T
he next morning, Xander woke early and couldn't get back to sleep. He got up and wandered into the kitchen. Another gloomy day, he noticed as he saw the low gray clouds. It was Wednesday, halfway through spring break, and he didn't feel any closer to a solution to Alice's disappearance.
He could tell from the cereal bowl in the sink that Xena was already up too. She never remembered to put her dirty dishes in the dishwasher. He had his own breakfast and then went into the study, where he found his sister tapping on the computer keyboard.
“Look at this,” she said.
He came around and read over her shoulder, and then straightened. “If it's true what they say hereâthat babies' fingerprints don't last as long as grown-ups'âno wonder Sherlock couldn't use
them to identify the princess, or whoever the new baby was. It wasn't his fault.”
“Still, at least he was using cutting-edge technology to solve his crime, just like we do!” Xena couldn't help being cheered by this thought.
“You two are up early for a vacation day,” their mother said as she came in and turned on a light. “This case must be keeping you busy.”
“It is,” Xander said.
“Well, here's something that should make it easier,” their mother said as she poured herself a cup of coffee. “The transit strike ended last night. So now you won't have to be dependent on me or your dad or that nice Mr. Brown to get around for your investigations.”
“I guess,” Xena said.
Mrs. Holmes paused on her way out the door. “Oh, Xena, I've been meaning to ask. What do you think of that new cell phone?”
Xena and Xander exchanged glances. “It's okay. Nothing special.” She hadn't yet dared tell her mother that the phone had gone missing along with Alice.
“I forgot to activate the GPS feature,” her mother said. “I think I need to program something to make it work.”
“What GPS feature?” Xander asked. Suddenly, they were both alert.
“It's a way for parents to keep track of where their children are. I thought you knew. You can track where the phone is once the feature is activated. I'm not sure how to do it, so after you get home, let me have it so that I can figure it out, okay?” She left the room.
“I sure hope she isn't going to spy on me,” Xena said, but Xander wasn't listening.
“Maybe we can use the GPS to figure out where Alice is!” He ran out of the room and came back a moment later with a booklet. “I told Mom I wanted to try to activate it myself, so she gave me the instructions. They're not online yet because the phone is kind of secret.”
“She said she had to have the phone to activate the GPS,” Xena pointed out. “We don't have the phone, and anyway, it's turned off. It's no good, Xander.”
“Don't give up so easily!” Xander was already on his own cell phone. “Hello, Andrew? Oh, sorry. I didn't realize it was so early. Listen, though, this is important, and we need someone techie like you.” He grinned at Xena, who knew as well as he did how well flattery worked with
Andrew. Xander explained the situation and said, “Okay, call me back.”
“Andrew's going to look it up,” Xander said after he'd hung up. “He said that even though this phone is new and experimental, it sounds familiar. It might be the second generation of another phone, one where the specs
are
online. That one can be programmed remotely, so maybe this one can too.”
“When he calls back, put him on speaker.” Xena still didn't think that the phone would help them find Alice, but she didn't know what else to do.
Xander's phone buzzed. “Hi, Andrew. I'm putting you on speaker.”
“I found it!” Andrew sounded excited, which was rare. “Give me the serial number and everything else you have.” Xena read from the booklet, and Andrew said, “If this new phone is like the first generation, it has a secondary backup battery that can't be turned off. Hold on a sec.” They waited. “Okay, I think I activated the GPS. It's finding the phone.”
Xena couldn't remain in her seat. She stood behind Xander and held her breath.
Andrew read an address. Xena was about
to write it down when Xander said, “Are you kidding?”
“That's what it says.” Andrew repeated the address. “Why, what's the matter?”
“Not sure,” Xander said. “We'll get back to you. Thanks, Andrew.”
“What
is
it, Xander? You've got to tell me!” Xena couldn't stand the suspense.
“The address that Andrew gave me is the Borogovian mansion.”
Xena felt suddenly deflated. “So that means Alice left it behind when she was kidnapped, after all.”
“Wait a second,” Xander said slowly. “Something's been bothering me. It seems like an awfully big coincidence for the security cameras to be knocked out by the thunderstorm just at the moment Alice âran away,' don't you think?”
“Maybe the kidnappers turned off the cameras
before
the storm, and they were just lucky that a storm came up to give them an alibi. If there hadn't been a storm, they would have had to come up with some other reason the cameras were turned offâmaintenance or an accident or something,” Xena said.
“Or maybe they planned the kidnapping for
a night when a storm was predicted,” Xander suggested.
“It's also possible that someone in the security team was in on the kidnapping and blocked the cameras somehow,” Xena added. “There are lots of explanations.”
“And there's one more,” Xander said. “
Maybe Alice never left
.”
They stood frozen in thought, trying to figure out what that meant, and if it was true, how the police could have missed her.
“When you have eliminated the impossibleâ” Xander reminded Xena, starting one of their ancestor's most famous sayings.
“âwhatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,” she finished for him. It was not exactly impossible that the security system had been accidentally disabled at just the moment when Alice leftâor was taken from the mansionâbut the odds against it were astronomical.
Xander's phone beeped, signaling a text message. Probably Andrew. But no, the phone showed that the message came from Xena's phone. Xena leaned over Xander's shoulder and together they read: “Hello, Xena! Sorry I wasn't
here when you came looking for me. I had to go away for a little while, but everything's just fine. Don't bother trying to find me! Sincerely, Alice.”
