The someone he is talking to is unlike anyone I’ve ever seen before. It’s a man in a long black sailor’s coat that’s sodden with water. He looms over the desk like a crooked monolith, his face a dismal crag, his eyes hidden beneath the peak of a ruined captain’s cap. With one stiff finger he is jabbing the button of my bell like he’s stabbing it with a knife. He stops when I arrive and leans in even further, covering me in shadow.

“Where…?” he says, in a voice that sounds like two slabs of wet granite being scraped together. “Girl. Where?”

“Ahem,” I say, clearing my throat and putting on the posh voice Mr Mollusc expects me to use with guests. “To whom may you be referring, sir?”

The man’s mouth, which is nothing more than a wide upside-down “V” in his dripping bone-yellow beard, opens with a hiss. I notice there is seaweed in that beard, and more tangled around his tarnished brass buttons. He smells like something bad is about to happen.

“WHERE?”

I gulp. Well, I can’t help it, can I? I’m just a lost-property attendant. I’m not trained for this.

“My dear sir,” purrs the voice of Mr Mollusc, “I’m sure we can sort this out. What exactly have you lost?”

The man pulls himself back out of my cubbyhole, and towers over Mr Mollusc. He draws his right hand, which has been hidden till now, out of his coat. Mr Mollusc shrinks back when he sees that where the man’s hand should be is a large iron boathook, ending in a long gleaming spike.

“Girl,” the man says.

Now one thing I will say about old Mollusc is that he knows which battles to fight. In this case, since there’s no way he can beat this great hulking intruder, he decides to join him instead. He turns on me.

“Herbert Lemon! Have you got a girl down there?”

Now they’re both looming in at me.

I shake my head. My how-may-I-help-you? face dissolves, so I try an innocent grin instead.

“No,” I manage to say in a squeaky voice. I hate it when my voice does that. “No girls are hiding down here. None at all.”

And that’s when there’s a soft thud down in the basement behind me. It sounds exactly like someone who is hiding in a travel trunk trying to make themselves more comfortable.

Oops.

The bearded sailor opens his mouth in a moan of triumph, his dark eyes flash beneath his cap. He yanks open the door to my cubbyhole and shoves me against the wall as he pushes past. He squeezes down the steps to the cellar, filling the tunnel, his back crooked as he stoops beneath the low ceiling.