«But it isn't yours, Lizzie,» he said. «Or Lyra, if that's your name.»
«It is mine! It's my alethiometer!»
He shook his head, sadly and heavily, as if he were reproaching her and it was a sorrow to him, but he was doing it for her own good. «I think at the very least there's considerable doubt about the matter,» he said.
«But it is hers!» said Will. «Honesdy! She's shown it to me! I know it's hers!»
«You see, I think you'd have to prove that,» he said. «I don't have to prove anything, because it's in my possession. It's assumed to be mine. Like all the other items in my collection. I must say, Lyra, I'm surprised to find you so dishonest —»
«I en't dishonest!» Lyra cried.
«Oh, but you are. You told me your name was Lizzie. Now I learn it's something else. Frankly, you haven't got a hope of convincing anyone that a precious piece like this belongs to you. I tell you what. Let's call the police.»
He turned his head to call for the servant.
«No, wait —» said Will, before Sir Charles could speak, but Lyra ran around the desk, and from nowhere Pantalaimon was in her arms, a snarling wildcat baring his teeth and hissing at the old man. Sir Charles blinked at the sudden appearance of the daemon, but hardly flinched.
«You don't even know what it is you stole,» Lyra stormed. «You seen me using it and you thought you'd steal it, and you did. But you — you — you're worse than my mother. At least she knows it's important! You're just going to put it in a case and do nothing with it! You ought to die\ If I can, I'll make someone kill you. You're not worth leaving alive. You're —»
She couldn't speak. All she could do was spit full in his face, so she did, with all her might.
Will sat still, watching, looking around, memorizing where everything was.
Sir Charles calmly shook out a silk handkerchief and mopped himself.
«Have you any control over yourself?» he said. «Go and sit down, you filthy brat.»
Lyra felt tears shaken out of her eyes by the trembling of her body, and threw herself onto die sofa. Pantalaimon, his thick cat's tail erect, stood on her lap with his blazing eyes fixed on the old man.
Will sat silent and puzzled. Sir Charles could have thrown them out long before this. What was he playing at?
And then he saw something so bizarre he thought he had imagined it Out of the sleeve of Sir Charles's linen jacket, past the snowy white shirt cuff, came the emerald head of a snake. Its black tongue flicked this way, that way, and its mailed head with its gold-rimmed black eyes moved from Lyra to Will and back again. She was too angry to see it at all, and Will saw it only for a moment before it retreated again up the old man's sleeve, but it made his eyes widen with shock.
Sir Charles moved to the window seat and calmly sat down, arranging the crease in his trousers.
«I think you'd better listen to me instead of behaving in this uncontrolled way,» he said. «You really haven't any choice. The instrument is in my possession and will stay there. I want it. I'm a collector. You can spit and stamp and scream all you like, but by the time you've persuaded anyone else to listen to you, I shall have plenty of documents to prove that I bought it. I can do that very easily. And then you'll never get it back.»
They were both silent now. He hadn't finished. A great puzzlement was slowing Lyra's heartbeat and making the room very still.
«However,» he went on, «there's something I want even more. And I can't get it myself, so I'm prepared to make a deal with you. You fetch the object I want, and I'll give you back the — what did you call it?»
«Alethiometer,» said Lyra hoarsely.
«Alethiometer. How interesting. Alethia, truth — those emblems — yes, I see.»
«What's this thing you want?» said Will. «And where is it?»
«It's somewhere I can't go, but you can. I'm perfectly well aware that you've found a doorway somewhere. I guess it's not too far from Summertown, where I dropped Lizzie, or Lyra, this morning. And that through the doorway is another world, one with no grownups in it. Right so far? Well, you see, the man who made that doorway has got a knife. He's hiding in that other world right now, and he's extremely afraid. He has reason to be. If he's where I think he is, he's in an old stone tower with angels carved around the doorway. The Torre degli Angeli.»
«So that's where you have to go, and I don't care how you do it, but I want that knife. Bring it to me, and you can have the alethiometer. I shall be sorry to lose it, but I'm a man of my word. That's what you have to do: bring me the knife.»
Eight
The Tower Of The Angels
Will said, «Who is this man who's got the knife?»
They were in the Rolls-Royce, driving up through Oxford. Sir Charles sat in the front, half-turned around, and Will and Lyra sat in the back, with Pantalaimon a mouse now, soothed in Lyra's hands.
«Someone who has no more right to the knife than I have to the alethiometer,» said Sir Charles. «Unfortunately for all of us, the alethiometer is in my possession, and the knife is in his.»
«How do you know about that other world anyway?»
«I know many things that you don't. What else would you expect? I am a good deal older and considerably better informed. There are a number of doorways between this world and that; those who know where they are can easily pass back and forth. In Cittagazze there's a Guild of learned men, so called, who used to do so all the time.»
«You en't from this world at all!» said Lyra suddenly. «You're from there, en't you?»
And again came that strange nudge at her memory. She was almost certain she'd seen him before.
«No, I'm not,» he said.
Will said, «If we've got to get the knife from that man, we need to know more about him. He's not going to just give it to us, is he?»
«Certainly not. It's the one thing keeping the Specters away. It's not going to be easy by any means.»
«The Specters are afraid of the knife?»
«Very much so.»
«Why do they attack only grownups?»
«You don't need to know that now. It doesn't matter. Lyra,» Sir Charles said, turning to her, «tell me about your remarkable friend.»
He meant Pantalaimon. And as soon as he said it, Will realized that the snake he'd seen concealed in the man's sleeve was a daemon too, and that Sir Charles must come from Lyra's world. He was asking about Pantalaimon to put them off the track: so he didn't realize that Will had seen his own daemon.
Lyra lifted Pantalaimon close to her breast, and he became a black rat, whipping his tail around and around her wrist and glaring at Sir Charles with red eyes.
«You weren't supposed to see him,» she said. «He's my daemon. You think you en't got daemons in this world, but you have. Yours'd be a dung beetle.»
«If the Pharaohs of Egypt were content to be represented by a scarab, so am I,» he said. «Well, you're from yet another world. How interesting. Is that where the alethiometer comes from, or did you steal it on your travels?»
«I was given it,» said Lyra furiously. «The Master of Jordan College in my Oxford gave it to me. It's mine by right. And you wouldn't know what to do with it, you stupid, stinky old man; you'd never read it in a hundred years. It's just a toy to you. But I need it, and so does Will. We'll get it back, don't worry.»
«We'll see,» said Sir Charles. «This is where I dropped you before. Shall we let you out here?»
«No,» said Will, because he could see a police car farther down the road. «You can't come into Ci'gazze because of the Specters, so it doesn't matter if you know where the window is. Take us farther up toward the ring road.»
«As you wish,» said Sir Charles, and the car moved on. «When, or if, you get the knife, call my number and Allan will come to pick you up.»