The Fangs of the Dragon

by Simon Cheshire

  ‘You really think that parchment is as old as the house?’ said Jack. Our shoes crunched against the grit that littered the bare floor.

  ‘We know it must pre-date 1937,’ I said. ‘And if that storage compartment was as well hidden and as precisely sized as Muddy said, then it’s quite possible that it was built into the wood panelling specifically to hide that one piece of paper.’

  ‘That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it?’ said Muddy. ‘To build a compartment into a wall just for that? If what’s written on the paper is that secret, why write it down at all? Why not just memorise it?’

  ‘Quite,’ said Jack. ‘It’s a spooky-sounding load of nonsense, which someone made up and hid years and years ago, giggling away to themselves, knowing that someone else would come along and get all excited about it. It really is just gobbledegook. I think you’re wrong, Saxby, I think it’s a long-lost Victorian practical joke.’

  ‘This is the room you found it in?’ I said. It was a large but unremarkable room, with two tall windows – two of those ‘teeth’ in the front face of the building – and an irregularly-shaped fireplace built into one corner.

  ‘I’ve got it over here,’ said Jack. From off the deep windowsill he fetched a box file, the sort of solid cardboard case you see in offices for keeping papers in. He flipped it open and handed it to me.

  Inside was a sheet of thick paper, about thirty centimetres tall and fifteen wide. Its left-hand edge was slightly jagged, the others neatly cut. It was yellowed with age, with brownish spots and blotches here and there across its surface, but it was surprisingly smooth and solid to the touch. Obviously very expensive paper (the exact opposite of the sort encountered in the case of The Tomb of Death!).

  On the paper, in angular but flowing handwriting, were lines written in black ink, all neatly level on the page. The words had clearly been written with one of those old-fashioned dip-in-the-ink pens: you could see where the ink kept thinning out every few words, then suddenly become thicker again when the pen was dipped. In all it said:

  Now, three by itself of eighth, solar revolutions twenty from Bonaparte’s fall, and nine, I hereby veil my dark and mighty treasure.

  Through its right eye, it sees a bullet-line down half a corner. Through its left eye, the canvas.

  Bisect and again, and lo! the needle’s mark, Rome’s war-god steps to the circle’s edge.

  Eastward the sky, westward the earth, northward we go and beneath.

  Mirror the prize and see the trees, fall from the glass and feel the soil.

  Down, and down, and where the saucer goes, go I.

  SM

  ‘Well,’ said Jack, reading the paper again over my shoulder, ‘I’ve come across some obscure treasure trails in my time, but that takes the cake! It’s gobbledegook. It’s a joke, it has to be.’

  ‘It’s not gobbledegook,’ I said, peering closely at the parchment in the grey light from the window. ‘It’s simply a complicated puzzle. It leads to this “dark and mighty treasure”, I’m sure of it. It’s far too elaborate to be nothing more than a practical joke.’

  ‘OK, then, make sense of just one line,’ said Jack. ‘Show me exactly what one line means, and I’ll believe you.’

  I read through the words again. They certainly appeared to defy logic! But, assuming that I was right and that they did actually mean something, it was possible to make a guess about what the first line might mean. After all, if you were writing an important document, what would you be most likely to put at the top?

  ‘I can tell you the exact date on which this was written,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yeh?’ said Jack.

  ‘Oh yeh,’ I said. ‘I just need to check a historical fact.’

  I flipped my phone open and called The Fountain of All Knowledge, or Izzy, as she prefers to be called. ‘Quick fact-check,’ I said. ‘Could you look up the date on which Napoleon Bonaparte was finally defeated?’

  ‘Who?’ muttered Muddy.

  ‘French bloke. Late eighteenth century, early nineteenth,’ I said. ‘I think. If I’m remembering what I read in The Boy’s Big Encyclopedia of Facts correctly.’

  There was a click on the line as Izzy returned. ‘Battle of Waterloo,’ she said. ‘1815. Is something interesting going on?’

  ‘Something very interesting indeed. I’ll get back to you. I may need a lot of background info finding on this one.’

