The Monster Within Read Free Page A

on the
top floor of 221 Bee Street. Many of the rooms were without ceilings: it was possible
to peer up into the roof to see the maze of rafters and steam pipes.
    As Jack gazed about his room with satisfaction, he was once again amazed at how far
he’d come since being stuck in the orphanage, where he’d shared a room of this size
with a dozen boys. At Bee Street, he had his own bed, chest of drawers and an en
suite bathroom. Luxury, by comparison!
    Jack changed quickly, throwing on a blue-and-white striped shirt and dark pants.
He pulled on his green coat, containing goggles, a disguise kit, pencils and other
paraphernalia. Finally, he slipped in the locket photograph of his parents and compass:
he always carried them with him. The photograph was of the three of them dressed
as The Flying Sparrows , and the compass was the last gift they had given to Jack
before they died.
    Scarlet had changed into a grey day dress and sensible shoes. ‘You see the importance
of education,’ she said as they strolled along the hall.
    ‘You don’t believe in Toby’s monster?’
    ‘And you do?’
    ‘I’m not sure.’
    ‘Education dispels darkness so we don’t have to believe in monsters, ghosts or demons,’
Scarlet said.
    ‘You’re not about to start telling me again about classical music, are you?’
    She sighed. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it, otherwise you might try sharing some of that
American jass with me.’
    ‘ Jazz ,’ he corrected her. Phoebe Carfax, Mr Doyle’s old friend and an extraordinary
archaeologist, who they’d met on their last adventure, had sent Jack a few records.
He had taken quite a liking to it. ‘And I thought you enjoyed it.’
    ‘It’s an acquired taste.’
    ‘Like Brumbie Biscuitlid?’
    ‘ Brinkie Buckeridge ,’ Scarlet said, rolling her eyes. ‘Will you ever get that name
right?’
    ‘Probably not.’
    Scarlet’s greatest love was a series of adventure novels written by Baroness Zakharov.
They featured a larger than life heroine, Brinkie Buckeridge, who, with derring-do
and aplomb, managed to vanquish evildoers and blackguards alike—and all without
breaking a fingernail.
    ‘This tale of the monster does remind me of one of her novels— The Adventure of the
Six-Fingered Glove .’
    ‘I can’t even imagine what that would look like,’ Jack sighed.
    ‘It looks like, well, a Six-Fingered glove. Anyway, Brinkie finds the glove on level
sixty-seven of her home.’
    ‘That’s a big house.’
    ‘Larger-than-life characters need big houses,’ she said. ‘Hers is called Thorbridge .
Anyway, it turns out the glove belongs to a creature made from several different
animals. It has the head of a mouse, the body of a rhinoceros and the legs of a giraffe.’
    ‘The head of a mouse,’ Jack mused. ‘That’s a very small head.’
    ‘It turns out to be a fairly harmless monster.’
    ‘A zombie would have been more fun,’ Jack said. He had been reading a series of adventure
novels entitled Zombie Airships and had become fixated on the living dead. ‘A crewman
finds a zombie in the hold. He gets bitten and, before you know it, there’s a zombie
plague.’
    ‘Zombies aren’t real.’
    ‘That’s what they said on the airship,’ Jack said. ‘And then— bite! ’
    They met Toby back in the waiting room, and within minutes all three were on a train
heading to Whitechapel. It was an old Hooper 55, an almost obsolete locomotive. Jack
peered about with interest. The people on board looked poor: thin, dirty and unhealthy.
Three men sat near the back of the carriage, passing a whisky bottle between them.
    The train pulled into Whitechapel Station. Toby led them down an alley. While much
of London was being torn down and rebuilt, this part of the city was still old and
rundown. Jack spotted a woman in a doorway with a flagon under her arm. Further along,
a cat, missing most of its fur, ran across the street chased by a mange-covered dog.
There were a few shops, but many pubs.
    ‘We’re not