Death in the Devil's Den (2 page)

Alfie gasped as they whizzed below him. This carbine rifle could shoot these newly invented bullets without stopping to reload. An army equipped with guns and ammunition like that would win any
war.

Inspector Denham put a finger to his lips and Alfie nodded. He understood the need for stealth.

Alfie and Inspector Denham were in a huge old building near Leicester Square, in the very heart of London. Hiding in a secret little room at the top of the building, they were looking down at
the shooting gallery from a small curtained opening.

Alfie, the spy to catch a spy,
Alfie said to himself and grinned with satisfaction. Then he concentrated on watching from his hiding place. Down below were three MPs, and they were all
reporting to the government about this new weapon.

‘That big one is called Ron Shufflebottom. He’s from Yorkshire,’ whispered Inspector Denham in Alfie’s ear. Alfie nodded, trying not to giggle at the name. Ron
Shufflebottom was dressed all in black, rather old-looking clothes. He was a big, tall man with a red face and shrewd eyes. I’d know him again, thought Alfie. Not many men are as tall as
that.

‘The one next to him is Tom Craddock from Cornwall.’ There was a slightly strange note in Inspector Denham’s voice, Alfie noticed, and wasn’t surprised when the inspector
added, ‘Scotland Yard suspect him. He’s supposed to be a dangerous man, so keep well clear of him.’

Alfie narrowed his eyes, memorising the details. Tom Craddock was not as tall as the Shufflebottom man, but he was above average in height and was wearing a colourful waistcoat of red and blue
squares. He had taken the gun from George, the owner of the shooting gallery, and was squinting down the barrel, with one eye closed. After a minute he passed it to the small man beside him.

‘Who is the third one?’ whispered Alfie.

‘That’s Roland Valentine from Essex,’ said Inspector Denham. ‘He’s a country man. He has a very big farm there and is supposed to be a great shot. I’d say
that he knows more about guns than the other two.’

Roland Valentine was a very thin man with red hair turning white and a long scarf around his scraggy neck. As he tried out the gun, it was clear that he was almost as good at shooting this
repeat rifle as the owner of the shooting gallery had been.

Alfie stared at all three men carefully, looking intently at each face. Yes, he would know them again. He moved forward a little, leaning out through the opening, in order to be quite
certain.

At that moment Roland Valentine swung the gun and aimed upwards. ‘A rat on your ceiling, George!’ he shouted. ‘Let’s see if I can kill it.’

And the bullet whistled past Alfie’s nose, missing it by a few inches.

Alfie shivered. He had been waiting outside the Houses of Parliament in the cold for hours.

Most of the MPs had already come out, taken cabs or walked away. But not the men Alfie was waiting for.

But then, at last, there they were: the three men he had seen in George’s Shooting Gallery. They came to a halt under the gas lamp, their backs to a scarlet postbox: Ron Shufflebottom, Tom
Craddock and Roland Valentine, who was so handy with a gun and had nearly put an end to Alfie’s life. Had he really thought he had seen a rat, or had he seen the face peering down at him and
thought he was being spied on? Whichever it was, this man was dangerous.

Alfie could see them quite clearly. Although the air was still foggy, there were no clouds in the sky and a brilliant full moon lit up the whole scene. The three men stood together looking for a
cab. So far, Alfie had watched them for three nights, and each night they had shared a cab back to their apartment. Each night Alfie had followed them, running all the way behind the horses, down
Whitehall, through Trafalgar Square, and then around to the place where they were staying by the river. But nothing strange had happened.

And it looked as though nothing was going to happen tonight, either. By now, Mr Shufflebottom had succeeded in getting a cab and they were all piling into it, laughing and teasing each other and
in a moment the horse was off, its hoofs clattering against the cobbled surface of Whitehall. Alfie gazed after them, too discouraged to follow them for a fourth night.

Inspector Denham had set him up with a newspaper stand so he could watch the suspects and catch the spy. Who would notice Alfie, a ragged, bare-footed, twelve-year-old boy, selling
newspapers?

And so, every day, Alfie collected the first editions of the evening papers even before the ink was dry and took his place outside Parliament, and called out ‘Paper! Paper! Paper!’
in a voice made hoarse by the London fog.

All for nothing, he thought bitterly and turned to go back and join his cousin Tom, who was waiting patiently a few steps away by the newspaper stand.

And then something happened.

A man who had been standing smoking a pipe at the door of St Stephen’s Tavern, opposite the Houses of Parliament, emerged from the shadows. He did not even look at Alfie and his bundle of
newspapers, but began to cross the road.

This man
was
a spy. Alfie was suddenly quite sure of that. A tall man, with a bushy black beard and a restless head that twisted and turned as his eyes darted here and there. He carried a
silver-topped cane and he was wearing a long overcoat made of glossy black fur. His shining silk top hat was placed sideways upon his head and obscured half of his face. The man had been there for
a long time, had watched all of the government ministers and backbenchers coming out of Westminster; but unlike them he had not called for a cab. He had stood in the shadows, a tense, alert figure,
smoking a cigar and waiting.