  I pocketed my phone, turned to Jack, and pointed out the first line on the treasure ‘map’, up to the bit that said ‘my dark and mighty treasure’.

  ‘There’s the date,’ I said.

  My maths is generally about as strong as a soggy tissue, but with a bit of lateral thinking and a bit of simple maths I could see that the first part of the sentence was a date and a month. And then, using a bit of maths and a bit of general science knowledge, I could see that the second part of the sentence gave a year.

  Can you work it out?

  ‘This was written on 9 August 1844,’ I said.

  Now, three by itself of eighth, solar revolutions twenty from Bonaparte’s fall, and nine . . .

  ‘Three by itself of eighth,’ I said. ‘Our whoever-it-was is putting the date at the top of his work. “Three by itself” could be simply the number three, on its own? Not if this is meant to be a puzzle! That would be far too easy. No, I think it’s three times itself, three times three. Nine. Of course, I can’t be sure of that, but I reckon it’s likely. And “of eighth”? Of the eighth month? August.’

  ‘Hmm, s’pose so,’ said Jack doubtfully.

  ‘Next, the year. “Solar revolutions”? Well, one revolution of the sun means one year, right? We did that in science ages ago, yes? So, twenty years from “Bonaparte’s fall”, and then another nine. Napoleon was defeated in 1815, add twenty-nine and you get 1844.’

  ‘Why not take away twenty-nine?’ said Muddy.

  ‘Because you’d be dating your document before “Bonaparte’s fall”,’ said Jack, ‘and that wouldn’t make sense, because you wouldn’t know about it.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Do you believe me now? These words do mean something. I think they lead to something important.’

  ‘I think you could be right after all,’ whispered Jack.

  ‘Maybe there’s a chest full of gold,’ said Muddy. ‘A pirate’s hoard or something.’

  ‘I think 1844’s a bit late for pirates,’ I said. ‘But you never know.’

  We stared at each other with our eyes boggling, our jaws dropping and our feet skipping about as if we were a bunch of over-excited horses. There was a secret treasure hidden in The Horror House, a treasure that had been hidden for many years, and we were going to find it!

  A Page From My Notebook

  What can I deduce about that parchment or, rather, the person who wrote it? He (or she) . . .

  1. . . . was a neat and tidy sort of person. The parchment was written in those straight, even lines, carefully set out on the page. BUT! What is the significance of that tear along the left-hand side? Was the paper ripped out of something? Or was something removed from it?

  2. . . . was clever, to compose such an obviously complex set of riddles.

  3. . . . probably had reason to be fearful. Otherwise, why go to such lengths to conceal this treasure? But fearful of what? Of whom? And why? If the treasure is stolen gold, or such like, then the answers are obvious. But is that the whole story?

  4. . . . had the initials SM!

  Problem: Muddy’s got a good point – if the treasure was such a secret, why create a trail to it at all? Why not simply commit the location of the treasure to memory?

  Answer: He/she MUST have intended to pass the treasure on.

  Problem: Why pass it on using such a strange method?

  Answer: The way the ‘map’ is written MUST have been designed to be understandable to whoever it was intended for, BUT to seem obscure gobbledegook to whoever it WASN’T meant for. That might be important. Must think about that some more.

  CHAPTER />
  FOUR

  THE NEXT DAY WAS SATURDAY. Muddy and I arrived back at the house for 9 a.m., ready for a solid day’s fortune-hunting. Muddy brought along a rucksack full of assorted gadgets of his own design. I wasn’t sure how useful the Whitehouse Silent Alarm Mark II or the Whitehouse Personal Reversing Mirror might turn out to be, but I thought that having a few tools to hand was a good idea all the same.

  Izzy turned up at quarter past nine. I’d called her back the night before and given her the full story, and also sent her a copy of the treasure trail. Jack’s parents had been given a pile of old documents and papers when they’d bought the house: legal stuff, plans of where the drains went, a certificate from when the plumbing was installed, all that sort of stuff. None of it was of help in deciphering the parchment, and none of it recorded anything earlier than 1900. So I was counting on Izzy to come up trumps!

