The Hotel Under the Sand (16 page)

On the morning of the fourth day, however, Masterman had much more than seasickness to worry about.

E
MMA HAD JUST
finished clearing away the guests’ breakfast plates with Winston when she became aware of a noise echoing over the sea. She ran to the dining room window and looked out. Far off to starboard was a yacht, cutting over the white waves at great speed. It looked as though it might be trying to intercept the
By-the-Wind-Sailor
.

As it drew nearer, the noise came echoing out again, much louder now. Someone on the deck of the yacht was shouting into a bullhorn.
“Stop! Stop in the name of the law! Heave to!”

But the
By-the-Wind-Sailor
just kept steaming ahead. Emma shaded her eyes and stared very hard at the yacht as it sailed closer. It looked like somebody’s luxury craft.

“What the heck is that?” said Winston, coming to the window to look over her shoulder.

“I think it’s trouble,” said Emma.

“Stop! Stop, thieves!”The
voice cried over the bullhorn.

“What do they mean,
thieves?”
said Winston angrily. “We haven’t stolen anything.”

“And they aren’t the police,” said Emma. “That’s not a police boat, and it hasn’t got any Coast Guard signs on it, either. I hope Captain Doubloon doesn’t stop for them.”

“I don’t think he will, somehow,” said Winston.

In fact, the
By-the-Wind-Sailor
seemed to speed up, and the Grand Wenlocke bounded over the sea in a way that would make anyone a little queasy. But the yacht kept on coming. Soon it was close enough to see clearly the man standing in the bow, calling through the bullhorn. He was a small man, though his head was rather large and perfectly bald. He clearly thought of himself as a dashing fellow, for he wore a yachtsman’s fancy blazer and a too-small yachting cap perched on his domed head.

“He doesn’t look so tough,” said Emma.

“No, but
they
do,” said Winston, pointing. All along the rail stood some men in black uniforms. “You know, I think I’ll just invite the guests down to the Theater. I’ll come back as soon as I’ve put on one of those cinematograph reels—they’re as good as a magician doing tricks to hold people’s attention. That way, the guests won’t notice if there’s any unpleasantness.”

“What unpleasantness?” said a faint voice from the chaise lounge. Masterman sat up unsteadily. “What’s going on?”

He staggered in from the Lobby and joined Emma at the window, as Winston ran to talk to the guests. Emma pointed out the yacht. Masterman peered at it, and then went (though Emma would not have thought it possible) an even paler shade of chalky pistachio.

“Oh, no! That’s Uncle Roderick!” he cried.

“You mean the man who sent you to the military school?”

“Yes! And he hates me!”

“He must have found out about the Grand Wenlocke reappearing,” said Emma, watching as the yacht got closer, and wishing she had Captain Doubloon’s cutlass.

“Where’s the rest of the breakfast dishes?” demanded Mrs. Beet, huffing and puffing from her climb up the stairs. Shorty came running after her, yapping excitedly. “Nothing’s come down in the dumbwaiter for five minutes and—oh, blimey, what’s that?”

“It’s Masterman’s guardian,” said Emma.

“Really?” Mrs. Beet scowled. “I suppose he’ll want to take the child back to that school now. However did he find us?”

“He must have been hunting for me,” said Masterman. “He knew I’d go to the Dunes!”

“But how’d he know we were back in business?”

“There are these things nowadays, called satellites,” said Emma. “They’re like giant spyglasses in the sky. Maybe he had a way to look at satellite pictures.”

“How inconvenient,” said Mrs. Beet.

“Or maybe he had spies in his pay,” said Masterman dramatically. “If the hotel guests found us, other people might have. Look at him! Doesn’t he look like a middle-aged goblin?”

By this time the yacht had veered very close indeed, and the voice screeching from its bullhorn was clear and unmistakable:
“Stop! Stop in the name of the Wenlocke Family Trust! That hotel is stolen property!”

