Printer's Devil (9780316167826) Page 11

  More like years, I thought grumpily, as I began the job. I had to move all the heavy boxes out of the way first; and, crouching on my knees, I discovered astonishing amounts of dust and rubbish, rags and inky old fluff, which had accumulated behind the boxes and cupboards over a long period of time. It made me cough so hard I thought my lungs were going to turn inside out. After half an hour I looked as though I’d been scraped out of a forgotten corner myself. As I was picking up the final few scraps of discarded paper before moving the boxes back against the wall, I noticed one with some rather surprising words on it.

  It was a short handwritten letter in a rust-colored ink. It wasn’t addressed to anyone by name, and it wasn’t signed. It just said:

  I dont’t appreciate the deceit, and neither do some of my friends. You can hide nothing, and you could save yourself a great deal of trouble by remembering it.

  I thought I had made myself quite clear: but it seems you require a further reminder.

  This is most certainly your final warning.

  I read it through several times. The handwriting and spelling suggested someone well-educated: it was certainly a far cry from the garbled notes of the man from Calcutta, or those with little drawings of eyes which the villains had been exchanging. How had it got here, among the scraps of Cramplock’s storeroom? I don’t think I was supposed to see this: but I felt sure it must have been sent to Mr. Cramplock, and it suddenly seemed as though he must know something he was keeping quiet about.

  A sudden thought occurred to me, and I lifted the paper up to the light from the little storeroom window. I wasn’t entirely surprised when I found the strange watermark of the dog yet again, curled around so its nose was touching its tail.

  I jumped as the storeroom door swung open suddenly, and made a poor fist of hiding the note as Cramplock popped his head in. I was convinced he must have noticed it in my hand; but he didn’t ask me about it. Instead he said:

  “Are you nearly finished, Mog? Only I want you to go out with some bills for me.”

  I beamed at him. “I’ve, er—just got a couple of boxes to put back,” I said, going red.

  “It looks much better,” said Cramplock, surveying the flags of the floor and probably remembering for the first time in years what color they were supposed to be. “But these must be delivered — now.” He waved a fat handful of envelopes. I clambered to my feet, and lumps of clinging dust floated into the air like thistle seeds.

  Lash was excited at the chance to get out of the dusty shop and was sitting patiently by the door even before I emerged from the storeroom. As I picked up the envelopes, Cramplock grunted. “Just make sure you don’t lose them, and bring me back some cock-and-bull story about people burning them up. Or about … about them being eaten by goats, or trampled by giants.” He seemed very pleased with his own sarcasm.

  “I won’t lose them, Mr. Cramplock,” I said, “I promise.”

  “You’d better not,” he said, “or the last printing job you ever do will be an advertisement saying W. H. Cramplock seeks a diligent boy to be a printer’s devil.”

  I looked at him to try and decide if he was joking or not, but as he turned his back I decided he wasn’t. Scanning the various addresses on the bills, I had a sudden idea. I’d have to be out of the shop for a good hour, delivering all these. And at least one of the bills had to be delivered fairly close to where the bosun lived. I might as well try and get a message to Nick while I was at it.

  Jamming the bills into my pocket and knotting Lash’s lead hastily around his collar, I dove out into the sunshine. I couldn’t resist a glance up at the blackened face of the house next door. Nothing appeared to stir; but my imagination conjured up eyes watching me from every one of the dark windows, and I ran past with a shudder of fear.

  But when I got to Lion’s Mane Court I found Mrs. Muggerage was very much in evidence. From the narrow passageway I could see her hanging up her laundry in the yard, moving between the dangling, dripping garments like a big ape in a forest of linen. I couldn’t possibly sneak in unnoticed. I ducked back out of the passageway and tied Lash to the nearest post.

  As I was doing so I became aware of a familiar chant from down the street. An old cart was clattering along, driven by a toothless old gypsy in a brown cap. He was a rag and bone man. Suddenly getting an idea, I rushed up to him and flagged him down.

  Mrs. Muggerage was no doubt surprised to see a rag and bone cart jolting its way into the yard, its wheels bumping over the pitted ground.

