Death in the Devil's Den Read online

  THE QUICK BROWN FOX

  JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE HUNT

  What on earth did that mean? Alfie thought furiously as he tidied his newspapers. The whole thing did not make sense.

  Then his eyes widened. The man in the fur coat was doing something very strange.

  He crumpled up the narrow strip of paper with the strange words on it; but he did not drop it upon the ground, he did not twist it up and put it in his pocket and he did not tear it into tiny strips and toss them into the foggy air.

  Instead, he put the strip of paper into his mouth, chewed it and swallowed it down. Alfie was near enough to hear the tiny gulp as the lump passed down the throat on its way to the stomach.

  What had been the meaning of that strange sentence? THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG.

  It had to be something important. Otherwise, why did the man swallow it? But what on earth was the purpose of the message?

  I’ll talk it over with Sammy, decided Alfie. Sammy had brains.

  ‘Here you, boy! Come here!’ The shout echoed through the dark street.

  Alfie hesitated and then warily approached. ‘Paper!’ He forced the word out and waved the midnight edition of the Daily Telegraph in front of the man’s face. A strange face, he thought, forgetting his fear in the excitement of the chase. He was near enough now to see what lay behind that side-tilted top hat. One side of the man’s face was ordinary: watery eye, reddish cheekbone, heavy moustache and beard; but the other side was terribly scarred, the lip puckered and, eerily, no hair grew from either moustache or beard on that half of the face. What a strange face for a spy, Alfie thought, the sort of face that no one could help but remember. It certainly wasn’t any of the men that Inspector Denham had shown him.

  Alfie’s eyes went to the man’s pocket. The contents of the envelope made a slight bulge there. Alfie was an accomplished pickpocket. Would it be possible for him to slip it out without the man noticing? Still, that was not what Inspector Denham was paying him for. His instructions were clear. Follow the man; see where he goes; if possible find out where he lives.

  ‘Paper, sir?’ he asked again. ‘There’s a ’orrible murder on page three, sir, read all about it.’

  The man held out a gloved hand and dropped a penny into Alfie’s outstretched palm. Alfie handed over the Daily Telegraph.

  And without reading it or even glancing at it, the man thrust the paper into the other pocket of his fur coat and began to walk briskly down towards Whitehall.

  Alfie dropped back and saw with satisfaction that Tom was already following the spy. He was going to have to dump his papers. The man had the opportunity to have a good look at his face while he was buying the newspaper. Alfie abandoned the Daily Telegraphs without a moment’s qualm. They might not be there when he got back, but he wasn’t going to worry about it. Soon he might be the owner of that five pounds!

  Alfie seized a broom, smeared some liquid mud from a puddle over his face and then followed at a safe distance. Alfie the newspaper boy had outlived his usefulness – now Alfie the road sweeper would have to take his place.

  By the time Alfie overtook Tom, the man in the fur coat had reached Trafalgar Square and was heading towards Pall Mall.

  ‘Never looked once at me,’ murmured Tom as Alfie passed him. ‘But he was a bit nervous-like when he saw a policeman and he crossed over the road to get away from him.’

  Alfie made no sound and did not even look at his cousin. Tom and he had played this game before and both were good actors. Tom was crying ‘Paper, paper!’ now and had turned towards Whitcomb Street. Alfie followed the spy, keeping a safe distance, hoisting his broom over his shoulder and strolling along, glancing from side to side, but never once looking at the man ahead. Occasionally ‘Old-fur-coat’, as he nicknamed him in his mind, glared over his shoulder, but he didn’t even seem to see the road sweeper. Boys like Alfie were almost invisible in the London streets.

  Five minutes later, Tom was in front, and Alfie saw how he was taken by surprise when the man turned suddenly into Albemarle Street. Tom stopped too abruptly, swivelled around too fast and crossed the road when it was clear, allowing himself to be seen under a gas lamp.