“Ha!” said Mrs. Beet. She threw open the window and shouted, “You’re wrong, there! Who should own this hotel but a Wenlocke, I’d like to know? And here he is!” She grabbed Masterman by the scruff of his jacket and the seat of his pants, and held him up in the window. Shorty jumped up and down, barking wildly, trying to see out the window.

Masterman was terrified. “No!” he squeaked. “You don’t understand! He’s evil!”

Emma had a terrible feeling he was right. The man in yachting clothes spotted Masterman, and the expression on his face was not at all what it should have been if he had been worried over Masterman and eager to see him safe.

Emma knew that grown people can sometimes be surprisingly blind to evil things, and so she grabbed Mrs. Beet’s arm. “We’re in danger! Let’s get away from the window!”

“Eh? But that’s his guardian, child. He wouldn’t harm our Masterman,” said Mrs. Beet.

The man in the yachting clothes rubbed his hands together and shrieked in glee.
“Haha! There you are, Masterman! You’ve been a very naughty boy!”
He turned and said something to one of the others on deck, who passed the message to the man at the wheel.

The yacht swung about and revealed her stern, on which was the name
DISPARAGEMENT
in gold letters. Emma did not spend much time spelling this out, however, for she was busy watching as a hatch slid back from the stern and a platform rose slowly up to the deck from below.

“Get away from the window!” shouted Winston, running up behind them. “That’s a gun deck!” He tackled Mrs. Beet in a flying leap and they went down with Masterman, just as there was a flash of light from the direction of the yacht.

Emma dropped flat too, and heard the
boom
and the whistle overhead as a cannonball shot in through the open window. It smashed into a panel at the rear of the Dining Room.

“Dear me, Masterman, did they miss? What a shame. Now you’ll have to go back to your classmates!” cried Uncle Roderick. “Minions, reload!”

“See? I told you he wanted to kill me!” said Masterman. Shorty crouched beside him, growling.

“Oh, dear, the watered-silk wallpaper—” said Mrs. Beet distractedly.

“They’ve damaged the hotel!” said Winston, looking angrier than Emma had ever seen him.
“They’ve damaged the hotel!”

“And tried to kill me, too,” said Masterman.

“You’ll stand to attention in the rain, Masterman! You’ll peel hundreds and thousands of potatoes! You’ll scrub thousands and millions of pots! You’ll march millions and billions of miles!” shouted Uncle Roderick. “Hahahaaaa!”

“Don’t listen to him,” Emma told Masterman. “He’s just trying to get you to yell back, so he can see where you are.”

“I won’t stand for this!” Winston scrambled to his feet, and Emma almost shouted to him to get down, before she remembered he was already dead. “No sir, I won’t! Where’s that emergency lever!”

He strode into the Lobby.
Crash
, another cannonball shattered a window!
Thwap
, it buried itself in the oak paneling, but Winston ignored it as he stepped behind the desk.

Emma followed him as far as the doorway, keeping almost flat to the floor and crawling behind furniture whenever she could. Winston opened the glass case and yanked hard on the lever there. Emma heard a deep grinding sound from somewhere down under the floorboards. Suddenly, a section of the marble floor slid back, and something of gleaming gray steel rose up and forward from below. As it moved into place, the Lobby doors opened automatically.

“We have our own cannon?” Emma asked.

“We certainly do,” replied Winston. “My Mr. Wenlocke, he was no fool.”

“Thank you, Great-Grandfather!” said Masterman from his hiding place in the dining room.

“Oh, Masterman! It was wicked of you to run off like that, and leave your poor dear guardian wondering where you were! Everyone at good old Pavor Noctis has given you up for dead, you know! Why, if something awful were to happen to you right now, no one would ever hear about it!” yelled Uncle Roderick from his yacht.

“Oh, shut up!” said Masterman, but very quietly. He grabbed Shorty, who was growling and snapping as though he’d like to jump out the window and attack Uncle Roderick himself.