  “Any rags or bones,” the old man moaned, looking at her. Setting her face in a grimace, she marched over to him.

  “What do you mean by draggin’ yer flea-ridden old cart in ’ere?” she screamed. “There’s no rags and no bones, now get lost!”

  “Rags or bones,” the man wailed again. I wasn’t sure whether he was an idiot, or just pretending to be; but I was very grateful for it. While Mrs. Muggerage blared at him, I crept down from the back of the cart, where I’d been hiding among the smelly rags. Ducking between the big sheets which hung around the yard, I scuttled for the cellar grating.

  I didn’t dare call, or make a sound of any sort. There was a light wind, and every now and again a dangling sheet blew aside to afford me a view of Mrs. Muggerage, just a few feet away, arguing with the blank-faced old carter. In the back of the cart I’d scribbled a tatty note with a stub of a pencil I had in my pocket.

  Nick

  TROUBLE!

  DOLLS HEAD 6

  M

  A scream went up as the ragman’s horse began eating Mrs. Muggerage’s washing. Fishing down through the grating, I slipped the note in through a crack in the dirty little window, and started to tiptoe back to the cart.

  But Mrs. Muggerage had begun clouting the feeble old carter over his flat-capped head and, finding the onslaught too terrible to bear, he’d geed up his horse and rattled off out of Lion’s Mane Court before I had a chance to leap back among the rags. The big woman was just turning away, wiping her hands on her bulging sides, when she spotted me lurking behind a sheet.

  A big smile of satisfaction spread across her beefy face and, without warning, she advanced. It was like trying to dodge a collapsing house. She barged through the yard, saying nothing, merely grinning as I tried to avoid her swiping arms. If one of them had hit me I’d have been out cold.

  Mrs. Muggerage may have been big and strong but fortunately she wasn’t especially agile; and her grin began to look rather strained as I led her like a matador through the maze of wet linen. Waiting behind an enormous pair of bloomers, hanging from the line like a ship’s mainsail, I watched her calculating her next move. When she was almost close enough to reach out and grab me by the throat, she lurched; and I ducked, and was gone. Looking back as I sped out of the yard I saw her bulky frame tangled up in her own bloomers, fighting for air amongst the billowing material, wrapping it around herself in her thrashing confusion until she’d twisted the entire washing-line up and pulled it onto the filthy flagstones.

  “What you been doin’ to your head then, Maaster Mog?” asked Tassie as I walked into the Doll’s Head that evening.

  “A kid threw a brick at it,” I told her, truthfully.

  “In a fight, was you?”

  “Not as such,” I said meekly.

  “Well if you don’t mind me saying,” Tassie said, polishing her taps, “you don’t smell so fresh this evenin’, Maaster Mog, neither.”

  There were four other people in the taproom, all of whom I knew. No spies in here, then, it seemed — but no Nick either.

  “Is it six yet, Tassie?” I asked her.

  “You take a look over there, Maaster Mog,” Tassie replied, “at that sizable clock what’s been here since the first day you set foot in here, and what’s more since long before you was ever born. And you tell me if it’s six yet.”

  Sheepishly, I glanced over at the longcase clock against the wall, with its slightly tarnished brass face which was at least twice the size of my own head.
Five minutes past six. Tassie was obviously in no mood to be trifled with this evening.

  Lash’s nose appeared beside me at the bar, sniffing and dribbling slightly at the scent wafting from the little back room. “Do we smell stock, Tassie?” I laughed.

  “Maybe it’s more than stock you smells, Maaster Mog,” she said, “maybe it’s a big pot o’ my best knuckle soup!”

  My eyes lit up, and Lash whimpered in anticipation as Tassie disappeared, still laughing, into the back.

  Trying to appear casual, I tightened my grip on the handles of the big canvas bag I’d brought with me, and heaved it under the table. To any observer, I hoped, it looked like a bag full of rolls of poster paper. What nobody else knew was that hidden among them was a brass camel which was apparently the most coveted object in the city’s criminal underworld. Although I was trying not to draw attention to myself, I was terribly nervous and I didn’t dare let go of the bag for a single second. I yanked at Lash’s collar to make him sit down quietly next to it.

