A Thursday Next Digital Collection: Novels 1-5 Read Online Free PDF Page A

hand. Whoever took the manuscript of Chuzzlewit left no fingerprints, no sign of entry and nothing on any of the cameras.”
    â€œNot a lot to go on, was there?”
    â€œOn the contrary. It was just the break I’ve been waiting for.”
    â€œDid you share this with Boswell?” I asked.
    â€œOf course not. We’re not interested in the manuscript; we’re interested in the man who stole it.”
    â€œAnd who’s that?”
    â€œI can’t tell you his name but I can write it.”
    He took out a felt tip and wrote “Acheron Hades” on a notepad and held it up for me to read.
    â€œLook familiar?”
    â€œ Very familiar. There can’t be many people who haven’t heard about him.”
    â€œI know. But you’ve met him, haven’t you?”
    â€œCertainly,” I replied. “He was one of the lecturers when I studied English at Swindon in ’68. None of us were surprised when he switched to a career of crime. He was something of a lech. He made one of the students pregnant.”
    â€œBraeburn; yes, we know about her. What about you?”
    â€œHe never made me pregnant, but he had a good try.”
    â€œDid you sleep with him?”
    â€œNo; I didn’t figure sleeping with lecturers was really where I wanted to be. The attention was flattering, I suppose, dinner and stuff. He was brilliant—but a moral vacuum. I remember once he was arrested for armed robbery while giving a spirited lecture on John Webster’s The White Devil . He was released without charge on that occasion, but the Braeburn thing was enough to have him dismissed.”
    â€œHe asked you to go with him yet you turned him down.”
    â€œYour information is good, Mr. Tamworth.”
    Tamworth scribbled a note on his pad. He looked up at me again.
    â€œBut the important thing is: You know what he looks like?”
    â€œOf course,” I replied, “but you’re wasting your time. He died in Venezuela in ’82.”
    â€œNo; he just made us think he had. We exhumed the grave the following year. It wasn’t him at all. He feigned death so well that he fooled the doctors; they buried a weighted coffin. He has powers that are slightly baffling. That’s why we can’t say his name. I call it Rule Number One.”
    â€œHis name? Why not?”
    â€œBecause he can hear his own name—even whispered—over a thousand-yard radius, perhaps more. He uses it to sense our presence.”
    â€œAnd why do you suppose he stole Chuzzlewit ?”
    Tamworth reached into his case and pulled out a file. It was marked “Most Secret—SpecOps-5 clearance only.” The slot in the front, usually reserved for a mugshot, was empty.
    â€œWe don’t have a picture of him,” said Tamworth as I opened the file. “He doesn’t resolve on film or video and has never been in custody long enough to be sketched. Remember the cameras at Gad’s Hill?”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œThey didn’t pick anyone up. I went through the tapes very carefully. The camera angle changed every five seconds yet there would be no way anyone could dodge all of them during the time they were in the building. Do you see what I mean?”
    I nodded slowly and flicked through the pages of Acheron’s file. Tamworth continued:
    â€œI’ve been after him for five years. He has seven outstanding warrants for murder in England, eighteen in America. Extortion, theft and kidnapping. He’s cold, calculating and quite ruthless. Thirty-six of his forty-two known victims were either SpecOps or police officers.”
    â€œHartlepool in ’75?” I asked.
    â€œYes,” replied Tamworth slowly. “You heard about it?”
    I had. Most people had. Hades had been cornered in the basement of a multistory car park after a botched robbery. One of his associates lay dead in a bank nearby; Acheron had killed the wounded man to stop him