by Renee Duke
“Get what you wanted?” Paige asked the professional photographer upon his return.
“I did,” Uncle Trevor replied. “Two rolls of film are being developed as we speak. Rolls containing close-up shots of the Wolverton-Hernes’ nosh-up with Deputy Führer Hess, Reich Minister Ribbentrop, and, as an unexpected bonus, Reichsführer Himmler. Percy was ecstatic. Me too. They’ll go so well with the recording and the Dachau pictures.”
“Good lunch?” Jack inquired.
“Very. Even with Hess and Himmler’s food preferences holding sway, they tucked into quite a spread. Those two were both vegetarians.” He explained. “Like the Führer.”
“Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian?” Dane sounded incredulous.
“Claimed to be, although it’s said the odd Bavarian sausage and other meaty morsels did find their way down. Went with that type of diet for health reasons, but was also a great lover of animals and an admirer of the German composer, Richard Wagner, who thought hunting animals and eating meat was uncivilized.”
“It is,” said Dane. “I’d like to be a vegetarian. I already don’t eat a lot of meat, but I can’t talk Mum into letting me cut it out altogether while I’m still a ‘growing boy’. I have got her to only buy free range eggs and milk, though, instead of what comes from chickens and cows that spend their whole lives stuffed into crates. She also makes sure our meat’s been humanely raised and slaughtered. As far as any kind of slaughter can be considered humane.”
“And he’s off,” Paige moaned. “Now that he knows Hitler was a vegetarian and really liked animals, he’s probably going to turn into as big a Führer fan as Marta.”
“Uh-uh,” said Dane. He shook his head firmly. “No way.”
Chapter Eighteen
After Uncle Trevor picked up his prints, they spent the rest of the day in various pursuits and awoke the next morning to the sound of a disturbance down in the lobby.
“This is outrageous!” Cousin Percy was shouting. “With such an efficient police force in this country, I didn’t expect to be a victim of theft inside a backwater guesthouse.”
“It was hardly theft, Herr Wolverton-Herne,” Herr Altmeyer replied in a weary tone. “Your father told me the girls could take your books.”
“Only the ones we’d finished reading. Not all of them,” Cousin Hermione shrieked as Uncle Trevor and the children moved closer to the stairs to listen.
“They were not to know which ones had not been read when all were on the same table,” said Herr Altmeyer.
“That one shouldn’t have been,” thundered Uncle Jasper directing his fury to Cousin Percy. “As far as I knew, all the books on that table were ones we’d finished. When I said the girls could have them I had no idea you were going to bring Titus’s book down to the lobby and then forget to take it back up when you went to bed.”
“Hermione and I only came down here because you were snoring so loudly in the next room,” Cousin Percy said defensively. “We’d have read it upstairs, otherwise.”
“You were snoring rather badly last night, Jasper,” Aunt Lavinia verified.
“Don’t make excuses for him, Lavinia. He’s an idiot. And because he’s an idiot, our ancestor’s lost book has been lost yet again.”
“You can get it back for us, can’t you, Herr Altmeyer?” Aunt Lavinia entreated.
“Perhaps. If the girls or their Jungmädel leader have not already sold it. Until they return to their meeting place, we cannot know this.”
“When’s that likely to be?” Cousin Percy snapped out.
“Probably not for some time. They will be collecting for charity all morning and possibly all afternoon. They are very zealous.”
“Where do they meet?” Uncle Jasper demanded.
“I will write the address for you.”
A few minutes later the front door slammed and the eavesdroppers returned to their rooms to dress.
“Our fellow guests sounded a mite put out earlier this morning,” Uncle Trevor said later, at breakfast.
Herr Altmeyer sighed. “Marta and Monika returned early from the Kepplers’ skiing trip. They remembered they had an end-of-year quota to fill as regards collecting money for the Winterhilfswerk. Marta knows the guests here are often generous. Just after you retired last evening, she telephoned and asked me to solicit unwanted items that could be sold for the cause. Which, despite being Nazi instigated, is a worthy one.”
“And the book the Wolverton-Hernes were throwing such a fit over?”
