aprons hurried about with shovels and wheelbarrows, loading coal into the train’s tender. Porters in bright blue jackets helped the passengers push their way through the crowd, and conductors in gray suits punched people’s tickets with silver punchers clipped to their belts. Something was pinned to the lapels of their suits and jackets. I couldn’t see what it was, but I could hear the echo of each puncher’s click as it bounced off the ceilings, over and over again. Everyone seemed to be in a hurry to leave town.
Somewhere, I thought, is the car where they lock all of Stain’d-by-the-Sea’s prisoners on their journey into the city. Somewhere there is Dashiell Qwerty and somewhere there is Ellington Feint, but you don’t see them, do you, Snicket? You can’t even find S. Theodora Markson, and you were supposed to be following her. With the black aprons, the blue jackets, and the gray suits, you don’t even know what uniform to look for.
I found a ticket booth where a woman sat behind a window, reading a book I didn’t like. I didn’t like the woman either. She was wearing an unfortunate smock with a little rip near the shoulder, right near a name tag printed with her name. I didn’t need it. I remembered her well enough.
“Polly Partial,” I said, and the owner of Partial Foods looked up and frowned at me.
“Total Stranger,” she greeted me in return.
“We’ve met a number of times,” I said, remembering that Ms. Partial had never been a reliable witness. “Why are you working here, instead of at your grocery store?”
“I have no more grocery store,” she said sourly. “The place was closed due to lack of interest. Some thieves took all my honeydew melons, which really affected employee spirit.”
“Well, at least your new job gives you time to read,” I said, pointing at the book. “How are you enjoying that?”
“Not so well,” she said.
“I’ve never liked that book.”
“Oh, I think the book is very good,” she said. “It’s just that I was interrupted while I was reading it by some boy who keeps asking me questions.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and I was a liar. “Is there room for one more passenger on that train?”
“The Thistle of the Valley ?”
“Is that what the train is called?”
“Yes.”
“When does it leave? Where does it stop?”
Polly Partial handed me a piece of paper printed on all sides with confusing times and locations. It looked like a herd of numbers having a square dance. I would rather have reread her book than Stain’d-by-the-Sea’s confusing train schedule, but just barely. “I can’t make head nor tail of this,” I said.
She pointed to one of the squares on one of the charts. “The Thistle of the Valley leaves in two minutes from Track One,” she said. “It winds through town, with brief stops at the post office, the museum, the library, and various downtown businesses, including Partial Foods and Ink Inc.”
“Those places scarcely exist in this town anymore,” I said.
“As you can see,” she said, pointing to different squares, “all those stops have been canceled indefinitely.”
“So then why did you mention them?” I asked her.
“It’s standard policy,” Polly Partial said, using a phrase which never means anything. “Unless there are special requests, The Thistle of the Valley makes no scheduled stops in town but travels across the sea and finally reaches the city before continuing on to various villages and tourist attractions.”
“The sea doesn’t exist anymore either,” I reminded her. “There’s only Offshore Island, a few remaining inkwells, and the Clusterous Forest.”
“Don’t tell
