The Fangs of the Dragon

by Simon Cheshire

  I sighed and settled down to untangling the jumble of numbers on the page in front of me. I tried hard to follow the rest of the maths lesson, but to be honest I found it about as easy as eating custard with chopsticks. My spirits perked up when the bell went for lunch break, and then they slumped back down again when I remembered my after-lesson appointment with Mrs Penzler. However, my ten-minute chat with her had two very important effects.

  Effect No. 1: ‘Oh I seeeee!’ I finally got what she’d been on about all lesson. It was as if the chopsticks had been replaced with a spoon!

  Effect No. 2: It made me late for dinner. Which made me late for what I had to do after dinner (namely helping to put up a display of artwork outside the school office). Which meant I was standing outside the office when Charlie Foster turned up. If I hadn’t been late I’d have missed him entirely.

  He was carrying his school bag, and clearly hadn’t expected to see me. He gave me a kind of nervous nod and a ‘Hello’ and went into the office, where he was out of sight and out of earshot.

  The art display was just about finished. The two other kids on display duty went back to their classrooms, leaving me to pin up the last couple of labels (A Map of the Town by 4B and By Timmy Liggins of 2L – Miss Bennett says ‘Lovely work, Timmy, well done’. I mean, yeurch!).

  A few seconds after Charlie had entered the office, Mrs McEwan the school secretary hurried out. She click-clunked on her tottering high heels over to the staff room, her whole body swaying back and forth on her chunky bare legs.

  Kids weren’t normally allowed in the office on their own. It occurred to me that Charlie had sent her off on some urgent errand to get her out of the way. I stepped out of sight, behind the display boards. Something was going on.

  From inside the office came a loud whirring noise. Then Charlie emerged, still carrying his bag. He had a look about him that could only be described as gleeful. Something in that office had made him very happy indeed.

  As soon as he’d gone, I emerged from my hiding place and nipped into the office myself. If I was found in here without good reason, I could be in big trouble. I needed to identify what Charlie had been doing, and fast.

  Suddenly, I heard the click-clunk of those high heels, heading back this way! I had time to look in one place only, and I had a choice of:

  Mrs McEwan’s desk and the heap of stuff on it

  The bin beneath the desk

  The cupboard under the window

  The big paper shredder beside the cupboard

  A box of just-delivered stationery

  The office computer perched on its trolley

  The choice was actually quite a simple one. Have you spotted it?

  I went straight to the paper shredder. What else would have made that loud whirring noise I’d heard? (Well, unless Charlie had suddenly started doing machinery impressions in his spare time . . . or the computer needed some serious repair work . . .)

  ‘Charlie Foster, you cheeky little so-and-so!’ cried Mrs McEwan, clattering back into the room. ‘Mrs Penzler does not need an emergency box of paper clips, and —’

  She stared at me. I think, just for a second, she thought Charlie had suddenly mutated into a different kid.

  ‘I’ve been sent to empty the shredder,’ I lied quickly, unhooking the big plastic sack beneath the machine.

  ‘Oh,’ said Mrs McEwan. ‘Thank you. If you see Charlie Foster, tell him he’s a cheeky little so-and-so.’

  ‘I will,’ I said, dragging the sack out of the office.

  I took the sack over to the recycling box outside the staff room. I opened it carefully and peered inside. Most of the shreds were plain white strips of paper, but sitting in amongst them were thin slices of something else. I picked up a handful.

  These shreds were a browny-white, with multicoloured bits. The paper felt thin and soft between my fingers. I lifted it to my nose. There was a dusty smell, a smell I’d smelled once before. With a sudden feeling in my stomach as if it had been tied to a giant boulder and thrown off a cliff, I realised what Charlie had been doing.

  Have you worked it out too?

  He’d just shredded The Tomb of Death.

  I gasped. Out loud. I flopped. On to the floor. Charlie Foster had just shredded a comic book worth . . . I gasped again.

  So Charlie had stolen the comic? I could hardly believe it. A dozen enormous questions suddenly popped into my head, most of them beginning with ‘Hang on a minute, how on earth . . .?’

  Mrs Penzler appeared out of the staff room and loomed over me. ‘If you’re emptying that sack, then get it emptied and run along to class. Honestly, Saxby, you’re in a world of your own today!’

