Jim Morgan and the King of Thieves

by James Matlack Raney

  The lunks didn’t laugh this time. Red didn’t snap or smile. He was serious and his pals knew it. Jim knew it, too, and as he hung there his little heart broke all over again. The tears ran upside-down and dripped right from his eyes to the ground.

  Even the lunks looked away and started to back down the alley. This was no fun anymore, and they’d had their fill. Red lingered for one more satisfying smirk. “See ya’ around, you monkey,” he said, then just left Jim there to hang in upside-down misery.

  After a few more moments of sniffling to himself, Jim heard Paul and Peter scamper around the corner. “Wow, that was a close one!” Paul exclaimed.

  “We thought you were a goner for sure,” Peter added. “Some angels or something must love you, Jim. That’s how lucky you were, that’s how lucky for sure!”

  Paul jumped on top of Peter’s shoulders so they could reach up and undo the tangled knot of vine around Jim’s ankle, dropping him down to the ground with an unpleasant bump.

  “Sorry it took so long for us to get back,” Peter said. “But we had to go three more roofs over before we could climb down. But wow! Somebody definitely loves you…” The two brothers noticed Jim’s face. It was certainly red from being hung upside-down, but tears drenched Jim’s eyes, and he must have looked as though he would never smile again.

  “No,” Jim said. “Nobody loves me.” Then he got up and started walking down the street to the old shoe factory. Peter and Paul walked beside him, but Jim never looked their way or opened his mouth to speak. He stared at the tops of his shoes in silence as they scuffed along the dreary, cobblestone walk.

  SIXTEEN

  hen Jim reached the crumbling hole that led to the cellar beneath the shoe factory, he never even broke his stride. He walked right passed it, eyes still glued to the ground. Better to leave on his own, Jim thought, than to be kicked out by the Ratts.

  “Hey, Jim!” Paul called after him. “Where are you going?”

  “Come back, Jim!” Peter also called from the hole, but Jim refused to listen. He knew the truth. When Lacey and George got back they would throw him out on his ear for all the trouble he’d caused them.

  Jim had no clue where he was going, but he kept walking anyway, as fast as he could, staring straight at the tops of his shoes, and constantly wiping away his tears. Soon his nose began to run, as noses often do after a good cry, and he had to use his sleeve to wipe it since he had no handkerchief. Then his head began to throb, as heads often do after one’s nose has run and eyes have cried for a long time, and Jim wondered if it were possible for a person to feel more loathsome than he did at that very moment. He had lost his box, and the King of Thieves would pillage his father’s treasure. Maybe Phineus had been right, Jim thought. Maybe Jim had never even deserved the noble name of Morgan.

  Eventually, the crying eyes, running nose, throbbing head, and aching heart became too much, and Jim could walk not another step. He stopped right in the middle of the street, looking around for the first time in some hours to see where he was.

  Whether by luck or fate, somehow Jim had ended up by the bridge leading back toward his family’s city home. Maybe his feet just remembered the way, or perhaps some cruel spirits somewhere thought it would be good for a laugh to rub the one place Jim desperately wanted to go, but had no hope of reaching, into his face. Either way, the mere thought of his home and his father felt like a punch in Jim’s stomach, and he could now add an aching midsection to his list of emotionally induced maladies.

  Without a clue of what to do or where to go next, Jim stepped onto the bridge. It was quiet save for the soft sound of the flowing water beneath the walk - until a sharp caw broke the silence, a raven’s caw.

  Jim saw him at the other end of the bridge, and in that moment, all of Jim’s worries and pains, from his aching heart to his running nose, froze solid with fear. As when James had first gone to his London home, here now, on the bridge, stood the dark pirate, the raven still perched upon his black-cloaked shoulder, haunting the street like a shadow that had decided to step off a wall. His black hat was still pulled down low over his face, and his sword hilt still protruded from beneath the edges of his greatcoat.

  Jim stood petrified. This form of a pirate, this shadow pirate, terrified him as much—no, more—than even the memories of Bartholomew Cromier. But this time, unlike at his home, there were no bushes or corners behind which to hide. The pirate stepped across the other end of the bridge. Jim held his breath. Perhaps the shadow would miss him and keep walking. But the shadow stopped and turned his head toward the far end of the bridge – to look right at Jim.

