The Thief's Apprentice Page 2

  “Is there something I can do for you?” asked Mr. Scant.

  “I came to ask for a sugar cube before dinner!” I blurted.

  The scrutiny from Mr. Scant’s eyes intensified, and it had already been at least three times more scrutiny than anyone ought to have to suffer. “Ha ha, you remember, I’m sure, M-Mr. Scant,” I babbled. “Mother likes her l-little . . . little joke about me. ‘Oh, he doesn’t have a sweet tooth, he has a mouth full of them.’ Ha! Oh, Mother. Yes, and Mrs. George gives me sugar sometimes! You’ve seen, I’m sure you’ve seen. Remember, I used to eat the ones that were there in case guests might want them in their tea? And Father said I should have a nosebag. Bit unkind, but maybe he’s right, ha ha! Ha.”

  Hasty as it had been, my excuse was not wholly terrible. The main question was whether or not Mr. Scant would remember that three or four years had passed since I last asked Mrs. George for such a childish treat. His eyes continued to pierce into mine, his hand still on my shoulder. Despite the lightness of his grip, that hand paralyzed me as surely as an iron maiden. Was my babbling too much? Would he see right through me and decide I was more trouble than I was worth, that the corridor’s stone walls would look good with a nice new lick of dribbly red paint?

  After an eternity, Mr. Scant lifted his hand. I felt like Atlas must have when Heracles took up his burden. Waiting long enough to be sure Mr. Scant hadn’t released me just to make it easier to chop me up, I stepped timorously toward the kitchen. The moment I did, Mr. Scant spoke. “By all means, Master Oliver, try your luck with Mrs. George.”

  “I will,” I squeaked, and sidled away slowly, in the way I imagine I would if I fell into the bear pit at the zoo. Apposite, then, that another growl stopped me two steps later.

  “Ah, and you need not worry, Master Oliver: I would never dream of letting your mother in on your little secret. A gentleman’s gentleman is always capable of discretion. Especially when keeping a secret is clearly the wisest course.”

  I looked back at him slowly, to see whether the words were a prelude to a deeply unpleasant bit of violence, but Mr. Scant remained quite still. He loomed in the basement dark, expecting a response. He was rather good at looming.

  “I quite agree,” I croaked. In the last minute, I had managed to blurt, babble, squeak, and now croak at the man. If my survival depended on being able to speak normally, I was in trouble.

  “Then we have an understanding,” he said. “A good gentleman never tells a lie, but also knows when it is unnecessary to say anything at all.”

  I swallowed. Was this a test? Part of me bristled with anger, because Mr. Scant was clearly enjoying my discomfort, but the rest of me shushed it before I could say anything. Instead, I nodded.

  As I did, Mr. Scant held up a finger. “Ah! I do believe I can hear your father’s motorcar, Master Oliver. The engine produces a very distinctive note. Please excuse me.” With that, he swept past me and up the stairs.

  “I . . . yes,” I said to the empty corridor.

  In a daze, I shuffled to the kitchen. It seemed wrong not to, now. As I stepped inside, Mrs. George funneled her chatter into a loud coo and hurried over. “Master Oliver! Been a while since we saw you down here!” She swiped at the flour caking her apron in an attempt to tidy herself up, but the apron was so thickly coated that a cloud expanded around her. That may have explained why everything looked a bit hazy, but not why my head was spinning. “What can we do you for? Are you all right, Duck? You look a bit pale.”

  “I’m fine, just dizzy all of a sudden.” I was in a muddle over what was truth and what I had invented. “I just, erm . . . I was after a lump of—”

  “Ooh, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. I’m not that pale with the flour, am I? Am I, girls?”

  “No, miss,” chorused the twins, who were rolling pastry.

  “I shouldn’t think someone made as solidly as I am would ever be mistook for a ghost, anyway,” Mrs. George said cheerfully.

  “You look thick as ever, miss,” said Meg, and giggled with her sister.

  “Do you need a sit down and some water, Duck?” asked Mrs. George, bringing over a little stool.

  “Water would be nice,” I said, sitting down. “All of a sudden I’m feeling . . . What’s the word?”

  “Dizzy?” Mrs. George put in.

