The Thief's Apprentice Page 3

  The gist of the terribly serious discussion was that Mr. Beards wanted to change the supplier of some part or other Father needed in his engines. Mr. Beards was very keen on the idea, while Father stressed the advantages of the existing deal. Even if they could save some money in the short term, Father said, they would lose solid and well-established connections. It was all very business-y.

  “But Sandleforth, you must see that Tenterton and the whole bally lot are reliant on you now,” said Mr. Beards, stopping to wheeze, as was his habit. “You can’t imagine for a moment the bounders are in any position to walk away. They need us!”

  “Maybe so, but we’ve spent a long time establishing trust across the board. If we abandon Tenterton, what stops the rest from thinking their heads are next on the block? That maybe they should hike their prices to get all they can out of the deal before we cut them off?”

  Mr. Binns weighed in: “Perhaps the notion that their heads will be next on the block is not such a bad one for them to hold.” He had a smooth, lazy voice, as though his words mixed with the wax in his pointy moustache on their way out. “Feared than loved—and all that.”

  “I’m against it,” said Father. “What we need to do is to hint to Sykes that this alternative deal exists. Give him just a whiff of it. Then he might want to start thinking about our arrangement. Just don’t scare him off. Daft sod’s already more skittish than a sparrow.”

  And so it went on. Emboldened by boredom, I chanced a peek out from behind my curtain to scan for Mr. Scant. I spotted him at once, attending to Father by the writing desk. The study was longer than most train carriages, so a fair distance stretched between my spot behind the curtain and where the men were talking. Whatever I hoped to see Mr. Scant doing, I knew I wasn’t about to see it from across the room, so slipped out into the open.

  As the universe and all the Fates apparently hold some grudge against me, the buckle of my slipper got tangled in the tassels at the bottom of the curtain. When I felt a tug, I spun around, afraid I had been caught, and as my foot failed to come with me, there was nothing to do but get better acquainted with the carpet.

  While I fell, Mr. Scant—without so much as a look in my direction—crossed swiftly to the drinks cabinet and let the tray door fall open with a loud bang.

  “What the devil, Scant?” Father barked.

  “My apologies, sir. I thought it a good time for some Armagnac, but the hinge came loose. I will see to it that it is repaired.”

  After a short pause, Father grunted and said, “Armagnac does sound agreeable. But no more disruptions, if you please. Apologies, gentlemen.”

  “Not at all—gratifying to see he’s human after all,” said Mr. Beards, with a merry little chuckle that descended into another wheeze. “I shall have to tell Deidre. She’s convinced that valet of yours is beyond fault.”

  Mr. Binns gave an amused little snort. “You’re lucky you found that new man of yours. I’ll need to find another soon, I’m sure. My sweet, sweet wife gives a member of our staff the chuck every week, or so it seems . . .”

  As he turned to prepare the drinks, Mr. Scant’s eyes flicked in my direction. So fiery was his gaze, I worried the carpet beneath me would be reduced to ash. Then he began distributing glasses, brandishing the decanter in those deft criminal’s hands of his. Feeling rather undignified, I sat up and untangled my shoe. Perhaps, if I managed to sneak out with no more fuss, Mr. Scant and I could reach a gentlemen’s agreement: none of this had ever happened, and there was no need for anyone to disembowel anyone else.

  Hoping beyond hope this might be the case, I managed to crawl halfway to the door before Mr. Scant’s shadow fell across me. He excused himself, saying he ought to check on the fire in the living room, then strode past me and opened the doors. When he turned, I realized he was standing to one side so that I could scamper out in front of him. I hurried to make the most of my opportunity.

  Unfortunately, my scramble for freedom left me right underneath a very unimpressed Ruminating Claw. I froze like a baby rabbit under the jaws of a hungry fox. For a moment we were still, until I smiled diffidently, at which point the thief seized my wrist and pulled me to my feet before marching me into the music room.

  “Master Oliver, I see that we are going to have difficulties,” said Mr. Scant.

  “If you harm a hair on my head, Father will hear of it!”

