Contents
Deep Hood
Weirdos and Crackpots
Sea Shanty
Weather-Pickled Regulars
Cat in a Box
A Dismal Business
Blaze
The Dunderbrain
Calamitous Weather
The Cold, Dark Bottom of the Sea
Touché!
Genie
Sprightning
Hoodwinks
Widdershins Cat
Jornty Spark
Old Squint’s Engine
The Seafarer’s Apprentice
Something Monstrous
The Last of the Westerleys
Frazzled
Mermonkey
Mysteries and Muffins
Mammoths and Narwhals
Stormquake!
Clarity Marks
Diamond-Shaped Panes
Drastic Action
Clammy Dodger
Toasted Mollusc
Sidekicks and Satsumas
Secret Buttons
An All-Seeing Eye
Ocean Potion
Gargantis!
The Baited Hook
The Signal
Gancy
Two Halves of a Compass
The First Rule
Deep Running
Vortiss
The Turgid Lake
Horribly Changed
Deepest Secret
Guardian of Gargantis
Clermit
Herbie’s Choice
About the Author
Copyright
DEEP HOOD
IF THERE’S ONE THING hotels have a lot of, it’s strangers. Hotels are kind of in the stranger business, after all. But no hotel in the world puts the strange in stranger quite like the Grand Nautilus Hotel.
Take this guy, for example. The one who’s just come in from the storm. The one walking across the empty marble floor of the lobby. See him? The one whose face is hidden by the enormous hood of a long waxed coat streaming with rainwater? He doesn’t even pull his hood back to talk to the receptionist, and his luggage – a metal-bound wooden box clutched in one gloved hand – doesn’t leave his side for a moment.
Who is he? What’s his story?
What’s in the box?
Of course, we’ll probably never know. And that’s fine. People are entitled to their privacy. Privacy is something else hotels have a lot of. Besides, there’s something sinister about this man, something threatening that makes me not want to know, to be honest. I’ll be quite happy once he’s up in his room, doing whatever dark and secret things he’s come here to do, far away from me. He takes his key and steps away from the reception desk …
… and starts walking in my direction!
I sit up and adjust my cap.
“May I help you, sir?” I say as the man in the overlong coat stops before the desk of my little cubbyhole. I look up and see nothing but darkness in that drooping hood. My cap starts to slip down the back of my head, so I straighten it.
“Herbert Lemon.” A voice comes from inside the hood, and I flinch. There’s an unnatural edge to that voice that makes my skin crawl.
“Th-that’s right, sir,” I reply. “I’m Herbie Lemon, Lost-and-Founder at the Grand Nautilus Hotel, at your service. Have you lost something?”
There’s a sudden KER-KER-BOOM! as a clap of thunder gallops around the town outside. The flash of lightning that rides with it only serves to highlight the darkness in the man’s hood. The wind flings rain against the windowpanes, and the hotel lamps flicker.
The man remains motionless, dripping rainwater on my counter.
“U-u-umbrella, perhaps?” I suggest.
I glance at the metal-bound box in the man’s hand. There’s barely room for a change of underpants in a thing like that.
“Or luggage, maybe?”
My voice is almost a squeak now.
The man leans in, his hood nearly closing over my head. My nostrils fill with the stink of wet coat and fishy breath.
“Do not ask what I have lost, Herbert Lemon,” comes the man’s voice, sounding as if each word is made with a great deal of effort. “Ask what I have found.”
And that’s when there’s another crash of thunder and the hotel’s lights go out.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. Yes, you – sitting there safe at home, staring into your book with bug eyes, waiting for something horrible to happen to me. You’re thinking that I’m going to freak out now. And I admit, I am considering it. But you don’t get to be Lost-and-Founder at the Grand Nautilus Hotel without learning how to be a professional. So, OK, yes, maybe I’m not the bravest mouse in the basket, but I am in my place, behind my polished desk, master of my own little world of lost property and shiny buttons. And so that’s why, when the lights come back on again, I’m still sitting exactly where I was, clutching my Lost-and-Founder’s cap with both hands and … blinking at empty space.
