Treasure Hunt (5 page)

‘I think I’ve found something!’ Billie squeals. ‘It could be the entrance to the secret room!’

‘Let’s go and tell Miss Singh,’ Alex says, helping Billie shove all the books back onto the shelves.

‘Not yet,’ Billie tells him. ‘There’s no way she’ll agree to cutting a hole in the wall without proof that there is something behind here.’

Jack looks at Billie like he knows what she is going to say next. ‘And to prove it, we need…’ he begins.

Billie smiles. ‘…the fifth member of the SMC,’ she finishes.

‘I guess a deal is a deal, right?’ says Mika, smiling back.

‘Right,’ says Billie.

Billie, Jack, Alex and Mika wait for Edwina at the front gate. When she arrives, she looks surprised to see them all waiting for her.

‘You were right!’ Billie says, excited. ‘We found something behind the bookshelves in the library.

It feels like it could be a sealed-up doorway!’

‘Alex didn’t believe the map you showed Billie was real,’ Mika adds. ‘But it must be!’

Alex blushes. ‘Yeah. Sorry, I didn’t believe you,’ he mumbles, kicking at the concrete beneath his feet. ‘I thought maybe you’d just drawn it yourself. You know, so you could join our club.’

‘Wow!’ says Edwina, looking
surprised
.

‘But we’d love you to join our club now!’ Billie grins. ‘We all think you’re a pretty good detective.’

‘And spy!’ Jack adds, grinning. ‘I can’t believe you were spying on us the whole time Billie was teaching us Pig Latin. You must be good at sneaking around.’

‘So, we’d be honoured to have you,’ Billie says in a formal voice. ‘Can you get your map so we can show Mrs Singh what we found?

It’s the only way we’ll be able to convince her to open up the wall to see what’s behind there.’

‘Um, sure!’ says Edwina, still with a look of surprise on her face. ‘I’ll run back home and get it now.’ She turns to go back across the crossing, but then pauses, and spins around again. Now she has a huge smile on her face. ‘And…anks-thay, Illie-bay!’

Billie laughs. ‘O-nay oblems-pray.’

Within a few minutes, the original members of the SMC along with their newest member are sitting in Mrs Singh’s office. They are
jiggling
with excitement. Mrs Singh is studying the map of the school on her desk.

‘Well, my goodness gracious me!’ she says, looking up at them and pushing her reading glasses up onto her head.

Billie has never seen Mrs Singh look so excited.

‘You know, I think you might be right! It does look like there’s a little room there. That’s certainly worth investigating! What a
clever
group of detectives you are!’

‘We couldn’t have done it without Edwina,’ Billie says quickly.

‘Well, once again you have shown how well you work together as a team,’ Mrs Singh says, smiling. ‘And it looks like Edwina will make a valuable member of your club!’

Billie glances at Edwina, who looks proud. ‘Elcome-way!’ she whispers.

‘Ank-thay ou-yay!’ Edwina whispers back. Billie can see the tips of her ears have turned pink underneath her hair.

‘We might have to close the library for a couple of days,’ Mrs Singh says. ‘But I think it’s about time that time capsule was found, don’t you? I can’t wait to see what’s in it! And I think our local media might be pretty interested, too.

I’ll give them a call.’ Then she pauses, looking thoughtful. ‘There is one problem, though.’

‘What’s that?’ Billie asks, feeling a flutter of worry in her stomach. She hopes they haven’t done anything wrong. Mrs Singh looks suddenly very serious.

Then Mrs Singh’s face breaks into a huge smile. ‘I’m afraid your Secret Mystery Club might not remain secret for much longer.

Once the word gets out who discovered the
treasures
in the school walls, you kids will be famous!’

Billie and her friends squeal and dance up and down on the spot. Famous? This is the best news ever.

That weekend, the Secret Mystery Club have an extra-special club meeting at Billie’s house. But instead of meeting in the treehouse, this time they are all in Billie’s lounge room, gathered around the TV.

Everyone’s parents are here too. They are all crowded into the room, sitting on the couches and on the floor, chatting loudly.

Billie’s dad has baked chocolate cupcakes especially for the occasion, with the letters SMC across the top in green icing.

Noah has already eaten three of their special cupcakes and has left sticky chocolate fingerprints all over the coffee table.

He climbs onto Billie’s lap to make sure he is right in the middle of the fun. Billie rubs off the chocolate he has smeared on her jeans.

‘Hi, Ina!’ Noah says, waving to Edwina. No matter how many times Billie tells Noah her name, he still can’t say it right. She has given up trying to teach him.

‘Here it is!’ Billie’s mum says,
dashing
over to the TV to turn the sound up. ‘Shhh, everyone!’

They all fall quiet and stare at the TV. Everyone cheers when an image of their school comes up on the screen. They watch the reporter speak into a microphone.

‘For nearly a hundred years, this school has hidden a long-lost secret deep within its walls. A secret message from the students of the past to students of today. The whereabouts of this time capsule had long been forgotten, and it took five intrepid young detectives to uncover the treasure.’

Everyone cheers loudly again. Especially the five members of the SMC!

‘Look, look!’ Mika shouts. ‘It’s Mrs Singh!’

The reporter holds the microphone up to Mrs Singh, who blinks nervously into the camera. ‘Yes, well, I’ve always known there was a time capsule hidden in the school,’ she says, ‘but it had become a bit of an urban myth, handed down from one school principal to another.

I never dreamt ours would be the lucky generation to find it.’

Now the camera shows the library. Even though the area has been roped off, Billie catches glimpses of people she knows
jumping
and
waving
, trying to get on TV.

She giggles. ‘Look! There’s Benny and Sam! And is that Rebecca there?’

They all laugh when the camera catches a shot of Miss Davenport looking annoyed that her once-neat library is such a terrible mess.

Finally, the camera focuses on what they’ve been waiting for. Once Billie had pointed out the seam in the wall behind the bookshelves it had been easy for builders to carefully cut out a square of the wall. Behind it, just as they’d hoped, was a large metal chest tucked away in the little gap between the two rooms.

Everyone in Billie’s lounge room watches, holding their breath, as the camera zooms in on the chest.

The mayor has been invited for the occasion. She makes a speech about what a wonderful day this is. Then she opens the chest
carefully
.

Two experts from the museum reach into it with white gloves and pull out the things inside, one by one.

‘Here we have a box of old pen nibs,’ one expert says, holding one up for the viewers to see. ‘And here is an inkwell. And this is called a slate,’ he continues, pointing to what looks like a small blackboard.

‘Children wrote on these with slate pencils to save paper.’

‘Like olden-day iPads,’ the other expert jokes. Everyone laughs.

The experts continue to pull out things from the box and explain how each item was used at school a hundred years ago.

‘It’s incredible how well-preserved everything is,’ says one expert. ‘This is really quite a find!’

Finally, one of them pulls out a small bundle of letters.

She gently unties the ribbon around them and reads out the first letter of the bundle:

To the children of the future,

We hope that whenever you find this time capsule, years from now, you will get a glimpse of what life was like in our day.

We have written stories and drawn pictures of what we think your life looks like in the future. We hope you enjoy them.

Signed,

Mr T. Barton and schoolchildren

‘He was the principal at the school when it first opened,’ Billie’s dad explains to the others.

The expert carefully unfolds some of the drawings and holds them up to the camera. Some of them are very funny.