Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms Read Online Free PDF

platform at the bottom, just large enough for one person to stand on; a large round dial at the top, covered in glass; and a rectangular upright part linking the two. The whole thing had once been painted red, but over the years it had been scratched and written on, and the glass over the dial was cracked in several places.
    On the base was a small plaque. It read:

    Stuart took out a threepenny bit. This time he didn’t hesitate, but pushed it straight in.
    Nothing happened.
    He looked at the instructions again: Place coin in slot and stand on platform . Tentatively he put one foot and then the other on the slanted platform. There was a click, and the long needle swung slowly around the dial and halted beside a number.
    79.
    And just above the number, scratched onto the red-painted metal of the casing, two words were visible. Stuart craned to read them—craned and stretched and stood on tiptoe—and as he did so, there was an ominous groaning sound. The contents of the dumpster began to shift. All around him were cracking noises. Puffs of plaster dust filled the air. The weighing machine started to sink treacherously beneath his feet and rivulets of grit poured into the hole. Stuart clawed his way upward. For a brief moment he was on the same level as the dial, and the writing was close enough for him to read—it said GRAVEST FLATE —and then he had scrambled past it and was almost dancing across the moving surface, arms flailing, grabbing for the plank at the edge. He climbed onto it, breathing heavily, and looked back. Only the very top of the weighing machine was visible; the rest lay buried beneath the rubble.
    Stuart sneezed and then sneezed again. He was covered in white dust, he realized, and his heart was beating wildly. He felt almost happy. And more than happy; excited .
    The first threepence had shown him a book, and the second had given him a message:
    GRAVEST FLATE. 79.
    And now he just had to work out what on earth it meant.

CHAPTER 7
    Stuart hurried home and wrote down the clue before he could forget it, and then he sat and stared at it for nearly half an hour.
    GRAVEST FLATE.
    79 .
    He looked up gravest in the dictionary, just to check that it meant “most serious.” It did. He looked up the word flate . It wasn’t in there.
    He turned the piece of paper the wrong way up and looked at the letters upside down for a while. Then he realized that he was starting to feel hungry. He went to the fridge and made himself a cream-cheese, sliced-pickle, tomato-relish, and salt-and- vinegar potato-chip sandwich, which he ate while pacing around the kitchen.
    GRAVEST FLATE .
    “I used to love anagrams at your age,” remarked his father, wandering into the room. “Did you know you can rearrange the letters of Horten to make the words throne and hornet ?”
    “No, I didn’t,” said Stuart.
    “And your own first name,” continued his father, “is an anagram of Rattus , which is, of course, the Latin for rat . And the word Beeton —”
    “Why are you talking about anagrams?” asked Stuart.
    “That piece of paper you left on the dining-room table,” said his father, “I assumed it must be—”
    Stuart was back in the dining room before his father could finish the sentence. If the clue was an anagram, then all he needed to do was rearrange the letters, and—hey, presto! (as Great-Uncle Tony might have said)—he’d have the answer.
    He took a pencil, sat down, and began to think.
    GRAVEST FLATE .
    He rested his chin on his hands and thought harder. The more intensely he stared at the letters, the larger they seemed to get.
    Larger.
    LARGE . All of a sudden he could see the word LARGE .
    Feverishly, he began to rearrange the remaining letters.
    FAV TEST .
    No.
    FAST VET .
    No.
    FAT VEST .
    For a moment, he hesitated.
    LARGE FAT VEST .
    He shook his head. That couldn’t be right. He turned the paper over and started again.
    An hour later, he had a headache and six more anagrams:
    A FLAG REST VET
    A RAFT