‘Ever thought of being a chimney sweep and getting stuck in a chimney because your belly was so big even the fire brigade couldn’t get you out and because of this unfortunate event not even Father Christmas could get down the chimney to deliver Christmas presents?’ retorted Scarlet making up a short Victorian horror story when put on the spot.
‘Funnily enough, no, I haven’t!’ spat Alfie as he scurried around the room wanting to be the first person to find the dragonfly brooch. It seemed to Alfie this really was like a game, a treasure hunt where there were clues and buried treasure, although the treasure was normally a toy or sweets. Finding treasure in a museum was frankly child’s play. If you couldn’t find treasure in a museum you most certainly couldn’t call yourself a treasure hunter. There were said to be many lost treasures in the labyrinths and bowels of the Victoria and Albert Museum, or so the story goes.
‘Come on, Alfie!’ Scarlet hissed.
‘Yes, sir, on the case right away, sir,’ Alfie said stopping to salute his sister as if he were a clockwork soldier.
A few minutes later…
‘I’ve found it!’ Scarlet cried, then wished she hadn’t as her voice echoed around the room.
‘You can’t have done,’ Alfie sighed, crestfallen that he hadn’t been the one to locate the dragonfly brooch.
‘I thought I heard footsteps,’ Billy murmured as he looked behind him. Scarlet and Alfie didn’t move, they just stood and gazed at the dragonfly brooch. The timepiece was quite exquisite and held the treasure hunters spellbound, so there and then they all decided it must be magical in some way.
‘Footsteps, it’s probably just your imagination, Billy, that’s what they always say in the storybooks,’ muttered Alfie finally turning to Billy, his eyes as wide as saucers as he stared at the dragonfly.
‘How do we get it out?’ Scarlet whispered looking at Billy.
‘That’s a good question, let’s see if the guidebook tells us,’ Billy said flicking through the pages of the guidebook as if it were a children’s flicker book. Here Scarlet was imagining that Billy had been a dragonfly in a previous lifetime (add it to the list of highly unlikely stories!).
‘Sorry, I know you’re not a thief,’ Scarlet added resting her hand on Billy’s shoulder.
‘We need to smash the glass with something, something heavy like, like, like this. Stand back,’ Alfie grimaced picking up a heavy marble globe standing upon a white marble plinth and throwing it at the glass cabinet. There was an almighty crash as the globe went through the glass as Billy and Scarlet stood mouth agape frozen to the spot. ‘I, I can’t believe you just did that!’ Billy stuttered almost lost for words.
‘Unfortunately I can, should have seen it coming in my crystal ball, I blame myself,’ Scarlet said sighing gently.
‘I was going to cut a small hole in the glass like I’ve seen jewel thieves do in London. They cut out a small hole with a sharp blade then gently lean on the glass with their elbow. Then they put their hand through the glass and make off with the booty. Often nobody sees or hears them,’ Billy said sounding exactly like a thief.
‘Oh no, that’s too time-consuming for our jewel thief!’ scowled Scarlet looking daggers at her brother.
‘Sorry!’ Alfie muttered shrinking into himself so much he almost disappeared.
‘Footsteps, and this time I’m not imagining things!’ Billy hissed looking towards the stairs.
‘Hide!’ Alfie cried crouching down behind an automaton made by James Cox and John Joseph Merlin.
‘This is not a game of hide and seek, Alfie, and you’re not the Invisible Man!’ Scarlet exclaimed dragging her brother from his hiding place.
‘I think we may need to ask the automaton to make up a good cover story for us,’ Alfie muttered, not being able to help himself getting his facts mixed up like his mind, as the Writer, which was almost destroyed in a fire, was not created by Merlin-Cox but by Henri Maillardet in the eighteenth century.
‘We’re trapped!’ Billy said as the footsteps got louder and so did the voices.
‘For God’s sake, someone get the dragonfly or tonight would all have been a complete waste of time!’ cried Scarlet in melodramatic fashion. Alfie was thinking his sister was making it sound as if now its glass prison had been broken it would fly off into the night, never to be seen again.
