Free The Peculiar by Stefan Bachmann Page A

more deserted the halls became until he could hear nothing but the distant ticking of a clock, echoing in time with his shoes. After several minutes he began to feel foolish hurrying down corridor after empty corridor. He sidestepped quickly into a doorway, listened, and hearing nothing, let himself in.
    The room was small, just a closet compared to some of the other chambers in the palace. The wall facing the river was all windows, and the rest was all empty bookcases except for a large walnut cabinet that stood next to the door. There were no drapes, no papers or photographs. Mr. Jelliby decided it must be a clerk’s office not yet moved into. All the better. He sat down on the bare floorboards and resolved to wait. In ten minutes he would hurry back to the council chamber and enter unnoticed during the main crush of gentlemen.
    It was very quiet in the room. The absence of books on the shelves made it feel hollow somehow, not lived in. He pulled out his timepiece and waited for the minute hand to move. It took an eternity. Tick . He set to drumming his fingers against the floor. Tick. Two people passed by the door, deep in conversation. “Most unbecoming . . .” he heard, before the voices receded again. Tick. More footsteps. Another person was coming down the hallway, pattering lightly. Mr. Jelliby stood, stretching. The footsteps came closer. Are they slowing? Oh heavens, they won’t stop. They will go past. They must go past.
    The feet stopped, directly in front of the door to the empty clerk’s office.
    Mr. Jelliby clutched his watch so hard he almost cracked its glass face. His eyes flickered around the room. What am I to do? He could go to the door and face whoever was about to enter. Or he could hide. Hide in the cabinet and hope upon hope that whoever it was, he was a quick fellow utterly uninterested in walnut closets. Mr. Jelliby chose the cabinet.
    It was one of those odd desk cabinets that is actually a tiny closed chamber, with drawers and compartments for ink and envelopes all up its walls. It had a little padded bench and a paraffin lamp to see by. A pane of warped glass looked out its door. Mr. Jelliby scooted in clumsily, and when he was pressed back as far as he could get, he shut himself in.
    Not a moment too soon. The door to the hallway opened quietly. Mr. Jelliby held his breath. And John Wednesday Lickerish slipped into the room.
    It took Mr. Jelliby a second to fully grasp his own bad luck. This was a dream, surely. Perhaps there was a gas leak in the palace and he had breathed the fumes, or contracted lead poisoning, and the effects were coming on now in hallucinations and headaches. But no. This was his life. And it made him angry.
    Confound it! Confound everything! Of course it would be the faery politician. And of course the bulb-headed blighter would choose this room to enter, out of all the hundreds of rooms in Westminster. Now if Mr. Jelliby were to be discovered it would mean more than just humiliation. It would mean an investigation, banishment from his club and all his favorite drawing rooms, perhaps even arrest. Hiding inside the furnishings of a private Parliament chamber only days after widespread rumors of spying was not something that could be interpreted favorably. With a few well-placed words, his opponents could easily have him thrown out of Parliament altogether. Mr. Jelliby had half a mind to burst from the cabinet then and there, and shout at the faery that he was bringing him ill fortune by the buckets and Mr. Jelliby wanted nothing to do with him. But of course he could never have brought himself to do it. He simply sat, rooted to the bench, and watched through the glass pane.
    The faery politician walked to the center of the room. He glanced around him. Then he moved toward the large mullioned windows that looked out over the Thames and undid a latch, throwing wide the casement. His hand went out. Something moved in his palm—metal feathers and