Dennis Prott of the Moon newspaper – and tomorrow morning you’ll all be on the front page.’
‘Yes, Mr Majeika,’ said Hamish Bigmore, very nastily. ‘You’re in real trouble now!’
3. The Governors Decide
Thomas and Pete found it very difficult to sleep that night. Early the next morning, they went down the road to the newspaper shop. Sure enough, the headline on the front page of the Moon was: ‘WOULD YOU WANT YOUR KIDS TAUGHT BY THIS MAN?’ The picture showed Mr Majeika waving his magic wand. Beneath it were these words:
‘Ace reporter of the Moon, Dennis Prott, has discovered WITCHCRAFT being taught to LITTLE CHILDREN in one of Britain’s most innocent-looking SCHOOLS. He watched while evil sorcerer Mr Majeika waved his MAGIC WAND and chanted FOUL SPELLS over the CHILDREN, turning them into VICIOUS-LOOKING WITCHES AND WIZARDS. He listened while Mr Majeika taught his VICTIMS to play NASTY TRICKS on OLD LADIES. He gasped in amazement while this WICKED WIZARD passed on to the children the SECRETS of his BLACK ART.
‘The Moon asks, HOW LONG CAN THIS BE ALLOWED TO GO ON? The Moon says, NOT A DAY, NOT AN HOUR LONGER. The Moon demands, SACK MR MAJEIKA NOW!!!’
‘Oh dear,’ sighed Thomas, ‘it’s even worse than we expected. What do you think we should do?’
They went home and phoned Jody. She had already seen the Moon. ‘Do you think we should phone Mr Majeika and warn him, before he gets to school?’ she asked.
‘That’s a good idea,’ said Pete. ‘But does anyone know his home telephone number?’
‘I wouldn’t bet that he’s even got a telephone,’ said Jody. ‘He doesn’t seem the sort of person who would.’
‘Maybe we could get in touch with him by telepathy,’ said Thomas.
‘By what?’ asked Pete.
‘Telepathy,’ said Thomas. ‘It’s when somebody thinks something, and they manage to make somebody else know what they’re thinking.’
‘Oh, don’t be stupid,’ said Jody on the phone. ‘You’re just wasting time – it can’t possibly work.’
‘You never know,’ said Thomas. ‘It won’t take a moment to try it. Let’s practise before we try to contact Mr Majeika. I’ll think hard,’ he said to Pete, ‘and you’ve got to tell me what I’m thinking about.’
Thomas thought hard. He thought about a car – a big, red, shiny sports car. In his imagination, he thought about himself driving it very fast, at a hundred miles an hour. The car had its roof folded down, so that the wind was roaring through Thomas’s hair. He was having a wonderful time.
‘What was I thinking about?’ he asked Pete.
‘You were thinking about eating a banana,’ said Pete.
Thomas was very disappointed. ‘It didn’t work,’ he told Jody down the telephone.
‘We must stop wasting time,’ Jody said. ‘Let’s get to school as quickly as possible, so that we can try to keep Mr Majeika out of trouble.’
They hurried off to school. As soon as they got there, they saw a big crowd of men and women around the gates. All were holding cameras, microphones or notebooks. And in the middle of them were Dennis Prott and Hamish Bigmore.
‘Hi there, kiddiewinks,’ said Dennis in
his Lulubelle voice. ‘Look at all the friends I’ve brought with me today. They’re all waiting to talk to your naughty teacher – he’s going to be on lots of radio and TV programmes, and in all the other newspapers.’
‘That’s nice,’ said Thomas.
‘No, it isn’t,’ said Jody. ‘He’s going to get into awful trouble – it’s the worst thing that Hamish Bigmore has ever done to him.’
Hamish grinned nastily at Jody, and waved Dennis’s ‘Lulubelle’ wig in the air. Pete grabbed it from him, and tried to tear it in half. Then he changed his mind, and ran off with it, calling to Thomas and Jody to follow him.
‘Listen,’ he said, when they had caught up with him, ‘I’ve got an idea. If we can find Mr Majeika and stop him before –’
‘Here I am,’ said Mr Majeika. He was walking past them on his way to school. ‘What a lovely sunny morning it is,’ he said cheerfully.
‘It may be sunny,’ said Jody, ‘but it’s not lovely at all, Mr Majeika, at least not for us.’ And she explained to him what had happened.
Five minutes later, they put Pete’s idea into action.
Pete pushed through the crowd of reporters and TV and radio people and shouted rude things at Hamish Bigmore, until Hamish lost his temper and tried to hit Pete, who ran away. Hamish ran after him. This was what Pete had wanted – it was important to get Hamish out of the way before his plan could be carried out.
Then Thomas and Jody walked up to the crowd at the school gates, with a third person walking between them.
‘Let us through, please,’ said Jody. ‘This is our dinner lady, Mrs Maggs, and she’s not feeling very well this morning.’
The reporters and TV and radio people let them through, but Dennis Prott had a suspicious look on his face, so they hurried across the playground as quickly as possible, and in through the main door of the school. Too quickly, because Mr Potter was just inside the door and he bumped straight into ‘Mrs Maggs’, whose
hair fell off – because she was, of course, Mr Majeika, disguised in Dennis Prott’s Lulubelle wig. Fortunately, the reporters couldn’t see what was happening indoors.
‘Ah, Majeika,’ said Mr Potter, ‘I was just looking for you. The governors of the school are holding a special meeting and they want you to come to it.’
