Peregrine
"Psst!"
Albert looked around in surprise, but he couldn't see me. He went to the door of his study and looked outside, but the corridor was empty. Returning to his desk, he continued with the task of writing a series of letters to important people, informing them that Peregrine Tripp had succeeded in his quest and closed the borders of The World of Fiction, but, tragically, had lost his life in the mission. Arthur suggested that in recognition of my valour, Free Worlds should raise a subscription to build a 'Portals Past and Present' museum in my honour.
"Psst!"
Once more, he raised his pen.
"Psst! Uncle Albert, it's me, Peregrine."
Uncle Albert could not see me, but he could hear my voice.
Good heavens," he said, jumping to my feet. "If this is somebody's idea of a joke, it is in extremely bad taste."
"No joke; Uncle Albert, it's me," I said. "I escaped from the woods into the Badlands and nearly drowned in a flood. I ended up in an alternative London."
"Gracious Peregrine, it is you. My dear boy, I cannot tell you how relieved I am, as everybody else will be when I tell them."
"No, Uncle Albert," I said. "You must tell no one. There is no time for explanations. This is a matter of great urgency, and you must trust me. Will you do that?"
"Of course, dear boy. Now, what do you want me to do?"
"Remember the time the portal took us back to Oxford in nineteen forty-nine?"
"Why yes."
"Can you set it to go to the past of anywhere you choose?"
"Well, yes, within reason."
"I want us to travel back sixteen years into the past of this building, and the room that you used as an office at that time. Do you remember it?"
"Yes, of course."
"And can you remember the day you permanently filed away the blueprint for the Mark Two Portal after a decision had been made to abandon the project?"
"Yes, of all the days to choose, it was May 15th, my birthday, not one of my best. I remember labelling the file to go in the archives and a requisition note for Miss Sharpe to send the prototypes for scrap. I just wanted to forget the whole thing."
"You never took the file out again or checked if the prototype had been received by the scrap dealers?"
"No, I noticed that the prototype had gone from the yard and assumed the scrap merchant had picked it up. I never looked at the file again. The law requires companies to keep archived files for six years and dispose of them.
"There would be no room for anything new if we didn't. I wanted nothing more to do with the project; we lost considerable money developing the prototype."
"There we have it then, Uncle Albert. I want us to go back to the evening of May 15th, sixteen years ago, and I want us to go right now. Will you help me, Uncle Albert? A great deal rests on your decision."
"Well then, we must go to the Yellow Room at once… but Peregrine, how will you join me?"
"As a passenger in your head. The same way that you visited me in Arcadia."
"Of course, my boy; how forgetful of me."
Less than an hour later, Albert was back in his old office from sixteen years ago, with me following him remotely. The time was a quarter past five in the afternoon. Albert had told me the office staff finished at five, and I could see Miss Sharpe's old-fashioned quill writer had its cover on.
Albert didn't have to hide, of course. Back in the past, he was also insubstantial and invisible, unable to change anything or interact with the environment in any way.
I asked Albert to confirm what was in the file.
"All the documentation relating to the project. The plans and test results right up to the final papers authorising the disposal of the prototype."
"What exactly was in the final papers?"
"My signed authority for the prototype to go for scrap, and a declaration signed by me and Earnest and witnessed by Miss Peabody from Order Dispatch. The prototype was for scrap only, and we stated that nobody must salvage any parts or try to rebuild the machine.
"Works labelled the machine in indelible red paint:
'DANGER TO LIFE. DO NOT TOUCH.'
There was also a letter from me to the scrap merchants enclosing two copies of the declaration and a request for an acknowledgement of receipt, plus a signed affirmation that they understood and would fully comply with the conditions."
"And that was the last you saw of them?"
"Yes. I never even thought of checking that the scrap merchants had sent the receipt. I should have done so, of course, but the failure of the project weighed heavily on me at the time, and I became unwell. I had to take time off to rest and recuperate. I wanted to forget the whole business."
"You were not to blame, Uncle Albert."
"Thank you, Peregrine, but will you please explain again to me why we are here? I'm still a little confused."
"And so, you should be. A receipt for the prototype is not in your possession because the scrap merchants never sent one. None of the staff ever painted a warning in red on the machine because Miss Sharpe never requested the works department to do so.
