The Mask of Destiny (29 page)

Gerald nodded, then he worked the ring off his right hand. He gave one to Sam and one to Ruby.

‘Does this mean we're engaged?' Sam said.

‘Don't be stupid,' Ruby said. She slipped on the ring and stared down at the gold band on her little finger. ‘Thank you, Gerald. This means a lot.'

Gerald raised and lowered a shoulder. ‘It's probably time the brotherhood was reformed,' he said. ‘Though with less murder this time around.'

Sam twisted the ring into place. ‘Well here's cheers to the three musketeers.'

Nico leaned up against the doorway and looked first to Gerald, then to Ruby and finally Sam. ‘Who is this woman from the museum? Why did she threaten you?'

Gerald knew he owed Nico some answers but he was too exhausted to explain the whole story. ‘She's trying to find the lost treasure of Delphi and we're trying to stop her.'

Nico stared at him blankly. ‘Why? What does it matter to you if she finds it?'

‘I guess it doesn't really matter,' Gerald said. ‘It's more the way that she's going about it.'

‘The way?'

‘It's a long story. Let's just say that we need to find her so we can let the police know where she is.'

Nico thought about this for a second. ‘I know where she is,' he said.

There was a silence in the room.

‘You know where Charlotte is?' Ruby said.

‘Of course. I followed her after she left the museum.'

‘Why didn't you tell us?' Sam said.

Nico transferred his gaze to Sam. ‘You didn't ask me.'

‘Oh for…okay, I'm asking you now: where is she?'

‘I followed her to a house just north of the town. A big place overlooking the valley.'

Gerald pulled his backpack from under the bed. ‘Can you show us where it is?'

‘Of course.'

Ruby fixed Gerald with a questioning look. ‘I thought you just wanted to find Charlotte and let the police do the rest.'

‘Yeah, that was the plan. But like Charlotte said, that's pretty hopeless now. It was probably always fairly hopeless. We need to give the police a reason to be interested in her.'

‘What do you mean?' Sam asked.

Gerald flipped open the top of his pack and sorted through the contents. ‘There's no point going through a replay of the Mason Green trial. We need more evidence that she's the killer than just our say so.'

Ruby nodded. ‘Gerald's right. We need some proof she at least had a motive to kill her uncle.'

‘How do we get that?' Sam said. ‘All the evidence points to Gerald being the killer.' He glanced across at Gerald. ‘Sorry, but it does.'

Gerald pressed his lips together. ‘Not all the evidence. The blowgun may have been found in my room, but where would a kid get that kind of poison? Maybe we can find something to tie Charlotte to the poison dart that killed Green.'

‘And take the suspicion off you,' Ruby said. ‘Great idea.'

‘I hope so,' Gerald said, ‘because I'm running out of them.'

The late summer evening sky lost the last of its light shortly after ten o'clock. Four heads appeared on the ridge above the house, barely distinguishable from the boulder-strewn landscape around them. Nico led them to a nest of rocks that provided a vantage point over-looking a floodlit courtyard on the other side of a wire fence. Gerald dropped in beside Sam and surveyed the scene. Beyond the expanse of the courtyard was the top floor of a modern house, which stepped down over a number of levels following the slope of the hillside.

‘How do we do this?' Sam asked. ‘Just climb over the fence?'

‘I guess so,' Gerald said. ‘It's only a couple of metres high. We should be able to get over easily enough. Nico, any idea where the front door is?'

Nico pointed to a corner of the house cast in shadow. ‘The woman went in over there,' he said. ‘There is a path that leads to the other side of the house.'

Gerald nodded. ‘Seems easy enough. Watch for my signal and come down.'

Gerald made his way down the slope as quietly as he could, taking care not to dislodge any stones with his shoes. He edged into the pool of light at the front gate and looked both ways. The fence was easily two metres high and stretched along the boundary out of sight.

He peered into the courtyard. It was a good twenty paces to the front of the house. He looked back up the slope and could just make out the shape of three heads; he thought he saw Sam give him a thumbs up.

Gerald was about to reach up and grab hold of the wire fence when he saw a small yellow sign attached to the gate—a sign with a red lightning bolt on it.

Are you kidding me? An electrified fence?

Gerald looked back to the silhouettes on the hillside, an expression of defeat on his face. All he got back was another thumbs up from Sam.

‘Oh for crying out loud,' Gerald mumbled. He kicked about the ground until he found what he was looking for: a stout stick, about a metre long.

This better work, or it's barbequed Gerald.

He edged the stick between the bottom two wires of the fence and ground the end of it into the dirt on the far side. Then he pushed up on the stick, levering the upper wire as high as he could. Gerald felt the pulse of the electricity conducted into the stick: a dull
thump,
thump, thump
.

He put a rubber-soled shoe onto the bottom wire and opened up the gap even further. Gerald looked at the two wires; each carried enough voltage to blow him back up the hill to Sam, Ruby and Nico. He swallowed hard and squatted to duck through the gap.

Then he heard the breathing.

For a second he thought the short, tight breaths were his own. But with a sickening rupture in his stomach, Gerald knew he had company. He lifted his eyes to see the sharp end of a guard dog pointed right at him, barely two metres away.

A Doberman.

A very large Doberman. Black and tan and mean, with a metal-spiked collar around its neck.

The dog stood perfectly still. The only movement was the rapid-fire pumping of its chest. Its eyes were black beads. It stood close enough for Gerald to see the stippled surface of its nose, glistening wet in the floodlights.

Gerald was paralysed. He could feel the stick in his hand, his only possible weapon. But he couldn't convince his arm to move. His brain was focused on the Doberman's head—the power of its jaws, the laser intensity of its stare.

The dog peeled back its top lip in a snarl, revealing perfect white fangs.