  ‘Hey!’ There was a note of suspicion in the voice of the man with the fur coat. Alfie flattened himself into a doorway and watched. Tom was doing the right thing. He had crossed the road again and was looking into a shop window as if he had no interest in the man.

  Alfie stayed where he was. The street was empty and the man was suspicious. Tom had definitely been spotted. He would have to go home.

  Now it was all up to Alfie.

  But then the luck changed for the better. A large group of well-dressed men came out of Brown’s Hotel and headed towards New Bond Street, talking and laughing loudly. The spy lingered and then walked close to them. Now he was almost hidden by the drunken set, but so, too, was Alfie, darting from doorway to doorway, always ready to fade into the shadows if the man looked around once more.

  But he didn’t. He walked quickly and confidently until he left the crowd of merrymakers at the next junction.

  There was a different air about him, Alfie thought. He strode rapidly and purposefully up the street with the appearance of someone who knows where he is going and what he must do.

  Alfie followed cautiously until he reached the broad trunk of a plane tree and leaned against its scaly bark feeling thankful that the nearest gas lamp was well away from him, beside the building where the man had stopped.

  Old-fur-coat didn’t stand on the pavement for long. He took one glance around, saw that no one was in the street and then went quickly up the steps. He pulled the papers from his coat pocket, wrapped them in the newspaper and pushed the copy of the Daily Telegraph into the letterbox, tapped on the knocker, turned and went back down the steps, crossed the road and stood in the shadows of another doorway.

  Alfie smiled to himself. There was a big brass plate fastened to the door where the man had posted his copy of the Daily Telegraph. The light from the gas lamp shone on it and he could read the letters clearly. One line meant nothing to him, just squiggles, but underneath it in ordinary capitals he saw: The Russian Embassy.

  And then the door to the Russian Embassy opened. A man, wearing a white silk evening scarf over his coat and an opera hat on his head, came out of the door and looked up and down the pavement. He was smoking a cigar and the smell of it was unusual, almost perfumed. He began to walk slowly, still smoking, the scent of his cigar drifting in front of him. His eyes rested for a moment on the man in the fur overcoat, and then moved away from him. He yawned, stretched his arms high above his head, the cigar still between his fingers, then strolled across the road to a small garden with an iron railing all around it.

  Without going in, the man from the Russian Embassy took something from his pocket, leaned over the railing and put a small package, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, on to an iron bench just inside the railing. Then he yawned again, puffed a little more on his cigar, crossed back over the road, mounted the steps and re-entered the Russian Embassy.

  Nothing happened for a moment.

  Alfie held his breath and squeezed himself against the tree trunk.

  And then the man in the fur coat, who Alfie was sure by now was the spy from Westminster, walked over quickly. He picked up the small package, thrust it into his pocket and turned back in the direction of Alfie’s tree.

  CHAPTER 6

  SUSPICION

  The spy was within a foot of the tree, and Alfie was prepared to run, when there was a creaking noise from above. A light was switched on in the upstairs window of the house opposite the tree and the window was flung open.

  ‘Look at that moon!’ said a woman’s voice from above and then it was joined by a man’s voice murmuring something. Alfie let his breath out in a gentle sigh of relief. The spy in the fur coat glanced upwards and began to walk briskly away. Alfie stayed very still a
nd waited until the window had been closed again and the curtains drawn over it.

  Then he darted out from behind the tree. Keeping well into the shadows, he went in pursuit.

  The man was easy to follow now. Alfie was prepared for the route and, by the time they were going down Whitehall, he grew careless. He was dead tired and could not stop himself yawning. Only one more thing remained for him to do, and that was to find out where the spy in the fur coat lived – and if possible, to get his name. Then, in a few hours’ time, when Bow Street Police Station opened for the day, he could make his report to Inspector Denham. Alfie spotted an abandoned meat pie on a bench, picked it up and crunched into the hard pastry. It was deliciously full of gravy with little pieces of steak and kidney inside it and it put new energy into him. Soon the long night would be over. This man must live somewhere near.

