Even finding the bed was hard enough; the place was vast. And at first Emma thought she’d been directed to the wrong hotel room.

It wasn’t because it was so opulent. Because it was opulent, it really was – this wasn’t the sort of hotel room that tourists would stay in, this was a suite for the very rich and the very lazy. There were tapestries on the walls, the carpets were so thick that Emma’s feet were buried within them. She wondered whether the paintings hanging on the walls were original masterpieces by some great artist… and decided that yes, they probably were. Emma didn’t know much about art, so she wouldn’t have recognised the painter’s name anyway. She was glad of that. It made her feel just a little less intimidated.

On the flight she’d been worried, of course. What would she do when she got to Rotterdam? Where would she go? She had no Euros, no grasp of the Dutch language, actually no grasp of anything to do with Holland whatsoever. And then she decided that she should put aside all her concerns. If whoever was in charge of this expedition was able to arrange a plane ticket for her, he presumably was savvy enough not to leave her stranded at the airport. And so, of course, it turned out to be; an unsmiling chauffeur held up a placard with her name on, greeted her formally, and led her to a limousine. No, he couldn’t answer any of her questions. No, he couldn’t say who had provided all this for her. No, he couldn’t even say where they were driving. He was under strict instructions, sorry. All he was authorised to do was to offer her a little light music during the journey. Would she like some Mozart? Splendid.

And that’s the last thing he said to her – and that was her introduction to the country, this English girl being driven through South Holland with Italian opera warbling in the background.

The chauffeur didn’t even speak when he dropped Emma off at the hotel. He nodded, curtly but not rudely, shook his head when Emma offered him a tip (fairly pointlessly, as she still only had the change left over from her supermarket shopping the day before in Leeds), and drove away.

Everyone at the hotel, guests and staff alike, looked very smart. Emma felt quite out of place. But no one at reception commented on her appearance, they were too well trained for that. She was given a key to her room, and led towards the special express elevator that would take her to the top, straight to the twenty-ninth floor.

So it wasn’t that the room was so opulent. If anything, Emma had already come to expect that. If there hadn’t been old Masters hanging on the wall, and a bathroom larger than her entire flat back home, she might have felt disappointed. What surprised her was the room seemed to be already occupied.

“Oh,” she said, out loud, when she saw the wardrobe was full, that there was a dress lying across the bed. “Hello? I’m sorry. Is there anyone here?”

On the dress there was a note. Typed, once again, on an old-fashioned typewriter, the letters punched hard into the paper.

“You are to wear this tonight. It will fit you perfectly, and the style will suit you. The colour will bring out your eyes. At seven o’clock precisely you must wait in the bar downstairs, and from there you will be taken to your next destination.”

Emma lifted up the dress. It was black, low cut, beautiful. The silk was so smooth that it almost resisted her touch, the hand all but glided off it. She instantly resented it.

“P.S.”, said the note. “If you are as stubborn as I think you are, you won’t want to wear this dress. That’s your prerogative. So I have bought you another dozen dresses, the wardrobe is full of them. Take your pick. Any of them will do for this evening’s adventure.

“But this one is the best.”

Emma looked at the other dresses. All of them, too, would fit her exactly. All of them, too, were better than anything she had waiting for her back in England. And none of them, it was true, were quite as good as the one that had been especially selected. Damn.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” said the note. It almost seemed to laugh at her. “And P.P.S. This room is very beautiful, and the bed is very very soft. But you will not be here long enough to enjoy it. At the party this evening you will receive a clue directing you to your next destination.”

The bed was very soft. “Hell with that,” said Emma. And not one to let a good bed go to waste, she curled up on it for a nap. She’d got one over on her mysterious benefactor after all. And she dreamed about riddles and clues and humourless chauffeurs and treasure.

*

“Can I have a volunteer from the audience, please?”

In spite of herself, Emma was enjoying this. She still felt out of place, of course she did. She knew no one at the party, and, it has to be said, she didn’t much want to know any of them. The men wore suits and the women wore dresses at least as expensive as hers – and you could tell immediately that they were used to wearing them. Nothing impressed them, nothing surprised them. Nothing would provoke them even to raise an eyebrow, these people had eyebrows that had probably been frozen on their face static since birth. Not the quality of the champagne, and not the quality of the entertainment. The applause that greeted Dan Meyer’s patter was polite but hardly enthusiastic. These weren’t the sort of people who did enthusiasm.

But Emma did like the champagne. (And it was extraordinary just how many misgivings about the evening disappeared once she’d chucked back a few glasses of the stuff.) And she did like the act; she thought Dan Meyer was extraordinary. When he’d first emerged from the wings, and the guests’ conversation had dropped to a respectful murmur, Emma had had no idea what to expect. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Mr Meyer had announced, “this evening, for your pleasure, I shall be swallowing swords.” And he grinned at them all, and added, “In this day and age, there’s not a lot of that about!” And Emma had laughed. Even the idea of a man thrusting sharp blades down his throat made her wince, but there was such a good-natured charm to his introduction that she was won over entirely.

He’d been swallowing knives, he’d been swallowing hedge trimmers, of all things! Now he took a long, twenty-nine inch sword from its scabbard. He asked for a volunteer, and Emma put her hand up – but Dan had already picked someone else out from the crowd.

“What’s your name?” asked Dan.

“David,” said his new assistant, in an English accent. He looked nervous, and as out of place as Emma, and she felt a pang of sympathy for him. His suit looked rented. His tie didn’t quite match.

“David,” said Dan, “nice to meet you. Now, ever swallowed a sword before? Because now’s your chance.” And David visibly blanched, and Dan laughed, and said, “I’m kidding, David, just kidding. I don’t want you to start sword swallowing, I don’t want the competition! No, I’ll do the swallowing part. And what I need you to do is pull it out afterwards. Okay?” David nodded nervously. “Trust me,” added Dan, “you’ve got the easy bit.”