‘Don’t move, I’ll get it,’ Billy grunted, yet again getting to play the part of the reluctant hero as he grabbed the booty and legged it back to where Alfie and Scarlet were hiding. ‘Got it!’
‘Now you’ve got it, don’t let it fly away. Sorry Billy, now it’s me getting carried away!’ Scarlet snapped, not meaning to bite Billy’s head off, as that really would have been a horror story!
Tick tick tick, the sound of a ticking time bomb was about to go off but where and when? Tick, tick, tick…
35
I’m No Harry Houdini!
‘Where did you say you got these watches and clocks from? They look familiar,’ said the pawnbroker eyeing the timepieces suspiciously.
‘Don’t worry, they’re not hot and I didn’t steal them from Buckingham Palace either!’ the thief laughed being economical with the truth. The truth was, if he really told the pawnbroker the truth, he wouldn’t have believed a word of it, not one single word!
‘You want me to sell them for you?’ the pawnbroker asked raising his eyebrows.
‘Well, you can’t afford them, not even your shop would buy this little lot,’ the thief replied with a jewel-like sparkle in his eye.
‘Okay, I’ll see what I can do. Might have to fence them to the Americans, they like shiny objects and most don’t care where they came from. Shame is, they’ll lock them away in a private collection happy in the knowledge they own something nobody else in the world does. Beauty shouldn’t be hidden away, beauty should be shown off,’ the pawnbroker sighed.
‘Shiny objects, magpies like shiny objects,’ the thief laughed as a magpie had sprung to his mind, The Magpie being one of the many monikers he had collected during his time as a thief.
The thief was back in his own time and with a haul that would make him a pretty penny and more besides. He knew the pawnbroker could be trusted, mainly because he had some dirt on him that could send him to prison for a very, very long time.
With the money from the robbery of the Greenwich Clock Museum he could buy a nice little property in Mayfair or Park Lane. He would be respectable and never have to work another day in his life. Now in some respects this did appeal but in others it did not. He enjoyed his work, he met many different people, saw many different places, got plenty of exercise and fresh air, and the pay was good. Better still, now he could travel in time and there was little chance of him being caught, or the treasure trove he had collected being traced back to him. It was almost too easy. He enjoyed the challenge of stealing something everybody said could not be stolen.
But he must be careful not to get too carried away by his good fortune. Nobody must find out his secret, otherwise his good fortune may be stolen away from him.
*
Good fortune was something Scarlet, Alfie and Billy were very much in need of at this moment in time.
‘What are you doing, Scarlet?’ said Alfie as Scarlet stood quite still as if she were an automaton.
‘I’m freezing time, at least in my own mind. I need to think and there is very little time to do it,’ Scarlet said not entirely making sense as she clenched the dragonfly brooch tightly in her hand.
Alfie didn’t know what to do: run, hide or hide behind his hands like he did when he saw a monster at the picture palace.
Time appeared to stop or at least it did in the museum, even the voices and footsteps of the guards could no longer be heard.
Then time restarted. Scarlet opened her eyes and smiled. ‘Billy, get that pole over there which opens the window and open one, doesn’t matt
er which one,’ hissed Scarlet giving out instructions in double quick time.
‘Alfie, push that automaton over and hurry up about it!’
Alfie didn’t argue, he just did what he was told, charging at the automaton as if he were a knight on a steed at a jousting tournament. The automaton crashed to the ground, along with Alfie who was winded – not something the automaton had to worry about!
Billy opened the window and within seconds several birds flew into the museum, fluttering here, there and everywhere.
‘Quickly, quickly, hide behind this cabinet!’ Scarlet exclaimed, motioning Billy and Alfie to join her behind a large cabinet in the corner of the room that was set a few feet from the wall.
‘It’s a bit of a squeeze, I’m no Houdini, I’m afraid,’ whispered Billy holding his frame against the wall as Alfie sneaked in behind him looking as if he had seen a ghost. A ghost in a museum? As if, that was more Edgar Allan Poe’s style.
‘Houdini’s a one-off. They couldn’t even make an automaton work the way he does. To see him work his wonders, it’s pure magic,’ Scarlet gushed sounding exactly like a little schoolgirl spellbound by the great magician.
