A Slip in Time Read online

  The Masher raised one eyebrow (a trick he’d spent hours practising in front of the mirror). ‘Family o’ yours, Fadge? You actually got family?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jack.

  ‘That’s all right, then,’ said the Masher. ‘We can talk. I got a job for you, young Fadge. I need a snakesman. Tonight.’

  Fadge wriggled uncomfortably. ‘I don’t know about tonight, Masher. Tomorrow, maybe.’

  ‘Tonight.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Go off with the Masher and leave his prize goose sitting here before it had had a chance to lay its golden egg? On the other hand, the Masher wasn’t in the habit of taking ‘no’ for an answer. ‘You said yourself, Masher, I’m getting over-large for a snakesman.’

  ‘You’ll do for this. I measured the jump already.’

  ‘I gotta look after Jack.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ said Jack. He didn’t know what a snakesman was, or where Fadge was supposed to jump. What he did know was that sticking with Fadge had to be better than being left on his own in a strange town. A strange time, even.

  Fadge beamed at him, gratefully.

  The Masher nodded. ‘You can come if you want. I can use a fourth man. Specially one that ain’t known.’

  Fadge said, ‘All right, then, Masher. You talked me into it.’

  5

  Snakesman at Work

  Outside, the fog seemed to have cleared completely. It happened like that sometimes. But look into any dark corner, up any alleyway and you’d see it curled there, lurking, biding its time, ready to pounce.

  It would have to move fast to catch the Masher, striding out on his long legs, while the rest of them jogged along behind. Down the street they went and round a corner. Across the next street, and down an alleyway, diving into a sudden bank of thick fog and surfacing again opposite a row of neat little terraced houses.

  ‘That’s the one,’ the Masher pointed, stopping as suddenly as he’d set off. ‘That’s the doctor’s house. Third from the far end. You got that? I’m talking to you, Jack Farthing!’

  ‘Oh! Right!’ said Jack. ‘But why are you telling me? I don’t need a doctor.’

  ‘Yes, you do. There’s a poor old lady, sick and like to die, if you don’t fetch the doctor to her, quick sharp.’

  Jack was opening his mouth to say ‘What old lady?’ and ‘Why me?’ when the Masher gave him a shove. ‘Off you go, then. What are you waiting for?’

  ‘You haven’t told me where she lives,’ said Jack.

  ‘Where she lives?’ The Masher looked blank. He turned to Fadge, as if to say, ‘Do I have to do his thinking for him?’

  Fadge shrugged.

  ‘The Spread Eagle,’ rasped Rusty.

  ‘That’s a pub, right?’ said Jack.

  ‘No!’ exclaimed the Masher, spreading his arms wide and flapping them up and down. ‘It’s a great, big, live bird! ’Course it’s a pub, you cloth-head!’

  ‘Is that where she is?’ offered Fadge. ‘The Spread Eagle?’

  The Masher beamed. ‘Got it in one, young Fadge!’

  ‘Took bad, she was,’ said Fadge, ‘right outside the door, an’ the landlord, like a Christian gentleman, he took her in. Right, Masher?’

  The Masher nodded.

  ‘Go back down the alley, Jack,’ said Fadge. ‘Turn left at the end, instead of right, back the way we came. Then first right and second left and keep straight on. The Spread Eagle. You can’t miss it. Ask for Mrs – Mrs –’

  ‘Smith,’ grated Rusty, like he was already sliding the old lady’s first coffin nail into place.

  ‘Granny Smith,’ nodded the Masher.

  ‘Just leg it, the first chance you get,’ Fadge muttered out of the corner of his mouth. ‘I’ll meet you,’ he glanced from Rusty to the Masher, ‘the same place we met before.’

  The Masher, with his hand clamped fast to Fadge’s shoulder, was already hurrying him away, with Rusty close behind.

  ‘Where are you going?’ demanded Jack.

  ‘We got to fetch the old woman’s family, before she snuffs it. Eh, Fadge? Eh, Rusty?’

  ‘The priest,’ wheezed Rusty. ‘She’s asking for a priest.’

  Jack caught Fadge’s desperate look, as he was dragged away. Fadge was well worried, but it wasn’t about some poor old lady.

