Imagine an opera house, the biggest, swankiest opera house you’ve ever seen, covered in curlicues and folderols and statues and columns and fancy carvings, with flowers and foliage chiseled over it. Imagine twisting iron pillars painted white and gold and varnished woodwork and mosaic pictures up the walls and arches and a domed roof and colored glass twinkling and cut crystal globes shining on blazing gas lamps. Now imagine that same opera house went out one night and met the fanciest wedding cake anybody ever saw, four stories high, with row after row of little Greek columns and covered in artificial roses and sugar Cupids. And the opera house and the wedding cake danced all night, they talked and they laughed and they had a great time, the way that wedding cakes and opera houses will, and then, nine months later, Budapest Railway Station was born. What a place. We stood together in the square in front, glad that people were too polite to mention a camel draped in dressing-up clothes, and admired it.

Even in the middle of the night it was packed with people: people pouring off the trains that came from every corner of the empire, people shoving through the doors to travel, well, any place in the world, I suppose. But not, as it turned out, to Albania.

“It is a well-known fact that there are no railways in Albania,” the Professor said—and he said it almost triumphantly.

“Oh, everybody knows that,” Sarah said. “In fact, Otto was just remarking on that to me on our way to the station.” And she gave my hand a little squeeze.

“I didn’t notice that—and my hearing is remarkably acute, perhaps by way of a natural compensation for my lack of sight.”

“I was whispering,” I said, “so as not to alarm the camel.”

“This is a more than usually jumpy camel,” Max said.

Now I could see that the Professor was not pleased. I suppose that might have been because Sarah had chosen to stand by me and, maybe, put him in his place a little when he wanted to get one over on me, but it seemed as if he felt snubbed or slighted somehow, as if this whole adventure had been his idea all along, his ball to play with, and I was stealing it from him. I didn’t want to fall out with the Professor. He was the only one of us who could speak Turkish after all, and by God we needed somebody who could do that, but aside from that he knew stuff: which spoon to use for chilled monkey brains, how to bow—who to bow at—stuff like that. And he was a thinker. You could see him thinking. It gave me the creeps. So I wanted the Professor onside—for Sarah’s sake if nothing else—but there’s only ever room for one king at a time.

The Professor turned his spectacles up to the sky and he asked, “Since we are all agreed there is no train service to Albania, why are we here?”

“We’re here because of the telegraph office. We need to send a telegram to the Albanoks, that Prime Minister bloke—what was his name?”

“Ismail Kemali,” said the Professor.

“Him. And it needs to be in Turkish. Tell him that His Excellency, the Heaven-born, beloved of Allah, has generously consented to take the throne, that he is hastening to his country with all speed. That, for reasons of urgency, His Supremacy will travel with only a tiny retinue, that a full accounting of the Treasury will be demanded of old…”

“Ismail Kemali.”

“Him. And his life depends on it and, above all else, to watch out for impostors and pretenders. Tell him that all future correspondence from His Magnificence the Heavenborn et cetera, will be sent using Code 17c of the codebook and, if it’s not in Code 17c, then it’s a fake and a phony and must be utterly disregarded.”

“I don’t know Code 17c,” said the Professor.

“There is no such thing. I just invented it, so it will be hard for anybody to send it and just as hard for them to decode. So tell him that you are sending the exact time and place of our arrival but in code. Give them a few spurts of random letters, enough to keep them guessing.”

“You seem to have thought of everything,” said the Professor.

Sarah said, “It is a very clever plan,” which probably wasn’t helpful.

The Professor was very sniffy. He said, “They charge by the word in the telegraph office, you know. How is this to be paid for?”

“There’s plenty of cash in the strongbox,” Sarah said.

“And it’s locked,” he said triumphantly.

But then there was a terrible crunch from behind the camel, and Max said, “It’s open now.” My mate Max.

We went to look. The box was stuffed with sacks of money, kronen and kronen of the stuff, and, I must admit, in a strange way it salved my conscience to see how much was in there. I didn’t feel nearly as bad about taking the boss’s cash when I saw how much he’d stashed away when he was always telling us how hard up he was.

Tifty said, “I’m thinking hats. Something with feathers.”

“After we get back,” I said. I took out one of the bags, closed the lid again and pushed the broken padlock back into place as best I could. It was no security. My mate Max was all the security I needed. I asked Tifty to hold out her bag and I emptied half the coins into it. “Would you please take the Professor to the telegraph office and help him send the message?”

“Darling, we’ll be delighted—won’t we, Professor?” And she held out her arm and waited for him to find it, “But what will you be doing?”

“We have to get a ticket for the camel.”