by Anthony Read
“The fair on Hampstead Heath.” Murray opened the book at a page he had marked and began to read aloud: “A splendid day spent enjoying all the fun of the fair. Little Sarah squealed with delight at the merry-go-round. Evie was intrigued by the Ghost Show and especially our very first glimpse of the latest invention, moving pictures.”
“Moving pictures?” Wiggins said. “Cor, I’d like to see that. But anyway, now we know where they was…”
“I’m afraid it doesn’t really help us.”
“Why not?”
“They went there on Bank Holiday Monday – along with half the population of London.”
“Oh, yeah,” Wiggins said. “I see what you mean.”
“Thousands and thousands of people from all over the city.”
“And it could have been any one of ’em.”
“Yes. Ah, well, the diary was a good idea. Not your fault it was no use in the end.”
“I’m sorry about that. Now let me put it back afore anybody notices it’s missing.”
Murray handed the book to Wiggins, who headed for Madame Dupont’s waxworks once again. Now that it was getting light, the Dungeon didn’t seem quite so spooky. He replaced the diary on the desk and turned to leave. As he did so, he noticed that the highwayman’s hat had fallen off. He must have knocked it last night when he bumped into it in the dark. He bent down to pick it up, pausing to straighten the sign beside the exhibit – and stopped, staring at its words:
The body of Black Jack Duvall, hanged at Tyburn in 1740 for highway robbery, was displayed in this gibbet on Hampstead Heath, where he operated from the notorious tavern known as The Spaniards Inn.
“Blimey!” Wiggins gasped, hardly able to believe what he had read. “Spaniards!”
BLACKBEARD’S
“I got it!” Wiggins burst excitedly into Mrs Pettigrew’s shop. “I found the answer!”
Murray sat up, startled. “What the…?” he exclaimed. “What are you talking about?”
“I know what ‘Spaniards’ means!”
“You do?”
“It’s a pub. Or it was in 1740.”
“It still is. It’s quite famous. Of course!”
“D’you know where it is?”
“Yes. It’s—”
“On Hampstead Heath, right? Where your brother went to the fair.”
“My goodness! But how…?”
Wiggins quickly told him about the sign next to the highwayman in the Dungeon.
“That’s amazing,” Murray said. “But we still don’t know if the two things are connected.”
“They must be,” Wiggins replied. “All we gotta do is find out how.”
Murray smiled at his confidence. “Oh, is that all? And what about the other part of the message?”
“Yeah, well … maybe if we go up to Hampstead and have a sniff around…”
“You may find it crowded. It’s holiday time again, and the fair will be on. Besides which, you don’t even know what you’re looking for.”
“That’s true,” Wiggins admitted. “This calls for a bit more thinking about.”
“It’s a pity Mr Sherlock Holmes isn’t around – from what I’ve heard of him, he’d be able to work it out.”
“That’s the trouble with Mr Holmes. He’s never here when he’s needed. We have to manage without him most of the time.”
“Do you think you can manage without him this time?”
“Course. But I’ll have to think about it a bit more. I gotta go now.”
“Where to?”
“We lost one of the Boys. Looks like some of your Russian revolutionaries might have took him.”
“That’s terrible! Some of these reds can be quite ruthless. I couldn’t bear it if anything dreadful were to happen to one of you on my account. We must find him before it’s too late.”
Queenie and the others were waiting outside the Russian tea room when the stern-faced waitress arrived to open up for the day. She looked at them with suspicion.
“More of you, huh?” she asked. “What you want? Where my friend who like blini?”
“That’s what we want to know,” Queenie told her. “He didn’t come home last night.”
“He is lost?” She sounded dismayed.
“What, Shiner? He couldn’t get lost round here,” Gertie said. “Not in a month of Sundays.”
“Knows his way around, does our Shiner,” Sparrow added.
“If he didn’t come home,” Beaver said, “it must have been ’cos he couldn’t. And if he couldn’t, he must’ve been locked up or somethin’. So if he—”
“Wait,” said the woman, interrupting him. “One moment.” She unlocked the door of the café and ushered them inside.
