The Fangs of the Dragon (7 page)

‘That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it?’ said Muddy. ‘To build a compartment into a wall just for that? If what’s written on the paper is
that
secret, why
write it down at all? Why not just memorise it?’

‘Quite,’ said Jack. ‘It’s a spooky-sounding load of nonsense, which someone made up and hid years and years ago, giggling away to themselves, knowing that someone else
would come along and get all excited about it. It really is just gobbledegook. I think you’re wrong, Saxby, I think it’s a long-lost Victorian practical joke.’

‘This is the room you found it in?’ I said. It was a large but unremarkable room, with two tall windows – two of those ‘teeth’ in the front face of the building
– and an irregularly-shaped fireplace built into one corner.

‘I’ve got it over here,’ said Jack. From off the deep windowsill he fetched a box file, the sort of solid cardboard case you see in offices for keeping papers in. He flipped it
open and handed it to me.

Inside was a sheet of thick paper, about thirty centimetres tall and fifteen wide. Its left-hand edge was slightly jagged, the others neatly cut. It was yellowed with age, with brownish spots
and blotches here and there across its surface, but it was surprisingly smooth and solid to the touch. Obviously very expensive paper (the exact opposite of the sort encountered in the case of
The Tomb of Death
!).

On the paper, in angular but flowing handwriting, were lines written in black ink, all neatly level on the page. The words had clearly been written with one of those old-fashioned dip-in-the-ink
pens: you could see where the ink kept thinning out every few words, then suddenly become thicker again when the pen was dipped. In all it said:

‘Well,’ said Jack, reading the paper again over my shoulder, ‘I’ve come across some obscure treasure trails in my time, but that takes the cake!
It’s gobbledegook. It’s a joke, it has to be.’

‘It’s not gobbledegook,’ I said, peering closely at the parchment in the grey light from the window. ‘It’s simply a complicated puzzle. It leads to this “dark
and mighty treasure”, I’m sure of it. It’s far too elaborate to be nothing more than a practical joke.’

‘OK, then, make sense of just one line,’ said Jack. ‘Show me exactly what one line means, and I’ll believe you.’

I read through the words again. They certainly appeared to defy logic! But, assuming that I was right and that they
did
actually mean something, it was possible to make a guess about what
the first line might mean. After all, if you were writing an important document, what would you be most likely to put at the top?

‘I can tell you the exact date on which this was written,’ I said.

‘Oh yeh?’ said Jack.

‘Oh yeh,’ I said. ‘I just need to check a historical fact.’

I flipped my phone open and called The Fountain of All Knowledge, or Izzy, as she prefers to be called. ‘Quick fact-check,’ I said. ‘Could you look up the date on which
Napoleon Bonaparte was finally defeated?’

‘Who?’ muttered Muddy.

‘French bloke. Late eighteenth century, early nineteenth,’ I said. ‘I think. If I’m remembering what I read in
The Boy’s Big Encyclopedia of Facts
correctly.’

There was a click on the line as Izzy returned. ‘Battle of Waterloo,’ she said. ‘1815. Is something interesting going on?’

‘Something very interesting indeed. I’ll get back to you. I may need a lot of background info finding on this one.’

I pocketed my phone, turned to Jack, and pointed out the first line on the treasure ‘map’, up to the bit that said ‘my dark and mighty treasure’.

‘There’s the date,’ I said.

My maths is generally about as strong as a soggy tissue, but with a bit of lateral thinking and a bit of simple maths I could see that the first part of the sentence was a date and a month. And
then, using a bit of maths and a bit of general science knowledge, I could see that the second part of the sentence gave a year.

Can you work it out?

‘This was written on 9 August 1844,’ I said.

‘Three by itself of eighth,’ I said. ‘Our whoever-it-was is putting the date at the top of his work. “Three by itself” could be simply the number three, on its own?
Not if this is meant to be a puzzle! That would be far too easy. No, I think it’s three
times
itself, three times three. Nine. Of course, I can’t be
sure
of that, but I
reckon it’s likely. And “of eighth”? Of the eighth month? August.’

‘Hmm, s’pose so,’ said Jack doubtfully.

‘Next, the year. “Solar revolutions”? Well, one revolution of the sun means one year, right? We did that in science ages ago, yes? So, twenty years from
“Bonaparte’s fall”, and then another nine. Napoleon was defeated in 1815, add twenty-nine and you get 1844.’

‘Why not take away twenty-nine?’ said Muddy.

‘Because you’d be dating your document
before
“Bonaparte’s fall”,’ said Jack, ‘and that wouldn’t make sense, because you wouldn’t
know about it.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Do you believe me now? These words
do
mean something. I think they lead to something important.’

‘I think you could be right after all,’ whispered Jack.

‘Maybe there’s a chest full of gold,’ said Muddy. ‘A pirate’s hoard or something.’

‘I think 1844’s a bit late for pirates,’ I said. ‘But you never know.’

