The Deal

Suddenly it was Artie who was bent backwards, and Abi's lips were certainly not hovering over his. She was kissing him, wildly, fiercely, desperately, her greedy mouth on his, tasting him, nibbling at him, devouring him, one hand around the back of his head ruffling through his hair, the other caressing his face and shoulders and back, while her nubile young body was pressed against him, lying on top of him...

It was something like fighting off an octopus, but he managed at last to break the liplock. "Abi! Great jumping balls of St Elmo's Fire, what was that?"

"I'm sorry!" Abruptly she vanished, reappearing at the far end of the sofa, knees drawn up and head drawn down, crouched in a fetal position. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

"Abi! Great Scott, child!" He stretched a hand out toward her.

"Don't touch me!"

"Ah… Abi, I'm not going to hurt you. You don't have to be afraid of me."

"It's not you I'm afraid of," she murmured brokenly. "Oh, this was a bad idea! I didn't think this through. I never should have come!"

"Would you explain to me, Abi, what you are talking about?"

"He said I was going to act like a fan girl, and I laughed. But he was right! I glomped you and kissed you, and I wanted to kiss you and kiss you and go on kissing you and… I need to get out of here! I need to go home!"

"And you know that isn't going to happen until Jim comes back and tells you that you can go." And consarn it, Jim, what's keeping you? "Abi," he added, "when you mentioned daydreams, what you really meant was not simply meeting me and talking with me. You really meant…"

She wouldn't look at him. "…that I was daydreaming about kissing you, yes."

"Kissing! Abi my girl, that was not a kiss; that was an attack!"

"Well, I… You kept teasing me with kisses, and I finally couldn't stand it any longer. I… Artemus, I love you."

And now she thought she was in love - just as he had expected. "Abi," he sighed, "you can't be in love with someone you've just met."

"But it's not like that. For me, I've known you all my life, and been in love with you for most of it." She looked at him with large and miserable eyes, then buried her face in her arms again. "I wish I hadn't come."

"It's a little late for that, you know." As she nodded, he regarded her, mulling things over. "Look," he said at length, "how about this: I won't tease you with kisses anymore, and you don't attack me anymore. All right?"

She nodded again.

"But you do understand, don't you, that you have to tell me everything! Or at least," he added as she began to protest, "everything you haven't made a promise not to mention. All right?"

"All right. But I was already willing to do that. You didn't need to… to kiss me into compliance. It's just that…" She sighed and hid her face in her arms once more. "Like I already said. You won't believe a word of it."

He held a hand out to her. "And as I already said: Try me."

She looked at the hand. "You sure you want me anywhere near you?" she asked pointedly.

"Well. As long as you don't… what was your word? glomp me? I think I'm fairly safe."

Slowly she unfolded herself from her fetal position. She slid closer, then sat sideways on the sofa, facing him. She regarded him for a long time and finally said, "All right. It… Well, I guess the place to start is with Bandy."

"All right. Who's Bandy?"

"Bandit. My little dog. He…" She swallowed, tears beginning to rim her eyelids. "I call him my little puggle boy - part pug, part beagle. Called him, I mean. He…" She lifted the hem of that garish vest and dabbed at her eyes. "Ok, see, I came home from work, and Dad wasn't home yet. Which is normal; his commute is like an hour and a half longer than mine. And there was Bandy, all happy to see me after being cooped up in the house alone all day. So I took him out for a walk. Same as always. Let the little guy run out his wiggles. Ok?

"Well, back behind the house is this peach orchard. Bandy likes - liked - me to throw sticks for him out there. He never would fetch anything for me, just run after it and, I don't know, bark it into submission. Then come chasing back and want me to throw another stick.

"That's… that's what we were doing when…" She stopped and bowed her head.

"Go on, Abi."

"This is where it gets weird. I don't know how to…" She sighed heavily, then looked him in the eye. "Artemus, I had just thrown a stick and it landed in the middle of the orchard and, and then the ground began to shake."

"All right. You had an earthquake."

"But we don't have earthquakes where I live! I've never heard of any. And anyway, what happened next was certainly no earthquake!"

