The Long-Lost Home Page 15

  Now painfully awake, the broker drank a strong black coffee and rued his change of fortune. A stroke of good luck had brought him a midnight visit from a debt-ridden messenger with a valuable ring. The desperate fellow had been glad to accept a tenth of the jewel’s worth. Money was exchanged, and now the ring belonged to the broker. If he sold it for even half its value, what a profit he would make! But the tide of luck had already turned. There was no longer a chance of selling the ring for even a single kopek without ending up in jail, not with the police already searching for it.

  What should the broker do? In such a predicament, many would fall prey to a mixed-up way of thinking called the “sunk cost fallacy,” which is best explained by telling a brief story. Imagine you have been sent to sell your family’s cow at the market, but instead you trade the cow for a handful of beans. (If you happen to also imagine that your name is Jack, and you are a character in a fairy tale involving giants and magic beanstalks, that is entirely your business.)

  Here is where the sunk cost fallacy comes in. “Fallacy” means a mistaken belief, and “sunk cost” means money that is already spent. Thus, the sunk cost fallacy is the mistaken belief that the money you once paid for something has anything to do with what it might now be worth. In other words, a fistful of beans does not become valuable simply because you paid a cow for them. The cow is a sunk cost, and the beans must be taken on their own merits. Perhaps they are magic, perhaps not. Perhaps a beanstalk will grow to the clouds and an adventure with giants will ensue. Or perhaps you will slurp a last bowl of watery bean soup and long for the days when your family owned a cow, from which you could get milk and soothing lowing and soft-eyed companionship, at least.

  The broker in stolen goods was a criminal, but he was also a businessman, and he knew all about the sunk cost fallacy. The money he had paid for the ring mere hours before? Sunk as a shipwreck at the bottom of the sea! The dream of great profits that had danced through his head as he slept? Gone and forgotten! He wasted no time whining about his losses, or imagining there was some way to recapture the ring’s value. Now his only wish was to avoid getting carted off to jail. He put the ring in its box, woke up one of his own servants, and ordered the man to take the box back to the messenger who had brought it to him in the first place.

  “But he’ll be asleep,” the servant groggily objected. He was none too pleased to be sent out at that hour himself.

  “I don’t care if he’s dead! Wake him up,” the broker ordered, “and tell him to retrace his steps. He must take this worthless rock back to wherever he stole it from. Right away! Before we all end up in Siberia!”

  The broker’s servant did as he was told. The hotel messenger was not asleep at all but pacing his room in his nightclothes. He had rid himself of his debts, which was good news. The bad news? He was so racked with guilt about stealing the ring that he had already decided to flee Saint Petersburg at dawn and make a new life for himself elsewhere.

  But now the accurséd box had returned! The sight of it struck fear in his heart. “It is an albatross ’round my neck!” he protested, but he also did as he was told. With his coat hastily thrown over his nightclothes and his feet in slippers, he raced back to the hotel and left the box at the front desk, addressed to the mysterious young lady in the royal suite, the unnamed cousin of England’s queen.

  The next day he failed to report to work, and the day after as well. On the third day, the Grand Hotel replaced him with another, more trustworthy employee. (What became of the poor fellow is another story, and would make a fine Russian novel, full of bad choices, pointless suffering, and lives ruined for no good reason. For now, it is enough to say that his brush with thievery taught him much about crime and punishment, and the dangers of thinking that doing a wrong thing “just this once” makes it somehow less wrong. As Agatha Swanburne once said, “A conscience is like a treasure map. You must follow it to the very end, if you wish to profit from it!”)

  WHAT A NIGHT IT HAD turned out to be! The back-and-forth of the emerald ring was enough to put one in mind of the children’s game called hot potato, which has nothing to do with cooked spuds or even warm globes. Broadly speaking, a “hot potato” is an item that no one wants. The princess’s emerald ring had become just such a potato. As a result, neither the Babushkinovs nor the general and the square-jawed private who worked for him, nor the Saint Petersburg police, nor the broker in stolen goods, his servant, or the hotel messenger whose fault it all was got much sleep.

