A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #4)(43)

I was trying to explain The Simpsons and succumbing to a deep sleepiness (it had been a long day) when something in my brain unlocked, and I remembered where I had seen that clerk’s face before. I handed the remote to Enoch, excused myself to the bathroom, and ran upstairs.

Closing the door to my room, I pulled out Abe’s operations log from under my bed, and began flipping through it, searching for the clerk’s face. It took a few minutes to find it—there were so many pages and so many faces—but I finally did, in an entry from 1983. The photo was old, from the 1930s or 40s, I guessed, but the clerk looked the same today as he did in the photo, which meant he had been living in loops for a long time. His name was noted as Lester Noble, Jr. In the picture he wore a big round hat and gazed placidly at the camera, no trace in his expression of the fear I’d seen on his face earlier in the day. I read my grandfather’s notes on the mission, then pried loose the staples that attached the photo to the log page and tucked the photo into my pocket.

I ran into Emma in the hallway.

“I was just coming to find you,” she said.

“And I was coming to find you. I need your help.”

She leaned in. “Sure, anything.”

“Cover for me. Just for an hour or two. I need to go back to the Acre.”





“Why? For what?”

“There’s no time to explain,” I said. “When I get back.”

“I’m coming, too.”

“I need to do this alone.”

She crossed her arms. “This better be good.”

“It will be. I think.”

I kissed her, then slipped down the stairs, outside through the garage, and into the potting shed.



* * *



? ? ?

When I got back to the lobby of the ministry building, he was gone. His window was shut and there was no one behind it. I slid over to the next window and asked the woman working there if she knew where the clerk was.

She squinted at me through thick glasses. “Who?”

“The man who works right there. Lester Noble.”

“I don’t know any Lester Noble,” she said, tapping her fountain pen on her desk, “but the chap who works next to me just left for the day. You might still catch him if you—oh, there he is.”

She pointed across the lobby. I turned to see the clerk hurrying toward the exit. I muttered a quick thanks and ran across the room, catching him just before he made it through the door.

“Lester Noble,” I said.

He turned a bit pale. “My name is Stevenson. And you’re blocking my way.”

He tried to push past me, but I stood my ground, and he clearly didn’t want to make a scene. “Your name is Lester Noble, Jr., and you’re faking that British accent.”

I pulled his photo from my pocket and held it up for him to see. He froze, then snatched it from my hand. When he looked up and met my eyes again, he seemed afraid.

“What do you want?” he whispered.

“To get in contact with someone.”

His gaze flicked across the lobby, then back at me. “Walk down that hall. Meet me at room one thirty-seven in two minutes. We can’t be seen walking together.”

I snatched the photo back. “I’m keeping this. For now.”

Two minutes later, I met him outside a plain wooden door that was only marked 137. He fumbled with the keys. His hands were shaking. We went inside and he closed and locked the door behind us. The room was small and filled with manila file folders, wall to wall, floor to ceiling.

“Look, kid,” he said, turning to me with his hands pressed together. “I’m not a criminal, okay?” His British accent had vanished, replaced by a slight southern twang. “There are some bad people in America, and I couldn’t let them find me. I changed my name when I got here. I never thought I’d hear the old one again.”

“Were the hollows over there really that much worse than the ones here?” I asked him.

“They were bad, but that’s not why I left. It was the peculiars. They’re crazy.”

“Oh? How?”

Lester shook his head. “I’m breaking about a hundred rules, taking you back here. If you want a file, okay, but there’s no time for stories.”

“Fine,” I said. “What do you have on the hollow-hunters?”

Lester hesitated. “Who?”

“I know you know who I’m talking about,” I said, and I told him what I knew from Abe’s mission report.

The report said Lester had been living in a loop of January 5, 1935, in Anniston, Alabama, until the loop had been raided and its ymbryne killed. Abe and H had found Lester holed up in a motel in the present—then 1983—where he’d been in bad danger of aging forward. They’d managed to ferry him to safety in another loop. He must have found his way to England at some point afterward, which was no doubt a harrowing story all its own. But it was one I didn’t have time to hear, and one that Lester, after I’d finished telling him about himself, seemed in no mood to share, anyway.

“How do you know all that?” Lester said. His whole body had gone rigid, like he was steadying himself for bad news.

“Abe was my grandfather,” I said.

“He told you about me?” His voice was rising steadily. It seemed I’d really spooked him.