The Fangs of the Dragon (4 page)

A
T SCHOOL THE NEXT DAY
, the case took a decisive turn. And a very unexpected turn it was too!

For most of the morning, I found it hard to concentrate on lessons. Which is normal when we’re doing maths, because maths is certainly not my best subject. But today, I was finding it
particularly hard to concentrate because of the problems surrounding that comic book. The crime
seemed
impossible, and yet it had happened. The suspects
seemed
to be in the clear, and
yet someone must have —

‘Saxby Smart?’ called Mrs Penzler, our form teacher.

‘Er, sorry?’ I blinked.

‘Are you with us today, Saxby?’ snapped Mrs Penzler. The rest of the class giggled quietly. Even Muddy! I glared at him and he pulled a big cheesy grin at me.

‘Give us the answer to question three, Saxby!’ cried Mrs Penzler.

I hadn’t the faintest idea what she was talking about. However, Mrs Penzler is a no-nonsense teacher, and she likes definite answers, so I gave her the most definite answer that came into
my head.

‘Fourteen,’ I said. Definitely.

‘It’s two point two,’ said Mrs Penzler, with a bemused look on her face. ‘See me afterwards, and I’ll go over this topic with you. Again.’

I sighed and settled down to untangling the jumble of numbers on the page in front of me. I tried hard to follow the rest of the maths lesson, but to be honest I found it about as easy as eating
custard with chopsticks. My spirits perked up when the bell went for lunch break, and then they slumped back down again when I remembered my after-lesson appointment with Mrs Penzler. However, my
ten-minute chat with her had two
very
important effects.

Effect No. 1:
‘Oh I seeeee!’ I finally got what she’d been on about all lesson. It was as if the chopsticks had been replaced with a spoon!

Effect No. 2:
It made me late for dinner. Which made me late for what I had to do
after
dinner (namely helping to put up a display of artwork outside the school office). Which
meant I was standing outside the office when Charlie Foster turned up. If I hadn’t been late I’d have missed him entirely.

He was carrying his school bag, and clearly hadn’t expected to see me. He gave me a kind of nervous nod and a ‘Hello’ and went into the office, where he was out of sight and
out of earshot.

The art display was just about finished. The two other kids on display duty went back to their classrooms, leaving me to pin up the last couple of labels (
A Map of the Town by 4B
and
By Timmy Liggins of 2L –
Miss Bennett says ‘Lovely work, Timmy, well done’. I mean, yeurch!).

A few seconds after Charlie had entered the office, Mrs McEwan the school secretary hurried out. She click-clunked on her tottering high heels over to the staff room, her whole body swaying back
and forth on her chunky bare legs.

Kids weren’t normally allowed in the office on their own. It occurred to me that Charlie had sent her off on some urgent errand to get her out of the way. I stepped out of sight, behind
the display boards. Something was going on.

From inside the office came a loud whirring noise. Then Charlie emerged, still carrying his bag. He had a look about him that could only be described as gleeful. Something in that office had
made him very happy indeed.

As soon as he’d gone, I emerged from my hiding place and nipped into the office myself. If I was found in here without good reason, I could be in big trouble. I needed to identify what
Charlie had been doing, and fast.

Suddenly, I heard the click-clunk of those high heels, heading back this way! I had time to look in
one
place only, and I had a choice of:

• Mrs McEwan’s desk and the heap of stuff on it
  

• The bin beneath the desk
  

• The cupboard under the window
  

• The big paper shredder beside the cupboard
  

• A box of just-delivered stationery
  

• The office computer perched on its trolley
  

The choice was actually quite a simple one. Have you spotted it?

I went straight to the paper shredder. What else would have made that loud whirring noise I’d heard? (Well, unless Charlie had suddenly started doing machinery
impressions in his spare time . . . or the computer needed some serious repair work . . .)

‘Charlie Foster, you cheeky little so-and-so!’ cried Mrs McEwan, clattering back into the room. ‘Mrs Penzler does
not
need an emergency box of paper clips, and
—’

She stared at me. I think, just for a second, she thought Charlie had suddenly mutated into a different kid.

‘I’ve been sent to empty the shredder,’ I lied quickly, unhooking the big plastic sack beneath the machine.

‘Oh,’ said Mrs McEwan. ‘Thank you. If you see Charlie Foster, tell him he’s a cheeky little so-and-so.’

‘I will,’ I said, dragging the sack out of the office.

I took the sack over to the recycling box outside the staff room. I opened it carefully and peered inside. Most of the shreds were plain white strips of paper, but sitting in amongst them were
thin slices of something else. I picked up a handful.

These shreds were a browny-white, with multicoloured bits. The paper felt thin and soft between my fingers. I lifted it to my nose. There was a dusty smell, a smell I’d smelled once
before. With a sudden feeling in my stomach as if it had been tied to a giant boulder and thrown off a cliff, I realised what Charlie had been doing.

Have you worked it out too?

He’d just shredded
The Tomb of Death
.

