The Kneebone Boy by Ellen Potter Read Free Book Online

Lucia and Max, seeing that he would not be budged, relented and did the same. There they waited, in the dingy little hallway, listening to Dr. Jekyll’s pacing and nodding a sheepish hello to a red-faced man who passed them on his way upstairs. They nodded hello again when he went back down the stairs a while later, then again when he came back up with a bag of groceries.
    “Who are you wanting, then?” he demanded in the tone of someone who had had enough monkey business.
    “Well, seeing as how we’ve been sitting in front of Angela Winger’s door for the past half hour, I’d say it’s a safe bet we’re wanting Angela Winger,” Lucia said without even looking at him. She was sometimes rude to people who asked dumb things.
    “Angela’s on holiday,” the man spat back. “Piss off!” He jabbed his thumb at the stairs.
    “What do you mean she’s on holiday?” Lucia said, looking up at the man.
    “Oh, the little snit is interested now, is she?” The man smirked and cocked his head in a taunting way.
    “Excuse me, sir”—Max tried to be as polite as possible to make up for Lucia—“but where
is
Angela?”
    “Not that it’s any of your business,” he said, “but she happens to be in Berlin. As in Germany.”
    “But our dad talked to her today and she said she’d meet us at the station,” Lucia said.
    “And
did
she meet you at the station?” the man asked in a mocking tone.
    “No,” Lucia admitted. “But . . . but she can’t be in Berlin!”
    “Can be and is, Sunshine. Can be and is.” The man was enjoying himself so much now that he put his bag of groceries on the floor and seemed prepared to stay and watch the panic unfold.
    It did.
    “What do we do now?”
    “How could Dad have sent us if Angela’s away?”
    But Max had the wherewithal to ask the man, “What about Dr. Jekyll then? She wouldn’t just leave him behind.”
    “Ever heard of a dog walker? She was here this afternoon. Dr. Jekyll would have took her fingers off for her if I hadn’t gone in first and gave him what for. And did that sullen little minger even say thanks for my trouble?” He frowned remembering this snub afresh. “Now, clear out! The building don’t allow loitering in the hallways.”
    There was nothing to do but to gather up their bags once more and trudge back down the stairs and out onto the street.
    “What are we supposed to do now?” Otto said. They were silent for a bit, considering.
    “I might try climbing up,” Max suggested, eyeing the gate in front of the building and the tiers of balconies above. “I could try Angela’s window and see if I can get in that way.”
    “Yes, and then we’ll all spend a lovely night in jail. Brilliant, Max,” Lucia said.
    In truth, she was slightly jealous of the idea, becausethough it involved risk and danger, of which she very much approved, it also involved heights, which as you already know she is not fond of.
    “What we need to do is to ring Dad,” Otto said. This was so plainly obvious that no one could argue against it. They found a phone booth on the next block and Max dialed up their home number. He held the phone to his ear for a distressingly long time before he hung up.
    “He must have already left,” he said.
    They had no other phone number for him. When he went away on his trips, he always called
them
and gave Mrs. Carnival a number in case of emergencies.
    “Maybe that man in Angela’s building was wrong,” Max said. “Or maybe he was just having us on, and Angela will be back later.”
    There was hope in that thought and they didn’t have much else at the moment. Otto was for planting themselves outside Angela’s building and waiting for her to return. But Lucia argued that since they were in the middle of London and free to do what they liked, they might as well try to have an adventure. Max agreed and so that was that.
    It wasn’t long, though, before Otto began to think it was a good idea as well. The whole of Camden was crawling