But no. George and Sir William and Liz had other ideas. Better ideas. It was all made to seem like a discussion with Eddie as an equal partner. Except he never got his way, while everyone else got theirs.
Which was why Eddie was outside the imposing main entrance to the British Museum, looking round for whoever Lorimore now had watching the place following Berry’s treachery. They weren’t hard to spot. Two of them — Eddie recognised the type. Large men with beer bellies who would knock you down and steal your wallet and your watch as soon as look at you. Not quick, but strong. If they got hold of him he would be in trouble.
Despite himself, Eddie found he was relishing the moment, enjoying himself. The two thugs were standing together on the corner of Museum Street, and since they were together they could not keep an eye on the back of the building. Perhaps there was someone else there. It didn’t matter.
One of the men was smoking a clay pipe. He blew out a stream of smoke that was soon lost in the mist that lingered from the earlier fog. Away from the factories, the air was clearer. They would see Eddie easily. He would make sure of that.
Hands in his trouser pockets, Eddie set off past the main entrance. He paused under a street lamp, making sure his face was in full view for several seconds. Then, bracing himself to run at any second, he walked slowly past the two men.
The man with the pipe was knocking it out against the heel of his hand. He looked up as Eddie passed, watching the boy with a bored expression. The other man glanced across too, to see what his fellow was watching. Now Eddie was close enough to hear them. He held his breath, kept walking slowly past.
‘Reckon it’ll rain tomorrow,’ the man with the pipe said.
‘Never,’ the other man countered. ‘No sign of that.’
The men lapsed into silence again. Eddie sighed and continued on his way. At this rate he reckoned he could probably walk into the Museum, retrieve the diaries, and walk out again without either one of them paying him any heed.
But that wasn’t the plan. So he crossed the road and walked back along, whistling. When he reached the two men, he stopped in front of them. The whistling had disturbed their reverie and they both looked at him, bored. One of them glared at Eddie as if to say: ‘Go on, get out of here.’
Eddie sighed, clearly they weren’t going to realise who he was without help. He dropped his mouth open in an expression of horror and fear. ‘Oh my good God,’ he said loudly.
The men stared at him, mildly surprised at this outburst.
‘Oh my cripes,’ Eddie went on quickly. ‘It’s you, isn’t it? You’re the ones Lorimore’s sent to find me, ain’t you?!’
Realisation slowly dawned on the pipe-smoker, and his pipe fell from his fingers and shattered on the pavement.
‘What?’ said the other man, seeing his fellow’s reaction.
But Eddie was already running — not so fast they had no hope of catching him, but fast enough to stay out of reach. He could hear their uneven gasps as they came after him.
And at the other end of the street, two shadows detached themselves from the gloom and made their way unseen towards the entrance to the British Museum.
They went straight to the written archives. George had no idea what had happened to the books that Percy had been working on after the break-in, the fire and his death. But Sir William seemed to know exactly where they would be, having, he explained, returned them there that morning.
The few volumes that had survived were stacked in a cupboard. George recognised the remains of the final volume with its blackened pages and one curled cover. The other cover was missing entirely. They gathered it up together with the half dozen volumes that had survived unscathed, and several more that had been damaged to a greater or lesser extent by the fire.
‘I don’t want to spend too long here,’ Sir William said. ‘The longer we are here, the more of a risk that that scoundrel Berry will clap eyes on us and go running to Lorimore himself.’
George found a Gladstone bag full of pages of a manuscript in the bottom of the cupboard. He took out the loose pages and stacked them on the shelf where the diaries had been. Then he put the diaries into the bag.
‘We don’t want to advertise the fact that we are removing them,’ he said.
Sir William nodded. ‘I suggest we take them all and examine them back at the club.’
They had left Liz at the Atlantian Club. While it only admitted gentlemen as members, and learned ones at that, Sir William was allowed to bring in Liz and the others as guests. The chief steward, Vespers, had shown no trace of surprise at their dishevelled appearance, though his nose wrinkled inadvertently as he got too close.
‘May I suggest a private room for your meeting?’ he had offered, and Sir William had been pleased to agree at once. ‘I’ll see if we have one with a washroom nearby,’ Vespers had promised.
As soon as they approached the club, the door was opened from inside.
‘The young lady is installed in your room, sir,’ Vespers told Sir William. ‘I have taken the liberty of having the chef send up a selection of cold platters. I gather from the young lady that she and the gentleman here have not yet dined.’
‘We were rather busy,’ George said as Vespers led the way through the foyer and to a small door.
‘Back stairs,’ he explained. ‘I gather there is a need for discretion, even here.’
‘I am afraid so, Vespers. Rather tiresome, but unavoidable I fear.’
The stairs were bare polished wood, and emerged from a narrow and inconspicuous door on the first floor of the club. Vespers led them down an oak-panelled corridor to a rather more imposing, heavy wooden door.
‘The Plato Suite, sir.’ He leaned forward, and added quietly: ‘There is a washroom attached. I can organise a change of clothes if that is required.’
‘Good notion, thank you.’ Sir William beamed. ‘Yes, very kind of you.’
‘Not at all, Sir William. I’m not sure what we can do for the young lady, especially as it is getting rather late, but rest assured we shall make every effort to accommodate.’
‘And discreetly, if you would, Vespers,’ Sir William implored.
‘Discreetly’ was hardly a description of Eddie’s arrival at the Atlantian Club.
He had led Lorimore’s two thugs round most of Holborn and twice down the Charing Cross Road before he grew bored and decided that he had given George and Sir William more than enough time to retrieve the diaries from the Museum. He put on an extra burst of speed, rounded a corner, and ducked into a narrow alley.
Almost a minute later, the two men passed the end of the alley. They were struggling to draw breath, close to exhaustion. Neither of them noticed the dark opening where Eddie was hiding in the shadows as they puffed past like steam trains.
‘Where’s he gone?’ one of them gasped.
‘Must be round the next corner. Come on, or we’ll never catch him.’
Eddie gave them plenty of time to get clear before slipping out of hiding and setting off back down the street in the opposite direction. Sir William had given him the address of the Atlantian Club, and Eddie knew the road. But he was unprepared for either the imposing entrance or the tall uniformed doorman who stepped out as soon as Eddie approached.
‘Can I help you?’ the man asked. His tone implied that he doubted very much that he could.
‘Yeah,’ Eddie told him from several steps lower down, ‘I’m meeting me mates here.’
‘Mates?’ The man’s nose wrinkled.
‘George and Liz,’ Eddie said. The man seemed unmoved. ‘And Sir William Something-or-other.’
This had an effect. The man came down the steps to meet him. ‘You’re with Sir William’s party?’ he asked quietly, looking round to make sure no one could hear them.