On the platform beside the cannon, behind a blast shield of plate steel, was a neat pyramid of stacked shot canisters. Emma scrambled to it, keeping well behind a sofa until she was there. Winston was already opening the loading chamber of the gun when Emma handed him a canister. He slid it into the breech and rammed it shut.

“May I fire it?” asked Emma. Like most well-brought-up children, she had always wanted to shoot off a real cannon.

“Don’t be silly, dear, that’s nothing a little girl should be doing,” said Mrs. Beet, who had followed her. “You might kill someone, after all. Let
me
fire it.”

“Just
somebody
fire it!” begged Masterman, who had crawled behind one of the marble columns, holding Shorty tightly in his arms.

“What do you mean, turn and run?” On his yacht, Uncle Roderick had turned to berate a minion. “Look at that hotel! It’ll make us millions! Watch for the boy! The minute he sticks his head up, fire! MASTERMAN, THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO COME OUT!”

The yacht swooped in close, for her crew hoped to get a broadside in, and it threw a drenching bow wave up that splashed through the broken windows.

“Why, those—that’ll ruin the paneling!” said Winston. As he stood straight up in his indignation, the gunner on the yacht had a clear shot at him, and fired. Close as they were, the shot went right through the Lobby, and through Winston too. Emma and Mrs. Beet had thrown themselves flat, so they didn’t see the moment of impact, though they heard the smash as the ball hit the front desk.

Emma looked up cautiously through all the smoke, not knowing what to expect. She didn’t think anything very terrible had happened, since Winston was already dead, but she saw Masterman looking up in horror. Shorty whimpered. She rolled over and saw a great gray plume of smoke coiling up from where Winston had been standing. She heard a noise like a man roaring in anger.

As she watched, the smoke was joined by a thread of ashes and whirling sand, seeping from the urn in the Lobby. It thickened and flowed out the broken window, seeming to stretch out two dark arms. There were no gold buttons, no stars: only a terrible shadow with the suggestion of bones. She just glimpsed it becoming something very scary indeed as it extended out on the verandah. The laughter of the men on the yacht broke off. They began to yell in terror instead as the dark thing flowed over the water toward them.

“Now, child!” Mrs. Beet scrambled up and grabbed the lanyard that fired the cannon. “Get me another canister!”

She yanked the lanyard and the cannon fired. The canister exploded, peppering the yacht with small shot. One ball plucked Uncle Roderick’s bullhorn right out of his hand, and the others whizzed through the yacht’s sails, leaving neat round holes.

“Stop! What are you doing?” wailed Uncle Roderick. “Give them another broadside—Oh! What are you?
Keep away from me!”

Emma loaded the cannon again. This time Mrs. Beet aimed it, because the yacht was now speeding away on another tack. Emma got to fire the cannon at last, but it didn’t do much harm, because the yacht was flying out of range as fast as her tattered sails would take her. The shot kicked up the white water in her wake in a satisfying way. There was a double blast on the whistle from the
By-the-Wind-Sailor
, as Captain Doubloon signaled triumph.

“You cowards!” Masterman shouted gleefully after the yacht. He crawled from behind the column and stood up. “Nice shooting, ladies!”

The cloudy darkness that had been out on the verandah now seemed to spill back in through the broken windows, like the vapor from dry ice. It trickled along the floor, growing brighter and more solid as it came together, and mounded up in a sort of pillar shape beside the big vase in the Lobby. For a moment Emma glimpsed the grisly grim specter that had frightened Uncle Roderick away, before Winston resumed his old friendly appearance.

“I must apologize,” he said. “I hope I didn’t scare you. It’s not an awfully nice shape to take, but, by gosh, I was so darned mad!
Look
at the mess they’ve made!”

“Look at them go!” said Masterman, running to the window. The yacht was fast disappearing over the horizon. “So much for you, Uncle Roderick!”