by Alex Bell
‘All right,’ Stella said. ‘We’ll just have to think of another way to get inside.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
Almost an hour later, Stella and Ethan finally reached the back of the Polar Bear Explorers’ Club. The property was extremely big and it had taken them quite some time to walk around the marble wall.
There they found a sleigh bearing the handyman coat of arms. Two men with gruff voices and beards had removed a grate from the floor and were standing on ladders inside, tinkering with something while complaining loudly about explorers.
‘… can always guarantee you’ll get an emergency call from the explorers’ club on what’s supposed to be your day off,’ one of them was grumbling.
Stella and Ethan walked past them to the back gates, which were rather less impressive than the front ones, although still firmly locked. When they looked through the bars, they immediately saw the huge dirigible parked on the snow, tethered by several anchors to stop it from floating away.
‘That must belong to the president of the Jungle Cat Explorers’ Club,’ Ethan muttered.
Stella saw at once that he was right. The large gas bag was painted with images of green jungle foliage, through which you could glimpse the occasional tiger, alligator or hippopotamus. The wooden passenger gondola underneath was also carved with images of snarling piranha, jungle riverboats dodging ferocious-looking hippopotamuses, and various ruthless Jinnish gods baring their teeth. A magnificent jungle parrot served as a sort of figurehead at the prow, wings spread wide and head held high.
Ethan snorted. ‘All this adventurous, interesting stuff, but everyone knows their lot just sit around having expedition picnics all day.’
‘What is it this time, anyway?’ the second handyman suddenly said behind them. ‘Penguin feathers blocking up the pipes again?’
‘No – get this – they said some tiny dinosaur got loose in the club and bit a hole in one of the pipes. Caused all kinds of havoc with the plumbing.’
Stella gasped, and the two junior explorers spun around from the fence.
‘Excuse me,’ Stella said, stepping towards the grate.
The two men looked up at her, taking in her blue explorers’ club cloak. ‘Yes, miss?’
‘I’m afraid that dinosaur is mine,’ she said. ‘He ran away from me earlier and he just loves biting things, including pipes. As soon as you fix this problem, he’ll only cause another one.’
Both men sighed heavily. ‘We’ll be here all day and night if that happens. And I promised the missus that we’d have a romantic dinner at the Ice Yeti tonight,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in the dog house, for sure.’
‘Does this pipe have access to the club?’ Stella asked, pointing.
‘Sure does,’ one of the men said. ‘Comes right up in the saltwater baths.’
‘You’d better let us through then,’ Stella said. ‘Buster must be down there somewhere and perhaps I can find him before he does any more damage.’
‘Do you think you could?’ the man said eagerly.
‘Well, it’s worth a shot, isn’t it?’ Stella said. ‘Especially if it means you’ll make your dinner date at the Ice Yeti.’
The man looked a little unsure and said, ‘It’s pretty wet down there. You wouldn’t want to ruin your dress.’
‘Oh, I have plenty of spare clothes,’ Stella replied. Explorers could always be counted upon to be prepared, after all.
‘Just how smelly and dirty is it down there?’ Ethan asked, peering at the grate dubiously. ‘I can’t stand places that are smelly and dirty.’
Stella elbowed him hard in the ribs and he yelped in protest. ‘My dad had lunch at the Ice Yeti last time he was in Coldgate,’ she said, a little desperately. ‘He told me that there are magic puddings in the shape of ice yetis that run around the table and sing you a song. And they wear little bow ties.’
‘Well, that settles it,’ the first man said, slapping his leg. ‘My wife would absolutely love that.’ He climbed out of the grate, closely followed by his partner. ‘You go ahead, miss. Anything’s worth a try.’
‘I’ll catch him,’ Stella promised. ‘Don’t you worry.’
And, with that, she ushered Ethan down the ladder before he could start complaining.
*
It was, unfortunately, very smelly inside the pipe, and Stella had to keep the hem of her grey dress lifted high to prevent it from trailing in the dirty water that rushed around at their feet. Ethan, of course, complained loudly and obnoxiously the entire time, but Stella had become used to mentally blocking out his whining during the last expedition and hardly even noticed. Instead, she concentrated on navigating the tunnel, whilst also keeping an eye out for Buster.
