THE PREVIOUS EVENING, ALL across Barsetshire, it had been snowing. A quiet, gentle snow that fell straight down through the dark sky. From the side door of Dan’s dorm building to the stone wall that surrounded the grounds of Bunter Academy was roughly two hundred yards. Dan had stood in the doorway for nearly ten minutes, waiting and listening. The snow kept flickering silently down. Far off, probably at the estate up on the hill, a lone dog barked once.
Readjusting the tan neowool muffler that Nancy Sands had given him just two weeks ago, Dan went darting out into the open. He ran across the white ground, snow quietly crackling underfoot. When he reached the six-foot-high wall, he struggled up it and grasped the top with both hands. Breathing hard, Dan pulled himself up and stretched out flat for a moment.
The five gray buildings that made up the school looked flat and two-dimensional through the soft, fluttering snow. No one seemed to have noticed him. Dan took a deep breath before dropping off the wall to muffled turf on the other side.
Getting to his feet, he brushed snow off his dark jacket and trousers. He started walking rapidly along the road that led to the village. It was two miles distant, but Dan figured he could make it there in under half an hour.
He glanced back over his shoulder a few times. As soon as he was sure no one from the academy had been aware of his unauthorized departure or had come after him, he quit looking back.
And so he never saw the dark figure that moved out of the stand of trees and started to tail him.
Night was well along by the time Dan reached the center of the village. The windows of the one- and two-story metal and plastiglass shops glowed pale yellow, and a light wind was swirling the snowflakes as they fell.
Hurrying, Dan turned onto a narrow street marked Antiquity Lane. All the shops and restaurants here had been designed to resemble nineteenth-century structures. There were tiled roofs, thatched roofs, timbered fronts, oaken shutters, stained glass windows. An android beggar boy, dressed in raggedy mismatched nineteenth-century clothes, stood shivering in front of Dan’s destination.
“Spare me tuppence, sir?”
Ignoring him, Dan entered the Maze Tea Shop. There seemed to be a fire blazing briskly in the deep stone fireplace of the simulated parlor.
A plump maternal android in appropriate dress came bustling over, smiling broadly, wiping her hands on her large white apron. “How may I serve you, young master?”
He said, “I’m supposed to meet someone here.”
“Bless me if I don’t sense another romance in the making,” said the proprietress, chuckling. “Would it be a pretty, dark-haired young lady that you’re seeking?”
“Yes, it is.”
“She’s here already, anxiously awaiting you. You’ll find the dear thing out in the maze and looking pretty as a picture.” The android pointed toward a doorway on the left. “Follow the arrow, mind.”
Dan went through the doorway and found himself in what looked to be a vast stretch of outdoor garden. A maze made of high thick hedges filled most of the grounds.
“Arrow,” reminded the proprietress from the parlor.
On the grassy path at his feet a yard-long arrow of red light appeared. The arrow started moving slowly forward.
Following, Dan was led along pathways and through the green, leafy corridors of the hologram maze. When the arrow reached a small, sunlit clearing, it faded away.
Seated alone at a round white wicker table was a slim young woman of sixteen. Her hair was dark and long and she had on the uniform of a nearby school. “I thought perhaps they wouldn’t give you permission to leave the academy this late in the evening,” she said.
“They didn’t.” He sat opposite her.
“Are you likely to get in trouble, Daniel?”
“I am, yeah,” he admitted. “You said on the phone that you had something new to tell me about Nancy, Jillian.”
“I think perhaps I do.”
“Perhaps?”
Jillian Kearny asked him, “Would you care for some tea, Daniel?”
“Not especially. Do you know where she is?”
“I have a notion,” the girl answered. “I was considering telling the McCays, the people she’s been staying with, yet I suspect Nancy didn’t trust them too awfully much.”
“Are they involved in this?”
“I’m not certain.” Carefully Jillian poured herself a cup from the china teapot. “I’ve only known Nancy, keep in mind, a few weeks,” she reminded him. “In that time, however, we have become rather close friends.”
“I know. That’s why when you phoned—”
“I’ve been going over all this in my head ever since Nancy ran away.”
“You’re sure she did run away on her own, that she wasn’t taken?”
“Yes, I am. A few days, you see, before she left the McCays I think something unpleasant happened there.”
“Did they hurt her?”
“Nothing of that sort, Daniel. Nancy did, though, discover something that upset her a great deal. I was aware that she was upset, but she wouldn’t confide any details.”
“She didn’t even hint at what she’d found out?”
“She simply didn’t wish to talk about what was bothering her.” Jillian paused, sipped her tea. “My impression is that this had something to do with her father.”
“Did she mention him?”
“Rather she stopped talking about him. Which is the point, do you see? Up until then she’d mentioned Mr. Sands quite often,” said the girl. “Nancy always spoke of him in a positive way, defending his reputation. She firmly believed, I’m convinced, that he was innocent of all he’d been charged with and was unjustly serving time in prison.”
“But then she must have found out something negative about Bennett?”
“Yes. Though I am of course merely guessing.”
“Why did she go away?”
“She did say that she wanted very much to get away by herself for a while, away from under the eyes of the McCays. Nancy felt she needed time to work things out. I had the impression she wasn’t certain what to do about whatever it was that she’d learned.”
Dan rested both elbows on the tabletop. “Okay, but when I talked to you before, Jill, you told me you had no idea where she might’ve gone,” he said. “But now you do?”
“I’ve been turning things over in my mind, trying to come up with some memory that might help.” She leaned forward. “Just today I recalled that Nancy told me—oh, quite soon after we’d met at school—that a friend of hers, an American girl whom she’d known at home, had been living in England. This friend had decided to run away and was hiding out in one of the wilder sections of London.”
“Did Nancy tell you who this girl was and where she was living?”
“Yes, since the friend had apparently communicated with her once or twice. It’s a section of London that’s ruled by street gangs.”
“Can you tell me where to find the girl?”
Nodding, Jillian took a slip of paper from her tunic pocket. “I’ve written down all that I remembered, Daniel,” she said slowly. “I find, I’m afraid, that I’m simply not brave enough to go to the authorities directly with this. Since you’re a close friend of Nancy’s with a father who’s a detective, perhaps you can see that this information gets to the proper people. It may not be worth anything, but I felt I must confide in someone.”
“I’ll handle it.” Dan reached across to take the slip of paper from her.
“Nancy has very romantic and naive notions about what life is like in that part of London,” Jillian said. “If she thinks of it as a refuge for confused young women, she’s in for a rude awakening. The kid gangs that—” She paused, looking into his face, and frowning. “Surely, Daniel, you’re not thinking of going in there after her yourself?”
He rose up. “Thanks for passing this information along, Jill,” he said. “I’ll be in touch.”
“It’s really too dangerous. You simply can’t go there.”
“Yes, I can,” he said and left.