Horatio Lyle (2 page)

In the corridor beyond, a single candle burnt on a table. Nothing else here to give any sign of ownership. The curtains at the far end were drawn, one side slightly singed. The figure moved forward cautiously, and for a moment could be seen by the dim candlelight, before darting back into shadow.

It was short, had no shoes, wore a shirt and trousers that might once have been white, but which now would shame even the most scruffy of scarecrows. It had a tangle of dark brown curls sticking out in every direction from its head, and a pair of intently squinting and blinking grey eyes. It was, in fact, a girl, still young enough to get away with pretending to be innocent, but old enough to be very, very guilty indeed.

Halfway down the corridor, she hesitated, head slightly on one side. She looked up at the ceiling. She looked down at the floor. Then she went back the way she had come, past the door, to the end of the corridor and tried a different door in the opposite direction. It was locked. This didn’t cause as much consternation as an innocent observer might have expected. The girl pulled out a small bottle from the deep recesses of a padded jacket favoured by shepherds the world over. There was the sound of something liquid. A smell rose up in the corridor, and a gentle hissing. A little click from the door, which was pushed gently open. In the room beyond sat a huge table, sagging under the weight of apparatus: bottles, strange flasks, tubes, candles, prisms, wires, tools.

The figure moved forward quickly, then stopped. Under the table a dog lay sleeping. It lay on its back, feet in the air, paws folded over, enormous nose twitching slightly, long brown and white ears sticking out either side of its head along the floor. It had the belly of a spoiled animal and the wagging tail, even in sleep, of a very happy one. It had the nose of a creature designed for hunting down prey at great distances, and the girl guessed that somewhere below the huge nose, there were teeth to match.

She watched it for a long while, cautious. Then, very slowly, when it was clear that this animal would wake for nothing (except, perhaps, food and affection), she shuffled forward, half-turning to keep it in her sight, moving a toe at a time. She went past the table to a row of cupboards hanging above a desk, in a corner. She opened them, started digging through, but found only notes, reams and reams of paper covered in an almost unintelligible hand and even less intelligible drawings. She frowned in exasperation.

Not having found what she was looking for, she headed to a side door in the room. This too was locked. She drew out her tools again, inserted the first one, and instantly something inside the lock flashed bright blue, a big fat spark leaping from the door to the ground. Somewhere above the door, something embedded in the ceiling went
thunk
. Something slow and ponderous began to turn. There was a sound like a marble running downhill on uneven ground. The girl tugged at her tool wedged in the lock, and heard a snapping sound. Pulled away, the end had boiled down to nothing. Not hesitating, not even bothering to waste time on thought, the girl turned and ran towards the other door, bursting out into the corridor, running along it for the window at the far end. At the point where before she had turned back, she ran on, and under her the floor shrieked, making her head shake sickeningly. Somewhere there was a hissing sound and hot steam exploded in a white cloud from the room she had only just left. She reached the window; a dog started howling, barking; she dragged the curtains back, heaved the window open, looked up, looked down.

There was the street twenty feet below, a gas lamp burning steadily outside, cobbles glistening in the rain. The girl leant out, saw a lead drainpipe, reached for it, grabbed hold and dragged herself out of the window until she dangled, feet scrambling against the wet metal. Clutching with hands and feet, she started to ease herself down. There was a long, screeching sound, like a banshee with indigestion.

The section of pipe she clung to lurched, started to bend away from the wall. Where it joined the section below, an unseen tube of linked metal plates started to bend, so that as the pipe fell back, it leant away from the wall like an arm. There was a snap and a long coil of rope, wound into a tiny cubby-hole in the red brickwork itself, started to unwind. One end was tied to the pipe. It fell back slowly, the girl still clinging on desperately. It bent forty-five degrees away from the wall before the length of rope snapped tense. It stopped moving, and dangled there, the girl holding on to it with every fibre of strength in her thin, unprepared arms, as she wondered what the hell to do.