“Now,” she said as she closed the door behind them, “why you think Luba know where your Shiner is?”
“Who’s Luba?” asked Queenie.
“I am Luba. This my tea room.”
“Oh, we thought you was just the waitress.”
“Waitress, cook, bottle-washer, I am everything. Now tell me why you think I know about Shiner.”
“’Cos he was followin’ one of your customers,” Gertie blurted out.
“Why?”
“We’re not allowed to tell you,” Beaver said.
“Then I cannot help you.”
Queenie thought hard. She did not want to put Murray in danger – but if Shiner already was, she had to do everything she could to rescue him. She took a deep breath. “All right,” she said. “We might as well come clean. We’re the Baker Street Boys, and we’re tryin’ to help a friend of ours find out who murdered his brother.”
Luba stared at her scornfully. “You think I have murderers in Russian tea room? Why?”
“’Cos when we was followin’ one of the suspects yesterday, he come in here. Our friend’s just escaped from Russia, and if they spot him, they’ll kill him.”
“Who will?”
“The Russian secret police.” Beaver lowered his voice to a confidential whisper. “It’s all to do with spies and secret agents and stolen plans and stuff.”
“Ha!” Luba let out a hollow laugh. “You think my customers work for Okhrana?”
“What’s Oker … whatever you said?”
“Okhrana is secret police of Tsar.”
“What’s Tsar?”
“Not what – who. Tsar is Emperor of Russia. He is tyrant. We hate him. But we hate Okhrana more. They spy on us, even in London.”
Gertie suddenly had an awful thought. “What if,” she said, “Blackbeard thinks Shiner’s spyin’ on him for the Okarina thingy?”
Queenie and the others were aghast.
“Who is Blackbeard?” Luba asked.
“The geezer what Shiner was trailin’,” said Gertie. “You know, him as was sittin’ in the corner over there when we was in yesterday.” She pointed to the table.
“Ivan!” exclaimed Luba, narrowing her eyes. “I know him. He is wild man. Come!”
She headed for the door, ushering the Boys before her.
“Where we goin’?” Queenie asked.
“Ivan’s house!” she replied. Then, as they opened the door, she stopped suddenly. “Wait!” she called, then dashed across to the counter, scooped up a handful of blini from a glass case and stuffed them into her coat pocket.
“My little Shiner will have hunger,” she said. “These from yesterday, but he not mind.”
Wiggins arrived just as Luba was locking the door behind them. “Where you lot off to?” he demanded.
“Madam Luba knows where Shiner might be,” Beaver said.
“Madam Luba?”
“I am Luba.”
“Pleased to meetcha.” He raised his hat as he had seen Mr Holmes and Dr Watson do when they met a lady. “I’m Wiggins, captain of the Baker Street Boys. What they been telling you?”
“Enough to know we are on same side. Come. There is no time to lose. We talk while we walk.”
Luba led the Boys through Soho and into the warren of
little streets beyond Shaftesbury Avenue, telling Wiggins what had happened and listening to him as he explained about the Boys’ mission. At last she stopped outside a small old house with a battered front door that had once been painted red. She hammered on it with her fist, and shouted, “Ivan! Ivan Ivanovich! Open up!”
After a minute or two, a man’s sleepy voice from inside called, “What you want? Who is there?”
“Is Luba. I must speak with you! Open door!”
There was the sound of bolts being drawn back and then the door was opened a little way. Through the crack, the Boys could see a dark eye under a bushy eyebrow peering out at them suspiciously. Luba snorted and pushed the door wide open, to reveal Blackbeard. He looked startled to see the Boys and tried to close the door again, but Luba shoved him back and stepped inside.
“What you do, crazy man?” she demanded fiercely. “You kidnap child. Lock him up?”
“He was spying on me. Spying for Okhrana!”
“No, he wasn’t!” Queenie shouted. “He was followin’ you ’cos he thought you was spying for the Oki-whatsit.”
“I do not understand.”