  “Peculiar?” suggested Penny.

  “Wobbly?” proposed Meg.

  “Discombobulated,” I said.

  “That was going to be my next guess,” said Meg.

  I gave Penny a look. “And don’t say I’ve always looked peculiar to you. I know you were going to.”

  Penny turned her nose up. “I’d never dream it!”

  That exchange seemed to amuse the sisters further. I always suspected they had some sort of private joke about me between them, but I knew they’d never tell me even if they did.

  “Here’s water, Duck. What’s brought you downstairs?”

  “Actually, I was looking for Mr. Scant,” I said. “Bumped into him outside.”

  “Not too hard, I hope. Made all of elbows, that man!” Mrs. George brayed like a donkey at her little joke. “Now, how about a taste of sugar? Don’t you go pretending yer all grown up. Never too old for a little treat—’til yer gnashers start going black, anyhow. What was it you was after ole Scant for?”

  “Just . . . had to ask him something.”

  “Hmm! Now, don’t let the man frighten you, hear? Might have a face that’s like to make that ’orrible Mr. Scrooge run off and hide behind the nearest orphan, but there’s a good heart in that ribcage.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “I do indeed. And I’ll have you know I am an excellent judge of such things, thank you very much! Here we are—one sugar lump. Do not let it spoil yer appetite, or I shall give you something to really be afeared of. If I hear reports there’ve been any I’m-full-ups or I-can’t-manage-another-bite-Mummy-dearests, you will have my rolling pin across the top of yer noggin. Finish up every scrap, even if you have to store it in your cheeks, hear?”

  “I will. Thank you,” I said, taking what she proffered—two misshapen little sugar lumps rather than the neat cubes I preferred. Or had preferred when I was small. “Mrs. George?”

  “Not getting any more’n that from me, Duck. Them tarts are strictly for—”

  “It’s not that. I just wanted to ask . . . have you ever thought there’s more to Mr. Scant than we know?”

  “Well, that depends what you know, my duck. A lot going on up here with that one.” She tapped the side of her head. “Plenty he’ll never show in front of that lot upstairs, I don’t mind telling you. But that Scant’s a good man, and as stiff as he looks. Never tells a lie, either.”

  “He just said so, actually.”

  “And it was no lie, neither!” Mrs. George sent more flour tumbling from her apron as she laughed and slapped her hand on the counter. “No, but my dear, you mustn’t be afeared of his sort. Everyone has their way of going through life, and his way is straight down the middle, no nonsense, no fuss. And we could all learn a thing or two from that. Couldn’t we, girls?”

  “Yes, miss,” the twins said again.

  “He does have them scary hands, though,” Penny added.

  “I still say he got ’em in the fighting out in Africa,” said Meg. When she saw my inquisitive look, she explained in a hushed voice, “He took his gloves off once, in here, when I got something on them by accident.”

  “All covered in scars!” said Penny.

  “I’m the one telling this story! You hush up!”

  “That’s enough of that,” Mrs. George said, “and when I say enough’s enough, it is enough. Master Oliver will think we’re gossips. Who can say how a fella gets scars on his hand? Maybe he put it in a fire when he was a babe? No use in making guesses.”

  I popped a sugar lump into my mouth, crunching it between my teeth, and felt the fear that had filled my bones begin to fade. There was no way to feel nervous around Mrs. George: once
you stepped into her kitchen, troubles ran from the cannon fire of her laugh. Even if those troubles included imminent death by impalement on metal claws.

  “The thing is, Mrs. George . . .” I began, but wasn’t sure what the thing was, so started again. “What I’m thinking is that if you have things you don’t want people to know, maybe the . . . the way you do that is to make the world think you’re a . . . straight-and-narrow sort of fellow, who would never do anything strange . . .”

  “Oh, my dear duck,” said Mrs. George, “there is not a single person in this world I think could never do anything strange.”

  Mrs. George could not have known how much better she had made me feel. That huge laugh of hers sent my fears flying away over the horizon. Coming home from school, I had doubted I would ever sleep again, but as I settled down into bed that night, I felt safe. Here, in my father’s house, I lay surrounded by people I knew and trusted to protect me. As for Mr. Scant, perhaps he only wanted to keep his secret safe. I even entertained the possibility that he was more afraid of me than I was of him.

