Big Change for Stuart (3 page)

STUART LOOKED AT
the cluster of objects draped in dustsheets. When he had discovered Great-Uncle Tony's workshop in the vast and gloomy room under the bandstand in the park, he'd had no time to explore it properly. Beeton Fire Brigade had declared the place unsafe, and Stuart and his companions had been hustled away before he could do more than glimpse most of the contents. Now he stepped forward and pulled at one corner of the nearest sheet.

It slid to the floor, revealing a tall oval cabinet, its surface smooth and ruby red. From the centre of the door protruded the glittering handles of four swords. Stuart reached up and, gripping the lowest, tried to pull the sword out of its slot. It was
stuck
fast. He let go again and took a step back. There was no lock or handle to the cabinet and no obvious way of opening it. He knocked on it softly, and heard the hollow boom of his knuckles.

‘
Enjoy the workshop
,' he said in a whisper. ‘
It has many surprises
.' Great-Uncle Tony himself had spoken those words to Stuart on the stage of a Victorian theatre, just five days (and a hundred and ten years) ago …

There was a noise behind him, and he turned to see Rod Felton coming into the room, holding a stepladder and a light bulb. Close behind him was April.

‘I got the job!' she announced gleefully.

‘Which job?'

‘Reviewer for the
Beech Road Guardian
. And guess what the first thing I'm going to review is?'

‘What?'

‘This exhibition! Mr Felton's just given me permission to see it – not that there's much to see yet. Shall we take all the rest of the covers off?'

Before Stuart could protest, April had darted past him and was ripping the dustsheets off the
other
illusions. He felt as if he'd just woken up on Christmas morning and found that someone else was opening his presents. And then Rod Felton fitted the bulb and switched on the light, and the room that had been full of mystery and excitement just a second ago now looked like a brightly lit shop-window display.

‘Seven,' said April. ‘Seven magic tricks.'

Rod Felton climbed back down the ladder and stood with his hands on his hips. ‘What we really need is a name and a short description for each illusion – how it works and so on. Do you think you could make a start on that for us, Stuart?'

‘I'll try,' said Stuart.

‘Right. I'll leave you to it. Incidentally, er' – he looked rather embarrassed – ‘er, your father's still sitting in my office. He seems to be talking to himself. I don't know how to get him out.'

‘Tell him the bookshop's about to close,' said Stuart.

The curator nodded and strode out, and the heavy door closed with a bang.

For a moment there was silence.

‘So do you know if these tricks even
have
names?' asked April.

‘Some of them do,' said Stuart. ‘When the mayoress was a little kid, she saw Great-Uncle Tony's stage act – she told me about it.' That had been on the first occasion he'd ever met the mayoress, Jeannie Carr, and he had learned two things about her: the first was that she loved magic tricks, and the second was that she loved money, to a quite frightening degree.

He began to walk around the room. ‘The Pharaoh's Pyramid,' he said, lightly touching a golden pyramid, taller than himself.

‘The Reappearing Rose Bower' – a bronze throne entwined with silver wire and flowers enamelled in pink and scarlet.

‘The Book of Peril' – a giant book, the jet-black cover locked by a huge key.

‘The Well—'

‘—of Wishes,' finished April, and they both stood for a moment beside the object that had led them on such a manic and magical hunt through Beeton.

‘It's odd …' said April hesitantly.

‘What's odd?'

‘The Well of Wishes doesn't look quite the same as it did when it was in the room under the bandstand. I mean, it's the same shape and everything, but …'

Stuart frowned. ‘It doesn't look any different to me.'

She shook her head. ‘I can't put my finger on what's changed, but
something
has. Anyway, what's this one called?' she asked, pointing at a graceful arch made of mirrored glass.

Stuart had no idea, but telling April things she didn't already know was a new and pleasant sensation, so he paused to invent something.

‘The Arch of Mirrors,' he said, not very imaginatively. ‘And the next one' – he took a moment to consider the giant fan, studded with turquoise jewels – ‘is the Fan of Fantasticness, and
this
one,' he said, returning to his starting point, ‘is the Cabinet of Blood.'

‘Urgh,' said April.

Like Stuart, she tried pulling at one of the
swords,
though unlike him she could reach the top one. ‘How do you open it?' she asked.

‘I don't know yet.'

‘Do you see, the base of the cupboard's resting on a sort of disc. I wonder …' She gave the sword hilt a sideways push, and the whole cabinet spun round in a blur of red and gold. As the reflections flickered across the room, Stuart noticed something very strange. While the other illusions glinted and flashed in the spinning light, the Well of Wishes seemed to have lost its lustre. No light bounced across its surface. It was as dull as if carved out of rubber.

‘You're right about the well,' he said to April.

