The Riddle of the Frozen Phantom

by Margaret Mahy

  “You mean that gun of his?” asked Crambo, blinking thoughtfully. “Yeah, you’re right. Makes you think a bit, doesn’t it?”

  Whizzy reached up and patted Crambo’s cheek with his mitt. “Keep on thinking, you clever boy,” he said, smiling and nodding.

  “Of course, he might be going to blast a few penguins,” suggested Crambo, “but I think there might be a bit more to it than that.”

  “So do I,” said Whizzy. “And the thing is, if he shoots the explorers and then we blow up this cave so that it vanishes from all human knowledge, well then we’re witnesses, aren’t we? Can we be sure he won’t…” Whizzy paused.

  “…shoot us!” finished Crambo. They looked at each other.

  “He just might,” said Whizzy at last, “so I think we ought to start off by booby-trapping the helicopter. Then, if he so much as points that gun in our general direction, we’ll explain to him that if we don’t get home safely, the helicopter will explode and he’ll be stuck out here in the icy wastes. He’s bound to take that seriously. I know I would.”

  “Me too!” agreed Crambo. “I’ll do the helicopter first. That way we can be sure of Rancid Swarthy. And if the pilot asks us what we’re doing, we’ll say we’re cleaning it up for him.”

  “Good idea!” said Whizzy. “Just booby-trap it in ways that only we know about. Aha! Nobody’s going to put one over on Explosions Ltd. Let’s go!”

  “It’ll be a complicated job,” agreed Crambo, his face bright with pleasure. “I’ll begin at once.”

  And so he did.

  CHAPTER 28

  The Logbook at Last

  How strange it was to be on an old ship that had been frozen in ice for seventy years! Ever since they could remember, Edward, Sophie and Hotspur had heard the name The Riddle, THE RIDDLE, murmuring around their house… Echoes lurking in odd kitchen corners had whispered “The Riddle” to them.

  Whenever they opened their toy cupboard, the name “The Riddle” had hissed from corner to corner. For after their mother died, whenever Bonniface had trouble sleeping, he would pace from room to room in the early hours of the morning saying the name of that lost ship aloud. “The Riddle! The Riddle! The Riddle!” he had exclaimed. “The Riddle?” he had asked himself, partly because it was the name of the lost ship and partly because life puzzled him so much. But though the echoes of his bewilderment had haunted the house, there had never been an answer.

  And at last they were actually on The Riddle itself. Even though they were all wrapped in thermal underwear, in coats and three layers of trousers, in woolly hoods, inner gloves, outer gloves, mitts and mukluks. Even though they were not actually touching the true wood of The Riddle, sheathed as it was in ice, they could feel the ship was almost alive, under their mitts and mukluks.

  “Escher Black was certain it had been crushed to kindling,” murmured Bonniface, looking around him.

  “We mustn’t take any notice of anything Escher Black said,” replied Corona. “I’ve always thought it was very suspicious – I mean, the way he came home from the Antarctic and grew rich all of a sudden. Now! What do we look for next?”

  Bonniface was in no doubt. “We must find Captain Cathcardo’s logbook,” he cried. “Whatever happened here will be written down there.”

  “We might even find a treasure map!” said Corona. “Captain Cathcardo will have written down exactly what happened in the last days. There might even be some diamond clues.”

  “Oh, yes!” said Bonniface, but carelessly as if diamonds weren’t worth thinking about. “The main thing is he will have written down his thoughts and observations in that logbook. If we find that, melt it very carefully and read it, we will understand just what happened at last.”

  And off went Bonniface, once more determined to go first, which was probably a good thing, for finding a way through The Riddle was a little like finding ones way through a refrigerator which has been filled with a thousand leftovers and then totally neglected for years and years. They all turned on their torches, and the torchlight picked out strange shapes and openings. It was all confusing, for everything looked like something else and most explorers would have been utterly confounded. But Bonniface had studied the plans of The Riddle since he was Edward’s age – since he was Hotspur’s age. Ice or not, he knew that whole ship by heart.

