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lay on the floor. The Professors and the Booker-Readmans stayed upright, thinking perhaps that the toboggans were merely pinking. I got hold of Rosamund round the knees and felled her. Johnson also lay down, on one elbow, while his pipe gently pulsed in the darkness. ‘The point is,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘who has found us? And which of us have they found?’
    We were all prostrate by then, mostly on top of the Eskimos. The Ukrainian said, ‘It is a kidnapping then?’ He sounded hopeful. No one bothers to kidnap a launderette owner. On the other hand, Challenger power toboggans cost about eight hundred dollars apiece, and it might have been an anti-Soviet capitalist plot financed by Big Business. The Canadian Professor, his nose rammed into sealskin, had gone into paroxysms of nervous sneezing, while the other, I noticed with surprise, had got out a revolver.
    I said, ‘I suppose we’d all fetch a few pence, but they’d be better to try and kidnap one man than twelve. They can always relieve the rest of us of our cash and our watches.’
    Simon Booker-Readman got up and crouched at the window. ‘Why do we need to let them take anyone? A train is going to come sometime. Meanwhile they’re out there in the cold.’
    ‘With guns,’ said Johnson.
    ‘I have a gun,’ said the Professor, waving it. ‘Living in New York, you understand, I am never without it.’ I got on my knees too.
    There were six rushing black shapes on the snow, with possibly two men on each. I said, ‘If they come through the doors and windows at the same time, there’s not much one revolver can do. But the galley’s steel-lined, and ventilated.’
    Rosamund was already half-way there. I just had time to pick up her son’s carrycot and shove it through the door before it shut behind her. I hammered on it, and when she opened, dived for the drawer with the knives in it. Emerging, I prodded people and handed out knives.
    The two Professors and Vladimir had pulled the curtains across and were manning an eyehole apiece: the flower arrangements were in ruins. I said to Johnson, ‘Why don’t you get into the galley? You’re worth a mint and you know it.’ Five thousand smackers a portrait, so my father used to claim. More, for royalty. I discovered I was offering him the point of the knife, and reversed it. There was another volley of shots.
    ‘You’re right,’ said Johnson suddenly. He turned his back on the knife and fumbling out of the room, made his way into the passage.
    The next moment there was a bang, and a blast of cold of freeze-shrinking intensity. Through the window, England’s best-known portrait painter could be seen hurtling feet first from the coach doorway into the snow, there myopically to begin an advance, waving his knitted waistcoat and calling.
    The Snowmobiles, which had fanned out in a half-circle, came to a halt, with Johnson in the eye of the daisy.
    One of the Professors said hoarsely, ‘There is Hope for Mankind, while one man can do that.’ Slowly dismounting, the Snowmobile riders were stalking forward. One of the Eskimos burst into tears. The intruders closed around Johnson. There was an exchange of sentences.
    Then the intruders, grasping Johnson, resumed their purposeful march to the railway carriage. It was the sequel the Boys’ Own Paper always avoided: where the Hero who Gives Himself Up becomes the Schmuck who Ends Up a Hostage. Booker-Readman got the gun off the Professor and I hung the tablecloth out of the window. Then we all stood about with our hands up.
    Which made us look pretty funny when Johnson climbed back into the carriage followed by a line of hefty young men clad in Timberwolf, Raccoon, Scimmia, Tibetan Yak and Natural Unplucked Nutria.
    We stood still in the glare of their torches. ‘Hi, chick!’ said the Bank of Canada, and leaning forward, planted an enthusiastic kiss on my face. ‘Jeeze, you’ve sure had a party. O.K. Lights on, folks. The new talent’s arrived!’
    The lights