“Never mind for now,” Luba said. “Where is boy? What you do with him?”
“He is safe, locked in attic.”
“Bring him,” she ordered sharply. “Now!”
Blackbeard scuttled away upstairs, unnerved by Luba’s ferocity. She marched into the nearest room and the Boys followed her. It was a bare room, with worn lino on the floor, a sofa against one wall and four hard chairs around a wooden table. On the table were piles of pamphlets and handbills, some in English, some in Russian, all printed in lurid red ink, echoing the colour of the flag hanging over the empty fireplace. The days and dates on a calendar hanging on another wall were also printed in bright red, in English this time, and some of the numbers had rings around them. Wiggins strolled over to look more closely at the picture on the calendar, which was of a foreign city filled with elegant white buildings and churches whose strange domes looked like golden onions gleaming in the sunlight.
“Is that Russia?” he asked Luba.
“Saint Petersburg,” she answered. “Our capital city. Is beautiful, no?”
“Yes,” he agreed. “I wouldn’t mind going there.”
“Hmm. Is pity it is home to so much cruelty, so much misery.”
Before Wiggins could ask her any more, Blackbeard came back, dragging Shiner by the arm and thrusting him roughly into the room. Shiner’s face lit up when he saw the Boys, but he did his best to hide his relief.
“What you lot doin’ ’ere?” he asked gruffly, trying to shake off Queenie as she rushed to give him a hug.
The Boys grinned. This was the Shiner they all knew.
“Well, he’s OK, at least,” said Beaver. “No need to ask.”
Luba stepped forward, wagging her finger at Shiner and looking as stern as ever.
“You are very bad boy,” she scolded him. “You must thank your friends for saving you. They were very worried.”
“Oh, right. Thanks.”
Luba shook her head in mock annoyance.
“I suppose that will have to do,” she said, and pointed to the table. “Now, sit. Eat.”
She pulled the blini from her coat pocket and piled them on the table in front of Shiner. This time he made no effort to hide his delight. As he tucked into the little pancakes – watched enviously by the other Boys – Luba smiled fondly at him, then turned back to Wiggins.
“You must tell Ivan everything,” she said. “He will help you. He has many friends.”
Wiggins hesitated. “I dunno,” he said. “I promised…”
“You can trust him. The Okhrana are his most bitter enemies.”
“They send secret agent here,” Ivan growled. “Assassin to murder me and my friends.”
“Have you told the police – our police?”
“They cannot help. They not believe us. We do not know who he is, or where he is. Only that he is very cunning.”
“Blimey,” said Beaver, “sounds like it could be the same geezer what killed Mr Murray’s brother.”
“Yeah, it does.”
“There has been killing?” Ivan asked. “Tell me.”
So Wiggins explained everything that had happened, and Ivan listened very carefully.
“This is our man. I have no doubt it is work of Okhrana,” he said when Wiggins had finished. “You have done well, but is not enough. We know there is to be meeting. We think we know where. But we do not know when.”
“If only we could work out what the rest of that message means,” cried Wiggins in frustration. “Three what, sitting where?”
He paced the room, deep in thought, then stopped in front of the calendar, hoping the picture of Saint Petersburg might give him some kind of inspiration. But it was not the picture that did it for him – it was the days and dates beneath it. He spun round in triumph.
“Got it!” he cried. “Look! Mon, Tues, Wed – it ain’t ‘three’ anything ‘sat’ anywhere. ‘Sat’ is short for Saturday!” He tapped the calendar with his finger. “And three can’t be the date, ’cos Saturday is the ninth. It’s got to be the time. So it’s three o’clock on Saturday, at the Spaniards pub on Hampstead Heath!”
“Brilliant!” shouted Beaver. “Wiggins – you done it again!”
The rest of the Boys cheered. Luba smiled. Ivan nodded, then held up his hands for quiet.
“Very clever,” he said. “Well done. There is only one problem.”
“What’s that?” asked Wiggins.
“Saturday is today. If we are to catch villains, we have no time to lose.”
