Printer's Devil (9780316167826) Page 14

  Then I remembered the Irish tramp — who had talked in his own musical way about sounds like snakes. So he hadn’t been mad after all: as I stood listening to this convoluted, dizzying music I realized I was hearing exactly what he’d described. Extraordinary, rising and falling, twisting itself up in knots, it was somehow as different from normal music as the strange symbols on the man from Calcutta’s note were different from normal writing. Something about it reminded me of those unfathomable squiggles dangling from their line like knife-slashed washing. And I’d heard it somewhere before! Hadn’t I heard it, when I thought I was imagining things, locked up in Coben and Jiggs’s stolen chest?

  Running now, along the lane toward the source of the music, I suddenly knew what I was going to find. And, sure enough, peering through the gates into the dingy backyards, I could tell it was coming from the mysterious empty house next door to Cramplock’s.

  Lash was straining on his lead to get away.

  “This way,” I said to him, tugging at the lead to try and rein him in. “Here, boy.”

  He wouldn’t come anywhere near. No amount of trying would make him stay with me, and in the end I just let him go. “Home!” I said as he stood looking at me, at a distance of five or six paces, his head on one side. “Go home!”

  He knew what that meant. Turning back to the high iron gate as he scampered off, I stood peering through for a few moments; and, taking a deep breath, I pushed it open.

  I found myself venturing into a tiny and hopelessly overgrown little jungle of a garden, surrounded by high brick walls. The strange music now seemed to fill the hot evening air. A twisted old yew tree had clambered, over the years, all the way up the wall, forcing its branches in between the bricks. Ivy and creepers and swathes of big broad leaves clung to every surface. There was a constant drowsy hum of insects, and the heat of the evening and the encroaching vegetation made me feel as though I were suddenly somewhere else entirely, in a foreign country, and that London had somehow melted away completely. I felt very peculiar, as though I was no longer inhabiting my body but seeing myself standing there from the outside — much as I had done while locked in the chest at Coben’s, and last night at Spintwice’s after we’d opened up the camel. I remember thinking, dimly, how strange it was that I’d never even realized this garden existed: never even imagined there might be such a garden here.

  Now the music faded away; and I came to my senses and ventured between the clinging plants to the little back door, listening for signs of activity inside. I couldn’t hear anything. I still felt dizzy as I pushed open the door, which swung away slowly and heavily on silent hinges.

  It was quite dark, and I stood for a while allowing my eyes to adjust. But I didn’t see what I expected to see. I was in a low stairwell, with a set of wooden stairs leading upward ahead of me. The paneled walls seemed to lean at different angles, which made the whole place look a bit like an optical illusion. Dust floated passively in the late evening sunlight. The boards creaked as I ventured in; and as I peered into the little rooms, all of them apparently empty, I became more and more mystified.

  I had been in here once before, and it hadn’t been like this. Defying Cramplock’s warnings, I’d ventured in here, a long time ago, and there had been nothing: no floors, no stairs, no paneling; simply a big, dark, burnt-out shell, with walls of bare blackened brick, and gnarled charred beams reaching across the empty space above my head where an upper floor had once been. I remembered it vividly.

  Yet now there wasn’t a trace of fire damage to be seen. Someone must have been in here, rebuilding it — although there was no furniture, or any obvious sign of anyone actually living here.

  Without even realizing how scared the rest of me was, my feet began to take me slowly upstairs. There were three rooms leading off the landing, all of them as bare and empty as those downstairs: except that the walls of one of them were lined all around with solid oak panels from floor to ceiling. And right in the middle of the room, standing in a shaft of sunlight, there was a kind of pedestal: and, sitting upon it, at my eye level, a little statue.