  I pulled the remains of the comic out of the sack, and stuffed them into my pockets.

  There had to be more to this than I was seeing. There just had to be. As soon as school was over, I hurried home to my Thinking Chair. Sitting down carefully so as not to make the rip on the arm any worse, I settled down with my notebook, my sharpest pencil and my brain cells.

  A Page From My Notebook

  Problem: OK, assuming Charlie is the thief, he must have opened the safe. Which means he must have known the combination. How?

  Fact: Only Ed and his parents know the combination. They all say they’ve never told anyone what that combination is. And even if they HAD told Charlie, they’d have no reason to hide the fact.

  Conclusion: Charlie FOUND OUT the combination.

  Question: How? Certainly not by sneakily watching someone – Ed made it clear that angle was covered!

  Problem: Sure, Charlie would be in huge trouble for stealing the comic. But why DESTROY it? An immensely valuable item like that? He’d be in FAR worse trouble by destroying it. Something about this simply DOES NOT add up.

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, SATURDAY, I asked two specific questions. The answers to those two questions finally gave me the key to the entire case.

  The first question was one I asked Izzy. I phoned her up and said: ‘Safes. Like the one the Fosters have got. Can you set your own combination for them, or do they come with one that you can’t change?’

  Ten minutes later, she called me back. ‘Most of them have a user-set combination. You can use whatever numbers you like. Most people use something memorable, like a birthday or their house number.’

  Aha!

  The second question came a little later. This time, I phoned Ed Foster. I said: ‘I have something here I’d like you to look at.’

  He said: ‘No problem, I’ll come over straight away.’

  Twenty minutes later, a clapped-out old banger of a car chugged and shuddered on to the small paved drive in front of my house. I suppose it made sense that a bloke as scruffy as Ed Foster should have a seriously rubbish car like that. Owner and vehicle in perfect harmony.

  Unfortunately, Ed had brought Charlie with him. I’d been hoping he wouldn’t, but it was too late now. I’d just have to risk it.

  This whole meeting was a risk. I needed to show Ed some of the shredded remains of the comic. I was hoping he wouldn’t realise exactly what it was I was showing him.

  Ed and Charlie came out to my shed. I took just two of the shreds out of my filing cabinet, as Ed perched on my desk. The moment Charlie saw them, he started to shuffle nervously. He realised at once that I must have followed him into the school office. I tried not to give away the fact that I knew that he knew that I knew what these shreds were. I told myself to play it cool.

  So now, here comes that vital second question. ‘What can you tell me about these?’ I asked Ed, handing him the two shreds.

  He frowned, then raised his eyebrows. ‘Well, they’re shredded paper,’ he said.

  My heart was thumping. I needed to establish the age of these shreds. It was central to the whole case. I also needed to choose my words very, very carefully, or I’d have a gibbering wreck of a comic collector on my hands. ‘I mean, can you tell me anything about the paper? I only ask
because you know a lot about whether some types of paper are old or new.’

  Ed examined the shreds up close, turning to hold them up to the light coming through the shed’s perspex window. ‘Well, this could be standard comic book stock,’ he said at last. ‘You see the way the coloured ink there is printed in tiny dots? That was certainly what you’d see on older comics.’

  I glanced over at Charlie. He’d gone as pale as a ghost in a snowstorm.

  ‘So . . . the paper . . . itself . . .’ I said.

  ‘Oh, that’s not old,’ he said confidently.

  I snapped to attention. ‘It’s not? That’s not from a very old comic book?’

  ‘No way,’ said Ed. ‘What on earth makes you think it is? No, if you put old pulp paper through a modern shredder, you end up with a load of little bits, not neat shreds like this. I told you, that old paper is really delicate.’

  Aha Number Two!

  And it wasn’t the ‘aha’ I’d been expecting. The age of that paper was indeed central to the whole case, but in a way I hadn’t quite foreseen. Suddenly, the theories I’d been working on in my head needed to be reversed.

  ‘That’s it!’ I declared. ‘I’ve solved the case!’

  ‘Really?’ cried Ed, grinning. ‘So where’s my comic book?’

