(40 Abacus)

The situation was quickly cleared up back in Wyatt Cain's office. All the commonplace items were there that Eddie and Pippin knew from the Yard, right down to bad coffee. Ambrose loitered to bring Wyatt his forgotten lunch, and Wyatt found some semblance of tranquillity moving the beads on a miniature abacus.

'So you're from the Other Side,' Cain summarised, 'and looking for someone named Peter Hawskins. Never heard of him.'

That wasn't surprising to Eddie. 'I'm not going back until I find him.'

Cain moved more beads, dividing six. 'You should ask your informant.'

Rudy hung his head, groaning.

*X*

(41 Ghost; 42 Impoverished; 43 Beguile)

Eddie and Pippin spent the afternoon speaking with other Tin Men, getting to know the way of things, and discovering as much as they could about Central City. Once it was established that Rudy would try and speak to his cousin about Peter Hawskins, he left to do just that. Eddie worried Rudy wouldn't know where to find them, fears that Pippin soon righted.

By evening, Pippin, Eddie, and Cain were companionable. Cain even pointed out a place for them to stay, escorting them there. Hard as it was to absorb the miraculous city while delegated to a specific task, Eddie and Pippin found themselves in the grand, old-fashioned lobby of a fine hotel.

'It has a few ghosts,' Cain said, 'but it's otherwise a nice place. What?'

'We sorta forgot that part,' Eddie confessed, mortified.

'Yeah,' Pippin bit a thumbnail, 'we forgot about money.'

Cain's shoulders dropped, exasperated. 'Should've known your guide would forget that detail. All right, well… I can work something out.'

Ten minutes and a streetcar ride later, they were in an impoverished city section called Downhill. Pippin laughed joyfully before the façade of a ramshackle building, a buzzing neon sign, part of it extinguished, declaring it was called Queen's Inn—or, rather Q-E-E-N I-N. Pippin elbowed Eddie.

'Look, Eddie, the Keen Inn!' He stopped laughing at Cain's beguiled face. 'It's a thing with this fortune cookie, and a brunette, and a—never mind.'

The innkeeper, Louie Hose, owed a dozen favours to Cain, and found it in his heart, after many proclamations from Cain, to let the two gentlemen stay for a while, come and go as they pleased, and treated like royalty. Before he left, Cain made sure Louie hadn't seen hide nor hair of Demilo.

'Ain't seen his ugly mug since Tuesday,' Louie responded.

This was sufficient for Cain. To Arlette and Pippin, he said that they'd meet at the station in the morning. But Cain turned back.

'What did Hawskins do, anyway?'

'Stole ten pounds from Eddie,' said Pippin, hoping to verify his partner's manliness.

Cain's smile was wry.

*X*

(44 Texture)

'These bed sheets are a weird texture,' ventured Pippin's tired voice into vaporous light and odd shadows. 'I'm certain they're not cotton. I'd bet your badge on it.'

'My badge?'

'Well, they could use goat fur or… Maybe lovely cotton plantations exist down south. What about tomorrow, Eddie? Talk to this Demilo who knows too much?'

'I have a feeling that tomorrows here are a whole lot different than tomorrows back on the Other Side.'

Pippin sighed, having known it would come. Eddie couldn't even refer to the Other Side as home, and they'd been away a mere ten hours.

*X*

(45 Noteworthy)

Business was conducted by the Tin Men much the same way it was by Scotland Yard. In place of Superintendent Johnson, however, Arlette and Pippin had Wyatt Cain. The next morning, bright and cool, Cain gave them papers to fill out. 'I'll file them and make you official. You'll be on my team.'

And so it was completed: Eddie Arlette and Monty Pippin became Tin Men. Whether that had been Cain's design since meeting them yesterday, witnessing their noteworthy competency, was soon understood.

A man fitting their description of Peter Hawskins was now the primary suspect in a murder investigation.

