Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms (13 page)

The machine on the right was identical in appearance apart from the wording, which read:

BICYCLE TIRE REPAIR KITS

In the center stood the machine from the fairground. It was much more eye-catching than the other two: the lettering was in yellow and red, the bell at the top had been brightly polished, and the giant mallet was glossy with black paint. At the base of the machine stood something that looked like an iron mushroom, a little more than a foot and a half high, and behind it there was a diagram of a stick man hitting the mushroom with the mallet.
ARE YOU A WEAKLING OR A MUSCLE MAN? ONLY THE
TRULY STRONG CAN RING THE BELL!
was printed next to the diagram.

Stuart looked around to check that no one had come into the room, and then he stepped forward, already feeling for a threepence in his pocket.

According to the order of photos in the book from the library, the movie theater toffee machine should come first.

He pushed the coin into the slot and pulled the lever. There was a brief rattling sound and then the slither of something coming down a chute, and a loud thud as it reached the bottom. He reached in and removed a small paper bag. Inside it was a solid, slightly sticky clump of toffees, immovably welded together by heat and time. Hurriedly, Stuart had another feel around inside the hole, but there was nothing else there.

Shoving the bag into his pocket, he took out another threepence and moved quickly across to the machine on the right, the one that dispensed bicycle tire repair kits.

And then he paused, reaching out a disbelieving hand. The slot for the coins had been covered with a thin strip of metal. It was held tightly in place by two large screws. Desperately, uselessly, he pried at them with his fingernails. He could have yelled in frustration.

Suddenly, he remembered the tools in the Victorian room. He ducked under the rope again and raced back there.

It was empty of visitors. The tools were fixed to the wall in fan-shaped arrangements. He could see a display of hammers and one of chisels, and finally, with a leap of the heart, he spotted an entire array of screwdrivers of different sizes, with age-darkened blades and smooth wooden handles.

They were just out of his reach.

He stood on tiptoe, but they were still too high for him so he looked around for something to stand on and saw that the large fake milkmaid was seated on a three-legged stool.

She was fixed in a sitting position, so he lifted her up (she was surprisingly heavy) and propped her headfirst against a wagon wheel. Then he grabbed the stool and climbed onto it. He could now reach the screwdrivers. Each was fastened to the wall with a pair of plastic loops. He pulled at the handle of one of the largest. The loops snapped easily—far more easily than he’d expected—and he found himself wavering backward, stepping into midair, sticking out a hand to break his fall.

And what broke his fall was the milkmaid’s backside. She lurched forward, shoving the wagon wheel with her head, and at that exact moment the curator and Stuart’s father entered the room.

Stuart, lying on his back, clutching the screwdriver, could see exactly what was going to happen, and he could do nothing,
nothing
to stop it.

The wheel trundled across the room and hit the cow, the cow leaned on the blacksmith, the blacksmith toppled onto the horse, and the horse keeled over sideways, hitting the floor with the most enormous crash. There was another smaller crash as one of its back legs dropped off, and then a final, tiny clatter as it lost an ear.

The silence seemed to go on and on.

“Hello, Dad,” said Stuart.

CHAPTER 20

Stuart and his father didn’t talk much on the way home.

Stuart hadn’t been able to think of a believable explanation for the horse-smashing incident, so he had simply said, “I’m really, really sorry,” to the curator and, “It was an accident,” both of which statements were true.

His father had silently written out a check.

The curator had stood in the front entrance and watched them leave. He hadn’t actually said, “Go away, you disgusting vandal and never darken these doors again,” but he might as well have done so.

Halfway home, it started to rain heavily.

“I really am really, really sorry, Dad,” said Stuart, dripping, as they turned the corner onto Beech Road.

“I know you are,” said his father. But he looked worried, as well as soaked. When they got into the house, Stuart saw him pick up the phone right away.

Stuart went to his room and flopped on the bed. He felt exhausted. He had wrecked the museum and humiliated his father, and all he had to show for it was a bag of inedible toffee.

He took it out of his pocket and looked at it.

He’d been certain that each of the museum machines would provide him with a number, but what number could he extract from an unmarked paper bag containing a large brown lump—one huge toffee where there had once been a handful?

And then, all of a sudden, he seemed to hear a chirpy voice:
You put in threepence and you got a little bag full. Always exactly the same number of toffees
. Lorna, the woman in the blue glasses at the bingo hall, had told him that. And then her friend, Vi, had chipped in with the precise number. A dozen. She’d said a dozen!

So if the first number was twelve, and he had to guess at the other two, how many goes at the safe would it take before he got the combination right? He fetched his calculator, tapped out 29 × 29, and groaned. That was still
far
too many. And in less than a week’s time, Uncle Tony’s house would be demolished, and the safe lost forever, crushed under tons of rubble.

He had to sneak back into the museum. Secretly.

He had to sneak back, undo a couple of screws on one machine, and then swing an enormous great hammer in order to ring a very large bell on the other. Secretly.

And if he didn’t manage it he would never find the workshop, and more than that, he would never find out what had happened to Great-Uncle Tony or to Lily.

