Jim Morgan and the King of Thieves (19 page)

Jim got very excited as he told the story. Hardly a month ago he would never have believed he stood even a chance of getting his box back from the King of Thieves, but his new friends’ training had given him a taste of success, and Jim was beginning to believe that all kinds of things were possible. His energy immediately infected the Ratts, as it tends to infect all little boys who are in love with adventure and intrigue, and, with mischief gleaming in their eyes, they leapt over to where Jim sat.

“A pawnshop!” George said, smacking his own head with his hand. “That makes perfect sense. That’s where he could trade the necklaces for money for our escape!”

“But if he’s really planning nothing but our escape, why is he bent on finding that one particular necklace?” Lacey asked, a fair bit of grownup skepticism in her voice.

“It must be something he lost before,” Peter said. “And he’s trying to get it back.”

“Or maybe it’s an extra valuable necklace,” Paul suggested. “One that’ll fetch loads more than all of the others put together!”

“I don’t think he wanted it for money, Paul,” Jim said, though in truth he knew for a fact what the old king wanted with it: for his father’s treasure. But for one reason or another, Jim kept this to himself. “He seemed rather keen on finding it and keeping it for himself, and the little man with the gypsy accent was quite upset that they hadn’t found it yet. He had a book that seemed to tell all about it, and had a picture of it, too. If we could see that book, we could know why he was looking for it.”

“Fat lot of good that’ll do us,” said George, who started laughing. His brothers joined in, slapping their knees. “A book, he says! Then we could know!”

“All I can think to do with a book is toss it in our stove for a little extra heat,” Peter said.

Jim felt a bit stung by this sudden mockery, as excitement had been building up within him. He crossed his arms over his chest,
scowling. “What’s so funny about that? And why in blazes would you want to toss a book into a stove?”

“Because, Jim,” said Lacey, as tired of the Ratts’ uproarious laughter as Jim. “None of us can read. No one in the entire king’s court can read except for a few of the Owls, so even if we got that stupid book, the only place we could go to get someone to read it for us would be a church.”

“And they’d toss us back into St. Anne’s orphanage or school the moment we popped up on their doorstep,” Paul added, shaking his head.

“What are you talking about?” Jim threw his hands up. “I can read!”

The Ratt brothers stopped laughing, their jaws hanging open like baby birds waiting to be fed, and Lacey arched her eyebrow high over her eye in disbelief.

“You can read?” she asked, crossing her own arms, and scowling as darkly as Jim. “Prove it!”

Jim shrugged, hopped up, and walked over to the pile of potato sacks they used for a bed. He picked one up, analyzed the letters stitched into the burlap, and read aloud. “Dunning’s Potatoes of London, in operation in England since 1652,” he said and threw the bag down, smiling widely, and ridiculously pleased with himself.

“Jim!” George and the Ratts leapt to their feet. “This is absolutely brilliant! How come you never told us you could bloody read?”

“I guess I never thought about it,” Jim said, suddenly feeling very good about having such a rare talent (and once more wishing he would have paid attention to the myriad other things that he could have learned when he lived as a nobleman’s son).

“Can you write, too?” Paul asked.

“Sure can,” Jim said. “And if you want, I can teach you how to read and write while you teach me how to thieve.”

“You would…teach me how to read?” Lacey asked. Her blue eyes went wide, and all of the skepticism seeped out of her face. In those days not many women learned such things as reading and writing, but
Jim wasn’t quite old enough to have been poisoned by such discriminations, and he gladly agreed.

“Brilliant!” George cried. “Well, what are we waitin’ for? Let’s go!”

“Go where?” Jim asked.

“Well, it’s like our father always used to say—” George began.

“You didn’t know our father, George,” Paul and Peter said together, but George didn’t seem to hear them.

“No better place to practice the art of thieving than the real world! That’s what he said, all right. Let’s get to the pawnshop on Barque Street and see about this necklace for ourselves!”

“I’m not so sure this is such a good idea, George,” Lacey said. “The King of Thieves seems very dangerous, even if he is going to help us escape. Besides, what good will it do for us to break into his pawnshop?”

“We’ve got Jim, Lacey,” George said. “He can read the book for us, and then we can know what the old king is up to. Now quit fussin’ and come on!”

Out the hole they tumbled into the streets, where the night grew steadily darker and colder, and where the first true snow of the year began to color the city a ghostly white, off to uncover a secret more unbelievable than any of them could possibly imagine.

TWENTY

y the time Jim, the Ratts, and Lacey arrived at the pawnshop on Barque Street, the snow had deepened enough to bear their footprints, night had fully darkened the world, and only a few streetlamps cast flickering light and wavering shadows over the empty roads.

Jim shivered as he drew close to the building. The shingle that read “Pawnshop” creaked and swayed in the cold wind, and the shutters clapped against the brick walls. Jim remembered the first time he had descended into the shadowy streets of London, and how the houses there had seemed to have faces, but now the snow, accumulating over the windows and door of the pawnshop, lent the building the frightening eyes and cruel mouth of an old man, one with bright
white eyebrows and a thick mustache who hated even the sight of little children.

“George,” Lacey said with a shudder, “let’s wait until tomorrow. It will be warmer in the sun…and more cheerful.” She looked at the old man’s face on the building and shivered again. But the Ratts had lived nearly their whole lives on the streets of London, and if they saw the cruel face of man on the building they simply imagined it was another snobby lord who required their special attention and needed to be taught a lesson.

