The Derring-Do Club and the Year of the Chrononauts by David Wake Page A

the unmistakable sound of swords clattering.
    It was a long time since she had played ‘hide–and–seek’ here and she realised that she could no longer fit under the sofa nor would the curtains suffice. Indeed, she realised that Uncle Jeremiah must have been particularly blind not to have realised straight away when she’d hid behind them.
    The voices reached the landing: high tones objecting to a lower pitched firmness.
    Maybe they were going up to the second floor.
    The handle rattled.
    “This door’s unlocked,” said a voice that wasn’t Uncle Jeremiah’s.
    Charlotte light footed it across the room and into the bedroom.
    She could hide under the bed – no! It would be the first place they’d look.
    In the wardrobe?
    Footsteps in the study!
    “I must object!” the landlady announced.
    “In writing, Mrs Jacobs, in writing.”
    “But where to?”
    “The Chronological Constabulary, care of Scotland Yard.”
    Trunk!
    Blankets out, flung onto bed, Charlotte in, top down.
    “It’s not on the shelf.”
    “Search everywhere.”
    “I can smell fresh tobacco.”
    “Someone’s been here.”
    The bedroom door creaked open.
    She wasn’t hiding from Uncle – don’t giggle! Don’t! Just don’t!
    “Post… an unpaid bill for glass… galvanic lighting… some funeral.”
    The cheek, Charlotte thought, they’ve opened his letters.
    “This pipe is warm – go and find out if anyone’s been here.”
    “How?”
    “Ask the Jacobs woman.”
    Footsteps went away, but another step sounded in the bedroom. The light in the crack around the trunk lid moved, split and moved again.
    “It’s not by his bed… nor under it.”
    “It was here.”
    “He’s taken it then.”
    “Looks like it.”
    “Someone else has been looking for it.”
    “We’d better tell Mrs Frasier.”
    “Rather you than me.”
    “Mrs Frasier isn’t going to be happy.”
    “Is Mrs Frasier ever happy?”
    The footsteps receded.
    The door closed.
    Charlotte lifted the lid a smidge and looked out: they’d gone.
    They’d been looking for ‘it’, they’d not found ‘it’, so ‘it’ wasn’t here, whatever ‘it’ was, and Mrs Frasier, whoever she was, wasn’t going to be happy.
    Back in the drawing room, Charlotte looked around.
    The books had been disturbed on the shelf, the gap was now larger and a Jules Verne lay fallen on the blotter.
    How do you find something, she thought, that you know isn’t here?
    What had the man said: “Kronologic Constab… u… lorry.”
    She fetched down Uncle Jeremiah’s big dictionary: ‘H’… ‘J’… ‘K’… ‘Krona’, ‘Kronecker’… It wasn’t there. Perhaps it was ‘Crone’ like an old woman, which would be an excellent word for Earnestine. Charlotte sniggered as she passed ‘E’ and ‘D’. It wasn’t in ‘C’ neither. Could you have a silent letter in front of a ‘C’ or a ‘K’, she wondered idly flicking the pages. There it was: ‘Chronology – pertaining to, and of, time’.
    “Temporal Peelers,” she whispered aloud.
    So it was true. They had been here looking for Uncle Jeremiah and the mysterious ‘it’. Uncle had packed, quickly as he’d left his trunk and scarf, and then gone on the run. Logically he’d taken ‘it’ with him. ‘It’ would be small, if ‘it’ had been on the shelf. But where would he go? Perhaps Battersea or smudged?
    She checked the letters they’d discarded on the table. It wasn’t wrong, surely, to read them now, because they were open and she’d not opened them herself.
    Smudged turned out to be a Birmingham glass making factory – how dull.
    She could do this.
    The clues were here.
    Holmes always spotted a footprint or a dropped pair of glasses, and deduced a secret room or whatever. No dog had barked, but then Uncle Jeremiah didn’t have a dog.
    He hadn’t opened the letter about Captain Merryweather’s funeral, so he’d not been here for an age, and yet there were only three letters. Perhaps he had arranged to