The Thief's Apprentice Read online

  “Who are the Tri-Loom?” I asked.

  “A Chinese crime syndicate,” said Dr. Mikolaitis. “They are what the Lice dream they could be. Many times bigger, and with real power.”

  “Father’s debt was transferred from the Woodhouselee Society to the Tri-Loom. They are the ones to whom Father owes his debt,” said Elspeth.

  “Ellie, my sweet child!” Mr. Gaunt held up his arms imploringly. “We can protect you.”

  “And if it’s money you need, I can help,” said Father.

  “The money must come from my father,” said Miss Scant. “From his own earnings. That is very important to me.”

  “Ellie, at least let me hold you again,” said Mrs. Gaunt. “I have been so worried.”

  Miss Cai laughed. “You don’t have to worry about Ellie!”

  Miss Gaunt nodded. “We will have time for embraces later. For now, we need to take these criminals somewhere safe. I also have an apple I would like to eat. Most urgently, more hostile combatants are approaching from the mausoleum.”

  She was right: though still far off, a considerable number of men were on the move. Miss Cai hurried to the roadside and whistled for the horses. The one that had reared up had not been shot, only taken fright, and both animals were well-trained enough to come trotting back.

  Young man?” said Miss Gaunt.

  “I . . . yes?” I answered.

  “Please take Lady Hortensia. She is still quite afraid.”

  “Oh. Yes, all right.”

  “And now we should all escape.”

  “Into the motorcar!” said Father. “Come on, Son.”

  Tearfully, Mrs. Gaunt called out one final time, “Write to us, Ellie, won’t you?”

  Elspeth Gaunt looked over as she heaved Mr. Binns onto the back of her horse. “Yes. I suppose I could do that.”

  “We love you,” said Mr. Gaunt as he led his wife away and to the motorcar. With Mr. Scant and Dr. Mikolaitis again clinging to the outside of the motorcar, Mrs. George eased us forward. One tire had been shot and let out an alarming groan, but we were mobile. We edged around the inert land ironclad and were on our way.

  “Now then, Mr. Scant—I think I’m well overdue your explanation,” said Father, leaning out of the window to address his valet.

  “Yes, sir. Well, it began with two boys much in love with science . . .”

  And so Mr. Scant told the story of our adventure, leaving out a good deal of the details and—after first casting me as an innocent, drawn along for leverage—letting me tell Father however much I wanted to. And I wanted to tell him everything. Mr. Gaunt grew increasingly sullen as the tale reached its triumphant ending, and he eventually spoke up: “Yes—but this isn’t over, is it? There are going to be consequences after this. Even forgetting China, Binns certainly had friends in his wretched club too. We didn’t do away with the whole lot of them. And whoever Ellie is working for, at some point they’ll have to hand Binns to Scotland Yard, and don’t be surprised if some strings are pulled and no charges stick.”

  “Ah, well, that is where this comes into play,” Mr. Scant said, drawing out a small case.

  “What have you got there?” said Father.

  “Film. From a camera that we had in the balloon. I was very careful to take it out under the cover of the fireworks. You see, on this film, there is a lovely, clear image of Mr. Binns wearing a certain claw. It may even show his wife by his side with some very unladylike pistols.”

  “Nothing unladylike about pistols,” Mrs. George trilled.

  “The point is,” Mr. Scant went on, “that the newspapers will be very keen to print this. The gentlemen we were dealing with may persuade the police to turn a blind eye, but the newspapers? Oh, that is another matter. We’ll send it to them, and if Mr. Binns comes back, the world will be against him. And should one of his respectable friends turn nasty, well, I’m sure we can find a picture of the man looking chummy with our new Claw, and they’ll understand the situation.”

  “I said from the beginning you’re a clever egg, Scant,” said Father. “And you, Son—never knew you had it in you. I want to give you a good whack for putting yourself in harm’s way, but maybe you’re old enough now to make you own choices. I’m proud of you. Once we’re home, Scant, I’ll have you explain it again—can’t say I took it all in with you out the window there—but by the looks of this, I’d say we won!”