*X*

(46 Invoke; 47 Bias)

'He's not here, Eddie, that's what I'm trying to tell you!' hollered Rudy, using his sympathetic tone. They were in Eddie and Pippin's office, as mind-blowing as that was for Rudy, to see that the two of them had become so acclimated to the O.Z. so quickly. It'd barely been a day… 'According to my aunt Avespa, Anthony's gone over to the Other Side to pick up a few things.'

'Hmm,' Pippin twirled a pen between his fingers. 'Can only imagine, from what we've been told about your cousin, Rudy, that these things are voluptuous females for his caravan?'

'Pickles,' Rudy spat. 'He went to get some pickles. Can't buy him here, can you?'

'A world without pickles,' murmured Monty, disheartened. 'I knew there was something about this place I didn't like.'

'Honestly, Rudy,' said Eddie, 'if we can't talk to Antoine—Anthony—whatever the hell his name is—then the investigation's dead in the water.'

'Invoke the name Anthony when you meet him. It'll pull the bias in your favour. I still can't believe Hawskins killed that girl.'

Reading the blankness of their stares, Rudy comprehended that Eddie and Monty were having a difficult time believing it, too.

*X*

(48 Taboo; 49 Noble; 50 Freckles)

Ambrose interrupted them at the end of the day. They fathomed that Ambrose and Cain had some sort of relationship, which, during the quiet times of office hours, Eddie and Pippin had busily speculated on, after preliminary differences in O.Z. culture and O.S. culture were identified. The taboos of one culture were everyday occurrences in the other.

'And no pickles,' Monty reminded Eddie hastily. 'Not a gherkin to be had.'

But Ambrose supplied Monty with reasonable cheer: an invitation to dinner. 'It's Friday night. It's what we do every Friday night.' Ambrose had a noble, ambitious air about him. He was not as flighty as he was unable to comprehend the greatness of his mind, and thus seemed disjointed and abstruse. He explained the Friday night dinner waiting on the pavement outside Station Eleven. While fixing Cain's tie, it was always lopsided, Ambrose finished with a casually inserted:

'The princess will be glad to meet you.'

Their dinner was with Princess DG, a guy named Raw, and Cain's kid, Jeb, which further provoked Monty's interest in Ambrose and Cain's relationship. While their new friends climbed into the limousine sent by the princess, Eddie knew Monty's thoughts.

'Maybe this is just a really affectionate culture.'

'If I fixed your tie, Eddie, you'd spit on me.'

'What's wrong with my tie?' Eddie tried espying its deficiency.

Sighing, mouth pulled into a tight pucker, Monty straightened the tie's knot. It was shocking that Eddie did not, in fact, spit.

In the limousine, Ambrose made one declaration. 'No business talk, boys, I mean it. Princess DG has enough to worry about.'

The command was followed, as Eddie and Monty had the palace to distract, then gilt and chandeliers, and the princess's gregariousness. Eddie thought she had the prettiest eyes and freckles he ever saw.

*X*

(51 Execrable)

Eddie enjoyed having officers at his beck and call. One ingratiating lad dived through the Department of Resident Services to locate Rosemary Hawskins, Peter's mother. The information was on Eddie's desk after three hours. In ten minutes, they barged their way into the Hawskins home in the swanky neighbourhood of Foothill Hesse.

Peter, of course, was not there. Signs someone had used the place recently, however, gave them hope.

'I still can't believe he really killed that girl,' Eddie lamented, collapsing upon the bed in their execrable lodgings.

Eddie thought Monty put it best.

'He's a schemer, not a killer.'

*X*

(52 Trollop; 53 Stalemate)

The girl was Margot Sprig. She had no friends, no family, no money, and no real connections but those in Downhill she'd cultivated.

'She was a trollop and a crook,' informants repeated, including Louie Hose. 'If it hadn't been one guy murdering her, it'd be another, for all the trouble she caused.'

Despite that, Margot Sprig started to plague Eddie. She was still someone's daughter, someone's sister… Her murderer deserved justice. Flashing sketches of Peter Hawskins around did not help. Peter was the type who wound up being everywhere ('Yeah, I saw him, and he was with her!'), and absolutely nowhere ('Not seen him for days…'). Three days passed, then a week, the investigation narrowing into a stalemate.

