“I know where he’s going,” Mr. Dunworthy bellowed. He suddenly noticed Colin. “What are you doing here?”

“Wearing clothes that fit a good deal better than that,” Colin said, grinning. “Is that how you’re planning to smuggle the treasures out of St. Paul’s-under your coat?”

Mr. Dunworthy shrugged out of the jacket, said, “Find me something in my size,” and half threw it at the tech, who scurried off with it.

“I think you should have kept it,” Colin said. “You’d be able to fit The Light of the World and Newton’s tomb under there.”

“Sir Isaac Newton’s tomb is in Westminster Abbey. Lord Nelson’s tomb is in St. Paul’s,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “Which you would know if you spent more time at school, where you are supposed to be at this very moment. Why aren’t you?”

He would never buy the holiday story. “A water main broke,” Colin said, “and they had to cancel classes for the rest of the day, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to come see what you were up to. And a good thing, too, since you’re obviously haring off to St. Paul’s.”

“Water main,” Mr. Dunworthy said dubiously.

“Yes. Flooded my house and half the quad. We nearly had to swim for it.”

“Odd your housemaster didn’t mention it when Eddritch telephoned him.”

I knew I didn’t like Eddritch, Colin thought.

“He did, however, mention your repeated absences. And the failing mark you got on your last essay.”

“That’s because Beeson made me write it on this book, The Impending Threat of Time Travel, and it was total rubbish. It said time travel theory’s rot, and historians do affect events, that they’ve been affecting them all along, but we haven’t been able to see it yet because the space-time continuum’s been able to cancel out the changes. But it won’t be able to forever, so we need to stop sending historians to the past immediately and-”