Death in the Devil's Den Read Online Free Page B

grandfather’s tales and he winced as a picture of her reproachful face flashed in front of his mind’s eye.
    You were always a troublemaker , he could hear her say. And now you’ve got your little cousin into trouble .
    I’m doing my best! The words were in his mind, but they didn’t help. He would feel guilty for ever if Tom was caught and dragged off to Newgate prison. The penalty for
stealing a gentleman’s purse could be death by hanging.
    ‘Good,’ said Richard calmly, breaking into Alfie’s thoughts. ‘They’ve found someone to occupy them. Careful here; grab onto that saint’s hand. Put your foot
on his foot. It’s quite firm. I’ve been up here hundreds of times.’
    Alfie did as he was told, fitting his bare toes around the carved stone beneath the statue’s feet and then stepping up onto the foot itself. The voices of several policemen moved nearer.
Had they given up on the chase after Tom? They seemed to be talking to the Russian now.
    ‘Come down from that ladder, sir, if you please. It’s an offence to scale a building like the Abbey.’ The constable’s voice was polite: the man was obviously a toff,
wearing a fur coat and a silk top hat, but there was no doubt that he was behaving suspiciously.
    ‘This is a tricky bit,’ whispered Richard. ‘We have to make a jump here. Don’t look down.’
    Alfie’s mouth was dry as he watched the boy, hand on hat, coat tails flying up, make a leap from the roof to a wall. For a moment it looked as though he would fall, but at the last moment
he recovered his balance.
    ‘Come on,’ Richard said quietly. ‘You can’t go back down there. The place is swarming with policemen. They’re always around when the MPs sit late. They fetch cabs
for them and things like that.’
    Alfie knew that he shouldn’t go back down for a while until the policemen had wandered off back to New Scotland Yard. Left to himself, he would have spent a few hours on the Abbey roof and
then climbed down around dawn. Once more he glanced down at the distance that Richard had leaped so effortlessly. It must be at least thirty feet above the ground, he thought, feeling his breath
shorten. He imagined what a fall would do to him, pictured himself splayed out on the pavement with his skull split and the blood oozing from him, like that steeplejack he had once seen fall from
the roof of St Martin’s church in Trafalgar Square.
    From the other side of the Abbey, he could hear more voices and the strong Russian accent of the organist as he tried to explain to the policemen why he had been starting to climb onto the roof
of Westminster Abbey in the middle of a winter’s night.
    ‘Don’t look down – look at me. Jump!’ Richard’s voice had a note of alarm in it. He could see something that Alfie could not.
    And then one policeman’s voice rose up, stronger and louder than the others.
    ‘You just stay down here, sir,’ it said. ‘Constable Davies will get him. ’e’s from Wales – ’e’s used to mountain climbing and ’e’s
younger than you are, begging your pardon, sir. He’ll catch the little beggar what stole your purse, sir.’
    That settled it. A young, fit, mountain-climbing Welshman, armed with a truncheon, was after him. He had to trust Richard. After all, he told himself desperately, Alfie Sykes could do anything
that a boy dressed in a tailcoat and wearing a hat and a pair of boots could do.
    The distance between the two buildings was only about four feet. That was not the problem; it was just that it was a very long way down if he happened to jump short. However, Alfie’s mind
was made up. Clamping his teeth tightly together and pulling a deep breath into his chest, Alfie leaped across, clawing at the wall’s parapet with stone-cold hands. For a moment he fumbled,
but then despair sent the blood flowing back into his veins and he felt the slightly rough surface through his fingertips.
    Richard did not say a word but slipped around a pillar and