Disclaimer: Due South and all the characters therin belong not to me but to Alliance/Atlantis. I promise I'll return them when I've finished playing.

Author's Notes: This is blatently silly, please forgive me.

Story Notes: 1) Senate House is real and Hitler really did want it for his London HQ. It is home to The University Of London and its main library. It is also home to the mysterious Price Library Of Witchcraft.
2) The SPHS is also real and their AGM really is that boring. Added Mountie really could only liven things up.
3) From the above, you can probably deduce that the "redhead with the weird sneakers" is yours truly bored out of my mind.

I'll admit I thought it was greatness when Welsh handed us those tickets to London. London, England, not London, Canada as Fraser had to have pointed out to him. Still, I thought it was greatness, even if the homesick Mountie didn't. I was so wrong.

I mean go to London, where we have no jurisdiction whatever and track down a criminal genius. That sucks. And to make it worse we don't know the identity of the criminal genius, besides that he wasn't the moron that thought up this lame ass plan, `cept that he would be at some conference thing and he's coming there from Chicago. Just to make it worse, I've heard some wild rumour that there are only three flavours of ice-cream in this freaky country. And when you come back to the fact we have no idea who Mr Criminal Genius is, the case descends to new levels of suck previously accessible only to people in deep-suck diving suits.

So there we were jet lagged and standing outside a building that looked like a cross between me and The Stella's wedding cake (a typical case of one-upmanship, one-upwomanship, by my ex-mother-in-law) and the Empire State after it had been left out in the rain too long.

Fraser turns to me, uh-oh, he's in encyclopaedia mode, "Did you know that Hitler wanted Senate House as his London headquarters and gave specific orders for it not to be bombed?"

Looking at how one of the wings stops kind of sudden and brickwork's whitewashed so it doesn't clash quite so badly with the stone, chalk this up as another one where the Nazis screwed up big time. Not that I'm going to point this out to Fraser right now, we have a job to do and stopping for a lecture on thirties building methods ain't on the itinerary. "How do ya know that?" I ask instead and bingo! Fraser goes all inscrutable on my ass. Usually that's as annoying as hell, but right now Mountie happy, me happy. He's been missing Dief the whole trip, we had to leave him with Turnbull in little Canada or he'd get quarantined, and without him to argue with, Fraser's been sad and given a choice between smug Mountie and talking to himself Mountie, I know which I choose.

Go looking for room 312 and The Society for Promotion of Hellenic Studies. "So Fraser, these guys study Helens, isn't that a little unfair? What about all those perfectly nice Janes, and Sues, and Maggies..."

"Hellenes, Ray. As in the Greek people, although the name is thought to derivate from Helen of Troy..." O Vecchio, wherever thou art, why did you make out that Mountie-wrangling was such damned hard work? Honestly, my dear Raimondo, it's not, it's quite simple once you get the hang of it. Just fulfil those fundamental needs for adventure, showing-off and veiled sarcasm and he'll follow you like a, eh, wolf.

Maybe not quite that simple, but I think I know how to play Benton-buddy.

Feel like the world's first art deco lab rat in here. Or should that be art noveau? I'll ask Benton later, not now, need those super keen Mountie senses to find the room before I die of old age.

And hey, he's found it. It's a schoolroom, okay a lecture theatre, but real small, you wouldn't tell the difference if it weren't for the sign on the door. And it's packed full of old folks, heck they're all ancient, must be pushing sixty. Who am I kidding? They've pushed, kicked and pummelled sixty and run off with it's pension money. Clearly they only just made the room before dying of old age. I swear some of them have, that or they're asleep. That's promising.

Fraser's found somewhere to sit. Greatness. He's next to some little redhead with weird sneakers, who's not sixty and eating an apple trying to stay awake. My suspicions confirmed; this place is yawnsville, the chick is here of her own free will and she wants to sleep through it all. She's showing Fraser her programme as I look up towards the lectern.

"And now, ladies and gentlemen, for the return of our very learned friend and colleague, with his latest and most interesting paper on "Tisis In The Works of Herodotos and Euripides: Some Comparisons", Renfield Turnbull."

Christ, it's Mr Criminal Genius. So who the heck is wolf-sitting Dief?