The Lost Property Office

by James R. Hannibal

  Jack jumped in his seat as a spark danced across the paper, tracing the letters. Four thick lightning bolts launched out from the sphere above the cabinet, connecting with smaller spheres sticking out from the shelves. The cat raised its head and perked up its ears, following the streaks of electricity as they worked their way through the books. Finally, a glass-windowed cabinet flew open and a small book popped out, seated on its own brass tray.

  Gwen hurried over to the journal, and Jack could tell she was dying to look inside. But she let him be the one to remove it from the tray. The first thing he noted as he thumbed through the pages was the detail of the drawings. Jack had never known his father to be an artist, yet he saw swords and cathedrals, gargoyles and angels, maps of mountain passes, castles, and canyons, each with an X marking some mysterious spot.

  Sensing Gwen’s patience fading, he flipped to the last few entries. A triangle diagram covered two pages, three lines connecting three drawings. On the left was an old mantel clock that looked as if flames were climbing up its sides, and on the right, a dimpled sphere that could only be Nero’s Globe. At the top of the triangle, drawn over the binding, was something that looked like a sun. It originally had a label that read The Heart, but Jack’s dad had crossed it out. A newer label read The Ember.

  “He was close, wasn’t he?” asked Gwen, reading over Jack’s shoulder.

  He nodded. “I never saw the clock in any of my sparks. Maybe Dad found it.”

  Gwen drew in an involuntary breath and slapped Jack’s bruised arm.

  “You wot?” Shaw swiveled around, eyes locking on Gwen. “Wot did you tell him?”

  “Nothing . . . really.” She glanced at Jack, giving him a what-were-you-thinking look. “He fell down and it sort of happened.”

  “Not just a thirteen,” Shaw muttered to himself, “a thirteen that can already spark.” He thrust his broad chin at Jack. “The ministry’ll be very int’rested in that li’l tidbit, won’t they?”

  Gwen punched Jack’s bruised arm again as the two returned to the desk with the journal. Apparently he had given up damaging information, but he couldn’t ask what the big deal was with the warden still listening in. He let it go and laid the journal down on the desk between them. On the next page, there were more written notes, but the opposite page was blank. He thumbed through the remainder. The rest of the journal was empty. “This is the last entry.”

  “ ‘Great Fire Suspects,’ ” said Gwen, reading the top line.

  Chapter 37

  JOHN BUCKLES HAD named three suspects in the final entry of his journal: Thomas Farriner, the baker; James, Duke of York, the king’s brother; and Thomas Bloodworth, the Lord Mayor. He had already scribbled over the baker’s name, writing too obvious in the margin.

  In the notes beneath the duke’s name, Jack’s dad quoted historians that called him a tyrant, and cited evidence that he had invested in several French candidates for the guilds—though none of them was Hubert. The notes also referenced the same allegations Jack and Gwen had found at the top of Barking Tower—witness statements claiming several French arsonists had been handed over to the duke, then promptly disappeared.

  “This looks bad for the duke,” said Jack, frowning at the page. “But read what Dad wrote in the margin.”

  Gwen scrunched up her nose. “ ‘Inconclusive.’ ”

  Jack rested his chin in his hands and sighed. “We’re getting more questions than answers.” He shifted his eyes down to the single note under Bloodworth’s name, and found it even less helpful. Instead of something useful like Bloodworth did it; the Ember is in his basement, his dad had written nothing but a long string of numbers. “And what is that supposed to mean?” he asked, tapping the entry.

  Gwen flipped to the inside cover, showing Jack a label with its own set of digits. “I thought it might be a reference number like this one, a location to help us find a book in the collection, but the string is too long.”

  They both stared at the number for several seconds. Then Gwen suddenly straightened. “Unless . . .” She ran to the Findomatic and cranked the wheel. “Clear!”

  There was another thump as the calico dropped off its perch, giving Gwen a look of pure exasperation. The clerk was too focused to notice. She typed in an entry and pressed RETURN.

  Jack ducked as white bolts shot across the library, lighting up the shelves with streams of electricity. A thick volume popped out on the third level.