  “The companionway is over here!” he called, and led them without the slightest hesitation. At the sound of his voice – so happy so sure of itself – the pendant throbbed against Sophie’s chest like a little, extra heart.

  “The strange thing is,” said Sophie to Edward and Corona, “this ship has been empty for years and years, but it doesn’t – well – it doesn’t feel empty, does it?”

  Corona and Edward stopped and stared around uneasily.

  “I know what you mean, but it is empty,” said Edward. “It must be.”

  “Perhaps there are penguins hiding in corners,” suggested Corona.

  “Come on!” called Bonniface impatiently from a little way ahead.

  They moved off after him.

  “It can’t be penguins,” muttered Sophie, “because Hotspur always calls out to penguins and they come when he calls. It’s something else.”

  “The penguins back there in the big cave are certainly making a row,” said Corona half-turning her head. “Anyone would think they were trying to warn us about something.”

  “Faster! Can’t you go faster?” cried Bonniface impatiently. “Ah! We go down here.”

  So down they all went, following Bonniface down the companionway which was so iced-up they had to kick ice away to make room for their mukluks. And slowly but surely they did find a way – first Bonniface, with Hotspur clinging to his back, then Edward, and then Corona, who every now and then helped Sophie, who came last of all. She still had the strangest feeling that someone was watching them – that someone had been watching them from the very first moment they had slipped in from the outside cave – that someone had watched them slithering and swaying up the gang plank, and was still there, listening to everything they had to say. This strange someone was not in any particular corner or cabin, but somehow all over the ship… it was someone who could be up or down, here or there, at one and the same time.

  “At last! The captain’s cabin!” cried Bonniface, flashing his torch up and down, then touching a surface that looked like thick, cloudy glass. But if you peered into that glass, it was possible to make out solid, old oak somewhere in the heart of it.

  Bonniface tried to open the door. It would not open. He leaned against it. It still would not open. He pushed his shoulder against it…

  “Let me help!” said Corona, and they pushed together. The door stayed shut.

  They pushed and heaved. Bonniface, now filled with violent enthusiasm, made every one stand back while he flung himself against that door, over and over again. But he bounced off uselessly, probably bruising himself in spite of all his layers of padded clothes. Then Edward and Sophie put down their torches and joined in. All four of them pushed and heaved and bounced together. But the door still refused to open.

  Then Hotspur moved towards the door, looking a little scared because, what with the thrusting, heaving, pushing and bouncing, it did seem he might be squashed or trodden on.

  “Get that boy out of here!” yelled Bonniface, who wasn’t so much afraid of treading on Hotspur, as on Hotspur spoiling the rhythm of the heaving and bouncing. However, Hotspur was too quick for him and, before anyone could stop him, he joined in. Every little helps! Hotspur’s four-year-old heaving and bouncing might not have been much in itself, but it made a difference. Even in the darkness, Edward could see a web of silver cracks running through the ice as it splintered away. At last, at last, the door inched open.

  Squeezing into the captain’s cabin was like trying to cram into an icebox. Bonniface’s torchlight fell on the foot of a bunk bed, then swept on to a desk. And there on the desk was what looked like a thick parcel of ice. It had been there for many ye
ars, and each year the Antarctic had wrapped it around with yet another layer of ice. Bonniface took a breath… bent over it… shone the torch on it… peered into it. He could just make out letters swimming like distant golden fish in deep water! They wavered and twisted, but Bonniface stared so sharply, so narrowly, they could not confuse him. LOGBOOK, said the golden words.

  “I’ve found it!” he cried, and, in spite of the danger, tears really did stand out in his eyes.

  “Don’t cry! Don’t cry! You’ll freeze!” shouted Corona, and she was right. Bonniface’s top eyelashes froze to the bottom ones. He could not even wink or blink!

  “Turn the torch on his face,” cried Sophie, and fortunately Corona took this good advice. It was a powerful torch and the light it gave off was enough to melt Bonniface’s frozen tears so that she was able to mop them away quickly.

  “We’ll take it back to Scott Base, melt the ice and read it,” said Edward, staring at his father standing there with The Riddle logbook in his hand and remembering how The Riddle and its many mysteries had haunted them for as long as he could remember.

