Here Be Monsters! An Adventure Involving Magic, Trolls, and Other Creatures; The Ratbridge Chronicles Volume 1 Chapter 31

The Standoff

• Back at the Laundry, there's a standoff between the police and the crew on the ship. If anyone leaves the ship, they'll be arrested by the police; food is becoming scarce.
• Suddenly Fish (one of the boxtrolls) leaves the ship. The police don't really care, though, so a bunch of other boxtrolls join him, and then they return with food for everyone. Yay.
• Marjorie eats a doughnut and then tells Willbury that this is all her fault. The Trouts stole her invention and gave it to Snatcher, and it's her invention that's behind all this.
• And what exactly is her invention? It's a resizing machine. Snatcher's using it to shrink underlings… but then the question is, where is all the size going?
• This also explains why Snatcher's men are blocking routes to the underground: so they can easily trap underlings and then feed their size to the machine.