“Who put you up to this?” Lois asked, scowling as she looked up from the ledger.
“Miss?”
Arthur had seemed naïve, maybe a little simple. She should have remembered that old people had just as many skeletons in their closets as the young.
“Did they doctor up the whole ledger or just the one page?”
Lois examined the ledger, looking to see if there was any evidence of pages torn out or newly glued. A quick sniff revealed only the smells she would have expected, of old book and dust. Wherever it had been kept, dust had time to accumulate.
Unless this was some sort of prank Perry had set up, they wouldn’t have had long to set this up. She’d been the one to ask about the ledger, and she’d been the one to see the dress and ask about it.
Maybe Perry had signed her up for some sort of really obscure mystery adventure getaway.
She looked up at Arthur again. His expression was clueless.
If he really had been a bellboy for eighty years or more, he couldn’t be particularly bright. Even Ralph at work could have been promoted to working the desk after that long.
She stared down at her signature on the page, looking closely. If it was a forgery, it was one of the best she’d seen. She’d have sworn it was her own signature if she hadn’t known better.
“Did somebody put you up to this?” she asked again, this time more kindly.
He gave every impression of having no clue what she was talking about.
“Where did you get the ledger?” she asked.
“From the attic, same as I get everything else for the museum.”
Lois hesitated. Although she was wavering about his involvement, and she was having trouble seeing how this all might be set up, she couldn’t afford to let him off the hook.
“Could you take me there?” Lois said. “I’d like to take a look at it.”
Arthur stared at her for a moment, as though it was taking that long for the message to get through. Finally he nodded.
He probably wasn’t even a hundred and five.
Lois grabbed her purse, then turned and locked the door behind her. “Lead on.”
***************
It was a dusty mess.
Lois could see the tracks where Arthur had come through. There were several boxes that looked as though they’d been recently opened.
One box was full of registers from 1910 to 1915. Apparently the owners periodically liked to set up a world war one exhibit; at other times they liked to set up a Titanic themed exhibit. Although it was more than five hundred miles to New York there had been guests who lost family to the tragedy.
Since the movie had come out, there’d been a resurgence in interest in Titanic memorabilia. Lois suspected that Arthur was standing behind her as much to make sure she didn’t take anything as to help her.
Lois could understand the appeal, although she’d felt the movie was a little ridiculous. The plank had been more than big enough for the both of them, and if she’d really loved him she’d have taken the risk.
Of course, Lois risked her life for her job all the time; some people weren’t as brave.
For the first time it occurred to Lois that Perry might have given her this assignment as much to get her out of town as to give her time to heal.
Mob investigations were always tricky, but Lois was sure that the price on her head had been rescinded by now.
Of course, sometimes people didn’t get the message as quickly as other. Maybe an extended vacation wasn’t the worst idea. She’d have complained if Perry had forced her to it, but now that she was here…
Setting up the little mystery just to keep her here was a little more elaborate than she’d have expected, but it was thoughtful.
Not that she’d fallen for the whole time travel business for a minute.
Glancing outside she noted that the eerie glow of the borealis was even brighter than it had been earlier. She could see lightning in the distance as well, a storm was starting.
A soft thump came from behind her.
Lois turned, but before she could react she was grabbed from behind. Whoever it was tried to grab her around the neck, but she ducked her chin as she’d been trained. It only took a few seconds to cut off the flow of blood to the brain and cause unconsciousness.
She reached up and grabbed the man’s forearm with one hand and stepped to the side. With her other hand she lashed out behind her, hitting the man in the groin. She felt the man moving backward, his head coming down. She lashed out with her elbow, hitting him in the chin.
His arm came loose and Lois managed to duck away.
Martial arts training was important considering the risks she took.
She turned and prepared to kick the man, but she froze as she saw there were two of them.
One had a gun pointed at Arthur, who had fallen to the floor.
**************
“I don’t suppose I can talk you out of this.” Lois said. “The Siderno group is out of business. How are they going to pay you if they don’t have any money?”
“You think this is about money?” The heavyset man asked. “It was never about money.”