  “If I am to harm you, Master Oliver, do you imagine I would leave you in a state to tell your father anything? Perhaps you should reflect on how rare it may or may not be for boys to fall through the ice of frozen ponds while walking home from school, never to be heard from again.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, and I wasn’t sure the tight feeling in my throat would let me say anything anyway.

  “Now, you can stop looking at me that way. That pout is not becoming,” Mr. Scant went on, taking a moment to listen for movement in the hallway. “You were not meant to see what you saw, Master Oliver. It puts me in a difficult position. But if I meant to garrote you with the piano strings, I would have already done so. Middle C is particularly good for the job.”

  “Why haven’t you?” I managed.

  “I do not consider it to be to my advantage. But if you continue in your attempts to convince me otherwise, that may change. Was my message last night not clear enough?”

  For the first time since Mr. Scant had pulled me into the music room, I could meet his eye. I drew myself up. “It was clear.”

  “Then you should know I was not the thief you seem to think you have discovered.”

  “But that’s not right at all. Not being there last night doesn’t mean you’re not the Claw.”

  That stopped him. He cocked his head for all the world like a pigeon in the park that thinks you have a fistful of bread crumbs. “If I may be so bold, Master Oliver—may I ask your meaning?”

  “You wanted me to see that you were here when the Claw stole that painting. Which I understood. You couldn’t have been at the National Portrait Gallery or stolen the painting. But . . . you knew to wake me. You knew what would be in the news this morning. That means you knew the Claw was going to strike! So either you are one Claw and there are others, or . . .”

  Mr. Scant raised one eyebrow. “Or?”

  “Or you’re the Claw—and the Claw isn’t the one doing the stealing.”

  For an instant, I thought I might have seen the edge of a smile on Mr. Scant’s lips, in the same way one almost sees the movement of a clock’s hour hand. He contemplated me as if for the first time, then said, “When your father’s guests leave tonight, wait for twenty minutes. And then, if you would be so kind, I should like you to join me here again.”

  I swallowed. “What happens if I don’t?”

  “I would advise against finding out.”

  Once again, he turned on his heel and left me. And that was that. Lips dry and knuckles blanched, I withdrew to my room. Settling into my soft chair, I picked up my book about a jungle explorer, while Father and his guests went on with their meeting. After a very, very long time spent staring at the same page, I heard voices and crept to the top of the stairs to listen. A woman was speaking with the declamatory voice of a trained actress, and I knew at once it was Mrs. Binns, here to collect her husband.

  “You know how I feel about being made to wait!” she snapped. She was a severe woman, with a face more pinched than the strictest schoolmarm and a smile far more terrible than her frown. I was glad to be out of the way, upstairs.

  “Coming, dear!” I heard Mr. Binns call, before the men appeared, laughing together.

  “Yes, yes, important men do love to dawdle,” Mrs. Binns remarked with a sniff. “It’s how the others know they are important, and the sole thing they have practiced to perfection.”

  “Very well observed, my darling,” said Mr. Binns, and a general bustling commenced as he and Mr. Beards took their leave. Mr. Scant would be down there, quietly helping the men into their coats. After Mr. Beards wheezed his wa
y through some good-byes and Mrs. Binns told her husband off for smelling of cigar smoke, the guests finally departed. Once the door was closed behind them, I heard Mother speak.

  “She does like her witticisms, that Thomasina. They strike me as a little old-fashioned.”

  Father laughed. “Perhaps next time you should tell her to refrain.”

  “I wouldn’t dare!” said Mother. “I don’t want my head bitten off. You can tell who’s in charge of that marriage.”

  “Come now, we both know the wife is the one in charge of every marriage. Only you all pretend we’re too soft in the head to know it. And you don’t like that Mrs. Binns doesn’t play the game.”

  “That sounded dangerously close to a witticism, my darling.”