‘Somebody left the window open, look, a couple of birds, they must have knocked the automaton over and it fell onto the cabinet. The old Newtonian theory: every action has an equal and opposite reaction!’ the watchman laughed as if he were a professor at the museum, not a simple night watchman.
‘It wasn’t me, I swear I shut all the windows upstairs. I know I’m tired but—’ the watchman’s colleague exclaimed.
‘But nothing, yes, that’s right, the Invisible Man is in the building. Come on, we’d better clear this mess up. I’ll go and get a dustpan and brush and you shut the window,’ the night watchman growled as he headed for the stairs.
‘Come on, here’s our chance and it may be our only one,’ Scarlet said forcefully pushing Alfie out from behind the cabinet, who was clearly reluctant to leave the safety of his hiding place.
Like cat burglars they snuck out of the room on tiptoes. Luckily the night watchman was making such a racket he couldn’t hear the children sneak out, and as his back was turned to them couldn’t see them either. So they hurried down the stairs as fast as their legs could carry them, but were stopped dead in their tracks as they heard the other night watchman returning with the dustpan and brush.
‘Quickly!’ hissed Scarlet rushing across the room to the window as Alfie and Billy followed hot on her heels. ‘Wait a minute, he’s almost at the stairs… Okay, let’s get out of here.’ Billy got the chair so he could open the window, after which he hauled Alfie and Scarlet up and they all jumped the few feet from the window to the ground below.
‘We did it, we did it!’ Scarlet said hugging Billy and this time it was his turn to blush.
‘Never in any doubt, not with the mastermind Alfie Reginald Potts planning the whole operation,’ proclaimed Alfie grinning from ear to ear. Scarlet ruffled his hair as much to say, ‘Okay, little brother, I’ll let you steal the show, even though I did most of the planning and Billy did most of the grafting and you did most of the moaning, much like a ghost in a haunted museum, I’d imagine!’ In truth Alfie in his impatience had nearly got them all into hot water, but to Scarlet’s mind now did not seem the time to point that little fact out.
‘Good job, team,’ Billy said congratulating everybody.
‘Thank you,’ Alfie smiled then looked at Scarlet, ‘but I can’t take all the credit, my sidekick did some of the groundwork.’
‘Very magnanimous of you, I must say, little brother,’ Scarlet replied with just a hint of sarcasm in her voice.
‘Magnanimous sounds like an extinct mammoth to me,’ Alfie joked, determined to have the last word on the subject.
‘It won’t take them long to discover the dragonfly brooch timepiece is missing. We’d better make ourselves scarce,’ said Billy looking all about to make sure nobody had seen them come out of the museum. But someone had noticed them come out of the museum, or should I say, something, a dragonfly and not the brooch, that being an inanimate object. No, this was an animate object, a very animate object as all dragonflies are.
‘Look, a dragonfly!’ Scarlet exclaimed as the dragonfly flew around her head blinking at her with its big lamp-like eyes. ‘How magical is that? Two dragonflies for the price of—’
Scarlet said before Alfie jumped in feet first.
‘Two dragonflies for the princely sum of absolutely nothing. The brooch we borrowed and have every intention of putting back at some later date as yet undetermined,’ Alfie bellowed in a loud voice just in case the long arm of the law’s reach stretched as far as his rapidly expanding imagination, ‘and dragonflies are free, Mother Nature sees to that.’
‘Oscar Wilde is alive and well and living inside my little brother’s head!’ Scarlet quipped as Alfie bowed to the small but appreciative audience which included one girl, one teenage boy, a dragonfly and a group of hungry pigeons! It has to be said, none of the spectators had any intention of paying a bean for this short one-man show which would not ‘run and run’ as they say in theatrical circles. And they most certainly had no intention of parting with a magic bean!
‘How did you think of all that so quickly? I mean the window, the birds, the automaton,’ Billy said looking puzzled.
‘Must have been the dragonfly brooch. It appears it really is magical, although we will only really know that on the next full moon,’ Scarlet replied.
‘So you really think it will enable you to travel in time?’ Billy asked almost open-mouthed.
