He looked more closely at the device on its back and saw in very small lettering, a G and an S printed in dark blue formed into a circle.
Dirk was so stunned to see the Global Sands logo that he forgot to keep his paw over his nose. He didn’t notice as a thin line of grey smoke escaped from his right nostril, drifting up through the room, into the vent in a small white box on the ceiling, setting off the fire alarm.
‘Sweet rats from Sweden. Not again …’ he swore, dropping the mouse, running across the room and leaping out of the window before the security guard came charging into the gallery.
The next morning Dirk phoned the gallery and asked for Mr Strettingdon-Smythe.
‘Ah, Mr Dilly,’ said the plummy-voiced curator. ‘I was just going to call you. You’ll never guess what has happened.’
‘One of the stolen paintings has been returned?’ he ventured.
‘Oh, you did guess,’ said Mr Strettingdon-Smythe. ‘Yes, the sad-looking lady was returned last night. It’s very peculiar. Can you understand it?’
‘I’m beginning to get the picture,’ said Dirk, inwardly groaning at his own pun. ‘When you called me you said your boss didn’t want you to contact anyone.’
‘That’s right. He said it would be bad for business.’
‘And may I ask the name of your boss?’ Dirk asked, pouring himself a glass of neat orange squash.
‘The gallery is owned by Global Sands. Brant Buchanan himself forbade me from calling anyone.’
Dirk knocked the orange squash back in one. ‘My advice to you would be to wait. In time all the paintings will be returned.’
‘But what’s going on?’ Mr Strettingdon-Smythe barked.
‘It’s safer for you if you don’t know,’ said Dirk firmly.
It was clear to him now that Buchanan was using the art gallery as a training ground for his mouse thieves. That’s why he wouldn’t allow the curator to call the police. He was stealing from himself. The metallic collars the mice wore must have enabled him to control them remotely, turning them into unwitting mini criminals. Mice could get in anywhere and with enough of them they could steal anything from a painting to a secret government weapon.
‘Have a good day, Mr Strettingdon-Smythe.’ Dirk put the phone down and switched on the morning news.
‘… after days of speculation regarding the strange sightings on top of Centre Point in London last Tuesday, the mystery has finally been solved,’ the female newsreader was saying. ‘A spokesperson for Gronkong Shinard PLC, the company which owns the top floor and roof of the building, explained that they had been testing new weather-predicting equipment at the time.’
Dirk sat back and bit open a tin of beans.
‘And now back to our main story,’ continued the newsreader in a sing-song voice. ‘Volcanologists are trying to explain why three volcanoes, thought to be dormant, have erupted simultaneously …’
Images of flowing lava and ash clouds came on screen.
‘… In a strange coincidence, all three volcanoes were situated on islands owned by Brant Buchanan, the seventh richest man in the world. Although no one was hurt in the eruptions, the islands have endured severe damage. Mr Buchanan was unavailable for comment but a Global Sands spokesman said, “Thankfully, Mr Buchanan has a fully comprehensive insurance policy that covers the damage.”’
In another part of London, in the back of his Bentley, Brant Buchanan was also watching the news report, laughing, clapping his hands together.
‘How are the share prices, Weaver?’ he asked.
Weaver’s face appeared on the plasma screen. ‘It looks like it’s worked, sir,’ he said. ‘The insurance payout for the three islands is so big that the share prices for the insurance company are plummeting, meaning you can purchase the company at a bargain price.’
Sensing the disapproval in his employee’s voice, Buchanan said, ‘You think it’s extravagant to erupt three volcanoes in order to buy an insurance company on the cheap, don’t you, Weaver?’
‘I think some would call it extravagant,’ replied the driver, choosing his words carefully.
‘What would you call it?’
‘I’d call it a rich man’s hobby,’ he said.
‘It’s lucky you made a copy of the instructions,’ said Buchanan. ‘Talking of which, let’s have a look at that security tape.’
The image of Weaver’s face slid to the side of the screen and grainy CCTV footage appeared, showing three angles of the upstairs office in the lab. Across the bottom of the screen ran the time.
19:44:58 …
19:44:59 …
At 19:45:00 something about the size of a golf ball dropped into the room.
‘It was rather bold of these thieves to use our own camera-neutraliser to break into the office,’ said Buchanan.
‘Luckily, as it was our own equipment I was able to isolate the scrambling frequency and recover the picture,’ said Weaver. ‘The thief should be entering any second.’
Brant Buchanan wasn’t used to being surprised. He wasn’t surprised when Malcolm Bigsby had told him the location of the VE 6.2 in exchange for a good job with a generous salary. He wasn’t surprised that Weaver’s remote-controlled mice had successfully stolen the weapon. He wasn’t surprised when the weapon actually worked, giving him the single biggest insurance payout in history.
But his jaw literally dropped as he watched, on the CCTV footage, from three different angles, a real, live dragon fall into the picture. The dragon glanced around, surveying the room. Weaver paused the footage on his large face, as it looked directly into one of the cameras. In spite of his childhood fantasies, Brant Buchanan had never dreamt that dragons actually existed, let alone that one had broken into his office. But there it was in front of him. Evidence.
The billionaire leant forward to get a closer look. ‘What have we here?’ he uttered.
‘I’d say you have a new hobby,’ replied Weaver drily.
By the Same Author
The Dragon Detective Agency:
The Case of the Missing Cats
The Case of the Wayward Professor
Look out for
The Case of the Stolen Film
First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
This electronic edition published in September 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Text copyright © 2008 by Gareth P. Jones
Illustrations copyright © 2008 Nick Price
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square,
London, WC1B 3DP
All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise
make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means
(including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying,
printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the
publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages
A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
eISBN: 978 1 4088 3686 6
Visit www.bloomsbury.com to find out more about our authors and their books
You will find extracts, author interviews, author events and you can sign up for newsletters to be the first to hear about our latest releases and special offers
The Case of the Vanished Sea Dragon Page 14