I gasped. Out loud. I flopped. On to the floor. Charlie Foster had just shredded a comic book worth . . . I gasped again.

So
Charlie
had stolen the comic? I could hardly believe it. A dozen enormous questions suddenly popped into my head, most of them beginning with ‘Hang on a minute, how on earth . .
.?’

Mrs Penzler appeared out of the staff room and loomed over me. ‘If you’re emptying that sack, then get it emptied and run along to class. Honestly, Saxby, you’re in a world of
your own today!’

I pulled the remains of the comic out of the sack, and stuffed them into my pockets.

There
had
to be more to this than I was seeing. There just
had
to be. As soon as school was over, I hurried home to my Thinking Chair. Sitting down carefully so as not to make the
rip on the arm any worse, I settled down with my notebook, my sharpest pencil and my brain cells.

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY
, S
ATURDAY
, I asked two specific questions. The answers to those two questions
finally gave me the key to the entire case.

The first question was one I asked Izzy. I phoned her up and said: ‘Safes. Like the one the Fosters have got. Can you set your own combination for them, or do they come with one that you
can’t change?’

Ten minutes later, she called me back. ‘Most of them have a user-set combination. You can use whatever numbers you like. Most people use something memorable, like a birthday or their house
number.’

Aha!

The second question came a little later. This time, I phoned Ed Foster. I said: ‘I have something here I’d like you to look at.’

He said: ‘No problem, I’ll come over straight away.’

Twenty minutes later, a clapped-out old banger of a car chugged and shuddered on to the small paved drive in front of my house. I suppose it made sense that a bloke as scruffy as Ed Foster
should have a seriously rubbish car like that. Owner and vehicle in perfect harmony.

Unfortunately, Ed had brought Charlie with him. I’d been hoping he wouldn’t, but it was too late now. I’d just have to risk it.

This whole meeting was a risk. I needed to show Ed some of the shredded remains of the comic. I was hoping he wouldn’t realise exactly what it was I was showing him.

Ed and Charlie came out to my shed. I took just two of the shreds out of my filing cabinet, as Ed perched on my desk. The moment Charlie saw them, he started to shuffle nervously. He realised at
once that I must have followed him into the school office. I tried not to give away the fact that I knew that he knew that I knew what these shreds were. I told myself to play it cool.

So now, here comes that vital second question. ‘What can you tell me about these?’ I asked Ed, handing him the two shreds.

He frowned, then raised his eyebrows. ‘Well, they’re shredded paper,’ he said.

My heart was thumping. I needed to establish the age of these shreds. It was central to the whole case. I also needed to choose my words very, very carefully, or I’d have a gibbering wreck
of a comic collector on my hands. ‘I mean, can you tell me anything about the paper? I only ask because you know a lot about whether some types of paper are old or new.’

Ed examined the shreds up close, turning to hold them up to the light coming through the shed’s perspex window. ‘Well, this could be standard comic book stock,’ he said at
last. ‘You see the way the coloured ink there is printed in tiny dots? That was certainly what you’d see on older comics.’

I glanced over at Charlie. He’d gone as pale as a ghost in a snowstorm.

‘So . . . the paper . . . itself . . .’ I said.

‘Oh, that’s not old,’ he said confidently.

I snapped to attention. ‘It’s not? That’s
not
from a very old comic book?’

‘No way,’ said Ed. ‘What on earth makes you think it is? No, if you put old pulp paper through a modern shredder, you end up with a load of little bits, not neat shreds like
this. I told you, that old paper is really delicate.’

Aha Number Two!

And it wasn’t the ‘aha’ I’d been expecting. The age of that paper was indeed central to the whole case, but in a way I hadn’t quite foreseen. Suddenly, the theories
I’d been working on in my head needed to be reversed.

‘That’s it!’ I declared. ‘I’ve solved the case!’

‘Really?’ cried Ed, grinning. ‘So where’s my comic book?’

Charlie had turned almost see-through, he was so pale. If he hadn’t been leaning on the lawnmower in the corner of the shed, I think he’d have fallen over.

‘I’ll explain everything when we get to Rippa’s shop,’ I said.

‘It’s closed today,’ said Ed.

‘Why?’

‘He’s going to America,’ said Ed.

‘Why?’

‘The International Comics Convention in Los Angeles,’ said Ed. ‘It starts tomorrow.’

Now it was my turn to go pale. I leaned against my Thinking Chair to stop myself falling over.

‘Of course,’ I gasped. ‘
That’s
what he’s been saving up for.’

‘Sure, it’s an expensive trip,’ shrugged Ed. ‘Are you telling me
he’s
got my comic?’

I nodded. Charlie stared at me, open-mouthed with relief.

‘Right!’ declared Ed. ‘When he gets back, I’ll —’

‘No, you don’t understand!’ I cried. ‘We have to stop him going, or you’ll never see that comic again!’

‘Impossible,’ wailed Ed. ‘If the flight hasn’t already gone, it’ll be going soon.’

‘What about your car?’ I said. ‘It’s only twenty miles to the airport from here.’