The train jerked sharply and started moving again, and the ladies went back to discussing their ailments. “All autumn I’ve had a dreadful pain in my heel,” Brown Hat said. “A friend of mine told me about Dr. Pritchard’s manipulation treatments, so I’m going to his clinic in Newport Pagnell.”

“Newport Pagnell?” Black Hat with Bird cried. “Why, that’s quite near Bletchley! You must come for tea one day. Are you getting off there, too?”

“Yes. Dr. Pritchard’s sending a car.”

Good, that meant he wouldn’t have to ask the spectacled man which station was Bletchley.

“If Dr. Pritchard’s treatment isn’t satisfactory,” Black Hat with Bird went on, “you must go to Dr. Childers in St. John’s Wood.”

St. John’s Wood. The lab had had a permanent drop there in the early days of time travel, before they’d figured out how to set up remotes. He wondered if Polly or Eileen knew where it was. When their drops malfunctioned, the lab might have reopened it to use as an alternative. He would have to tell Eileen and Polly that when he called them—correction, rang them up—to tell them he’d arrived safely.

If they ever got there. He had to sit through a seemingly endless discussion of bunions, rheumatism, lumbago, and palpitations before Black Hat with Bird said, “Oh, good, we’re coming into Bletchley,” and both ladies began collecting their things. The man continued reading even when they pulled in to the station, and Mike wondered if he’d been wrong about him being one of Bletchley Park’s cryptanalysts. But the second the train stopped, the man clapped his book shut and, without so much as a glance at any of them, was out the door and walking rapidly along the platform toward the station. Mike stood up, intending to follow him, but the ladies asked him to help them take their packages down from the overhead rack, and by the time Mike did, the man had vanished.

But there were plenty of people still in the station and outside—cycling and walking away from the station—whom he could follow. As soon as he found a phone. He’d promised Polly he’d call to tell her he’d got there okay. He only hoped it didn’t take forever to put the call through.

The phone booth—correction, box—wasn’t occupied, and the operator put the call through fairly quickly, but Mrs. Rickett answered and, when he asked for Polly, said sourly, “I don’t know if she’s here,” and when he asked her to go check, gave a put-upon sigh and went off for so long he had to put more coins in.

When Polly finally answered, he said, “I’ve got to make this quick.” The stuff about St. John’s Wood could wait till next time. “I got here all right.”

“Have you found a room? Or Gerald?”

“Not yet for either one. I just got off the train. I’ll call you as soon as I know where I’m staying,” he said, then hung up and hurried out into the station, but it had already emptied out, and when he went outside into the gathering dusk, there was no one in sight.