Eventually, the pipe reached a dead end with a ladder attached to the wall. They climbed up, removed the grate at the top, and came right out into a drained pool in the club’s saltwater baths. Another giant pool steamed beneath a glass-domed high ceiling; white marble pillars stretched down to the floor, and ornate wall tiles were decorated with polar bears and the club’s official crest. Dozens of lit candles flickered away in glass jars and polar-bear-shaped candleholders.
Since they’d been told that the club was closed to visitors, Stella had expected the room to be empty but, in fact, there were two explorers there, both wearing swimming trunks and sporting sideburns that had puffed up quite alarmingly in the steamy heat. Fortunately, they were too preoccupied with the gaggle of penguins stubbornly refusing to be budged from the jacuzzi to pay much attention to Stella and Ethan.
‘I can’t believe someone let the penguins in here again!’ one of them was complaining.
‘It’s an outrage,’ the other agreed. ‘You come in for a nice relaxing soak and instead you’re met with a highly stressful penguin situation. It’s a wonder we’re not all suffering from nervous breakdowns.’
He poked at one of the penguins with a lifesaver hook he’d removed from the wall, but the penguin just honked at him indignantly and refused to budge.
‘Not like that!’ the second explorer said, snatching the stick from his colleague. ‘You have to poke them like this.’
‘No, no, no, that’s all wrong, Maximillian,’ the other explorer complained. ‘Penguin-poking requires more finesse than that. Look, here, allow me to demonstrate.’
Ethan and Stella tiptoed past the squabbling pair and out into the corridor undetected.
‘That’s weird,’ Ethan said. ‘I thought the club was supposed to be closed?’
Stella shook her head. ‘Let’s just head for the Map Room. And keep an eye out for Buster.’
As they made their way down the wide corridor, it became apparent that the club definitely wasn’t closed. In the billiards room, several explorers were drinking brandy, smoking cigars and arguing about the best way to escape a rampaging yeti. The murmur of voices clearly came from other rooms too, and Stella and Ethan had to scoot past doorways rather quickly to avoid being seen.
Fortunately, they soon found themselves at the entrance to the Map Room and quickly ducked inside. The huge place was full of dark wood, grand leather-inlaid desks and green reading lamps. It reminded Stella of a library, even down to its papery smell. Massive globes stood between the tables, and ancient maps and charts lined the walls in impressive frames.
There were a couple of explorers there bickering over a place called Frogfoot Island.
‘I tell you, it isn’t there, Horatio,’ one of the men said.
‘And I tell you that’s balderdash! I saw it myself. I even set foot on it!’
‘Well, I went to the exact coordinates and there was nothing there but ocean.’
‘That simply isn’t possible!’
Stella and Ethan quietly crept past the quarrelling pair. On any other occasion, Stella would have loved to explore the room properly, poring over the maps and sniffing the charts and spinning around in one of the spinning chairs, but there was no time for that today. She and Ethan lingered only long enough to locate the map of Witc
h Mountain. They were neatly stored on wooden shelves, in alphabetical order, so it didn’t take long to find the correct one, rolled up in its own leather map tube. Stella slung this over her shoulder before they headed back out in search of the Trophy Room.
Unfortunately, neither of the junior explorers had been to the club enough times to get their bearings yet, and they weren’t too sure where the Trophy Room that held Stella’s tiara was. In their attempt to locate it, they eventually found themselves in the corridor outside President Fogg’s office.
The sensible thing would have been to hurry away from there at once – since being spotted by President Fogg was really the last thing they needed – but, as they tiptoed past, Stella clearly heard someone inside say her name. Ethan heard it too and they both lingered to press their ears up against the door.
‘… if the girl’s dinosaur is here then surely she must be too,’ a male voice was saying. ‘The doorman said she tried to get into the club over an hour ago.’
‘And was denied access, Wendell,’ President Fogg replied.