  I went over to it. It was made of brass, and seemed to be of a figure sitting cross-legged with his hands resting, palms upward, on his knees. As I looked at it more closely in the fading light, I noticed the face wasn’t that of a man, but of an elephant, with a trunk descending firmly down into its lap and two fine little tusks curving out on either side. In size, and in color, this little statue was very similar to the camel. I ran my fingers over the brass: over the little feet, over the folded robes. In the center of the forehead was a tiny, bright red jewel, shaped like a little teardrop.

  The ruby, if that’s what it was, was picking up the light of the sinking sun through the window, and glowing with a rich, ethereal light. It looked like a single eye in the center of the elephant’s forehead. As I gazed into it, it seemed to glow more brightly, almost fiercely. I couldn’t stop looking at it.

  I have you, it seemed to say. I am in control.

  Momentarily, I felt dizzy again; then the light faded, as though the sun had gone behind a cloud or finally sunk below the horizon. My fingers played over the big flat forehead and the little bump the jewel made; and as I ran a forefinger down the smooth, tapering trunk I realized it was hinged, and could move.

  Slipping my finger behind the trunk like the trigger of a gun, I pulled; and it sprang up with a sudden click to point upward so that the little elephant-man now seemed to be throwing up his trunk and trumpeting, silently enraged. To my alarm I heard a clatter somewhere behind the wall. I froze: I immediately assumed it must be someone coming in, but as I looked around the room I realized what the noise had been. I must have triggered a mechanism which opened a little trapdoor over by the far corner, in the oak paneling of the wall. I pushed the elephant’s trunk carefully back into place with my thumb, and went over to have a look.

  When closed, the panel just looked like any other; but now it was hanging slightly open, at shoulder height, like a flap. Well, how could I resist lifting it to find out what was behind it? With the slightest of squeaks the little door swung up to reveal a secret compartment, about the height of a small adult and not much wider. A hiding place — not a very comfortable one, but big enough for a person to stand in. At first I thought it was empty; but, once my eyes had grown used to the darkness, I realized there was a big, urn-shaped wicker basket standing inside. Intrigued, I reached in and grasped the basket with both hands. It was lighter than I expected: but as I lifted off its lid, I could tell there was something in it.

  I peered in. Whatever it was lay in the bottom, dark in color; not, at first sight, very big. What might it be? A piece of cloth? Something edible?

  Then, slowly, with a long sinister rustle against the wickerwork, whatever it was moved.

  It was something alive! There was just enough light to see it squirming in the bottom of the basket, disturbed by the sudden movement, waking up, rearing up a slender and lethal black head. In mingled panic and revulsion I shoved the wicker lid back on.

  A snake. The snake! How could I have expected anything else? I had to get out of here.

  But as I slipped back out of the secret compartment, I heard the unmistakable sound of a door handle being rattled below; and then slow footsteps, as someone stepped into the hallway and stopped at the bottom of the stairs. I was trapped.

  As I looked around the room in a panic, I could hear the footsteps echoing relentlessly up the stairs towards me. There was only one possible place to hide.

  Tears welled in my eyes as I crawled back into the secret hiding place. I shoved the snake basket as far forward as it would go, right up against the trapdoor, and pressed myself into the back of the cavity. I didn’t know which I was more terrified of: the man from Calcutta, or his snake, which I could even now hear slithering drily around inside the basket.

  I held my breath in the darkness. Within seconds the footsteps coming through into the room, and I could do nothing but squeeze farther an
d farther back against the wall, praying he wouldn’t spot me. The grey light of dusk penetrated the hiding place as the flap was lifted open, and a pair of hands reached in and closed around the basket.

  I braced myself and stood as rigidly still as I could, my heart pounding, praying I couldn’t be seen. A voice began speaking softly, in a foreign language, cooing as if the words were addressed to the snake. The basket was lifted carefully out through the flap; and as the voice continued to sing softly and I pressed myself tightly against the back of the compartment, the trapdoor swung shut, and clicked.

