Bianca's Narrow Escape

Or, She Is the Very Model of a Modern Damsel in Distress

This is ridiculous! Bianca fumed.  As a member in good standing of the Brickville Damsels Club, I expect to be properly distressed!

Bianca was restrained to a railroad track, in a manner of speaking.  Certainly, the ropes binding the young heiress were tied expertly, and the cloth running between her teeth was knotted tightly behind the mass of brown curls that fell from her head.  Her back pressed against the track, while ropes ran from her wrists, stretched over her head, and from her ankles, tightly bound together.  These ropes were tied to posts so Bianca could not roll away.  No, there was no issue with how well she was tied.

The problem was the track itself.  The two rails were not a few feet apart, as one might expect, but only a couple inches.

Instead of tying her to a proper railroad track, Craemer Crumb had used a model train track!

Bianca looked in disdain at the miniature locomotive puffing out insignificant clouds of steam.  It pulled its equally small coal tender, followed by a flatbed loaded with small, brown sticks meant to be logs, several boxcars, and finally, the caboose.  It chugged through a Lilliputian village and rounded a diminutive mountain.  Instead of the loud shriek from the whistle as it approached, she only heard a pathetic, high-pitched squeak that made her wince, but didn’t cause her the slightest bit of alarm.

Well, if Craemer isn’t going to take this seriously, then neither am I!  I won’t make the slightest effort to get free.

She quietly ceased her struggles against the ropes, wondering what would happen when the locomotive arrived.  A quiet bump, and then it’ll roll over, she thought contemptuously.

Craemer Crumb twirled his moustache, as he was required to do by the bylaws of the Brickville Villains Club whenever he addressed a captive damsel.  “You’re taking this quite calmly,” he observed.  “Perhaps it would interest you to know that those ‘logs’ are, in actually, sticks of dynamite, painted for verisimilitude!  I have them rigged so that once the locomotive makes contact with you, there will be a most impressive explosion!”

“Mpfff!” Bianca screamed in fright, thrashing wildly in the ropes restraining her.

“That’s better!”  Craemer nodded in approval.  “However, as singularly enjoyable as this scene is, concerns for my safety demand that it continue without my presence.  Adieu!”

Hardly had Craemer left when the door reopened and in strode the confident figure of Bianca’s fiancé, Walter.

“Bianca, my darling!” he exclaimed.  “I heard about Craemer abducting you, so daringly and in broad daylight!  Of course, I immediately raced from the sal…”  He coughed in the middle of the word.  “I mean, from my volunteer stall at the charity bazaar to rescue you from your, um… perilous predicament?”

Bianca gave him an impatient toss of her head, suggesting he needed to stop gaping at her like a landed trout and get her untied!  The train had crossed what had to be the world’s shortest suspension bridge and was now heading directly towards her!

Walter shook his head.  “You’re not in any peril at all!”

“Yes, I am!” Bianca tried to scream through her gag, longing to explain about the dynamite.

“I can’t rescue you,” Walter decided.  “If word got back about this, I’d be the laughingstock of the Heroes Club!”

Bianca furiously let forth a frantic string of incomprehensible syllables.

“No, you don’t need my help.  You can quite manage this yourself.  It may take a little time, but you can slip those knots.  All it requires is for you to concentrate your efforts.”  Walter added a few more words of encouragement, before leaving Bianca alone again.

Bianca gathered the fingers of her right hand, pulling them together.  She wiggled her hand, feeling her wrist slide ever so slightly through the coil of rope.  If she kept exerting pressure, surely her hand would slide free.

Eventually

The train whistled again.

A hope came to her that this might be part of an elaborate joke by Craemer.  She shook her head, dismissing the notion.  Craemer was a bona fide villain; if he said those logs were actually sticks of dynamite, then that’s what they were there.  What’s more, they would work exactly as stated.

Her hand slid forward with agonizing slowness.  The train was seconds away.  She was still trapped.  She wouldn’t escape in time!

Just as the train arrived, Bianca took a deep breath and arched her back.  Would she be able to raise herself high enough?

She felt a puff of hot steam as the locomotive safely passed beneath her.

She collapsed back to the ground, and pulled her right hand from the loop binding her as the locomotive crawled to a stop a few feet away.

She released the gag and unknotted her feet.  “I’m sure I’ll find a use for these,” she remarked, carefully removing the dynamite sticks from the train’s flatcar.

“What happened to the explosion?” Craemer cried out, rushing back into the cottage.  “How did you get free?  Never mind, I’ll tie you again, and this time… Ouch!” he added, as Bianca drew back a fist and knocked him to the floor. She was tempted to add another blow, but stopped herself.  She slid the diamond engagement ring from her finger, surprised at how easily it came off before her thoughts returned Walter.  I’d better save some of that energy for when I find him, she thought grimly, and then we’ll see how good he is at ‘concentrating his efforts’ to get free!