“Some creep stole my territory,” Chubby said, shoveling a forkful of noodles into his mouth, and chewing—much to Pippa’s disgust—with his mouth open. “I lay low for a few days and what happens? I find another guy working the corners from Herald Square to Forty-Second Street. What was I supposed to do? A man’s got to eat.” As though to illustrate this, he forked a dumpling from Thomas’s plate and popped it in his mouth.

They were sitting in an old booth in a tiny Chinatown dive, surrounded by the carcasses of ducks and chickens and other animals Pippa didn’t care to identify. She pushed away her egg drop soup, which was barely touched.

“So you decided to go into thieving?” she said sternly.

Chubby blushed. “I never gave the orders for that,” he said. “Stick to the food stalls and the fat cats only. That’s what I said. Sorry about that business with your wallet, Thomas,” he said for the sixth time.

“That’s all right,” Thomas said. “I got it back, didn’t I?”

“It’s most certainly not all right!” Pippa burst out, so loudly that several other customers swiveled around to stare. She lowered her voice. “The police are looking for you, Chubby. Are you trying to give them a reason to chuck you in jail?”

“I need money to buy my corner back, don’t I?” Chubby wailed. “But how’m I supposed to get money, if I don’t have my corner? It’s like a pair o’ ducks.”

“A what?” said Max.

“A pair o’ ducks,” Chubby repeated. “You know, when two things kind of cancel each other out.”

“A paradox,” Thomas corrected, without raising his eyes from his food.

“Yeah, that’s what I said.” Chubby wiped soy sauce from his lips with the back of a hand. Pippa turned away, making a face.

“Well, the cops aren’t looking for you anymore,” Max said. She had gone through a vast plate of chicken and rice in record time. “Some bum killed Eckleberger. That’s what they think, anyway,” she added when Thomas shot her a look. “You’re in the clear.”

Chubby paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. “Are you fooling with me?”

Max shook her head.

“For goodness’ sake, Chubby.” Pippa gave in to her exasperation. “You sell newspapers. Don’t you ever read them?”

He glared at her. “I told you. Someone stole—”

“Your corner, yes, I know.” Pippa’s head was pounding. It was stiflingly hot in the restaurant, and the smell of fry oil was making her nauseous. She wished she had never agreed to help Thomas on his search for Eckleberger’s killer. Even with Ned Spode’s help, and the possible link between murders, it seemed an impossible task. If the police were satisfied, why couldn’t they be?

“So I’m off the hook?” Chubby’s lean face lit up excitedly. “I ain’t a fungus anymore?”

“I think you mean fugitive,” Sam said.

Chubby obviously didn’t hear him. He slapped a palm on the table, causing all the flatware to rattle. “I’m a free man!” he bellowed. Once again, everyone turned to stare. “Thanks for lunch, Tom. I owe you one. Soon as I get my corner back, I’ll treat you to a king’s dinner. See you around, Max. See you, Sam. See you, Pip.”

“Pippa,” she corrected through gritted teeth. But Chubby had already slipped out of the booth and dashed out of the restaurant, leaving several soggy dumplings on his plate.

“You think he’s coming back for those?” Max said, gesturing with her chopsticks.

“Help yourself.” Pippa shoved the plate over to Max.

“Well.” Sam heaved a sigh. “All’s well that ends well, I guess.”

“Nothing’s well,” Pippa said. She didn’t know why she was behaving so badly—she had a sense that they had stumbled into a game and only very poorly understood the rules. “And nothing’s ended, either. It’s just beginning. Manfred was innocent, and he’s dead. Eckleberger was killed over a stupid picture. And there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Thomas laid a hand on Pippa’s arm. “We’re going to find whoever killed Freckles, Pippa,” he said quietly. “With Spode’s help, we’ll do it.”

She wanted to believe him. She turned away, blinking back sudden tears. She realized she wasn’t just upset about Freckles, but about Dumfrey and the museum and Howie and all the fighting—by the sense that things were slipping away, like water through her fingers.