  I opened my eyes. Complete darkness. The footsteps were receding, muffled now, thumping down the stairs. My blood was still pounding in my ears. I hadn’t been discovered, and the snake had gone — but now I was locked in. For at least a minute I didn’t move, my head reeling with the events of the past few minutes. When I did move, it was because I felt the wall of the compartment suddenly shifting behind me.

  I tried to stand up, but I’d been leaning with my full weight back against the wall and it was collapsing. Before I had time to do anything about it, I had fallen through in a cascade of bricks, and was lying, grazed and dizzy, on my back in the dark.

  9

  HIS LORDSHIP

  Just as I was telling myself the noise I’d made falling through the wall must surely bring the man from Calcutta back up the stairs to investigate, I felt something wet in my face. In a surge of panic I thought it must be the snake again; but there was something too affectionate, too altogether familiar, about the sensation.

  “Lash?” I whispered in astonishment.

  He responded to his name by intensifying his licking, his whiskers tickling my face so much I eventually had to push him away in spite of my relief. Pulling myself into a sitting position, I suddenly realized where I was. I was in my own room above Cramplock’s shop. I’d fallen through the wall from the house next door into the cupboard of my own bedroom!

  Things began to make sense. As I wrapped my arms around Lash’s neck, I realized exactly how the snake had been able to get in and out of my room the previous night. The bricks of the dividing wall between my room and the hiding place next door were obviously so loose, the man from Calcutta must just have been able to lift one out and let the snake slide through. At any time of the day or night, he could send it into my room, or come sneaking in himself, just by moving a few bricks! Holding onto Lash’s neck to steady myself, I got to my feet and began to brush the dust off myself.

  Somehow I had to tell Mr. Cramplock about the wall, so he could get it cemented up as a matter of urgency. Otherwise, I realized with a shiver of fear, I was in real danger of being killed while I lay asleep.

  There was no sound in the house, and the place was in darkness — Cramplock had obviously gone home — but there were bricks everywhere, and I’d have to put them back, or the man from Calcutta would immediately discover the hole when he returned.

  When I’d finished it looked a bit lopsided, but at least there were no gaping holes, and I told myself it would have to do. It had been a long day, and I suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to lie down. But questions were still darting around my tired head like fireflies. Where might the man from Calcutta have been going with his snake? Wherever he was by now, I was sure he was up to no good.

  Lash had disappeared out of the room and I whistled to summon him up from the printing shop downstairs, where he was no doubt sniffing around doing his

  nightly checks, satisfying himself before bedtime that everything was where it should be, and smelled as it should smell. With a scrabble of feet on the steps he was back, and, as I bent to make a fuss of him, I saw he had something in his mouth.

  “Where did you get that?” I asked him.

  It was a piece of paper. At first he hung onto it, treating it as a game as I tried to free it from his jaws. But it was going to get torn.

  “Lash!” I said sharply, “Drop it!”

  I picked it up, and unfolded it.

  “Where did you find this?” I asked him again.

  It was chewed, and a bit soggy, but I could still easily read the few words it bore, in the same scratchy handwriting as the note Cramplock had found nailed to the door the other night.

  BOY,

  MUST SPEAK. BAD MEN

  FIND YOU. MUST WATCH

  3 FRIENDS.

  The stilted message made me shiver involuntarily. These were the rushed, misshapen letters of the man from Calcutta again, and very obviously intended for me. But something was different from the threatening note he’d nailed to the door the night before last. I read it four or five times over.

  This didn’t seem like a threat. It was a warning. As though the man from Calcutta wanted to stop me from getting hurt.

  I went to sit down on the bed, and as I did so I kicked something which gave a dull metallic clunk. I felt around on the floor in the half-light, and just underneath the edge of my bed my fingers made contact with my cookie tin of treasures. It had fallen from the shelf and rolled across the floor when I plunged through the back of the cupboard.

  I pulled off the lid and reached inside. Among the pieces of paper I found the man from Calcutta’s earlier note, with its tatty little nail mark. There was no mistaking the threat there, I decided.