  “I’m holding it!” cried Bonniface. “Holding Captain Cathcardo’s logbook at last. And I owe it to all of us – to Corona and…” he looked at his children in the dark cabin “…to my kids. Even Hotspur!”

  The moment was so exciting, the cold was so ferocious, that none of them had noticed that the ship beyond them was full of noises… full of cracking and grumbling. Then, suddenly everything around them transformed. The light of a torch far more powerful than their own torches fell on them, while the open doorway of the cabin darkened… and not because the door had closed.

  “Ah! Good evening, all!” said a new voice, a horrid voice, “if it can be said to be evening when, somewhere outside, the sun is still high in the sky.”

  They all spun around. Though they were blinded by that torchlight, they knew someone was staring in at them – someone in a black survival jacket, with a black hood above and black mukluks below. This darkly-dressed man was even darker than the still air of the frozen Riddle. And the gun he was pointing at them was black too.

  Sophie immediately felt she somehow knew this man, though, at the same time, she was also perfectly certain that she had never seen him before. What she did know for sure was that, under her clothes, the pendant suddenly grew colder and colder. It was recognising something about their new enemy, who flourished the gun in one hand and pushed up his snow goggles with the other.

  “Rancid Swarthy!” cried Bonniface and Corona together. It was a name Sophie had sometimes heard on television and she vaguely remembered seeing that wicked face in the papers and magazines.

  “It is always gratifying to be recognised,” the man said. “I advise you not to argue with me, Bonniface Sapwood, or I might try and shoot you. And I am not a good shot. Why, I could even hit one of your children. Now, give me that logbook.”

  “But I don’t understand,” said Bonniface. “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for the logbook!” said Rancid Swarthy. “What else?”

  “But I’m planning to bring it back to you – well, bring it to our local museum,” said Bonniface. “It needs to be lovingly restored. Then you’ll be able to read it there. Everyone will.”

  “That diary must not be opened by anyone but me,” said Rancid Swarthy. “You see, somewhere during his long-ago travels, the late Captain Cathcardo explored a fallen meteorite. And on the surface of that meteorite I believe he found diamonds.”

  “Oh, yes! There was some tall story about Escher Black bringing a few diamonds back with him,” said Bonniface with a cheerful laugh. “It’s just old gossip, though. And anyway, finding an outer-space meteorite would be even more amazing than finding a few diamonds.”

  “Diamonds are best,” said Rancid in the voice of a man entirely sure he is speaking the truth. “Absolutely the best! The thing is, Captain Cathcardo may have hinted somewhere in the logbook you’re holding just where that meteorite fell. The logbook must be mine.”

  “Of course it belongs to you,” cried Bonniface. “To you – to me – to everyone! Knowledge belongs to the world.”

  “I was frightened you might say something like that,” said Rancid. “You see, when I said it belonged to me… I meant it belonged only to me.”

  Bonniface stared at him. “You can’t mean it,” he cried.

  “But I do,” Rancid assured him. “I’m generally not a sincere man, but on this occasion I am utterly, entirely sincere. I am going to take the logbook. I am going to shoot you all in this very cabin. Then I am going to leave this miserable ship in this miserable cave. And my minions are going to blow up the cave. At this very moment the firm of Explosions Ltd are hard at work arranging a great detonation. As I climb into my helicopter, they will set it off… the cave will collapse… your bodies will be buried here in the ice, along with The Riddle and those wretched white penguins, and I will sweep off, logbook and all, in my black helicopter.”

  “You can’t do that,” cried Corona in horror. “Those penguins out there are rare birds.”

  Rancid laughed scornfully. “Penguins! Ha ha ha ha! Who cares about a lot of penguins? I will take that logbook and defrost it. I will read it at my leisure and, sometime later (this time next year, say, when you and your family and your silly expeditions will be almost forgotten), I’ll set up a small expedition of my own, locate the very place where Captain Cathcardo discovered those diamonds, dig down to the meteorite, and mine a whole lot more. I will be rich! Rich! Rich!”

  “But you’re rich enough already,” cried Corona.

