Jim Morgan and the King of Thieves (20 page)

“What does it say?” George asked, all three Ratt brothers leaning in close over Jim’s shoulders as he began to read the words.

“Of all the great treasures lost in the wreck of the mighty galleon,
Fortune
, off the coast of Spain, none was as grievous to me as the loss of the Amulet of Portunes. This charm came to me at a great cost and possesses a most unique power. The amulet holds the power to unlock anything that is locked and to unbind anything that is bound, whether it be chained, barred, locked by key, or even that which is bound by magic.”

“That could come in handy,” Peter whispered, his eyes gleaming. “Especially for a thief.”

“But I have not lost all hope,” Jim continued, “for it is said that a commoner, an able seaman by trade, found the medallion, and having wasted its powers to unlock a cabinet of whiskey, drank himself silly and lost it in a game of cards in London, where the amulet still passes from hand to hand in that town’s many streets.”

“That’s what he’s up to,” Paul said. “He thinks eventually one of us will nick this amulet of whoever for him so he can unlock anything that his heart desires.”

“But he already has all of this treasure,” Peter said, looking around again at the wall full of gold and silver chains. “What could he possibly need to unlock?”

“What couldn’t he unlock?” Jim said, secretly thinking about the fate of his father’s treasure. If the King got his hands on the Amulet, he
could surely open the box, and then unlock whatever safeguards that now protected his father’s great treasure. “He could have any treasure he wanted.”

Peter and Paul’s eyes lit up with dreams of unlimited treasure, but Lacey on the other hand, didn’t believe a word of it. “Boys! I mean, seriously, have you ever heard of something so ridiculous? A magic necklace that can unlock anything? It’s absurd!”

“Well I didn’t think magic was real at all until that gypsy cursed my box!” Jim argued, snapping out of his reverie in a sore temper.

“It’s not the same thing and you know it, Jim!” Lacey crossed her arms and the two of them were about to have a real corker of a fight when Peter noticed something through the window that the arguing Lacey had missed.

“Say,” he said. “Were those footprints there just a second ago?” But the answer to his question was the loud clink of a key sliding into the keyhole of the pawnshop door.

“Hide!” George ordered as he snuffed the candle out.

“I haven’t had a class on hiding!” Jim said, on the verge of panic. But George had already thought of that and, as his brothers and Lacey disappeared behind shelves or cabinets or desks, George flung himself and Jim against the wall behind a curtain, holding a finger against his own lips to warn Jim to keep quiet.

The front door opened with a groan and shut with a clap, just as it had when the clan had snuck in themselves. Two sets of creaking footsteps made their way toward the back room. The door to the office opened, and Jim couldn’t help but shift ever so slightly behind the curtain to peek through a slit in the fabric and see what was going on.

The King of Thieves, wearing his tailored half-coat with the tails, and his silk hat still perched over his greasy black hair, walked in first. The red glow of the coals cast long shadows on his furrowed brow, his sharp jaw and his large, hooked nose. His dark eyes glimmered beneath the edge of his hat, peering suspiciously around the room.

“Are you absolutely sure you saw a light in here, Wyzcark?” the King asked, walking over to the desk upon which sat the candle and the book.

“I know vat I saw,” Wyzcark muttered, the squat man waddling into the room behind the King. “There vas a light, and shadows; I swear it.”

The king lit the candle and picked it up from the table with his long spindly fingers, holding it toward the shadows, but the children were hidden neatly enough to avoid his sight. The King arched one eyebrow over his large, dark eye and sighed. “Well, maybe it was ghosts,” he said dismissively.

“Humph,” Wyzcark said with a grunt. “Think what you like, but ve must be more careful than ever! Ve can’t afford any lapses or mistakes now, not when ve’re so close!”

“On the contrary, my little friend.” The king smiled, setting the candle back down on the table. “Once we find the Amulet, we will be able afford as many lapses as we like.”

“Don’t be so cocky, oh King of Thieves,” Wyzcark warned with just enough mockery to prick the smile off of his tall friend’s face. “Even though the amulet has supposedly been spotted, ve have yet to verify that fact. And even if ve do, ve have yet to steal it for ourselves.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Wyzcark, my skeptical friend.” The smile returned in the form of a sneer on the King’s face. “The little dogs I have running my errands may be dirty street urchins, but they have sharp eyes and sharp ears. They’re eager to please me and afraid to make me angry. I showed Big Red and his Dragons the picture of the amulet and they verified what they saw, and that the old sea salt wintering at the Wet Rock was wearing it. It all makes perfect sense! The reason we didn’t come across it by now was because the latest owner had been out to sea, and now that he’s returned, it won’t be long before those grimy grubbers have my prize, and the riches of the world will finally be opened to me!” The King’s eyes burned hotter than the coals for a brief moment, madness simmering at their edges, until the King’s fat comrade’s suspicious voice broke his trance.

“
Your
prize?” Wyzcark asked, trying to draw himself up as tall as he could, which wasn’t very tall, truth be told.

“Our prize, our prize, Wyzcark,” the King said, soothing his friend with his best, honey-dripped tone.

“Just remember that,” Wyzcark said, pointing a finger at the king’s chest, which stood a full inch above his head.

“Oh, I’ll remember.” The king’s tone grew so deep as to nearly become a growl. “Believe me, I’ll remember.”