"Miss Sharpe's brother, Edmund, stole the prototype from the yard on this very night, sixteen years ago. He entered the yard by unlocking the gate with duplicate keys kept in the office. The next day, the yard staff assumed that an authorised vehicle from the scrap yard had collected it. Nobody bothered to check because everybody was glad to see the back of it."
"What became of the file?" said Uncle Albert, now fully alert. "It will prove my innocence."
"We don't know for sure. If Miss Sharpe had sent it to the archives, as she should have done, the archive staff would by now have shredded it.
"But I have a strong suspicion that Miss Sharpe would not have taken the chance of somebody noticing that it had gone missing and starting an official investigation. She could not destroy it for the same reason.
"If somebody did notice it missing, they would naturally come to her first rather than raise an official report, and she could miraculously 'find' it before an investigation started. Very risky, of course, but she would have had no other choice."
"But how could she possibly have got away with it?"
Albert was intrigued. 'Whodunits' were his favourite reading.
"Can't say for certain," I replied. "But I would guess that she thought that if anybody did come looking for the file, it wouldn't be for anything important. The company had washed its hands of the whole project, and in all probability, it would be just a clerk looking for an old memo or something to match up routine records. If that had happened, she would have contacted the clerk by speaking tube from the other side of the manufacturing area and said that she had found the file mixed up with old papers and if they cared to tell her what they were looking for, she would take it out of the file and bring it over in person.
"Miss Sharp was a smart character and would have found her way around the problem, whatever the circumstances. But it was clear that she could not destroy the file. It was too risky, even if the chances of anybody asking for it were small. She had to find another way."
"Hide it!" said Uncle Arthur triumphantly, "but where?"
"That's what we are here for. Somebody removed the prototype from the yard on this very night, and I am counting on Miss Sharpe hiding the file at the same time."
And so, we waited.
The minutes ticked away, and I sensed that Albert was dozing off, just as I was. Then the sound of a key turning in a lock woke me, and I hissed. "Albert, wake up."
We watched together as the door opened, and a woman, with a shifty-looking young man behind her, came into the office.
"We have to be quick," said the woman, unlocking a cabinet and taking out a large set of keys, which she handed over to the man.
"Remember to lock up on the way out and give me the keys later. I will put them back tomorrow, and nobody will notice. Now go."
The man hurriedly left the room, and the woman, I can hardly bear to say her name, went over to the filing cabinet and, after unlocking it, pulled out a slim red file from the first drawer. She then relocked the cabinet.
"We were right then; she was going to hide it, but where?"
"The cheek of it! Said Albert indignantly, for Miss Sharpe had taken the portrait of Earnest and Albert standing on either side of their father, down from where it hung on the wall. It was a handsome oil painting commissioned by their father to mark the day he officially handed over the company to his sons.
It had a thick oak frame, and the woman struggled to get it down. She carried it over to her desk, placed it face down on the surface, and carefully removed the back from the frame using a small, but very sharp knife.
She then placed the file in the groove between the reverse side of the thick canvas and the outside panel and replaced the back. Stepping up onto the desk, now pushed the painting under the place where it had originally hung, and lifted it back onto its hook.
Getting down, she put the desk and chair back in their original places and stepped back to admire her work. It looked exactly as it did before; not even the slightest bulge showed that the file lay behind the canvas.
We had seen enough and returned by the portal to the yellow room.
"Where is that painting now?" I asked Albert.
"Why in favourite study," he said, "hanging behind his desk.
"All these years, and it has been staring straight at us!"
"Go there at once and tell Earnest. Take out the file and lock it away somewhere safe. But first, I would like you to write down these coordinates for where I would like you to pick us from London".
I dictated the figures to him, and he wrote them on a piece of paper with his gold-nibbed fountain pen.
We had a brief discussion concerning the coordinates, and then I said,
"Now, Albert, I must return to some pressing business. I hope to see you again soon, but it is best not to say I am alive just yet until I am certain I can get back."
"Anything you ask, dear boy, anything at all."
Uncle Albert sounded very faint now as my journey back to London got underway.
Uncle Albert rushed round to Ernest's office, but Ernest was out. Albert unhooked the painting from the wall and laid it face down on the table. Using a penknife, he slit open the back cover and slipped his hand into the space to search for the file.
There was nothing there.
Peregrine's plan had failed…