The Fangs of the Dragon (2 page)

Point 1:
If two alarms weren’t tripped, and no burglar was involved, then the safe was almost certainly opened by
someone who already knew the combination
to it!

Point 2:
If the thief took an old comic, but left a pile of cash untouched, then the thief was almost certainly
someone who already knew the value
of the comic. They knew that the
comic was worth more than the pile of cash!

‘This is all very puzzling,’ I mused. ‘Didn’t Ed go to the police?’

‘Yes, but they say there’s nothing they can do. There was no break-in, or anything like that. It’s as if the comic simply vanished into thin air, overnight.’

I stood up decisively. ‘OK, here are the two things I’m going to do, in reverse order: Number Two, I’m going to examine the scene of the crime; Number One, I’m going to
try and get this wretched super-tough heavy-duty repair tape off my fingers. Tell your brother that Saxby Smart is on the case!’

F
IRST THING THE NEXT MORNING
, I boarded a bus to Charlie’s house. As it rumbled its way through town, I phoned my
super-brainy friend and all-round research genius, Isobel ‘Izzy’ Moustique.

‘
How much?
’ she gasped.

‘That’s exactly what I said,’ I said. ‘I’m on my way to the scene of the crime right now.’

‘A comic book so rare and valuable would be very hard to sell without attracting attention,’ said Izzy. ‘This must be a pretty stupid thief! There’s no way they could
do
anything with that comic without being noticed.’

I shrugged. ‘They could read it.’

‘What? You’re telling me that the contents of a comic like that wouldn’t have been reprinted and republished in a dozen books by now? No, nobody would steal it just to see what
was printed in it.’

‘I guess not,’ I said. ‘Anyway, see what you can come up with. Information on recent sales of rare comics, that sort of thing.’

‘Already on it,’ said Izzy. ‘Come and see me later.’

As the bus chugged and bumped along the town’s main shopping streets, something struck me about what Izzy had said. She was right – the thief would find it almost impossible to sell
that comic without being noticed.

Unless . . .

Unless they didn’t plan to sell it at all. Suddenly, I jumped up with a cry! It startled the old lady sitting in the seat behind me.

‘Have you missed your stop, luvvy?’ she asked.

‘No, I’ve missed an obvious suspect!’ I replied.

She gave me a funny look. I think she thought I was a bit barmy.

But there
was
an obvious conclusion to be drawn here. What sort of person would steal that comic book and
not
intend to sell it at all? Only one sort of person, as far as I could
see! Can you see it too?

Another
collector
, like Ed! Someone who might want to keep the comic just for its rarity alone.

At last the bus reached my stop. The old lady clutched her shopping and watched me nervously as I raced to get off. I hurried over to Charlie’s house. He took me up to Ed’s room
first, so I could finally meet his brother.

They say that the clothes you wear say something about you. If that’s true, then the clothes Ed wore said something rather rude. With a hand gesture added in as punctuation. He was without
doubt the scruffiest person I’d ever seen in my life. He looked as if he’d bought his T-shirt and jeans from the local rubbish tip, and he had a scrubby beard that reminded me of those
scatterings of sugary bits you get on cakes. Apart from all that, he was simply a larger version of Charlie.

His room, tucked away in a converted attic at the top of the house, was his exact opposite. It was amazingly neat and clean. One entire wall was covered in white shelving units, and housed on
these units were hundreds – no, thousands – of plastic envelopes. Just visible inside each envelope was the outer edge of a comic book, and most of the envelopes had handwritten sticky
labels attached to them.

Ed was sitting in front of his computer. As soon as Charlie and I came in, he bounded over to me and shook my hand so enthusiastically I thought my teeth would come loose.

‘Hi!’ he said. ‘You must be Saxby. Charlie’s told me all about your exploits, kid. I hope you’re as good as your reputation suggests.’

‘Better!’ I declared with a grin. ‘Now then, tell me more about this comic.’

Over a glass of fruit smoothie and some rather posh chocolate biscuits (‘Ooh, yes, I’ll have another one of those,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’), Ed told us the tale of
The Tomb of Death
with a wild gleam of eagerness in his eyes.

‘Way back in the 1950s,’ he said, ‘
The Tomb of Death
was the first in a new style of comic book in America. Full of grisly stories about murder plots, evil curses and
tentacled monsters. These comics were a smash. Kids loved them. And within a couple of years, they were banned!’

‘Banned?’ I said. ‘Were they really horrible, then?’

‘Naaah,’ said Ed. ‘They were funny! With a few scares thrown in, mind you. The thing is, parents started saying they were a bad influence on kids, and they were all banned:
The Tomb of Death
,
The Valley of Slime
, all of them.’

‘I see,’ I said. ‘They weren’t published for long, and parents would get rid of them wherever they could. Result: they end up as rare collector’s items.’

‘Precisely!’ cried Ed. ‘There are certain comics that are legends in the world of collecting. Like, for instance, the Action Comics issue in which Superman first appeared in
the 1930s, or Batman’s arrival in Detective Comics a little later. Or Issue 15 of Marvel’s
Amazing Fantasy
– that’s the origin of Spider-Man; that comic’s worth
a fortune.’

‘And
The Tomb of Death
is as famous as those?’

‘Weeeell,’ said Ed, pulling a face and rocking his head from side to side. ‘It’s less sought after, but it’s
so
unusual that its value is at least their
equal.’

My earlier thoughts about another collector being the thief sprang to mind. ‘Did you keep the comic a secret? Did other collectors know you had it?’

