All Clear

sitting in it, combing her long hair. “Oh, woe is me,” she said. “Here I sit, trapped in this tower! Who will come and rescue me?” She leaned out the window. “Oh, no!

Here comes my cruel jailer, the wicked witch!”

There was ominous music from the orchestra pit, and a Nazi officer goose-stepped onstage and stopped under her tower. “Sieg heil, Rapunzel, let down your hair!”

he barked in a German accent. “Zhat’s an order!”

Rapunzel dumped a huge mass of yellow yarn hair on him, knocking him flat, and then brushed her hands together briskly. The audience erupted in cheers and laughter, and above the deafening roar floated Theodore’s clear, piercing voice. “I don’t like the pantomime. I want to go home!”

“That’s our cue,” Polly whispered. She grabbed Mike’s hand and hustled him up the aisle and down the stairs to the lobby.

Eileen was already there, an impatient Theodore tugging on her hand. “I told you it would be all right,” she said.

“I want to go home!” Theodore declared.

“So do we,” Polly said, grabbing his other hand, and they hurried out of the theater, the glaring usher holding the door open for them.

“What’s happened?” Eileen asked as soon as they were outside. “You said you didn’t find the retrieval team. Did you find some other historian?”

“Yes,” Mike said. “John Bartholomew.”

“Mr. Bartholomew?” Eileen said, looking from him to Polly. “But didn’t you tell Mike he’s already gone back?”

“He hasn’t,” Mike said. “You heard wrong. He was here for the attack on St. Paul’s, which is tonight.”

Theodore was listening avidly to them.

“Shouldn’t we discuss this after we see Theodore home?” Polly said.

“Yes, we need a taxi,” Mike said, looking down the street for one. “You know his address, don’t you, Eileen? We can pay the driver up front and tell him to—”

“We can’t send him home alone,” Eileen said. “His mother’s not there. She’s at work. That’s why I had to bring him to the pantomime.”

“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.

“It already did open,” Mike said. “Six years ago.”

“Oh, that’s right, I’m sorry. And I’m sorry I thought he went back in October. I should have listened more closely to his lecture.”

“And I should’ve told you both about Bartholomew when I thought of him,” Mike said.