  Mother and Father had started up the stairs, so I slipped back to my room. Instead of picking up my book again, I took out my pocket watch and began counting down the twenty minutes Mr. Scant had stipulated. The watch tormented me with its tiny, taunting clicks, and I soon came to learn that twenty minutes looked uncannily like the rise and fall of a mountain. But when the time came, I almost wished it hadn’t.

  I crept downstairs to the music room, and when I opened the door, it was no surprise whatsoever to see the old man standing beside what was clearly the stolen painting from the museum, covered by a sheet.

  “Well then, Master Oliver,” he said, “let us begin.”

  IV

  The Gallery

  hat would Mother say, I thought to myself, if she found out what I was up to?

  We left behind the streetlamps of Tunbridge Wells. The town gave way to fields and hedgerows, which the relentless carriage wheels then plucked away, one by one. So little light was left in the world on this starless night—only the frighteningly small pool from the carriage lamps.

  I tried to remember if I had ever been so far from home without Mother. There had been the school trip to the muddy field where the Battle of Hastings had been fought—not, in fact, in Hastings, but in the conveniently named town of Battle. Tonight’s destination was farther from home than that, though. And of course a school trip was not quite the same as a clandestine mission to commit a crime. What was that crime? Not theft, only trespass. We were on the way to London to break into the National Portrait Gallery.

  Mr. Scant brooded silently, running one bony finger down his chin over and over again. It was a habit he broke only when another carriage or a motorcar passed, at which point he pulled his scarf over his face. The carriage curtains were barely open, so I thought this was a bit much. But I would never risk saying so, especially with Mr. Scant so still and quiet that I nearly believed he himself had sucked all the light out of the sky. Odder still: beneath his scarf and plain inverness cape, he still wore his valet’s tailcoat.

  The coachman for our journey was a sharp-eyed man of perhaps thirty. I had never seen his face before, and it was not a face one could easily forget. He bore enough scars across it that anybody could tell at a glance he lived in an entirely different world from the one I knew. He didn’t so much as acknowledge me, and I found myself quite relieved about that.

  The thieving, it seemed, had already been done. In Mr. Scant’s possession was the missing painting. And indeed, Mr. Scant said, he had stolen it. But only after another party had stolen it first.

  “I did the deed during the forty minutes that your father was at the bank and your mother was taking her bath,” he informed me. “Naturally, that did not involve a trip to the National Portrait Gallery and back. No, I intercepted those thieves and relieved them of their stolen goods.”

  Where this had taken place and how Mr. Scant had known where to find these villains remained a mystery.

  For the umpteenth time since getting into the carriage, I wondered what I was doing there. When Mr. Scant had said he wanted me to accompany him as he returned the painting, terror ran fingers all up and down my spine, but that didn’t mean I was surprised. I couldn’t have predicted where we would go, but somehow I had been certain that Mr. Scant meant to take me away from everything I knew and trusted. Once I went to the music room, everything felt mechanical, as if I were a windup toy with no choice but to walk forward, out of the house, and down the path and into the old growler carriage waiting outside the gates. It wasn’t as though I could have refused. I no longer dealt with Father’s valet, the household butler. I dealt with the Ruminating Claw.

  And now here we were, almost at our destination. London began to rip its way out of the countryside, bringing its brightness with it. This did not fill me with eagerness. The excited little boy I had once been, the Oliver who stood on his seat to get the first glimpse of the city, was long gone. If gold had ever really paved these streets, as Dick Whittington once dreamed, it had long been buried under muck or pried loose and pawned.

  Soon, the streets grew wider and notably less bumpy. There was no chance to enjoy the smoothness, though: our scarred coachman spurred the horses to a frightening pace. Lamplights flashed again and again past our windows, as if we were a ship passing a manic lighthouse. I gripped at the leather of my seat, thinking about what Mr. Scant had told me when I said I was afraid we would be caught. “To get away, a person need only disappear upwards. Remember that, Master Oliver.”

