Lockwood & Co.: The Screaming Staircase

as if another trio walked invisibly alongside.
    In Portland Row there had been a malfunction with the ghost-lamp; blue sparks flickered at the base of the headpiece and, instead of their usual fierce brightness, the lenses glowed a frail, resentful red. Most of our neighbours’ windows were dark, and all were shut and curtained. The mist clung close about us as we drew level with our door.
    Lockwood was in the lead; he reached out his hand to open the gate and suddenly stopped dead. George and I both bumped into him.
    ‘George,’ Lockwood said quietly. ‘You had Annie Ward’s necklace last. What did you do with it?’
    ‘I put it on the shelves with all the other trophies. Why?’
    ‘Its silver-glass case was sealed? It wasn’t loose or anything?’
    ‘Of course not. What—’
    ‘I just saw a light in our office window.’
    He pointed down over the railings. The basement yard was a pool of blackness, diagonally sliced by the faint orange glow from the street-lamp outside number 37. Half in and half out of that glow sat the window in question. By day it gave a glimpse of my work-chair, and the vase of flowers on the centre of my desk. Right now it was entirely flat, as if a black rectangle had been painted on the brickwork.
    ‘I don’t see anything,’ George breathed.
    ‘It was just for a second,’ Lockwood said. ‘I thought it might be a trace of other-light, but maybe— No, there it is again!’
    This time we’d all seen the shimmer, faint and fleeting, glinting off the interior of the glass. Shock held us in its grip; none of us moved.
    ‘That was a torch,’ George said softly.
    I nodded; my skin crawled. ‘Someone’s in our house.’
    ‘Someone,’ Lockwood said, ‘who’s not afraid of being out at night. Which means they’ll be armed. They’ll have rapiers or flares at the very least. All right, let’s think. How did they get in?’
    I squinted up the path. ‘Front door looks OK.’
    ‘You want me to check out the back?’ George said. ‘They may have busted in through the garden door.’
    ‘But if they haven’t you’ll be stuck outside . . . No, we need to work together on this. We’ll go in the front as usual – only quietly . Come on.’
    He flitted up the path, moving soundlessly on the tiles. At the porch he halted, pointing in silence to a little patch of splintered wood halfway up the door jamb. When he pushed the door, it swung slowly open. ‘They jemmied the lock,’ George hissed.
    ‘If this was their way in,’ Lockwood said, ‘we can trap them down below.’ He beckoned us close, whispered in our ears. ‘OK. We check the ground floor, then go down the spiral stairs. I don’t want to hear a sound.’
    ‘What about the upper floors?’
    ‘Can’t risk it. The landing squeaks. Besides, it’s clearly the office they’re raiding. So: rapiers ready? We find them, corner them, ask them to disarm.’
    ‘And if they don’t?’ I said.
    Lockwood’s teeth glinted briefly. ‘We use what force we need.’
    The hallway was black; no sound came from deeper in the building. We halted a moment, with the door pulled to behind us, letting our eyes adjust. The crystal-skull lantern grinned from its side-table; our coat-rack was a dark mass on the wall. Lockwood pointed with his rapier at the display shelves opposite. At first sight they were the same as ever; then I saw that some of the masks and gourds were slightly out of position, as if someone had sorted through them with a hasty hand. Far ahead of us, I made out the dull white glow of the thinking cloth beyond the kitchen door. I listened again, heard nothing. I realized I was automatically using all my senses, both outer and inner, as if we were away on business, doing the agent thing.
    But this was our house, our home, and we had an intruder here.
    Lockwood motioned with the blade to left and right. George flitted into the living room; I stepped like a shadow into the library. I could sense right away that it was empty: there was no trace of a lingering presence. But it hadn’t escaped our guest’s attention. Below the shelves, books and papers lay strewn upon the floor.
    Back in the hall, Lockwood waited by the stairs. George’s report was similar to mine. ‘Someone’s working the place over,’ he breathed. ‘Hunting for something.’
    Lockwood only nodded. We stole forward to the kitchen.
    Whether or not our enemy had rifled our possessions here was hard to say, since the room was its usual mess. The table