The door had an old-fashioned bell pull, like those in Lyra’s world, and Will didn’t know where to find it till Lyra showed him. When they pulled it, the bell jangled a long way off inside the house.
The man who opened the door was the servant who’d been driving the car, only now he didn’t have his cap on. He looked at Will first, and then at Lyra, and his expression changed a little.
“We want to see Sir Charles Latrom,” Will said.
His jaw was jutting as it had done last night facing the stone-throwing children by the tower. The servant nodded.
“Wait here,” he said. “I’ll tell Sir Charles.”
He closed the door. It was solid oak, with two heavy locks, and bolts top and bottom, though Will thought that no sensible burglar would try the front door anyway. And there was a burglar alarm prominently fixed to the front of the house, and a large spotlight at each corner; they’d never be able to get near it, let alone break in.
Steady footsteps came to the door, and then it opened again. Will looked up at the face of this man who had so much that he wanted even more, and found him disconcertingly smooth and calm and powerful, not in the least guilty or ashamed.
Sensing Lyra beside him impatient and angry, Will said quickly, “Excuse me, but Lyra thinks that when she had a lift in your car earlier on, she left something in it by mistake.”
“Lyra? I don’t know a Lyra. What an unusual name. I know a child called Lizzie. And who are you?”
Cursing himself for forgetting, Will said, “I’m her brother. Mark.”
“I see. Hello, Lizzie, or Lyra. You’d better come in.”
He stood aside. Neither Will nor Lyra was quite expecting this, and they stepped inside uncertainly. The hall was dim and smelled of beeswax and flowers. Every surface was polished and clean, and a mahogany cabinet against the wall contained dainty porcelain figures. Will saw the servant standing in the background, as if he were waiting to be called.
“Come into my study,” said Sir Charles, and held open another door off the hall.
He was being courteous, even welcoming, but there was an edge to his manner that put Will on guard. The study was large and comfortable in a cigar-smoke-and-leather-armchair sort of way, and seemed to be full of bookshelves, pictures, hunting trophies. There were three or four glass-fronted cabinets containing antique scientific instruments—brass microscopes, telescopes covered in green leather, sextants, compasses; it was clear why he wanted the alethiometer.
“Sit down,” said Sir Charles, and indicated a leather sofa. He sat at the chair behind his desk, and went on. “Well? What have you got to say?”
“You stole—” began Lyra hotly, but Will looked at her, and she stopped.
“Lyra thinks she left something in your car,” he said again. “We’ve come to get it back.”
“Is this the object you mean?” he said, and took a velvet cloth from a drawer in the desk. Lyra stood up. He ignored her and unfolded the cloth, disclosing the golden splendor of the alethiometer resting in his palm.
“Yes!” Lyra burst out, and reached for it.
But he closed his hand. The desk was wide, and she couldn’t reach; and before she could do anything else, he swung around and placed the alethiometer in a glass-fronted cabinet before locking it and dropping the key in his waistcoat pocket.
“But it isn’t yours, Lizzie,” he said. “Or Lyra, if that’s your name.”
“It is mine! It’s my alethiometer!”
He shook his head, sadly and heavily, as if he were reproaching her and it was a sorrow to him, but he was doing it for her own good. “I think at the very least there’s considerable doubt about the matter,” he said.
“But it is hers!” said Will. “Honestly! She’s shown it to me! I know it’s hers!”
“You see, I think you’d have to prove that,” he said. “I don’t have to prove anything, because it’s in my possession. It’s assumed to be mine. Like all the other items in my collection. I must say, Lyra, I’m surprised to find you so dishonest—”
“I en’t dishonest!” Lyra cried.
“Oh, but you are. You told me your name was Lizzie. Now I learn it’s something else. Frankly, you haven’t got a hope of convincing anyone that a precious piece like this belongs to you. I tell you what. Let’s call the police.”
He turned his head to call for the servant.
“No, wait—” said Will, before Sir Charles could speak, but Lyra ran around the desk, and from nowhere Pantalaimon was in her arms, a snarling wildcat baring his teeth and hissing at the old man. Sir Charles blinked at the sudden appearance of the dæmon, but hardly flinched.
“You don’t even know what it is you stole,” Lyra stormed. “You seen me using it and you thought you’d steal it, and you did. But you—you—you’re worse than my mother. At least she knows it’s important! You’re just going to put it in a case and do nothing with it! You ought to die! If I can, I’ll make someone kill you. You’re not worth leaving alive. You’re—”
She couldn’t speak. All she could do was spit full in his face, so she did, with all her might.
Will sat still, watching, looking around, memorizing where everything was.
Sir Charles calmly shook out a silk handkerchief and mopped himself.
“Have you any control over yourself?” he said. “Go and sit down, you filthy brat.”
Lyra felt tears shaken out of her eyes by the trembling of her body, and threw herself onto the sofa. Pantalaimon, his thick cat’s tail erect, stood on her lap with his blazing eyes fixed on the old man.
Will sat silent and puzzled. Sir Charles could have thrown them out long before this. What was he playing at?
And then he saw something so bizarre he thought he had imagined it. Out of the sleeve of Sir Charles’s linen jacket, past the snowy white shirt cuff, came the emerald head of a snake. Its black tongue flicked this way, that way, and its mailed head with its gold-rimmed black eyes moved from Lyra to Will and back again. She was too angry to see it at all, and Will saw it only for a moment before it retreated again up the old man’s sleeve, but it made his eyes widen with shock.
Sir Charles moved to the window seat and calmly sat down, arranging the crease in his trousers.
“I think you’d better listen to me instead of behaving in this uncontrolled way,” he said. “You really haven’t any choice. The instrument is in my possession and will stay there. I want it. I’m a collector. You can spit and stamp and scream all you like, but by the time you’ve persuaded anyone else to listen to you, I shall have plenty of documents to prove that I bought it. I can do that very easily. And then you’ll never get it back.”
They were both silent now. He hadn’t finished. A great puzzlement was slowing Lyra’s heartbeat and making the room very still.
“However,” he went on, “there’s something I want even more. And I can’t get it myself, so I’m prepared to make a deal with you. You fetch the object I want, and I’ll give you back the—what did you call it?”
“Alethiometer,” said Lyra hoarsely.
“Alethiometer. How interesting. Alethia, truth—those emblems—yes, I see.”
“What’s this thing you want?” said Will. “And where is it?”
“It’s somewhere I can’t go, but you can. I’m perfectly well aware that you’ve found a doorway somewhere. I guess it’s not too far from Summertown, where I dropped Lizzie, or Lyra, this morning. And that through the doorway is another world, one with no grownups in it. Right so far? Well, you see, the man who made that doorway has got a knife. He’s hiding in that other world right now, and he’s extremely afraid. He has reason to be. If he’s where I think he is, he’s in an old stone tower with angels carved around the doorway. The Torre degli Angeli.
“So that’s where you have to go, and I don’t care how you do it, but I want that knife. Bring it to me, and you can have the alethiometer. I shall be sorry to lose it, but I’m a man of my word. That’s what you have to do: bring me the knife.”
EIGHT
THE TOWER OF THE ANGELS
Will said, “Who is this man who’s got the knife?”