  Us boys were all in tatty jeans and sweatshirts, because we were expecting to get as dusty as Jack’s dad, but Izzy turned up in her usual out-of-school look, all glittery curls and snazzy colours.

  ‘You’ll ruin those trousers,’ I said, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘I’m not staying,’ said Izzy. ‘I only came over to get a closer look at The Horror House. I’ve got loads of leads for information, but I need to go to the library and search through local records. Wow, this place is a dump.’

  ‘A dump with hidden treasure in it,’ corrected Muddy.

  ‘A dump that might have hidden treasure in it,’ corrected Jack.

  We trudged across the hallway, our boots kicking up delicate clouds of plaster dust. Various thumps and clanks and ka-chuggs echoed from elsewhere: Jack’s mum was busy shovelling sand into the hired cement mixer in the back garden, and Jack’s dad was busy chasing the cat. As we all sat at the bottom of the staircase, I took out the photocopy of the parchment I’d made and read through it for the thirty-seventh time.

  ‘What have you got so far?’ I said to Izzy.

  Izzy plucked a print-out from inside the plastic folder she was carrying. ‘This house was built in 1837, by a man called Silas Middlewich.’

  ‘SM!’ said Muddy.

  ‘Originally, it was a workhouse, a kind of half-prison where poor people ended up when they had nowhere left to go. They were terrible places. This street was originally called Mill Lane, but once the workhouse was here, everyone started calling it Dead Man’s Lane, because it was said that nobody left here alive.’

  ‘And over time, Dead Man’s Lane became Deadman Lane,’ I said.

  Izzy nodded. ‘I still have a lot of research to do on this Silas Middlewich, but it seems he was an A-grade Mr Nasty. He packed more and more people into this place and forced them to work for him until he was the richest man in the district. He died in 1845; it’s said he was murdered by one of his workers, a woman called Martha Humble. Apparently he’d swindled her husband.’

  ‘Nice guy,’ I muttered.

  ‘Still, someone like that is exactly the sort of person who might have hidden his ill-gotten gains in a secret stash,’ said Muddy excitedly.

  I wasn’t so sure. I thought back to my notes, about deductions that could be made from the parchment. Something didn’t add up there.

  ‘You could be right,’ said Izzy. ‘But there’s a vital point you’re all missing. Saxby’s theory about that secret compartment must be wrong.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ I said, looking up suddenly.

  ‘The wall panelling was built at the same time as the house. Which we now know was 1837. But you’ve worked out that the parchment is dated 1844. So the compartment was there for seven years, empty. Doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Hmm,’ I said, getting a sinking feeling. ‘I don’t get it. That compartment was the perfect size for the parchment in height and width.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Muddy, ‘the compartment was originally used to hide the treasure, but then it got moved?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘The compartment was only a few centimetres deep. Not big enough.’

  ‘Plus,’ said Izzy, in a way which added I-don’t-want-to-put-another-spanner-in-the-works-but . . . ‘why would someone like Middlewich leave a treasure trail for someone to follow? If he was as nasty as his reputation suggests, he wouldn’t want anyone getting their hands on his cash, would he?’

  ‘Ugh! Well, that’s a great start,’ said Jack. ‘You really got my hopes up there, Saxby.’

  I held up a hand for quiet. I was trying to think. What Izzy had just said was absolutely right. There was another layer of mystery here: there was a strange difference between what I had worked out about the parchment, and what Izzy had found out about this Silas Middlewich. We’d found a weird gap in history!

  One thing was for sure. It was now even more vital that we decipher the parchment. There were more secrets involved in this matter than buried treasure alone.

  I jumped to my feet. ‘Muddy, Jack, we’re getting to work on the parchment, right now. Izzy, to the library. Find out all you can. Get back to us as soon as possible.’

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  ‘OK, THE FIRST LINE IS THE DATE, let’s work on the second,’ I said.

  Through its right eye, it sees a bullet-line down half a corner . . .

  ‘What’s “it”?’ said Muddy.

  ‘What’s half a corner?’ said Jack.

