After Jasper had called an ambulance and had seen that the comatose Delaware Stare-Eyes player was well-cared for at the hospital, he called Katie and Lily at the hotel and told them that the game was afoot, and what the score was.
He met them at the Royal Grant Hotel. They were already sitting there in the lobby, looking anxious, when he strode in. “Right-o,” he said. “To work!”
“Jasper?” said Katie. “First of all, how do you expect us to face seven Stare-Eyes players, their coach, and their team mom? Second of all, Mr. Genius, would you stop and look down?”
“Huhn?” said Jasper unintelligibly, and looked down. He looked up. “Aha,” he said. “In my haste to ensure that my opponent’s medical condition is stable, I have completely forgotten that I am not wearing clothes.”
His nightgown was bedraggled. His bare feet were coated in mud.
“We already asked about the Stare-Eyes team,” said Lily. “They left about an hour ago. They told the guy at the desk that they had gotten an urgent message and they couldn’t stay.”
“Drat,” said Jasper. He thought for a minute. “About an hour ago… Hmm… Why, that’s just when I was confronting Number Four on the city wall. I wouldn’t be surprised if he sent them a mental message, through ESP, telling them that I had captured him. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re the ones who knocked him out—so I wouldn’t discover more about their diabolical schemes!”
“That makes sense,” said Lily.
“Did they leave anything in the room? Any clue or neglectful spoor?”
“Sure,” said Katie. “They left a sign saying, ‘We went thataway.’”
“Eureka! Which way did it point?”
“Well, when the hotel clerk took it out of the garbage and gave it to me, it pointed over there, but now it’s folded up in my pocket, so it’s pointed—”
“The staff disturbed the crime scene?” sputtered Jasper. “That note could have—”
“She’s joking, Jasper,” Lily whispered.
“Sarcasm,” said Katie.
He frowned. A little stung, he said, “I guess some of us have time for larks because they are not being hurled through the air in high-speed chases.”
Katie said, “And some of us have time to put on clothes before spending a night out on the town.”
“Well, some of us—”
“Hey,” said Lily, “let’s go back to bed. We have to be up in four and a half hours to meet our guide. Let’s not fight.”
They stepped outside the hotel and flagged down a three-wheeled taxi. They got in, and it drove them through the skinny, steep streets, past old crumbling Baroque facades and shuttered windows, past brass shrines black with old smoke and murky pools where laundry hung to dry.
“I cannot believe that Bobby Spandrel has taken over Vbngoom,” said Jasper desolately. “It was an island of peace in a world of confusion. And now—probably to get back at me—he is there stealing its treasures and beating the stuffing out of its monks.”
Lily rubbed Jasper’s arm awkwardly but kindly. She said, “We’re going to stop him.”
“It’s my fault,” said Jasper. “We have to get there as fast as possible. I’m the one Bobby Spandrel wants.”
“What is it he wants you for?” asked Katie.
“I suspect, to get revenge for foiling all his plans.”
“Like in Jasper Dash and the Cowpoke Caper, ” said Lily.
“Exactly. Most recently, he sent out thousands of fake electronic mails to people telling them they had won millions of dollars in a global lottery. They just had to send him their bank account information, and he would give them their prize. But really, he planned to use that information to withdraw all their money and leave them penniless. But his efforts came to nothing. No one fell for the scam because Bobby Spandrel’s gangster typists were such atrocious spellers.”
“What does spelling have to do with it?” Katie asked.
Jasper explained, “A small error, but important. No one would freely give their bank account number to something called ‘The World-Wide Lootery.’ I was tipped off, and I traced Spandrel to his secret base beneath an old abandoned pulled-pork restaurant in North Carolina. I went in and busted his computers and found the priceless black diamond, the Eye of the Jaguar, and returned it to its rightful owner.”
“What Eye of the Jag—”
“It must be Bobby Spandrel’s World-Wide Lootery that is up at the monastery now. Don’t you see, chums? Time after time, when he’s been about to kill thousands or steal millions, I have stumbled upon him and tried to stop him. So, why, I think this is his revenge. He wants to lure me back to the place that means the most to me of anywhere in the world. He wants to ruin it. He wants me to suffer as he has suffered. He probably sent those artifacts you saw, Katie—the dagger, the idol, and the model of Vbngoom—to Pelt specifically so I would see them in our museum and know something was wrong in the mountains of Delaware.” Heavily Jasper finished, “Those monks are probably suffering because of me.” He put his hands around his own throat and stared, horrified, into the night.
The cab dropped them off in front of the wreckage of the Sky Suite.
They went in, trudged up the stairs, and got back into bed.
Lily lay in the darkness and listened to Jasper breathing in the next bunk. She could tell he was still awake. She wished there was something she could say to soothe him. She was glad they were setting out on their trek the next day. He would not be satisfied until they confronted his arch-enemy.
Lily wondered if she had an archenemy. She didn’t think she did. She went through the possibilities in her head. She was getting sleepy.
Outside, taxis rattled through the pitted streets. Trios of drunks sang rounds in the doorways of nightclubs, their neckties loose, their shirts soaked with sweat from dancing.
Tomorrow, Lily thought to herself. Just a few hours. Tomorrow.
Across the dark alley, on the gargoyles, pigeons shrugged their shoulders.