  That notion shattered when a hand clamped over my mouth and jolted me awake, stifling what would surely have been the very manliest of screams.

  III

  He Who Does Not Toil

  knew I had no chance of wresting myself free. Nor was Mr. Scant going to release me if I kept on trying to yell for help through his palm. So as I settled from panic into a kind of miserable, shrinking fear, I did my best to keep still—though my shoulders had decided they were going to tremble and were sticking with that plan no matter what.

  When I fell silent, Mr. Scant released his palm from across my face, the cold look in his eyes warning me not to make a sound. I tried my best to gasp for breath in silence.

  What Mr. Scant did next left me mystified: he stepped back and made a downward gesture, indicating his person with both hands, and raised his eyebrows meaningfully. “Here I am” was the obvious meaning, but why I had to be shown this in the middle of the night, scared at least seven-eighths to death, I hadn’t the faintest. Then, without another word, Mr. Scant turned and left.

  I stared at the door. Five or six hours must have passed while I sat there. A vision of a huge metal claw dashing it to splinters played over and over in my mind, like the moving picture in one of those spinning zoetropes. In all that time, however, the clock on the bedside table only changed from 3:17 to 3:33. I thought this was nonsense, but when the sun didn’t rise, I had to accept it.

  Eventually, I settled back down onto my pillow, and the next thing I knew, Meg was bringing in my clothes for the day and calling in a bright voice that it was time to wake up. Compared with her sister Penny, Meg had a considerably less gentle approach to the morning routine: if I didn’t get out of bed, she liked to roll me off the edge of the mattress. So I sat up, rubbing my eyes. That unreliable sun had at last found its way up into the sky, its feeble winter light exploring my room. I let out a loud groan and held my head.

  “Not sick again are you, Master Oliver?” asked Meg.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Y’look like y’did that time you got that bad food at the party.”

  “The bad canapés at Peter Clephane’s birthday? Urgh. And then Macclesfield looking smug all the rest of that term because he hadn’t come.”

  “Maybe them fancy foods aren’t meant for schoolboys,” said Meg with a prim smile, laying out my school uniform and leaving me to wash and dress.

  As expected, Mr. Scant stood in wait for me when I went downstairs, lurking behind the arrangement of newspaper and fingers that was all we ever saw of Father at the breakfast table. As I took my seat, I felt like a field mouse watched by a hungry owl, not daring to look away in case the bird swooped in for a silent kill. In the end, I almost made a mess of my egg and soldiers by trying to dip them without taking my eyes off Mr. Scant.

  Suddenly, those strigine eyes of his flickered downward. This was no loss of nerve on his part, but rather an instruction: his eyes were leading mine toward Father’s newspaper. Frowning, I read the headline: A Third Veto for Russell, it proclaimed, which like most headlines meant nothing whatsoever. But underneath, in smaller characters, I found what I was meant to see: The Ruminating Claw, Once Again, Strikes!!

  I shot to my feet, which made my chair fall over. Father flicked the corner of the paper down and eyeballed me in irritation. “What the devil is the matter?” he demanded.

  “Nothing. Sorry, Father,” I said in a small voice, as Mother helped me pick up the chair. “I was just surprised by something. A fly.”

  Father rolled his eyes before flicking the paper back up. “Scared of a fly . . .” I gave him a hurt look, but only the headlines could see it.

  The body of the article was not, as would have been most convenient, on the front page—I had to make do with a short summary. I tried to read without squinting or leaning closer, as Mother was already giving me an inquisitive look. “The criminal known as the Ruminating Claw has struck again in London’s National Portrait Gallery,” the article read. “This report was rushed to the presses after the crime took place in the small hours of the morning. Reported stolen was a painting by the Dutch”—I wondered for a moment if the painting had been a collaborative effort before realizing the sentence continued on page five. Unwilling to disturb Father again, I could read no further, but the message was clear nonetheless.

