Blondin had appeared by Prince’s side, like a genie out of a bottle. Not a hair of his brilliantined head was out of place; though triumphant, he was calm. He held up a hand for silence and when the clapping had ceased gave a bow. “Gentlemen, I give you my assistant Barney,” the Great Blondin shouted, “and I give special thanks to someone with true sporting blood who has permitted this little imposture. Put your hands together for—” the rest of his words were drowned out as a man, who had been sitting quietly in a shadowy corner of the room, rose. As he stood up his head was illuminated in the flare of a gaslight. Those bushy whiskers, that genial smile. The round cheeks so reminiscent of his mother, Queen Victoria. How could anyone have been taken in by a mere actor? This was the genuine article. Unmistakably the real Prince of Wales! His Royal Highness Albert Edward.
The other man was an acrobat playing the Prince. And the Prince himself was here to witness the trick on his future subjects. What a stunt! Never before had the halls of the Alhambra resounded with such a fever of clapping and cheering.
We couldn’t afford to linger, though. “Look sharp,” I hissed to my friends and dived into the backstage muddle. We wandered past more ballet girls who were getting ready, amongst a froth of pink tutus, for their famous dolphin show. We went down a dark corridor lit by only a couple of spluttering lamps—we had to find the props room.
“Where’s Isaac?” I turned around, noticing with a pang of fear that he was not with us. If anything happened to him Rachel would never speak to me again. Hurriedly Waldo and I retraced our steps. Isaac was back in the wings, staring at a small boy who was collecting iron cannon balls and placing them in a wooden box. This was what theatrical folk called the “thunder run.” It was the boy’s job to roll the iron balls down the wooden channel and make the noise we’d heard before Blondin’s act—the din of an approaching storm.
“What are you thinking of ? Wandering off like this!” I hissed to Isaac.
Isaac came out of his reverie with a start. “I’ve had an idea, Kit!”
“Isaac!”
“What?”
“This is not the time for one of your ideas.”
“Thing is … I could make a much better system for creating the sound of thunder. If we hung a metal chute from the ceiling, powered it say with a compressed steam engine—the engine could fire off the balls at a rate—”
I grabbed Isaac by the arm and forcibly pulled him along with me. We turned left, snaking along the same badly lit corridor.
“Isaac,” I blurted with sudden inspiration. “I’ve a special job for you.”
“You have?”
“We need a look-out. It’s vital—but not in the Alhambra. When we find the mummy we need someone to keep the coast clear.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I want you to wait on Charing Cross Road, check for the villains we saw around Velvet Nell, keep your ears and eyes open. Concentrate now, this is really important!”
Isaac, who is so absentminded he is rarely trusted with real tasks, was thrilled. He scampered away, toward the stage door. I only prayed he would find his way to Charing Cross Road. Meanwhile Waldo and I continued down the passageway. We both noticed a sign which said: “PROPS” at the same time, and simultaneously broke into a run.
Waldo made it just before me. He opened the door, revealing a large space filled with the most incredible collection of junk. Right in front of us was a table, set as if for afternoon tea with white lace doilies and china cups and saucers. There was a big gold and glass case, bound all over and secured with a stout padlock. A stuffed monkey, two dogs and a parrot. A large hanging depicting Venus rising out of the waves. A dolphin modeled from clay, identical to the one in the wings, except this one had a large crack in its head.
“How are we going to find anything among this rubbish?” I groaned.
“Let’s do this properly,” Waldo suggested. “I’ll start at the back. You keep a look-out.”
“No! I’ll do the searching, Waldo.”
“Bossed by a chit of a girl! The way you talk to me you’d think I was the younger one!”
I was tempted to point out that Waldo was only older than me by a few months. Anyway, girls are certainly more mature than boys, but I didn’t want to annoy him.
“Keeping a look-out is more dangerous. I’m scared to hang about in this dark passage by myself.”
Waldo looked suspicious; he guessed he was being tricked, but reluctantly agreed. I nipped back into the props room, turned on a lamp and began searching from the back. Oh it was a hopeless task! Finding a pearl in the sea would be easier. Everything was a mess. A pile of painted canvas scenes and ballet girl props under the tiny window. I was holding up a long, thin pole with a hoop on the top and wondering what on earth it could be for when Waldo dived back into the room with an urgent cry.