‘Of course they knew!’ cried Ed. ‘I mean, what’s the point of having Issue 1 of
The Tomb of Death
in your collection if you don’t tell the world?’

‘You weren’t worried one of them might try to steal it?’

‘To be honest, no,’ said Ed. ‘It was in that safe, locked away.’

‘And it never came out of the safe?’

‘Never. Well, except on special occasions, and on those occasions it never left my sight.’

‘What sort of special occasions are we talking about?’

‘Er, let’s see,’ said Ed, wrinkling his nose up in thought. ‘
Comics UK
magazine did an article on my collection about a year ago. They took a picture of me holding
the comic. Then I took it to a trade fair shortly after that.’

‘What’s a trade fair?’ I said.

‘A kind of comic convention,’ said Ed. ‘Lots of traders, lots of buying and selling goes on, comic publishers show off their latest stuff, that sort of thing.’

‘An ideal opportunity for a thief!’

Ed shook his head. ‘That comic was in a sealed, see-through case that never left my hand. I even took it to the loo with me! It was perfectly OK.’

‘Was that the last time the comic was taken out of the safe?’

‘No, there was one more time, about four months ago. I took it out to show to Rippa. He’s another collector. He’s got a shop in town, right opposite the restaurant I work at.
That’s how I got to know him. Odd bloke. Not really someone you’d trust.’

‘I see,’ I said quietly.

Ed could see what I was thinking. ‘I can see what you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘No, he never even touched it. You shouldn’t touch comic books that old,
anyway.’

‘Not touch them? Why?’

‘They were printed on very cheap paper. High acidic content in the wood pulp, you see, so after a few years the paper literally starts to crumble. That’s another reason why certain
comics are so rare. Most copies have simply fallen apart. You’ve got to keep the air off them, and keep them out of sunlight. Like vampires.’ He pointed to the neatly stacked comics on
his shelves. ‘Why else do you think I keep all of those in plastic wallets?’

‘So this Rippa didn’t even touch it?’

‘Nope. I did take the comic out, and turned the pages so we could both admire the thing. Wonderful smell comes off them, you know, the smell of history. Of course, I wore cotton gloves.
Even the tiny layer of sweat on your fingertips can damage that paper.’

All this time, Charlie was being oddly quiet. He kept sipping at his smoothie and staring at the rows and rows of sealed-up comics on the shelves.

‘So,’ I said, ‘if the rest of the collection is kept in this room, rather than the safe, I assume none of these are anywhere near as valuable?’

‘Correct,’ said Ed, ‘but there’s some very interesting stuff here. Take this one, for instance . . .’

Ed Foster might have dressed like a walking rubbish dump, but he was clearly an expert on the history of comic book publishing. He showed me what made particular issues of a comic more
collectable than others (Issue 33 of
The Amazing Spider-Man
, for instance, worth more than Issues 32 or 34, because it contains a very well-known story. Or, Issues 12 to 22 of
The Purple
Avenger
, worth only fifty pence each because the artwork was rubbish. Fascinating stuff!). By the time Ed had given me his eager guided tour of the shelves, I was ready to rush out and start a
collection of my own!

Charlie kept peeking over his brother’s shoulder, trying to get a look at whatever Ed was showing me. Drips from his almost-empty glass of smoothie plopped on to the carpet.

‘Oi, Charlie!’ cried Ed. ‘Watch it! You get any of that on these comics and you’re for it! You know you’re barred from the entire collection.’

‘Barred?’ I said.

‘Yeh,’ said Ed, eyeing his brother moodily. ‘Ever since I let him borrow one of my 1960s
Fantastic Four
s and he got jam all over it.’

Charlie stuck his tongue out at Ed. (Actually, no, he didn’t do that. Actually, he said a short sentence that included the words ‘complete’ and ‘you’, and which I
can’t repeat here!)

‘Can I see the crime scene now?’ I said quickly.

We went downstairs. The safe was recessed into the wall of the living room, and concealed behind a painting that swung back on hinges like a door. The rest of the room was just an ordinary
living room: sofa, a couple of chairs, TV in the corner.

The safe had a standard combination lock, a big dial in the middle of the door that you turn back and forth to line up with a series of numbers. Ed opened it up, standing close to it so that
nobody could get the combination by watching him. All that was inside the safe was a small pile of papers.

‘That’s all stuff of Dad’s,’ said Ed. ‘Stuff about the house, insurance and so forth.’

‘And the comic was propped up at the back there?’

‘Yup.’

‘In full view, so you’d know straight away it was gone?’

‘Yup.’

‘No way it could slip out of sight, or get mixed up with those papers?’

‘Nope.’

I remembered my earlier deduction, from Chapter Two: if the safe hadn’t been broken into, then the thief had to be someone who knew the combination.

I asked Ed where the combination was kept. He tapped the side of his head. ‘In here,’ he said. ‘There’s only me, Mum and Dad who know it. None of us has got it written
down. None of us has ever told anyone else what it is.’

‘I don’t know the combination,’ said Charlie. ‘They won’t even tell me what it is. I’ve never opened that safe in my whole life.’

At that point, I had to admit I was out of ideas. The theft of the comic book seemed almost impossible. So only those three people could have opened the safe?

Suddenly, I wasn’t out of ideas any more! If the thief didn’t
break in
to the safe, and the thief couldn’t
open
the safe (assuming, of course, that neither Ed nor
his parents were the thief!), then there could be one, and only one way the thief could have struck.

Can you see how?