  Jim trembled from head to foot, icy fear now cracking and splitting from the heat of a deeper surge of terror. He and the shadow pirate stood still at each side of the bridge, staring at each other for a long moment, until the shadow pirate stalked onto the bridge, heading straight for Jim.

  There was no mistaking it now, Jim knew. The shadow had been seeking him at his house, and now it had found him on the bridge. The freeze of fear that imprisoned Jim to his spot finally shattered, and from somewhere inside himself, Jim found the strength to run.

  He had no idea where he was going, but he whipped around corners, dashed through alleys, and tore down streets that had no names. Jim looked over his shoulder, sure he would find the shadow just behind him, but instead, when he turned a blind corner, he ran right into a set of open arms.

  “Get off, get off, let me go!” Jim cried, twisting and turning. But much to Jim’s surprise, the arms never fought back. Rather they let him go, leaving Jim to fall rather unceremoniously into a pile on the sidewalk.

  “Jim!” a familiar, sweet voice said. “Whatever are you doing?”

  Jim looked up to find Lacey staring down at him, wearing a gentle look not too unlike the one she wore the first time they had met.

  “I - I was just…” Jim looked around. There was no trace of the dark pirate anywhere. The fear trickled out of Jim, slowly replaced with the miserable pride he had been feeling before his incident on the bridge.

  “I was just leaving,” Jim finally managed, getting to his feet and starting to walk off again.

  “Leaving?” Lacey asked with a snort. “It’ll be night soon, and being out here like this will only get you sick.”

  Jim, having been crying for some time, then terrified out of wits, and now just miserable again, was in no mood for any kindness or sweetness to spoil his ugly gloom. He walked over to a large rain barrel that had leaked into the street and stared down into the puddle, refusing to meet Lacey’s eyes.

  “Good,” he said and folded his arms. “I hope I do get sick. So sick that I —”

  “Don’t you even say that, Jim Morgan!” Lacey scolded sharply. Jim could picture her eyes changing the way they had before, flashing like lightning in a storm, and, for some reason, that made him almost want to smile. “You should be ashamed of yourself, just running out on us like this!”

  “Running out on you?” Jim nearly shouted. He finally looked up at Lacey, who, as he had guessed, was now sporting a very cross look indeed. “You and George were just going to kick me out of the clan anyway after today. Admit it!”

  “Kick you out?” George said over Jim’s other shoulder, his smiling face suddenly appearing as well in the reflection on the puddle of water. “Why in blazes would we kick you out? You just started!”

  “Why? Why!?” Jim shook his head, throwing his hands up in the air. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m useless, absolutely useless. I couldn’t get my own breakfast. I couldn’t even take one lousy apple without spilling a hundred others. I almost got us caught by Butterstreet. I couldn’t run two blocks without nearly passing out. And then I almost got myself killed trying to jump across the rooftops. Red was right, I’m just a big mistake… and it’s no wonder…” Jim felt his throat and eyes burn again as the last words made their way out. “It’s no wonder I was the biggest disappointment my father ever had!” he blurted, and more tears erupted as he did.

>   “Oh, Jim.” Lacey put her hand on Jim’s back, any crossness fleeing her eyes, which filled up with kindness once more. “I’m sure that’s not true.”

  “It is,” Jim said, sniffling and trying to stop crying. “I heard people say so with my own two ears.”

  “But did you hear your father say so?” George asked.

  “Well, no,” Jim admitted.

  “Then how do you know for a fact that it’s true?”

  “Well,” Jim said. He had never thought of that before. “I guess they could be wrong…”

  “And besides,” said Peter, who sidled up to Lacey. “It’s not exactly like Big Red speaks the gospel truth, if you know what I mean.”

  “He’s a dunderhead, Jim!” Paul chipped in as he too appeared as a reflection in the puddle beside his brother George. “He’s the one pickpocket on the street I’d hand over to Butterstreet meself!”

  “Now that’s something we can all agree on,” Lacey said. “Big Red is a brute!”