  Then the Masher whisked them round a corner and the only evidence they’d ever been there was the fading sound of Rusty coughing. Jack was on his own after all, still with a load of shopping to get and not the foggiest idea how to find his way back to Grandad’s. There was nothing he could do about it, not just at present. Not that he could see.

  So he set off down the narrow street of terraced houses until he came to the third one from the end, where a plump young man in shirtsleeves was busy polishing a brass plate on the wall beside the front door.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Jack.

  The young man gave a guilty start and spun round, trying to hide his polishing cloths behind his back.

  ‘I’m looking for the doctor,’ said Jack.

  ‘You’ve found him! John H. Watson, M.D.’ The young man stuck out a hand to shake, noticed the cloth still in it, and hid it behind his back again. ‘My housekeeper!’ he explained. ‘Old lady. Bad chest.’ He thumped himself twice on the chest to demonstrate. ‘Outside work. Not good for her in this pea-souper.’

  He seemed very young for a doctor, with a round baby face, bright, innocent eyes and a shock of curly hair. The moustache looked like a cheap disguise. But the brass plate said Dr J.H. Watson, M.D. So Jack gave him the message about poor old Granny Smith, sick and like to die, and the others going off to fetch her sorrowing family etcetera, and before he was halfway through, the young man was shrugging on his coat and racing upstairs for his doctor’s bag (very shiny, very new), then down again, exclaiming, ‘Oh, this is exciting! My first call-out! My first emergency! Where’s my hat? My hat! My hat! I can’t go without my hat!’

  ‘Can’t you?’ said Jack.

  ‘Of course not! Must look the part! Doctor must wear a hat. Imagine it, if a doctor came to call, looking like a … a butcher, say! Would you believe he could make you better?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘Of course not! Ah, here it is! Hanging on the hook behind the door. Off we go, then!’

  Off they went. Down the road and through the alley, turn left at the end.

  A thought struck Jack. ‘Dr Watson,’ he said. ‘You’re not the Dr Watson, are you? The friend of Sherlock Holmes?’

  ‘Shylock – ?’

  ‘Sherlock.’

  ‘Sherlock … Holmes, did you say? Odd sort of name.’ He shook his head. ‘No. Doesn’t ring a bell.’

  Of course it didn’t. There was no such person. Never had been. Though Grandad said people from all over the world still wrote to the Great Detective at 221B Baker Street, asking him to solve their problems.

  Did Fadge say second right, then first left? Or the other way round? Second right, Jack decided. Poor Fadge. Jack couldn’t forget the worried look on his pinched face before the Masher whisked him out of sight.

  Nothing worried Dr Watson. With John H. Watson, M.D. on hand, you just knew everything was bound to turn out all right. Jack couldn’t help wishing that he’d met Dr Watson before he met Fadge.

  Turn left. Soon be there. He was worried about Fadge. Leaving him with the Masher. And Rusty. There was something going on. Some reason they wanted him out of the way.

  ‘Dr Watson,’ said Jack. ‘Do you know what a snakesman is?’

  6

  A Human Tug of War

  In the dim alleyway that ran along the back of the terrace, Fadge stood beside the Masher, looking nervously up at a small, rectangular window. ‘It’s smaller than the last one, Masher.’

  ‘We been through this before. Get your head and one shoulder through and the rest’ll follow, easy as slicing butter.’

  ‘It’s awful high. What if I make a noise coming down the other side?’

  ‘The hou
se is empty. Jack Farthing’s seen to that.’

  All the same, there was something not quite right. Fadge could feel it in his bones. He peered towards the end of the alley, where they’d left Rusty on guard. ‘Where’s Rusty gone?’

  ‘He’s still there.’

  ‘I can’t see him.’

  ‘Course you can’t. Rusty’s the best in the business.’ That was true. The way Rusty lurked, passers-by rarely took him for anything more than their own shadows. The Masher gave a low whistle and a sound came back like rats suddenly disturbed, then settling again. That was Rusty. Rusty could do rats, cats, dogs, horses and half a dozen birds more lifelike than the real thing. It was just the human voice he could never quite get right.

  ‘Up you go!’ said the Masher. ‘We haven’t got all night.’

  Fadge found himself lifted up and swivelled halfway through the narrow window before he knew it. He stretched out his arms into the dark and found the top of a cupboard or a table. A quick wriggle and a handspring down to the floor. And he was in. Standing in somebody’s larder by the look of it in the pale moonlight.

