The Beast of Blackslope

by Tracy Barrett

  As they were eating their late breakfast Xander said, “You know, Xena, we didn’t really solve the mystery.”

  “What are you talking about?” She was indignant. “Of course we did!”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t mean our Beast mystery. I meant Sherlock’s Beast, the one in the cold-case file. Plus there’s still that missing sheep.”

  Xena thought for a moment. “I haven’t heard anyone else say anything about the missing sheep since that day in the library. It must have found its way home. But you’re right about Sherlock’s case.”

  Suddenly she was as disappointed as her brother. She spread bright red preserves on her scone and took a bite. When Xander didn’t answer her she looked up. He was sitting with a blank look in his eyes, his mouth hanging open. “Hello? Earth to Xander!”

  He shook his head like a dog shaking water off itself. “I just thought of something! Quick—where are those newspapers that Ian had?”

  They carefully washed all the crumbs and jam off their hands before touching the fragile old newspapers.

  “It was something in one of the illustrations,” Xander said. “Whoever drew the pictures made them look almost as realistic as photographs.”

  Xena looked over his shoulder. Ladies with feathered hats and gentlemen carrying skinny canes and wearing tight suits strolled arm in arm down a busy street. “What a funny little dog that lady has. And look, you can even read the signs on the wall.” There were posters advertising a haberdashery, whatever that was, a charity tea, and a traveling circus. “Look at that!” She marveled at the intricate detail. “An aerialist? I wonder what that is.”

  “A trapeze artist.” Xena didn’t question him; she knew he had memorized most of the dictionary. “And look.” He pointed to the circus poster. “They had a dancing bear and jugglers.”

  “Must have been a great circus!” Xena said.

  Xander wasn’t listening. Instead he pulled out another paper, this one dated a week later. “Same circus in the next town, but nothing about a bear.”

  “Let me see,” Xena said. Sure enough, there was no mention of a bear on the poster of the circus a week later in a different town.

  “Hmm,” she said, sitting back and closing her eyes. “I wonder …”

  Xander sat still.

  “I think I’ve got it.” Xena opened her eyes. “What if they called it a dancing bear because it had a hurt foot, like it was missing a toe, and it walked funny?”

  “The four-toed footprint!”

  “Exactly,” Xena said. “And what if the bear escaped from the circus, and people who saw it reported it as some kind of beast? They were so scared they imagined the beast had horns. The circus people wouldn’t have told them what really happened, because they’d get in trouble for not keeping track of a dangerous animal, so they just moved on without reporting it. Maybe they found the bear, or maybe it lived in the woods for a while and then died. That’s why they didn’t advertise a dancing bear when they got to the next town. They didn’t have one anymore!”

  “But what about Adeline the cook?”

  “I bet she ran away from that awful husband of hers,” Xena said. “We’ll never know for sure, but I bet she joined the circus.”

  Xander stood up and went upstairs. He came down with the cold-case notebook of their great ancestor, Sherlock Holmes. He rummaged around in a drawer of an end table and pulled out a pen and a pad of sticky notes. He tore one off and then took the notebook from Xena. He flipped to the page at the end of the section on the Beast of Blackslope, attached the note to it, and with a flourish wrote the words:

  CASE CLOSED.

  Henry Holt® is a registered trademark of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

  Copyright © 2009 by Parachute Publishing, LLC

  All rights reserved.

  Henry Holt and Company, LLC

  Publishers since 1866

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  New York, New York 10010

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  Book designed by Greg Wozney

  eISBN 9781429991506

  First eBook Edition : July 2011

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Barrett, Tracy.

  The Beast of Blackslope / by Tracy Barrett.—1st ed.

  p. cm.—(Sherlock files ; 2)

  Summary: Xena and Xander Holmes, an American brother and sister spending a year in England, use clues in their ancestor Sherlock Holmes’s casebook as they try to solve the mystery of a monster threatening a peaceful country village where a documentary film is being made.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-8341-5 / ISBN-10: 0-8050-8341-3

  [1. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 2. Documentary films—Production and direction—Fiction. 3. England—Fiction. 4. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Title.

  PZ7.B275355Be 2009

  [Fic]—dc22

  2008036941

  First Edition—2009