  When I looked back to Mr. Scant, he raised his eyebrows, and I hoped the look I gave in return showed him I understood his message. He had woken me to demonstrate he was not involved in this latest theft. The Ruminating Claw had struck—and Mr. Scant had not been present for the crime. Even if it was entirely possible to travel to London and return to Tunbridge Wells in a single night, Mr. Scant had chosen the hour with a purpose: it fell evenly between sunset and sunrise, giving him no time to get to London and back without his absence being noticed in the household.

  For a fleeting moment, I thought this meant I’d been mistaken and that Mr. Scant was not the Claw after all, but I quickly realized that could not be the case. True, Mr. Scant could not have been responsible for last night’s theft, but crucially, he knew about it before it was reported. The other message Mr. Scant had conveyed to me, when I thought about it, frightened me even more: he knew I thought he was the Claw. He knew I had discovered his secret.

  A day at school promised some relief from the burdens of home—a very unusual feeling. While I was happy to escape, though, I also feared for Mother. After I put on my blazer and cap at the door, I gave her a long hug, which made her laugh and say, “You won’t get out of school that way.” I tried to deliver a menacing look to Mr. Scant before letting go, but he was busy preparing Father’s overcoat, and even had he seen me, most likely he wouldn’t have cared very much.

  The school day was long. Judner’s School took as its motto Qui non Laborat non Floreat, which meant “He who does not toil does not flourish,” but most of the teachers looked the other way as long as you at least pretended. All through Double Science, I planned what to do when I got home: acting as though nothing had happened would be easiest, which was probably what Mr. Scant wanted. But knowing a criminal lived in the house, with Mother and Father all unawares, would eat away at me inside. Yet I was also afraid to tell them. Father would march up to Mr. Scant, of course, and demand an explanation. I dreaded to think what the Ruminating Claw would do, confronted like that. He could be as dangerous as Jack the Ripper. He could be Jack the Ripper, for all I knew. The thought of his plan for me gave me enough to worry about, though I took a small amount of comfort from knowing that if Mr. Scant had wanted to do away with me, he would have done it the previous night. One does not give riddles to a boy that one is about to tie up in a burlap sack and dump in a river.

  Which was not to say that should I provoke him, he would not change his mind.

  At lunch, I almost fell asleep in my apple and rhubarb custard. My friend Chudley gave me a poke in the ribs so savage that it almost
made me fall off the bench, and everyone laughed.

  “Stop that,” I said.

  “Up all night revising for Osbaldeston’s test?”

  I blinked. “We have a test?”

  Chudley laughed. “Oh, dear. I think you’re in trouble.”

  A bad mark on a Latin test might have worried me the week before, but just then, it was the least of my concerns. I needed to gather information. Carefully.

  As it was Friday, I had no tuition session after school, so I could start as soon as I got home. Even so, I found myself trudging to the house at a snail’s pace. Once home, I went straight to my room and thought hard about whether I should give up on the day and go to bed.

  Staring at my reflection in the mirror of my dresser, however, I realized hiding myself away would be the most intolerable thing. I would surely go mad if I tried it.

  I didn’t know what I hoped to discover through my investigation, but if I wanted to survive, the best thing would be to find solid evidence for Mr. Scant’s true identity.

  When I checked on Mother, she informed me we had guests that evening. Father’s business partners, Mr. Beards and Mr. Binns of Beards and Binns Financial Services and Dirigibles Ltd., would be calling for dinner. That meant we would eat earlier than usual, so the men could retire to Father’s study afterward. Mr. Scant would be attending to them, supplying the brandies and cigars and anything else they might want. It seemed a good opportunity to observe Mr. Scant without being seen myself, so I hatched a plan.

  I excused myself after the cheese course, saying I had been given a lot of prep this weekend. But instead of going to my room to practice Latin declensions, I slipped into Father’s study. The men always went there to discuss business after dinner, which—from what I had managed to glimpse through the doors—mostly meant drinking brandy and arguing about the rules of a dice game. Mother said this was how the world of business worked.

  I slid behind the thick curtains on the far side of the room from the door, and for some half an hour, stood in wait. Eventually, I realized that sitting behind the curtain was no less sneaky than standing behind it, so I settled down onto the floor. Just as I began to wish I had brought a book, burly voices drifted in from the other side of the door, and I scrambled to my feet before burly bodies followed.