"Go on."

She looked up at the ceiling and closed her eyes. "This… this thing erupted up out of the ground. Ok? It was… well, there's no other word for it. It was a tentacle."

"A tentacle," he echoed.

"Yes! You see? I told you you wouldn't believe me!"

"Go on."

She paused, then continued. "It was, uh, pink. Or maybe kind of orange. Anyway, it kept stretching up higher and higher. And then there were more of them in a kind of ring around… Um… Around a…" She ducked her head as she said the next word, muffling it.

"Around a what?" Artie prompted.

Again she looked up at the ceiling. "A mouth," she said. "Ok? The thing had a mouth in the middle, opening and closing and…" She shuddered. "And Bandy was barking at it, running in and back, scared but brave, the way a small dog will act, you know. And then…" Tears started to roll down her cheeks and she lifted the hem of her vest to mop at them.

Artie slipped closer and laid a hand on her shoulder. "Abi?"

"Oh Artemus! One of the tentacles snaked out and, and grabbed Bandy and took him up and… and dropped him into the monster's mouth. It, it ate him!" And at that point, she lost control completely and began crying in earnest.

Artie pulled the sobbing girl into his arms and held her, murmuring soft sounds of comfort to her. Whether he believed her or not - and he and Jim had seen some truly unbelievable things over the years - obviously Abi believed she had seen what she was describing. She wept, grieving over her little dog, while he held her, letting her cry herself out.

At length she fell silent, resting her head against his chest. He kissed the top of her head gently, comfortingly. And she stiffened.

"You said you weren't going to tease me with kisses anymore."

"That wasn't teasing. Or at least, I didn't intend it to be teasing, little Abi. It was supposed to be consoling."

"I'm not little Abi," she said.

"For right now you are. You can be little Abi for a while as you mourn for your pet. And I can be Uncle Artie, commiserating with you."

She snuggled deeper into his arms. "All right. But I'm not a little girl."

Gently he placed another kiss on the top of her head and said, "Big girl then."

She gave a hiccup of a laugh and whispered, "Oh you!"

He gave her another minute to compose herself, then asked, "What happened next, Abi?"

"I… I don't want to remember. It was awful! The… that monster. It…" She shuddered again. "It… spat out… It was like a husk, floating down. It… had emptied out Bandy and…" A raw edge of hysteria was creeping into her voice.

"Shhh," said Artie hastily. "You don't have to remember that part. What came after?"

"What came after is that the tentacles came after me! And I was so scared, I was paralyzed. Like when you were trying to get me away from that nest of rattlesnakes, and I couldn't move."

"But you evidently did move, because you're here now."

"I didn't move. Someone moved me. A hand grabbed my wrist and a voice said, 'Run!' And he dragged me away - just in time."

"He," said Artie. "The same he? The British he?"

She nodded. "Once I started running, I didn't stop until I saw Bandy's doghouse and dove inside it. Then I peered out and asked the stranger who had just saved my life, 'What is that thing?' And he… babbled."

"He what?"

She looked up at him. "You're the linguist, Artemus. I wish you could have heard him, because maybe you could have made head or tails out of what he was saying. As for me… I mean, I graduated college. I have a degree in Mathematics with a minor in Physics - you want fries with that?"

"Huh?"

"Never mind. It's a joke. The point is that I used to hang out with the brains, the math and science geeks. I picked up all kinds of scientific and technical jargon when I was at the University. And that man's talk had me baffled! He finally got to the end and said, 'Right?' And all I could say was, 'Right what?'

"Well… He reached inside his overcoat and pulled out this gadget about the size of a softball and also a very large slingshot and he told me, 'I'm going to kill it. And you're going to help me.'"

The size of a what? Artie wondered, but did not interrupt.

"His plan," Abi continued, "was for me to stand just outside the range of the tentacles and draw the monster's attention so that it would open its mouth, and then he would use the slingshot to lob the gadget - well, I called it a fiendish thingy; it was some sort of bomb - down the thing's gullet. And I told him he was nuts to think I was going to risk my life and be bait for that thing, and I retreated inside the doghouse.