“Have a fortune cookie,” Max said. “It’ll make you feel better.”

Pippa shook her head, scowling. Max shrugged and took a cookie for herself, cracking it against the table like an egg. Her fortune fluttered out on a pale paper ribbon. Suddenly, her face turned grim.

“What’s it say?” Thomas said, reaching across the table to grab it. His smile faded instantly.

Finally, Pippa’s curiosity got the better of her. “What?” she said. “What is it?”

But Thomas didn’t even have to show her. Suddenly, the words appeared in her mind, smooth and dark, as if imprinted there.

Disaster is on the way, it read.

Once the other fortunes proved to be gibberish—The proud man catches no fish, read one, and another, You will meet a stranger bearing good tidings—Thomas, Sam, and Max felt much better. Pippa, too, was reassured, though the nervous feeling wouldn’t leave her entirely.

They made their way through the thick crowds toward the Canal Street subway entrance. Thomas paused outside a store selling wind-up dolls and porcelain cat figurines, cheap toys and paper fans. In one barrel were hundreds of miniature turtles, clawing at one another desperately to escape. “Did you ever think about buying a turtle for a pet?” Thomas said, pointing. “Look! Built-in armor.”

“Don’t even think about it.” Max’s voice turned shrill.

Sam stared at her. “Why not? It’s a good idea.”

“I’m allergic, that’s why not,” she snapped. She grabbed hold of Sam’s hand. “Come on, keep it moving.”

Sam, Pippa noticed, turned the color of a tomato at Max’s touch.

The subway at Canal Street was teeming with people and swelteringly hot. Pippa cupped a hand over her mouth, trying to ignore the overwhelming smells of sweat and breath and old seafood. When the subway arrived at last, there was a massive surge toward the doors. Pippa caught an elbow in the chest, and fell backward, gasping, as Thomas, Max, and Sam were carried forward on the wave of people onto the train.

“Tom!” Pippa shouted. She was caught on the platform behind a fat woman sporting sweat stains in the shape of butterfly wings. Thomas tried to turn around, but the momentum of the crowd was too powerful. The doors slammed shut, sealing Pippa off from her friends.

“Sorry, Pip.” Thomas’s voice was muffled through the glass. Then the train pulled forward and was gone.

This only increased Pippa’s bad mood, especially since she had to wait another twenty minutes for a train, and was pressed so tightly between passengers, she felt like a noodle in a very dense casserole.

Then, at Twenty-Third Street, the train came to a shuddering halt, and a tinny announcer’s voice declared the train out of service.

“Worse and worse,” Pippa muttered as she oozed with the rest of the slow-moving crowd along the platform, toward the stairs that led up to the street. Her bangs were sticking to her forehead, and her dress clung uncomfortably to her lower back.

She was relieved, when she emerged from the station, to be in open air, though it was not much cooler than it had been on the train, and the streets were knotted with cars shimmering in the sun, horns blaring. Still, she resolved to walk home. She’d had enough of trains for the day.

She hadn’t gone two blocks when she spotted Howie on the opposite side of the street. He had his back to her and was moving north, as she was, but she recognized the precise cut of his clothing and the swagger in his walk, as though he was parading in front of an invisible camera. Despite the fact that she didn’t particularly care for Howie, she nearly called out to him, thinking they could return to the museum together. But at that moment he stopped, looked furtively right and left as though fearful of being observed, and darted into a narrow, soot-stained building.

Pippa waited impatiently for the light to change, then crossed the street along with a tide of commuters and tourists. She broke free of the crowd with difficulty and made her way up the street to the building she’d seen Howie enter. On the ground floor was a dingy dry cleaner’s, but a quick glance revealed that it was empty.

Curious, Pippa pushed inside the building. She was greeted by a sad lobby, hardly bigger than a bathroom, which featured a dying plant and a dust-smeared directory of the building’s businesses and residents. Pippa scanned the list quickly, and her stomach seized up.

The top floor of the building was occupied by the Bolden Brothers Circus.

Howie, too, was abandoning ship.