‘Wendell! That’s the name of the Jungle Cat president,’ Stella whispered to Ethan, remembering the letter she’d seen. ‘He’s made an official complaint about me being a member of the club.’
Ethan gave her a worried look. ‘We should press on,’ he said. ‘It sounds like they’re already suspicious. President Fogg must have remembered Buster and put two and two together.’
Stella nodded glumly. She needed to find her dinosaur before they could leave, and he could be causing havoc just about anywhere. She and Ethan hurried down the corridor, turned the corner, and immediately found themselves face-to-face with an enormous wolf. Far bigger than any ordinary creature, she had black fur and intelligent silver eyes that regarded them with obvious recognition.
‘Koa!’ Ethan and Stella both exclaimed.
Stella was so pleased to see the wolf that she would’ve loved to throw her arms around her neck, but Koa was a shadow wolf and therefore didn’t have any physical substance.
‘If she’s here then Shay must be here somewhere too,’ Ethan said. All whisperers had their own shadow animal, and Koa was never too far from Shay.
‘Can you take us to him?’ Stella asked the shadow wolf eagerly.
Koa immediately turned and padded off down the corridor, the two junior explorers close at her heels. She quickly led them to the Trophy Room, which was filled to bursting with glass cabinets displaying the many wonders and curiosities that the explorers had brought back from their adventures. A magnificent stuffed snow shark hung suspended above them from the ceiling, and all manner of objects filled the cabinets, from eternal snowballs to fossilised mammoth tusks to yeti teeth.
Stella didn’t have much time to study the cabinets, though, because there in the centre of the room, peering into a glass case, were their explorer friends Shay Silverton Kipling and Benjamin Sampson Smith (or Beanie, to his friends – due to his great love of jellybeans).
‘It’s locked tight,’ Beanie was saying, scrutinising the case. Beanie had a tendency to get attached to comfortable old things, and today he was wearing a knitted jumper that Stella recognised as one of his mother’s creations, with a narwhal – Beanie’s favourite animal – on the front. His uncle must have managed to bribe him with jellybeans to persuade him to get his hair cut because it was a little shorter than the last time Stella had seen him. This meant you could clearly see that Beanie’s ears were slightly pointed at the tips. Beanie was part elf, as shown by his slender build and pointed ears.
‘I wonder where they keep the keys for these things?’ Shay replied. The wolf whisperer wore his blue explorers’ club cloak but had rolled up the sleeves, exposing the chocolate-coloured leather bracelets, adorned with silver wolf beads, on one wrist.
Stella was delighted to see them both and ran over, Ethan and Koa close behind her. She threw her arms around Shay in a hug and then waved at Beanie because, although she would have loved to hug him too, he wasn’t a fan of physical contact.
‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ Stella said. ‘Thank you for coming!’
‘We came as soon as we got your message,’ Shay told her.
‘Here, I think this is yours,’ Beanie said.
Stella realised that Beanie was holding a struggling, squirming T-Rex in his hand. ‘Oh, you found him!’ she exclaimed.
‘He was in the library,’ Beanie offered. ‘Ripping up Captain Filibuster’s leather-bound travel almanacs. Luckily there were only two adult explorers in there and they were both asleep in their armchairs.’
‘Never run off like that again, you naughty beast,’ Stella scolded the dinosaur. ‘You caused me a huge amount of worry, you know.’
The T-Rex responded by rubbing his scaly head affectionately against her hand. Stella gave him a kiss and figured she couldn’t really be too angry with him, since his biting of the pipes had allowed them to gain access to the club through the tunnels.
‘Stella, did you know that they stuffed Pepé?’ Beanie said indignantly, pointing to a nearby case.
Stella peered in and saw that the carnivorous cabbage that had attacked them on their last expedition had, indeed, been stuffed and put on display, its mouth open wide to reveal its hideous long teeth.
She couldn’t help a shudder. ‘Well, at least it won’t be biting anyone any more,’ she said.
‘It’s not right,’ Beanie said. ‘I was fond of that cabbage. You wouldn’t like it if they’d stuffed Dora, would you?’