  “We haven’t won until our Ellie is back with us,” said Mrs. Gaunt.

  “I promise you, Winifred, we will get through everything together,” Mr. Scant said.

  “All of us,” I said. I looked to Father to see if he would forbid it, but he simply gave a slow nod.

  “All well and good,” came a distant-sounding voice, “but do you think I could swap places with somebody at some point?”

  The four of us on the backseat turned to look at Dr. Mikolaitis, who didn’t look very comfortable hanging to the back of the motorcar.

  “If it’s convenient . . .”

  Epilogue

  would be lying if I said the thought hadn’t struck me even before we reached home that day.

  When I finally plucked up the courage to ask my question, almost two weeks later, “What do you mean, Master Oliver?” was Mr. Scant’s response.

  “Well . . . the battle is over, isn’t it? You don’t need to steal art back from Mr. Binns. Mr. Gaunt even got all the credit for the photos exposing the ‘Real Claw.’ ”

  “Indeed.”

  It had been a fine day when the newspapers printed our photograph of Mr. and Mrs. Binns, along with a full story of a raid on their house that uncovered numerous strange trinkets and an array of stolen goods even Mr. Scant had not known about. Scotland Yard announced it had the Binnses in custody, and the press named Reginald Gaunt as the intrepid Beards and Binns employee who felt honor-bound to expose his employer. Poor old Mr. Beards had been in a sorry state, with his company suddenly infamous, until Father negotiated a takeover by Diplexito Engineering and Combustibles Ltd., Tunbridge Wells. And just as the company was preparing to branch out into airships.

  Christmas had arrived, and I had a new bike to learn to ride, at least as soon as the ground began to thaw. Out daydreaming about routes around the garden, I went to visit Mr. Scant in the Ice House.

  “I just don’t see why you’re still here,” I said to Mr. Scant. “Now that it’s all . . . come together, you don’t have any reason to be serving Father.”

  “Ah. Is the idea troubling you, Master Oliver?”

  “You and your brother can go back to being scientists.”

  Mr. Scant stopped tinkering with the contraption he was working on and went to sit on his rocking chair. He had salvaged every small part of the old chair and built a new one around them. In a way, it was still the old rocking chair, very heavily restored. “We could,” he said.

  “So why are you still at Father’s side? Is it only until you pay him back?”

  “For the traction engine?” Mr. Scant smiled, something he had been doing a lot more often. “No, I could repay him for that in my own way. But the truth is that I don’t want things to change so dramatically. Especially now that Reggie can come and visit whenever he pleases. I rather like it here. I am very good at being a gentleman’s gentleman. You also ought to hesitate before thinking everything has been tied up with a bow. Life is seldom so tidy. If Binns escapes, or sends his son, or someone we have ruined by our actions comes looking for revenge, I should like to meet him with the people I trust. The people I have around me here. There’s also the matter of young Elspeth Gaunt, who so far hasn’t sent word to her mother and father of her whereabouts, or anything else. Thinking of her and her young friend, we may have made an enemy of some particularly worrisome people out in China.”

  “If anything happens, I hope you’ll let me help you.”

  “Of course, Master Oliver. You are still, after all, my apprentice.”

  I smiled. “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “We’ll have
to keep your father in the dark, I think—though he does seem to be paying more attention to you now.”

  “Yes,” I replied. “It’s a bit odd.”

  “Well, as long as we don’t tell any outright lies, I think there’s still some more good we can do in this world. And I need to work to restore my reputation as a man who tells no lies. I hope you have forgiven me my indiscretions.”

  “I have. But there’s still one thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “You told me that your real name isn’t Hector. Was that a lie?”

  Mr. Scant stopped rocking. “Strictly, no.”

  “But Mr. Gaunt—he calls you ‘Heck.’”