Because, of course, the man with the deep hood has gone.
WEIRDOS AND CRACKPOTS
THE SECOND RULE of lost-and-foundering is: Keep calm and try a smile.
Seriously, you’d be amazed at some of the things that turn up in my Lost-and-Foundery: thingummies, doodahs, assorted hoojamfips of all descriptions. Once, I even had a living, breathing human being hand herself in, but that’s another story. You just have to take it all in your stride, stay cool and pretend that the Roman helmet, or false nostril, or bloodstained candlestick that got left in the conservatory is all in a day’s work for a Lost-and-Founder. So it’s the second rule I’m mostly thinking of when the hotel lights come back on to reveal that not only has Deep Hood gone, he’s also left an object on my desk.
“You were just handing something in?” I ask the empty space where the man had been standing. “Why did you have to be so creepy about it?”
I lean out of my cubbyhole and see a trail of rainwater leading to the main staircase. If I wanted to, I could follow it and find out which room Deep Hood’s staying in.
If I wanted to.
And the thing on my desk? Well, see for yourself.
It’s a shell.
A strange, spiky shell – pearly white and spiralling around itself until it ends in a point. The small spikes, which are slightly curved, run up this spiral at regular intervals. I pick up the shell and peer into the trumpet end (it’s one of those sorts of shells). It seems heavier than it should be, and it gives a clear metallic tinkle when I shake it. There’s a small hole in one side, rimmed with brass. Is there something inside? Cautiously, I put the shell to my ear.
“I can hear the sea,” I say to myself with a nervous chuckle of relief. “That means it’s empty, right?”
“Or your head is,” says an annoying voice, and I nearly drop the shell in surprise. From behind a large potted fern near my cubbyhole steps Mr Mollusc, the hotel manager. He takes the shell from me.
“Shiny thing.” His eyes light up. “Probably worth quite a bit. What are you doing with something like this, Lemon?”
“It was handed in, sir,” I say. “By that new guest.”
At this, old Mollusc’s horrible moustache bristles, and he almost throws the shell back to me.
“You spoke to him?” he says, nodding fearfully at the stairs. “He spoke to you?”
I shrug and hope that’s answer enough.
Mollusc runs his fingers through his thinning hair.
“Why do we always get the strangest ones?” he asks, though mostly to himself.
I shrug again.
I mean, surely he knows the answer to that by now. Summer is a faded memory, and Eerie-on-Sea hasn’t pretended to be a normal seaside town for so long that I wonder if it’ll remember how when the tourists return. Winter is lingering, and a storm mightier tha
n any I have ever seen has engulfed the bay, turning the sea into a raging animal and blowing winds that would strip the enamel from your teeth. Only weirdos and crackpots would travel all the way to Eerie-on-Sea at this time of year. And where else are those weirdos and crackpots going to stay but the Grand Nautilus Hotel?
“Er, did you speak to him, sir?” I say, daring a question of my own. “His voice was a bit … you know. Did you think his voice was a bit … you know?”
“Don’t be impertinent!” snaps Mr Mollusc, suddenly remembering himself. “You have a new piece of lost property to take care of, boy. No doubt of great value. Kindly get on with your job.”
And with that he turns on his heel and strides away.
Across the lobby, Amber Griss – the hotel receptionist – gives me a smile that seems to say, “Oh, don’t mind him, Herbie. You know what he’s like.” But her raised eyebrow adds, “Just don’t let him see you making that face!” So I grin an “Oops! You’re right!” grin back and lift down the heavy old ledger instead.
This ledger is where I, and all the Lost-and-Founders before me, record everything that is handed in at the Lost-and-Foundery, as well as everything that is successfully returned. It’s enormous. I heave it open and flip to the next blank space. I write the time and date and then the words PECULIAR SHELL. I’m not quite sure what else to write, to be honest.
