The face hung in the darkness, swinging gently: a single oval eye, a flat snout, the skin an oily green. Behind it hung a row of identical faces, all twisting slowly in the drafts.
In a second, before he had even taken another breath, Stuart realized what they were. Gas masks, he thought, and then he said the words out loud, because it was reassuring to hear his own voice. “Second World War gas masks.”
He moved the flashlight beam and saw an arrow on the wall, and the words AIR-RAID SHELTER. A few feet beyond it, the tunnel widened into a sort of cave, and the space was filled with rows of benches.
Stuart was still breathless from the shock, and his legs felt weightless and feeble, as if they were made of string. He wobbled over to one of the benches and sat down. He shone his flashlight beam at the floor, because he didn’t enjoy watching those sightless masks all quietly swinging, and he recited the five-times table to himself, just to steady his thoughts.
A daddy-longlegs scuttled across the flashlight beam, and then the pool of light between his feet began to flicker rapidly. Stuart turned the flashlight off and on again. For a second or two it shone more brightly than before, and then the yellow light dwindled to an orange glimmer, before blinking out completely.
He sat in the utter darkness, more afraid than he’d ever been before, and the only thing he could think to do was to carry on reciting the five-times table. When he’d finished that, he moved on to sixes, and then on to sevens, and he was just starting on eights when he heard a noise. It was such an incongruous noise here in these dusty, forgotten tunnels that for a moment he couldn’t believe his ears, and then it happened again. It was the sound of a dog, barking. There were footsteps as well, and a sudden, welcome blur of bluish light. He heard a voice that he recognized.
“April!” he shouted, standing up. And there, coming along the tunnel toward him, was April— and Leonora and the guide dog, Pluto. It gave another little “woof” when it saw Stuart, and April screeched with surprise and ran forward, half throttling him with a hug.
“How did you get here?” he asked, when he’d managed to disentangle himself. “And how come you’re with Leonora, and how long have I been down here, anyway?”
“A couple of hours. Maybe three,” April told him. “And you won’t believe what happened. You see, I saw Jeannie climb down the ladder—”
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” said Leonora calmly, “but Stuart sounds to me as if he might need a little energy boost. We have snacks.”
“Fantastic!” said Stuart. “There are benches here,” he added for Leonora’s benefit, and they all sat down to the oddest picnic he’d ever had, eating shrimp-cocktail flavored potato chips by flashlight, with the row of gas masks swaying overhead.
“As I was saying,” gabbled April, after Stuart had told his own story. “I saw Jeannie go down the ladder, and I was going to follow her, but then the firefighters came and shooed everyone away and closed the park, and then the police turned up too, and someone from the local TV news as well, and I didn’t know what to do. I thought you were probably hiding down there, so I hung around for a while to see if you’d sneak out, and then when you didn’t, I started to get really worried. I remembered you’d said there were underground entrances to the workshop, so I went back to the museum and looked at the model and there were three different tunnels to the room under the bandstand.”
“I know,” said Stuart. “I fell into one of them and hit my head.”
“And the tunnels came out in different bits of the town—they were all used as air-raid shelters. One came out under Beeton police station, so I knew I couldn’t get in there. And one was labeled DISUSED DUE TO FLOODING IN 1941, so I knew that was no good. The third came out into the basement of Saint Cuthbert’s Teacher-training College. But there isn’t a teacher-training college in Beeton—at least, not anymore. And then I had a brilliant thought—”
“There was a ring at my door,” interrupted Leonora, smiling. “And when I answered it, I heard a young voice say, ‘You don’t know me, but you know my friend Stuart, and he said that you trained as a teacher in Beeton, ages ago. So can you tell me where the training college used to be, because he’s in trouble and I’ve got to help him?’”
“Yes, and when I told her all about what had happened, Leonora took me there,” said April. “It’s posh apartments now, but we snooped around and there’s an underground parking garage. Leonora pretended that she was lost and had to sit down and that Pluto was thirsty. The attendant was helpful, and they got into this fantastic conversation about what Beeton was like in the old days, and the attendant said, ‘You won’t believe it, but behind the old generator at the end of this garage, there’s supposed to be a tunnel that goes all the way to the center of town,' and then I said—‘Oh!’”
The light in the shelter was suddenly half as bright as before.
“Oh, not yours too,” said Stuart irritably.
“What’s the matter?” asked Leonora.
“Her flashlight battery’s dying.”
“Then we’d better hurry,” replied Leonora. “Pluto’s a guide dog, not a guide mole. He needs a little bit of light or he can’t see where he’s going.”
Pluto wagged his tail at the mention of his name and stood up eagerly.
“Are we going back to Great-Uncle Tony’s workshop?” asked Stuart.
“Of course we are,” said April. “Anyway, it’s your workshop now, isn’t it?”
“Try telling Jeannie that,” said Stuart, but he felt invigorated: the combination of potato chips and company was very cheering. It was good to be part of a team, even if one member was blind, and one was a bit short, and one was a dog.
“Is everyone ready?” asked Leonora in a teacherish voice. “Then off we go.”
By the time they had walked back to the workshop entrance, April’s flashlight was about as much use as a luminous watch dial. Stuart had to feel around the edges of the door to confirm that it was still closed. He gave the springs at the bottom a fruitless tug. “So, what do we do now?” he asked.
“The Horten Ready Release,” said Leonora.
“The what?”
“Every sealed cabinet that Tony made had a safety catch. It meant that Lily could open it if there was a problem. Feel around behind the springs. There should be a little knob on both sides.”
There was.
“Now push them away from each other.”
There was a quiet click, and the back of the cabinet lifted silently, like a car hood. Stuart found himself looking directly into the workshop through the open front cover of the book. And staring straight back at him was the round, hamsterish face of Clifford.