Its muscles were tightening, its shoulders tensing like a spring.

Then it leapt.

It sprang forward with impossible speed, launching its bared teeth at Gerald's throat. All four paws were off the ground; it was a flesh and bone missile.

Gerald fell back with a cry, driving with his legs as hard as he could. He lost his grip on the stick and the fence wires snapped back into place—right onto the dog's metal-spiked collar.

A white halo of sparks exploded around the dog's head. The shock jolted the beast through the air. It landed metres back inside the compound. The floodlights shorted and the area was plunged into darkness.

Gerald landed with a thud on his back. He lay there for a second, waiting for the Doberman to tear his throat out. But instead of the black eyes of the guard dog, Gerald was surprised to see Ruby, Sam and Nico staring down at him.

‘Nice job, Gerald,' Sam said. ‘Dog problem and electric fence problem solved in one simple step. Too easy.'

Gerald sat up and rubbed his neck. ‘Yeah,' he said. ‘Too easy.'

They clambered through the fence and past the prone shape of the Doberman.

‘It's breathing,' Ruby said.

‘I'd rather not be here when it wakes up,' Gerald said. ‘Let's make this quick.'

Nico led the way to the front door. He tried the handle. It was locked. They ducked down the side of the house, descending a steep line of steps cut into the hillside. There was a light in a window at the very bottom of the building. Gerald motioned for the others to follow. He moved close to the side of the house until the light from the window washed across his face.

He eased an eye around the corner and peered inside to see a large dining room with a long table running down its centre. The end wall was made entirely from glass and provided an uninterrupted view of the valley and the distant harbour lights. A wooden chandelier suspended from the ceiling lit the room with at least two dozen flickering candles.

‘The table's set for two,' Ruby whispered. ‘Charlotte must have a guest.'

The remains of a simple meal sat on the table, together with a half-drunk bottle of red wine.

There was no sign of anybody.

Gerald looked along the side of the house back towards the top of the slope. ‘Feel like having a look around? There's an open window up there.'

Ruby tucked her fingers under the edge of the window and eased it open. With a light kick, she hauled herself up and slid inside. A second later she reached out a hand to pull Nico up; Sam and Gerald followed.

‘Come on Gerald,' Ruby said as he landed on the carpeted floor. ‘Time for some mischief.'

Gerald fumbled in his backpack and pulled out his headlamp. A shaft of light cut into the darkness, illuminating the inside of a large, empty walk-in wardrobe.

‘How do you know Charlotte's not asleep on the other side of that door?' Ruby whispered.

Gerald put his hand on the door handle. ‘There's only one way to find out,' he said. He extinguished his headlamp and waited a few seconds for their eyes to adjust to the darkness. Then he opened the door.

The bedroom was empty. Gerald tiptoed across the carpet and opened the door a crack. There was no movement in the hall. Slowly, he inched the door wider and slipped through. The glow from the candles in the dining room filtered up from the right. Gerald edged along the corridor like a curious moth.

He reached a mezzanine level; a spiral staircase led down to the dining room. He was about to set foot on the top step when Sam stopped him and whispered, ‘You've got to see this.'

Gerald looked back. Ruby was beckoning from an open doorway. They ducked inside and closed the door behind them. Ruby flicked on her headlamp and set the beam wide. ‘Behold,' she said, ‘the evil witch's lair.'

The light played across a laboratory that would be the envy of any mad scientist. Racks of beakers lined the stainless steel benches. There were glass flasks and test tubes containing a rainbow array of liquids, bunsen burners and clamp stands, titration tubes and distillation equipment, a stone mortar and pestle, and an entire wall given over to a wooden cabinet with at least a hundred square drawers, each one meticulously labelled.

‘
Cactus barbatus
,' Ruby read. ‘
Cactus berteri
,
cactus
chlorocarpus
…'

‘Yeah, eye of newt, toe of frog,' Sam said. ‘This must be where she brews up her poisoned apples.'

Gerald shone his light around the room. A whiteboard was attached to the far wall. On it was a map, held in place by a magnet at each corner. And beside the map was a long list. Six of the items were crossed out with a red line.

‘What is this, Nico?' Gerald asked.

‘It's a map of the area,' he said. ‘And this is a list of place names.'

‘What about the red lines?' Sam said.

‘If it's a bunch of place names, it could be Charlotte's checklist of where she thinks the treasure is hidden,' Gerald said. ‘The crossed out ones might be places she's already looked. What do you reckon, Nico? You're the local. Could any of these be a hiding place?'

Nico scratched his chin and thought for a second. ‘The Korykian Caves maybe? I climbed up there last year with my friend. If you go really deep inside, there could be a place.'

Ruby pulled open one of the drawers in the wooden cabinet and peered inside. ‘Shouldn't we be concentrating on finding the poison that killed Mason Green? I say we take a bunch of this stuff and drop it off at the local police station with a note.'

Gerald was jotting down the place names from the whiteboard onto a piece of paper. ‘I wouldn't touch any of that,' he said. ‘Who knows what it could do to you.'

Ruby withdrew her hand from the drawer and wiped it on the back of her shorts. ‘What do we do then?'

Gerald folded the paper into his pocket. ‘There's enough material in this lab to keep a forensics team busy for a month. Let's get in touch with Inspector Parrott and tell him what we've found. They're bound to find a trace of the poison.'

They gathered beside the door and switched off their headlamps. ‘Okay, back to the window and back to Nico's house,' Gerald said. He eased the door open and slid into the hallway. They crept back up the corridor. Gerald had his hand on the bedroom door handle when the house lights came on. The sudden brightness caught them by surprise—as did the sight of Charlotte standing a bare three metres away from them. She was dressed in her commando chic and was aiming a handgun at Gerald's head.