It was, of course, still raining furiously in the Spaldergate House garden. Skeeter did slip again, the muddy ground was so churned up beside the crowded flagstone walkway. The furious man on his heels grabbed at the trunk again as Skeeter lurched and slid sideways. “Listen, you drunken idiot!” he shouted above steady pouring of the rain. “Lay off the booze or the pills before you show up for work!”
“Stuff it,” Skeeter said crudely. He regained his feet and finally gained the house, where he gratefully lowered his burden to the floor.
“Where are you going?” the irate young man demanded when Skeeter headed back into the downpour.
He flung the answer over one aching shoulder. “Back to the station!”
“But who’s going to cart this out to the carriage? Take it to the hotel?”
“Carry it yourself!”
The skinny, whiskered little tourist was still sputtering at the back door when Skeeter re-entered the now-visibly shrunken Britannia Gate. He passed several other porters bent double under heavy loads, trying to get the last of the pile through, then was back on the metal gridwork platform. All that remained of the departing tour was a harried Time Tours guide who plunged through as Skeeter reappeared. Then he was alone with the mud and a single uniformed Time Tours employee who swung shut the big metal safety gate as the Britannia shrank rapidly back in on itself and vanished for another eight days.
Skeeter—wet, shivering, exhausted—slowly descended the stairs once again and slid his timecard through the reader at the bottom, “clocking out” so his brief stay in the London timestream would be recorded properly. The baggage manager was waiting, predictably irate. Skeeter listened in total, sodden silence, taking the upbraiding he’d expected. This evidently puzzled the furious Enyo, because she finally snapped, “Well? Aren’t you going to protest your innocence?”