  Mr. Scant looked embarrassed, another new sign of humanity. “My name was meant to be Hector. Unfortunately, my father was the one left to submit it at the registry. He wasn’t one for details, and nor was the registry official. So on my birth certificate, I am Ector. No H. And if you laugh, the partnership is off.”

  He watched me, and I watched him. And then it was too late. “I’m sorry!” I cried. “I can’t help it!”

  On a reconstructed platform above us, the claw I had worn sat on a little table, untouched since we first placed it there. The connection between Mr. Scant and the Ruminating Claw had been broken. The true identity of the Claw would only ever be known to our small circle, and perhaps to certain secret societies. The rest of the world would associate the claw with Mr. Binns and his misdeeds. There was another claw, of course; the strange, misshapen one made of scraps and pipes, and that I kept in my room as a memento of sorts, even though Meg and Penny often whispered about it and laughed. Chudley came over for a visit one Saturday, and when he saw it, he nodded sadly and said it was a modernist sculpture expressing heartache and rejection. “It takes an artist’s eye to see these things, you know,” he said with a doleful expression.

  Mrs. George never spoke again of the events at the mausoleum, but I suspected she looked at Mr. Scant in a whole new way—and she had begun making orders in person from a butcher’s across town, just to keep an eye on the owners’ larger-than-life daughter. One day, Mrs. George received delivery of a cooking pot that seemed to have been crudely hammered out of a sheet of bronze—such as might once have served as a breastplate.

  The day after we came home from the mausoleum, Mr. Ibberts had given Father a note of resignation. In his late years, he had discovered a great desire to teach abroad, he said. When last we heard of him, he was eager to visit Canada. As Mother began looking for a replacement, I wondered what she would think of a Lithuanian tutor with a doctorate, one who happened to be searching for a new job himself.

  As for Father himself, he still had little time to spare, but now he occasionally went so far as to pat my shoulder or tell me about the news he was reading in his morning paper. Mother told me he had been considering taking me to the company during the school holidays, a development she mentioned as if it were the most exciting thing that had ever happened in my life. But then, she had thought I’d be thrilled by ballet, too.

  Through that crisp and peaceful winter, I often thought about the future. It was a beautiful thing—the best part of it being the number of lives I would be able to live. As many as I wanted. Because if Mr. Scant had taught me anything, it was that a person needn’t settle for just one.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to my supportive friends and family. Life is about having fun, and the world would be a dreary place without you.

  Thank you to my editor, Greg Hunter at Lerner, for your immediate understanding of everything I hoped someone would one day understand.

  Thank you to Fiona Kenshole at Transatlantic Literary Agency, effortlessly lighting up the most daunting of paths with her boundless enthusiasm.

  Thank you to Richard Sala for being so readily able to paint the inside of my head.

  Thank you to my teachers, especially Anne Barton—may you rest in peace, Professor. I wish I’d spent more time listening to your stories, though I don’t regret for one moment all that time we spent chasing your cats.

  Thank you to James Wills—an hour of your time improved the book tenfold.

  And of course, thank you to my readers, for taking a chance on this new, untested author—or possibly, if I’m lucky, for going back to see where this old hack’s journey began.

  About the Author

  Bryan Methods grew up in a tiny village south of London called Crowhurst. He studied English at Trinity College, Cambridge, and has been working on a PhD on First World War poets. He currently lives in Tokyo, Japan, where he loves playing in bands, fencing, and video games.

  In the next stirring installment, Mr. Scant and Oliver arrive in Paris, searching for Elspeth Gaunt. They soon discover that children are disappearing, snatched from the streets. Guided by a young Parisian whose brother was taken, Mr. Scant and Oliver follow the trail of clues to Shanghai, where they unravel a plot to overthrow the Emperor of China himself. Can Mr. Scant and his allies foil the conspiracy and rescue the children, or will they fall victim to a shadowy criminal organization bent on international war? And where in all this is Elspeth Gaunt?