  SO CLEAVER FIND HIS CAMEL.

  I SHOW HIM DEATH SOON.

  But as I stared at it, I began to think about it more carefully. Who was the “him” supposed to mean? I’d assumed it meant me, and if so it was obviously a threat — but “him” could have been anybody. And then, I realized with mounting excitement, “his camel” might not mean my camel at all — but the bosun’s camel. Maybe it meant /was so clever to find his camel.

  And if “him” was the bosun …

  “Lash,” I said to him, holding his ears up so he’d listen properly, “I think this might be important. Do you understand?”

  He licked my nose. My heart was beating fast. I’d been tired a minute ago, but now I couldn’t have been more awake. I was bursting to talk to somebody, but at this time of night, in an empty house, there was no one except Lash to talk to.

  So I did what I always did when I had something on my mind which couldn’t wait until morning. I reached inside the treasure box again, and pulled out Mog’s Book.

  I’d had so many adventures since my last entry, it was hard to know where to begin.

  Something amazing has happened, I wrote. This seemed to be the way I was beginning every page these days.

  The man from Calcutta is hiding out next door, I continued. I have found out where he keeps his snake. The house is full of peculiar music, like an enchanted house, and inside it is all as if the fire had never happened. Now it seems like a dream, but I know it is all real because he has left me another note. I think

  I was stuck.

  “What do I think, Lash?” I asked him.

  He sneezed, then looked astonished, and his tongue came out to lick his nose.

  “A great help you are,” I said.

  I might have been wrong about him all along. Maybe he wants to help me. Instead I think it may be the bosun he is really after. I have to watch him. He is so scary, yet it is as though I am being pulled toward him, wherever he goes.

  My eyes were hurting. I closed the book, pushed everything back into the tin, and put it back in the cupboard. Then I climbed into bed.

  But I didn’t stay there long. There was so much going on inside my head I could no more sleep than flap my arms and fly. “Must watch the Three Friends,” the note had said. So why wasn’t I?

  I made Lash stay in his basket and, as silently as a black cat, let myself out of the printing shop. It was completely dark now, and some of the poorly lit parts of the city were frightening at this time of night. Almost immediately, I wished I’d brought Lash with me, and very nearly went back to get him. Whispering voices met my ear every now and again, from doorways or from basements beneath my feet. The faces of thieves and bosuns and men with baskets lurked in eve
ry shadow, even when no one was really there. I hurried on.

  I was still thinking hard about the man from Calcutta. He was obviously a very dangerous man; but was he in danger too? I pictured his tall, alert frame striding through the dark streets with his snake basket, his eyes darting at every sound, the brim of his hat bent secretively over his face.

  MUST SPEAK.

  How was he intending to talk to me? Climb through the wall in the middle of the night? It was all making me feel very uncomfortable indeed: but although I knew I was still profoundly afraid of him, part of me wanted to talk to him, too.

  When I set off I had felt confident of where I was going: but in the darkness the narrow streets of this part of London all seemed very much alike, and I very soon began to wish Nick were here to lead me confidently through the maze as though it were broad daylight. There was a strong smell, and a general air of damp and disease. I’d also lost all sense of direction, so I couldn’t tell whether I was going toward the river or away from it, toward the City or away from it. I was quite startled, therefore, when I suddenly emerged from a particularly dilapidated old tenement to find myself on the corner by the Three Friends Inn.

  I sneaked across the street to get a better view. The inn stood at the end of a crooked row of tall houses, which leaned toward it as though they were trying to elbow it down the hill and into the river. Opposite the inn was a soaring old church with a small cemetery, and it was in through the cemetery gate I crept as I tried to find a hiding place. At one point the cemetery wall was particularly low, and hidden in shadow. Gravestones stood palely in a mean little cluster, like children refusing to talk to one another. Every now and again a rat would scatter loose earth or scrabble with its sharp feet against a box beneath the soil. Turning my back on all this, I crouched to watch the inn.