“Hide! Quick!”
I turned off the lamp. We dived into the same place, behind a bookcase filled with leather-bound volumes. A few fell on the floor. They were fake, blocks of wood painted to look like books.
“I’m all done in. Why has it gotta be tonight, Barney?”
Peeping out through a chink in the bookcase I could see the speaker was a stocky man in a yellow jersey. Another man strolled in. His performer’s stockings peeped out underneath a velvet dressing gown trimmed with gold braid. Everything about him—from the way he sat down on an upturned box, to the time he took replying to the question while he puffed slowly on his cigar—was arrogant.
“That’s what ’Er Majesty wants. Never question orders if you wanna get ahead in this game.”
“We’re fagged out. Me head hurts. Me knees ’ave got cramp. I bin up slavin” on this “ere show since—”
“Nell doesn’t give a hoot about your knees,” Barney replied. I realized he was the acrobat who’d impersonated the Prince of Wales though he looked very different now he’d removed his false whiskers.
“Where’s it orf to then?”
“Baker Brothers want it. Round at 101 Eaton Square, Mayfair. Use the tradesmen’s entrance.”
“The Baker Brothers?” the stagehand’s voice dropped in awe and I felt my own heart miss a beat. I must have misheard. It couldn’t be right, not the Baker Brothers!
“Them swells.”
“Everyone is swells to the likes of you.”
“Wot do they want wiv a ’orrible old stinkin” mummy?’
“Did yer go to school?” Barney’s voice had dropped to a menacing murmur.
“No, Barney.”
“Do yer know how to read and write?”
“No.”
“Do we pay you to think? Or do we pay yer to use those big, stupid muscles to move things?”
“Er …”
“We pay you for your muscles, you glocky moron. If we wanted brains we’d hire a professor. So stop boring me to me grave and get a move on!”
Barney obviously saw himself as the brains. He didn’t exert himself at all. He stretched back, puffing out a cloud of smoke, while the poor stagehand frantically jumped to attention, moving the clutter of props about in his search for the mummy. Finally, I could see, he unearthed a box, about the same shape and size as the original mummy case. The man opened it up and Barney strolled over and took a look inside.
“That’s all in order. Yer can load it up,” Barney said. “There’s a hansom carriage waiting outside. Can you manage it yerself ?”
The man tried. He lifted it up, till his muscles stood out like knots of oak. It was no good, the packing case was simply too large and unwieldy.
“All right,” Barney lazily strolled out of the door. We heard a piercing whistle and a moment later who should appear in the room but our old friend Jabber.
“Get this out of ’ere. Sharpish,” Barney ordered.
“Righto, Bender!” Jabber said.
“Oi! How many times ’ave I told yer not to call me by that name!” Barney gave Jabber a smack round the ear. “Get a move on, yer insolent toad.”
>
Jabber kept his mouth shut after that, which must have been an effort. Together the man and the boy shifted the packing case to the door and then disappeared down the corridor.
Meanwhile, crouched behind the bookcase in a position which made my calves ache I was falling victim to a fresh bout of despair. We’d been so close! In another few minutes I might have found the mummy. Now it was gone. Out of our reach.
I had failed, again.
I was getting a bad case of cramp in this tight, airless space. Waldo, who is quite a bit taller than I, looked even more squashed than I felt. I hoped that the loathsome “Bender” Barney would go away, leaving us free to try and follow the hansom cab with the mummy. But not a bit of it. While we struggled to breathe, he sat on his box, puffing away, carefree and apparently deep in thought. He looked like he’d settled down for a good, long smoke.
Suddenly Waldo sneezed. It sounded like a box of fireworks exploding.
“Rats in the wainscoting, eh?” Lazily Barney arose from the case and paced toward us.
I curled myself against the wall, willing Waldo to remain silent with all my might.
“I don’t remember no rodents in ’ere,” Barney said to himself. Did he know where we were? He was almost upon us, then at the last moment he turned to the left and pushed aside a large case. I saw him look behind the case and then, disappointed, move away. Still puffing away on his cigar, he began to pace silently up and down the small space in the center of the room. We held our breaths. Then, as if the movement exhausted him, he sat down again on his box and flicked the stump of his cigar on the floor.
