The Golem's Eye

shuffled in like an animated skeleton. Nick's reassuring bulk brought up the rear. All three entered the room, Nick closing the door softly behind them.
    "Evening, Mr. Pennyfeather, sir." Stanley's voice was less chipper than normal; to Kitty's ears it carried a nauseating false humility. There was no reply. Slowly, Mr. Pennyfeather approached Fred's wicker chair; each step seemed to give him pain. He sat. Anne moved across to place the lantern in a niche beside him; his face was wreathed in shadow.
    Mr. Pennyfeather rested his stick against his chair. Slowly, one finger at a time, he plucked his gloves from his hands. Mr. Hopkins stood beside him, neat, quiet, instantly forgettable. Anne, Nick, Kitty, Stanley, and Fred remained standing. This was a familiar ritual.
    "Well, well, sit, sit." Mr. Pennyfeather placed his gloves on his knee. "My friends," he began, "we have come a long way together. I need not dwell on what we have sacrificed, or"—he broke off, coughed—"for what end. It has lately been my opinion, reinforced by my good Hopkins here, that we lack the resources to carry the fight to the enemy. We do not have enough money, enough weapons, enough knowledge. I believe we can now rectify this."
    He paused, made an impatient signal. Anne hurried forward with a glass of water.
    Mr. Pennyfeather gulped noisily. "That's better. Now. Hopkins and I have been away, studying certain papers stolen from the British Library. They are old documents, nineteenth century. From them, we have discovered the existence of an important cache of treasures, many of considerable magical power. If we can gain possession of it, we stand to revolutionize our fortunes."
    "Which magician has them?" Anne asked.
    "At present, they are beyond the magicians' reach."
    Stanley stepped forward eagerly. "We'll travel wherever you want, sir," he cried. "To France, or Prague, or... or the ends of the earth." Kitty rolled her eyes skyward.
    The old man chuckled. "We do not have to go quite as far as that. To be precise, we only have to cross the Thames." He allowed the ripple of bemusement to subside. "These treasures are not in some far temple. They are very close to home, somewhere we have all passed a thousand times. I will tell you—" He raised his hands to quell the rising hubbub. "Please, I will tell you. They are at the heart of the city, the heart of the magicians' empire. I am talking about Westminster Abbey."
    Kitty heard the others' intakes of breath, and felt a shiver of excitement run up her spine. The abbey? But no one would dare—
    "You mean a tomb, sir?" Nick asked.
    "Indeed, indeed. Mr. Hopkins—if you would explain further?"
    The clerk coughed. "Thank you. The abbey is the burial site of many of the greatest magicians of the past—Gladstone, Pryce, Churchill, Kitchener, to name but a few. They lie entombed in secret vaults deep beneath the floors, and with them lie their treasures, items of power that the faltering fools of today can only guess at."
    As always when Mr. Hopkins spoke, Kitty scarcely acknowledged him; she was toying with his words, with the possibilities they suggested.
    "But they laid curses on their tombs," Anne began. "Terrible punishments await those who open them."
    From the depths of his chair, Mr. Pennyfeather let out a wheezing laugh. "Today's leaders—poor excuses for magicians, all—certainly avoid the tombs like the plague. They are cowards, every one. They quail at the thought of the revenge their ancestors might take, were they to disturb their bones."
    "The traps can be avoided," Mr. Hopkins said, "with careful planning. We do not share the magicians' almost superstitious fear. I have been looking among the records and I have discovered a crypt that contains marvels you could scarcely dream of. Listen to this..." From his jacket, the clerk produced a folded piece of paper. In dead silence, he opened it, drew a small pair of spectacles from his pocket and perched them on his nose. He read: "Six bars of gold, four jeweled statuettes, two emerald-headed daggers, a set of onyx globes, a pewter chalice, an—ah, this is the interesting bit—an enchanted pouch of black satin, filled with fifty gold sovereigns—" Mr. Hopkins glanced up at them over his spectacles. "This pouch is unremarkable to look at, but consider this—no matter how much gold is removed from the pouch, it never grows empty. An unending source of revenue for your group, I think."
    "We could buy weapons," Stanley muttered. "The