  ‘If I’m correctly following Silas Middlewich’s way of working,’ I said, ‘half a corner probably means half a right angle. Forty-five degrees. Basic maths again.’

  ‘What’s “it”?’ said Muddy.

  ‘So, by a bullet-line, do you think he just means a straight line?’ said Jack. ‘The line that a bullet would take?’

  ‘I think that’s highly likely,’ I said.

  ‘Hellooooo?’ said Muddy. ‘What’s “it”? And where’s its right eye?’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ said Jack.

  ‘Neither have I.’ I shrugged. But suddenly, the answer hit me harder than a brick wrapped in concrete. My mind flashed back to the previous day, when Muddy and I had arrived in Deadman Lane. Immediately, I knew exactly where this eye was, and what it belonged to.

  Have you spotted it?

  I dashed outside, the others following. At the edge of the pavement, I turned and pointed up at the windows.

  ‘It’s the house itself!’ I said. ‘Remember the way it seems to have a face? That window, up there, poking out of the roof. The house’s right eye!’

  ‘Bingo!’ cried Jack. ‘But . . . that’s its left eye.’

  ‘No, the parchment says “it sees a bullet-line”. It does the seeing. From the house’s point of view, that’s its right eye.’

  We dashed back inside, and up to the room with the ‘right eye’ for a window. It was a small, cobweb-covered room, with a sharply angled ceiling and two floorboards missing from one corner.

  ‘Now, a straight line from the window, looking down at a forty-five degree angle,’ I said.

  Muddy almost yelped with excitement. From his rucksack he produced an ordinary protractor and the viewfinder mechanism from an old camera, on to which he’d stencilled the words FlixiScope Model B.

  ‘Will this help?’ he said.

  ‘Not pin-point accurate, but it’ll do,’ I said.

  Muddy held the protractor, Jack judged the angle and, screwing up one eye, I looked through the viewfinder. Directly in the line of its crosshairs was an empty paper sack marked DIY Warehouse Readymix Concrete, which must have been blown around the side of the house and got caught in the front garden.

  ‘We’re in luck,’ I said. ‘That bag marks the correct spot.’

  We dashed back outside. By now I was getting out of breath, and telling myself I really ought to get more exercise.

  We picked our way across the snagging, thorny jungle of a front garden until we found the empty bag. Muddy stood right in the centre of it, exactly where the viewfinder had pointed.

  Through its left eye, the canvas.

  �
��OK, Muddy, now look up at the house’s left-eye window,’ I said. ‘What do you see?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Muddy.

  ‘What can “the canvas” be?’ said Jack. ‘A painting?’

  ‘Possibly,’ I said. ‘But I think it’s more likely to be something else. I doubt the trail would rely on having a particular object put in a particular place.’

  ‘Why?’ said Muddy.

  ‘Because something like that could so easily change,’ I said. ‘You’d only have to move this painting and the whole puzzle would fall apart. Silas Middlewich must be referring to something that probably wouldn’t change over time. What can you see, Muddy?’

  ‘Nothing. Just the window.’

  ‘And through it?’

  ‘Just the wall opposite.’

  ‘Well, that’s it, then!’ I cried. ‘A big blank wall! You could call that a canvas, couldn’t you?’

  We dashed back inside again. Now I was really getting out of breath and wishing I’d made more effort during PE lessons.

  The far wall of the ‘left-eye’ room was tall and rectangular. The pale yellow paint that covered it was darkened with age around the edges, and there was a slightly lighter, sharply defined patch to one side, where a heavy piece of furniture must have stood for many years.

  Bisect and again, and lo! the needle’s mark, Rome’s war-god steps to the circle’s edge.

  ‘Now what’s that supposed to mean?’ said Jack.

  ‘Bisect,’ I muttered. ‘More maths. That’s geometry.’

  ‘Yeh, bisecting means dividing in two, doesn’t it?’ said Muddy.

  ‘So we’re looking for an area of the wall,’ said Jack.

  ‘An exact point, rather than an area,’ I said. ‘It says “the needle’s mark”. The mark a needle would leave is a point.’