The Fangs of the Dragon (9 page)

‘Come on, guys,’ I said quietly. ‘Two more lines to go. We’ve got work to do.’

‘W
HAT’S THE NEXT LINE
?’ said Jack.

‘Well, the prize must mean the key,’ I said.

‘Are we supposed to look at it in a mirror?’ said Muddy. ‘And how would we see a tree if we did?’

I turned the key over and over in my fingers, examining it closely. It was a perfectly ordinary key, without markings or oddities of any kind. It wasn’t particularly light or heavy, and it
didn’t appear to be made of anything unusual.

‘It’s obviously got some connection to mirroring, or symmetry, but what?’ I mumbled.

‘Maths again,’ sighed Jack.

‘Perhaps it’s a reflection, rather than a mirror,’ said Muddy. ‘The next part of the line mentions glass, and that reflects.’

I snapped my fingers. Which I only did at that moment because I couldn’t get a huge exclamation mark to ping into view above my head. ‘We’re thinking too small. Most of what
we’ve done so far has involved the house itself, and moving around it. We’re now standing as far as you can go on
this
side of the house. If we mirror the exact spot we found the
key on the
other
side of the house, what do we get?’

As one, we charged out of the room and across the landing at the top of the stairs. Keeping a careful three-dimensional picture in our heads of the key’s hiding place, we hurried across
the house, judged the correct position as closely as we could and found ourselves at the end of a corridor, standing in front of:

‘A side window,’ said Jack. ‘“Mirror the prize and see the trees”!’

‘But you can’t see any trees from here,’ said Muddy, peering out and pulling a face. ‘All you can see is the roundabout and the shopping mall.’

‘I thought I could hear you lot thundering about.’ At that moment, Izzy appeared along the hallway, clutching a pile of papers to her chest.

‘Perfect timing!’ I cried. ‘Have you found any pictures?’

‘Of . . .?’

‘Of this house in the 1840s?’ I said. ‘I need to confirm a theory.’

‘Actually, yes,’ said Izzy. ‘I’ve been able to find masses of stuff. Here, there’re pictures amongst all this.’ She handed me the papers and I started
flicking through them eagerly.

‘Give us the edited highlights of what you’ve found,’ I said, still zipping through one sheet after another. ‘This whole mystery contains more questions than two quiz
books and a TV game show.’

‘OK,’ said Izzy, adjusting her specs. ‘Tonight’s headlines. Silas Middlewich came from a very poor family himself. Which makes the way he exploited poverty-stricken
people here all the more shameful, I reckon. He got his money, the money to build this place, by getting involved in buying and selling local plots of land. These deals were highly illegal, it
seems. Dozens of wealthy locals, including the mayor, a Mr Carmichael, and a factory owner called Isaac Kenton were also involved, but nothing was ever proved. It’s thought that Middlewich
got the whole thing hushed up. It’s also thought that Middlewich murdered Isaac Kenton’s wife. She vanished without trace in 1844, the same year this treasure trail was written. Again,
nothing was ever proved.

‘And Middlewich was himself murdered?’ said Jack.

‘Yes, in 1845,’ said Izzy. ‘By this Martha Humble I mentioned before. Nothing more is known about her, only that she accused him of swindling her husband, whoever he was.
Anyway, Middlewich was so hated around town that the local teacher, a man called Josiah Flagg, organised a kind of anti-Middlewich committee. The town constable, Mr Trottman, even had this house
raided twice, looking for evidence against Middlewich. But Middlewich was obviously too good at covering his tracks. I tell you, Jack, your parents now own a house built by an absolute and total
crook.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ I muttered to myself. I stopped sorting through Izzy’s papers and looked up at the three of them. ‘I know who this treasure hunt was meant for. I
know who Silas Middlewich meant to leave his treasure to.’

‘Who?’ said Muddy.

‘Think about how the parchment is written, about how we’ve gone about deciphering it so far. From what Izzy’s told us, there was someone who would have had an easier time
following this treasure hunt than most people. In 1844, anyway.’

Have you worked out who it was?

‘The teacher, Josiah Flagg,’ I said. ‘Every single clue we’ve followed has involved exactly the sort of maths, science and history that we learn about
even today. Most people in 1844 had no real education at all. Most people would have got hopelessly stuck somewhere along the trail.’

‘Noooo,’ said Izzy. ‘He hated Middlewich. Let’s face it,
everyone
hated Middlewich. That
can’t
be right.’

‘Silas Middlewich left this trail for someone to follow,’ I said.

‘Even the great Saxby Smart can make one leap of logic too many, you know,’ she said, eyeing me with a sly smile.

‘You just wait,’ I said, eyeing her right back. I turned to the window, brandishing one of the sheets of paper Izzy had brought with her. ‘
Voilà!
’ I
declared. ‘The trees!’

I showed them what Izzy had printed out at the library. It was an engraving, dated 1860, showing the house from a short distance away. As well as the woods behind the house, there were thickly
wooded areas to both sides as well.

‘If you’d have looked out of this window in 1844, all you’d have seen would have been trees, trees and more trees. You’d probably still have seen trees in
1944.’

‘Right,’ said Jack. ‘So now . . .’

We slid the window open, peeped out and looked directly down. A ‘fall from the glass’ would have dropped us into the garden. Well, it might have done in 1844. But not any more.

‘Oh dear,’ said Muddy quietly.