  “He used to wet the bed at St. Anne’s orphanage, that’s what I heard,” Peter said.

  “Probably still does,” George added, and for the first time that day, Jim smiled and laughed a slobbery laugh beneath his running nose and tear-stained cheeks.

  “You probably still do too, George,” Paul said with a laugh.

  “I never wet the bed, Paul, that was Peter!”

  “IT WAS NOT!”

  Lacey and Jim laughed again, and when Jim looked down, he saw five faces staring back up at him from the puddle instead of just his one, and for a reason other than fear, the aches and pains inside him drifted away.

  Together the clan walked back to the hole, laughing and joking the entire way, though Jim kept one ear out for the sharp call of a raven, or any sign of a shadow stepping out from a wall. Jim knew his situation was still dire. The box that held his father’s secret was in the clutches of the King of Thieves, who somehow knew something about the treasure no less, a shadowy pirate was apparently chasing him around London, and he was sleeping in a cellar beneath an old shoe factory with a gang of thieves. But even the cellar, Jim surmised, was a safer place than any other from the dangers that surrounded him of late.

  SEVENTEEN

  ll right, Jim, I think we started all wrong last time.” George was stretching and loosening up his arms and hands, cracking his knuckles like a card dealer, twisting and turning his back and shoulders and even doing a couple of jumping jacks to get his blood moving.

  “You know,” Paul added. “With the apples and all.”

  “Yes, he knows we mean the apples Paul,” Peter chided his brother when he saw Jim’s cheeks flush with leftover embarrassment. “No need to bring that up.”

  “It’s okay,” Jim said, taking a deep breath. The four boys were standing around the corner of an alleyway in downtown London while hundreds of pedestrians walked to and fro on the streets before them. Jim’s stomach tightened into a knot as he thought about his incident at breakfast a few days before, and he was less than eager to experience that kind of trouble again. But he had to get his box back and it seemed that this was the only way.

  “It is okay!” George said encouragingly. “Because my brothers and I put our heads together over the last couple of nights and have come with…”

  Peter drummed his hands on his legs until the three of them leapt together with outspread arms and glowing smiles.

  “… the Official Ratt Brothers Course to Thieving and Pickpocketing!” they cried together.

  “By George!”

  “Peter!”

  “And Paul Ratt!” After each said his name they bowed together with a flourish, hats in their hands.

  Jim couldn’t help but laugh, clapping politely for their showmanship. “I’m proud to be your first student,” he said.

  “I still don’t know why I have to go last,” Paul grumbled, slapping his hat on his head.

  “Because you’re the youngest!” the other two said together. “And besides,” George said. “You get to say: ‘Ratt’ at the end of your name, which is more than Peter gets to say.”

  “Yeah,” Peter said, as if that fact had just dawned upon him. “That IS more than I get to say. This is bollucks!” And he threw his hands up in outrage.

  Jim thought he was about to witness yet another Ratt brother brawl, swearing to himself that the three brothers would end up being more famous for their scuffling than for their thieving, but George spotted what he wanted to see in the streets and called Jim over, effectively forestalling the inevitable fisticuffs.

  “Lookie there, Jim,” George said, pointing at a rather tall lady, who was either noble herself or married to a noble family, Jim noted. She wore a huge, pink dress that absolutely billowed out from her waist and ruffled down to the ground, and in spite of the fact that she wore a gigantic brimmed pink hat, a servant scuttled along beside her with the sole purpose of holding an umbrella over her head to protect her delicate skin from the harsh sun.

  “It’s a good thing that umbrella’s there,” Paul said with a smirk.

  “Why?” Jim asked.

  “Because with her nose held up that high, she’d go blind staring right into the sun.” The boys laughed and Jim had to admit it was true. For the first time he wondered if that is what he and his aunt had looked like from the outside not so long ago. If it was, Jim thought to himself, it suddenly looked far sillier than it did noble.

  “Okay, Jim,” George said with unmistakable confidence. “You are about to witness the perfected Welshman’s Waltz!” He slid out onto the street, blending in with the crowd as Jim and the other Brothers Ratt watched intently from the safety of the alley. Like a hunting hawk, George glided through the crowds, weaving in and out of the bustling rows of people until he was headed straight for the woman in pink.

