Wild Boy and the Black Terror (4 page)

“The freak and the acrobat?” Lucien said. “Have they not taken up enough of our time? This is not a bloody orphanage.” He chuckled, a deep rumbling noise. The other Black Hats joined in.

“Have you heard their story, Lucien?” one of the Grey Hats asked. “Clarissa’s mother turned against her,
hunted
her even. And I am told Wild Boy has unique detective skills. I must admit, I am intrigued.”

“Please. We are a secret organization, appointed to safeguard the interests of Britain and her Empire. Children have no place here. I am sure the Principal intends to inform us that we cannot continue to harbour them.”

Wild Boy didn’t hear anything else, just a beating drum, the sound of blood pounding in his ears. Was it possible? Was the Principal going to kick them out of the palace? They had nowhere else to go.

Suddenly he didn’t want to be here. They had to get back up to their room, act as if they’d never dream of causing trouble.

“Hey,” Clarissa whispered.

She had taken the rat from its cage. The creature sat on her head, sniffing the air.

“Think I’ll call him Hatty,” she said.

“No, Clarissa … put it back.”

The rat leaped onto the laboratory table, knocking over a rack of test tubes. Glass smashed and chemicals spilled across the surface. The fizzing liquid soaked the weaponized hats. It reacted with the gas inside one, causing it to shake and jolt – and then burst into the air with a gunshot-loud boom.

“That was
brilliant
,” Clarissa said.

There were shouts from the next room, and stomps of boots.

Grabbing Clarissa’s arm, Wild Boy yanked her from the laboratory. They raced back along the passageway and leaped through the secret entrance. As Wild Boy slammed it shut, Clarissa shoved one of the suits of armour, toppling it over to block the exit.

“Hurry!”

As they darted back into the hallway, bells began to ring around the palace.

“It’s the Gentlemen’s alarm,” Clarissa said.

Several men charged from the other direction.

“The tapestries,” Wild Boy said.

They ran faster, slapping the hanging tapestries. A cloud of dust filled the corridor, hiding them from the approaching Gentlemen.

They climbed the stairs, pelted along a corridor and up to their attic bedroom. They collapsed on the other side of the door, wheezy breaths broken by gulping laughs.

“Did anyone see us?” Clarissa said.

“Don’t think so.”

“Then we ain’t done nothing, have we?”

“You
haven’t
done
anything
,” a stern voice corrected.

The voice was so forceful that it seemed to grab their jaws and snap them shut, instantly silencing their laughter.

A man sat watching them from the corner of the attic, fingers locked over the top of a cane. His face was in shadow, but still something glinted in the darkness. Something gold.

“However,” the man continued after a pause, “we all know that is a great big lie.”

3

W
ild Boy helped Clarissa up from the floor. The alarm had stopped ringing around the palace, but they could still hear the shouts of the Gentlemen charging around the corridors in search of the intruders.

As the shouts grew louder Wild Boy and Clarissa’s attention remained focused on the person seated in the dark corner of their attic bedroom.

The man rose, leaning heavily on his silver-topped cane. Another glint of gold shone from a face that otherwise seemed carved of stone, so sharp were its lines and angles. The gleam came from one of the man’s eyes. He had a golden eyeball.

This was Marcus Bishop. For the last four months he had been Wild Boy and Clarissa’s guardian. And until that evening, Wild Boy had thought that he was the leader of the Gentlemen.

Marcus limped closer, slicked silver hairs brushing the low attic ceiling. His voice was as calm as ever, each word measured and laid neatly into place. His single good eye narrowed with disapproval.

“What have you two done this time?” he asked.

Clarissa thrust her arms in the air in disgust. “I knew you’d blame this on us,” she said.

“How exactly are you not to blame?” Marcus said.

“Cos we’re stuck up here,” Clarissa said, hurling herself onto the bed. “All we’re doing is keeping our skills sharp. Ain’t that so, Wild Boy?”

Wild Boy didn’t hear. His mind was still downstairs in the Gentlemen’s laboratory, listening to Lucien’s grim prediction.
“The children have no place here. I am sure the Principal intends to inform us that we cannot continue to harbour them.”

A knot tied in Wild Boy’s stomach. These past four months, fooling about with Clarissa, had been the happiest of his life. He’d never thought it might end.

No. He was being stupid. Marcus wouldn’t let them be kicked out. He was their guardian, their friend. Wild Boy had spied on him issuing orders to police inspectors, army generals, even the Prime Minister on one particularly tense occasion. He couldn’t imagine anyone having more authority than Marcus.

But someone did. The Principal.

“Anyway,” Clarissa said. “It wasn’t us. We ain’t done no snooping.”

Marcus winced slightly from a pain behind his false eye. “I am not angry about snooping. A detective and an acrobat? I
expect
you to snoop. I do not, however, expect you to get
caught
. You were lazy, foolish. You must control your emotions. Concentrate. Think.”

“If we do, will you give us our own cases to solve?” Clarissa asked.

“You know that is not possible.”

Marcus pulled two folded sheets of paper from his coat and dropped them on the bed. They were posters for plays, printed with the same picture of a werewolf attacking a top-hatted man and a ball-gowned lady.

