and Jiggs had paid him to throw the brick
at me.
Faces spun around my head: the man with the mustache and the wily crow’s face he had taken on in my dream; the sneering Coben
and Jiggs, the customs official laughing as they handed him money. The air in this chest was making me dizzy. It was heavy
with an alien smell which reminded me of the foul air in Flethick’s sluggish den. A strange music seemed to be reaching my
ears, fading in and out: music which sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before, rising and falling and seeming to avoid all
the familiar notes. The events of the last two days mingled in my head, out of sequence, running riot. I was printing posters
with the face of a dog on them. Bob Smitchin was talking about camels, with three other people gathered around him. “Mog,”
he said, “how rude of me not to introduce you. These are the three friends.” They turned to look at me, and I realized in
horrorthat they all had the face of the escaped convict. Looking down at myself, I noticed my clothes rapidly blackening with tar,
which was seeping all over my body. “Ink!” I shouted at the three convicts, “Indian ink from Calcutta!” They glared at me,
their heads getting bigger and bigger on their shoulders, until suddenly one of them picked up a brick and it came spinning
towards me, revolving in the air, infinitely slowly.
I woke to thuds and crashes from outside the chest.
How long had I been asleep? It was still pitch dark: I tried opening and closing my eyes but it made absolutely no difference
to what I could see. Someone was clattering around in the room, knocking things over. Had Coben and Jiggs come back? If so,
it sounded as though they were drunk.
My head ached as if it had been battered for hours with spoons. Doing my best to move in the cramped chest, I felt a sharp
pain in my thumb, and remembered the knife, or whatever it was, wedged underneath me. With difficulty I lifted my thumb to
my mouth, and found my tongue immediately covered with warm welling blood.
Right next to my ear, something clicked.
The chest was being unlocked! Suddenly light flooded in, making me squint and gasp after such along time in total darkness: and I found myself blinking up into the astonished face, not of Coben or Jiggs — but of the mysterious
man with the mustache!
I cried out instinctively, in sudden terror — and so did he. Above his beak-like nose his eyes were, if anything, wider and
whiter than they’d been when I met him under the street light last night.
For the first few seconds I was too shocked to know what to do; but then, scrambling to my knees, I reached down to grab the
knife from the bottom of the chest. Only when I’d raised it above my head did I notice it was actually a huge curved scimitar
with a golden handle, a weapon formidable enough to drive back a herd of elephants. The man with the brown face was no match
for this — a tar-stained child springing like a jack-in-the-box out of the chest and waving a giant sword which flashed in
the candlelight! He was off up the stairs, leaving the old wooden door swinging crazily behind him.
I sat back on the rim of the chest. I was trembling. For the first time I took a proper look at the weapon I held in my hands.
It was at least half my own height. Its polished blade was smeared with some of my own blood, and I wiped it on my shirt tail,
adding a patch of bright red to the black tar stains.
My thoughts were coming thick and fast now, a new one with every thumping heartbeat and every dropletof blood which squeezed its way out of my gashed thumb. This stranger, who’d just found me in the chest and who’d bumped into
me as I ran from Cut-Throat Lane last night, was looking for something. What was he after? Was he looking for the same thing
Coben and Jiggs wanted, including the mysterious “camel”? Did this chest in fact belong to him, and had he come around here
to try and get
at me.
Faces spun around my head: the man with the mustache and the wily crow’s face he had taken on in my dream; the sneering Coben
and Jiggs, the customs official laughing as they handed him money. The air in this chest was making me dizzy. It was heavy
with an alien smell which reminded me of the foul air in Flethick’s sluggish den. A strange music seemed to be reaching my
ears, fading in and out: music which sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before, rising and falling and seeming to avoid all
the familiar notes. The events of the last two days mingled in my head, out of sequence, running riot. I was printing posters
with the face of a dog on them. Bob Smitchin was talking about camels, with three other people gathered around him. “Mog,”
he said, “how rude of me not to introduce you. These are the three friends.” They turned to look at me, and I realized in
horrorthat they all had the face of the escaped convict. Looking down at myself, I noticed my clothes rapidly blackening with tar,
which was seeping all over my body. “Ink!” I shouted at the three convicts, “Indian ink from Calcutta!” They glared at me,
their heads getting bigger and bigger on their shoulders, until suddenly one of them picked up a brick and it came spinning
towards me, revolving in the air, infinitely slowly.
I woke to thuds and crashes from outside the chest.
How long had I been asleep? It was still pitch dark: I tried opening and closing my eyes but it made absolutely no difference
to what I could see. Someone was clattering around in the room, knocking things over. Had Coben and Jiggs come back? If so,
it sounded as though they were drunk.
My head ached as if it had been battered for hours with spoons. Doing my best to move in the cramped chest, I felt a sharp
pain in my thumb, and remembered the knife, or whatever it was, wedged underneath me. With difficulty I lifted my thumb to
my mouth, and found my tongue immediately covered with warm welling blood.
Right next to my ear, something clicked.
The chest was being unlocked! Suddenly light flooded in, making me squint and gasp after such along time in total darkness: and I found myself blinking up into the astonished face, not of Coben or Jiggs — but of the mysterious
man with the mustache!
I cried out instinctively, in sudden terror — and so did he. Above his beak-like nose his eyes were, if anything, wider and
whiter than they’d been when I met him under the street light last night.
For the first few seconds I was too shocked to know what to do; but then, scrambling to my knees, I reached down to grab the
knife from the bottom of the chest. Only when I’d raised it above my head did I notice it was actually a huge curved scimitar
with a golden handle, a weapon formidable enough to drive back a herd of elephants. The man with the brown face was no match
for this — a tar-stained child springing like a jack-in-the-box out of the chest and waving a giant sword which flashed in
the candlelight! He was off up the stairs, leaving the old wooden door swinging crazily behind him.
I sat back on the rim of the chest. I was trembling. For the first time I took a proper look at the weapon I held in my hands.
It was at least half my own height. Its polished blade was smeared with some of my own blood, and I wiped it on my shirt tail,
adding a patch of bright red to the black tar stains.
My thoughts were coming thick and fast now, a new one with every thumping heartbeat and every dropletof blood which squeezed its way out of my gashed thumb. This stranger, who’d just found me in the chest and who’d bumped into
me as I ran from Cut-Throat Lane last night, was looking for something. What was he after? Was he looking for the same thing
Coben and Jiggs wanted, including the mysterious “camel”? Did this chest in fact belong to him, and had he come around here
to try and get
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