The Four-Fingered Man (8 page)

Before Amelia and Charlie could move, Miss Ardman charged out of the servants’ door
and onto the deck. Her head whipped around wildly, trying to see which way the thief
had gone, but she was far too short-sighted to notice Amelia and Charlie cowering
by the pillar.

Miss Ardman hadn’t made another sound. If that had been her upstairs (and who else
could it be?), she wasn’t wasting any energy on noise now. She gathered up her robes
until her legs were bare to the knees, then sniffed the air. Her head snapped around
to exactly the direction Tom had taken, and she bolted across the lawn, rushing through
the hedges. She was
fast
.

‘Come on!’ Amelia and Charlie raced after her.

As Amelia and Charlie came through the hedges and ran over the brow of the hill,
they saw that Miss Ardman was already right at the bottom of the slope. It was impossible
for anyone to be so fast. She had almost caught up to Tom, who was pushing his way
through the magnolia trees only a second or two ahead of her.

Amelia pulled ahead of Charlie as they galloped over the lawn. They crashed into
the trees, almost a minute after Miss Ardman. They’d never been so far down this
end of the garden, had never wanted to get so close to Tom’s cottage, but here they
were, crashing through the fallen leaves, snapping twigs, not even caring about making
noise. It was clear that Miss Ardman and Tom were far too absorbed in their own chase
to notice the two kids tailing them.

As they made it to the clearing around the cottage, they heard an ominous hissing.
The door was hanging open, almost torn off its hinges, and Miss Ardman’s scarf lay
on the step.

After running so far and so fast, Amelia was carried into Tom’s cottage partly by
sheer momentum, but partly by something else. The jewels. Ever since she and Charlie
had first seen them, they’d been tingling away in the back of her brain. And now,
running after them, those tinglings had become more urgent.

Any doubts Amelia had about her parents, any guilty fear about upsetting Miss Ardman
again, any question about why they were chasing an angry woman who was chasing a
creepy man – all of it was swept away by the sheer joy of running towards the beautiful
jewels. Nothing else mattered now.

So there was no hesitation for either Amelia or Charlie as they reached Tom’s cottage.
Ignoring all the signs of violence at the doorway (were those
slash marks
on the
woodwork?), they barrelled inside.

Amelia had no idea what she’d expected of Tom’s home, but it wasn’t this. Charts
were pinned up all over the place, like timetables, but in an alphabet Amelia didn’t
recognise. Dozens of old clocks lay about, and on a desk cluttered by toy trains
and empty mugs sat an old computer, wrapped in aluminium foil. Stranger still was
the amount of space on one wall given to a contraption that was mostly dials, brass
cogs and wire.

Not that Amelia was looking at these things, precisely. They just flashed across
her mind as she stared at something even more astounding.

Miss Ardman was
stalking
Tom. There was no other word for it. Her body was hunched
and poised like a cat’s, ready to pounce. Her hands were held like claws, and Amelia
remembered how strong and heavy they could be. She almost felt sorry for Tom, even
if he was a lying pirate thief.

Amelia held her breath. Charlie was silent too. They were so close to the jewels
– Amelia could swear she felt the warmth of them from here. Amelia looked sideways
at Charlie, her eyes huge.

What are we doing here?
she asked him silently.

Charlie seemed to know exactly what she meant.

The best thing would be to quietly edge out of the cottage before either Tom or Miss
Ardman noticed them. But they stayed where they were. Amelia was frightened, but
leaving the jewels would have been unbearable.

Tom and Miss Ardman must surely have known they were there, but were so focused on
one another they’d barely blinked. They were locked in a bizarre sort of stand-off
that looked as though it could last all night.

Tom’s back bumped into the brick wall. Miss Ardman took a step towards him.

And then Tom burst into tears.

Amelia blinked. She hadn’t seen that coming.

Tom was now hugging Miss Ardman’s case like it was his long-lost love, and begging
her, ‘But I need them, I
need
them! Just one?’

Miss Ardman growled deep in her throat – a dark, chilling sound like a crocodile’s
roar. She stepped closer to Tom and hissed, ‘Give me the bag.’

Tom whimpered. ‘I – I – I can’t.’

‘You must.’ Miss Ardman stepped closer again, her hands twitching. She was desperate
to snatch back the bag, but at the same time worried about the jewels being broken
in the process. ‘Give it to me,’ she said more quietly.

Tom took a shuddering breath and raised his head. He looked Miss Ardman straight
in the face, and said, shakily and with great effort, ‘I
can’t
. You’ll have to. Can
you –’

Without warning, Miss Ardman sprang at Tom, hitting him so hard with the back of
her hand that he flew across the room and hit the wall, crumpling to the floor. She
must have had the reflexes and precision of a ninja brain-surgeon, because with no
wasted movement, the case was now safely under her arm.

She spun away from Tom so that she was turned more towards Amelia and Charlie, and
opened the case to check the jewels were all still there. As the top of the bag opened
and shimmering golden light spilled out, Amelia and Charlie both sighed with delight,
and began moving closer to them.

Miss Ardman slammed the case shut instantly, and glared down at the kids. ‘You!’

