Chapter 3: The Ping
A quiet table, a blinking sandwich, and a city that answers.
[ The Bear’s Pilgrms — Live Hub — reading order & schedule, extras & The Pilgrms’ Bear ]
Recap: London has given us its notices and its tests. At the British Library, a suitcase vanished with cloakroom ticket #42 left behind; in its lining, Aunt Lucy’s scrap still waits to be understood. The Find My icon—shaped like a marmalade sandwich—has sat grey ever since. Holmes and Watson have taken the loss as a case. The Pilgrms, for once on the same page, have taken it as a duty. Paddington has taken it as he takes most things: politely, and seriously.
This morning returns us to The Pilgrim café, to the same window table and the same quiet hope. Patience holds; cups cool; notes are kept. What follows isn’t a deduction so much as an announcement—the kind only a suitcase can make. The map is about to speak, and when it does, the room will have to move. As Holmes likes to remind them: “We have a time and a door. Early tempts; right-on-time is kind.”
The following morning found Paddington once more at The Pilgrim café. He had returned early, sitting at the same table by the window, paws folded over his iPhone. The Find My app was still open, the little marmalade sandwich icon fixed in place, grey and unhelpful. Every so often he tapped the screen, just to be sure. He had not slept well, though he was too polite to say so aloud.
Holmes and Watson arrived first, followed by the Pilgrms. Wilkins had forgotten his tie, Keene’s lighter clicked irritably in her hand, Marsh carried a half-eaten croissant, and Blake was already scribbling in her notepad. Yet for all their quirks, they gathered promptly, drawn together by something they had rarely felt before: purpose.
Watson poured tea for Paddington. “No news?”
Paddington shook his head. “Not yet. Aunt Lucy always said that patience is just politeness stretched a little further. But even so, I do hope the marmalade sandwich shows itself soon.”
They sipped their tea in silence, the clatter of the café carrying on around them. Just as Marsh reached again for his croissant, Paddington’s iPhone buzzed. The marmalade sandwich icon flickered, then glowed green. A tiny circle pulsed beneath it.
Paddington sat up straight. “Oh! It’s moved!”
Blake nearly dropped her pen. “Where? Where has it gone?”
Holmes leaned across, eyes narrowing at the map. “Not here in London. Not anywhere in England. Bear, your suitcase is already abroad.”
Watson frowned. “But where? Show us.”
Paddington turned the screen for all to see. The glowing marmalade sandwich hovered over an unfamiliar cluster of streets, the place name spelled out clearly at the bottom: Hong Kong.
There was a stunned silence. Marsh let his croissant slip back into its bag. Keene muttered a curse so quiet even Holmes ignored it. Blake scribbled the words down three times, as if to prove they were real. Wilkins lit a cigarette, then quickly stubbed it out again when Paddington looked at him hopefully.
Paddington’s eyes were wide, but not afraid. “Aunt Lucy always said that if something important is taken, one must go after it — politely, but without delay. If my suitcase is in Hong Kong, then I must be too.”
Watson sighed, but there was admiration in his voice. “Then we are bound for Hong Kong.”
Holmes tapped his cane once, firmly. “Indeed. We have a time and a door. Early tempts; right-on-time is kind”. The trail has declared itself. A suitcase does not travel alone — it is carried. And whoever carried it will expect to be followed.”
The Pilgrms reacted each in their own way. Keene exhaled a stream of smoke she hadn’t realised she was holding and muttered, “Hong Kong? That’s a lot further than Hammersmith.” Wilkins looked pale at the thought of airports, mumbling something about losing his passport in 1987. Marsh brightened at once, rummaging in his pockets. “I’ve heard the dim sum there is excellent. I’ll need a bigger bag.” Blake scribbled furiously in her notebook: Visas. Luggage limits. Emergency sandwiches. She underlined the last twice.
Paddington looked at them fondly. “I am glad you will all come with me. A bear is always less likely to get lost when he travels with friends.”
The Pilgrms exchanged uneasy glances, but not one of them spoke against it. For once, their bear believed in them, and they would not let him down.
So it was decided, over half-drunk cups of tea and a cooling plate of sponge, that they would follow the marmalade sandwich to the other side of the world. The Bear’s Pilgrms were no longer bound to London. Their next chapter lay under neon lights, Hong Kong.
But before the bear, the detectives, and the Pilgrms could board a plane, the suitcase had already begun to tell its own story.
Hong Kong breathed in electric colours and exhaled a low, wet haze. Neon pooled on the wet pavement like spilt ink. From a narrow window above Temple Street, a man watched the market wake. Hawkers tugged at their shutters; awnings trembled under leftover rain; signs blinked through the mist as if rewriting themselves between breaths.
On the table behind him lay a brown suitcase, scuffed at the corners, politely tagged in a hand he almost recognised. Beside it rested a page torn from a notebook — sentences crossed out, rewritten, then crossed again, as though the author could not decide which version of himself to keep.
He smoothed the paper flat with care.
“The bear may not be wholly imagined,” the line began — but beneath it, another hand had written something gentler, almost erased by age: “Be kind to what is not yet finished.”
The words were not his, but they could have been. Every life, he thought, was an unfinished sentence waiting for the pen to return. He had waited twenty years for that sound.
Outside, a green-roofed minibus slowed by the kerb. Its soft two-tone chime — ding-ding — cut through the market’s hum, polite as a knock at a half-forgotten door. A red 落車 light blinked above the driver, then went dark as the door hissed shut and the bus slipped back into the rain.
The man closed the notebook. The echo of that chime lingered in the room — a small, courteous signal that someone, somewhere, still expected to be answered.
He looked at the suitcase, at the tag with its careful handwriting, and almost smiled.
Let them come looking, he thought. Let them learn what it means to be left half-written.
The lamp clicked off — two soft sounds, like punctuation marks.
The next chapter’s door opens next Wednesday, right on time. See you then ..
[ The Bear’s Pilgrms — Live Hub — reading order & schedule, extras & The Pilgrms’ Bear ]