Free Zeuglodon by James P. Blaylock Page A

always managed to run away before Mr. Diggler recovered his wits and turned around to catch the culprit.
    “If my eyes don’t deceive me,” Uncle Hedge said to Mr. Diggler, “that was Ms Henrietta Peckworthy.”
    “Yes, it was,” Mr. Diggler agreed. “She’s a tenacious woman. Very tenacious. She won’t be put off. This is her third visit to the school.”
    “She gets her fair share of worms,” Uncle Hedge said.
    “Worms?” Mr. Diggler asked, blinking his eyes slowly, which brought out his newt-likeness.
    “He means she’s the early bird,” Perry said helpfully.
    “That’s the truth,” Mr. Diggler said. “I’m afraid she means trouble, too.” He glanced at us, as if he was worried about us overhearing.
    “You can speak plainly,” Uncle Hedge told him. “Ms Peckworthy isn’t anyone’s secret.”
    “She had drawn up…papers of some sort,” Mr. Diggler said, “which only had to be certified somehow by social services, and…” He noticed then that there was a woman’s handbag lying on a chair. The office window looked out onto the parking lot, and we could see Ms Peckworthy still sitting in her car. Then the car door swung open, and she climbed out again.
    “Someone run it on out to her,” Uncle Hedge said.
    Perry started to pick up the handbag, but Brendan said, “I’ll do it,” and he pushed Perry aside, snatched up the bag, and went out through the door running. After a moment—a long moment—we saw him crossing the parking lot. Ms Peckworthy poked her head forward like a surprised pigeon when she saw him rushing at her, but then she must have seen her handbag, because she stepped forward and took it from Brendan, and the excitement was over.
    When Brendan came back in there was something in his face that made me wonder, although it wasn’t until later, when we got home and were getting ready to go to the airport, that he pulled Ms Peckworthy’s notebook out from under his sweater. He looked triumphant. He hadn’t had to lie in wait for her at all, but had taken the notebook right out of her handbag before he got to the parking lot. I reminded him that we had voted against stealing the notebook, and that I had been against it from the start, and that stealing it was wrong.
    “Dry up, Perkins,” Brendan told me unpleasantly. “If you don’t like it, don’t look at it.” He decided not to let Perry look at it either. He said he was going down to the sea cave that very moment to look at it himself, and to burn it. A half hour later, when he returned, he wouldn’t tell Perry or me what actually was in the notebook, but said he would die with the secret safe in his head, even if he was tortured, and so I said the sooner the better, although later I felt bad about saying it. I also felt bad, in a small way, that I very much wanted to know what was in the notebook, and also that part of me was glad that Brendan had stolen it and burned it.
    As you can imagine, we were in a sweat to leave for the airport because of what Mr. Diggler had said about the papers. Time was passing like a tortoise or a sloth, both of which are slow, and so we spent it up in the attic, watching through the gable window for Ms Peckworthy’s car to turn up into the neighborhood. The notebook might be a heap of ashes now, but we still weren’t easy about it, because Perry pointed out that the notebook wasn’t really evidence of anything, but only a record of the evidence. Brendan said that she would never take him alive, and that he had an escape route down the bluffs to his “hideout,” by which he meant the lighthouse. He thought that the unlocked window was a secret that only he knew about. Our suitcases already lay in the trunk of the Zeuglodon along with the Mermaid in her box, and I was itching to be in the back seat watching the scenery fly past.
    Uncle Hedge came home at last, laden with supplies for the long flight ahead, and so we hurried back down to the livingroom. He carried the missing maps