The Camelot Caper Read Online Free PDF Page B

burst into tears.
    â€œBut you can’t stop them,” she faltered. “I can’t get out without being seen, they’ll follow us, and if they—”
    â€œNot in England,” Mrs. Hodge repeated. She raised her voice in a ladylike bellow.
    â€œMiss Aiken—Mr. Woodle—Sam—”
    Jessica jumped several inches; the other passengers, now four in number, turned casualfaces toward the back seat. Evidently they were familiar with Mrs. Hodge’s voice and her habits.
    Light-headed with hunger and nerves, Jess began to feel as if she had slipped out of the real world into some sideways dimension, as Mrs. Hodge, in a cheerful shout, outlined her version of her problem. It was quite in keeping with the mad logic of this unreal world that all the other passengers accepted the improbable story with perfect equanimity. The red-faced man in baggy tweeds—Mr. Woodle—expressed the general sentiment.
    â€œAmericans,” he snorted. “Gangsters. Can’t have that sort of thing here. Let ’em come.” He brandished his stick, a heavy gold-headed affair, and narrowly missed hitting himself in the nose as the stick bounded off the low luggage rack above his head.
    â€œWe can’t fight ’em,” yelled Mrs. Hodge, “They’ve got tommy guns. Maybe bombs.”
    A disembodied voice floated back from the driver’s seat. Sam never took his eyes off the road, but he hadn’t missed a word.
    â€œTrick ’em,” he shrieked. “Not very bright, these gangsters.”
    â€œQuite right,” shouted the genteel maiden lady midway down the bus. “Do I understand that the young woman believes that these villains do not know with absolute certainty that she is presently within this vehicle?”
    â€œI don’t think so,” Jess muttered dazedly. The information was passed on to the audience by Mrs. Hodge, and an animated discussion followed, at the top of everyone’s lungs.
    â€œWe none of us seed her,” bawled the fourth passenger, a wizened little old man who might have been a farm laborer. “She never was here.”
    â€œBut I am here,” yelled Jessica, entering into the spirit of the thing. “How can I hide, on this—”
    â€œBetter to say, I think, that she got off the bus earlier,” howled the maiden lady.
    â€œWow,” said the shrillest voice of them all. “Mum, look there.”
    Master Hodge, probably the most sensible member of the crowd, had been keeping an eye out the back window. He drew Jess’s attention to the road just in time for her to see the car pull out and pass. Moments later came the driver’s warning yell:
    â€œWatch ouuuuuuut!”
    The words blended harmoniously with the squeal of the brakes as the bus shuddered to a halt, twisted half across the road in a wrenching movement. Jess knew what had happened even before the maiden lady screeched, “They’vestopped…blocking the road…They are getting out of the automobile. They are coming—”
    Then Mrs. Hodge—five feet tall, 160 pounds, bespectacled and on the wrong side of forty—achieved her finest hour.
    â€œShe got out at Woodhole,” she called; simultaneously her large pink hand clamped on Jessica’s shoulder and forced her down onto the floor of the bus.
    There was very little floor available, not more than a foot and a half between the last seat and the back of the one ahead; but Jess was amazed to find how much of her own small person could be crammed, with Mrs. Hodge’s vigorous assistance, into that space. Moving with the skillfulness of a housewife shaping a loaf of bread, Mrs. Hodge’s hands tucked a good deal of Jessica under the seat. The part of her that protruded was, at least, down below seat level.
    Speechless and snorting in the dust, Jess’s distorted view of the outside world was obliterated by a rain of parcels, all of which landed on