Around the street, she could hear people stirring, distant dogs barking, carriages being pulled to a stop, breaking their rhythm towards the corner at the end of the road. The window she had dropped from lit up a dull orange. Silhouetted against it was a dark shadow that might just have resembled a man. There was a long silence. Finally the shadow said mildly, ‘Are you all right up there?’

‘Yes, thank you, sir.’

‘You sure? It looks like quite a long drop
. . .
’

‘Really, sir, it ain’t nothin’ to be botherin’ about.’

‘Oh.’ He looked slightly surprised, and frowned. ‘It
was
you trying to break in, wasn’t it? Only if there ’s been some kind of misunderstanding
. . .
’

She gulped. She could feel her hands slowly slipping on the smooth metal pipe. Falls seemed further when you were short, she reasoned. ‘Oh no, no, no, sir! Can’t think what you’ll be meanin’. But since you happen to be mentionin’ this pipe, sir
. . .
’

A front door opened on the other side of the street. A woman exploded out like a runaway train. She was carrying a meat cleaver, had blonde hair which trailed down her back, and wore a determined expression of bloodthirsty vengeance. The girl on the post shrieked and tried to climb higher. The man in the window blanched. The woman in the street screamed, ‘Police, police!’, saw the man in the window and gasped, ‘Horatio?’

Horatio Lyle, who knew that manners were an essential social glue and that society was a fascinating phenomenon that deserved study and thus, preservation, smiled uncomfortably. ‘Yes, Miss Chaste?’

‘Horatio, are you all right?’ In that split second, her voice had dropped an octave and become as soft as springtime rain, which was clearly disconcerting to Horatio Lyle, who began to reconsider the benefits of society after all. The girl clinging on to the drainpipe tried not to boggle at her.

‘What in heaven’s name is happening here?’

‘Just a little
. . .
’

On the dangling pipe, the girl, who had been watching all this with keen attention began, ‘’Bout this pipe
. . .
’

‘Horatio, is this another experiment? Only I do know that the last one went so terribly
. . .
’

‘No, no, I was just ascertaining whether this young lady was or was not
. . .
’

‘Oh, the young lady!’ Miss Chaste’s voice rocketed an octave, and two hands flew to two cheeks, as if they might burst with appalled indignation. ‘She looks in such terrible danger, so distraught! Oh, good Horatio, you must
. . .
’

‘Well, actually, she was in the process of
. . .
’

To everyone ’s surprise, including possibly the girl herself, she exploded. ‘Please, miss,’ the girl started yelling, ‘please, I’m just an innocent child tor
. . .
torme
. . .
havin’ a really hard time seein’ as how I’ve been on the street tryin’ to make an honest livin’ in a harsh world
. . .
’

‘I beg your pardon?!’ squeaked Lyle.

The girl was unstoppable. ‘Please don’t let this horrid man hurt me, I never done nothin’ but he just don’t listen to me and he chased me an’ I said how I was lovely really and, please, miss
. . .
’

In the gloom of the window, Lyle’s mouth dropped open. In the street the woman with the meat cleaver hesitated. She looked far too slim and pale to be holding such a large weapon, and indeed now that the excitement was cooling a little, its presence in her hand made her uncomfortable, and she tried to hide it behind her voluminous white nightrobe. Ladies of more decorum might have worn a shawl, and indeed she had considered one when exiting the house. But then, she ’d realized who the incident involved, and changed her mind. The shawl, she believed, wasn’t her most flattering colour.

Turning a pair of severe almond eyes on Lyle, a useful inheritance from her father and a match for her freckles, she said in a voice like glaciers rolling over a particularly difficult hillside, ‘Horatio, is this true?’

For a second, his indignation almost overwhelmed all power of speech. ‘Do you really believe that
. . .
’

‘Please, miss,’ sobbed the girl, ‘please, miss, don’t let him hurt me. I’m so hungry and cold and scared and he’s such a brutish man, he hasn’t heard of Christian charity, miss, please
. . .
’

‘Horatio!’ The woman flushed. ‘I demand that you come down here at once and assist me with this unfortunate waif!’

‘
Waif?
’ exclaimed Lyle. ‘Miss Chaste
. . .
’

‘Horatio, I shall summon the police!’

