Printer's Devil (9780316167826) (18 page)

Grasping the drowsy-looking head in his grubby fist, he twisted it and it began to unscrew, squeaking, and sending little
grains of powder trickling to the floor out of the grooves. Lash gave an excited bark.

“Well, I never,” said the dwarf, intrigued.

“
You
knew, didn’t you?” I exclaimed to Lash, remembering how he had tried to gnaw at its neck last night. Why hadn’t it occurred
to me then?

“What on earth’s all this?” said Nick, “chalk?” He lifted off the head and blew. Powder flew up into his face, and he sneezed.
“Or is it snuff?” He held it out to me. Lash was fussing around it, and I had to stand up so I could get a proper look without
him pushing his nose inside.

The camel was full to the brim with an off-white powder, like flour and ashes.

“I don’t get it,” I said, “this powder can’t be valuable either. Let’s empty it, and see if there’s anything else in here.”

“All the powder,” put in the dwarf, “might just be there to stop the jewel, or whatever it is, from rattling about and getting
scratched.” He passed me an old porcelain jar. “Empty it into here,” he said.

I stuffed the open neck into the jar and shook the camel. Clouds of powder rose as it all poured through. Lash, his ears erect,
was transfixed, and kept giving short excited yelps as the stuff trickled out. We all watched eagerly for something else to
fall into the jar — but no, just a steady stream of powder was all there was, until the camel was empty and the jar nearly
full.

“Well,” said Spintwice, disappointed.

“This doesn’t make sense,” said Nick. “Are you sure there’s nothing else in there? Nothing’s stuck?”

I shook it, and pressed my eye to the open neck, but could see nothing.

“Let’s have some more tea,” Spintwice said, getting up.

But I was sitting with my nose in the neck of the jar. I sniffed.

“What are you doing?” Nick asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, “I think I’ve smelt this before.” I breathed in again.

Suddenly I felt very, very peculiar.

The jar was growing, swelling, like something about to give birth. I held it until it was too big for my hands and then I
let it fall, which it did very slowly, as if it were falling through endless space. When I looked up, Nick and Mr. Spintwice
had receded, the room suddenly expanding until it was the size of a cornfield: there they were, in their armchairs, miles
away, moving their arms like insects, completely silent. Lash’s wet nose, shining in the glow of the fire, had become a disembodied
ball of light, like a star. All I could hear was the ticking of the clocks, which became louder and louder until it was more
like a rush of crashing echoes; the room began to spin and I clutched the arms of the chair in desperation as, lashing like
a snake, the world flipped right over and threw me into a blaze of meaningless color, like the pinkest, bluest, blackest sunset
that ever smeared its way across the smoky London sky.

As we left Spintwice’s I still felt rather strange; though at least the world was no longer expanding and contracting like
a concertina. Nick and the dwarf had picked me up and sat me firmly in a chair, where they’d given me tea to drink, and then,
as a further measure, brandy. Again I’d declined the offer of a bed for the night, partly out of a desire to protect Spintwice
and partly because I had an aching feeling that, the more time I spent in his extraordinary and beguiling house, the less
I’d ever want to go back to Cramplock’s at all, to work or to sleep. Bravely, Nick had agreed to come with me.

“Are you feeling better?” he asked as we walked up the street in the dark.

“I think so,” I said, hesitantly. “Nick, we
can
trust Spintwice, can’t we?”

“’Course we can,” he said quickly. “I tell him everything, Mog. I always have. He won’t say anything to anyone.”

The dwarf had been tremendously excited by the whole affair, and thought it was fun to join in our adventure; but I was worried.
The tiny man wouldn’t present much of an obstacle if a murderous criminal should pay him a visit, determined to get at the
camel or its contents. The more I thought about it, the less sure I was that we had done the right thing. I just hoped we’d
hidden them well enough, and had been careful enough not to let anyone see us as we came and went.

“We’d better not hang around,” I said as we came to the corner where our routes home diverged.

Nick looked up at the dark sky. “I hope Pa’s still out,” he said, “and Ma Muggerage, too, for that matter. Then I can get
back in without being clobbered. Look, I might come back here tomorrow and make sure Spintwice is all right.”

“Well, I shan’t come,” I said, “if you-know-who’s watching me, the further away I stay the better.” And as I hurried between
the unfriendly walls towards home, every face which melted into the shadows at my approach made me stop in my tracks; every
cough from a doorway, every murmur from a lighted window, even the rustle as Lash chased a rat into the shadows near my ankles,
sent shivers up my spine; and by the time we got back I was running so fast I was completely out of breath.

“Busy today, Mog,” Cramplock told me next morning, “invitation cards for Lord Malmsey’s daughter’s wedding. I want you to
cut the card while I engrave this coat of arms.” He was peering through his half-glasses at the design he’d been given to
work from: a big shield-like coat of arms, featuring banners unfurled, and a motto in Latin I couldn’t understand. The emblems
on the shield were three white flowers and a lion with a particularly blank expression on its face, as though its brain had
been removed.