Clarissa snatched one up and read it with the exaggerated horror of a showman at a fairground. “‘
The Savage Spectacle of Wild Boy!
The murdering boy monster that preyed on London
.’” She picked up the next sheet. “‘
The Wild Boy of London. The voodoo fiend who devoured his victims’ flesh and drank their blood
.’”

“It ain’t fair,” she said. “People thought I was a monster once too. Now they’ve forgotten all about me. It’s all
‘Wild Boy killed this’ and ‘Wild Boy murdered that’
. I should’ve bitten someone. Or howled like a wolf.”

She gave her best werewolf howl and fell back laughing on the bed.

The knot pulled tighter in Wild Boy’s gut. Four months ago he’d proven to the police that they were innocent of murder, but not to the public. He had become famous: the Wild Boy of London.

That was why he hid in the palace, why he couldn’t leave. Why he couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d heard downstairs.

“Who’s the Principal?” he said.

The words came out before Wild Boy could stop them. Questions about the Gentlemen’s business were as forbidden as snooping around their laboratories.

Marcus looked at him. He seemed as if he was about to answer, then suddenly slammed a hand against the wall, grimacing. Clarissa stepped towards him, but he held out a palm, signalling for her to stay back. His eye scrunched shut as the pain grew stronger behind the other socket.

“Sir?” a voice called. “Sir!”

“Oh
great
,” Clarissa said. “It’s Gideon.”

It was hard at first to see much of the man who rushed up the stairs. Small and skinny, he was hidden by an oversize tricorn hat and a coachman’s coat that was almost twice his size, flowing behind him like a royal gown. Tripping on its train, the man tumbled into the attic. His hat fell off and a parcel slipped from his hands.

Clarissa grabbed the hat and hid it behind her back.

“Sir,” the man said, scrambling to Marcus. “Sir, your medicines.”

“No, Gideon. I am fine.”

The man whirled around. He had a tight, shrivelled face, like an old sponge, and beady black eyes. It was Gideon Finkle, Marcus’s coach driver.

“What have you done to him now?” he yelled, glaring first at Wild Boy, then Clarissa. “You’ll kill him! You’ll be the death of him.”

“Oh, it’s always us, ain’t it, Gideon?” Clarissa said. “Maybe it was your coach driving that hurt Marcus, eh? So bumpy he banged his head about.”

Gideon’s lips peeled back, revealing brown, peg-like teeth. He fingered a dirty cloth tied around his wizen neck. “I’ve been his driver for sixteen years,” he snarled.

“Should be better at it by now, then.”

“Give me my hat,” Gideon demanded.

“Ain’t got your hat.”

She tossed it to Wild Boy, who threw it back, trapping Gideon as a piggy in the middle.

“Sir!” Gideon squealed. “They’re doing it again.”

“Enough! All of you.”

Marcus’s voice boomed around the attic, and they all fell silent. He sighed a breath so heavy it clouded the air. “Can’t you just get along?”

“No fun in that,” Clarissa muttered. “What’s in that parcel?”

With his cane Marcus prodded the parcel that Gideon had dropped. He raised an eyebrow at Wild Boy. “Care to tell us?”

Wild Boy hadn’t been paying much attention to the quarrel with Gideon. His mind had still been on Lucien and the Principal. But suddenly it was here again, sharp and focused.

It was a test. He loved tests.

He crouched beside the parcel, wide eyes scouring the surfaces. “It’s a dress,” he said, looking to Marcus, “from a fashion shop on Bond Street. It’s for Clarissa, although you only got the idea to give it to her in the last half hour.”

A small smile cracked the corner of Marcus’s mouth. “Care to share your observations?”

Wild Boy rose. This was the bit he really liked, a chance to show off his skills. “Gideon gave it away,” he said.

“Sir, I said nothing. I promise.”

“No, your coat. The mud marks tell a story.”

Gideon glanced around at the back of his coat. “Ain’t no mud marks.”

“That’s the story. Means you only drove on metalled roads between here and the shop. You ain’t gone past Oxford Street to the north or Park Lane west, where it gets muddy. So you went east into Mayfair.

“Also, look at the parcel. See these dried spots on the top? That’s from snow. But it’s only snowed in the past twenty minutes, since midnight. What shop would open so late for you to collect a dress? Only the
very
poshest, the ones on Bond Street. And why pick it up so late? Cos Marcus only just got the idea of inviting Clarissa somewhere – somewhere she needs a dress.”

“How do you know it’s a dress? You didn’t even touch it.”

“If it’s from Bond Street, it’s either jewellery or a dress. Gideon didn’t go crazy when he dropped it, so it ain’t jewellery.”

“Well, how do you know it’s for Clarissa?”

“Cos I don’t wear dresses. Though neither does she.”

Gideon snatched the parcel from the floor. “That ain’t so clever,” he muttered. “I once saw a magician chop a lady in half.
That
was clever.”

“It ain’t
magic
,” Clarissa said. “Wild Boy’s a detective.”

“Freak, more like.”

Clarissa shot up. “What did you just say?”

“The parcel, Gideon,” Marcus said calmly.

Gideon dumped it beside Clarissa on the bed, and snatched his hat back in return.