  Fadge made straight for the door, and found it locked.

  He went back to the window. ‘Door’s locked, Masher. We’re out of luck. Can you help me out?’

  ‘You stay there!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Stay there and do as I say. Look around you. Can you see a chicken?’

  ‘A chicken, Masher?’ Not content with stealing Fadge’s dinner, the Masher was going to all this trouble to steal someone else’s? ‘What sort of a chicken?’

  ‘Plucked. All ready for cooking. Look around you, Fadge!’

  ‘I’m looking, Masher! Get out of the light. I’m looking.’

  ‘It’s there, Fadge! It’s got to be!’ The Masher, on tiptoe, pressed his face up close to the open window.

  Of course the chicken was there. Fadge had seen it the moment he dropped to the floor. There wasn’t much else. A few jars. A few vegetables. Half a loaf of bread. Fadge looked round in vain for a knife to cut it with and something to spread on it. Jam. Butter. A bit of beef dripping would be favourite. Nothing. He tried the door again.

  ‘Fadge? What you doing, Fadge?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You found it?’

  ‘What if I have? What’s it worth?’

  ‘Just give it to me. Pass it to me out of the window.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘All right. Sixpence?’

  ‘I reckon it’s worth more than that,’ Fadge said thoughtfully.

  ‘How much more?’

  ‘Make me an offer.’

  Then suddenly, ‘Masher!’ Rusty rasped in the Masher’s ear.

  The Masher, taken by surprise, somehow managed to crack his head on the top of the window frame and his chin on the sill, both at the same time.

  ‘I gave the signal, Masher, but you never heard me! They’ve come back!’

  Behind him, Fadge could hear footsteps coming through the house, and voices.

  ‘Help me out!’ pleaded Fadge.

  ‘Give me that chicken.’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘Give us the chicken, then we’ll help you out.’

  ‘You won’t.’

  ‘We will!’

  The feet and the voices were just the other side of the door. The key was turning in the lock.

  ‘It’s both of us, or nothing!’ Fadge stuffed the chicken up his shirt and leapt for the window.

  Two pairs of hands grasped his wrists. But another four hands now had hold of his ankles.

  There was a very short tug of war. Fadge and the chicken together were never going to fit through that window.

  Fadge heard Jack’s voice. ‘It’s all right, Fadge! I’ve told him! I told him they made you do it!’

  But the Masher and Rusty still held him fast. Fadge kicked and wriggled and yelled fit to wake the dead three streets away.

  As the first window slammed open and a head poked out to ask who was being horribly murdered on their doorstep, the Masher and Rusty let go and ran for it.

  Fadge shot back into the larder like a human cannonball, and landed on something soft. The chicken soared into the air, hovered for a moment near the ceiling, then plummetted down to perch on his chest. ‘Oooff!’ Fadge lay for a moment, letting his arms and legs shrink back to their proper size.

  ‘Gerroff!’ growled Jack, from underneath him.

  ‘Well, well!’ said Dr Watson. ‘Isn’t this exciting!’

  7

  Chicken Surprise

  Roughly ten minutes later the three of them stood round the kitchen table, staring hard at the chicken from three different sides. It didn’t look too bad, considering what it had been through. There was stuffing dribbling from one end, and the left wing stuck out at an odd angle, as if the chicken was resting on its elbow, waiting for them to make up their minds.

  ‘This friend of yours – is he specially fond of chicken?’ asked Dr Watson, frowning.

  Fadge shook his head.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Jack, ‘he couldn’t have been hungry. He’d just eaten Fadge’s dinner.’ He had the creepy feeling the chicken was looking at him, sizing him up. He edged out of its line of sight (not that it could see anything, having no head) and the others followed him, processing round the table.

  The doctor twirled one end of his moustache, giving it a lop-sided look, as if it was starting to come unstuck. ‘Could it have been a joke, do you think? Say he was put up to it by someone I know. Medical students. Yes? No.’ He shook his head. ‘I would have been sorry to lose it. Chickens don’t come cheap.’

  Jack toyed with the idea of making some crack about chickens not coming cheap, only chicks going ‘cheep’. But thought better of it.