  But was that really the only thing he could do, he asked himself as they reached Westminster Abbey. The pie had given him courage. After all, he was a practised pickpocket. Surely he could take the brown paper package from the spy’s overcoat pocket? Inspector Denham would be delighted to get it and Alfie himself was very curious to know what was inside the small square parcel.

  Alfie fumbled in his own pocket and picked out a penny. It was a bright new penny and, seen in the dim light of the candle-lit window of Westminster Abbey, it could pass for a half-crown. In a second he was beside the man, holding out the penny and saying in an angelic tone of voice:

  ‘Beg your pardon, sir, you dropped this, sir.’

  At the same time, his other hand slid into the wide entrance of the fur-coat pocket.

  It did not work, though. The man hardly glanced at the penny, but instantly felt the threat to his parcel. A hand like a bone crusher gripped Alfie’s wrist and twisted it mercilessly.

  And the other hand produced something long and pointed from a concealed pocket inside the stout leather boots.

  Within one inch of Alfie’s neck was the long, wickedly sharp blade of a knife.

  Could he escape? Alfie looked around wildly, struggling silently against the grip on his wrist, digging his nails into the man’s soft palm and lowering his teeth towards the hand.

  All around him were stately buildings, places for the rich: the Houses of Parliament, its newly-cut stone shining white through the fog; smoke-blackened Westminster Abbey and Westminster School; all huge, magnificent buildings, splendidly ornamented with carved towers and statues.

  But only a few yards away from this splendour lay Devil’s Acre – that den of the devil, that terrible place of narrow streets filled with rotting houses, of blind alleys where the smell hit you as you approached, and of small square courts with houses crowded around a central space where the filth was heaped as high as the houses themselves. Devil’s Acre was a place where thieves, cracksmen and murderers lived side-by-side with the poor and the starving. It was not a place where a well-dressed gentleman in a fur coat, a silk top hat and a silver-topped cane would willingly go.

  Alfie made a sudden lunge, broke free and sprinted in that direction. He knew Devil’s Acre well. There were no gas lamps there, just a few pitch torches burning outside the inn. He could lose himself easily there.

  But he was too late. The silver-topped cane was thrust between his bare legs and he fell heavily to the ground. The fall winded him badly. There was no way that he could escape. He lay gasping for breath.

  The wickedly sharp knife flashed as it descended towards him. Alfie abandoned all hope and shut his eyes. This was it.

  CHAPTER 7

  REFUGE

  Suddenly, there was a sound. Something flew through the air. As Alfie lay on the road, gasping like a stranded fish, he saw the black silk top hat spin from the man’s head and land in the gutter. Beside it lay a small lump of yellow stone. The man hesitated and looked around behind him. The light from the gas lamp illuminated the terrible scar on his face. He looked up towards the roof of the abbey and then something else came whizzing down and struck the cobbled pavement at his feet.

  The man cursed. Alfie had heard most curses, but this one was not known to him. It sounded like some strange language, he thought, as he watched the man pick up his hat and begin to run. But as he did so, another missile came flying down and struck him on the back of the head.

  This time he stopped and looked back. The light from the gas lamp showed nothing but a hard, green pea lying on the ground. The strange mouth, half-bearded, half-naked, twisted into an evil grin. He raised the knife and came back, barring Alfie’s escape path. He bent down, so near that Alfie could smell a strong smell of tobacco from him. The eyes, he thought, were the eyes of a madman. He shut his own. There was no way that he could escape that wicked knife. All was over with him. He had nowhere to go to escape this man.

  And then a chance!

  Bullets of hard peas were raining down, shot from the porch roof. They stung the man’s face and Alfie heard him swear – again in that strange language. The man straightened himself and took a step towards the Abbey and away from Alfie. Gazing upwards, he shouted ‘Who’s there?’ in a threatening voice.

  A different voice whispered urgently to Alfie. ‘Up here!’ It appeared to come from the roof of the Abbey. ‘Here, climb up by the door.’