  “I am rich,” agreed Rancid. “but not rich enough. It isn’t possible to be rich enough.”

  As he said this, Sophie, listening in horror, became aware of something very peculiar happening just beyond Rancid Swarthy. Smoke began rising and twisting just over his left shoulder. And it seemed this smoke was trying to take on a definite shape… trying to be something or someone.

  “Now, pass me that logbook and I will see to it you die quickly,” Rancid said. “You won’t feel a thing. But if you hesitate, it will the worse for all of you. Even the littlest one will feel the power of my anger.”

  The smoke was forming a face… a face with a curious, blue shine to it. Once again Sophie felt she already knew that face well. She shot a sideways glance at Edward. He was certainly looking at Rancid… but she could not tell if his horrified expression was because of the gun, or the twisting blue face. Hotspur, however, piped and pointed.

  “Tell that ridiculous child to shut up,” hissed Rancid.

  “But – but – there’s someone behind you,” stammered Sophie. “Someone blue!”

  “My dear, there is no way I’m going to fall for an old trick like that,” said Rancid. “You think I will snatch a glance over my shoulder and that you will have a chance to dash the gun from my hand. But I am not to be taken in by such tricks. Give me that logbook immediately!”

  With every passing second the face was becoming more and more visible… and by now Sophie knew exactly who it was. So did Bonniface and Corona, but being grown up they couldn’t believe in it as easily as Sophie, Edward and Hotspur could.

  “It can’t be…“Bonniface began.

  “Oh, but it is!” cried the face at Rancid’s shoulder.

  It sounded like a huge echo. It sounded like wind blowing down one of the Dry Valleys. At the some time it sounded like something never heard by human ears. It was not shouting – it was not even particularly loud – yet somehow it filled every little space in the whole of The Riddle. It rang off icy surfaces, seen and unseen. It echoed in the cabin and up the companionway, and then came back at them from all directions.

  Rancid gave a convulsive leap and, even though there was so little space to spin in, he managed to spin around in the cabin doorway. The blue face smiled at him – a smile much more terrible than anything he could smile himself. It seemed to be melting. Then it pulled itself together again.

 
; “Oh, it’s my old friend and murderer, Escher Black!” said the voice, and the name rang through The Riddle. “Escher Black! Black! Black!”

  “Captain Cathcardo!” screamed Rancid.

  “You traitor!” said the face. “You killed me. You stole my crew! You stole my diamonds!”

  “It wasn’t me!” screamed Rancid. “Escher Black was my grandfather. I never got on with him. It wasn’t my fault. I’m not in the least like Escher Black. I was pretending just now. I’m really very nice.”

  “You look just like Escher Black!” said Captain Cathcardo. “But that doesn’t matter. You think like Escher Black, and that does matter.”

  Rancid fired his gun. He fired it over and over again, yelling all the time.

  “I’m not Escher Black.” (BANG!) “I’m much, much cleverer than Escher Black!” (BANG!) “He was a there thief! An uneducated thief!” (BANG!) “I am an executive!” (BANG!) “I rule a business empire.” (BANG!) “Kings and presidents ring me up and send me birthday cards.” (BANG!)

  But none of the shots made any difference to the ghost of Captain Cathcardo and, at last, Rancid had to let the useless gun drop to his side. Quick as a wink, Edward leaped in to snatch it from Rancid Swarthy’s clumsy mitts.

  “Catch!” he shouted, tossing it to Bonniface. But Bonniface’s fingers were locked around the logbook. He would not – he could not let it go! He was frozen to it.

  It was Corona who pulled the gun out of the air. As for Rancid Swarthy, he had barely noticed his gun being snatched away. He was far too busy flinging himself at the ghost, pummelling it with his black-gloved hands.

  The ghost moved, but not to protect itself. Indeed, it stepped forward and flung out its arms to hug Rancid. There was a curious convulsion in the cabin doorway. Just for a moment it was hard to tell where Rancid left off and the ghost began, for they seemed to have melted into each other and become the same single person. Sophie thought it was as if Rancid was struggling and shouting somewhere inside a misty blueish envelope.