  However, Miss Penelope Lumley snoozed through the whole business and knew nothing about it. Before dawn she rose, put on her royal costume, and packed up her feathered carpetbag. Then she waited, ready to board whatever ship of luxury the hotel had found for her, and the sooner, the better.

  At six o’clock sharp, there was a knock at her door. There stood a fresh-faced bellboy. Her first thought was that he looked barely older than Alexander Incorrigible.

  “I have your flowers, your grace,” the boy said, out of breath. The bouquet was so large he could barely carry it. “And your chocolates.”

  In all her weary playacting, she had forgotten about ordering these things, but their arrival reminded her to get “back in character,” so to speak. She stepped aside so the boy might come in and set down the vase.

  “Thank you—that is to say, tut-tut! The Cockney flower girls of London sell nicer flowers than these!” The boy gave her a receipt to sign for the items. In her haste, she signed P. Lumley. She realized her error at once but thought it best not to make a fuss over crossing it out, as it would simply draw attention to the name, and she would soon be safely at sea in any case.

  After handing him his fountain pen and the receipt, she popped a whole chocolate in her mouth all at once, as she had often seen Lady Constance do. “Now, young sir,” she said with difficulty, for it turned out to be a gooey one, with a sticky caramel center. “I wish to know what time my ship leaves.”

  But the capable young man was already holding the ticket. “It’s right here, your grace,” he said.

  “Hmm,” she replied, trying to sound displeased. She examined the ticket: first-class passage on the Royal Amsterdam, the finest Dutch clipper ship to sail the northern waters, leaving promptly at ten o’clock! She could hardly have asked for better.

  “Royal Amsterdam, hah! A mere tugboat,” she scoffed. “I will endure it, I suppose. But I need a carriage to take me to the dock.”

  “Already arranged, my lady!”

  “Is that so?” She forced herself to frown as she swallowed the last of the chocolate. “In that case, have a hearty breakfast brought to my room. A bowl of hot porridge would hit the spot, with a spoonful of jam—why, what is that in your hand?”

  “This package was at the front desk for you.” Proudly he held out the little box. “I’ll see to your breakfast right away—”

  “Wait.” Penelope’s fingers went cold as she opened the box. There was the emerald ring, with the tissue paper carelessly crumpled around it! “This was to be delivered to a general’s house last night,” she said, handing it back to him. “Clearly it was not. I should not have trusted that messenger!”

  The cheerful bellboy clicked his heels together in the Russian fashion. “Shall I deliver it somewhere for you now, your grace?”

  “I’m afraid it is too late. And no time for breakfast, either. Blast!” Hot porridge would have been lovely, but not today. No doubt all the police in Saint Petersburg were looking for her, or soon would be. She grabbed her red velvet cloak and feathered carpetbag. “I shall need that carriage at once.”

  “Your grace, the ship doesn’t sail until ten.”

  “Too late!” She was already striding down the hall.

  The bellboy scampered behind. “But it is the only luxury passenger ship to leave today.”

  “Never mind luxury!” she retorted. “I don’t care what kind of ship is it. I must leave the city, now. What is the very next vessel to leave Saint Petersburg?”

  The b
oy looked as if he might cry. “I’m sorry, I don’t know, your grace!”

  Poor child! She took pity on him and dropped her imperious tone. “Of course you do not. How could you? You are not the harbormaster, after all. However, you are an excellent bellboy and will no doubt achieve great things in life, if you apply yourself! For now, just get me to the street, but not through the hotel lobby, where we will be seen—is there a side door? Through the kitchen, perhaps?”

  The bewildered bellboy did as she asked. Before long they had slipped out to the street through a service door. The boy put his fingers to his lips and whistled sharply to hail a carriage. The first to stop was not one of the fine carriages that picked up the hotel’s wealthy guests, but a simple horse-drawn wagon, more suited to delivering goods to the kitchen. At the moment, the wagon was full of beets.

  Penelope clambered up next to the driver, as it was the only place to sit. “Take me to the waterfront, right away,” she said. At the driver’s blank look, she made swimming motions, to no avail.

  The puzzled driver spoke to the bellboy in Russian and made concerned gestures toward his cargo. After a brief negotiation, the bellboy prevailed. He turned to Penelope.