  Alfie was on his feet instantly. He jabbed his fist straight into the centre of the large stomach so near to him and, almost before the words were finished, placed his foot on the first piece of carving that decorated the small door at the side of the Abbey.

  When he was halfway up, he risked a glance over his shoulder. The scarred man had moved closer to the door, out of the range of the shooter on the roof. He must have realised that he had been hit by peas and that he just had a pair of boys to deal with. But the strange thing was that after that first exclamation he made no further sound, did not call out, did not threaten – did not behave as most adults would when shot at by a boy.

  And, even stranger, he did not attempt to call to the policeman who had just come into sight and was parading past the Houses of Parliament, swinging his truncheon in one hand and fiddling with his whistle with his other hand.

  He’s the spy, all right, thought Alfie as he climbed. Any honest man would have called the policeman’s attention to the person on the roof, would have complained that someone had flung a piece of stone and then shot peas at him from a peashooter. It was probably breaking some law to climb up to the roof of the Abbey, but Alfie didn’t care. The man had put his knife away, but Alfie remembered how sharp it had been and how long the blade was and how it had glinted under the light of the gas lamp.

  ‘There’s a rope just above your hands,’ came the whisper. ‘Grab onto it and feel for footholds with your feet. He’s still there. He’s just waiting for you to come down again.’

  Alfie did what he was told. Big Ben, the new clock at Westminster, struck twelve as he climbed, startling him for a moment. Like most Londoners, Alfie was still not used to that giant bell with its booming sound. Then he took a firmer grip on the rope and found that the stone was pitted in places and his bare toes could get a good grip. The voice of his friend on the roof belonged to a toff; but what was a toff doing on top of Westminster Abbey roof? Sometimes, during the day, men with ladders came and repaired something, but no one in their sane senses would be up there on a winter’s night.

  ‘The rope finishes there,’ whispered the voice with the swell’s accent. ‘Grab the devil’s head and pull yourself up by it.’

  An ugly, leering, carved face peered down with water dripping from it. It was green and slimy but Alfie managed to get a firm grip onto the stone curls and lever himself up. In a moment he was on a small, narrow section of roof above the door. The light was dim here, but it was enough to show that the voice that had guided him up belonged to a boy no older than himself.

  ‘Keep still for a minute,’ whispered the voice. ‘He’s going away.’

  Alfie’s heart beat with relief. Perhaps the man was going to give up the chase.
/>   ‘Where’s he going?’ he whispered back.

  ‘Into Little Dean’s Yard.’

  By now Alfie could see his rescuer more clearly. He was a boy of about Alfie’s own age and size, but not dressed in rags as Alfie was. This boy wore a suit like a gentleman and his shirt, though stained with smears of mud and streaks of wet moss, had been stiffly starched and the points on his collar still stood up beside his chin. He had a well-combed head of blond curls and a pair of blue eyes. He must be one of those posh schoolboys from Westminster School, thought Alfie.

  ‘I’m Richard,’ he said, holding out a hand that had a few smudges of dirt on it, but felt soft – the hand of a boy who had never had to work. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked politely.

  ‘Alfie . . . I’d better be getting out of here. Will you be safe?’ Alfie looked anxiously at the young gentleman who had probably saved his life. Young gentlemen, in his experience, knew little about the rough underbelly of London. Richard wouldn’t know what it was like to be hunted through the streets or across the rooftops of the city. It would be just a game to him. ‘That fella’s got a knife,’ he added.

  The boy, however, seemed quite unworried and continued to study Alfie with a smile, until a slight sound from below made him peer down at the pavement.

  ‘He’s coming after you. What a lark,’ said Richard with a chuckle. He leaned over the parapet and peered down. ‘Found himself a ladder, too! I wonder how he managed to get hold of that? It’s kept in the gardener’s shed at the back of the yard. How would he know about that? And how did he get a key to go into the yard? It’s always locked at night.’

  Alfie joined him and peered over the edge of the parapet; but Richard suddenly drew well back.