We were looking at the large, plastic roof of a conservatory, added to the side of the house by a more modern owner. Two minutes later, we were looking at that same roof from beneath it. Then we
looked down, at the rock-hard floor of concrete under our boots.

‘“Down and down”, it says,’ wailed Muddy. ‘We can’t go down through this. Not without some seriously huge equipment.’

‘I don’t
believe
it!’ growled Jack furiously. He stamped against the floor as hard as he could. It was so solid, the blow barely made a sound.

‘Isn’t there a cellar?’ I said.

‘Yes, but it’s towards the back of the house,’ said Jack.

Suddenly, Izzy twitched as if she’d just been jabbed with a stick. ‘Wait! Wait!’ She quickly searched through her pile of print-outs, tossing sheets aside as she went.
‘In amongst that load of documents your parents got with the house, Jack! Plans of the sewers!’

‘I am
not
going down a sewer!’ cried Jack.

‘Of course!’ I said. ‘That plan would include anything under the house.’

Izzy found the document she was looking for and tapped a finger against it with excitement. ‘Look! Look!’

‘The cellar goes all the way across here,’ I said, tracing the line that marked its edges. ‘It extends out past the side of the house, including this spot where we’re
standing right now. We
can
go down from here.’

Without a moment’s hesitation, we raced for the cellar, clattering down a flight of wooden steps into a long, low room lit only by a single bare lightbulb hanging above us. Then we
hesitated.

‘Urgh, it stinks,’ said Izzy.

‘It’s very damp,’ said Jack. ‘Dad says it’ll be the biggest job in the house, putting it right. It’s going to be a boiler room and laundry.’

‘We’ve got to go right over to that far corner,’ I said. ‘That’s the section under the conservatory.’

The cellar was mostly empty. A few decaying wooden crates were stacked to one side, leaning against the moist brickwork of the wall as if they were too exhausted to stand up by themselves. Our
boots made dull scraping sounds against the shiny grey flagstoned floor. The single lightbulb beamed claw-like shadows around us as we moved.

Once we were in the right place, we took a good look around.

‘But there’s nothing here,’ said Jack quietly. His voice sounded thick and heavy, as if the dampness of the walls was soaking it up as he spoke. ‘Where on earth would you
put a saucer?’

‘I assume he means like a china tea-set saucer,’ said Muddy. ‘Not a flying saucer.’

‘I don’t think they had aliens in 1844,’ said Izzy, pulling a face at the patch of mossy stuff that was growing on the brickwork beside her.

I was also feeling puzzled, to say the least. But the last line had to indicate something down here. I took another close look at everything around me:

1. The ceiling
– made up of grey panels that had been nailed in place; obviously not the original ceiling, but a more modern covering of some kind; bashed and gouged in several
places.

2.  The floor
– plain, grey flagstones; almost slippery with damp in places; some of them worn into a dipping, uneven surface, one so deeply you could put your foot in it; with
a scattering of dirt and rusted nails.

3. The walls
– the same plain brick as the walls in the rest of the house; dark and damp, several of them in a crumbly, flaky state, forming a kind of dotted line at knee
height; the mortar between them dotted with black.

‘Of course,’ I whispered. ‘I see it now. It’s one of Silas’s sideways-thinking clues. All you’ve got to do is ask yourself, “What does
a saucer go under?”’

Can you spot it?

I crouched down and pointed to that deeply worn flagstone in the floor. ‘“Where the saucer goes, go I.” A saucer goes under a cup. That flagstone is worn
into . . .’

‘Something pretty close to a cup shape,’ said Izzy.

‘Muddy,’ I said, ‘got something to get that flagstone up?’

Muddy produced a large screwdriver from his bag and pushed the flat end of it as deep into the crack at the edge of the flagstone as he could. With a few heaves, the stone was lifted. With a
loud k-klak it dropped over on its front.

Beneath it, surrounded by earth, was what could only be the lid of a small wooden chest.

‘That’s it!’ cried Jack.

‘The treasure!’ cried Muddy.

I, being me, didn’t want to start sinking my hands into the soil. Eurgh! But Muddy, being Muddy, dived straight in, digging the box free. At last, he hauled it up out of the hole
he’d dug and set it down on the shiny floor.

It wasn’t very large, but it was very decayed. The wide metal straps that reinforced its edges had become pitted and discoloured over the years. The wood it was made from had been half
eaten away by the earth and whatever lived in it.

I took the key we’d found from my pocket and handed it to Jack. ‘It’d probably split open with a good kick,’ I said, ‘but I think this would be more
appropriate.’

With a grin, Jack knelt down and twisted aside the small metal plate that covered the lock. The rest of us hardly dared breathe, our hearts racing. The key turned, and with a crunching sound the
lock sprang open.

Jack lifted the lid. Inside, tightly wrapped in a thin sheet of roofing lead to preserve it, was a leather-bound notebook. Every page was filled with handwriting, lists and numbers. Towards the
back of it was a torn edge, where a sheet had been ripped out. Inside the front cover, in the same familiar lettering as the parchment, were the words:
Journal of Mr Silas Middlewich, begun 4
June 1837, ended 7 August 1844.

‘That’s it?’ said Jack. ‘That’s the treasure of Dead Man’s Lane?’

‘It certainly is,’ I said, smiling broadly. ‘It certainly is.’