Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms Read online

  The front door was open. He took off his shoes and made a dash for the stairs.

  “Oh, there you are!” said his mother, opening the door from the kitchen.

  “Hello!” He was surprised. She wasn’t usually at home until halfway through the evening.

  “We had a flood in the lab,” she told him. “A pipe burst, so I thought I would take an afternoon off, for once.”

  “Aha!” said his father, looking over her shoulder. “I thought I could detect a somewhat mephitic odor, and now I can see its alluvial origin.”

  “I fell over in some smelly mud,” said Stuart.

  “Oh, so you did,” acknowledged his mother, apparently noticing his head-to-foot sludge coating for the first time. “Anyway, we’re expecting guests,” she continued. “I was just thinking that it must be a bit lonely for you here in Beeton, and then I bumped into some children, exactly your age, right on this street, and I thought, seize the moment …”

  Oh, no, thought Stuart. Oh, no.

  “… and I invited them around for tea.”

  The doorbell rang.

  “And here they are!” said his mother.

  She opened the front door—and there stood the Kingley triplets. Three sets of eyes gazed at Stuart. Three faces registered disgust and horror at his appearance. Three noses wrinkled at the smell.

  “Hello, Stuart,” said the one with glasses.

  “I’ll just go and get washed,” he said, and fled up the stairs.

  He took as long as he possibly could, but when his mother called up to him for the third time, Stuart knew he could avoid it no longer.

  “Your guests are in the dining room,” she said to him as he came down the stairs with incredible slowness. “I’m not going to bother you,” she added. “I know there’s nothing worse than parents interfering. I’ll leave you alone to enjoy yourselves.”

  Stuart opened the door.

  The triplets were sitting around the table. They looked at him in silence.

  Avoiding their gaze, he sat down on the only empty chair. On the table was a plate of peanut-butter sandwiches, a plate of scones with jam and cream, a plate of chocolate brownies, and a plate of mini cupcakes. He took two of everything and began to eat.

  One of the triplets tutted disapprovingly. “Manners makyth man,” she said.

  “What?” asked Stuart, his mouth full.

  “It’s a quote,” she said. “It means you shouldn’t speak with your mouth full, and you should offer food to guests before you start eating yourself.”

  Stuart shrugged. “You can die of starvation, for all I care. And if you’re talking about manners, then what do you call following someone around and taking pictures of them and writing horrible things about them in a stupid newspaper?”

  “We call it investigative journalism,” said one of the triplets.

  “I call it snooping,” said Stuart.

  “We at the Beech Road Guardian—” began a triplet.

  “You at the Nosy Parker Weekly,” interrupted Stuart, imitating her prissy little voice.

  “Now you’re being rude,” said another triplet. “And if we’re going to—”

  The door opened, and they all stopped talking and sat upright. Stuart’s mom poked her head into the room. “Everyone having a good time?” she asked.

  They all nodded. Mrs. Horten shut the door again.

  “Now, where were we?” asked a triplet.

  “I was being rude to you,” said Stuart.

  “No, you were being rude to her,” said the triplet, nodding at one of her sisters.

  Stuart shrugged again. “Can’t see it makes any difference. You’re all exactly the same.”

  “No, we’re not!” screamed the girls.

  The door opened again. “Still having a good time?” asked Stuart’s mother. They all nodded. “I forgot to say,” she added, “there was a phone call for you from the library, Stuart. They wanted to tell you that the missing photo from the book has turned up. Does that make sense?”

  “Yes,” said Stuart. “Thanks.”

  His mother closed the door again.

  “We’re nothing like each other,” continued one of the triplets immediately. “June’s hair has got a parting on the left, mine’s got a parting on the right, and April has got glasses.”

  “Well, you all sound the same,” said Stuart.

  “Not when you get to know us.”

  “But I’ve already known you for three months,” said Stuart. “Get it?” he added. “April, May, and June?”

