Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3 Amy pounded on the cell door. "Hello? Help?" she yelled. Dan appeared and looked inside the bars. "Whatever you did, I'll always stand by you," he said. "Don't be a dweeb. Get the guard and open this door!" Amy yelled. Dan pushed on the door, and it slowly swung open. Amy blinked. Why had she thought the door was locked? Come to think of it, Isabel had never said that it was. She felt her legs trembling. She was more shaken up than she wanted to admit. "C'mon," Dan said. "I found this awesome collection of knives. One of them still has bloodstains on it!" "Dan, Isabel Kabra was here," Amy said.

艾米重重地敲着牢房的门。 “喂?救命？”她喊道。 丹出现了，向酒吧里看了看。 “无论你做了什么，我都会支持你，”他说。 “别犯傻了。叫警卫来，把门打开！”艾米喊道。 丹推了推门，门慢慢地打开了。 艾米眨了眨眼睛。为什么她以为门是锁着的？ 仔细想想，伊莎贝尔从来没有说过这句话。 她感到双腿在颤抖。 她被吓坏了，虽然她不想承认。 “来吧，”丹说。“我发现了这个很棒的刀具收藏。 其中一只手上还有血迹！”“丹，伊莎贝尔·卡布拉来过，”艾米说。

"Isabel Kabra? Multiplying Cobras. Which one is that?" "Ian and Natalie's mother!" "Oh, man. Those kids have a mother?" "She was almost… nice," Amy said. "She actually apologized for Ian." "Too late. Her kids are the hounds of suck." "She said the Lucians should win—" "Duh." "—and that I should trust her. She was about to tell me something." Dan made a face. "Let me guess. Go home, little children, this game is too dangerous for you, you're going to lose. Blahbaddy blah. We've heard it a million times since we started. So which branch got the originality gene? They all sound the same." Amy decided to leave out the part about Ian really liking her. She wasn't buying it, of course. But Dan definitely wouldn't buy it. "She said she met me when I was little, but I don't remember her at all," Amy said.

“伊莎贝尔Kabra ?眼镜蛇。 是哪一个？”“伊恩和娜塔莉的妈妈！”“哦,人。 那些孩子有妈妈吗？”“她几乎……很好，”艾米说。 “她真的替伊恩道歉了。” “太迟了。她的孩子都是狗屎。” “她说卢西亚队会赢——”“废话。” “而且我应该相信她。 她正要告诉我一件事。” 丹做了个鬼脸。“让我猜猜。 回家吧，孩子们，这个游戏对你们来说太危险了，你们会输的。 Blahbaddy等等。我们从一开始就听过无数次了。 那么，哪个分支有独创性基因呢？ 听起来都一样。”艾米决定不提伊恩真的喜欢她这部分。 当然，她并不买账。 但丹绝对不会买。 “她说她在我小时候见过我，但我一点也不记得她，”艾米说。

Dan was barely listening. "We'd better get outside or Nellie is going to have a freak attack." As they walked toward the exit, Amy stopped in front of the wall of mug shots. "Why was she here?" she wondered. "It wasn't just a coincidence. She stopped here, at the mug shots. She was leaning in, right—" Amy stopped. "Dan! One of the mug shots is missing!" Neatly cut out from behind the Plexiglas, one small photograph was gone. "Now we'll never know who it was," Amy said. Dan closed his eyes. Amy knew he was going over the photographs in his mind. Even though there were about a hundred on the wall, she knew he'd remember the one that was missing. "Follow me," he said. Amy hurried after him to the gift shop. There was a framed poster on the wall showing the same criminal faces. Dan put his finger on one, a youngish man with dirty hair and a blank expression. One side of his face showed white scars from his forehead to his chin. "Him." "Bob Troppo," the clerk behind the register said. "Is that some sort of Aussie greeting?" Dan

丹几乎没在听。“我们最好到外面去，不然内莉会突然发作的。” 当他们走向出口时，艾米在满墙的疑犯照片前停了下来。 “她为什么会在这里？” “这不仅仅是巧合。 她在嫌犯照片前停了下来。 她正向前倾着身子，对吧——”艾米停住了。 “丹!一张疑犯照片不见了！”从树脂玻璃后面整齐地剪下来的一张小照片不见了。 “现在我们再也不知道是谁了，”艾米说。 丹闭上了眼睛。艾米知道他正在脑子里翻看那些照片。 尽管墙上挂着大约一百张，她知道他会记得少了的那张。 “跟我来，”他说。艾米紧跟着他去了礼品店。 墙上挂着一张装裱好的海报，上面是同样的罪犯的面孔。 丹把手指放在一个人身上，那是一个头发脏兮兮、表情茫然的年轻人。 他的一侧脸上从前额到下巴都有白色的伤疤。 “他。”“鲍勃·特罗波，”收银台后面的店员说。 “这是澳大利亚人的问候语吗？”丹

murmured to Amy. He waved. "Bob Troppo!" he called. The clerk came from around the counter. "The bloke you're looking at. He was called Bob Troppo. Nobody knew his real name because he never spoke. 'Gone troppo' is an Australian expression for someone who's lived in the tropics so long he's gone a bit weird. He lived in Sydney in the 1890s." "What did he do?" Dan asked. "Feed someone to a croc? Tie him to the railroad tracks?" "He tried to assassinate Mark Twain." Amy and Dan exchanged a glance. Mark Twain was a Cahill descendant. He was a Janus, the clever, artistic branch. The clerk, a burly young man in khaki shorts, leaned against the counter. "Twain was on a lecture tour, you see, back in 1896. Troppo was seen talking to him in an alley outside the hall where he spoke. Apparently, they had words, and Troppo smashed him on the shoulder with a cane!" "That doesn't sound like an attempted