"That's when he offered me the deal: if I would cooperate and help him kill the monster in my back yard, he would give me a trip. One trip, anywhere I wanted to go, and then back home again. Well, I didn't have to think about that at all. I knew where I wanted to go. I wanted to come meet you. So - we blew up the monster, and then he brought me here."

She said no more, simply rested against him, her cheek on his shoulder, looking up at him, waiting. Would he believe her?

Artie frowned, thinking. The tale was incredible, of course. But how many times had he and Jim dealt with the incredible - standing at the edge of normalcy and looking over into the abyss of insanity, into a world where the impossible was all too present? The time when Dr Loveless had introduced him to Jim shrunk to a height of six inches came to mind. So did a certain man who had prepared a potion from diamonds to permit him to move impossibly fast, and another man who had used the prodigious power of his focused mind to transport them bodily into the past.

Artie's arm tightened around Abi briefly, and he smiled down at her. "And here you are. But how did your friend know where to find me? Jim and I didn't even know we'd be here till we arrived yesterday. So how could your friend know to bring you here?"

"He, ah…" Severely editing the truth, she said, "He's just very good at showing up at the right place and the right time. He certainly did for me."

Hmm, thought Artie, that was a non-answer. But he decided to let that pass. "Tell me, Abi," he went on. "Who is he? I know you said that he made you promise not to say anything about him, but I really need to… What was that?"

Abi's pocket had beeped again.

"What, uh… what was what?" said Abi.

"I heard a chirp," said Artie. "And there was a buzzing as well. Some sort of vibration. It was right here between us."

"A cricket?" she suggested.

"No, it sounded more mechanical than that, not like something alive. Get up, Abi. I want to search." And as soon as she vacated the sofa, Artie started rummaging under the cushions, feeling around for whatever had made the sound.

Taking advantage of her cousin's distraction, Abi glanced about, then slipped into the galley for some privacy to check her phone. The latest message read:

Stop ignoring me. Time 2 go NOW.

Bringing up her saved draft, she swiftly added the final three letters and the full stop so that it read "On train called Wanderer." Then she pressed Send.

Ugh! She had forgotten! The incoming message tone was a beep, but the outgoing tone was a warble. And there was no way Artemus could have missed hearing that!

In fact, here he was now, suddenly appearing in the galley doorway. Quickly she snapped the phone shut and jammed it into her pocket, but not quickly enough.

He loomed over her. "Abi, what was that?" he demanded.

"What was what?" she asked again, looking up at him with those big wide innocent brown eyes of hers.

"The thing I just saw you put in your pocket," he responded.

"…pocket?"

He sighed. "Abi, don't do this. I was beginning to like you, and was hoping I could trust you. Hand it over to me right now, whatever it is you're concealing from me." He held out his hand. "Right now, Abi."

Abruptly she turned and bolted out the other galley door behind her and found herself in the corridor. She glanced left, then turned right and hit the door that let her back into the parlor.

Artie sighed. He paused a second to let her get well inside the parlor in the hopes that she wouldn't double back and lead him on a chase up the corridor, then he burst through the door he had just entered by, his hand automatically reaching to pull the cord in the cabinet to his left which would engage the bolts on the main door of the varnish car, locking her in.

Surprisingly though, she wasn't running for that door, nor was she doubling back toward the corridor. Instead, he found she wasn't running at all. She was standing at the far side of the table from him, picking up the crackers from her plate and cramming them, one right after another, into her mouth.

He folded his arms and leaned against the door frame. "All right, Abi, what are you doing?"

She pointed at her mouth, made a mumbling sound and shook her head.

Smiling sweetly at her, he said, "Yes I see, Abi. You have your mouth full so you can't talk to me right now. Do you realize how childish that makes you look? And you can't stay like that forever. Eventually you'll either have to swallow or spit out the mess - preferably the former. But it's not really putting anything off, chère cousine, because I'm not asking you to talk to me; I'm asking you to hand over the device you have in your pocket." And he held out his hand again.