  Charlie had turned almost see-through, he was so pale. If he hadn’t been leaning on the lawnmower in the corner of the shed, I think he’d have fallen over.

  ‘I’ll explain everything when we get to Rippa’s shop,’ I said.

  ‘It’s closed today,’ said Ed.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He’s going to America,’ said Ed.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The International Comics Convention in Los Angeles,’ said Ed. ‘It starts tomorrow.’

  Now it was my turn to go pale. I leaned against my Thinking Chair to stop myself falling over.

  ‘Of course,’ I gasped. ‘That’s what he’s been saving up for.’

  ‘Sure, it’s an expensive trip,’ shrugged Ed. ‘Are you telling me he’s got my comic?’

  I nodded. Charlie stared at me, open-mouthed with relief.

  ‘Right!’ declared Ed. ‘When he gets back, I’ll —’

  ‘No, you don’t understand!’ I cried. ‘We have to stop him going, or you’ll never see that comic again!’

  ‘Impossible,’ wailed Ed. ‘If the flight hasn’t already gone, it’ll be going soon.’

  ‘What about your car?’ I said. ‘It’s only twenty miles to the airport from here.’

  ‘Impossible,’ wailed Ed. ‘The radiator’s bust. It’s got a leak that needs to be sealed. At the moment, that car’s got a range of about three miles, at most. How about the bus? Or a taxi?’

  ‘Too slow,’ I said. ‘We need to get there now!’

  Charlie slid to the shed floor with a bump. ‘That’s it, then,’ he said mournfully. ‘It’s gone. Rippa’s won.’

  Ed let out a yelp of anger and panic. I looked around quickly. There had to be something we could do. There had to be some way to fix that car.

  And as I looked around at the contents of my shed, an idea struck me. There was something here that had been giving me no end of trouble, but which might, just, make a temporary seal for the car’s radiator.

  Think back . . .

  ‘This!’ I cried, snatching up the reel of super-tough heavy-duty repair tape with which I’d been trying to fix my Thinking Chair. Guaranteed 100% Bonding Power! it says!’

  Ed took the reel from me. ‘Brilliant,’ he said.

  The three of us raced out to the car. Ed hurriedly refilled the car’s radiator from the plastic bottle of water he was carrying around in the boot, and taped up the leak.

  ‘So, Saxby,’ said Charlie quietly. ‘How exactly did Rippa steal the comic?’

  Ed jumped into the driving seat. ‘Yeh!’ he cried, ‘I want to know that too!’

  ‘I’ll explain on the way,’ I said. ‘Now move!’

  We buckled up as Ed shifted the car into reverse and it lurched around in a semicircle. With tyres screeching like a fast getaway in a movie, the car bounded for the main road.

  ‘Well?’ said Ed, as he drove round a sharp bend and headed for the sliproad that joined on to the motorway.

  ‘Well,’ I said, watching the grass verge zip past at a frightening speed, and wishing I hadn’t been quite so insistent on getting there as fast as possible, ‘the thing is, what I didn’t realise for ages is that there were two thefts here, not one.’

  ‘Two?’ said Ed, manoeuvring the car on to the motorway and revving up to a needle’s width below the speed limit.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The first happened because the thief saw a chance and took it. The second was carefully planned. OK, let’s consider the second one first. Ed, do you have a firm hold of that steering wheel?’

  ‘Yes, why?’ said Ed.

  ‘Because I’ve got to tell you that the second crime was done by Charlie.’

  ‘What?’ yelled Ed. He whizzed the car into the fast lane and we all swung from side to side. Charlie buried his face in his hands.

  ‘Charlie Foster, you thieving little pipsqueak, I’ll —’ cried Ed.

  ‘Pack it in!’ I cried. ‘You just concentrate on driving! Yes, Charlie did it, but hear me out. He didn’t intend any harm. He only wanted to borrow the comic for a while. Am I right, Charlie?’

  ‘Yes,’ mumbled Charlie from behind his hands. ‘I’m sorry, Ed, really. I wish I’d never even heard of that comic.’

  ‘You’ll wish you’d never heard of me!’ cried Ed. ‘Did you give my comic to Rippa? Is that it?’

  ‘No!’ cried Charlie.

