Almost at once, a pretty, overpainted girl with hair piled high and a sparkling ballgown hurried from the embassy. She was followed by the babyfaced heir to the Silver Bullet Munitions fortune, whose product had been instrumental in driving the werewolf clan back into the darkest depths of the Crabtree Forest. The lovesick playboy helped the mystery girl up into the orange carriage, imploring her to come with him the very next night to the Rapunzel Ropeladder-Works Ball. Her coy giggle was the coachman’s signal to crack his whip and send the carriage clattering out into the street.
Sonderborg ran after it, hoping to find a fourwheeler for hire along the way. But the street was empty. As the carriage turned a far corner, the Cathedral bell tolled the first stroke of midnight. The count shook his head, knowing he could never catch up now by running. Then an intriguing thought came to him. How much more sensible to put his feet together and hop. His first try resulted in a gratifying, effortless forty-foot jump. The next hop was even better, and the one after that brought him to the corner. But two more hops and he was standing lost and crestfallen at a six-way intersection. As he wondered which way to go, the last pitiless stroke of midnight sounded and died away.
All at once he heard the frantic scurrying of many little feet. Then three white mice, two lizards, and a fat grey rat burst from one of the streets and scattered every which way. Close on their heels came Lovey, running low to the ground, cheeks bloated purple, jaw chewing with quick greed. Sonderborg raced back the way they had come. There, beyond the hollowed-out pumpkin in the gutter, his quarry, the mystery girl, barefoot now and in rags, was quietly unlocking the door of a shabby house.
After firing off a quick pigeon to Crown Prince Hugo, Sonderborg waited for him across the street in a twenty-four-hour donut shop called Night Crullers. As he drank his coffee, he let the counterman tell him about the mystery girl and how step-people, both wicked and ugly, were indeed involved.
The prince arrived in short order, hair freshly oiled, chrysanthemum bouquet in the crook of his arm, the very image of Fratollini’s portrait of Bastian the Suave. When the situation had been explained to him he said, “You may withdraw, Count Sonderborg, Master of Fen House. Your beloved prince will take it from here.” The Crown Prince then crossed to the house, knocked loudly, and struck a pose, as if the front door were a full-length mirror. When one real sleepy mystery girl appeared with a candle at an upstairs window and hoisted a slop bucket up onto the sill, the Master of Fen House thought it best to get the hell out of there.
Just as Sonderborg reached home, Rinaldo pulled up in a police wagon to tell him the Magic Squad had raided Pedigreed-Pet Plaza and found all the proof it needed. Motioning the count to get in, Rinaldo said, “Donnabella made one big mistake when she changed Trade Smith into a parrot. That bird blew the whistle on her whole operation. And parrot or not, his testimony will stand up in court.”
The police wagon arrived at Rose Garland Street just as a sergeant and ten constables charged into Donnabella’s apartment building and pounded loudly up the stairs. Then there was an ominous silence, which ended in the terrific racket of a wild downward stampede. Now a flock of terrified, shoving sheep was jammed up at the front door. Now they had burst out into the street, where they huddled together in a trembling flock. Then they slowly turned back into policemen with long sad faces and curly white hair. “Baad luck, Inspector,” said the sergeant. “She bleat — she beat us to the draw.”
“I told you to wait until I got back with the wandproof vests,” said Rinaldo, selecting a glen-plaid one from the police wagon and buttoning it on.
“Do these things really work?” asked Sonderborg skeptically.
“Like a charm,” Rinaldo assured him. “Remember that old drag-chain you used to have to wear in case you got struck by lightning? The Merlin Armor people have eliminated that altogether.”
“Then do me a favor,” begged Sonderborg. “Let me lead the next charge. I’ve got a score to settle.”
A mural of that famous charge now decorates the police-head-quarters cafeteria. Splendid, truncheons at the ready, a fresh batch of bright-vested constables are dashing up the staircase, led by a larger-than-life Sonderborg with full head of hair, arm in an “upward and onward” gesture. A moment later in time and the artist would have had an entirely different mural. For as the count’s foot touched the last step, he remembered that Donnabella was on the board of the same Merlin Armor that made his vest! Suppose her grand design was to infiltrate and sabotage the kingdom’s anti-magic defenses — Merlin Armor, Brownie-Point Industries, Silver Bullet Munitions, and all the rest — so she could end up ruling everything with an iron wand? Sonderborg tried to slam on the brakes, but the charging constables behind him swept him through the open door of the fairy godmother’s apartment.
When Donnabella stepped out from behind the door, flexing her wand between her fists, all way of retreat was blocked. “Hey, look, Lovey,” she said with a wicked smile, “Messenger Boy’s come to visit again.”
“Who?” grinned Lovey, smiling down hungrily from his crystal perch on the chandelier.
Then Donnabella waded in, hacking and slashing, changing the startled police into snack-sized creatures that Lovey pounced down upon and swallowed whole, spitting out little badges and tiny pairs of handcuffs. In all the confusion, amid the shouts of owlish glee and the squeals of snack terror, Sonderborg managed to duck under Donnabella’s mighty backhand and make it out into the hall.
But the evil fairy godmother caught up with him at the top of the stairs and changed him once again into a frog. But before she could stomp him into the floor, a lucky bolt from a police sharpshooter’s crossbow knocked the wand out of her hand. Twisting and turning, the crystal thing tumbled through the air and crashed into a thousand pieces at the bottom of the stairwell. Rinaldo and the cheering sheep-police charged up the steps to subdue Donnabella and her bloodthirsty consort.
For Sonderborg it seemed an eternity before his soul gave a halfhearted heave and he became himself again.
It was a beautiful day, set under a storkless sky. The carriage, one of those old-fashioned domed vehicles completely encircled by a running board, smelled of macassar oil. Sonderborg watched the reedy countryside roll by, wondering why Natalie had chosen to go on ahead. Masterson’s explanation — he was hanging by his knees from the luggage rack — had been detailed and animated but pitched too high for the human ear.
In any event, Sonderborg was happy to escape the city which had become a madhouse. The king had suspended the Omnibus Magic Act to allow the Royal Wizard, a correspondence-school graduate with a mail-order wand, to locate and restore to their human shapes the Pedigreed-Pet Plaza captives who had fled in panic in the course of the police raid. During the night, the wizard had run amok, turning every stray creature that crossed his path into a human being. The next morning, all across the city the burgers awoke to find total strangers curled up on the rug before the fire or eating cheese in the pantry. The ensuing uproar brought the king low with a heart attack. Crown Prince Hugo was said to be playing with the Scepter and Orb again.
The carriage passed through a country gate and down a winding road, between marsh grass and rushes topped with red-winged blackbirds, and then stopped before the half submerged stones of Fen House. Natalie waved from under a tree, where she was eating from a hamper. Sonderborg stepped from the carriage and started toward her. But he stopped dead in his tracks. There on a broad lily pad in the Fen House moat was the most beautiful frog he had ever seen.