It was then that he remembered the scrapbook Leonora had given him. He reached down and pulled it out from under his bed, brushing dust balls from the cover.

He looked again at the first photograph, of Great-Uncle Tony holding the threepences, and then he began to turn the pages. The first few pictures were all of children: of Lily, presumably, and her little sister Leonora, of Tony and his big brother Ray— Lily and Tony always grinning, fighting, shouting, jumping, a blur of energy and action, Leonora always holding a book, looking shyly at the camera from behind thick spectacles, Ray always serious and slightly disapproving.

Photograph followed photograph; gradually the children grew up. The boys acquired mustaches, Lily smoked a daring cigarette, Leonora held up a certificate from Saint Cuthbert’s Training College, showing that she’d qualified as a teacher. There were flyers from Tony’s magic shows and ecstatic reviews of his performances, and pictures of Lily in glamorous costumes, and on the final page of the book, crumpled and slightly torn, was the yellowed newspaper clipping that had fallen onto the road the day before.

Stuart smoothed it out. It was the top half of a page from the
Beeton Advertiser
of September 1940.

It showed a photograph of Great-Uncle Tony and Lily, holding hands and grinning hugely at the camera. He was wearing a tin helmet with a
W
on the front, and she was in nurse’s uniform.

BEETON CELEBRITY TO MARRY

“Teeny-Tiny” Tony Horten and his lovely assistant Lily Vickers pose together after announcing their engagement. Speaking to our reporter yesterday, Mr. Horten (who is also a volunteer air-raid warden for the Beeton Park area) said—

Stuart heard a soft noise, like a sharp click. And then another. And another. Stuart hauled himself up and went over to the window. April Kingley was standing on the sidewalk holding a handful of pebbles.

“
Go away
,” he mouthed through the glass.

She shook her head and threw another one.

Stuart opened the window. “What do you want?” he asked as rudely as possible.

“Did you know you’re being watched?” asked April.

“Yes,” he said. “By you.”

She shook her head. “Seriously. There’s a man about forty years old, a bit fat, dressed in green trousers, with no distinguishing features apart from a white dove that keeps flapping around wherever he’s hiding. Which is currently behind the hedge at number twenty-two. He turned up not long after you got home covered in mud again. And then when you went off with your dad a bit later, he was sneaking along about fifty feet behind. Incidentally, why
were
you covered in mud for the second day in a row?”

“It wasn’t mud. It was soot.”

“All right, why were you covered in soot?”

“It’s none of your business,” said Stuart, annoyed to learn that Clifford was still following him. He closed the window.

A few more pebbles smacked against the glass. He opened the window again. “Stop it,” he said.

April folded her arms and looked at him with her head tilted to one side. Her expression was incredibly irritating, a mixture of condescension and sympathy. “I think you’re in some kind of trouble,” she said.

“No, I’m not.”

“And I really think you should tell someone about it. Me, preferably, because I’m really good at keeping secrets, and because I’m quite brave, and also because my journalistic contacts—”

“You don’t have any journalistic contacts,” Stuart said. “
You’re ten years old
.”

“My journalistic contacts,” she continued determinedly, “mean that I’m a really useful person to know.”

“Go away,” said Stuart.

“And I’m a fast runner,” she added. “And I always win at dares, and my report card said that I never take no for an answer.”

Stuart started to close the window.

“And I’m
bored
!” April shouted. “I’m really, really, really
bored
. I can’t find any crime to report, and my sisters aren’t interested in investigative journalism. All they want to do is copy stuff out of the paper. Anyway,” she added, “I bet you need help.”

He hesitated, his hand on the window latch.

He did need help. Without it he’d never get back into the museum, and he’d never find the safe combination, and he couldn’t give up now, he just couldn’t.

He took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll meet you in the yard in two minutes.”

When he got outside, Stuart wished he’d chosen somewhere else to meet. He’d forgotten that April was tall enough to rest her chin on the top of the fence, whereas he could only see over into the yard next door if he stood on tiptoe.

“So,” said April, looking down at him, “what’s going on?”

Stuart thought hard. He didn’t really trust her, so it would be best, he decided, to give her as little information as possible, and not to mention the coins or the machines, or even Great-Uncle Tony. He would have to be very, very clever about it.

“All right,” he said. “If you needed to spend twenty minutes in one of the rooms in Beeton Museum without being disturbed by anyone, how would you do it?”

“What’s this, a quiz?” asked April, frowning.

“In a way,” he replied mysteriously.

“Well, what do you need to do for those twenty minutes?” she asked. “Do you want to borrow something?”

“No.”

“Steal something?”

“
No
.”

“Have a go on one of those old-fashioned slot machines in the back room?”

His jaw dropped. “How do you know?”

“Everyone wants a go on those. They lock them up when school trips come around. They’ll only work with old threepenny bits. Have you got some?”

“Er …”

“I bet you have. Where did you find them?”

“Er …”

“Did they belong to your great-uncle Tony who had the house? Did they?”

Stuart nodded dumbly. It was hopeless. She was just too clever for him.

“You might as well tell me everything,” said April. “Go on. Please.
Please
.”