  “He wants to know which dock, your ladyship?”

  “Wherever I am likely to find a ship putting out to sea right now.” The boy translated. By now the sun had risen, and Penelope’s fear made her impatient. “Let’s go! Ah-deen, dva, tree!” she said to the driver. Obligingly he started the horses at a trot.

  “But your grace! The box!” The bellboy broke into a run and chased after the moving wagon. With a strong overhead toss, he threw the box at Penelope. Countless games of playing hot potato with the Incorrigible children had honed her reflexes. Without thinking, she caught the box with both hands.

  “To be found with this emerald is the last thing I need!” she exclaimed, and tossed it back to the bellboy.

  Determined, the boy threw it to the driver, in whose lap it landed. The annoyed driver shoved it at Penelope and kept his eyes on the road.

  “Very well, but we must hurry.” She grabbed the reins and gave them a hard shake. “Hey-a, hey-a!” she called to the horses. “Now, gallop!”

  Obediently the horses took off. Penelope was nearly knocked out of her seat. But there was a traffic jam not far ahead, and the driver cursed in Russian as he pulled the sweating team to a hard stop. An angry general waving a pistol was being pursued through the intersection by an even angrier pair of little Russian boys, who were in turn being pursued by their parents: a hysterical, well-dressed woman and a tall, imposing captain with a bandage tied ’round his head, though the wound was clearly no more than a scratch.

  “It is the Babushkinovs!” Penelope cried. She jumped down from her seat into the wagon itself, to hide among the beets. Alas, the wagon was a rickety wooden affair. The force of her landing was enough to split the boards in two.

  “Beets!” Madame Babushkinov cried in horror as the spilled beets tumbled in a river of red across the road.

  Penelope hung on to the railing with one hand and wedged her feet on either side of the split. The little box was in her other hand. Thinking quickly, she threw it high in the air. “Hot potato!” she cried, to get their attention. The twins’ heads whipped upward, searching.

  “I have it!” yelled Boris.

  “I have it!” yelled Constantin, shouting over his brother.

  The twins raced to be first to catch the box, but the beets were rolling underfoot. At the same moment, the two boys flailed and tripped. Distracted by their cries, their mother also lost her balance on the sea of beets and ended up sprawled on her backside in the road, as the soaring emerald ring reached the top of its flight, paused, then dropped fantastically from the sky and landed in her lap.

  Penelope kept low and out of sight in the broken wagon. The spilled beets had stopped all the other traffic, and in the chaos and distraction, her driver had found an opening and gotten them through.

  She peeked between the wooden slats at the scene they were leaving behind. Madame Babushkinov held the ring aloft in triumph, as the confused general and her equally confused husband stood nearby. “Ivan Victorovich, look!” she cried. “Your mother’s ring, dropped from heaven itself! We have been saved! Saved by the beets!”

  THE RICKETY WAGON TURNED DOWN one street and then another. Penelope was still hanging on in the back and could not see where they were going, but they were surely heading toward the sea, for the smell of the cold salt air grew stronger by the minute.

  She drew a deep breath. The sea air was nourishing and gave her hope. “My costume has been spoiled by all this rolling around in a beet wagon, and I no longer have the ring,” she thought, “but a first-class ticket for the Royal Amsterdam will serve as proof of my wealthy connections. With it, I will easily convince some captain or other to take me on as a passenger.”

  The wagon stopped. “Phew!” the driver exclaimed, holding his nose. Even the horses tossed their heads and snorted in distaste.

  “If you mean that something smells fishy around here, I quite agree,” Penelope said, climbing out. The whole place stank of fish. A look at the vessels preparing to set sail revealed why. These were no luxury schooners. The beet-wagon driver had taken her where the fishing boats berthed, for those were the very first boats to leave Saint Petersburg each day.

  “There has been an unfortunate misunderstanding,” she said to the driver, “for these are all fishing boats, yet I am a passenger, not a fish, obviously. I wonder if you might possibly take me to a different dock?”