Some of the hotel’s clocks, the faster ones, start chiming for 7 p.m. It’s been a long day, so I just write, INVESTIGATION BEGUN AT 7-ISH next to PECULIAR SHELL. Then I close the ledger with a thud, flip the sign on my desk to CLOSED, and carry the strange shell down to my cellar.
The cellar is the real heart of the Lost-and-Foundery: a whole wing of the hotel’s basement that generations of Lost-and-Founders have called home and that has long since become a glittering cavern of curiosities. Someone once described it as “Aladdin’s cave”, but it’s not.
It’s mine.
I shove a log into my little wood burner, hang my cap on a curly bronze whatsit and flop down into my enormous armchair. The gale whistles through the chimney, and the walls quake with an almighty thunderclap, but the storm can’t reach me down here. I grab my largest magnifying glass – itself a lost item – and use it to turn my eye enormous as I peer closely at the curious shell. In particular at the small brass-lined hole.
“Something interesting?” comes a voice, and for the second time the shell nearly flies out of my hand, as I start in surprise.
“Can people please stop doing that?” I shout as the shadows move and Violet Parma steps into the firelight to sit beside me. She’s holding a large white cat.
“Doing what?” she asks.
“Jumping out! I was just thinking how this place is mine-all-mine, and then you pop up from behind the lost pyjamas and spoil it.”
“You did say I could come around whenever I wanted,” says Violet with a slight lift of her chin. “And there was a time when you invited me to live down here, remember?”
And both those things are true, even if the second one turned out a bit differently in the end.
But wait, you’re probably wondering who Violet Parma is. Unless you’ve been to Eerie-on-Sea before, that is, and have heard all the stories about her. And if that’s the case, then let me tell you that those stories are also true. I know because I was there for most of them. But whatever you’ve heard, and whatever I say, and whatever you think of this wild-haired, brown-eyed girl with a cat, all that really matters right now is that Violet is my best friend here in Eerie, and she knows how to open my cellar window.
“Besides,” says Violet, “the storm is worse than ever. Poor Erwin here got lifted right off his paws and was nearly swept out to sea! I didn’t think you’d mind us hiding out down here for a while.” And she puts Erwin – that’s the cat, by the way – in his favourite box of lost scarves, the one I keep near the wood burner.
“You’ve got something new,” Violet adds, staring eagerly at the iridescent shell in my hands.
“There’s a hole in the side.” I flip the shell around. “I was just going to look in it, to see—”
“Great idea!” Violet takes the shell and the magnifying glass from me, and now she’s the one with the giant eye, peering into the hole in the shell.
“There is something in there!” she cries.
“What sort of something?” I ask, deciding not to protest.
“In the bottom of the hole.” Violet’s eye looks bigger than ever as she leans into the magnifying lens. “There’s a piece of metal, like a little pin with squared-off sides. The kind of thing you see when you look into the winding hole of an old-fashioned clock.”
“Like the kind of thing that’s turned with a key?”
“Exactly,” says Violet. “You have some of those keys, don’t you? Herbie, I think there’s clockwork in this shell!”
I open the large toolbox beside my repair desk, heave out a big jar and carefully tip its contents into the pool of light from my anglepoise lamp. From the jar spills keys of every kind. It takes a bit of poking about, but eventually I find a brass winder key that neatly fits the hole in the shell.
“Well?” says Violet when I don’t turn the key. “What are you waiting for?”
“Maybe we shouldn’t,” I reply. My mind goes back to the creepy man who left this shell, with his disturbing voice and drooping hood. “I’m supposed to keep things safe, Vi, not mess around with them. Maybe it wouldn’t be right to wind this thing up.”
“Are you serious?” Violet blinks at me. “How can you not be curious to see what it does?”
“I am curious, but…”
I glance over towards Erwin and see that the cat, while in every other way appearing to be fast asleep, has one ice-blue eye wide open and is staring at us intently. It looks as though Erwin is on Violet’s side, as usual.