“Yeah, right,” Xander said with contempt.
“There's no way Alice wrote that.” Xena nearly laughed. “Nobody would write a text with capital letters and punctuation. And âSincerely, Alice.' Oh, sure! Someone else wrote it, someone who has no idea how to text. There must have been a signal on my phone that showed we'd turned on the GPS, and whoever has Alice saw it and got nervous, and sent us this to get us off the trail.”
“As if!” Xander said.
They were both immensely cheered by the knowledge that they were getting close enough to frighten the kidnapper, though Xena tried not to think how dangerous this might be for Alice. The sooner they found her, the better.
“Let me have your phone,” she said to Xander. She punched in Andrew's number. “Hello, Andrew? Can you tell where my phone was when the earlier message was sentâthe one that really looks like Alice wrote it, the one we showed to the police?”
“When was that?”
She told him. She heard computer keys clicking, and then Andrew said, “That one came from the same address.”
“Thanks.” Xena shut the phone. “So that means Alice is still in the mansionâor at least she was when the first message was sent. But where could she be? And who put her there?”
“We haven't really thought about the prime minister,” Xander said.
“No good.” Xena shook her head. “He wasn't even in London when Alice was kidnapped.” She stopped at the knowing smile on her brother's face. “Or maybe he was! We have only his word for it that he arrived after she disappeared.”
“Let's find out when he checked into his hotel,” Xander suggested.
“We don't know what hotel he's staying in,” Xena said.
“We can figure it out. Remember he said there was construction outside? Let's find out which hotels are near construction sites.”
In a short time, Xena had identified all of London's best hotels, ones that looked like places an important foreigner would stay. Then she found a traffic site that warned of construction in the city. It was easy to put the two together
and figure out that the prime minister was most likely staying at the Hotel Bertrand. Two different Tube lines ran near it, so it should be easy to get to, she thought.
They set out for the Tube station in silence, Xena holding an umbrella over both of them. As they stopped and waited for a light to change, Xander's eye caught a figure standing under a lamppost. Why would someone just stand there in the rain? If heâor sheâwas waiting for someone, why didn't he go into a store or at least stand under an awning? “Xena, look over there,” he said in a low voice and jerked his head the slightest bit toward the unmoving person.
Xena pretended the wind had caught her umbrella, and she glanced at it and behind her shoulder as she pulled it closer overhead. She instantly saw the person Xander was referring to, wrapped in a dark raincoat with a hood pulled down tight, casting a shadow on the face. She couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman. Although the person appeared to be staring at nothing, Xena could tell that heâor sheâwas really keeping an eye on her and her brother.
Hardly moving her lips, Xena said, “We'll have to separate. I'll try to get him to follow
me, and then I'll lose him. Meet me at that church, Saint Bartholomew the Great, in twenty minutes. If I'm not there, call Mom and tell her what happened. If we shake him, we can go to the hotel, each of us on a different Tube line just in case.”
Xander nodded, and the instant the light changed, he sprinted across the street and dodged pedestrians. Although he wasn't as fast a runner as Xena, he was a good soccer player who was used to weaving around opponents, and he soon disappeared.
Just as Xena had hoped, their follower hesitated when the two of them split up. Xena took a moment to close her umbrella and then ran around the corner, hoping the stranger would follow her. It was hard to tell in the rain, but it did sound like running footsteps were behind her. She didn't stop to look around until the road curved, and then she was able to see that although the person was still there, the distance between them was increasing with every stride of her well-trained legs.
Around another corner, through an alley, and then over a small brick wall, and Xena was sure she had shaken her pursuer. She took a
roundabout route to the old church, which had a tiny open square in front of it. She pushed open the heavy door and entered the gloom.
“What took you so long?” Xander stepped out from behind a gray stone column. “I was just about to call Mom!”
Xena shook her head without answering, as she was working hard to get her breath back. She gestured toward the back of the church, where she remembered there was a door leading to a small garden. Few churches had exits in that part of the building, so if, despite all her efforts, she had been followed, the person would probably assume they were still inside and wouldn't be able to leave except through the front door. Their pursuer would be waiting there, ready to pounce.
Â
They took separate Tube lines and met up, as planned, in the park in front of the Hotel Bertrand. They had seen the hotel from a distanceâit was close to the British Museumâbut now they stood and stared before going in, not minding the rain that fell on their faces as they looked up. It was huge and ornate, built of reddish brown stone, with lots of windows,
balconies, complicated architecture, doors, stairways, and other details that were almost overwhelming.
The lobby was small but gleaming with marble, and the clerks behind the desk looked as though they had been polished. A young Asian woman smiled at them as they came in.
Xander turned on all his charm, but the clerk wouldn't budge. “We can't give out our guests' room numbers or any information on their stay with us. If you like, I can call the party you're here to visit, and he can give us permission to send you up.” She poised her hand over the house phone.
“Thank you,” Xena said hastily. “But we want it to be a surprise. We'll figure out something.”
They went back outside and stood on the sidewalk, discouraged.
“I thought there was supposed to be construction going on around here,” Xander said, surveying the cars moving by, unimpeded by anything except the traffic lights.