Cain got them in on the first distributed paycheque, allowing Eddie and Monty to move from the "Keen Inn" and to a nicer hotel. Only, after the first night, they found they missed their room, with its spiders and leaky bathroom faucet, and went back.

'Miss us, Louie?' Eddie asked of their ugly proprietor.

'Knew you'd be back. You've got messages.'

Monty swooped upon the envelopes—telegrams, by their looks. Hoping they'd be about the case, Eddie read them over Pippin's shoulder.

*X*

(54 Yaw; 55 Tea)

Being invited by Princess DG to the next dinner Friday left Eddie yawing in the wake. Monty tried to urge Eddie's feelings forward, and explore what was happening. 'She likes you,' delivered Monty. 'You do ooze this sort of charisma and allure. And, anyway, she's from the Other Side, sort of, and that's something the two of you have in common.'

'I find it distracting.'

'Which part?'

'All of it. The whole thing. I came here to find Peter Hawskins, not have tea with princesses.'

'Very fine wine, Eddie, not tea.'

They had, through the use of their underlings, found a suitable place to socialise outside work, a pub not far from the office called Kicking Pickets. The title was perplexing to them as The Sticky Wicket was to Ambrose and Cain. Kicking Pickets made after-hours tolerable, and the ale was sweeter than what they'd known back in London. Still, Monty found it dismaying that Eddie should travel anywhere but never be out of the office, in a sense. To improve Eddie's mood, Monty reiterated an important fact.

'Rudy says Anthony will be back soon.'

'Demilo,' Eddie muttered the name resentfully. 'Just our luck, he won't know anything.'

'Yeah, probably.'

*X*

(56 Ascetic)

It rained Friday night, promising that tomorrow would be the first summery day the O.Z. had seen that season. This was the way Princess DG declared it. She was still something of a Kansas girl, after all: able to read the weather's secrets. She'd lived an ascetic existence in a small town, but enjoyed hearing Eddie Arlette disclose his viewpoints of New York and London.

'What's London like, really?' she asked, refilling his wine glass.

'Expensive,' was always the word coming to mind. He felt Monty glare. 'With nice people.'

A servant knocked, and brought forth an uninvited Rudy Alexander.

*X*

(57 Arcane)

The arcane insight of Anthony Alexander, a.k.a. Antoine Demilo, proved useless. 'About as useful as a porcuquirrel in a gorsebush,' to quote Cain. Though Cain was pleased to question Demilo about Margot Sprig.

'She was a gutless nobody who never did anything but take up space,' was Demilo's assessment. 'Good riddance, huh, Cain? You know about terminating useless people.'

When Monty entreated Ambrose to disclose information about Cain's resentment towards Demilo, Ambrose waved a quick hand, chortling.

'An old feud. Wyatt doesn't forget much. I think that's why he envies me.'

They knew him so well that details were unnecessary.

*X*

(58 Elevate; 59 Masks)

At the hotel, following more messages to Eddie from the princess (Louie was beginning to boggle), Monty fell into rumbling snores only to elevate himself from the pillow minutes later.

'Go to sleep, Eddie, please.'

'You worry about me too much.'

'Who's worried? The desk lamp is bothersome, that's all.' Monty listened to the pen scratching on Eddie's notepad, not curious about the case that time of night. Evening hours were more personal. 'Think Audry misses me?'

'Sure she does.'

'Think Fiona misses you?'

'No.'

'You miss Fiona?'

'No. You miss Audry?'

Monty shrugged. 'I miss the sex.'

Six months ago, Eddie would've frowned at the statement, and now he laughed. 'I have to point out that the sex was not with Audry. You guys wore proverbial masks to get into the swingers clubs.'

The immediate reaction was to punch the pillow. 'You've never said that word before.'

'Which? Think?'

'Sex.'

Eddie grumbled, scribbling more fiercely. Amusement rose in Monty.

'Face it, Eddie: If you're here too much longer, this place will do things to you.'

'You have my permission to leave any time you want.'

'Oh no. I won't leave until I see exactly what it does to you.'