“Well, there must be a relative or a neighbor—”

“There’s Mrs. Owens, but she may not be home either, and I can’t send him off not knowing whether there’ll be anyone at the other end,” Eileen said. “He’s six years old.”

“You don’t understand,” Mike said. “We’ve only got today to find Bartholomew. He leaves tomorrow.”

“But we’re not going with him, are we?” Eileen said. “We’re only sending a message telling Oxford where we are. So couldn’t you two go and I’ll take Theodore home and you tell the retrieval team to come get me at Mrs. Rickett’s tomorrow? Like Shackleton. And that way you’ll be certain to get Polly back, since she’s the one with the deadline.”

“Polly doesn’t know what Bartholomew looks like, and you do,” Mike said. “And tonight’s”—he glanced at Theodore and lowered his voice—“one of the worst raids of the war, and Bartholomew’s going to be right in the middle of it. Which means we need to be out of here before it starts. We need to find him, get him to take us to his drop and go through with a message telling them to pick us up this afternoon.”

“I know,” Eileen said, “but Theodore’s my responsibility. I can’t leave him.”

“Perhaps we could find someone to take him,” Polly suggested. “Didn’t you say you sent him home from Backbury in the care of a soldier?”

“Yes, but I knew his mother would be waiting for him at the station. And I can’t turn him over to a perfect stranger.”

“Not a stranger,” Polly said. “We could go back to Mrs. Rickett’s and see if Miss Laburnum—”

“Are you sure she’ll be there?” Mike asked.

“No.”

He frowned a moment, thinking, and then said, “It looks like it’ll be faster to take him ourselves. Do you think you’ll be able to find someone in the neighborhood to leave him with if we do?”

“Yes, I’m certain we can.”

“Then let’s go. Where’s the best place to find a taxi?”

“The tube will be faster,” Eileen said. “There are so many diversions between here and Stepney.”

And now let’s hope the trains to Stepney are running, Polly thought, and that Theodore doesn’t suddenly announce that he doesn’t want to go on the train. But he boarded the car eagerly, peeled a corner of the blackout paper back from the window, pressed his nose against the glass, and gazed happily out, even though they’d still be underground for several more stops and there was nothing to see.

The three of them moved over to the opposite seats so they could talk. “What if we don’t reach him before the raids begin?” Eileen asked.

“Then we get him to tell us where his drop is,” Mike said, “and we go there and wait for him to come when the raid’s over. I figure his drop’s got to be outside London to have been able to open the morning after the twenty-ninth.”

“And you’re certain it will open?” Eileen asked.