  “It isn’t just a reference number,” exclaimed Gwen, setting the journal back on the desk as she rushed by on her way to the nearest spiral stair. “It’s a reference number and a page.”

  Jack hesitated, processing what she meant. Then he jinked around Shaw’s chair and ran for a different stair, closer to the book. He, Gwen, and the calico all reached it at the same time. The title on the binder read AN ACCOUNT OF CURIOSITIES OF THE LORD MAYORS OF LONDON BY JOSEPH FOWLER VI 1845.

  Gwen showed none of her previous patience. She pulled the book from its brass tray and started paging through. “Two twenty-four. Two twenty-four,” she repeated as she flipped through the text. “Those were the last three digits in your father’s number.” When she finally got there, it was clear someone else had already dog-eared the page. Page 224 was the start of a new chapter, with the heading THOMAS BLOODWORTH 1665–1666. Above the heading was a black-and-white portrait of a portly man wearing a stern expression and a long curly wig.

  The clerk paced down the narrow walkway as she read, stepping over the cat, which had stretched itself out across her path. “Several passages are underlined”—she reversed course at the stairwell, giving Jack a sour look—“in pen. Do you know how old this book is?”

  “Gwen, what does it say?”

  “Oh. Right.” She strode toward him, nose down in the book again. “Lord Bloodworth made some quirky moves in his time. In 1665 he had a glass booth installed in his London offices. He feared the commoners all carried the plague, so he would sit inside the box whenever one came to see him.”

  “A glass box.” Jack flattened his expression. “Dad was really grasping there.”

  “He was building a profile.” The clerk came to a stop in front of Jack, feet together. “Which is simply good detective work.” She made an about-face and continued pacing. “Bloodworth also used press-gangs to roust the poor out of the city, and he set those bonfires we read about on Barking Tower, attempting to smoke the plague out of the slums. Another of his brilliant ideas was to order the slaughter of eighty thousand cats.”

  “Cats?”

  The calico lowered its ears and moaned.

  “I know,” said Gwen, acknowledging the animal as she passed on her circuit. “That blunder allowed the rats to flourish, probably making the plague exponentially worse.”

  Jack was growing impatient. Glass boxes and dead cats were great, but he had hoped for a smoking gun. “Is there anything about the artifact or Robert Hubert?”

  “Not exactly. But the writer does say that Bloodworth sponsored foreign candidates for the guild. He favored basket weavers, gun makers, and—”

  “Clockmakers.”

  “Who else? And then there’s this.” Gwen turned the book around so Jack could see, indicating the last sentence in the chapter. His dad had circled it twice.

  Lord Bloodworth despised the poor, often commenting that they had brought the plague to his city, robbing him of the dignity of his office.

  “So Bloodworth hated the commoners.” Jack dismissed the text with a shrug. “Circumstantial.”

  “Hearsay, actually.” Gwen closed the book with a definitive whump. “But Farriner said, ‘The mayor betrayed us.’ That’s got to mean Bloodworth’s our man.”

  “Unless the baker only wrote that because he blamed the mayor for refusing to help him fight the fire.” Jack sighed and checked his watch. The afternoon was passing too quickly. “We have to make a decision. We don’t have time to look into both Bloodworth and the Duke of York.”

  “Personally, I fav
or the Duke of York,” Shaw piped in from below, thumbing through the journal. “Wot, with ’im sympathizin’ wi’ the French? An’ all those arsonists vanishin’ into thin air? Now, that’s a dodgy bloke if ever I saw one.”

  The other two, along with the calico, turned from their conversation to stare down at the warden in shock.

  “Di’n’t think I was payin’ attention, did ya?” Shaw let out a swinish snort, leaning back in the leather chair and placing his hands behind his head, stretching the limits of his tweed jacket. “Anyways, I don’t favor the mayor for it, turnin’ up at the bak’ry so quick like that. That’d be returnin’ to the scene of the crime, now, wouldn’t it?”

  A piece of the puzzle floating through Jack’s mind suddenly snapped into place. “The scene of the crime,” he said quietly. He turned to Gwen. “I need a map of London—one that shows us what it looked like the day before the fire.”

