Printer's Devil (9780316167826) (15 page)

I was dimly aware of Lash still whimpering down below. I simply couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and I stood transfixed,
watching the coiled creature wavering in the light of the lamp, reflecting deep golden light back at me. Slowly, it moved
over the shelf, crossing its coils over itself, creating intricate knots and sliding powerfully out of them. All of a sudden
the head seemed to swell, big flaps like a black hood bristling outward at either side as the head rose, silently, up into
the air, the lithe body dangling beneath it like the string of a kite. It seemed to have brought a mysterious scent into the
room, like incense, making my brain swim and my own towering shadow on the far wall grow and diminish with every beat of my
heart.

I realized I was still holding the camel. With all my force I hurled it at the shelf, into the mass of sliding snake, wanting
it smashed in all directions.

The camel crashed among the boxes and bottles, scattering the contents of the cupboard and sending
things cascading off the shelves and onto the floorboards with a clatter loud enough to wake everyone in the square. The camel
lay in the bottom, on its side, its head facing me, its glazed expression illuminated by the lamp. There was no sign of the
snake.

I hadn’t seen it move: one second it was there, the next it wasn’t. I wheeled around to try and work out where in the room
it had gone. The room swam before my tired eyes. There was no snake to be seen, anywhere. I even put the lamp on the floor
and got nervously down on my hands and knees to peer under the bed; but I could see no sign of it. There was virtually nowhere
else for it to hide.

Could it have gone down the stairs? Looking down, I was greeted with the sight of Lash sitting exactly where I’d left him,
gazing anxiously up at me from under his eyebrows. He gave a little bark. No snake had come slithering past him, that much
was clear — or he certainly wouldn’t still have been sitting there. Might it have disappeared into a crack in the rotten skirting
board? I was trembling. Maybe it really
had
been a hallucination. I went over to the little window and grasped the splintered wooden sash. It was shut tight: the snake
couldn’t possibly have come in or out that way.

I was about to move away from the window when I noticed someone outside. Down below, moving in and out of the light cast by
the street lamp, was a man: tall,
his head covered by a black hat, casting frequent glances up and down the street, wary of being seen. And as he turned to
look upwards, the sudden sight of a familiar face made goose bumps stand up all over me. I knew this night-watcher, this tall
and alert figure, all too well.

It was the man from Calcutta.

The night was full of strange dreams.

The faces in the fog had returned. Cramplock was one of them, roaring at me in rage, hurtling away from me as he shouted,
but coming back several times to remind me of my negligence. Some of the figures who ballooned up out of the mist held up
lanterns, as though to peer into my face, and I had to squint and screw up my eyes to stop the light from dazzling me as they
drifted off. Mrs. Muggerage had appeared, cleaver in hand, roaring silently into the murk, and the image of Nick’s anxious
little face with his shock of black hair swam around her, dodging the cleaver as she swung it mercilessly from side to side.

And I’d dreamed of the man from Calcutta, too, though he hadn’t been one of the faces in the mist. This time not just his
head but his whole body had become that of a crow, sleek and shining, his eyes glinting jewels which darted and pierced; and
he was
sitting on the edge of my bed, in the dream, watching me. But instead of feeling frightened of him, I felt as though he were
guarding me. Perched on my bedpost, alert but protective, his presence seemed somehow important and comforting, like the ravens
at the Tower.

I woke in a sweat, with Lash licking the salt from my temples. Light was flooding in through the window and I could hear the
sounds of morning activity outside. The first thing I did was sit up and check that the camel was still there — and, sure
enough, it was still in its raggy bundle in the bottom of the cupboard.

Cramplock was already at work. His hands and face were black and smeared with ink.

“Strange letter arrived this morning,” was the first thing he said to me.

“Who from?”

“Can’t say.” He reached for a stiff piece of paper. “Make any sense to you, Mog?”

I scanned it quickly. “Where was it?” I asked him, uncomfortably.

“Nailed,” he said, dramatically, “to the door.”

I swallowed.

CLEAVER BOY,

SO CLEAVER FIND HIS CAMEL.

I SHOW HIM DEATH SOON.

And beneath this extraordinary message, the strange letters again:

It had obviously been left last night by the man from Calcutta, and there wasn’t much doubt about what it was getting at.
The way he’d misspelled “clever” was rather unsettling, I thought, under the circumstances.

“I can’t make head or tail of it,” Cramplock said, “some sort of joke I suppose — from a friend of yours, is it?”

“Mm,” I said.

I SHOW HIM DEATH SOON.

Not an especially funny joke, I was thinking — and my face must have made it clear I wasn’t amused. The man from Calcutta
had had a good try at “showing me death” the night before. It was clearer than ever that, after he’d failed to find the camel
that evening at Coben’s hideout, when I threatened him with the sword, he had become convinced I was working for Coben and
Jiggs, and was hiding the camel for them. He must have seen me bringing home a bundle last night, and guessed straightaway
what it was.

It was absolutely vital to find another hiding place
for the camel — and I had to do it today. I was beginning to wish I’d taken Nick’s advice and left it where it was in the
first place.

“Mr. Cramplock,” I said, “has, er — has somebody come to live next door?”

He stared at me. “Not as far as I know,” he said. “Nobody’s lived there for ages. It caught fire years ago — and it’s been
empty ever since, I think.”