“I just wonder if…”
“Oh, give it to me.” Violet takes the shell again.
She turns the key.
SEA SHANTY
VIOLET GIVES THE KEY three sharp turns…
Tic-tic-tic-TIK, tic-tic-tic-TIK, tic-tic-tic-TIK.
Nothing happens.
She puts the spiky shell down on the table beside my chair.
Nothing continues to happen.
“Wait,” she says. “Can you hear that? It’s doing something.”
I stretch my hearing, and yes, sure enough, there’s a faint whirring from inside the shell, as if tiny gears are moving into position.
Then the shell stands up.
Or rather, it pops up a finger’s width above the table as a small brass arm reaches down from the trumpet end and elevates the shell. Then music starts – a tinkling tune that dances in the air as the shell begins to rotate on the brass arm, sending points of reflected lamplight flickering across the arched ceiling of my cellar.
“It’s beautiful!” gasps Violet. “And the tune seems familiar…”
“It should,” I say. “It’s a sea shanty.”
“A what?”
“A sea shanty. You know, one of the songs the fishermen sing. You must have heard them when they’re hauling their fishing boats up the beach, or doing fishy things on the harbour wall. They’re always singing.”
“It sounds different like this, though,” says Violet. “Prettier. More magical.”
The music ends, and the shell stops spinning. It sinks back down onto the table.
“So, it’s a music box,” I say, thinking I should add this fact to the ledger. “That might make it easier to find its rightful owner…”
The shell stands up again.
And I mean REALLY stands up this time, on four little brass legs – each like the leg of a crab – which pop out from inside it with a metallic CLACK! Violet and I, who had been leaning in close to hear the music, start back in surprise. Even Erwin sits up in his box of scarves and gives a hiss of alarm. The shell pivots my way, as if looking at me, though there’s no eye that I can see. Then it pivots towards Violet. A fif
th brass appendage emerges, this time with a tiny pair of scissors attached to the end like a crab claw. The arm waves between us, the little scissors snip, snip, snip-ing in a way I can only describe as menacing.
“Pass me that bucket,” I say to Vi as quietly as I can.
“Why?” comes her reply. “Do you feel sick?”
“No,” I mumble. “The third rule of lost-and-foundering. I was forgetting it. Pass me the bucket. Quick!”
Violet reaches over and picks up an old wooden bucket filled with coat hangers. I snatch it from her, tip the coat hangers on the floor and dive towards the shell.
Too late! The thing must sense me somehow, or maybe it’s just bad timing, because the shell leaps from the table just as I bring the bucket down, and it scuttles away across the floor. I dive after it, miss again and have to watch helplessly as the little clockwork hermit crab – because that’s exactly what it looks like to me – runs up the side of my lost-books bookcase and skitters away along the top. In desperation, I throw the bucket at the shell, knocking it to the ground.
Violet darts forward holding an old woolly jumper and jumps on the shell. She wrestles with it in the jumper for a moment, and I can hear metallic clacking and whirring sounds as the mechanical hermit crab tries to untangle itself. Then the jumper goes still.
“Got it!” she says.
“Do you think it’s all wound down now?”
Violet shrugs.
“It’s stopped struggling, at least.”
“Maybe.” I take the jumper from her, careful not to let our little clockwork prisoner escape. “But I’m not taking any chances. If someone comes to claim this wind-up shell, I don’t want to have to admit that it’s run away and is living wild and free somewhere in my Lost-and-Foundery. Besides, I didn’t like the look of those scissors.”
I scrunch the jumper – shell and all – into the bucket, place the bucket on the floor upside down, and then put a couple of heavy books on top. If the mechanical contraption still has some wound spring left, that should stop it going anywhere.
“What is it, then?” says Violet.
“A clockwork hermit crab.”
“No, I mean the third rule of lost-and-foundering. What’s that?”
“The third rule,” I say, giving her one of my most impressive looks, “is: Unexpect the expected!”
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