  ‘I told you, Charlie’s was the second crime,’ I said. ‘It happened like this. Some time ago, you banned Charlie from your entire collection. Now, naturally, Charlie felt a bit miffed by that. After all, the incident with the jam was an accident. Right, Charlie?’

  ‘Right,’ mumbled Charlie from behind his hands.

  ‘But, naturally, he was very curious to see The Tomb of Death. Your pride and joy. The most valuable collector’s item he was ever likely to set eyes on. But it was locked away in the safe.

  ‘Now, Charlie here is a brighter spark than you give him credit for. He might not have known the combination to the safe, but he could work it out. He realised that you and your dad would have set the combination to something memorable. A significant date, a phone number . . . Right, Charlie?’

  ‘Mum’s birthday,’ mumbled Charlie.

  Ed glanced at Charlie a couple of times in his rear-view mirror. ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘He didn’t, at first,’ I said. ‘Over several days, when nobody was about, he tried various combinations. Until he found the right one, last Sunday night. So he opened the safe and took out the comic. He only wanted to take a look at it, to read it and see what all the fuss was about. He had every intention of putting it straight back. But almost as soon as he took it out of the safe, he realised that he was in a whole world of doo-doo.’

  ‘Too right,’ muttered Ed.

  ‘Ed! Just listen to me,’ I said. The car wove ahead, overtaking a lorry and changing lanes to pull away from a chunky people carrier filled with fighting toddlers.

  ‘As soon as Charlie looked through the comic, he realised it was fake. A dummy. A very good one, but a fake none the less.’

  ‘A what?’ yelled Ed. ‘Rubbish! I know every square millimetre of that comic! Do you think I can’t tell a fake when I see one?’

  ‘We’ll get to that,’ I said. ‘Keep your eyes on the road! What Charlie took from the safe was not the real Tomb of Death. And when he realised that, he panicked. He had no idea what had happened to the real one. Would you think he’d taken it? Who had taken it? Had it always been a dummy? Were you hiding something?

  ‘He didn’t know what to do. OK, with a bit more thought on his part, or by being honest from the start, things might have turned out better. But he was scared; he knew you’d be furious. For a start,
there was nothing he could say without having to admit that he’d got into the safe. And he reckoned he’d be in enough trouble for that, let alone whatever might happen because the comic was a fake.

  ‘The point is, while he dithered over what to do, the safe was reopened and the comic was seen to be missing. Then you, Ed, told him to come and see me. Which, reluctantly, he did. And all this time, he was hiding the fake comic away.

  ‘With Saxby Smart on the case, Charlie realised it was only a matter of time before he was found out. Which is true. He still had the fake comic in his school bag. So he went to the office, distracted the school secretary and shredded the fake. Now, at least, when suspicion pointed towards him, there was no physical evidence left.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Charlie, finally uncovering his face. ‘When you gave Ed those shreds of paper, you thought they might be the real comic, didn’t you?’

  ‘Ummmm,’ I said, ‘yes, but, anyway, moving on —’

  ‘As if I’d do that,’ muttered Charlie.

  ‘Moving on,’ I said quickly. ‘We come to the first theft. The theft of the real Tomb of Death.’

  ‘By Rippa,’ said Ed.

  ‘By Rippa,’ I nodded. ‘Izzy’s research, and my own observations, had shown Rippa to be a dodgy dealer in more ways than one. He’d already tried to pass off a facsimile edition comic as the genuine article. He’d nearly succeeded too. So what more logical step for him than to go one better, and produce a really convincing fake, one that only an expert would spot? And why not aim high? Why not go for one of the most valuable comics there is? The Tomb of Death Issue 1.

  ‘From various published sources, he could reproduce the comic’s covers and inside pages. And there was a local dealer he knew, Ed Foster, who actually had a copy. If he played his cards right, he could go along and take a look at the real thing, to make sure that his fake was as perfect as possible.

  ‘The trouble was, he didn’t have a good reputation in the trade. He decided that, once his fake was ready, he’d travel to one of the big American trade fairs, where he wasn’t known, and sell it there. In a huge place like America, the selling of a super-valuable comic book wouldn’t attract quite the same attention it would over here. So he worked away at his fake, and he managed to get you, Ed, to show him the real comic, for comparison. You said he had some catalogues with him when he came to your house?’