  In an attempt to settle my nerves, I let out a little laugh and said to Mr. Scant, “London, eh? I usually only come with Father’s friends. Business partners, I should probably say. I have to pretend I’m having a wonderful time at some horrible opera or something. The last one was about a fat woman in a sack and a fat man with a pillow up the back of his shirt to make him look like a hunchback. They went on for hours, right in each other’s faces. That was the last time father smacked me with the slipper—when I nearly fell asleep. Not my fault! ‘No son of mine will be a philistine!’ Smack, smack. I can’t help it. Why can’t we go and see shows about flying boys and pirates like everyone else? ‘Frivolous nonsense.’ Puh!”

  Mr. Scant apparently wasn’t in the mood for idle chatter. He went on staring out of the window.

  “Don’t want to sound ungrateful, though,” I added.

  I couldn’t really compare this with a trip to the capital with my parents, of course. Those trips hadn’t involved any criminal acts. The plan, according to Mr. Scant, was straightforward: we would evade the guards of the National Portrait Gallery and put the painting back where it belonged. Simple. According to him, at any rate. Why he wanted me at his side wasn’t clear, but I was too afraid to refuse.

  Had the journey taken a hundred years, making me roughly the same age as Mr. Scant, I don’t think I would ever have felt prepared. As it was, when he drew his scarf up over his face and said, “We’re here,” I felt my whole body freeze, but a sharp look from Mr. Scant was enough to spur me into action.

  I climbed uneasily down onto the dark cobblestones of the alley. Shiny and slippery—the only time London doesn’t give the impression that the rain has just stopped is when it is actually raining.

  “Are we near Nelson’s Column?” I asked. I knew that if we were near the National Portrait Gallery, Trafalgar Square must have been nearby. The real meaning of my question was, “Can we go and see it afterwards?” but without being so vulgar as to actually ask.

  “We are,” said Mr. Scant, unloading the painting, “but we are making haste.”

  Make haste we did—deeper into the alley. At first this confused me, but if you want to break into a museum, marching up to the front door probably isn’t prudent. The scarred coachman lit a cigarette and watched us set forth into the gloom, then turned away indifferently.

  “So is this near the back of the Portrait Gallery?” I asked. “That must mean we’re near that new statue they made of Mr. Irving. Maybe we could sneak a look before they unveil it?”

  “For the love of Pete, be quiet,” Mr. Scant growled. His rudeness shocked me into silence, but what he did next would have struck me dumb in any case: from under his cloak he drew out the terrible claw and pulled it onto his right hand.
Up close, the claw really was an eerie sight, with a multitude of little parts shifting and whirring with each movement, intricate as the innards of Father’s automaton clocks. Mr. Scant knelt over a hatch in the shadows I hadn’t even noticed and violently plunged one blade down into it. A moment later, we heard the sound of metal hitting the ground far below us—the padlock Mr. Scant must have cut through. Mr. Scant winced at the sound, faint though it was. Then, with some effort, he pulled the hatch open.

  I wanted to ask if we were really going down into the darkness, but I hadn’t quite rediscovered my voice. Luckily, there was no need, because Mr. Scant could read my expression. “Yes, this is our way into the museum, Master Oliver,” he said, lashing the covered painting to his back. “No other entrance is available to us. Now, once we are inside, you must do exactly as I tell you, questioning nothing. Do we have an understanding?”

  I nodded.

  “Your word, please.”

  I thought about what he might do if I refused. “You have my word of honor. On my family name.”

  “Then climb down.”

  I looked nervously at the opening into the underworld. I could just make out the top of a ladder. “I have to go first?”

  “I had your word.”

  “Once we’re inside, you said. We’re not inside yet.”

  Mr. Scant’s lips pressed together. I found myself looking at those sharp, sharp blades. “No,” he said, after a time. “We are not. I ask you to go first not because you are better equipped to face some great danger below, but because the hatch behind us is too heavy for you to close.”

  That was that. I gingerly got to the ground, and, trying not to get any dirt on my nice warm Norfolk jacket, maneuvered myself into the abyss. It crossed my mind that this might all be part of the Claw’s plot to make me climb into my own grave, but why tie a painting to his back and have a man drive us to London for that? Taking what comfort I could from the thought, I began my descent.