The Kidnap Plot (The Extraordinary Journeys of Clockwork Charlie) Read online

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2016 by Dave Butler

  Cover art copyright © 2016 by Ken Pak

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhousekids.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Butler, Dave.

  Title: The kidnap plot / Dave Butler.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2016. | Series: The extraordinary adventures of Clockwork Charlie ; 1 | Summary: When young Charlie Pondicherry sets out to rescue his inventor-father from kidnappers, he uncovers a dastardly plan that he must help to foil, and discovers a great truth about himself.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015017909| ISBN 978-0-553-51295-3 (trade) | ISBN 978-0-553-51296-0 (hardcover library binding) | ISBN 978-0-553-51297-7 (e-book)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. | Kidnapping—Fiction. | Inventors—Fiction. | Robots—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.B893 Kid 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/​2015017909

  ebook ISBN 9780553512977

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  About the Author

  FOR EMILY, OF COURSE.

  “Charlie Pondicherry ain’t got no mum!”

  Charlie cringed. There would be a rock. There was always a rock.

  “What are you talking about, Skip? Charlie Pondicherry ain’t even got a dad! Charlie Pondicherry’s a toenail fungus; that’s why he’s always got that goop smeared on him!”

  Skip, Mickey, and Bruiser followed Charlie down the Gullet. Charlie was sure the three boys had just waited in the alley for him to come out. Charlie’s shoulders slumped.

  He hunched down lower over the basket of dirty laundry he was carrying. Sooner or later, there would be a rock.

  “A fungus…ha-ha! A fungus!”

  Whack!

  That was the rock. It hit Charlie between the shoulders. He stumbled, but kept his feet.

  He wanted to turn and stand like a ship’s captain, letting the pirates have it with both pistols…but he’d soil the laundry. Plus, they outnumbered him three to one, and any captain knew those weren’t great odds. Charlie gritted his teeth and hoped they’d give up.

  The steam clouds that surrounded Lucky Wu’s Earth Dragon Laundry billowed just ahead. Behind him he heard the sucking sound of the other boys’ feet in the mud.

  “Where you going, fungus? Get him, Bruiser!”

  Bruiser grabbed Charlie by his jacket and shoved him against the brick wall. Charlie gripped tight with both hands; he managed not to drop any of the laundry.

  “You got any brass, fungus?” Mickey sneered. Mickey had ears like jug handles and teeth too big for his head. He spat when he talked.

  Charlie glared at the bigger boy. “Do I ever have any money?” Charlie’s bap—his dad, the other boys would have said, but Charlie’s father was from the Punjab, in India, and insisted Charlie call him Bap—never gave him money.

  “What you think we are, stupid or sumfing?” Skip shouted. Skip had a loose lower lip that flapped down and almost covered his chin. Also, Skip smelled terrible.

  “Stupid or sumfing!” Bruiser echoed, and he laughed. Bruiser was a big boy, with man-sized knuckles.

  “Going to Fathead Wu’s again, yeah?” Mickey spat. “What, you ain’t got a bit of brass to pay old Fathead?”

  “Are you an idiot?” Charlie snapped. He was shaking, but he might as well speak his mind; whatever he said, he was going to get punched. “I always go to Wu’s. And I never have any money.” Charlie wished he were bigger. He’d pound Mickey and his friends flat. Maybe then Bap would let him out of the shop more. “Clock off!”

  “How many times we gotta teach you this lesson?” Skip jeered.

  Bruiser pressed Charlie against the wall with one hand and curled up his other fist. His big hand hung in the air like a wrecker’s ball.

  Charlie laughed. “You’re slow learners, I guess.” He smirked to distract them from his hands while he shifted his grip on the basket and made a fist inside one of his bap’s shirts. He was Captain Charlie Pondicherry, priming his pistols.

  Bruiser didn’t know when the joke was on him. “Slow learners, ha!”

  Mickey looked at Bruiser, irritated.

  Charlie threw the basket of dirty laundry at Bruiser’s face.

  “Huh?” Bruiser shouted, and swung his fist—

  Charlie ducked.

  Pow! Bruiser’s fist plowed right into the top of Mickey’s head.

  “Ow!” Mickey staggered back.

  Charlie hurled his fistful of shirt at Skip’s face and turned to run, but the shirt missed and Skip knocked Charlie down.

  Charlie hit the mud in a rain of dirty laundry.

  What was he thinking? He couldn’t really run away and leave the laundry. He couldn’t really fight, either. There were three of them and only one of him, and they were bigger. Best to just take a quick beating and not drag it out.

  Charlie wasn’t aboard a sailing ship in search of treasure, and he was no adventurer.

  “Hit him, Broo!” Mickey showered Charlie with spittle.

  Bruiser dropped to one knee and punched Charlie in the stomach.

  It hurt. Charlie jerked his knees up to protect himself.

  “Ow.” Bruiser shook his hand.