“A lion and three roses,” I said to Cramplock. “Does he like lions, then, this Lord Malmsey?”

“He doesn’t have to
like
lions,” Cramplock replied, “it’s a sign of courage.” He went to a cupboard and took out lots of little carving tools. “And
the flowers are poppies, I think, not roses.”

A little bell rang.

“Customers, customers,” said Cramplock, laying down the pencil he’d just picked up. “Mustn’t discourage them, I suppose, but
really I sometimes think I’d get on a great deal faster without them.”

“You’d be a great deal poorer, too,” I said, as he finished tapping a fat heap of stiff cards on their edges against the workbench
to make them into a neat square pile. I couldn’t help being slightly suspicious of Cramplock this morning. Nick’s words of
caution kept
ringing in my ears. He
did
know more than he was saying, that much was certain; otherwise, what had that mysterious note been about? Cramplock put the
cards down and went towards the door; but, as he saw who was waiting in the shop, his face changed.

“Mr. Glibstaff,” he said, slowly.

I felt a sudden sick misgiving. Glibstaff was a well-known local character: a small, smug, thoroughly unpleasant man who worked
for the City Magistrates, and who saw it as his job to uphold justice and public order — which in practice meant he usually
pokes his nose into everyone’s affairs to tell them what they should and shouldn’t be doing. I’d never met anyone with a good
word to say about him: as far as I could tell he was completely untrustworthy, and used to threaten people with what he pompously
referred to as “the Mysterious Might of the Law,” as though he were some kind of divine agent. People who didn’t do as he
told them — or, more usually, didn’t pay him whatever money he fancied charging in return for leaving them alone — tended
to find themselves summoned before the Magistrates and accused of some dreamt-up offense, for which they usually ended up
paying out even more money in fines. Whatever course of action they chose, a visit from Mr. Glibstaff was usually expensive
— and people greeted him in much the same way as they might greet someone who’d come to tell
them their house had been condemned, or that all their investments had collapsed.

But my immediate thought was that someone had tipped Glibstaff off about my recent adventures. I hovered by the door, trying
to eavesdrop on the conversation. I could see Glibstaff standing, rigid and officious, saying something to Cramplock, who
had his back toward me. We have reason to believe, he’d be saying, one of your employees is a thief. I’d like to ask him some
questions regarding a camel!

I chewed at my nails. The two men seemed to be deep in conversation. Could it have been Cramplock himself who had called Glibstaff
in? Was the game up once and for all? The more I thought about it, the more panic-stricken I became. There would surely be
some officers waiting at the back door too, and if I tried to run, I’d run straight into a trap. They were smoking me out
like a badger! For an insane moment, I eyed the curved blade of the paper guillotine and began calculating whether my neck
would fit underneath it.

Then I heard the shop door rattle shut. There was silence. He’d gone!

I couldn’t believe it.

Cramplock came back in. “Another job,” he said, reading something.

“A what?” I asked, as if I’d gone deaf with fear.

He looked up. “A murder notice,” he said. “We’ve
got fifty to do by tomorrow. What’s the matter, Mog? You look rather — strange.”

“It’s all right, Mr. Cramplock,” I said, breathing more easily, “when I saw it was Glibstaff I, er — that is, I—”

He gave a short chuckle. “Well, for once his visit was for legitimate business reasons,” he said, handing me the sheet of
paper Glibstaff had given him.

A REWARD
is Offered to PERSONS supplying
Information required by THE CROWN,
concerning a most BRUTAL late

MURDER
in the City of LONDON, being that of
one Wm Jiggs, Esq. Ships Chandler, of
Foulds Walk by Eastcheap on the Night of
20th May

Everything else melted away as I read this. For all I know, I might have been standing there for twenty-four hours.

“Mog? You look — even stranger than before,” Cramplock finally said.

“Oh,” I said, waking up, “er — it’s nothing, Mr. Cramplock.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Well, come on then, there’s work to be done.”

Nick’s face, when I told him, turned whiter than any of the paper we had in the shop. It was as though a little tap opened
under his chin and all the blood surged away.

“When?” he hissed.

“Last night,” I said. “They found him in an abandoned hackney coach — no horse, no driver, just the cab and a dead Jiggs.
Near the river, just under the north end of the bridge, it was.”

“How did he die?”

“It doesn’t say.” I reached inside my shirt for the poster I’d taken.

We were sitting in the Doll’s Head again; after I finished work I’d gone there with Lash and found Nick already sitting in
the corner. As soon as he saw me, he’d known something was up. Now he sat reading the big poster, his eyes leaping up and
down the page as though, like me, he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.

“I s’pose,” he said, slowly, “Coben could’ve done it.
Maybe Jiggs was threatening to blow his cover, or something.” But it was clear he was thinking the same as I’d immediately
thought. The single most likely murderer was the man who’d recently had an anonymous note, and who’d gone storming off in
a rage the night before, believing Coben and Jiggs had taken his most precious possession.