The blade went into Dan’s mouth. He supported the sword carefully with his hands, and then, incredibly took them away. It looked for all the world that Dan was trying to balance something very sharp and very deadly on nothing more sturdy than his tongue. A gulp – that was all – and the sword slid quickly down his throat. In spite of their better classed reserve, the crowd gulped in echo. Dan turned to them, and bowed from the waist, the sword hilt poking out from between his teeth. Then, still bent over, he swung his body round to David. David hesitated. Dan sighed, and made a show of checking his watch; the crowd laughed. So David took hold of the sword, closed his eyes tight – and pulled it free with all his strength.

“There,” said Dan, now able to speak again. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

But David’s eyes were still shut, and he was wobbling, and then he wasn’t on his feet any more. And he’d toppled over, straight through a rather expensive looking glass table.

“Oh dear,” said Dan. “Let’s give him some air, shall we?” And as a couple of waiters helped the hapless man to his feet, and led him outside on to the balcony, Emma realised where she’d seen a man that clumsy before. She followed out after him.

“It’s you,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“Hello,” said David, still a little pale. He smiled weakly at her.

“You followed me all the way to Holland?”

“Hey,” protested David. “You said if I could solve the clue, I could join you on your treasure hunt.” He shrugged. “Well. So. I solved it. As you can see.”

“Yes,” said Emma, “but Holland? Are you out of your mind?”

“It was very odd,” said David. “I couldn’t have afforded the fare. But there was a ticket waiting for me at the airport. A car waiting when I got through customs, a suit on my hotel bed. And I was told I’d make a contact here. Hey, are you my contact?”

“I think I might be,” said a voice behind them.

It was Dan Meyer. Now his act was over, his voice no longer boomed like a showman’s, and was earnest and hushed. “Are you the guy I’m supposed to meet? I was told to pass on an envelope to the man with the dreadful tie who’d crash through the glass table.”

“You crashed through the table deliberately?” asked Emma. “How stupid are you? All I had to do was drop a scarf.”

“I would rather,” David said ruefully, rubbing his sore sides, “have dropped a scarf.” He took the envelope from Dan Meyer. “Have you any idea what this is about?”

“Not a clue,” said Dan. “All I know is I was invited to perform at this party. From what I can see, the only reason was so I could give you the envelope. All over the world people book me for my sword swallowing. Frankly, if I was only being paid to be a postman, I could have saved myself a little effort.”

Inside the envelope there was a card, on which was typed a clue:

It has 23 friends allied into one,

With a name crafted from silver in old Latin tongue.

Visit the city of fair winds and good air,

Seek out a hostel with a dance full of flare.

“Here we go again,” sighed Emma.

“And there’s more,” said David. “Wait.” And from the bottom of the envelope he pulled out the fragments of two photographs. Both had been torn in half. On one there was a little boy, and the other a little girl. David looked them over. “It’s me as a boy. That’s odd. I don’t know how old I’d have been. I don’t know who the girl is…”

“It’s me,” breathed Emma. “It’s me.” Little Emma was smiling, beaming up at her older self, this young innocent Emma. Who still had her Daddy. Who still played games with him at Christmas. There was an arm on her shoulder – but whoever’s shoulder it had belonged to had been ripped away. There was an orphaned arm around David’s shoulders too.

“Well done. You have solved my little puzzle.”

And, smiling at them, was a fat man in a suit.

“Your puzzle?”

“My puzzle, yes,” said the man. “And my party! I am your host. I invited you here.” He opened his arms out expansively, as if to say, yes, this, all this, is my home – and he grinned wider, and Emma was fascinated to see how many gold teeth he sported. It made that smile seem very insincere. He looked like a frog, Emma thought, a fat little frog who’d been taken from his pond and squeezed into a tuxedo, and she stifled a laugh. She somehow knew laughing would be a mistake; this was not a man who was used to laughter.

“Well, thanks for the party,” said David, politely.

“You’re welcome.”

“And for the treasure hunt. It was fun.”

“Good,” said the frog. “And now, if you’ll just hand over the contents of that envelope I provided, I’ll give you your prize.”

“If it’s your envelope,” said Emma, “why do you want it back? Why don’t you tell us what’s in it?”

The frog fell silent. He puffed out his cheeks in frustration, and it made him look so much more amphibian, Emma couldn’t help it, Emma did laugh.

“This isn’t a game,” he snapped.

“It’s funny,” said Dan Meyer. “A game, I thought that’s exactly what it was. Or I wouldn’t have got involved.” He pulled out his sword.

“Are you threatening me, Mr Meyer?” snarled the host.

“Of course not,” said Dan, equably enough. “I’m just showing you my sword. I’m very proud of my sword.” And he hissed at David and Emma, “Well, go on, then! Run!”

And so they ran. Over the balcony, across the lawn, towards the road. This was ridiculous, Emma thought, she couldn’t run in these shoes! So she kicked them off, and that made her feel only slightly more sensible. And she realised with some shock she was enjoying the adventure, and that she was laughing, and that David was laughing too.

“We’ve got to solve that clue!” David puffed.

Emma agreed. Otherwise they wouldn’t know where they were running to. Or why they were running in the first place.

She really rather hoped they weren’t running for their lives.

*

Solve the puzzle in the chapter above and use your answers as search terms in Telpages (http://telpages.com) to locate the .tel name with the link to next week’s chapter.  The link will appear somewhere within the relevant .tel name.  Once you’ve found the link, the next chapter of the story will not be live until Friday 28^thMay at 12:00 BST.  Hints may be available athttp://twitter.com/emmasjourney - good luck!