The two men were about to leave when the king stopped suddenly and turned back to the table. He reached over his workbench and pulled away a false panel to the wall, withdrawing a single object from the hiding place there. Jim nearly leapt out from behind the curtain when he saw what it was: his box. The King also took the book from the desk and tucked it beneath his arm.

“Just in case the ghosts decide to come back, eh, Wyzcark?” The King said. The two men laughed to themselves and the king blew out the candle before leaving. The door shut behind them, and the children were alone once more.

Cautiously, they emerged from hiding, gathering together in the center of the room. Lacey checked the window and watched as the treacherous King of Thieves and his squat business partner stalked off through the snow.

“They’ve got the box!” Jim lamented, punching his fist into his hand.

“But more,” Peter said excitedly. “The Dragons have seen the necklace from the book. Some old guy is sportin’ it around the docks.”

“One thing’s for sure,” Paul added. “We’ve got to make sure and get that amu-thingy before they do!”

“No problem for us,” Peter said. “After all, we are the brothers …”

He turned, fully expecting George to jump into the performance, hat in hand, ready to pick up their cheer, but instead, the leader of their little clan was standing by the wall, his slight shoulders slumped, his thin face hidden beneath his cap, which seemed to have grown in size to hang down low over his mousy face.

“George, you missed your cue,” Paul said, but George said nothing in return.

“George, whatever is the matter?” Lacey asked, moving to stand by her friend’s side. But George pulled away and nearly ran for the door.

“Nothing’s the matter!” he snapped. “And if you sods want to keep wasting your time, be my guest. I’m going home.”

Lacey and Jim looked at each other in bewilderment, but George’s outburst seemed to come as a great blow to his brothers. Peter and Paul’s shoulders slumped nearly as low as George’s had been, and they trudged out of the store to follow him.

“Mates, where are you going?” Jim asked. “Mates?” But it was no use. Jim and Lacey walked back to the little home beneath the shoe factory in silence.

James had found out more about his box than he’d imagined– and about the King of Thieves’ interest in it. But, he thought miserably, following the dragging footsteps of his disheartened friends in the snow, he may have lost his only means of stealing of it back.

TWENTY–ONE

hen Jim and Lacey finally crawled through the hole and into the cellar, they found the forlorn Brothers Ratt huddled around the makeshift stove, faces buried in their hands. Jim and Lacey plopped down beside them in the fire’s warmth, but for the longest time none of the children said anything at all, until George finally spoke, almost too quietly to hear.

“What did you say, George?” Lacey asked.

“He lied to us,” George whispered a bit louder. Even in the flickering light of the coal Jim saw his friend’s chin quiver, his voice thick and trembling. “He lied to us.” After that, George would speak no more about that or anything else. Of course Paul and Peter, being as loyal to George as best brothers always should be, followed suit, and
the Brothers Ratt sat the whole night by the stove saying hardly a word to anyone at all.

When Jim awoke the next morning, he hoped that perhaps a good night’s sleep had cured his friends of their disappointment and that all would return to normal, but this was not to be. The night before had been London’s coldest in recent memory, the snow having fallen through the night into the morning. The burlap bags the Ratts used as beds were about as soft as rocks when it was icy outside, and being half-frozen to death in the morning was enough to put anyone in a horrible mood, which is exactly what it did to the Ratts.

Instead of quietly moping about, they immediately set in on one another over the most trivial matters.

“That’s my hat, Paul!”

“George, quit hogging all the space by the stove!”

“Peter, did you just blow your nose into this rag? Because that’s my shirt, you git!”

Jim mostly kept quiet during these arguments, because they weren’t the same lighthearted fare he had come to expect from the brothers. When they shouted at one another, they meant it, and when they fell to blows, they hit hard as they could. Jim wasn’t sure why, but it made his stomach churn and tighten up in little knots to watch them behave this way. Lacey, of course, tried to help, but Jim thought she only made things worse.

“Boys, boys, stop this nonsense this instant! What’s come over you, really?” Lacey said late in the afternoon after the Ratts’ latest row.

“Oh, yes mother, we’ll just pretend there ain’t a problem in the world,” George said, a nasty pout on his face. “What would you have us do next? Bath time? That would be perfect ‘cause then I could freeze my ears shut so I could go five seconds without hearin’ your nagging voice!”

Lacey shut her mouth, only a slight whisper of a breath escaping her lips. Jim knew immediately from the surprised look in his eyes that George wished he could take those cruel words back. But he was so inexplicably miserable that he refused to apologize. Then
Jim saw something he never expected to see in a hundred years. Lacey, the toughest girl he’d ever met, began to cry. Now, to her credit, she never blubbered or wailed, but her face twitched and quivered, and she had to clench her jaw to keep from making a sound. Despite her best efforts, two tears, one from each eye, slowly fell down her cheeks and dripped onto the floor. Then, without a word, she turned on her heel and ran as fast as she could out the hole and into the snowy streets.

“Well, that was right nice of you, George!” Jim shouted.

“She had it coming, all bossin’ us around and all.” George refused to look up at Jim, but just crossed his arms and plopped down in front of the stove. “She’s been doing it since the first day she got here, and we was tired of it since then! Weren’t we, boys?” George asked his brothers, but they only stared at the ground, saying nothing at all.

“Well, aren’t you going to go after her?” Jim asked incredulously when the three brothers continued to sit there, unmoving. “I mean, not so long ago you came after me, and Lacey’s been your friend longer than I have.”