Then, when all the others had gone, he had emerged from the doorway, looked from left to right and behind him. He had carefully scanned the road before crossing over and stopping in front of the
red postbox. Once again he looked all around him, but Alfie was now facing the railings and was busy tidying his pack of newspapers, carefully matching up their edges.

But from the corner of his eye he could see what the man was doing.

Alfie’s eyes were sharp and so were his wits. To a passer-by it would have looked as though the man in the fur coat was just posting a letter; but Alfie was near enough to hear a slight
clink of metal and he saw what was happening.

The man was not posting a letter. He was fishing a letter out of the red postbox.

A dark thread had been tied to a heavy key. The man pulled on the key and on the other end of the thread was tied an envelope. The gas lamp shone on it for a few seconds, long enough for Alfie
to see the creamy-white of the paper and the red of the sealing wax that kept it tightly closed.

Alfie swallowed hard. By now this strange behaviour, this affair of the hidden letter, had convinced him. This was what he had been waiting for. He had to follow this man, stay with him, but
stay unsuspected and unseen if possible.

Alfie had been starting to get very tired of this job. Nothing was happening as far as he could tell. But tonight was different; tonight things were happening at last.

But this man was not one of the MPs. He was not one of the suspects. Alfie glanced over towards the newspaper stand and hoped that his cousin Tom was observing too. He picked one newspaper off
the pile and raised it above his head. That was the signal to Tom who stood shivering beside the newspaper stand.

Tom’s job was to follow the man first and then, after a while, Alfie would catch up with him and Tom would hang back. In this way they would take turns so that the hunted person would not
notice the same boy behind him all of the time. Tom was good at this sort of thing and would be ready as soon as the man in the fur coat began to move. Alfie himself fiddled with his newspapers and
tried to think what to do next. Who was this man? And where was he from?

He had come out from the tavern, but he was not the owner, nor was he staying there. Alfie knew everything about St Stephen’s Tavern. He had haunted the place for the last four days and
knew everyone who worked there and most of the customers who came and went. This man was not from the tavern and yet his shoes were bright and shiny, so he could not have come from far. He had not
come by cab either: Alfie had checked every cab that had arrived in the last few hours. Where did he live? He was not the sort of man who would live nearby in Devil’s Acre. Devil’s Acre
was a terrible place, with narrow, stinking streets and tumbledown houses. It was the home of thieves, criminals and people who did not own a penny. There were no respectable houses around. Where
had this man come from?

Alfie pondered over the puzzle while he watched the spy from a safe distance.

‘Don’t let him suspect you,’ Inspector Denham had said. ‘A dead hero is no good to me. Keep yourself safe. You have your brother and your cousins depending on you.
I’ll give you sixpence a day for watching and there is a five-pound reward if you lead me to the spy.’

Five pounds, thought Alfie. Five pounds would put to rest all his worries about finding the rent for the cellar. Five pounds would keep the roof over their heads safe for the time being. So he
continued to watch.

The next second, the man in the fur coat stripped the thread from the blob of sealing wax, broke the seal, tore open the envelope and put it, the key and the thread into his pocket. He looked
quickly at the large folded sheets of paper and they also went into his pocket. Then he looked around once more and held a long, narrow strip of paper up to the gas lamp. He seemed to be reading
its words over and over, almost as though he were trying to understand them. Alfie moved a little nearer and saw why the man was puzzled. There on the piece of paper was written in large black
capital letters:

THE QUICK BROWN FOX
JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG.

What on earth did that mean? Alfie thought furiously as he tidied his newspapers. The whole thing did not make sense.

Then his eyes widened. The man in the fur coat was doing something very strange.

He crumpled up the narrow strip of paper with the strange words on it; but he did not drop it upon the ground, he did not twist it up and put it in his pocket and he did not tear it into tiny
strips and toss them into the foggy air.

Instead, he put the strip of paper into his mouth, chewed it and swallowed it down. Alfie was near enough to hear the tiny gulp as the lump passed down the throat on its way to the stomach.

What had been the meaning of that strange sentence?
THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG.

It had to be something important. Otherwise, why did the man swallow it? But what on earth was the purpose of the message?

I’ll talk it over with Sammy, decided Alfie. Sammy had brains.

‘Here you, boy! Come here!’ The shout echoed through the dark street.

Alfie hesitated and then warily approached. ‘Paper!’ He forced the word out and waved the midnight edition of the
Daily Telegraph
in front of the man’s face. A strange
face, he thought, forgetting his fear in the excitement of the chase. He was near enough now to see what lay behind that side-tilted top hat. One side of the man’s face was ordinary: watery
eye, reddish cheekbone, heavy moustache and beard; but the other side was terribly scarred, the lip puckered and, eerily, no hair grew from either moustache or beard on that half of the face. What
a strange face for a spy, Alfie thought, the sort of face that no one could help but remember. It certainly wasn’t any of the men that Inspector Denham had shown him.

Alfie’s eyes went to the man’s pocket. The contents of the envelope made a slight bulge there. Alfie was an accomplished pickpocket. Would it be possible for him to slip it out
without the man noticing? Still, that was not what Inspector Denham was paying him for. His instructions were clear. Follow the man; see where he goes; if possible find out where he lives.

‘Paper, sir?’ he asked again. ‘There’s a ’orrible murder on page three, sir, read all about it.’