  “Oh, very funny,” said April, the one with the glasses. “And if you’re going to make jokes about names, then you’d better be careful, Mr. S. Horten. Bet you get called ‘Shorty.’”

  “Bet you get called ‘Speccy,’” snapped Stuart. He could tell from her expression—a wince—that she did.

  The door opened again. This time it was Stuart’s father. “I’m here to take an order for potables,” he said. “We have a wide choice of citrus cordials and also a gaseous syrup-based libation.”

  “Cola, please,” said Stuart.

  “Same for us, please,” said June.

  “I shall be back precipitately with your chosen beverages,” announced his father, leaving the room.

  There was a pause, and then May and June looked at each other and sniggered.

  “He’s weird!” said May.

  Stuart took a breath and was about to say something really, truly, incredibly rude to her (because, although she was right that his dad was weird, it was still his dad) when April unexpectedly spoke up.

  “It’s not fair to laugh,” she said sharply to her sisters. “No one can help their parents. What about when our mom sings? What about our dad’s shorts that he wore to the school party last year, which had a hole in the butt? We hated it when people made fun of him.”

  May and June looked a tiny bit shamefaced.

  “So, anyway,” said April, turning to Stuart. “Why were you trying to break into that house?”

  “Don’t you ever give up?” asked Stuart. He’d just at that moment been beginning to think that perhaps April wasn’t quite as bad as the other two.

  She shook her head. “A good crime reporter never wastes an opportunity.”

  “Okay,” he said tiredly. “My great-uncle Tony used to live there, so I was curious about it. I just wanted to look around.” He sat back and folded his arms.

  “That’s it?” asked April.

  “That’s it.”

  “Simple curiosity?”

  “Simple curiosity.”

  “I see.” She reached into her pocket and took out a very small glittery notepad, and leafed back through the pages. “So at that point, were you already aware that the building in question was the subject of a demolition order?”

  Stuart gaped at her. “What?” he managed to say.

  “Your great-uncle’s house is going to be knocked down,” she said. “Didn’t you know?”

  CHAPTER 14

  “What are you talking about?” asked Stuart. “What do you mean?”

  “The land’s been taken over by the local council,” said April. “The house has been empty for more than forty years, so they’re going to knock it down and put up a block of apartments instead.”

  “When?”

  “Next week. Monday, I think.”

  “But how do you know?”

  She shook her head. “A good journalist doesn’t reveal her sources.”

  “You’re ten,” snapped Stuart. “You don’t have any sources.”

  April flushed and tossed her head. “Well, as a matter of fact, I heard my dad tell a friend of his,” she said.

  “And how does your dad know?” asked Stuart.

  “He’s a builder,” said all the triplets simultaneously.

  At that point, Stuart’s father came in with the drinks and said, “Behold, I bring hydration for your powwow,” and May and June started giggling again and didn’t stop until the dreadful tea party was over.

/>   But Stuart barely noticed. He was too busy working out exactly when he could get back to Great-Uncle Tony’s house. Because now he was running out of time.

  That night, he set the alarm on his wristwatch for four a.m., and it was still beeping away madly when he eventually woke at ten past six. He hauled himself out of bed and looked through the window. His mother was just wheeling her bicycle up the drive, and he watched her cycle away along the road, orange helmet bobbing. Then he dressed quickly, hung the key on a piece of string around his neck, stuck two of the threepences in his pocket, just in case, and very quietly left the house. He had, he calculated, an hour and a half before his father woke up.

  It took him only five minutes to get to Uncle Tony’s house, whizzing along empty roads in the pale morning light, but when he turned the corner into the street, he braked hard. Work had already started. There was scaffolding up the side of the house and a front loader—empty as yet—squatting in the road outside.

  Someone had unwired the front gate. Stuart pushed it open and waded through the dewy grass to the door. There were still planks nailed across it, but above them a sheet of paper in a plastic envelope had been stapled to the frame. It was too high up for him to read properly, but he could see the words DEMOLITION ORDER in large letters near the top.