We stared at each other with our eyes boggling, our jaws dropping and our feet skipping about as if we were a bunch of over-excited horses. There was a secret treasure hidden in The Horror
House, a treasure that had been hidden for many years, and we were going to find it!

T
HE NEXT DAY WAS
S
ATURDAY
. Muddy and I arrived back at the house for 9 a.m., ready for a solid
day’s fortune-hunting. Muddy brought along a rucksack full of assorted gadgets of his own design. I wasn’t sure how useful the
Whitehouse Silent Alarm Mark II
or the
Whitehouse Personal Reversing Mirror
might turn out to be, but I thought that having a few tools to hand was a good idea all the same.

Izzy turned up at quarter past nine. I’d called her back the night before and given her the full story, and also sent her a copy of the treasure trail. Jack’s parents had been given
a pile of old documents and papers when they’d bought the house: legal stuff, plans of where the drains went, a certificate from when the plumbing was installed, all that sort of stuff. None
of it was of help in deciphering the parchment, and none of it recorded anything earlier than 1900. So I was counting on Izzy to come up trumps!

Us boys were all in tatty jeans and sweatshirts, because we were expecting to get as dusty as Jack’s dad, but Izzy turned up in her usual out-of-school look, all glittery curls and snazzy
colours.

‘You’ll ruin those trousers,’ I said, raising an eyebrow.

‘I’m not staying,’ said Izzy. ‘I only came over to get a closer look at The Horror House. I’ve got
loads
of leads for information, but I need to go to the
library and search through local records. Wow, this place is a dump.’

‘A dump with hidden treasure in it,’ corrected Muddy.

‘A dump that
might
have hidden treasure in it,’ corrected Jack.

We trudged across the hallway, our boots kicking up delicate clouds of plaster dust. Various thumps and clanks and ka-chuggs echoed from elsewhere: Jack’s mum was busy shovelling sand into
the hired cement mixer in the back garden, and Jack’s dad was busy chasing the cat. As we all sat at the bottom of the staircase, I took out the photocopy of the parchment I’d made and
read through it for the thirty-seventh time.

‘What have you got so far?’ I said to Izzy.

Izzy plucked a print-out from inside the plastic folder she was carrying. ‘This house was built in 1837, by a man called Silas Middlewich.’

‘SM!’ said Muddy.

‘Originally, it was a workhouse, a kind of half-prison where poor people ended up when they had nowhere left to go. They were terrible places. This street was originally called Mill Lane,
but once the workhouse was here, everyone started calling it Dead Man’s Lane, because it was said that nobody left here alive.’

‘And over time, Dead Man’s Lane became Deadman Lane,’ I said.

Izzy nodded. ‘I still have a lot of research to do on this Silas Middlewich, but it seems he was an A-grade Mr Nasty. He packed more and more people into this place and forced them to work
for him until he was the richest man in the district. He died in 1845; it’s said he was murdered by one of his workers, a woman called Martha Humble. Apparently he’d swindled her
husband.’

‘Nice guy,’ I muttered.

‘Still, someone like that is exactly the sort of person who might have hidden his ill-gotten gains in a secret stash,’ said Muddy excitedly.

I wasn’t so sure. I thought back to my notes, about deductions that could be made from the parchment. Something didn’t add up there.

‘You could be right,’ said Izzy. ‘But there’s a vital point you’re all missing. Saxby’s theory about that secret compartment must be wrong.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ I said, looking up suddenly.

‘The wall panelling was built at the same time as the house. Which we now know was 1837. But you’ve worked out that the parchment is dated 1844. So the compartment was there for
seven years, empty. Doesn’t make sense.’

‘Hmm,’ I said, getting a sinking feeling. ‘I don’t get it. That compartment was the perfect size for the parchment in height and width.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Muddy, ‘the compartment was originally used to hide the treasure, but then it got moved?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘The compartment was only a few centimetres deep. Not big enough.’

‘Plus,’ said Izzy, in a way which added I-don’t-want-to-put-another-spanner-in-the-works-
but
. . . ‘why would someone like Middlewich leave a treasure trail for
someone to follow? If he was as nasty as his reputation suggests, he wouldn’t want anyone getting their hands on his cash, would he?’

‘Ugh! Well, that’s a great start,’ said Jack. ‘You really got my hopes up there, Saxby.’

I held up a hand for quiet. I was trying to think. What Izzy had just said was absolutely right. There was another layer of mystery here: there was a strange difference between what I had worked
out about the parchment, and what Izzy had found out about this Silas Middlewich. We’d found a weird gap in history!

One thing was for sure. It was now even more vital that we decipher the parchment. There were more secrets involved in this matter than buried treasure alone.

I jumped to my feet. ‘Muddy, Jack, we’re getting to work on the parchment, right now. Izzy, to the library. Find out all you can. Get back to us as soon as possible.’