  “What’s the matter, Bruiser?” Skip giggled. “Charlie Pondicherry too hard for you? He hurt your precious hand?”

  “Hurt my hand, huh, yeah…” Bruiser chuckled slowly.

  Mickey stepped deliberately on two shirts and a pair of Charlie’s trousers, squashing them all into the filth with the heel of his square-toed shoe.

  Charlie stayed down, grinding his teeth. His stomach hurt. Overhead, hundreds of yards above the rooftops framing the Gullet, he saw an airship drift slowly past. The craft had a hull like an oceangoing ship’s, copper-bottomed, and it hung beneath three oblong balloons. Steam puffe
d from a funnel at the back. The airship’s motion was calm and graceful, and Charlie desperately wanted to be on it.

  Or on the saddled neck of a vengeful dragon, blasting his tormentors with fire.

  “Yeah, well, Charlie, it’s been fun,” Mickey said. “We got other customers to see, so we have to leave you now.”

  “Fun, ha-ha!” Skip kicked Charlie in the shoulder. The kick hurt less than the punch, because the sole of Skip’s boot hung loose and flapped just like his lip. Still, it knocked Charlie over. Charlie sighed, shook his head, and stared holes into their backs until the three boys disappeared down the Gullet.

  Then Charlie climbed to his feet.

  He spat mud and gathered up the laundry. Only a few pieces had escaped getting trampled, and the pair of trousers Mickey had trodden upon looked as if they’d been worn by a pig wrestler at a Sunday fair. Charlie had read about pig wrestlers, and about Sunday fairs.

  Lucky Wu was not going to be happy.

  Charlie moved quickly, worried he was running out of time. He heaped all the clothes back into the basket and trudged into the steam. The clouds jetted from the mouths of brass dragon heads guarding the front of the shop. Standing in the dragons’ breath was a little like taking a bath, so Charlie lingered and wiped mud off his face. What with the white creams his bap put on his skin, the black mud, and the steam washing both off in rivulets, he expected he must look like a zebra caught in a rainstorm.

  Finally Charlie pushed in through Lucky Wu’s door, out of one cloud of steam and into another.

  Hyoo-hyoo-hyoo-whee-up, hyoo-hyoo-hyoo-whee-up! chirped the little brass sparrows perching over the door. There were three of them, fixed on tiny pins, so they were forever flying in a circle around their brass nest, beaks open. Charlie smiled at the birds. They didn’t move; they didn’t do anything but sing when the door opened so that Wu would know he had customers. Still, Charlie’s bap had made the sparrows, so they were Charlie’s friends.

  Not really, of course. Really, they were just a bit of clockwork.

  “You stupid inbred sack of meat!”

  Charlie flinched.

  Lucky Wu rushed around his own counter in a clatter of wooden sandal soles and tore the basket from Charlie’s hands. He hurled the Pondicherrys’ laundry to the floor and peered closely at the wicker.

  The long braid that bounced along Wu’s back from under his skullcap was jet-black. He wore white shirtsleeves, a green silk waistcoat, and a black skirt. Stitched around the edges of Wu’s waistcoat were rows of gold characters Charlie couldn’t read. Once, when he’d been brave enough to ask, Wu had told him that the characters were a spell that detected liars and thieves. He’d then stared at Charlie so hard that Charlie had backed out of the laundry without another word. He hadn’t known whether Wu was serious about the spell, but he was pretty sure that the laundry owner had called him a liar.

  “I’m not a sack of meat.”

  “Filthy motherless son of a goat!” Wu howled. He waved his arms, and his braid danced through the air, stabbing like a scorpion’s tail. “This is my basket!”

  He shoved the wicker into Charlie’s face, and Charlie’s shoulders slumped. He hadn’t given a thought to the basket. It was filthy, too.

  Still, he didn’t like being yelled at. “It’s just a basket.” He tried not to look at Wu, and instead let his eyes wander over the machinery behind the counter. Crunching forward three inches at a time as the gears inside the equipment shifted tooth by tooth, a parade of frock coats, trousers, and hats wound in an S-shaped curve around the back of the shop. Behind the clothing Charlie saw clamshell-shaped presses, many-armed stretchers, and enormous irons. Steam piped from the machinery as if from a dozen teakettles.

  “You barbarian dog!” Wu roared. “You stinking, flea-bitten monkey’s armpit!” He towered over Charlie. “You slug!”

  “What’s wrong, Fathead? Accidentally put too much starch in your dress again?” Charlie meant his words as a defiant shout, but he muttered them at his own feet instead.

  Wu didn’t notice. The laundry owner thrashed the air in front of him with a finger. “You want to roll around in the mud like animals, I don’t care! I’m not even surprised! But you leave my basket alone!”

  “Yeah, okay.” Charlie backed away. “Sorry.”

  Hyoo-hyoo-hyoo-whee-up, hyoo-hyoo-hyoo-whee-up! sang the brass sparrows.