  ‘My housekeeper –’ the doctor began. ‘Hrrm!’ He cleared his throat. ‘I’ll come clean. I have no housekeeper. Can’t afford it. Mrs Hudson’s very good, though. She comes in twice a week. The rest I manage for myself, but it doesn’t do to let people know.’

  ‘Bad for the image?’ suggested Jack. ‘Like going out without your hat?’

  ‘Exactly! Which is why you caught me polishing my brass plate under cover of darkness. I can’t afford to eat chicken, either, as a rule. But this is a special occasion. A friend of mine – another doctor – is passing through tomorrow, on his way to take up a practice down in Southsea. Bit of a celebration, yes? I asked Mrs Hudson to buy me a chicken and leave it ready to pop in the oven.’ He gave the chicken a doubtful look. ‘I suppose it’ll still be all right, once it’s cooked.’

  ‘I think p’raps you ought to wash it,’ said Jack.

  The doctor looked even more doubtful. ‘What about the stuffing? Excellent stuffing Mrs Hudson makes! Don’t want it waterlogged.’

  ‘You could scoop it out,’ suggested Fadge. ‘Stuff it back in after.’

  ‘Good thinking!’

  The doctor rooted round until he found a spoon and a basin. He started scraping out the chicken while Fadge held it. Jack took charge of the basin, tipping it underneath the gaping neck, so not a scrap of Mrs Hudson’s excellent stuffing would be lost.

  At the third scoop, there was a ‘chink’ of spoon on metal.

  ‘What’s this?’ said Dr Watson. He bent down and peered inside.

  ‘This’ seemed to be something solid mixed in with the squidgy stuffing. A glint of gold. A gold chain! A gold chain leading back inside the bird. Gently the doctor drew it out and gently … gently …

  Fadge and Jack watched open-mouthed. It was as if that chicken was laying a golden egg. Egg-shaped it was, but flatter, and studded with red and green stones. A golden pendant on a golden chain.

  ‘That’s what they were after!’ breathed Jack. ‘Not the chicken at all.’

  ‘They ought to have told me,’ muttered Fadge.

  The doctor washed the pendant clean, holding it over the sink in his left hand, while he worked the pump briskly with his right.

  ‘But how did t
hey know?’ demanded Jack. ‘How did it get in there?’

  Fadge said, ‘Can I hold it? Please?’

  He took it reverently, but firmly, so as not to drop it. As if he was afraid it might break. ‘Gold!’ he thought. Gold and jewels beyond his wildest dreams. He rubbed his fingers over the pendant, feeling the shape of it, the warmth of it. No more sleeping in the cold. No more being hungry. Then he felt a tiny ‘click’ and the pendant sprang open. It wasn’t a pendant; it was a locket.

  Inside was what might have been a portrait, if you looked at it from far enough off (like halfway down the street in a bad light). Close to, it was nothing but a collection of smudges, pink and black and purple streaked with gold.

  ‘Well, well!’ said the doctor. ‘What are we to make of that? May I?’ He took back the locket, and started examining it from every angle, holding it up to the light.

  ‘P’raps some kid did it for his mum,’ suggested Jack, remembering all his pictures from playschool that Mum still kept. Cringemaking stuff.

  ‘Perhaps,’ nodded the doctor. He peered a bit more, then, ‘Hm!’ he said thoughtfully. He snapped the locket shut and slipped it in his waistcoat pocket.

  ‘Hey!’ protested Fadge, indignantly, but faintly.

  ‘What do we do now?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Why,’ said the doctor, ‘we must set about finding the owner.’

  ‘What about finders keepers?’ demanded Fadge.

  ‘Shut up, Fadge,’ said Jack, not unkindly. ‘You can’t just keep a thing if there’s any chance of finding the owner.’

  ‘How are we going to do that, then?’ Fadge bit back scornfully.

  ‘I think,’ said Dr Watson, ‘a visit to the butcher’s shop is called for.’

  So off they went, after a short delay while they all hunted for the doctor’s hat again. Then there was a quick detour down the back alley, so Fadge could collect his broom.

  Now and again, as they went along, Fadge thought he saw a movement in the shadows, a thickening of the darkness that might be Rusty. On the other hand, if he thought it might be, then it probably wasn’t. Which didn’t make him feel any better.