  Chapter 38

  “WAIT.” THE ARCHIVIST held up a warning hand, keeping Shaw from stepping out onto her gondola. She motioned for Gwen and Jack to board first, and the cat reclaimed its position atop the books. When the Archivist finally did allow the warden to step on, the balloon dropped of its own accord, without any venting of air.

  “Jack needs to see the Map,” said Gwen, settling down onto the gondola bench.

  The Archivist nodded as if she knew exactly which map, but Jack couldn’t see how. Gwen had offered no other explanation. “One from the 1660s,” he added, just to be sure.

  “Relax, Jack.” Gwen’s freckles rose into a grin. “She knows the Map you need.”

  The elevator-style doors to the Ministry Express and the Guildhall rose through the light of the lanterns, passing above them, as did the empty spaces where the old book from the Clockmakers’ Guild and the shipping manifests had rested on the shelf. And still they descended.

  Gwen lowered her voice. “We’re entering the section dedicated to the Ministry of Secrets. Below these shelves are the oldest records of the Archive, those belonging to the Ministry of Dragons.”

  If they were nearing the Ministry of Dragons section, they were nearing the bottom. Yet, looking over the side, Jack still could not see the floor. He was dying to know what was down there. “If we’re close,” he offered, “why not go all the way down and recover the manifests?” He did not bother to whisper, and earned a harsh look from Gwen for the offense.

  “That would not be a good idea,” said the Archivist. “Not all mysteries are meant to be solved, Jack.” Even she kept her voice low, which Jack found particularly unsettling. As if to punctuate her warning, a grating rumble rose from the black. Jack pulled back from the rail and looked wide-eyed at Gwen, but the clerk was studying her hands, chewing her bottom lip.

  Before Jack could ask any more questions, the Archivist punched her pedal and the gondola bumped to a stop against the wall. Where Jack expected to see a door, he saw a flat slab of dragonite instead. “Um . . . ,” he whispered, not wishing to be rude to the blind woman but not knowing how else to phrase his concern. “I think you missed.”

  The Archivist gracefully kicked her stool around and laid a hand on the stone. To Jack’s astonishment, the dragonite dematerialized, exposing a door behind, made entirely of midnight-blue marble. “Magic,” he breathed, before his brain could catch up to his mouth.

  The Archivist sniffed. “Don’t be absurd.” She stood back, pulling open the gate. “Mind the gap, please.”

  Jack was first through the door, into a small chamber. The walls were made of the same dark blue marble, with shelves carved into them, as empty as the niches in the baker’s tomb. A simple iron chandelier hung low over the center, gas flames quietly hissing, casting a pool of yellow light over what Jack assumed must be the Map.

  It seemed more like a big copper box than a map table, with sheer sides instead of legs, each a patchwork of plates joined by little hinges. Copper plates also made up every detail of the model of London on top, right down to the river winding its way through the center.

  “I think you’re going to like this.” Gwen strode past on her way to the map table, then Shaw and the Archivist, leaving her balloon hovering outside. The calico came last, skirting around the Map. It disappeared down a passageway in the shadows beyond.

  “Where—?”

  “I believe he keeps his litter box back there,” answered the Archivist before Jack could finish the question.

  “The cat keeps his litter box in the Ministry of Secrets section?”

  “Where else would he keep it?”

  Gwen guided Jack around to the other side of the table, where four crank wheels of steadily diminishing size were attached. On the table’s edge, engraved between a pair of rearing dragons, were the words LONDON, 1066 TO THE PRESENT, and a rolling date counter set to 7 p.m., 20 March 1413.

  “ ‘To the present.’ ” Jack read the words aloud as if that would help him make sense of them. “How can a map cover an indefinite period?”

  “September second, 1666. At midnight, please.” Gwen tugged Jack out of the way as the Archivist cranked the largest of the wheels, rolling the years forward. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of gears ground within the box. The city sped forward through time.

  Plates rapidly clicked, folding upon themselves and unfolding again in new shapes. Lines of houses collapsed while others rose up from empty fields. The copper Thames roiled. Then, as the Archivist moved to each successive wheel, the rate of change slowed. The counter rolled to 12 a.m., 2 September 1666 with a slow and final click.