  “George really is the best pickpocket in all of London,” Peter said, admiration beaming in his voice. “He knows all the moves!”

  “Yeah,” Paul chimed in. “The Dragons only steal more ’cause there’s more of ‘em. But they’re jealous of the skill set, have no doubt. Look, here he goes!”

  Jim leaned in over the Ratts shoulders to see the action and found George walking with his hands in his pockets as though he had not a care in the world.

  “He’s not even looking at her,” Jim said. “He’s headed right for her! They’re going to crash!”

  “That’s the point,” Peter said, a wicked smile spreading across his face. George did indeed run right into the woman in pink, but instead of knocking her over or being knocked over himself, he deftly wrapped his arms around her, spinning them both around as gracefully as a ballroom dancer before twirling off behind her.

  “Watch where you’re going, you filthy little boy!” the woman shrieked, trying to wipe some imaginary dirt from the front of her dress.

  “Well!” George mustered up the most indignant look he could manage, turning his nose up as high in the air as the woman’s. “Excuuuuse ME!” Then he wiped his rags of their own imaginary dirt, stomped his foot, and strutted off down the street. In a moment’s time he crept back in the alley, flipping a fresh and shiny silver coin back and forth over the back of his knuckles.

  “That was brilliant!” Jim exclaimed.

  “It definitely was one of your better performances, George,” Peter said with a nod.

  “The main thing is, Jim,” George said, looking Jim right in the eye. “You’ve got to put their mind on somethin’ else. Distraction is a thief’s best friend.”

  “That’s good n’ all George,” said Paul. “But I think style may be just as important. For instance, I prefer the Welshman’s Waltz with the English Finish, meself.”

  “What’s that?” Jim asked, but George was already out on the street and headed in a beeline for a stuffy merchant’s wife dressed all in satin. He crashed into her, spun her, and twirled away - except this time when the lady cried out about a filthy little boy, George took off his hat and bowed low to the ground.

  “M
y lady,” he exclaimed. “The pleasure was all mine!”

  Jim laughed so loud from the alley that their hiding space was compromised and they had to flee a constable’s deputy for three blocks. But, they all agreed later, the laughs had been worth it, and in the back of Jim’s mind, a small glimmer of hope suggested he may get his box back after all…just maybe, if nothing else went wrong, that was.

  EIGHTEEN

  any, many miles from London, where Jim Morgan was taking his first steps toward becoming a master thief under the tutelage of the Brothers Ratt and living with them in their cellar beneath the old shoe factory, Bartholomew Cromier stood alone atop a gray tower overlooking his family estate, built on the hard coast of the sea, where the waves crashed against the rocks from morning until night – Shade Manor.

  The bricks in Shade Manor’s walls and the tiles on her many roofs were so dark they leeched the very light from the air, and the billowing sea mist, like a never-ending fog, turned the stones blacker still. Brown ivy, more dead than alive, crawled up the walls facing away from the ocean, and all the trees in the orchards grew fruitless and crooked. Even the fountain water, cascading over the stone saint in the courtyard, trickled down the carved face like forlorn tears.

  Traveling folk would walk for miles just to skirt around Shade Manor, and nobles and merchants alike, living in the nearby towns, whispered among themselves that the dark manor was not only one of the dreariest and coldest places in all of England, but that it was also cursed, perhaps even haunted.

  Bartholomew Cromier, however, cared nothing for rumors or for travelers, nor for ghosts or for curses, for his cold heart and steely mind were too far bent toward his and his father’s dark purposes to bother with such trivialities. Even at that very moment, his raven-black hair dampened from the sea mist, his coat whipping in the icy wind, Bartholomew silently brooded over their incomplete vengeance against their old enemy, Lord Lindsay Morgan. The fact that Lord Morgan’s mysterious treasure had somehow slipped through their fingers drove Bartholomew nearly mad. It had been one week to the day since Count Cromier had told his son that the treasure was not at Morgan Manor, and by that seventh day, Bartholomew had brooded himself into a whirlwind of silent fury.