And she again shook her head.

Artie considered making a lunge for her, but with the table squarely between them, he could envision any attempt to grab her turning rapidly into a game of Ring-a-Ring-a-Rosie. So instead, he started clearing the table.

She watched him warily, her mouth still full, her eyes showing how much she was wondering what he was up to. He went on blithely piling things onto the silver tray, then took it up and went into the galley to set the laden tray on the counter. His back was to her for a couple of seconds, but he had no fear now of her running away. Curiosity, he was sure, would keep her where she was.

And he was right.

The only items left on the table now were the four glasses. He took up both glasses of sherry and drank from his own. "Mmm," he sighed appreciatively. "That's good. I was thirsty. Aren't you thirsty, Abi?" He smiled congenially at her as he set her sherry down behind him on the cabinet between the two doors, then picked up one of her remaining glasses. "Which is this one, I wonder? Water, or ginger water? They look so much alike." He set that glass down on the cabinet as well, then took up her final glass. "You must certainly be very thirsty by now, Abi. Those crackers are so dry, aren't they? Dry and hard to swallow. No matter how much you try. How will you ever swallow them, Abi, unless you have something to wash them down?" He studied her glass in his hand, swirling its contents gently, then glanced over at her again. He smiled amiably and finished off his own glass, then set both glasses he'd been holding down on the cabinet. Stepping back, he waved a hand at her three glasses and said, "There they are, Abi. Help yourself whenever you'd like." And he folded his arms, waiting.

His words had certainly worked their magic. Her mouth was as dry as cotton. She munched away diligently, wishing she hadn't tried to out-clever him with the crackers. After two unsuccessful attempts to swallow, she gave up and came around to the cabinet.

Excellent. He had lured her to the same side of the table with him. "I believe the one in the middle is the water," he said helpfully.

Not sure if she should believe him - he was obviously up to something - she ignored the sherry and picked up the other two glasses. She sniffed them. Detecting the odor of vinegar in the left-hand glass, she set that one down and drank the other. Ah! She managed at last to swallow those infernal crackers. "Oh, that's better!" she sighed as she put down the empty glass.

"I'm sure it is," his voice purred from directly behind her. Before she could react, he slipped his arms around her waist, pulling her close. Leaning his head near her ear, he said, "Hello again, Abi."

She stiffened in his arms and whispered, "You're doing it again! You promised not to tease me!"

"But this isn't a kiss. It's an embrace. You can have as many of those as you'd like. Besides," and she could feel his breath tickling against the side of her neck, "is it really a tease if you actually get the kiss?"

This time he was expecting it. As a whimper escaped her, he loosened his arms slightly, knowing what she was going to do. Sure enough, she whirled and threw her arms around his neck, pulling at him, trying to drag his head down toward hers. But he took charge this time and pressed his mouth to hers first, overcoming her frenzy with a long slow kiss that took her breath away. Her hands fluttered and came to rest on his shoulders, then slipped up into his hair as his arms tightened around her waist again, drawing her closer, pressing her sweet young body against him. It was not an unpleasant sensation, actually, and Artie allowed himself a moment to enjoy the experience before continuing on with the business at hand. Keeping his right arm where it was to hold her securely against him, he discreetly moved the left, sending his hand quietly into the pocket of her riding skirt to liberate its contents.

"Got it," he said and stepped back.

"Huh? What?" His sudden absence confused her for a second. Then what he had done hit her. She slapped at her pocket, finding it empty. "Oh! You sneak! You, you pickpocket!"

"Mm-hmm!" he grinned. "Didn't they ever mention that particular talent of mine as they were telling you all those stories?"

He was fully expecting her to slap him, knowing he deserved it, and was a bit confused when she didn't. Suddenly she was laughing, a sparkle in her eyes as she skipped away from him, moving toward the very same cabinet where he'd placed all her glasses. "Of course they told me!" she said. "That's why it wasn't in my pocket anymore." And from a small eye-level shelf at the side of the cabinet she retrieved the same item he'd seen her hide in her pocket. She waggled it at him, grinned mischievously, then stowed it in her pocket once more.

