The Fangs of the Dragon

by Simon Cheshire

  ‘Right,’ said Jack. ‘“Bisect and again”, that must mean we divide it twice. And if we want to find a point, that means we have to draw the lines in opposite directions, so they cross. But how are we supposed to do the dividing? Floor to ceiling? Corner to corner?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘It must mean the dead centre of the wall. Whichever way you halve the wall, top to bottom or corner to corner, you’ll get the same thing. The centre.’

  Hurriedly, Muddy fetched a ball of string and a marker pen from his bag. Standing on a packing crate, I held one end of the string at the top left corner of the wall, Jack held the other end at the bottom right, and Muddy marked the line. Once the second line was drawn, bottom left to top right, we had our mark!

  We stood back from the wall. None of us said anything, but there was a tangible sense of nervous anticipation in the room, an eager thrill of discovery.

  Rome’s war-god steps to the circle’s edge.

  ‘Logically, we must now need to go somewhere from the centre point we’ve just marked,’ I said. ‘And this next line on the parchment implies we go to the edge of a circle. Or at least, I think that’s what it implies.’

  ‘With the centre point as the centre of the circle?’ said Jack.

  ‘But how big a circle?’ said Muddy.

  We stood there pondering for a few moments. The late morning sunshine threw geometric shapes of light across the wall.

  ‘I wonder if this bit about Rome’s war-god is a measurement?’ I said, more to myself than the others. ‘A measurement of the size of the circle, maybe?’

  ‘Well, the Roman god of war was Mars,’ said Jack. ‘We know that from doing Ancient Rome in class last year. But we need a number, not a name.’

  ‘The Romans used letters for numbers!’ cried Muddy suddenly. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘No,’ said Jack. ‘The only letter in ‘Mars’ they used was the M, and that equalled one thousand. A thousand of anything would be too big a measurement to fit on the wall.’

  ‘How about the planet Mars?’ I said. ‘Our friend Silas seems to like these little cross-references, doesn’t he. Mars is the fourth planet. Hang on, is it? Er . . . Mercury, Venus, Earth . . . yes, Mars is fourth, definitely. There’s a possible number.’

  ‘Yeh, but four what?’ said Jack. ‘What’s the unit of measurement? Good grief, look at us, doing maths in our spare time! Mrs Penzler would be delighted!’

  ‘Four . . . “steps”, presumably,’ I said, frowning. ‘Rome’s war-god steps to the circle’s edge.’

  ‘But how big is a step?’ said Jack. ‘It depends how long your legs are!’

  ‘And how do we walk along the wall to measure them?’ said Muddy.

  ‘It can’t literally mean steps, as such,’ I said. ‘Remember, this is a puzzle. The word “step” must translate into our missing unit of measurement somehow. Silas must have wanted to indicate something standard, something that would be meaningful to whoever was meant to follow the trail, something that in 1844 would be —’

  I stopped in mid-sentence. My eyes darted to Muddy’s rucksack.

  ‘Muddy, have you got a ruler?’

  Muddy quickly ferreted around in the bag. He pulled out a round, chunky object and handed it over.

  ‘Muddy,’ said Jack, ‘that’s just a tape measure with a label saying Whitehouse Measure-Tek 2000 stuck on it!’

  ‘Shut uuuup!’ said Muddy. ‘It does the job!’

  I pulled out a length of the metal measuring tape, and twisted it over to read the markings printed on its yellow surface.

  ‘Of course, feet and inches!’ I cried. ‘Old-fashioned feet and inches. We think of everything in metres, don’t we? But lots of people still use feet and inches, and people in 1844 wouldn’t have used anything else. The measurement is four feet! That’s the radius of the circle!’

  ‘Eh?’ said Jack.

  ‘I told you, “steps” must indicate a unit of measurement,’ I said. ‘What do you step with? Feet. Four feet to the circle’s edge. Terrible example of word-substitution, but it fits.’

  Using the tape measure locked off at the right length, and keeping one end of the tape positioned over the centre point of the wall, we marked out a huge circle.

  ‘Hey, we’re really getting somewhere now,’ said Muddy with a grin.

  ‘I guess the next line tells us where on the circle to look,’ I said. ‘What direction to take from the centre.’

  Eastward the sky, westward the earth, northward we go and beneath.

  ‘Oh yeh?’ said Jack. ‘How? The sky isn’t east, no matter where you are!’

  I was on a roll! I spotted it at once. Standing back, looking at the circle we’d drawn on the wall, I was reminded of a slightly off-centre compass. And suddenly, the answer was obvious.

  Can you see it?

  ‘Look at the wall,’ I said. ‘We’re after a direction. “Eastward the sky” it says. Twist the points of the compass so that, as marked on this particular wall, east is up. That places west at the bottom.’

  ‘Towards the earth,’ said Muddy. “Westward the earth”.’

  Jack groaned and slapped his hand to his face.

  ‘Northward then points left,’ I said. ‘Follow that to the edge of the circle, and we arrive here.’ I tapped at the ‘northerly’ edge of the circle.

  ‘So what does “and beneath” mean?’ said Jack. ‘Where do we go now?’

  ‘Into the wall,’ I said simply. ‘If north is to the left, then beneath is thataway.’

  ‘Fantastic!’ said Muddy. ‘Demolition!’

  He rooted around in his rucksack, and pulled out what looked like a metal cylinder fixed into a wire frame.

  ‘I’ve only just developed this. It doesn’t even have a name yet. The digger is pushed forward by this spring, which came out of an old sofa, and when you switch on it starts —’

  ‘Is this some sort of drill?’ I said.

  ‘Yup,’ said Muddy proudly. ‘The lever here adjusts the —’

  ‘Isn’t this just the tiniest bit dangerous?’ I said.

  ‘Only if you’re silly with it,’ said Muddy. ‘It was designed to cut holes in lawns, for when you want to play golf. But it should work on plaster OK. The only trouble is, the battery pack only lasts for six and a half seconds at the moment. Needs some work.’

  Jack and I stood back a little. Then we stood back a little more. Muddy held the wire frame against the wall at the correct spot. Jack and I stood back a little more.

  Muddy switched his invention on, and the metal cylinder inside the frame started to rotate. Six and a half seconds later, when the power ran out, the machine whined to a stop and a shower of old plaster was tumbling out of a neatly cut hole halfway up the wall.

  ‘You know, Muddy,’ I muttered, ‘you really are a genius.’

  I blew a layer of dust out of the hole and peered into it. Visible behind the plaster were a couple of thin wooden struts, and tucked behind those, almost out of sight, was something metallic. I scratched at it with my finger, gradually pulling it free, and at last it dropped into the palm of my hand. It was a key, about the same length as my thumb. I held it up for the others to see.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ gasped Jack. ‘We’ve been absolutely right, so far.’

  ‘You know what this means, don’t you?’ giggled Muddy. ‘This must be the key that unlocks the treasure chest! There really is treasure at the end of this!’

  I had to admit things were looking good. I stared at the key, wide-eyed, amazed that this little object had been hidden away from the world for so long. For decade after decade, through wars and winters and world events. I felt as if it had been handed to me across the centuries, from Silas Middlewich in 1844 to me, here, now, today.

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

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  ‘WHAT’S THE NEXT LINE?’ said Jack.

  Mirror the prize and see the trees, fall fr
om the glass and feel the soil.

  ‘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 . . .’

  . . . fall from the glass and feel the soil.

  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, and where the saucer goes, go I.

  ‘“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.
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br />   Once we were in the right place, we took a good look around.

  . . . and where the saucer goes, go I.

  ‘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.