“Accidentally left beside those Jasper Wolverton-Herne said the girls could take from the table in the lobby. I asked him just before he and his wife went to bed last night, and when the girls came by early this morning, I let them have them. I did not know another, very valuable, book had been added.”
“Well, luckily, Jasper seems more inclined to blame Percy than you.”
“As long as he does not blame Marta. It was by no means her fault.”
“Seeing as she’s back, it might be a good idea for us to be on our way,” Uncle Trevor mused. “Jack’s arm’s almost better and she might let slip that I’m not as in tune with the Wolverton-Hernes’ way of thinking as we’ve led them to believe.”
“I understand.” Herr Altmeyer smiled. “When next you come to Germany, this guesthouse will have new owners, but they will make you welcome. They are not Nazis. I made sure of that.” The smile faded. “But, of course, once war comes, you will not come.”
They made a brief visit to the Reitzels to make their farewells and then returned to the guesthouse, where Jack went to the Altmeyers’ apartment to announce their departure and Paige and Dane went upstairs to gather up their belonging and help Uncle Trevor pack them into his suitcase.
“Despite the grimness of it, I shall miss this era once we’re back in our own,” Uncle Trevor remarked.
Paige and Dane both frowned. They knew they had to get away from the Wolverton-Hernes, but still balked at leaving Pre-World War Two Germany with no clear assurance that Nicko and his family would be safe in the turbulent years to come. Though it was not being insistent, the medallion was tingling off and on, and they knew, if they left, they wouldn’t be able to come back.
“We can’t go back to our own time yet,” said Paige, stuffing the surplus clothing they had acquired from the Reitzels into the suitcase. “Not the way things are. We can avoid the Wolverton-Hernes by moving to another guesthouse and steering clear of any places we might run into them.”
“It’s not like they’ll be looking for us,” Dane chimed in. “Once Herr Altmeyer tells them we’ve gone back to England, they’ll think we have.”
“Suppose they ask their Nazi friends to stop us?” Uncle Trevor put forward. “Be a bit difficult to keep the Brases out of a concentration camp if we were in one ourselves.”
“They wouldn’t do that to foreign visitors,” said Dane. “Not yet. Our countries aren’t at war with them yet.”
“I’m sure they could hold us on some pretext. Or arrange for us to have an unfortunate accident.”
“You’re just being pessimistic, Uncle Trevor. That’s usually Paige’s job.”
“And Paige is usually sensible. Weighs all the risks.”
“There are some risks,” Paige conceded. “But sometimes, risks have to be taken. Like when we were trying to find Skookaweethp. If we hadn’t found her our lives would have stayed in disarray.” She shook her head. “Even now I still don’t get some of the things Khatcheres changed. I mean, the house swap, our parents’ careers, and the trouble with Jack’s birth parents were all major and, for Khatcheres, successfully upsetting, but some of the other stuff seemed pointless. Like our birthdays. I didn’t pay much attention at the time, but I later remembered Dad telling Jack we moved to the ‘new’ house just after I turned two and said Dane was born a couple of months later. Dane’s birthday’s only a couple of weeks after mine, not a couple of months. Why change that?”
“Not sure,” said Uncle Trevor. “Though, I suppose, if his birt
hday had remained in June, but yours had moved up to April, you would have been premature, and premature babies are a bit delicate at first. Coming from a time before the miracles of modern medicine, Khatcheres might have thought a premature child would expire, leaving fewer seekers to go after the Arcanus Piece.”
“Well, unfortunately for him, I survived, and we did go after it. Getting it helped us fix everything that went wrong, and having it go wrong in the first place just made us even more determined to thwart him by rescuing Varteni. And anyone else we can,” she added, giving Uncle Trevor a challenging look.
Capitulating with an amiable, “Righty-ho,” he snapped the suitcase shut and headed for the stairs. “I suppose, if we were to get arrested, we could conceivably escape our captors by saying the connecting rhyme. I trust you’d be willing to go back to the twenty-first century under those circumstances?”
“I guess we’d have to be,” said Dane.
“Well, when we do, do you think the shirt and vest I found for Jack look enough like the originals to pass muster?”