低声对艾米说。他挥了挥手。 “鲍勃·特罗波！”他喊道。店员从柜台周围走过来。 “你正在看的那个家伙。 他叫鲍勃·特罗波。没人知道他的真名，因为他从不说话。 “Gone troppo”是一个澳大利亚短语，用来形容那些在热带生活太久而变得有点奇怪的人。 他19世纪90年代住在悉尼。” “他做了什么？”丹问道。 “把人喂鳄鱼？”把他绑在铁轨上？”“他试图暗杀马克·吐温。” 艾米和丹交换了一下目光。 马克·吐温是卡希尔家族的后裔。 他是雅努斯，聪明的艺术分支。 店员，一个穿着卡其布短裤的魁梧的年轻人，靠在柜台上。 “你知道，早在1896年，吐温就在做巡回演讲。 有人看到特罗波在大厅外的巷子里和他说话。 显然，他们吵架了，特罗波用手杖打了他的肩膀！”“这听起来不像是故意的

assassination," Amy said. "The cane had a knife concealed in it. That was enough to convict him, especially since he never spoke a word in his defense. Anyway, he escaped in a totally ingenious way." The clerk leaned forward as if he was about to impart a secret. "He was in jail, but he had the job of cleaning the floors at night, you see. So every night he scraped the wax off the wood and kept it in his cell. Then he made a wax impression of a key! Is that clever or what?" Dan and Amy exchanged another glance. They knew each other so well and had depended on each other for everything for so long that they could communicate without speaking. Ekaterina? The Ekat branch was ingenious and inventive. "What happened to him?" Amy asked. "Nobody knows. Rumor has it that he took off into the bush. Would you like to buy some handcuffs? A book?" "Handcuffs?" Dan asked. Amy pulled on his shirt. "No, thank you. We have to be going. Thanks for the story!"

暗杀，”艾米说。“手杖里藏着一把刀。 这足以给他定罪，尤其是他从来没有为自己辩护过一个字。 不管怎样，他逃走的方法非常巧妙。” 那个职员身体前倾，好像要告诉他一个秘密似的。 “他在监狱里，但他有一份晚上打扫地板的工作，你知道。 所以每天晚上他都刮掉木头上的蜡，把它放在他的牢房里。 然后他做了一把钥匙的蜡印！这算聪明吗？”丹和艾米又交换了一下目光。 他们彼此非常了解，彼此依赖了很长时间，所以他们可以不用说话就能交流。 Ekaterina吗?Ekat分支很有创意。 “他怎么了？”艾米问。 “没人知道。谣传他跑到灌木丛里去了。 你想买手铐吗？ 一本书?”“手铐?”丹问道。 艾米穿上他的衬衫。“不，谢谢你。 我们得走了。谢谢你的故事！”

Amy and Dan walked out of the shop and headed for the door. "Bob Troppo sounds crazy," Amy said. Dan nodded. "Gotta be a Cahill." "But what does Isabel want with him?" Amy wondered. "Is he the reason the Kabras are in Sydney? Or…" "…is it us?" Dan asked. Amy, Dan, and Nellie stood in front of a metal door. There was no nameplate, just a grimy button that could be a doorbell. The building was made of corrugated steel and brick, with long shuttered windows. It looked like a warehouse. "Maybe this isn't it," Amy said, suddenly nervous. "It's the address," Nellie said. She pressed the bell. They waited. Amy shifted from one foot to the other. She felt heat rise in her cheeks. How crazy was it to travel halfway around the world and show up at someone's door? Someone who hardly managed to stay in touch with his own cousin and

艾米和丹走出商店，朝门口走去。 “鲍勃·特罗波听起来很疯狂，”艾米说。 丹点了点头。“一定是卡希尔家的。” “可是伊莎贝尔找他有什么事？”艾米想知道。 “他就是卡布拉一家来悉尼的原因吗？” “……是我们吗？”丹问道。 艾米、丹和内莉站在一扇金属门前。 没有铭牌，只有一个脏兮兮的按钮，可能是门铃。 这座建筑是用波纹钢和砖建造的，有长长的百叶窗。 它看起来像个仓库。 “也许不是这样，”艾米说，突然紧张起来。 “这是地址，”内莉说。 她按了门铃。他们等待着。 艾米从一只脚换到另一只脚。 她感到脸颊一阵发热。 绕了半个地球，出现在别人家门口，这有多疯狂？ 一个连自己的表弟都联系不上的人