  There was still no one about. Quickly he made his way to the back of the house and lifted the key from around his neck. It slid smoothly into the keyhole and turned with a sharp click. He opened the door.

  The first thing Stuart noticed was that it was very, very dark. He’d completely forgotten that all the windows were boarded up, and stupidly he hadn’t thought to bring a flashlight.

  He opened the back door as widely as possible and looked around. He was standing in a large square kitchen, lined with cupboards. He opened one of the cupboards at random and found a chipped mug and a box of matches. Unable to believe his luck, he shook the box and then looked inside: three matches, bent like bananas, lay within. He opened a few more cupboards, but found nothing except old dishes and dead flies, and then he tried under the sink, and unearthed the stub of an old candle.

  The first match folded limply in half when he struck it, but the second produced a tiny, bluish flame. Holding his breath, Stuart held it to the wick. A clear yellow light grew and steadied. Cupping a hand around the flame, he closed the back door again and began to explore.

  There were two doors out of the kitchen. The first led to a small cellar, festooned with cobwebs and empty except for a pile of coal. The second door opened into a passageway. Stuart walked along it cautiously, the candle flame dancing.

  Through an arch to the left was a dining room, the table covered with what looked like a gray furry cloth. Stuart touched it, and his finger sunk to the knuckle. It wasn’t a cloth, but a layer of dust as thick as a rug. He continued along the passage and through another arch into a long living room, the walls glinting with framed pictures, the furniture as dusty as the table had been.

  He paused beside one of the pictures. It was a theater poster for the Nottingham Hippodrome, and at the top of the list of acts was Great-Uncle Tony’s name, accompanied by a small black-and-white photograph. As Stuart peered up at his great-uncle’s face—like a sparkier version of his own father’s—the candle flame began to flicker wildly, and he realized that there was a draft swirling around his knees. He took a step back and saw a broad, empty fireplace, almost invisible in the shadows. He shielded the flame and moved on into the front hall.

  In the trembling yellow light, Stuart explored room after room. In the downstairs study, he found a family of mice nesting in the ruined seat of a chair. In the bathroom he disturbed a bat, which flew in worried loops around his head. In one of the upstairs bedrooms he found a wardrobe full of moths and a drawer heaving with beetles.

  At every turn, he expected to stumble upon something significant, but all he could find was wildlife. Admittedly, the beetles were fascinating, scrambling over one another as they panicked in the candlelight. Stuart stood staring at them for at least a minute before realizing that a low noise coming from outside the house was getting louder.

  It was a truck, backing up. And there were shouts too, and boots on the pavement and the whine of the gate hinge. He went over to the window and tried to peer through a slit between the boards, but before he could see anything at all he heard a regular thud, thud, thud and realized that someone was climbing up the ladder onto the scaffolding.

  And from downstairs, he could hear a ripping, tearing noise, as someone else started to pull the planks away from the front door.

  Stuart blew out the candle and ran for it.

  CHAPTER 15

  Stuart hurtled down the stairs, just as sunlight flooded through the newly uncovered stained glass of the front door, illuminating the jaunty hat and wand and the letters T-T TH. The living room was still in darkness, and as he tried to hurry he found himself kicking a footstool halfway across the room. The crash sounded enormous, but by now there seemed to be crashes coming from all sides of the house.

  He carried on groping his way toward the kitchen, but before he got there he heard a different sort of noise: quieter but distinct. It was the sound of the back door being opened.

  “Here, it’s not locked,” said a man’s voice, surprised.

  Stuart stood paralyzed. If he was caught, he’d get into trouble. The builders might even tell the police, but they’d definitely, definitely tell his parents. If his mom and dad found out that he’d been trespassing on condemned property at seven in the morning, then they wouldn’t trust him to go off by himself at all, and then that would be that—the whole quest smashed, the trail frozen. The threepences would rust unused, while somewhere in Beeton, Great-Uncle Tony’s workshop would remain forever undiscovered.