“Just think about what we could find in there,” George said. “There’s a reason the King’s looking for that medallion and I want to find out what it is. And besides, Jim’s box is in there. If nothing else, we could nick that and be on our merry way!”

That was all the convincing Jim needed. He took a deep, icy breath and tried to feel brave. His father had been brave, he reminded himself, that deep-seated feeling of being a disappointment pushing Jim all the more to break into the pawnshop and take back what was his.

“Open the door, Peter,” Jim said. “Besides, it’ll be warmer inside, Lacey,” he added with a smile.

Peter hopped in front of the door and peered into the keyhole. He cracked his knuckles, loosened his arms, pulled out his leather case of metal pins, and got to work. It was apparently a tougher lock to pick than the one on the warehouse door, but Peter was no amateur. In a few moments the latch popped and the door swung open with a long groan.

An inviting warmth blew out from inside the store, but the coals still burning in the stove splayed a sinister red light over the trinkets decorating the pawnshop shelves, and in the shadows, the jewelry glimmered like glowing eyes in a forest dark. Jim gulped hard at the memory of such eyes, but he reminded himself he was no longer going to be a coward and took the first step through the door. The others followed, and, almost by itself, the door creaked behind them, clicking shut with a loud pop.

The children jumped and huddled close together. “Sorry about that,” Paul squeaked. “I bumped it a bit, I think.”

“You think?” Lacey asked with a scowl, but after few moments no further sounds belied the presence of anyone else in the shop but the clan, and they proceeded to have a look around.

All manner of curious odds and ends, traded away by desperate Londoners for a few coins, filled the shop from top to bottom. For those who have never been in a pawnshop, they really are very sad little stores. Every object on every shelf once belonged to someone with no choice but to trade those precious items for less than half their true worth, just to scrape by for another month.

There were smoking pipes and empty satchels for tobacco, pots and irons for cooking, fine sets of silverware, and rows of teapots and cups and saucers. Lacey found a wedding dress hanging in the corner. It looked nothing short of heartbreaking to see it there, knowing that the woman who had worn it had been forced to give it away for the sake of her family. Nevertheless, Lacey imagined taking it for herself and wearing it one day. Then she pushed those thoughts out of her mind with a fierce shake of her head. She couldn’t steal that dress. For some reason it seemed wrong, even for a thief.

The boys, on the other hand, found some pistols, overcloaks, tricorn hats, and even a set of cruel-looking knives, all of which they had no problem trying on and making like a band of fearsome pirates.

“Arrgghh!” Paul growled, spinning around to reveal an eye patch over one eye, a tricorn hat upon his head, a rusty pistol brandished in each hand. The boys burst into laughter until Lacey shushed them quiet.

“Shut up, you dingbats!” she whispered rather loudly. She seemed to want to stomp her foot again but resisted the temptation for fear of the noise. “Do you want to let the whole street know we’re here? Let’s find what we want and get out of here and back home. Put that stuff away! These things belong to people as poor as we are, and that’s against the rules! Now come on!”

The boys begrudgingly put their new playthings back, George mumbling something akin to “yes, mother” under his breath, but the glow of the coals in Lacey’s flashing eyes quickly silenced his grumbling.

“I think it’s back in the rear office,” Jim said. Behind the counter and through the door at the back of the shop they crept, where another stove full of red-hot embers lit a smaller room, its walls practically shimmering like a cave of diamonds. Necklaces and medallions hung on every hook and in every corner of the room, gleaming silver and gold in the light of the stove. The Ratts’ eyes went wide and they licked their lips.

“It’s a treasure!” Peter whispered.

“Surely we almost have enough to get out of here,” said George.

“More than enough,” Jim said, furrowing up his brow. “If the King of Thieves traded all these for coin we’d have more than enough to sail all of us to the Far East and back again.”

“Then why don’t he do it?” Peter asked.

“I’m not sure he’s ever going to, Peter,” Lacey said, a sudden sadness sweeping over her face. “If Jim is right, then all he really cares about is this medallion, and he’s using us to help him find it.”

“And when he gets what he wants,” Jim added gravely, “I think he’ll leave the clans behind.”

“Don’t you say that, either of you,” George barked. “We
are
leaving here and the King of Thieves is going to take us with him! We stole a lot of this rich stuff, and it’s ours as much as his! What could be so important about one medallion anyway that he would lie to us like that?” George was so angry that in the dim glow Jim could see his hands balled up into fists at his sides.

“Maybe this could tell us,” Paul said from beside a desk by a bookshelf. He pointed at an empty inkwell, a dry old quill, a candlestick, and a thick book all resting upon the desktop before him. “Can you read it, Jim?”

“Not in this light,” said Jim, shaking his head. But almost immediately a small yellow flame glowed in the room. George had found a slender lighting stick and used it to light the candle on the desk.

“George, no!” Lacey whispered harshly. But George was upset by that point, and little boys, and even grown men, tend not to listen to reason when angry.

“Just keep a good lookout, Lacey,” George said without looking at her.

Lacey harrumphed a complaint but crept over to the window just the same to stare out of the office, straining her ears for the slightest sound of approaching trouble.

Jim stood beside the desk as the light from the candle brightened over the pages of the book. On the far page, the hand-drawn image of a peculiar medallion came into view. “This must be it,” Jim said.