House of the Lost Read Online Free Page A

moved, but it was as if something invisible pounced triumphantly on the word.
    ‘That’s just it,’ said the man. ‘We think there might be secret things your father writes.’
    ‘What kind of secret things?’
    ‘Things that might not be printed in the newspapers. Things that aren’t articles.’
    ‘D’you mean letters? Stuff like that?’
    ‘It might be letters, yes. Or even diaries. He goes away sometimes, doesn’t he? He’s away now, isn’t he?’
    ‘It’s just, um, business things he goes to,’ said Matthew. ‘I ’spect it’s about his work.’
    ‘Don’t you know where he goes? Doesn’t he tell you?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Does he keep a book with appointments written in?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘We’d really like to know where he goes, Matthew,’ said the man, ‘on those trips he makes two or three times a year. It’s quite important to us to know.’
    ‘Why?’ It came out quite bravely, even though Matthew was not feeling in the least bit brave.
    The men looked at one another. Then the leader said, ‘Do you know what a traitor is, Matthew?’
    A traitor. The word dropped into the quiet room like a stone. Traitors were very bad people indeed. Matthew knew that because they had history at school on Wednesday afternoons, and the lessons told about traitors. Traitors were liars and cheats; they were sly and secretive and everyone hated them.
    (‘There are lots of secrets,’ Mara had said. ‘Only it’s better not to talk about it, that’s what they say.’)
    In wars, enemies wanted to know where soldiers and armies would be so they could send their own soldiers sneaking in, so traitors were given money for finding this out and telling it to the enemies. But they were dangerous and wicked people and at times they even killed, which was the worst thing anyone could do in the whole world. These things were all very clear in Matthew’s mind, but what was also clear was that terrible things were done to traitors if they were found out. They were put in prison and usually they were shot or had their heads cut off. Matthew sat on the edge of his bed and looked at the two men, who were watching him, and tried to imagine how it would be if his father were to have his head chopped off or if he were propped up against a wall and shot through the heart.
    At last he said, ‘My father isn’t a traitor. I know he isn’t.’
    ‘We don’t think he is either, not really,’ said the man, ‘but some people do think it, that’s the difficulty. Important people think it. So we have to make sure. We have to – to prove his innocence. Do you understand what that means? Yes, I thought you would, you’re such an intelligent boy.’
    ‘I’m sure you can help us,’ said the second man. ‘Let’s see, you’re nine years old, aren’t you? You recently had a birthday, in fact. So I expect at nine, you can read and write pretty well.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘You could read what your father writes and tell us about it,’ said the first man. ‘And you could find out when he’s next going to be away. Could you do that?’
    ‘I’m not sure,’ said Matthew, staring at him.
    ‘I think you could. You’d have to do it without him knowing, of course.’
    ‘Then once we knew for certain, we’d be able to – what’s called “clear his name”,’ said the man, ‘with the people who suspect him.’
    ‘Haven’t you asked him?’ said Matthew. ‘I ’spect he’d tell you where he goes. And he’d show you the things he writes. You’d know it was all right, then.’
    ‘Oh, we’ve done that, of course,’ said the second man at once. ‘But your father is very clever, Matthew. He says he hardly ever goes away, but when he does it’s to see people about his books and articles. But we aren’t sure about it. And we can’t be sure he isn’t posting things off we don’t know about.’
    Posting things off. It provides ‘jam to spread on the bread’, his father had said, with the little sideways smile, sealing his