My Synthetic had also thoughtfully left me some clothes, and as soon as I was dressed, I unlocked the door and peered outside. I was in a service area somewhere on the ground floor, so I grabbed my stick and limped out the door but then stopped abruptly as the service elevator opened at the far end of the corridor. It was Jack—with what looked like a body wrapped in a sofa slipcover across his shoulder. I reversed direction as soon as I saw him and limped as fast as I could back toward the storeroom. The first shot zipped past my head as I ducked inside, and I had only just thrown the lock when a second shot struck the door. After five more shots, not a single one of which penetrated the heavy wood, I heard the clatter of a dropped pistol and footsteps down the corridor. I opened the door to find I wasn’t the only one doing so. Heads were popping cautiously out of offices all the way down the corridor to see what was going on. I picked up the small pistol and traced the route Jack had taken in time to see him driving off in my Daimler, my driver lying on the ground, rubbing his jaw. Within a few seconds, I was joined by two Special Library Services troopers.

“Where is he, ma’am?” asked the first.

I told them he was in my Daimler but that he’d be dumping it in less than ten minutes. The trooper nodded and barked some instructions into his walkie-talkie.

I retraced my steps and took the elevator back to the seventeenth.

Duffy looked surprised when he saw me. “You’re okay?”

I showed him the tattoo on the back of my hand and pulled off the bandage on my neck to show a dry wound with a single stitch.

“It’s me,” I said, “really me. What did he tell you?”

“That you had collapsed and he was taking you to the Lola Vavoom Discount Sofa Warehouse See Press for Details Memorial Hospital.”

“Wrapped in a sofa cover?”

“Yes, I thought it a bit strange.”

“He actually gave me one here,” I said, pointing to my forehead. “Cancel my eleven-o’clock and push my eleven-thirty back half an hour. If Bunty can’t be moved, put her in my two-o’clock and bump who was going to be there until tomorrow. Yes?”

Duffy had been writing frantically. “Right. But I don’t think the Blyton Fundamentalists will take kindly—”

“Ahaa!” said a loud voice. “Chief Librarian!”