"On the Common, eh? Big holes, were they?"
"Pretty big. Didn't find anything much there, though."
The policeman looked at Will strangely and wrote something in his notebook. "Much like what?" he asked, frowning with incomprehension.
"Oh, just some bottles and old junk."
At that point, the policewoman came out of the living room and joined her colleague by the front door.
"All right?" the policeman said to her, tucking his notebook back into his breast pocket. He gave a last penetrating look at Will.
"I got everything down," the policewoman replied, and then turned to Will and his sister. "Look, I'm sure there's nothing to worry about, but per standard procedure we'll make some inquiries about your father. If you hear anything or need to talk to us — about anything at all — you can contact us at this number." She handed Rebecca a printed card. "In many of these cases, the person just comes back — they just needed to get away, have some time to think things over." She gave them a reassuring smile and then added, "Or calm down."
"Calm down about what?" Rebecca ventured. "Why would our father need to calm down?"
The officers looked a little surprised, glancing at each other and then back at Rebecca.
"Well, after the disagreement with your mother," the policewoman said. Will was waiting for her to say more, to explain exactly what the argument had been about, but she turned to the other officer. "Right, we'd better be off."
"Ridiculous!" Rebecca said in an exasperated tone after she had shut the door behind them. "They obviously haven't got the faintest idea where he's gone or what to do about it. Idiots!"
12
"Will? Is that you?" Chester said, shielding his eyes from the sun as his friend emerged from the kitchen door into the cramped back yard behind the Rawlses' house. He had been whiling away the time that Sunday morning by swatting bluebottles and wasps with an old badminton racket, easy targets as they grew lazy in the noonday heat. He cut a comical figure in flip-flops and a beanie hat, his oversized frame accentuated by baggy shorts and his shoulders reddened by the sun.
Will stood with his hands in the back pockets of his jeans, looking a little preoccupied. "I need a hand with something," he said, checking behind him that Chester 's parents weren't in earshot.
"Sure, what with?" Chester replied, flicking the mutilated remains of a large fly off the frayed strings of his racket.
"I want to take a quick look around the museum tonight," Will replied. "At my dad's things."
He had Chester 's undivided attention now.
"To see if there are any clues… in his office," Will went on.
"What, you mean break in?" Chester said quietly. "I'm not…"
Will cut him short. "I've got the keys." Taking his hand from his pocket, he held them up for Chester to see. "I just want to have a quick look, and I need somebody to watch my back."
Will had been completely prepared to go it alone but, when he stopped to think about it, it seemed natural to enlist the help of his friend. Chester was the only person Will could turn to now that his father had gone. He and Chester had worked very effectively together in the Forty Pits tunnel, like a real team — and, besides, Chester seemed genuinely concerned about Will's father's whereabouts.
Lowering his racket to his side, Chester thought for a moment as he gazed at the house and then back at Will again. "All right," he agreed, "but we'd better not get caught."
Will grinned. It felt good to have a real friend, someone other than his family he could trust, for the first time in his life.
After it had grown dark, the boys stole up the museum steps. Will unlocked the door and they slipped in quickly. The interior was just visible in the zigzag shadows thrown by interlacing bands of weak moonlight and the yellow neon from the street lamps outside.
"Follow me," Will whispered to Chester and, crouching low, they crossed through the main hall toward the corridor, dodging between the glass cabinets and grimacing as their sneakers squeaked on the parquet flooring.
"Watch the—"
"Ouch!" Chester cried as he tripped over the marsh timber lying on the floor just inside the corridor and went sprawling. "What's that doing there?" he said angrily as he rubbed his shin.
"Come on," Will whispered urgently.
Near the end of the corridor, they found Dr. Burrows's office.
"We can use the flashlights in here, but keep your beam down low."
"What are we looking for?" Chester whispered.
"Don't know yet. Let's check his desk first," Will said in a hushed voice.
As Chester held his flashlight for him, Will sifted through the piles of papers and documents. It wasn't an easy task; Dr. Burrows was clearly as disorganized at work as he was at home, and there was a mass of paperwork spread across the desk in arbitrary piles. The computer screen was all but obscured by a proliferation of curling yellow Post-it notes stuck around it. As they searched, Will focused his efforts on anything that was written on loose-leaf pages in his father's barely legible scrawl.
Finishing the last of the piles of papers, they found nothing of note, so they each took one side of the desk and started searching the drawers.
"Wow, look at this." Chester produced what appeared to be a stuffed dog's paw fixed to an ebony stick from among a load of empty tobacco tins. Will simply looked at him and frowned briefly before resuming his search.
"Here's something!" Chester said excitedly as he was investigating the middle drawer. Will didn't bother to look up from the papers in his hand, thinking it was another obscure object.
"No, look, it's got a label with writing on it." He handed it to Will. It was a little book with covers of purple and brown marbling and a sticker on the front that read Ex Libris in ornate and swirling copperplate lettering, with a picture of an owl wearing massive round glasses.
"Journal," Will read. "That's definitely my dad's writing." He opened the cover. "Bingo! It looks like a diary of some sort." He fanned through the pages. "He's written something on quite a few of these." Pushing it into his bag, he asked, "Are there any others?"
They hurriedly searched the remainder of the drawers and, finding nothing else, decided it was time to leave. Will locked up, and the boys made their way toward the Forty Pits, because it was close by and they knew they wouldn't be interrupted there. As they slunk though the streets, ducking behind cars when anyone appeared, they felt alive with the thrill of the forbidden mission at the museum and couldn't wait to look at the journal they'd unearthed. Reaching the Pits, they descended into the main chamber, where they arranged the cage lights and made themselves comfortable in the armchairs. Will began to pore over the pages.
"The first entry is not long after we discovered the lost train station," he said, looking up at Chester.
"What train station?"
But Will was too engrossed in the journal to explain. He recited slowly, in broken sentences, as he struggled to decipher his father's handwriting.
I have recently become aware of a small and… in… incongruous grouping of interlopers coming and going among the general populace of Highfield. A group of people who have a physical appearance that sets them apart. Where they come from or what their purpose is I have yet to ascertain but, from my limited observation of them, I believe that all is not what it seems. Given their apparent numbers (5+?)… homogeneity of their (racial?) appearance… I suspect they may cohabit or at the very least…
He trailed off as he scanned the rest of the page. "I can't quite make out the rest,"he said, looking up at Chester. "Here's something," he said, flicking over the page. "This is clearer."