“No one likes vermin,” Barney said. “Human-shaped, animal-shaped or vermin-shaped.”
Abruptly, he stood up. He was looking straight at us. Had we made a noise? Something was glinting in his hand as he stalked up to the bookcase, reached behind it and pulled me out, Waldo stumbling after me.
“Kids.” Barney looked us over in disgust. “Wot are yer? Stagehands or what? Scarper or I’ll call the manager.” The glinting thing in his hand was a peashooter, a tiny pistol no bigger than a lady’s fist.
We “scarpered.” Waldo dashing off first. We had almost made it to the door when Barney swore. His hand stretched out and grabbed me from behind by my shoulder. My blouse ripped, leaving a strip of cloth in the thug’s hand.
“Hold up. Turn round. You ain’t the kids Velvet Nell’s got a bee in her bonnet about, are you? She got the whole family searching for the little rats who’ve bin hanging around Zwinglers. Blooming hell, I’ll bet you are. I recognize the description. Girl who acts like a lad, that’s what she said. All right, hands up, I’m taking you straight to Nell.”
The peashooter was pointed at my chest. Poised to blow a perfect hole through my heart. I raised my hands above my head. The shame of it was I couldn’t stop them trembling.
A leer splitting his lips, the acrobat walked up to me, till he was an inch from my face. He smelt foul. He placed the gun against my neck. My breath caught in my throat, muscles seizing up all the way to my stomach. Barney could see my fear and he enjoyed it. He was smiling. Smiling.
Chapter Fifteen
“You two will be fish-food before the sun rises.”
Bender moved the barrel of the pistol along my neck. I couldn’t feel anything, except the gun, cold against my skin. Finally, after what seemed an age, he took it away and I could breathe again.
“See, Nell don’t know the meaning of mercy. Ask her what the word means. Go on, give it a try. She’ll probably think it’s a new kind of ladies’ fashion,” the man assumed an odious falsetto voice: “‘The Mercy Corset Essential for all Ladies of Taste and Refinement.’”
Keeping his eyes on us, Bender Barney lounged back against the wall, the deadly toy in his hand covering us both. Without the whiskers he’d worn in his disguise as the Prince of Wales there was a repulsive weakness in his chin. His tiny mouth disappeared into folds of fat, seeming almost to merge with his neck.
“Never seen Nell so angry. Well, not since last yesterday. Said you lot are toffs. Pokin” around where you’re not wanted.’
“You’ve got the wrong children, sir,” I managed to stutter. “We’re just stagehands.”
As soon as I’d uttered a word I realized I’d done the wrong thing. My voice bred in Oxford had given me away. Barney would realize instantly that I was no street urchin.
“You’ve got the wrong children, sir!” Viciously Barney mocked my accent. “Thank you, your ladyship. You’ve saved us a lot of bother, coming here nice and easy. Lambs to the slaughter, that’s wot I say. Look sharp. Out, quick.” Waving the gun, he directed us out of the door.
I could take nothing in. Make no plans. I felt sick, my brain aflame with fevered thoughts. It was I who had planned this silly escapade. It would all be my fault if we were murdered and—as Barney promised—bundled into the Thames.
An explosion cut through me. Followed by an awful rattling. I turned, startled.
Waldo and Barney were intertwined, a flailing mass of arms and legs. For a moment I could make no sense of it at all. Then I saw Barney firing his gun, while Waldo struggled to catch his hand. Bang, a bullet ricocheted off a tin picture of the Duke of Wellington. I stood and stared, like a fool. What was wrong with me? I felt sluggish. As if wading through treacle.
Waldo struck Barney hard on the chest, cutting off his breath. Barney retaliated with a nasty kick at Waldo’s knee. The pea-shooter was firing wildly, a stream of bullets zinging crazily through the room. I snapped to and ran to them. Jumping up I tried to grab the gun.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Waldo roared. “You’ll be shot.”