Amelia cringed, waiting for the blow that would knock her to the wall like Tom, yet
still not able to back away from the jewels. But instead, it was Miss Ardman who
backed off, one hand holding the case to her, the other reaching out as if to fend
off Amelia and Charlie. ‘No more,’ she said hoarsely. ‘Just go. Quickly now, while
you still can.’

In the corner, Tom groaned and pulled himself upright, holding his head, but focused
on the jewels.

Miss Ardman swung about wildly, trying to keep watch on three people in two different
places. ‘Stay down,’ she hissed at Tom.

And Tom said the last thing Amelia expected.

‘I’m sorry.’

The tears were gone. This was the Tom Amelia knew: gruff and surly. ‘Sorry you had
to deal with me like that. I should have been stronger …’

Miss Ardman shook her head. ‘Your kind are never strong enough. I thought I warned
you about even bringing my food up to my room.’

Amelia and Charlie looked at each other in bewilderment, and then Amelia’s lip curled
in disgust. Miss Ardman couldn’t mean the
centipedes
, could she?

‘I thought you understood,’ Miss Ardman went on. ‘I thought you knew how dangerous
it was for you.’

Tom shook his head. ‘I underestimated …’

‘About what?’ Charlie blurted out.

Tom looked over at him and glared. ‘What are you two doing here, anyway? Didn’t your
parents set you straight about
trespass?
’

‘You’re mad at us?’ Charlie retorted. ‘We were right about you. You were stealing!
And
she
can prove it – you’re a witness,’ he told Miss Ardman. ‘You can tell our
parents, and then
you
,’ he grinned triumphantly at Tom, ‘will be fired.’

Tom growled in frustration. ‘Both of you, out of my house
now
! Or it’ll be me talking
to your parents and you getting in trouble.’

Amelia set her jaw. ‘No.’

‘What?’

‘We’re not going,’ Amelia said. ‘We saw you. You stole, and we’re going to the police, and then you’ll be arrested, and –’

A tremor hit the house, shaking the windows in their frames and sending several clocks
crashing to the floor.

‘What now?’ said Charlie.

Amelia stiffened. A harsh wind gusted out from the far room of Tom’s cottage, and
the air was suddenly full of dust and sand.

‘I don’t have time for this,’ said Miss Ardman, and without waiting for an answer,
she reached up to her neck, put her fingers into the flesh of her throat, and twisted.
She pulled out a small object and dropped it onto Tom’s coffee table.

The instant she did, Miss Ardman became a towering, scaly, sharp-clawed creature,
with wide, yellow eyes and a frill of vicious spines like a frill around her head
and shoulders.

A reptile monster in a dress.

Amelia was amazed she didn’t faint, and disappointed not to. Unconsciousness would
have been wonderful compared to this – standing face to face with …

She had no words.

No, that wasn’t right. She had plenty of words (dinosaur, for instance; nightmare,
Godzilla,
please save me
). What she didn’t have was any way to make sense of them.

The reptile thing sniffed at Amelia and Charlie, then turned to Tom and said in Miss
Ardman’s voice, ‘They didn’t
know
? You let me uncloak in front of
children
and they
didn’t
know
? What kind of gateway are you running out here?’ She shook her head in
contempt. ‘Human clowns. I’ll be telling Control about this, I promise you.’

She stepped past Amelia and Charlie and shook her head again. ‘Sorry, children.’

Amelia looked at the sharp talons gripping onto the case of jewels, the coarsely
folded scaly skin emerging from the sleeves of the robe, and let out a little moan
of confusion.

‘But,’ Charlie murmured. ‘What are you?’

Miss Ardman said more gently, ‘I’m a –’ and she made a clucking, grinding noise in
her throat that Amelia couldn’t begin to sound out.

Charlie stepped towards her. ‘But I mean, what
are
you?’

Miss Ardman grinned. ‘Ah, the big question, not the specific one. I see. Shall I
tell them, Gateway Man?’ She flicked her gaze towards Tom. ‘Shall I spoil your secret
and tell them that I’m – what is your charming word for it? An
alien
?’

Charlie gasped and stepped closer again.

Miss Ardman stepped back and held out a warning claw. ‘No further.’

‘Oh, I didn’t mean …’

‘Perhaps you don’t mean to,’ she said grimly. ‘But look at you all!’

It was true. They had all unconsciously crept nearer and nearer to the jewels. She
had shrunk away from them until her back was against the wall, and now hissed, ‘Children
or not, I will hit you if you come any closer to me.’

‘That’s nice,’ said Amelia sarcastically. ‘It’s not as if we were going to –’

‘Fall under the spell of my eggs and do everything in your power to steal them from
me?’ Miss Ardman suggested, her voice bitter, but nervous too.

Amelia jolted.
Eggs
? Those jewels in the case were …

Miss Ardman saw Amelia’s astonished face, and said in a slightly warmer tone, ‘Yes,
these are my unborn children. Perhaps you understand why I was so distraught over
them. To you, they are like an addiction, things to crave, but to me … well, I am
their mother. I assume all mothers are the same, whichever galaxy we are from. Wouldn’t
all mothers fight to protect their children?’