The Devil and His Boy by Anthony Horowitz

swivelled on his shoulders. He didn’t look surprised to see Tom.
    “My dear boy!” he said. “My most likeable fellow! Do I take it that you’ve changed your mind?”
    “Yes,” Tom blurted out. “I have.” He was almost whispering, afraid that Ratsey would hear him even though he was right on the other side of the cathedral.
    “Then let’s hurry to my offices before you change your mind again,” Grimly said. “We’ll have to prepare you for your work. It will mean certain … changes. The sooner it’s done, the sooner you can start.”
    Tom nodded, although he had heard little of what the man had said.
    Leaving Paul’s Walk behind them, the two set off together.
    Grimly had a yard at the end of a dark, narrow alleyway near the Thames. The city was much quieter here, with fewer people on the streets and a damp, evil-smelling fog in the air. Slimy water and mud rose over Tom’s ankles as the two of them hurried towards a pair of mouldering wooden gates.
    “My home,” Grimly muttered. He opened the gates and ushered Tom inside. The gates led into a rough, partly cobbled courtyard, squeezed between three buildings that seemed to be leaning on each other to stay upright. Tom looked around him. Set in the middle of the courtyard was a single, wooden chair with a high back and solid arms and legs. Tom had no idea what the chair was for. But there was something about it that made him go cold inside.
    “Belter!” Grimly called. “Snivel! Get the book! Get out here! We have a new recruit!”
    Almost at once a door at the side of the courtyard flew open and two men hurried out. The first of these, the man called Belter, was huge and muscular, completely bald with a face that hadn’t quite formed, like an over-sized baby. He was naked to the waist. He had no hair on his chest and his nipples were black. Snivel was older, a crumpled bag of a man, carrying a leather-bound book underneath his withered arm.
    “A new recruit?” Snivel rasped. He licked his lip. “From Paul’s Walk?” he asked.
    “Where else?” Grimly turned to Tom. “We’ll prepare you straight away.”
    “Prepare me?” Tom was getting more nervous by the second. “What do you mean?”
    “I thought I told you. It’s for charity!”
    “Charity!” Snivel agreed.
    “What sort of charity?” Tom demanded.
    Grimly sighed. “The homeless and the disabled,” he explained. “I’ve got boys all over London. On street corners. Outside churches. They’re Grimly’s boys.”
    “You mean they’re beggars!”
    “Exactly. But they’re special beggars. They work for me and I take half of what they earn. But in return I help them, you see. I
adjust
them.” Grimly flicked a finger in Tom’s direction. “Take a boy like you. You’re a little thin. A little ragged. But how much do you think that’s worth? Good people, charitable people, people with money … they want something more. Oh yes, they might give a penny to a child shivering with cold. But how much do you think they’d give to that same child,
missing a leg
?”
    Grimly had barely spoken the last three words before Tom was running for the gate. But Belter had been expecting it. Before Tom had taken two paces he was grabbed from behind and dragged, screaming to the wooden chair. There was nothing he could do as he was forced down, his hands and feet securely fastened with rope. It was over in a matter of seconds. By the time the giant had finished with him Tom was sitting helplessly, unable to move.
    “Let me go!” he shouted. “I’ve changed my mind! I don’t want to work for you!”
    Grimly touched a finger to his lips. “Don’t shout,” he said in a soft, soothing voice. “It won’t hurt that much.”
    Belter had produced a dirty canvas bag from somewhere. He dropped it on the cobbled ground and Tom heard it clink.
    “Now what shall we do with him?” Grimly asked. “How about one arm and one leg?”
    Snivel had opened his book. “We did one of those last week,”