  “I have two shirt presses that need to be calibrated! If I have to clean your filth off my own baskets, at least my machines should all work perfectly! You tell your father—” Wu was still shouting when the door shut behind Charlie.

  Charlie sighed.

  A shadow loomed up in the steam. Huge boots swung toward him.

  Charlie flung himself out of the way—thud!—right into the brick wall of the alley.

  Charlie fell onto his back in the mud. “Ow!”

  The shadow rushed over Charlie so fast that all he saw were horns and a long coat. Charlie smelled a strong animal stink, and then something whizzed through the air unseen above his head. Shaitans, Charlie thought. He was being stalked by shaitans, who would kill him and take his place in the shop, and his bap would never know the difference because shaitans were shape-changers. Or maybe it was djinns or ifrits, or alfar, though none of those folk were supposed to smell like beasts.

  Didn’t the Almanack say that trolls smelled like cows?

  Charlie peeled himself out of the mud and limped toward home.

  Emerging from the cloud of steam, he stopped. Just down the alley he saw Pondicherry’s Clockwork Invention & Repair, and over the door the flexing piston arm that served as its signboard. For Bap’s customers who didn’t know how to read, the piston arm meant CLOCKWORK MACHINES BUILT AND FIXED HERE.

  Ducking to pass underneath the piston was a very big man.

  Charlie felt a shiver of excitement—the big man might be a troll. A hulder. He was tempted to run back to the shop and get a closer look, but a better thought stopped him.

  The big man might be a troll, but he must be a customer.

  His bap would be distracted, at least for a few minutes.

  Charlie turned and sprinted back into the steam cloud. He burst out the other side and raced to the mouth of the Gullet. There Charlie pressed himself against the wall and poked his head out into Irongrate Lane.

  This was the absolute boundary of his life.

  Charlie knew Irongrate Lane was in Whitechapel, and Whitechapel was part of London, but he didn’t have any good idea of the shape or size of either. Bap didn’t keep any maps of the city in the house, and Charlie wasn’t allowed to leave the Gullet. He very rarely snuck to the mouth of the alley for a peek, and he had absolutely never set foot beyond it.

  He’d been knocked down by Mickey, Skip, and Bruiser, browbeaten by Fathead Wu, and run over by a passing hulder. He wanted an adventure and a victory, and with Bap distracted by a customer, this was his chance.

  He stepped into Irongrate Lane.

  The street throbbed with life. Charlie saw a bookseller, an ironmonger, an apothecary, the place of business of some sort of wizard (the signboard showed a human palm covered with astrological symbols and an all-seeing eye), and other buildings he couldn’t identify. A costermonger walked behind his shining cart of fruits and vegetables, shouting prices as the cart itself generated cubes of ice and dropped them one at a time among the vegetables to keep them cool. People flowed in and out of the shops and rattled down the cobbles of the street on their two-wheeled, pedal-powered velocipedes and on horses. Charlie saw passengers riding in rickshaws, too—small, two-wheeled wagons, each pulled by a running person instead of an animal. A four-wheeled steam-carriage puffed majestically past, carrying on its high platform three ladies in crinoline dresses spangled with clouds of ribbon. No animals pulled it; a driver sat on a bench high in front, behind a steering wheel and two long gear handles. Two zebras clopped nonchalantly along; their riders wore dark blue uniforms with short blue capes and lots of shiny buttons, and looked
around at everything as if they were in charge.

  Charlie stuck his hands into his pockets. This was no big deal for any other boy; it should be no big deal for him. He took a few steps, trying not to tread in any horse manure, and whistled a scrawny note or two. He walked slowly and looked at a big pile of apples on the costermonger’s cart. He wasn’t hungry—he wasn’t the sort of boy who ever really got hungry—he was just trying to do whatever it was people did on Irongrate Lane.

  “Hello,” said a voice in an accent Charlie didn’t know.

  Charlie looked up from the apples. The speaker was a tall man, with long arms and legs and long black hair and a thin mustache on his upper lip. He was dressed all in black, including a black cloak that fell from his shoulders to his ankles.

  The cloak was pinned at the man’s throat with a brooch shaped like a gearwheel.

  “Hello,” Charlie whispered.

  The man squinted at him. “Is this the way to the shop of Mr. Rajesh Pondicherry?” he asked, and pointed over Charlie’s shoulder, down the Gullet. He had a funny lisp to the way he spoke, and when he said th, it almost sounded like z.

  Charlie swallowed hard. If the customer told his bap he had been out on Irongrate Lane, Charlie might get in trouble. Besides, there was something unsettling about the man. His accent wasn’t the problem; it was the way he stared. He was too intense, too interested. On the other hand, Charlie couldn’t turn a customer away. “What if it is?” he asked.

  “Clockwork Invention and Repair?” The stranger tried again, gargling his r’s. He leaned down, putting his face very close to Charlie’s. Charlie smelled onion and old butter.

  The stranger reached out to touch Charlie’s face—

  Charlie turned and ran.