"What? How did you…?"

"I put it up there as soon as I ran back in here, while you were still in the kitchen."

"Galley."

"Yeah, that. Then I started eating the crackers to throw you off. I did well?"

His mouth hung open for a second before he managed to stammer out, "Y-yes… yes, Abi, you did very well. Where did you ever learn to do a thing like that?"

"Well, duh! From you, of course! All those stories."

He shook his head in wonder. The little scamp, she had managed to gull him! And now he looked down at what he had extracted from her pocket. "So if the thing I was after was over there the whole time, what is this?"

"Well, that's the strange thing," said Abi. "I don't remember having anything else in… there…" She saw now what he had in his hands: a piece of paper, folded down small, which he was briskly unfolding. Her eyes went wide. "Oh no! No no no! I put that in my pocket? No, Artemus, you're not supposed to see that either! Give it back!" And she tried to snatch it from him.

The much-taller Artemus moved the paper out of her reach by the simple expedient of holding it over his head. "Ah-ah-ah!" he told her. "I stole this fair and square, and it's mine now. What's so important about it, hmm?"

It was at this point that the door to the rear platform opened and James West walked in. "Well, Artie," he was already saying as he closed the door behind him, "the short version is that Hansen managed to get away, so we'll have to…" He trailed off as he caught sight of the odd scene before him: Artie holding a sheet of paper high over his head, while that girl - what was her name? Abi? - was at his side jumping like a jackrabbit in her stocking feet, trying frantically to snatch the paper away.

"Please, Artemus!" she was crying, very nearly in both meanings of the word. "Give it back! I printed that out to show the Doctor. I didn't mean for you to see it!"

Instantly on the alert, Jim said, "Doctor? Doctor who - Loveless?"

"I don't know, Jim," said Artie, "but I think we may be about to find out."

Pointing at the girl, Jim ordered her to "Sit!" Miserably, she sat. Crossing to Artie's side, Jim looked on as his friend spread the paper out flat on the table.

Two photographs were printed on it side by side in crisp sepia tones. "Well that one's you," said James, tapping the photo on the left.

"Yes, and this other is my cousin Elias Gordon, Abi's purported grandfather." He lifted the edge of the paper, rubbing it between thumb and forefinger, frowning.

"Something wrong, Artie?"

"Well," he replied, shaking his head, "there's something… different about this paper. The ink too. It doesn't feel quite, I don't know, normal." He shook his head again. "I can't quite put my finger on what, Jim, but there's definitely something off about it." Turning to the girl, he said, "And you say you printed this? You know how to run a printing press, Abi?" He glanced at Jim, both of them thinking of the fact that Hansen was a counterfeiter in possession of a printing press. Perhaps, Artie thought with a sinking feeling, the child was a better actress than he had given her credit for; perhaps she had gulled him more than he knew.

For her part, Abi was sitting on the far sofa, knees drawn up, folded arms resting on them, chin propped on her arms, refusing to look at the men and remaining completely incommunicado.

Artie held the paper up to the light to check for the watermark, then flipped it over. There was more on the back. This was handwritten in pencil rather than printed. Across the top was the title GORDON. Below that were numerous interconnected horizontal brackets interspersed with vertical descenders.

"My family tree," Artie said, studying it, noting his own name filled in on the left-hand side. In fact, his was the only name filled in on that side. The other side, which was more complex, was also incomplete, having only five names actually filled in.

Starting at his own name, he traced up the brackets, through his father and grandfather, crossing over to the right-hand side, coming down to "Elias. And this mark next to him should be labeled Rufus." The bracket below Elias had room for seven descendants; only one was labeled. Tapping one of the others, Artie said, "And this one is Dale. Following down from Harper," which was the only name filled in for that generation, he reached a bracket for five descendants, none of them labeled. The second descendant here led down to the next bracket - room for four, again none labeled. The fourth carried on the descent to a bracket for two. The first here was labeled "Chas. Married Ellen." And the sole descendant below that was "Abi."