Pigeons were startled out of their roosts at the indignant squeak in her voice. Lyle flinched, sighed and said humbly, ‘Yes, Miss Chaste.’

Mercy Chaste knew her duty. As the local vicar’s daughter, she took an immense pride in her Christian heritage, and had an evangelistic streak in her which had led to a new and interesting reinterpretation of the verb ‘chastened’.

A minute later the front door opened and Lyle appeared, dragging a large metal box as if it was very heavy, and after it a tube connected to a large pile of what looked like leather sacking. This he spread out under Miss Chaste ’s furious eye to a rough square beneath the pipe and kicked the box moodily. There was a hissing sound and the leather square expanded slowly into a small inflated mattress. The girl craned her neck to see the mattress and squeaked, ‘I’m not falling on to that!’

Lyle’s eyes flashed. ‘It ’s that,’ he snapped, ‘or the pavement.’

She thought about it, even as Miss Chaste barked, ‘Horatio!’ Lyle’s expression was unshakable.

Sullenly the girl muttered, twisting to see her destination more clearly, ‘I think I’ll let go now.’

‘Why not?’ he sighed.

The girl closed her eyes and let go. She fell, and bounced up from the mattress several times. It was almost fun, she thought, and wondered if she could bounce some more. Then she saw the two adults’ faces peering down and hastily she crawled off the mattress and picked herself up, putting on her most endearing expression of innocence. Lyle scowled. Seeing this, the girl launched into emergency procedure. She threw herself at Miss Chaste, wrapping her arms around the woman’s waist and bursting into tears. ‘Please, miss, don’t let him hurt me. Miss, please, I’ll do anything
. . .
’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’ Lyle pulled a plug in the mattress, which slowly started to deflate. As the girl sobbed into Miss Chaste’s nightgown, Lyle stalked up to his half-open door, disappeared inside, reappearing a second later. With a whirring sound, the section of dangling pipe started to wind back against the wall, locking itself in place, as if it had never moved.

‘Horatio.’ Miss Chaste’s voice had a tone of determined finality.

He wished he could simper as well as the girl was doing. ‘Yes, Miss Chaste?’ he sighed.

‘What do you have to say for yourself, Horatio?’

He thought about it.

‘Erm
. . .
’

The girl chose this hesitation as a chance for prolonged sobbing.

‘You realize I can’t possibly permit the child to go home in a state like this?’

Something of the Lyle family spirit flared up in Horatio. Though he prided himself on being able to deal in a rational manner with any crisis from chemical fires to electrical overloads,
some
things were beyond reasonable expectations, and he snapped. ‘This child damn well
broke into
my hou
—
’

‘Language, Horatio!’

‘Please, miss, I never, I never, miss, I
. . .
’

‘Horatio,’ snapped Miss Chaste, ‘I think you owe this young lady an apology.’

Lyle realized the girl, between sobs, was slyly watching him through her fingers. She grinned slightly behind her hands. His scowl deepened. ‘Miss Chaste, I have reason to believe this young lady may be a thief.’

‘No, miss, t ’isn’t true, miss, I swear! T’isn’t true!’ And then, fulfilling a plan which had been brewing from the moment she ’d labelled Miss Chaste a busy-body, and better still, a
rich
busy-body of total gullibility, Teresa Hatch, pickpocket and burglar by trade and notorious up and down Shadwell, fainted.

 

And in that part of the city where the fate of continents is decided over a glass of port and a game of bridge, in a room with a ceiling appreciable only by giraffes and a width that would certainly appeal to a small blue whale, if it ever had occasion to see it, a room hung with pictures of fine old men with large moustaches, a man sits at the end of a long, polished table topped with black leather, and says, ‘Well?’

‘We’ve just had confirmation of the break-in.’

‘And?’

‘And
. . .
we can’t say how it happened, sir.’

Silence.

‘What do you wish done, sir?’

‘I wish to know where they have taken it, and what they are planning.’

‘Would Her Majesty approve, sir?’

‘Her Majesty,’ the man replies quietly, ‘need never know.’