“Only — I thought I could hear someone moving about in there,” I said cautiously.

Cramplock shrugged. “Probably some poor old soul who’s broken in, using it as a place to sleep. But it’s not safe. As far
as I know there are no floors in there.”

I said nothing.

“Is something wrong, Mog?” Cramplock asked. “You’ve been acting a bit strange lately, as if there’s something on your mind.”

“Nothing much,” I said vaguely, not wanting him involved.

But for the whole of the day I was miles away, pondering over the man from Calcutta and the house next door and the whole
camel affair. The more I thought about it, the surer I was that someone
had
been moving about next door the other night, and that it had probably been the man from Calcutta. He was hiding in the house
next door, to spy on me. I was so preoccupied I couldn’t concentrate on my work, and
Cramplock had to tell me several times to stop daydreaming. At one point when I’d been told to pull out a long length from
a roll of paper, I was particularly careless and managed to tear a huge gash right up it; and this time he shouted at me.

“Wake up, can’t you?” he barked. “Did you knock your brain out when you hit your head the other day? Just pay attention to
what you’re doing or you’ll get another knock you won’t forget.”

He took me by the arm and dragged me through into the filthy little storeroom where he kept most of his paper and old woodblocks.
“You can scrub the floor and the cupboards in here,” he said, “seeing as you don’t seem to be able to do anything more complicated.
This has needed doing for months.”

More like years, I thought grumpily, as I began the job. I had to move all the heavy boxes out of the way first; and, crouching
on my knees, I discovered astonishing amounts of dust and rubbish, rags and inky old fluff, which had accumulated behind the
boxes and cupboards over a long period of time. It made me cough so hard I thought my lungs were going to turn inside out.
After half an hour I looked as though I’d been scraped out of a forgotten corner myself. As I was picking up the final few
scraps of discarded paper before moving the boxes back against the wall, I noticed one with some rather surprising words on
it.

It was a short handwritten letter in a rust-colored ink. It wasn’t addressed to anyone by name, and it wasn’t signed. It just
said:

I dont’t appreciate the deceit, and neither do some of my friends. You can hide nothing, and you could save yourself a great
deal of trouble by remembering it.

I thought I had made myself quite clear: but it seems you require a further reminder.

This is most certainly your final warning.

I read it through several times. The handwriting and spelling suggested someone well-educated: it was certainly a far cry
from the garbled notes of the man from Calcutta, or those with little drawings of eyes which the villains had been exchanging.
How had it got here, among the scraps of Cramplock’s storeroom? I don’t think I was supposed to see this: but I felt sure
it must have been sent to Mr. Cramplock, and it suddenly seemed as though he must know something he was keeping quiet about.

A sudden thought occurred to me, and I lifted the paper up to the light from the little storeroom window.
I wasn’t entirely surprised when I found the strange watermark of the dog yet again, curled around so its nose was touching
its tail.

I jumped as the storeroom door swung open suddenly, and made a poor fist of hiding the note as Cramplock popped his head in.
I was convinced he must have noticed it in my hand; but he didn’t ask me about it. Instead he said:

“Are you nearly finished, Mog? Only I want you to go out with some bills for me.”

I beamed at him. “I’ve, er—just got a couple of boxes to put back,” I said, going red.

“It looks much better,” said Cramplock, surveying the flags of the floor and probably remembering for the first time in years
what color they were supposed to be. “But these must be delivered — now.” He waved a fat handful of envelopes. I clambered
to my feet, and lumps of clinging dust floated into the air like thistle seeds.

Lash was excited at the chance to get out of the dusty shop and was sitting patiently by the door even before I emerged from
the storeroom. As I picked up the envelopes, Cramplock grunted. “Just make sure you don’t lose them, and bring me back some
cock-and-bull story about people burning them up. Or about … about them being eaten by goats, or trampled by giants.” He seemed
very pleased with his own sarcasm.

“I won’t lose them, Mr. Cramplock,” I said, “I promise.”

“You’d better not,” he said, “or the last printing job you ever do will be an advertisement saying W. H. Cramplock seeks a
diligent boy to be a printer’s devil.”

I looked at him to try and decide if he was joking or not, but as he turned his back I decided he wasn’t. Scanning the various
addresses on the bills, I had a sudden idea. I’d have to be out of the shop for a good hour, delivering all these. And at
least one of the bills had to be delivered fairly close to where the bosun lived. I might as well try and get a message to
Nick while I was at it.

Jamming the bills into my pocket and knotting Lash’s lead hastily around his collar, I dove out into the sunshine. I couldn’t
resist a glance up at the blackened face of the house next door. Nothing appeared to stir; but my imagination conjured up
eyes watching me from every one of the dark windows, and I ran past with a shudder of fear.

But when I got to Lion’s Mane Court I found Mrs. Muggerage was very much in evidence. From the narrow passageway I could see
her hanging up her laundry in the yard, moving between the dangling, dripping garments like a big ape in a forest of linen.
I couldn’t possibly sneak in unnoticed. I ducked back out of the passageway and tied Lash to the nearest post.

As I was doing so I became aware of a familiar chant from down the street. An old cart was clattering along, driven by a toothless
old gypsy in a brown cap. He was a rag and bone man. Suddenly getting an idea, I rushed up to him and flagged him down.