He landed an uppercut to Barney’s jaw. The thug’s head flopped to the side. I kicked him and Waldo followed up with a punch in his chest. Bender sagged, slumping to the floor in a heap of satin and velvet.
“Oh …” I gasped and couldn’t go on, my breathing was so painful. I stood in the doorway, trembling.
Waldo regarded me for an instant, eyes blazing. He was furious. “I—” he began and stopped. Abruptly he turned away: “Better make a run for it. Before he comes round.”
I followed Waldo down the corridor, feeling very shaky. I was ashamed of my pathetic behavior. I, who had always prided myself on being different from the Minchin and the other fools who fainted at the hint of blood. Instead of being brave I had turned into jelly. Was it fear that made me react so feebly? I was ashamed of myself.
“Get a hold of yourself, Kit,” Waldo turned round, breaking into my reverie. I’d realized I had come to a standstill. “We have to be quick.”
We skirted our way through a maze of corridors, till we found signs for the stage door. The people we passed paid us no heed. Then we tumbled out of the theater into the chill night air of a back alley. Straight into fog. As thick as wood smoke, it curled along the alley, reducing visibility to a couple of yards. Through the murk we could see the outlines of a couple of loungers, the shadows of a few horses further down. No sign of a hansom carriage. Infuriatingly the mummy must already be well on its way to the Baker Brothers’ home. It was very late, nearly midnight by Waldo’s pocket watch.
We crept down the alley into the fairytale world of Leicester Square. The blazing front of the Alhambra competed with the illuminations of the Turkish Baths next door. Some instinct made me tug Waldo back. He had been about to step into the arc of gaslight. A moment later I spotted some familiar faces, shining sickly greenish-gray through the fog. The Velvet Mob. Among them, looking very gray indeed, was Barney. How had he recovered so quickly? Maybe he was a magician as well as an acrobat. There was a huge commotion in front of the theater. Several of the mob were shouting. In the midst of them I had a glimpse of Nell in a scarlet cloak, her lily-white face furious. A shiver went through me, I would not want to be one of her gang tonight.
We had an advantage over the hoodlums. London was on our side. Under cover of the smog, we made our way; keeping out of lamp-lit streets, taking comfort from the
shadows of the towering buildings. We came into Charing Cross Road and I spotted our friend. For once he had done as he was told and was waiting outside a bookseller’s. Isaac is not a patient boy. He was wriggling around on the pavement as if he had ants in his shirt.
A carriage clipped toward us and a friendly driver peered down from the cab.
“Want a ride ’ome, miss?”
I glanced at Waldo. We had just enough money for the fare and we were both exhausted.
“Thanks, cabbie.” Waldo scrambled in and I followed. I was just about to request the driver to stop for Isaac when I felt a pressure on my arm. Someone was squeezing me roughly. I turned, about to protest when my words died on my lips. Looming out of the shadows was a familiar face. Those repulsive lips, merging smoothly into the chin. Those malicious, piggy eyes.
Bender Barney! How had he come to be sitting in the back of this cab?
“Hello, me lovely.” He grinned and lifted one hand lazily, the fabric of my blouse dangled from his fingers.
Bender was covering Waldo with his pistol. How could we have been so stupid? We’d handed ourselves to the Velvet Mob. On a platter.
Isaac. At least he had a chance. I leaned forward, sticking my head out of the doorway and screamed at my friend on the pavement below. “Run, Isaac. Run. They’ve got us!” was all I managed before Bender removed his hand from Waldo’s mouth and clapped it over mine.
Isaac looked up at me startled, still wriggling about crazily. His eyes met mine. Then he moved. A streak sped across the deserted street, faster than anyone could run. An illusion almost, a smooth blur of matter and light. Grazing the horses noses as it zoomed past.
The horses went wild, rearing up in alarm. The cab toppled to the side. Panic blossomed inside me. I was dimly aware of trampling horses, firing guns, bodies falling heavily against me. The window smashed into a hundred glittering pieces. A shard of glass speared Bender’s top hat, close to taking out his eye. His hand fell, and his gun dropped to the floor. I grabbed part of the window frame and bashed Bender on the head.
“Take that!” I screamed.
The Mummy Snatcher of Memphis Page 9