‘That’s the million-dollar question. I can’t believe I’m going to say this but time will tell,’ Scarlet replied, not sure she could believe the words coming out of her own mouth.
‘So what now?’ Billy said asking a question he was sure Scarlet could answer with certainty.
‘You sound like Alfie, heaven forbid another Alfie!’ Scarlet exclaimed imagining John Joseph Merlin had made an exact copy of her brother – an automaton.
‘I mean, where do we go from here?’ said Billy shrugging his shoulders.
‘I imagine we all go home to bed and after a good night’s sleep I’m sure we will all know “what next” and “where do we go from here”,’ Scarlet replied wearily, as she was so tired she could barely think let alone think straight, and thinking laterally was out of the question.
‘Let’s meet by the Tower of London in two days’ time. Twelve o’clock alright with you?’ Billy asked rubbing his eyes.
‘The Tower of London, I hope that isn’t tempting fate!’ Scarlet replied looking worried.
‘I wouldn’t imagine so,’ Billy said trying not to smile.
‘So be it,’ Scarlet said briefly breaking into the language used by the Bard of Avon, William Shakespeare. ‘Thanks again, William, you’re our knight in shining armour. We could never have done it without your help, could we, Alfie, could we, Alfie?’ growled Scarlet nudging her brother in the side.
‘No, I don’t suppose you could have done it without Billy’s help, Scarlet, don’t suppose you could,’ Alfie said without missing a beat… tick tock, tick tock, tick…
36
A Most Untimely Meeting!
The next morning Scarlet was up early. She had already figured out ‘what next’ and ‘where do we go from here’, as it came to her in a dream, or so she told Alfie and Wilbur. Time passed without further incident, apart from Alfie being Alfie who, according to his mother, was a walking incident. But then again that was probably because the time that had passed was only ten hours, although to Wilbur shut up in the dolls’ house it seemed like a lifetime. In fact time appeared to stand still in the confines of the dolls’ house, mind you, that may well have been down to the fact the face on the miniature replica grandfather clock permanently said twelve o’clock!
‘Come on, Alfie, oh and bring Wilbur,
he’s sitting in the drawing room,’ Scarlet shouted.
Alfie disappeared out of the room then came straight back as if he’d forgotten something, his head probably the one that wasn’t screwed on properly, according to his father!
‘We don’t have a drawing room!’ Alfie exclaimed.
‘Yes we do!’ Scarlet replied.
‘No we don’t, or a parlour, or a games room, well, apart from my half of the bedroom,’ Alfie said looking puzzled.
‘You poor unimaginative boy, come with me,’ Scarlet said shaking her head, leading him into the other room by the hand.
‘Is this not a drawing room and this a parlour?’ said Scarlet sternly as she opened the dolls’ house and pointed to the miniature rooms where Wilbur was sitting in the drawing room reading a newspaper.
‘Good morning, nice day for it!’ Wilbur cried waving at them then added in a jolly manner, ‘The paper’s written in invisible ink.’ You see, although clearly you cannot, the paper was just for show like a lot of things in the dolls’ house.
‘That’s, that’s—’
‘Clever was the word you were looking for, or was the word witty?’ Scarlet said like the Cheshire Cat that got the cream.
‘Cheating was the word I was looking for, although underhand will do just as well!’ Alfie spluttered going as red as the red carpet in the dolls’ house.
‘Wilbur, I’m sorry we didn’t take you with us last night but I thought it was too dangerous. We’re meeting William at the Tower of London to decide what to do next, oh and we’ve got the dragonfly timepiece,’ Scarlet said holding the dragonfly brooch up so Wilbur could see it with his own eyes.
‘Wow!’ Wilbur said standing and reaching up to touch the dragonfly with its moonstone wings, sparkling emeralds and diamonds that were set in gold with a small clock face also made of clear moonstone.
‘Now please don’t burn the house down as we’re in it!’ Scarlet’s mother said sternly, popping her head into the room. Scarlet quickly turned round, dropping the dragonfly brooch into the dolls’ house’ almost flattening Wilbur in the process.
The Clock People Page 22