  Looking up, I noticed one of the drinkers looking at me, a disheveled old soul called Harry Fuller who drove a stagecoach between here and Cambridge.

  “Hello, Mr. Fuller,” I said, “it’s been a nice day again.”

  “Noith for thumb, maybe,” he replied. He spoke rather strangely as a result of his having no front teeth — they’d been missing for as long as I’d known him. When he drove his coach he used to hold the reins with both hands and keep his horsewhip clamped in the gap between his remaining teeth, poking out of his mouth like a kind of long floppy pipe as the coach lurched by. “Noith for mouth folk, I don’t wonder.” I could tell he was in a bad mood, and there was still no sign of Nick, so I asked him what was the matter.

  I immediately wished I hadn’t. In his gruff lisp, he began to rant, about how much trouble he went to to ensure that his passengers were comfortable, and how much of a sacrifice it was, driving a coach back and forth in all weathers and never being at home with Mrs. Fuller and the five or six little Fullers — he didn’t seem to be able to remember quite how many children he had. But just as I was looking around the room to try to think of an excuse to talk to someone else, he said something which made my ears prick up, about his coach being stopped and searched by soldiers on his way out of London.

  “Soldiers?” I asked.

  “Thowdjerth,” he affirmed, flinging a fine spray from his mouth with every syllable in the evening sunlight. “Convict looth, they thed.”

  So there was a search on for Coben. Oh, where was Nick? My mind raced again through the things I had to tell him, as Mr. Fuller grumbled on about how he was convinced the soldiers were just using the search for the convict as an excuse to rifle through passengers’ luggage, and how they were no better than uniformed robbers and highwaymen. “Crawled out o’ pigth-tithe and gutterth, mouth of em, Mathter Mog,” he was saying.

  It was Tassie who finally cut short his grumbling, by returning with two deep bowls of soup. One she placed on the table in front of me, the other on the floor in front of Lash’s glistening whiskers. The sound of slobbering filled the room as he dug his nose delightedly into the soup.

  “Might there be more?” I asked her.

  She looked at me with mock disapproval. “You spoils that dog rotten,” she said.

  “I didn’t really mean for him,” I said, reaching down to ruffle his ears. “I meant, for a friend of mine.”

  “I dare say there might,” she said, amused. “What friend are you expecting?”

  “Oh, just a lad I know,” I said airily. “If he comes. I asked him to.”

  But the longer I waited, the more certain I became that something had gone wrong. Maybe my note had got stuck in the grille and he hadn’t found it. Or worse — what if the bosun or Mrs. Muggerage had found it first? Even now they might be marching over here. Every time the door opened I almost jumped out of my skin, half expecting one of the enormous couple to come stamping in.

  To my relief, at just after twenty past, a small face peered round the taproom door, saw me, and hurried in.

  “I’ve got a bone to pick with you,” he said in a low voice, as he sat down.

  “What sort of bone?” I asked, putting the last spoonful of knuckle soup into my mouth.

  “I’ve just had a good clouting off my Pa for something I never did. Nothing new that, I suppose. But —“ Suddenly he stopped, looked down at me, and wrinkled his nose. “Where’ve you been?” he asked; “you smell like a drain.”

  “Thanks very much,” I said, “I had to hide in a rag and bone cart to get that note to you. But never mind that — what happened to you?”

  “Pa came home this afternoon,” continued Nick, “saying he’d been to the ship. To the Sun of Calcutta, you know. And someone there told him I’d been snooping round asking for the captain. I never, I said. Don’t you lie to me, he says.” He did a passable imitation of his father’s throaty voice. “Wasn’t you described to me in perfect detail? Some sailor apparently told him there was a kid aboard wearing tarry breeches and a white shirt, skinny with a sprout of dark hair and a big cut on his forehead. That’s you, innit, says my Pa. Yes it is, I thought, and I know who else it is.”

  “You didn’t—” I began.

  “No, course I didn’t tell him,” Nick said. “But I got a bruise or two more to boast of, out of that little conversation.”

  “I’m sorry, Nick,” I said.

  “Course, he was in a foul mood,” Nick said, looking around nervously, “you-know-what being gone.”

