Chapter 5

V.

A cool, nippy Autumnal Oxford evening met the two conspirators as the they stepped out the door and made their way down Wanton Well Road. The archaic townhouses loomed and crowded over the ribbon of a street, like so many leaves around a rose bud. Colin was walking silently with an infuriatingly mysterious air, and Monty was following at his side, when a somewhat frustrated, “I am going to reiterate, Colin, what the hell are we doing?”, came from Monty.

“Oh Monty,” replied Colin, his face dripping with sarcasm, “where did you learn such fancy and...colorful language.”

“I'm not stupid. I am, after all, attending one of the most prodigious universities on the planet. Just tell me already!”

“Well, yes, but it does help if things a bit your dad is on the board of regents and we are, quite obviously, going to a watch store.”

“Am I allowed to know why?”

“Yes, you are actually, we are going to snitch something.”

“You mean to say you're putting me through all this for the sake of stealing a watch.”

“Well, yes and no. We're not really going steal it, and you wouldn't exactly call it a watch.”

At this point they turned around a corner and it seemed to Monty that they were going towards the Center, so he asked where, exactly, their destination lay. “11 Longstreet Street,” was his answer. “Ah,” replied Monty, “that can't more than, what, a four kilometer walk? Why don't we skip the cab part and walk it?” And with only partial sarcasm he added, “I always enjoy our walks.” He was answered by affirmative silence from Colin, who was, as Monty knew, working out the details of their outing.

These details were somewhat complicated. You see, the object Colin was planning to take—and then return—was a rare 16^th Century timepiece of Dutch make. The shop was owned by an extremely rich widower, who's hobby was collecting watches and other time-related oddities. He lived for his tick-toking collection and couldn't bear to see any one his many collection pieces in another person's hands. For this reason, he priced everything at about three times what they were worth, and also lived on the floor above it, so in reality, his place was more a museum/house than a shop.

This collector person was extremely distrustful. So very distrustful, in fact, that he made himself more defenseless against theft than the average shopkeeper because he didn't even trust the security companies. He did everything for himself, by himself. And, as he was not technologically advanced, his system was out-dated, and easy to hack. As Colin found out. The only partially hard part about the whole thing was that the security system had an alarm that sounded when the system was shut down. Colin got this out of the way by programing the system to shut off just long enough for him to get inside the shop and then setting it in a loop so it would play the the same roll over and over again. This ensured the plan to foolproof, except for the possibility of a random police patrol, . Monty's job was to watch for any such Scuffers out on patrol.

By the time this had all been explained to Monty, they were near the destination. It was an elegant, Tudor style townhouse with ivy growing up its left side. It had stood there for centuries, probably, as evidenced by the many cracks in its wood-beam and limestone exterior. Monty, being the more romantic of the two, was thinking of the many previous inhabitants old house; the triumphs and doubtless the horrors it has been the scene of. “You know Colin, I just love these old townhouses...when you're in them, its like—like you're inside history or something.” Monty said. “Well, I always just think of what a pain they would be to heat in the winter,” replied our resident realist. “And you cannot be in history. In fact you nothing you can do has the ability to bring you closer or father away from it. You are always one moment removed from it, and there's nothing you can do about it. That is, unless you are me and you are going to solve the time-travel puzzle.”

“And you wonder why I have trouble finding you dates? You're about as romantic as the contents of my dirty clothes basket.”

“Yes, but its not as if all girls are helpless romantics, Monty.”

“I guess that's true. But, um, its I think its also true to say that almost all girls do not enjoy being told that they look like a hedgehog.”

This reference to Colin's last date in which he had tactlessly told his date that she looked like a hedgehog, was the deathblow, and Colin that. Why, just why couldn't he be better with girls, he thought. Ten more seconds and it would be time to go in the shop. He had other things to worry about. Namely, not getting arrested. “Never mind about that. Its almost time to go in,” he said. Colin then counted down, opened the door, and went inside.

The alarm, as expected, immediately sounded upon his entrance. Colin gave a sort of chuckle as he pictured the old miser breathing a sigh of relief when he saw his empty shop, as displayed by his looping monitors. He took his time going through the shop, for the already interesting objects were mystified in his torch's beam. Things would have been pretty nearly stress free, but for the agonizingly loud creaks the old floor gave out each time Colin set one of his feet. After the first seven or so steps, he found to his great relief that there was a thick rug—Turkish by the feel of it—which subsequently muffled both the movements and the creaking of that blasted old floor.

Once the necessary sigh of relief had been gotten out of the way, Colin began to moved about more freely. The room was over-full of intricately and curiously carved furniture and, of course, watches, clocks, and every sort of ticking thing you could imagine. The effects of both the tick-toking and the crowding furniture were not exactly what you would call, calming. Colin soon felt rather like how I should imagine a claustrophobic man would feel if he found himself encased in an egg. This feeling grew. And then it grew some more, until it was practically unbearable. He moved as swiftly as he could without being careless, and soon came to the place of honor in which he knew the rare timepiece was kept.

He was two steps away from the grotesquely carved goblin-table it was on when he shined his torch at its pedestal.

To his utter shock and amazement, that's all he saw: a pedestal. A quick check of the inscription on the said pedestal gave assurance that this was, indeed, the right table. The clocks ticked and toked, and a dumbfounded and somewhat irate Colin booked it out with the nearest valuable-looking object he could get his hands on.

If he had been there fifteen minutes earlier, the timepiece might still have been there and he might have run into someone eerily similar to himself, in more than one way.

But he wasn't and the only person he ran into—quite literally—was Monty, who had situated himself in an extremely inconvenient position, right outside the door. “Bosch it all, Colin, what's all the fuss for?” a tumbled-down Monty exclaimed.

“What do you mean by hanging about in the doorway? And you were on your phone, too. Caught in the act. Lot of good you would have been if a Scuffer had passed by. You wouldn't have detected one if he had tripped over you.”

This torrent of words was followed by the usual apologies and the two thwarted burglars made their way back to their flat as Colin filled Monty in on what had happened inside.

________________________________________________________

There you go. Sorry it took so long for me to get it done.

-Thomas