Stella sighed. ‘It’s hardly the same thing, Beanie. Look, now that we’re all here, there’s no time to lose. We’ve just got to snatch this tiara and then we’ll be on our way.’
‘The case is locked,’ Shay said. ‘And we have no idea where they keep the keys.’
‘Ouch!’ Stella exclaimed. Buster was squirming about and digging his claws into her hand. ‘Stop being such a fidget,’ she told him as she set him down on the glass case, where he proceeded to walk up and down looking grand and important.
‘We can’t mess around looking for keys,’ Stella said. ‘Felix has probably arrived at Witch Mountain by now. We need to go after him, and quickly.’
‘Sir Rex Tiddlywinks Smith,’ Beanie said at once. ‘Murdered by black magic at Witch Mountain in—’
‘I don’t want any witch death facts!’ Stella said, holding up her hand to stop him. ‘Please. Not until we’ve rescued Felix.’
Unfortunately, Beanie had an excellent memory for the various ways that explorers had met sticky ends over the years, and didn’t always appreciate that there was a time and a place for sharing such information.
‘Was his name really Rex Tiddlywinks Smith?’ Ethan asked. ‘I bet he was a Jungle Cat explorer, wasn’t he?’
‘How did you know?’ Beanie asked.
‘They’re buffoons,’ Ethan said. ‘Only a Jungle Cat explorer would have such a ridiculous name.’
‘Never mind that now,’ Stella said. ‘We have to work out how we’re going to get this.’
She pointed at the tiara and everyone looked at it, including Buster. It sat sparkling in the glass case on a white velvet cushion decorated with purple woolly mammoths. Buster immediately began roaring at them through the case, and Stella had to tap him on the head to get him to stop.
‘Shush, you,’ she said. ‘We’re trying to think here.’
The tiara itself was an incredibly beautiful object, sparkling with ice-white gems and frosted diamonds – although Stella couldn’t help finding its beauty slightly marred by the fact that it would freeze her heart if she used its magic too much.
‘Dad says that all the locked cases in the Trophy Room are alarmed,’ Shay said. ‘And we can’t risk setting it off or we’ll never make it out of the club.’ He glanced at Stella. ‘I know it’s frustrating, Sparky, but we’re just going to have to find the key. We can’t rescue Felix if we’re locked up.’
Stella sighed. He was right – setting off alarms and having guards and explorers bearing
down on them was the last thing they needed.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I think we should start with the Secretary’s office. That seems like the kind of place where they might keep—’
She didn’t get any further, however, because Buster chose that exact moment to roar at the mammoths once again before suddenly lunging down towards the glass case. His teeth went straight through the glass, and dozens of cracks instantly spider-webbed out from the points where his teeth made contact.
‘Oh no,’ Stella gasped, plucking the dinosaur up in her hand.
But the damage was already done. The next second the entire case collapsed in on itself, shattering into a multitude of broken pieces.
The loud wail of an alarm instantly filled the room.
CHAPTER EIGHT
For a moment, the junior explorers just stared at each other in dismay. Then Shay cried, ‘Stella, the door!’
They all turned to look and saw that an iron gate was rapidly coming down from the ceiling. As soon as it made it to the floor it would cut off their only means of escape and they would be trapped in the room.
Stella snatched up the tiara in her free hand, thrust it onto her head and shot a blast of ice magic at the gate, freezing it solid before it could come all the way down. Just like before, she felt an icy chill run down her back and couldn’t help shivering.
‘Guards will probably be here any minute!’ she gasped. ‘We’re going to have to be quick!’
There was just about enough room for them to roll under the gate and out into the corridor – only to find two large guards running straight towards them.
‘Drat!’ Stella exclaimed. She hadn’t expected the Polar Bear Explorers’ Club to be quite so efficient. She’d hoped for bumbling foolish guards who were snoozing on the job somewhere comfortable, but these two looked alert, and cross, and ready to do damage with the heavy truncheons they were carrying.
‘Stay right where you are!’ one of them yelled.