She nodded slowly, staring in the same direction as him. ‘Very peculiar,' she said. ‘Anyway, do you want to start the descriptions? I'll take your dictation – I'm a very fast writer.' She whipped her purple reporter's notebook out of her pocket and stood poised.

Stuart felt under pressure. ‘I'd better start with the book, I suppose,' he said, ‘seeing as I know how it works.' He had climbed into it while
hiding
from the mayoress in the room under the bandstand.

He walked over to the giant, upright book. The words
OPEN AT YOUR PERIL
were written across the front in letters of silver and red. He turned the key and lifted the heavy front cover to reveal an empty interior.

April had followed him, still holding the notebook. ‘OK,' she said. ‘Fire away.'

Stuart cleared his throat. ‘When you open the front cover of this illusion, it just looks like a big, empty metal cupboard. But if you get inside it and close the front cover, then the
back
cover opens so that you can climb out the back without anyone seeing you. And then, if someone opens the front cover again, the back cover shuts automatically – so to the audience it just looks like an empty cupboard. And there's a a sort of safety catch at the back which Tony Horten invented.'

He waited for April to stop scribbling. ‘Is that all right?' he asked.

‘I'll just sub it,' she said. ‘That's the phrase us journalists use for improving a story.' She made
some
rapid notes, and what appeared to be a large number of crossings out.

‘OK.' She read from her notebook. ‘
A disappearing cabinet, in which the front and back covers cannot open simultaneously unless the Horten ready-release mechanism is operated
.' She looked up with a confident smile. ‘Next!'

‘Hang on,' said Stuart, feeling a bit jangled. ‘There's no hurry, is there? This is the first time I've had a chance to really look at everything.'

It was odd to think that no one (apart from himself) had used the trick in nearly fifty years. Great-Uncle Tony's fingerprints were probably still on the inside.

He started to close the cover again, and as he did so, some marks on the floor of the cupboard caught his eye. He crouched down and frowned. Incised into the metal, in very small print, were the words:

AT YOUR PERIL

‘THAT'S ODD,' SAID
Stuart. ‘It says
OPEN AT YOUR PERIL
on the front of the book, but down here it just says
AT YOUR PERIL.'

April came up and peered over his shoulder at the tiny writing. ‘Very odd,' she agreed. ‘And why are the words in a box?'

She was right. A rectangle about the size of a pack of cards had been incised around the writing.

There was a pause while they both stared at it.

‘You know what?' said April. ‘It looks just like a small version of the front cover. Apart from the missing word.'

Stuart nodded. ‘Apart from
OPEN
,' he said softly. There was another pause, and then they spoke simultaneously.

‘I know—'

‘What if—'

‘—the answer!'

‘—it's another door?'

They looked at each other, grinning.

‘The writing on the front cover's an
instruction
,' said Stuart. ‘Open
AT YOUR PERIL
!'

‘Except there's no little key for the mini door,' April pointed out. ‘And no handle.'

They squatted down beside the writing. April tried to prise open the tiny door with her fingernails, but it wouldn't shift. ‘So how do we do it?' she asked.

Stuart thought about the puzzles that Great-Uncle Tony had set in the past. He thought about the very first puzzle: a tin with a base that unscrewed anticlockwise instead of the more usual clockwise. ‘What if it's the opposite of what we expect?' he asked. ‘The
front
cover opens if you pull it. So maybe with this one—'

April was there before him. She placed her fingers on the right side of the little door, and gave
a
push. There was a grating sound, and it sprang upward, revealing a shallow space beneath.

‘What's
that
?' she asked.

Stuart reached in and took out a small object wrapped in wrinkled brown paper. It was a six-spoked star made of dark, heavy metal, its surface slightly rippled as if it had melted and then cooled. It was shaped a bit like a miniature cartwheel, but minus the outer rim.

He turned it over on his palm. ‘I have no idea …' he said slowly. ‘A Christmas decoration? Part of a toy?'

‘Hang on,' said April. ‘Is there something else in there?' She ran her fingers around inside the space and then shook her head. ‘No, I'm wrong. There's just a short groove in the bottom.'

Stuart glanced at the crumpled paper that the star had been wrapped in, and with an exclamation began to smooth it out. ‘It's a message!' he said, peering at the faded capitals, and April jumped up so that she could read it over his shoulder.

Stuart turned the note over and April groaned. There was a wide circular mark on the paper, almost as if someone had spilled bleach on it. It blotted out the whole centre of the message:

On impulse, Stuart placed the metal star on the page. It was exactly the same size as the missing chunk of writing.

‘Strange,' said April thoughtfully. ‘But you can still work out what some of the message says. The top bit's about deciding if you really wish to keep the tricks, or whether you want to give them away to someone – but why would you want to give them away?'