  The driver glared and let out a stream of angry words in Russian. His meaning was along the lines of “Listen, Princess Whoever-You-Are, I’ve brought you where you said you wanted to go. Now I expect to be paid for the ride, plus the cost of fixing my broken wagon. And don’t forget about my lost beets! That’s a sunk cost I can never get back!”

  Penelope understood not a word, but the fellow’s tone was plain as day. And it was clear from the way he kept slapping one open palm with the back of his other hand that he wanted money. She gave him a winning smile. “Please submit your bill to the Grand Hotel of Saint Petersburg, to be charged to my account—”

  “Nyet!” he roared, and took a threatening step toward her.

  “My good sir, you shall be paid, I promise—but not just yet,” she said, and bolted. The driver shouted and shook his fist, but he could not give chase without leaving his horses, and after losing his beets he had no wish to lose his animals as well.

  Penelope ran in a zigzag, ducking behind crates and heaps of coiled rope as she made her way to the ships. At the far end of the dock, a Norwegian trawler was being loaded with provisions. “The Incorrigibles would use their noses to discover what these wooden casks contain, and so can I, if I concentrate,” she thought, sniffing her way along. “I smell fresh water, salt, hardtack, and sauerkraut. And all these empty barrels were once filled with”—she sniffed deeply, to sort it out from the general fishy smell of the dock—“not sole, not flounder, but herring, if I am not mistaken. . . . Empty barrels! Eureka!”

  She glanced about to make sure no one was watching, but the crew was hard at work, preparing to set sail. She pried the top off an empty barrel and began to climb in. “One leg at a time, and never mind the dress, which is already ruined,” she thought. “But, hmm! There is something inside this barrel after all . . . perhaps if I give a small kick to dislodge the contents . . .”

  “Ah!” cried the barrel, or rather, the man it contained. Penelope withdrew in a flash. The fellow stood with effort and blinked his eyes in the early-morning light, for he had been hiding in the dark for an hour already. He stared at Penelope in horror.

  “Albatross!” he wailed. “The albatross has returned!”

  “I know you.” Penelope gave him a hard look. “Aren’t you the messenger from the Grand Hotel who was supposed to deliver that small box to a general’s house? There has been a great deal of trouble because of you.”
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br />   “Yes, it is all my fault!” the messenger replied in despair, for indeed it was the same fellow. “I was in terrible debt, sick with worry, and when I saw that precious jewel I lost my head. I never should have peeked! What a fool I was, to think that committing a crime would improve my situation. Now I must flee Saint Petersburg or else die of shame.” His eyes filled with tears, but it might have been from the overpowering smell of herring. “I have always had bad luck. I was born to cold, unhappy parents who preferred my brother to me. Later I fell in with the wrong companions—”

  Penelope interrupted him. “This is no time for a Russian novel, sir. The ship will soon set sail, and two stowaways on board is one stowaway too many. I must ask you to leave.”

  He started to protest but soon gave up, since it was all his fault to begin with. Sadly he climbed out of the barrel, like a hermit crab being evicted from a favorite shell. Fishy tears rolled down his cheeks.

  The man was pessimax personified. Penelope could not help feeling sorry for him. “Take heart, sir. Your luck is about to improve. Look.” She reached into her carpetbag and produced a ticket.

  He read it, and his eyes grew wide. “First-class passage on the Royal Amsterdam?”

  “It will be more comfortable than traveling in—ugh!—one of these barrels, I assure you.” With a grunt, Penelope climbed in. “The ship leaves at ten o’clock. Let your actions be blameless until then! As Agatha Swanburne once said, ‘Anyone can be good for a minute. Multiply by sixty and the hours will take care of themselves.’ Now, if you will hand me my carpetbag, thank you! And be so kind as to fasten the lid. . . .”

  The messenger whose fault it all was bowed low, amazed—how quickly one’s life could change! He placed the lid on the barrel and ran off, clutching the precious ticket.

  AND THAT IS HOW MISS Penelope Lumley, so recently a guest in the royal suite of a hotel as grand as its name, gave away her first-class ticket on the Royal Amsterdam clipper and became a stowaway on a Norwegian fishing ship bound for who knows where, traveling in the least grand, dirtiest, and most herring-scented accommodations imaginable.