The girl spoke up then. "You see? I told you I was only partly lying about that. I am Elias's granddaughter. I just left out all the greats."

Starting at the girl's name, Artie went back up through the brackets, working out the real relationship. "Triple great," he said. "You're Elias's great-great-great-granddaughter."

"You understand what that's implying," put in Jim. Placing his thumb on Abi's name and his forefinger on Elias's, he said, "That many generations has to span well over a century of time. So how can she be here - now - and be who this paper claims she is?"

"Right," said Artie. "Either she's lying, or she traveled through time."

"And you and I know for a fact that time travel is possible," said Jim.

"What?" The girl's head came up off her arms. "You know it's possible? Are you saying that… that you've traveled through time?"

Artie shrugged modestly. "Once or twice."

For the first time since just before Jim arrived, a smile lit her face. Eagerly she asked them, "Do you know the Doctor then?"

Again she mentioned a doctor! "Doctor who?" said Jim. "Are you talking about Dr Loveless? You don't mean that Loveless is capable of time travel now, do you?"

"That would bode ill for the world," put in Artie.

"Dr Loveless," Abi repeated. "You mean that…" and she held her hand out at about four feet off the floor. Pulling some phrases from her memory, she said, "That brilliant, twisted little man. The evil mad genius. That little man with a giant rage against the world."

"Against the universe," Artie corrected.

"You know him, Abi," Jim stated.

"No, I've only heard of him," she replied. And to Artie she added, "He shows up in a lot of the stories. Somewhere around a dozen times."

"The stories your dad and grandpa told you, you mean?"

"Yes. Meaning Chas and William Mackenzie Gordon, not, uh, not Harper and Elias Gordon."

"Well, that makes more sense, at least. I had wondered how my exploits could have formed the bulk of your bedtime stories."

"Getting back to Dr Loveless," said Jim. "Where is he, Abi?"

"How should I know? He's not my Doctor. My Doctor is taller than either of you. Skinny as a rail too. Now, mad - yeah, that fits him. And genius as well. But not evil. My Doctor's not evil."

"But who is he?" Jim persisted. "What's his name?"

"Like I already told Artemus, he didn't tell his name. He just said he was the Doctor. The Doctor."

"What, as if he were the only one?" said Jim with a snort. "Sounds like he could rival Loveless when it comes to arrogance."

"The definite article, you might say," quipped Artie.

"Oh, I like that!" said Abi. "I'll have to…"

"Shh!" Jim held up his hand for silence, then murmured, "You hear that, Artie?"

"I sure do. There's somebody outside talking…" He paused and listened some more. "And that was a whinny. Talking to a horse?"

"Mine is tied to the railing of the rear platform."

"Ah," said Artie. Reaching over, he gave a tug on the cord he'd nearly pulled earlier. Immediately the bolts on the main door engaged, locking it firmly.

A silhouette appeared on the frosted glass of that door, a tall man with his forelock standing up. Without bothering to knock, the man outside rattled the doorknob. The door of course did not budge. A second later a bright blue light shown through the glazing, accompanied by an intense high-pitched whine.

The bolts slid back. The door opened.

"Not deadlocked then," said a cheerful voice with a British accent. And in stepped a tall lean man dressed in brown - dark brown pinstriped suit under a huge light brown overcoat. Loud tie, somewhat askew. Wild brown hair, very much askew. Bright red shoes of some unfamiliar design - made of canvas, perhaps?

He strode in talking, and his mouth just never quit. "Hullo, then. What a lovely day! Don't mind me; just looking for Abi. And what a beautiful varnish car you have! Those revolvers there - they don't really fire, do they?" and he pointed to a brace of ivory-handled hand guns mounted on a rectangular base at the corner of the desk. "Ah, there you are, Abi," he continued, not waiting for an answer. "I see you found your uncle or cousin or whatever he is. And a good day to you, sir, lovely meeting you!" He was now in front of Artemus, shaking his hand enthusiastically. "I can certainly see the family resemblance. Such brilliant brown eyes! Rather partial to brown eyes myself," and he waggled his eyebrows, calling attention to the deep shade of his own eyes. "Or at least currently. Not to be disparaging however," and now he was shaking West's hand warmly, "to any non-brown-eyed people in the room, of course."