The thug who she’d hit had wanted to beat her even further, but this man was in charge.
He was planning to wait until the storm hit before shooting her and Arthur in the head. Although both men’s weapons had silencers, they didn’t do as much to suppress the sounds of guns firing in rea life as they did in the movies.
The sounds of thunder would cover any unsavory sounds and they’d be long gone before anyone thought to look for Arthur.
Given his age, Lois was surprised that he only seemed stunned even now.
“What was it about then?” Lois asked.
The storm was coming closer; it wouldn’t be long before they finished what they’d come to do.
The man who’d tried to choke her was clearly an idiot. He’d tied her wrists behind her back without checking to see that she didn’t have any slack in the line. Her wrists were thin and she’d had enough experience being kidnapped to have learned a few things.
Her purse was lying near her; although it was small, it contained things she could use as weapons. She’d had pepper spray on her keychain in Metropolis; she’d had to check it in her luggage on the plane. It was loose in her purse now. Even just her pen would make a fine weapon if she could jab it somewhere sensitive.
For the first time she wished her purse was heavier; if she was like some women and had the equivalent of two bricks in there she’d be able to swing it and hit someone in the head with it.
“Honor…family. Things you wouldn’t understand.”
“Like there’s a lot of honor in human trafficking and gunrunning.”
Lois taunted him even as she felt the ropes loosening around her hands. A peal of thunder caused the floor she was sitting on to vibrate.
It took her a moment to realize that the vibration continued even after the thunder stopped. She’d been to a concert when the bass was so low and deep that everything vibrated; this felt like that.
“What’s going on, boss?”
Obviously she wasn’t the only one who felt it. The only one who seemed oblivious was Arthur.
The thrumming was getting worse; she could see her purse vibrating and the boxes around her were shaking. Dust was sent flying, and the thug coughed.
Lois’s hands came loose and she used their moment of distraction to lunge for her purse. The thug was quicker than she anticipated, lunging for her as well.
They both touched the purse at the same time, just as gravity seemed to cease to exist.
Lois’s feet lost purchase with the ground, and she held onto the purse. The thug did the same, and she could see that he was floating inches above the ground.
A moment later, he disappeared. Lois felt a massive yank on her purse, and before she could let go of it, she felt herself being yanked forward.
Involuntarily, she screamed.
The world seemed to blur around her and she felt as though she was falling.
*************
Like a time lapse movie in reverse, everything flickered around her. Lights appeared and disappeared in the window. Boxes appeared and disappeared and every once in a while Lois almost thought she could make out presences in the room.
At least the gravity seemed to have returned. Sounds, such as they were seemed muted. She could hear the sounds the trees made outside as they grew in reverse.
A glance out the window showed the trees shrinking slowly.
There was no sign of Arthur or either of the thugs.
Still holding her purse, Lois searched for the doorway back to reality. Somehow, no matter how much she looked, it never appeared.
Was she going to be trapped here for eternity?
She made her way down the stairs, slipping through the doorway in a moment between moments. She almost thought she brushed up against someone, but she couldn’t be sure.
As she made her way through the hallways, the flickering seemed to slow at times.
Once she saw people flickering into sight. A younger version of Arthur, still in his sixties looked up at her and stared. He vanished a moment later and Lois made her way through the hotel.
There had to be other entrances to whatever place this was; otherwise there wouldn’t have been so many stories of ghosts.
Maybe Clark Kent had slipped into another portal and was around somewhere.
She saw more people flicker into existence. They were dressed in old fashioned clothing, like clothes she’d seen in old Katherine Hepburn movies.
A little girl looked up at her and looked like she was about to scream before she vanished again.
She ducked into the tiny hotel museum. The exhibits flickered in and out of existence around her, but the one thing that never changed was Clark Kent’s picture. It seemed to stare at her with that same indefinable look.
Even in this weird, half-world, Lois still felt drawn to him.
She stood and stared at him even as the world flickered around her.
The picture vanished, and Lois felt a sudden jolting sensation, as though the world around her was shaking.
She fell to the floor even as she felt a massive lurching sensation.
The world went black.
