Excerpt from The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The open latch was still on his mind as he climbed up the yellow stairs, unwinding his scarf. From a combination of the cold and tapping at telegraph keys, his fingertips had roughened and kept catching on the wool. He was halfway up when the senior clerk came down and pushed a sheaf of papers into his chest. 'For your will,' was the explanation. 'No later than the end of next month, understand? Or we'll drown in paperwork. And sort out Park, will you?'

Puzzled, he went on to the telegraphy department, where the youngest clerk had burst into tears. He paused in the doorway, then dredged up something that at least looked like sympathy. He believed firmly in a soldier's right to cry in public upon surviving the attentions of the surgeon, and a miner's after being lifted from a shaft collapse. He wasn't convinced in the least that anyone in an office at the HO had anything to cry about. He was also aware, though, that this was probably a very unfair thing to think. Park looked up when he asked what the matter was.

'Why do we have to make out wills? Are we going to be bombed?' Thaniel took him downstairs for a cup of tea. When he shepherded him back upstairs, they found the others in a similar state.

'What's all this?' he said.

'Have you seen these will papers?'

'It's only a formality. I shouldn't worry about it.'

'Have they issued them before?'

He laughed, had to, but forced himself to keep it slight and quiet. 'No, but we're up to our eyes in unnecessary forms. Remember that one about not taking money from the Prussian intelligence services for secret naval information? For what, when we run into a Prussian spy in one of their many haunts near the Trafalgar Square tea-and-horrible-coffee stall? I expect we've all been very vigilant there. Just sign it and lob it at Mr Croft when he comes past.'

'What are you going to write?'

'Nothing, I haven't got anything anyone would want,' he said, but then realised that it was a lie. He took the watch out of his pocket. It was real gold.

'Thank you for looking after me,' Park said. He was folding and refolding a handkerchief. 'You're awfully good. It's like having my dad here.'

'You're no trouble,' he murmured, before he felt a little sting. He almost said that he wasn't so much older than all the rest of them, then saw that it wouldn't have been fair. It didn't matter how much older. He was older; even if they had all been the same age, he would still have been older.

They both jumped when all twelve telegraphs burst into clattering. Transcript paper crumpled under the speed of the messages, and there was a scrabble as everybody reached for pencils to take the code down by hand. Because they were all concentrating on individual letters, he was the first to hear that the machines were all saying the same thing.

Urgent, bomb detonated in—
Victoria Station destroyed—
—station severely damaged—
—hidden in cloakroom—
—sophisticated clockwork in the cloakroom—
Victoria Station—
—officers dispatched, possible casualties—
—Clan na Gael.

Thaniel shouted for the senior clerk, who ran in, looking like thunder with tea spilled down his waistcoat. Once he understood, the rest of the day was spent speeding messages between departments and the Yard, and refusing comments to the newspapers. Thaniel had no idea how they managed to get hold of direct Whitehall lines, but they always did. From down the corridor, there came a bellow. It was the Home Secretary shouting at the editor of The Times to stop his journalists blocking the wires. By the time the shift ended, the tendons in the backs of Thaniel's hands hurt and the copper keys had made his skin smell of money.

Excerpted from The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley. Copyright © 2015 by Natasha Pulley. Excerpted by permission of Bloomsbury USA. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.