  “When did he find out?”

  “Just this afternoon when he came in. He’d been out all night. He found the note, came down to bawl at me, threw me at the wall, and left again straight away. I don’t fancy being Coben or Jiggs when he gets his hands on them.”

  Tassie came over with some soup for Nick. Lash jumped up when he saw it, but seemed quite crestfallen as he realized it wasn’t for him, and lay down again with what sounded very much like a sigh. As Tassie walked back to the kitchen I heard her telling someone, “Look at them two. Spitting image of each other, like a pair o’ magpies, they are, and twice as mischievous I’ll wager.” And she couldn’t resist a quick vigorous wipe at her taps as she went past them.

  “Listen,” I said in a low voice, “I’ve got a story and a half to tell you.”

  “Trouble,” quoted Nick.

  “Yes,” I said. I looked around, just to make sure no one new had entered the room, and I told him all about the snake in the cupboard and the man from Calcutta lurking outside.

  “Are you sure you didn’t dream it?” Nick asked.

  “It did cross my mind,” I said. “But look at this.” Under the table I unfolded the note I’d received that morning, and leaned back to let Nick read it. He gave a grim smile.

  “What does SO CLEAVER FIND HIS CAMEL mean?” he asked. “Does he mean Ma Muggerage’s cleaver?”

  “I think he means ‘clever,’ doesn’t he,” I said. “He probably doesn’t speak English very well. I suppose he’s trying to say, ‘You think you’re so clever to find the camel,’ or something like that. But the point is, he knew I’d got it, didn’t he? I think it was the camel he came looking for at Coben and Jiggs’s as well, when he found me in the chest. And I reckon he’s watching us from the house next door to Cramplock’s. I bet he’s seen me coming and going all the time.”

  “I told you it was stupid,” Nick said. “You’ve only had the camel a few hours and already you’ve had people coming after you with real live snakes and death threats.”

  I was beginning to think he was right, but I said nothing. Nick continued to stare at the note in my lap. “What’s this?” He was pointing at the strange lettering.

  “It’s writing of some sort,” I said. “I’ve seen it before. In the captain’s cabin, on a snuffbox lid. And it was on another piece of paper I got from Coben and Jiggs.”

  “Keep your voice down,” Nick muttered. I stopped talking. I’d been getting too excited, and had
forgotten. There was silence for a while as Nick began attacking his soup.

  “What did you tell the sailor on the Sun of Calcutta?” he asked, after a while.

  “Mmm? I told him, er — that — that I was the bosun’s boy,” I said, going red, “and that I was on an errand for my Pa — your Pa, that is. And that it had something to do with the East India Company. It sounded grand, I read it on a document.”

  “So you told him you were me,” said Nick, drily.

  “Sort of. Except I didn’t know you then. I didn’t even know the bosun had a boy. I — I guessed, because that’s who everyone seemed to think I was.”

  Nick took another mouthful of soup, saying nothing.

  “Anyway,” I said, anxious to change the subject again, “we’ve got to move the camel again. The man from Calcutta won’t leave the place alone till he’s got it.”

  “Well, maybe it belongs to him,” Nick said. “Have you thought about that? Maybe he’d only trying to get it back because it’s his. Where is it now?”

  “Here,” I said, “under the table. Don’t look! Someone might be watching.” Now it was Nick’s turn to look around nervously. I reached over and ate a spoonful of his soup. “I’ve got another note to show you,” I said, licking my lips. “I found it in the storeroom at the printing shop.” I fumbled in my pocket but couldn’t find the note, and I didn’t want to draw attention to it. “I’ll show you it later,” I said, “but I think it must have been sent to Mr. Cramplock. It’s like a — threat.” I tried to remember how the note had begun. “Something like, I don’t appreciate the deceit, and neither do my friends,” I quoted.

  Nick grimaced to himself. “So let me get this straight,” he muttered. “You’re being watched by the man from Calcutta, who’s got a deadly snake as a pet, and who lives next door. Someone’s been sending you notes threatening to show you death. And Cramplock’s mixed up in it too, for good measure. This is too close for comfort, Mog. Seems to me you’d be better off staying away from there altogether.”