“Right, let’s get moving, then!”
Leaving Ivan and Luba to collect up some of their friends, Wiggins and the Boys rushed back to Baker Street. As they arrived, panting, at the gates of the Bazaar, Sarge came out of his lodge, looking bewildered.
“What’s goin’ on?” he asked. “What’s the rush?”
“We gotta get Mr Murray. We’re going to the fair!”
THE GHOST SHOW
Selwyn Murray was startled when the Boys burst in on him without warning. He leapt to his feet, certain that his enemies had tracked him down and were about to murder him, so he was relieved to see Wiggins’s excited face appear round the door.
“Wiggins!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing? Someone might see you!”
“Don’t matter if they do,” Wiggins replied. “Not now.”
“What do you mean?”
“We know where they’re going.”
“Where?”
“The Spaniards – three o’clock this afternoon. Saturday at three. Get it?”
“Of course! Sat 3. Well done!” He pulled out his watch. “But it doesn’t leave us much time.”
“You’re right,” agreed Wiggins. “And if we’re gonna catch ’em red-handed we’ll need the coppers there.”
He turned to the other Boys, who were crowded behind him in the doorway, and rapped out his instructions: “Shiner, you know all about the Russians. Rosie, you know about the secret message. So you two go to Dr Watson, tell him where we’re going and ask him to get on to Inspector Lestrade. Off you go, now! The rest of you, come with me and Mr Murray.”
“How we gonna get to Hampstead?” asked Beaver. “It’s too far to walk, ain’t it?”
“It is indeed,” Murray answered. “And we don’t have time to wait for a train or an omnibus. We’ll go by cab. Run and tell Sarge to find us a four-wheeler, quick as he can.”
The driver grumbled at having to squeeze six people into his cab, but Murray pointed out that half of them were small and offered him extra money to take them all.
“And there’ll be another ten shillings for you,” he promised, “if you get us to The Spaniards Inn before three o’clock. It is a matter of national importance.”
“Make it a pound and I’ll have a go,” the man replied.
“Very well. A pound it is. Now drive!”
Encouraged by the idea of so much money, the cabbie whipped up his horse and soon had them careering through the streets, past Lord’s Cricket Ground and the elegant villas of St John’s Wood, towards the long hill that led up to Hampstead Heath. It was a bumpy ride, and the Boys had to hang on tight to stop themselves being flung about inside the cab, but they all found it exciting, if a little scary.
Before they reached Hampstead, however, the poor horse began to get very tired. Its flanks were soaked with sweat, skeins of white saliva hung from its mouth and it slowed down almost to a walk. When they saw a stone horse trough by the side of the road, the driver pulled over and stopped to give it a drink of cool water while Murray and the Boys waited in an agony of impatience. Wiggins pulled out his pocket watch.
“We ain’t gonna make it,” he groaned.
Murray checked his own watch, then leant out of the window. “This is urgent!” he called to the driver. “Matter of life and death. We’ve no time to lose.”
“I don’t care how urgent it is,” the driver replied. “It ain’t worth killing my Betsy.”
“He’s right,” said Gertie. “If she don’t have a drink we shan’t get there at all.”
At last the driver patted the horse’s quivering neck. “That’ll do, girl,” he said. “Not far to go now. Then you can have a rest.” He climbed back onto his seat and jerked the reins. The horse responded with a steamy snort and set off again at a smart pace.
Although it was on the edge of London, Hampstead looked and felt like a village. And because this was a holiday, it was full of people who had come out of the city to enjoy the fresh air of the Heath, an area of unspoilt countryside filled with trees and ponds and green hills that were perfect for getting away from the hustle and bustle. Unfortunately, there were so many people strolling through the streets that the cab containing the Baker Street Boys and Selwyn Murray had to slow down again to get through. As it passed the ancient church, the clock was already striking three.
“Listen!” Queenie cried. “We’ll be too late!”
“How much further is it?” Wiggins asked.
“At least half a mile. Maybe a mile.”
“We could run that,” said Beaver.