“Hard to say.” Dane replied as they got to the bottom of the stairs. “Wardrobe people check things over pretty carefully when they’re handed in.”
“I’m sure we can come up with up some sort of explanation for them.”
“Can you come up with some sort of explanation for me, Hastings? If that’s actually your name.”
Cousin Percy stepped out of the hallway that led to the Altmeyers’ apartment. Jack was with him, his wrist held fast.
“I saw little Jack here coming out of the Altmeyers’ personal quarters. He told me you were out so I decided to wait with him until you got back. Even though I thought you probably weren’t out. Seems I was right. I also thought that, when you did show up, you’d be in flight. Which the suitcase indicates you are.” Cousin Percy let go of Jack and shoved him toward the others.
“Um, care to enlighten me as to what you’re talking about, young fellow?” Uncle Trevor queried, thinking how strange it felt to call someone, who, in his own time, was almost fifty years his senior, ‘young fellow’.
“I’ve just come from some Jungmädel headquarters, where my wife and parents are still trying to track down something of value that was mistakenly taken from us. While there I got to chatting with one of the leaders. She asked where we were staying. The conversation then somehow got on to Gasthaus Altmeyer’s only other guests. I told her how much in harmony we were. How much you admired the Führer, and, like us, thought the rise of the Nazi party was the best thing that could have happened to Germany. She said that surprised her because, from what Marta had told her, she believed Herr Hastings to be a very good friend of Marta’s grandfather, and in full agreement with his decidedly anti-Nazi opinions.”
“Really? Well, children do get thing wrong, you know. I’m always cordial to Herr Altmeyer, but—”
“Don’t waste my time, Hastings. You’re not a Nazi sympathizer. More likely an English spy placed here by our government to entrap, and denounce, those of us with the vision to realize the Nazis are the world’s future masters and it’s in our interests to work with them rather than against them. No wonder you were so obliging when it came to taking our photos. Photos you intend to take straight to Whitehall. But you won’t be doing that. You’ll be giving them to me instead.”
“I rather doubt it,” Uncle Trevor replied. “I developed them last night and posted them off to London less than an hour ago.”
For a moment, Cousin Percy looked horrified. Then his face hardened. “I don’t believe that, Hastings. You wouldn’t be in such a hurry to leave if the photos were safely on their way to London. I think they’re still on your camera. Where is your camera? In the suitcase? Must be. Hand it over.”
Uncle Trevor laughed. “Come, now, Percy. I have no intention of doing that, and I seriously doubt you can make me. You might be a good bit younger than me, but I’m a tad heavier, and reasonably fit. You’re no match for me.”
“This is.”
“My, my, you lot do like your guns, don’t you?” Uncle Trevor said as Cousin Percy pulled one from a holster underneath his coat.
It was a bigger gun than Penelope’s. A German luger. The kind of pistol Gestapo officers used in the movies. Paige wondered if he’d bought it locally, then shook off the thought as she realized that, yet again, she was being held at gunpoint.
She looked past Cousin Percy, remembering how, the first time, Uncle Trevor had come up behind their assailant. He couldn’t do that now, but someone else could. And was. Herr Altmeyer was moving quietly along the hallway, something clutched in his hand.
“Give me the suitcase,” said Cousin Percy. “Once I’ve got what I want, you can have the rest back. I—Aghhrgh!”
He staggered back, frantically waving away the smoke billowing from the capsule Herr Altmeyer had thrown at his feet.
“Run!” shouted Herr Altmeyer.
While Cousin Percy coughed and spluttered in Ernst the Magnificent’s ‘magic mist’, Uncle Trevor and the children made for the door. Before they could reach it, the smoke dissipated, giving Cousin Percy a chance to take aim with his pistol. Herr Altmeyer struck at his arm as he fired, causing the bullet to strike Uncle Trevor in the thigh rather than the head, as Cousin Percy had intended.
Uncle Trevor went down just as a startled HJ boy appeared, possibly drawn in from the street by all the commotion.
Still struggling with Herr Altmeyer, Cousin Percy bellowed, “Don’t help him, you little fool. He’s an English spy.”
But the boy did help. Surprisingly strong, he hoisted Uncle Trevor to his feet almost effortlessly.