  Stuart could hear footsteps crossing the kitchen.

  Was there anywhere he could hide? He looked around frantically, squinting in the darkness. Except that it wasn’t darkness any longer. Another of the boards covering the front window was at that very moment being wrenched free and an arrow of light shot across the room, bouncing off the framed picture that he’d looked at earlier. And all of a sudden, he knew where he could go.

  He scurried over to the fireplace, ducked down, and crawled into it. It was larger than it looked. He could feel the draft stirring the air around him and he realized that if he stood at the back with his head and body actually up the chimney, then only his legs below the knee would be seen from the room, and since his jeans and sneakers were black, he’d be nearly invisible.

  He got in as far as he could and then stood upright. With a painful thud, his head hit something hard.

  “Start in the upstairs bathroom,” said the voice coming along the passageway. “Get the tub out and then strip the piping. It’s all copper.”

  Stuart ducked back down again, clutching his head. He could already feel a lump pushing up under his fingers. He half rose again, extended the other arm and felt around inside the chimney. He could feel the corners of a metal box. He gave it a shove, but it didn’t move; one side of it seemed to be fixed to the brickwork. He stood up as much as he was able, his head crooked awkwardly to one side.

  The clump of boots approached the fireplace.

  “Any of the furnishings worth anything?” asked a second voice.

  “A dealer came around and said he had a client for the big items. The rest is just trash.”

  The boots retreated again, and in a few moments Stuart heard the drumbeat of footsteps going up the stairs. In the living room all was momentarily quiet.

  He took his chance. He crawled out from the fireplace and was about to make a dash for the back door, when the throbbing in his head seemed to push a thought into his brain.

  A metal box.

  A metal box fixed to the front of the chimney.

  He stepped back to the fireplace and looked at the framed poster that hung above it.

  The photograph of Great-Uncle Tony seemed to stare at him. St
uart gripped the bottom of the frame with one hand and lifted it up. There, behind the picture, was the closed door of a small safe inset into the chimney, firmly cemented into place. It had a little dial on the front, with the numbers one to twenty-nine printed around it. And beneath the dial were the words:

  THE MINI HERCULES HOME SAFE

  MANUFACTURED BY

  HORTEN’S MIRACULOUS MECHANISMS

  Stuart had seen safecracking done in films. He turned the wheel, first clockwise, then counterclockwise, then clockwise again. Nothing happened: no clicks, no clacks, no hidden springs. And he knew from films that nothing would happen unless he had exactly the right three-number combination.

  He was just about to have another go when he heard footsteps coming back down the stairs, and he hastily lowered the picture and ran for the kitchen. The back door was still open so he galloped out and across the backyard, using the junk stepping stones that he’d first used only a week ago. As he vaulted from the old grill over the fence and into the neighbor’s compost heap, someone shouted, “Hey, you!” but by that time Stuart knew he was safe.

  It wasn’t until he reached his bicycle that he realized that he’d left his great-uncle’s back-door key sticking out of the lock.

  And it wasn’t until he arrived home and saw April Kingley looking out of the upstairs window of her house, the sun flashing off her glasses, and then saw her mouth drop open with shock, that he realized that he wasn’t looking quite the same as when he’d left the house. The bathroom mirror confirmed it. He was completely coated with soot, and it took half an hour and most of his mother’s Fruit ’n’ Herb X-plozion shower gel, before he was acceptably clean again.

  “That’s a pleasant odor, if a trifle pungent,” said his father, over a late breakfast. “Quince and tarragon?”

  “Strawberry ’n’ mint,” said Stuart, between mouthfuls of cereal. “Dad, say you were a safecracker, and there was a safe with the numbers one to twenty-nine on the dial, and you didn’t know the right combination. How long would it take you to try all of them?”

  “Ah, a problem in probability,” said his father. “Mathematical conundrums would be more your mother’s area, I feel, but I seem to remember from my hours in the classroom that the number of combinations would be twenty-nine to the power of three.”