Just then the door to the cell opened. It was Inspector Jack Russell, popping his furry head in. "Alice," he barked, "please come with me and quickly! Our Lady of the Snakes is now ready for you. Your conviction will play a vigorous role in her election campaign."
Alice was quite fearful of meeting such a high-up Civil Serpent, but really she had no choice at all. Indeed, she had less than a second's chance to pat Long Distance's sleeping shell-shape, and to gather up all the jigsaw pieces and the parrot's feather, before Jack Russell whiskered her out of the cell. Down a long twisting of corridors they travelled, and up an ever-increasing series of stairways. Alice became disorientated yet again. "Why, the future is so full of mazes," she said to herself, "it's a wonder anybody can get anywhere!"
Presently she was led through a door marked Chamber of Interrogation, into a room of mirrors. "Wait here," Jack Russell growled at her. "The Over Assistant will be along shortly to question you." He left the room, banging the mirrored door shut behind him. Alice looked all around in order to find an escape, but the mirrored walls repeated her image time and time again, until Alice was quite lost in her reflections. There was an infinitude of Alices in the room!
"This is really all too much!" she reflected to herself, reflected to herself, reflected to herself, reflected to herself, reflected to herself (ad infinitum). "I shall never find my true self in this room of mirrors."
Just then, a thousand elusive images of Whippoorwill started to dance around the room!
"Oh dear!" cried Alice, as she flickered here and there trying to catch even one of the thousand feathery images: "How shall I know which is the real Whippoorwill?" she cried, "and which the unreal? And in any case, I wonder what the collective noun for parrots is?"
"The collective noun," answered a croaky voice from out of nowhere, "is a pandemonium of parrots."
"Who said that?" asked Alice in surprise.
"Celia said it," answered the voice of a thousand parrots, as one of Alice's reflections peeled itself free from the mirrors.
"Is that really you, Celia?" asked Alice of the wayward reflection.
The reflection reflected, ".uoy eucser ot gniyrt m'I .aileC yllaer si siht, seY" And the reflection vanished once more into a merely mirrored image, taking all the reflections of Whippoorwill with it.
One of the mirrors then opened, and a Snakewoman came slithering forwards from the reflection of the reflection of a Snakewoman, whose curling body was somehow arranged into a vaguely human shape.
Alice was quite taken aback. "What do you want of me?" she asked of the Snakewoman. "Are you an adder?"
"I am a Subtracter," replied the Snakewoman. "My name is Mrs Minus. I am the prime candidate for imminent election to the position of New Supreme Serpent."
"What happened to the old Supreme Serpent?" asked Alice.
"He died from too much addition. I, on the other fork, subtract the crimes of this world; the Jigsaw Murder of a Spider boy, for instance..."
"But, you must understand, I was in the year 1860 when the Spiderboy was killed!"
"That is not nearly good enough, my little suspect!" Mrs Minus replied, wrapping a strangulation of her thick coils around Alice's body. "Your alibi smells of high wantonness. You have already admitted to the ownership of the murderous jigsaw pieces. I am hereby charging you with Probable Involvement in the crime of murder. Captain Ramshackle is the killer of the Spiderboy and the Catgirl; he wants nothing more than to bring chaos to the world, and you, troublesome Alice, are the Badgerman's helper in this endeavour. You shall be executed for this." Mrs Minus then produced an evil-looking pistol from a pocket in her skin. She pointed it at Alice...
"But I'm innocent!" squealed Alice. ("Innocent... innocent... innocent..." reflected the thousand mirrors, all to no avaiclass="underline" Mrs Minus had every single image of Alice wrapped in her tightening coils.) At which thankful moment Inspector Jack Russell came bursting into the room.
"Has my election campaign mascot arrived, Inspector?" asked the Snakewoman.
"Not yet, Our Lady of Slitherness," replied Inspector Jack, nervously, "but I have to report that there has been an escape from the cells..."
"Who has escaped, Inspector Russell?"
"Captain Ramshackle."
"Captain Ramshackle! You puppified fool!"
Mrs Minus released Alice in order to wrap her slinky knots around Jack Russell's body. A pack of wild police-dogmen came howling by, and Mrs Minus and Inspector Jack Russell swiftly joined them in the search for Captain Ramshackle. Alice peeked out of the cell and looked along the corridor. In the long distance she saw Long Distance Davis escaping (at quite a pace for a snail!). On the other side of the corridor rested another door. This one was marked with the number forty-five and the words Room of Evidence, and it was through this forty-fived door that Alice slipped, to escape from the police.
The Stroke of Noon
The Room of Evidence was freezing cold, and Alice was shivering as soon as she closed the door behind her. She hugged her red pinafore around herself (checking her pockets to be sure that the six jigsaw pieces and the feather were still safe) and ventured forth into the coldness.
The Room of Evidence was lined with cabinets wall to wall, and filled up with large tables, all of which were empty except for one, on which lay a white sheet covering a lumpy shape. Alice noticed that a notice attached to the sheet was labelled with a label that read Whiskers MacDuff. Alice slowly lifted up the sheet...
Alice screamed then as she had never screamed before! "Upon my kittens!" was her strangled cry. She backed away from the table in a rush, fell over her own legs, and ended up in a heap of herself on the floor!
The reason for Alice's discomfort was that, upon lifting the sheet, she had uncovered the dead and rearranged body of the Catgirl, Whiskers MacDuff. Alice had never seen anything dead before, and the sight of such a thing made her go all wobbly. "I must be a strong young girl!" she was now saying to herself as she got back to her feet. "I must grow myself up!" Alice forced herself to look at the body. The Catgirl's face was covered in a fine gingery fur from which a pair of startled, human eyes were staring, lifelessly. The head of the Catgirl was melded to the juncture between her furry legs; her whiskers were sprouting from her thighs; her hind paws were growing out of her gingery chest. Her furry ears were planted upon each of her elbows (if cats have elbows, that is; Alice wasn't sure). And clipped with a brass safety pin to the Catgirl's left ear was a small linen bag. Alice, being curious, searched inside the bag and found a piece from a wooden jigsaw. She quite rightly decided to keep the jigsaw piece, which illustrated the golden eye of a wildcat. She added this feline fragment to the collection in her pocket. She had now collected seven pieces of the puzzle. Alice was more than halfway home!
But it was so cold in that freezing room that Alice's tears were forming icicles, and she decided to find a way out. "I certainly can't escape through the door I came in by," she shivered to herself; "those horrible policedogmen might still be lingering there. But there seems to be no other doorway! Whatever shall I do now?" She was still looking all around when the only door opened and a very tired-looking, old bloodhoundman came lolloping in! He was dressed in a crisply clean and spotless white gown and his long face hung down with a hangdog expression, complete with briefcase eyes, a dripping wet nose and a long and lollingly pink tongue. This creature sniffed at the air with a gruff huff, twice times, and then lowly growled, "Who in the iciness are you?"