“Get away,” he said with icy calm. “Go home.”
They required no second bidding. Uncle Trevor staggered outside, supported by Paige and Dane, and followed by Jack, who seized the contentious suitcase and used his good arm to drag it though the door.
Jack then said the connecting rhyme as quickly as he could, and the medallion swept them all from the courtyard.
Chapter Nineteen
Desperate to escape, they had all momentarily forgotten that danger awaited them in another courtyard. When they materialized, it was, as initially feared, in front of Penelope.
Not directly in front, however. While their own time barely moved during their absences, it had, on this occasion, moved enough for Cousin Ophelia to have possession of Penelope’s weapon, which she’d wrenched away from her as soon as she’d fired it. Using one arm to keep the gun out of Penelope’s reach, she was using the other to hold the kicking, clawing, girl in a headlock.
“My stars, Penelope, that’s a real gun. Whatever are you doing with a real gun?” And you fired it. At the other kids. Don’t you realize you could have hit someone? Cousin Ophelia glanced to the side. “Oh! Oh! You did hit someone. Quick, Paige. Run inside and get help.”
That proved to be unnecessary. Ever on the alert for things like gunshots, two security guards were already hastening toward them. Upon reaching the distraught group, they immediately tried to free Penelope and restrain Cousin Ophelia, thinking her to be the aggressor.
“No! No! It was that girl who shot him,” Jack shouted, forgetting, in his agitation, to speak German.
Fortunately, the guards both spoke English.
“That is so?” one asked Paige and Dane, who nodded vigorously.
At once the man relaxed his hold on Cousin Ophelia, who had not relaxed hers on Penelope. “I take her, Ja?”
“Ja,” Cousin Ophelia agreed. Pocketing the gun, she flew over to Uncle Trevor, whose left thigh was bleeding profusely. Ripping a long scarf from her neck, she used it as bandage.
Penelope did not appreciate the change in custodians. “Let go of me, you moron,” she screamed, finding the restraining hold he put on her even more resistant to resistance. “I won’t be stopped now. I won’t! I let myself be dragged around boring exhibits for hours so I could do what I came here to do. And that stupid, interfering, woman’s not going to stop me. You�
�re not going to stop me. Let go. Let go. Let go.”
Paige and the boys paid her scant attention. Concerned for Uncle Trevor, they somehow found it comforting to listen to Cousin Ophelia babble on in her usual manner.
“Don’t worry, Trevor,” she said as he endured her ministrations with gritted teeth. “I know all about First Aid. And, see that nice guard over there? The one that’s not holding Penelope? Well, he’s on his cell phone getting you an ambulance. I’m sure it’ll be here within minutes. What an awful thing to happen. I can hardly believe it. Penelope with a gun. A child her age with a gun. It just boggles the mind.”
The ambulance did arrive within minutes. Even in that short a time, on-lookers had crowded onto the museum’s front steps, kept there by some sort of museum official and the second guard. The only people allowed out were Mrs. Marchand and Aunt Augusta, who insisted on being let through to their offspring.
“What’s on earth’s happened?” Mrs. Marchand demanded as they came up behind Paige and the boys.
“Uncle Trevor’s been shot,” said Paige. “By Penelope.”
“That’s a lie!” Penelope shrilled. “I didn’t shoot Trevor. I shot Jack. I know it was Jack. They switched places in some other dimension.”
“Jack—,” Aunt Augusta began.
“I’m perfectly all right, Mummy. It’s Uncle Trevor who’s hurt.”
“Not fatally,” Uncle Trevor put in from the gurney the ambulance attendants had just placed him on. “Leastways…don’t think so…Just hurts like hell.”
“So you children did go down one floor too many like Uncle Trevor thought,” said Mrs. Marchand, inadvertently alerting them to the excuse he had used to go in pursuit of them. “But whatever were you doing out here?”
“Penelope made us,” said Jack. “At gunpoint. And then said, if we didn’t give her Grantie’s medallion, she’d shoot us.”
“Grantie’s medallion? Why did she want Grantie’s medallion?”
“Who knows?” said Paige. “She’s crazy. You heard her. She’s talking about other dimensions.”