  Jack walked around the table. “This is London right before the fire?”

  Gwen nodded.

  The streets were so cluttered with ramshackle tenements as to be useless. The houses had grown together, the upper floors reaching across the streets so that the roofs nearly joined, making caves of the lanes below. Shacks and hovels clung to the buildings like fungus, blocking off whole roads. Just west of Pudding Lane, where the greatest clutter had grown, a single narrow gate led to a slum that covered dozens of acres, with a labyrinth of interior alleys and courtyards. How could anyone have escaped such a place once the flames hit?

  Gwen hovered at Jack’s shoulder. “They called that Little Tyburn, named for the gallows outside the city walls. Laws did not apply in there. The wooden walls kept the authorities out, and tens of thousands of the city’s poorest tenants in.”

  “And where is Covent Garden? The neighborhood where Bloodworth lived.”

  “Why?”

  Jack almost smiled. Gwen hadn’t figured it out yet. “Just show me.”

  The clerk moved down the map, a good distance from Little Tyburn, until she came to the spot where the Thames took a hefty turn to the south. She pointed to a well-organized collection of streets, lined with tall row houses. “Here.”

  Jack let his eyes drift between the two neighborhoods, taking in the distance and the growing jumble of shacks that clogged the streets the closer he got to the baker’s house. “How could Bloodworth have made it to the fire so quickly?” he asked, walking slowly along the Map. “It would have taken a messenger an hour to get through all this mess, and at least another hour to drag our drunken mayor back to Pudding Lane.”

  Realization washed over Gwen’s face. “But Bloodworth was there well before the fire spread to the nearby houses. He had to have been there within the first few minutes. And that’s not possible, unless . . .”

  Jack came to a stop next to Shaw. “The Lord Mayor didn’t return to the scene of the crime at all,” he said, slapping the warden on the back as hard as he dared. “He never left.”

  Chapter 39

  GWEN STARED AT Jack across the table, looking crestfallen. His hands fell to his sides. “Wait. What’s wrong? I figured it out. I thought you’d be impressed.”

  Her freckles bounced, but not quite high enough to form a smile, even a fleeting one. “I am . . . sort of. It’s just that . . . you know . . . you’re the tracker. You make the observations. I’m the one who makes the
deductions, at least the big ones. That’s our thing, isn’t it?”

  He frowned. “We’ve known each other like six hours. We don’t have a thing.”

  “And if you start making the big deductions, where does that leave me?”

  Shaw’s big head turned from one to the other, his mouth slightly open. “  ’Ave you two gone bonkers? Three and a ’alf million lives’re on the line, remember?”

  “Right. Of course.” Gwen held a hand out over Covent Garden. “So Bloodworth sponsors a French clockmaker applying to the London guild, hoping to share in his profits. But when the masterpiece arrives, powered by this incredible source of heat, he’s inspired.” She moved to Little Tyburn. “He sees a way to end the plague that’s ruining his career—a better way than killing cats or ordering bonfires in hopes that one would get out of control.”

  “It’s midnight. No one’s around.” Jack jumped in to continue her stream of thought. “Bloodworth seizes the moment and tosses his prize through the window by the ovens, releasing the Ember from whatever casing Hubert built to control it.”

  The clerk shot him a glare. Apparently Jack was still in trouble for beating her to the big deduction. “But,” she said, continuing on her own, “the Ember is more powerful than Bloodworth expects. The fire burns through the slums and keeps on going, burning five-sixths of the city.” Gwen nodded slowly. “So that’s how the Ember got to the bakery.” Then she furrowed her brow, looking down at the Map again. “But where did it go from there?”

  “The cobbler!” exclaimed Jack. “The cobbler saved us. We know Farriner was right about the mayor. Maybe he was right about the cobbler, too. If the mayor started the fire by releasing the Ember, then the cobbler put the fire out by regaining control of it.” He spread his hands. “We have to find the cobbler. We find him, we find the Ember.”

  Gwen’s jaw dropped. “You did it again. Stop that.” She frowned at him for a long time, then turned to the Archivist. “Roll the hours forward through the fire, please.”