Reaching inside his jacket, the man produced a small ID wallet, saying, "I'm the Doctor. Dr John Smith, young Abi's physics tutor…" He flipped open the wallet, displaying the small white rectangle of paper within. "…as you can see. And I must say," he went on, flipping the wallet closed again, "what a brilliant student she is! Quite beyond the typical physics student of this day and age…"

Artie had put out his hand, trying to examine the alleged ID. As the Doctor was speaking the words "Quite beyond," Artemus stepped all over his line with, "I'd like another look at that, please."

"Hmm? What? Oh! Oh, yes. Yes of course," the Doctor responded, handing over the wallet. "You'll find it quite in order, naturally. Dr John Smith, tutor of physics. Physics, physics, physics!" He continued on gabbling while Artie studied the white paper.

Indeed, at first it did seem to have on it the very words the Doctor claimed. Blocking out the skinny fellow's inane chatter, the trained Secret Service agent took a closer look. Then he nudged Jim and passed the wallet to him.

"Blank," said West.

"Completely blank," Gordon agreed.

The Doctor, who had been keeping up his continuous flow of words all the while that the paper was being inspected, nattered on for a couple more sentences before what the two men had said suddenly registered on him. "Blank!" he exclaimed. "What, blank?" He took back the ID and looked at it for himself. "Well, what do you know - blank! Imagine that!" And he tossed the wallet away over his shoulder.

Clapping his hands together, he turned his back to the agents, saying, "Abi my dear, are you ready to go now? Oh, but I can see," and here, in stalking back across the room he bent and scooped up the ID wallet and tucked it away again in his jacket, all without breaking stride, "that you are not, because those shoes - those precious, ridiculous cowboy boots you absolutely had to wear - are over here at this chair along with your hat." On the word "hat," with a flick of his wrist, the Doctor skimmed the hat through the air to her, landing it neatly in her lap. Grabbing up the boots, he added, "Found they were rubbish, did you?" as he stuffed the pair of them, together, into an outside pocket of his overcoat. "Which is why I brought you the trainers I recommended." And from the very same pocket, also together, he produced a pair of shoes much like the ones he was wearing, only somewhat smaller and bright purple. "Here's one… and the other…" He tossed them to her, one at a time, something like a juggler tossing Indian clubs to a partner. "Now if you'll just get those on, Abi, we'll be out of the nice gentlemen's hair. Very attractive hair too, I might add."

Spotting something interesting near the mounted guns on the desk, he exclaimed, "How brilliant!" and popped open the false set of books, exposing the telegraphic key hidden within. "Working?" he added, giving it a few experimental taps.

"Get away from that!"

"Oops!" grinned the Doctor, eyes gleaming. "Wonder what I said?" Turning to the fireplace, he said, "But this! I love this!" Unerringly he found the latch that caused the fireplace to swing out. "An escape hatch through the fireplace!" he said admiringly. "You know, I once met the most charming lady through a fireplace. Well, she was a little girl when I first spotted her. Reinette, they called her. Isn't that delightful? Means 'little queen.' " Eyes far away in reminiscence, he added, "She turned out brilliant…"

"Reinette?" said Artie. "Are you referring to Madame de Pompadour?"

"The very one! Ever meet her? Oh, but of course not. The dates are all wrong." Fading off into nostalgia once more, he added, "What a pity the clockwork men were determined to steal her brain… Still, it all worked in the end. Well… sort of…"

Spotting Abi hopping up off the sofa, he continued with, "Ready now, my dear? Say 'Good-bye' to the nice gentlemen then."

"Good-bye."

With a low bow to the agents, the Doctor said, declaiming:
"And whether we shall meet again I know not.
Therefore our everlasting farewell take:
For ever, and for ever, farewell."

And turning to Abi, he took her hand with a cry of "Allons-y!" and whirled her out the door.