‘Can we come too, Mr Potter?’ asked Jody.
Mr Potter shook his head and led Mr Majeika off by the arm.
‘It’s all right,’ said Pete. ‘They’re meeting in Mr Potter’s office, which is next door to Class Three, and if you go into the big cupboard in the classroom, there’s a hole in the wall, and you can see and hear what’s being said in the office.’
They hurried into the classroom. There was only room for one person in the cupboard, so Jody went into it and told the others what she could see and hear through the hole.
‘There are just two governors,’ she said in a whisper. ‘One of them is a very old man with a long beard, who seems to be asleep, and the other is – oh no! – it’s Hamish Bigmore’s mum!’
‘What’s she doing in there?’ said Thomas.
‘She became a school governor last term,’ said Pete.
‘Shh!’ said Jody. ‘Mr Potter is introducing Mr Majeika to the old man, who’s fallen fast asleep again already. And now Mr Potter is reading out bits from the Moon about Mr Majeika doing magic, and Mr Majeika is looking very unhappy. Mrs Bigmore is getting very angry and saying that Mr Potter ought to sack Mr Majeika right away. And now –
oh, bother – Mr Potter has taken off his jacket, and hung it on a hook just above the hole in the wall, and I can’t see or hear anything any more. We’ll just have to wait until Mr Majeika comes out.
They had to wait for a long while, and when Mr Majeika finally came into Class Three, he looked very miserable.
‘Have you been given the sack, Mr Majeika?’ asked Thomas.
Mr Majeika shook his head. ‘Not quite,’ he answered. ‘Mrs Bigmore wanted Mr Potter to fire me at once, but instead he’s told me that I can go on teaching if I promise to give up all magic. So I’ve promised that I’ll break my magic wand, and burn my spell book.’
‘That’s terrible, Mr Majeika,’ said Jody. ‘Worse than the sack.’
Mr Majeika nodded. ‘It means I can never be a wizard again, for the rest of my life. And I’ve promised to do it right away.’ He took his wand out of the drawer, shut his eyes and bent the wand double, so that Jody, Thomas and Pete were certain it would break. But instead, it vanished!
‘Oh dear,’ said Mr Majeika, ‘I must have said a vanishing spell over it by accident.’
‘Well, you tried to break it, Mr Majeika,’ said Jody.
‘I suppose so,’ said Mr Majeika anxiously. ‘But I’ll have to make sure my spell book really does catch on fire. Here it is,’
he said, pulling it out from its hiding place under his desk. ‘Has anyone got a box of matches?’
Nobody had. ‘Surely, Mr Majeika,’ said Jody, ‘you could do a fire spell to make it burn?’
Mr Majeika nodded. ‘That’s a good idea,’ he said. He shut his eyes and waved his hands over the book.
Just at that moment, Hamish Bigmore barged noisily into the classroom. ‘Yah, boo, sucks!’ he shouted at Mr Majeika. ‘You’ll never be able to turn me into anything again, now that you’ve had to give up doing magic. Serves you right, silly old Mr Majeika.’ Then suddenly Hamish yelled ‘Ouch!’ because the spell book had risen up in the air, and come down on top of him with a big thump.
‘Oh dear,’ said Mr Majeika, ‘I didn’t mean to do that at all – I must have used the wrong spell again.’
The book went on thumping Hamish, and when he tried to run away, it chased him round the classroom. At this moment, the door opened, and in came Mrs Bigmore, followed by Mr Potter.
‘What is going on?’ shrieked Mrs Bigmore.
‘He’s done another of his spells,’ yelled Hamish, who was trying to hide from the spell book by squeezing under one of the desks. The book found him there quickly, and began to smack him on the bottom. ‘Ow! Ow!’ shrieked Hamish.
‘That proves it!’ said Mrs Bigmore. ‘Mr Majeika obviously doesn’t have the slightest intention of giving up magic. He’s going to go on doing horrid magical things to my poor little Hamish. Sack him at once, Mr Potter! Sack him right now!’
Mr Potter nodded gloomily. ‘I’m afraid you’re right,’ he said to Mrs Bigmore. ‘Mr Majeika, you must leave the school at once, and never come back.’
4. What a Week
A week later, Thomas and Pete were walking home from school with Jody.
‘What a dull week it’s been,’ said Pete. ‘I knew that Mr Majeika’s magic made school more exciting, but I never dreamed that school without magic could be so boring.’
‘Well,’ said Jody, ‘we haven’t been very lucky with teachers, have we?’
There had been a different teacher on each of the five days. On Monday, there had been an old man with a white moustache, who had shouted at them as if they were soldiers in the army under his command. But of course Hamish Bigmore had shouted back at him, so he told Mr Potter he wouldn’t go on teaching Class Three.
On Tuesday, they were taught by a very fat man, who ate cream buns while they were writing or drawing. Hamish had stolen one of his buns and smeared it all over the drawings that were pinned on the wall, so of course he wouldn’t come the next day either.
On Wednesday, there was a young woman with long hair. Hamish had tied her hair to the back of her chair, and by the time Jody and some of the other girls had managed to untie it, she had decided she wouldn’t come back again either.
On Thursday, there had been a big tough man, who looked like a footballer and arrived at school in an expensive-looking car. He had managed to keep Hamish under control, but when he left at the end of school he found that Hamish had poured glue into the door-locks of his car, so he couldn’t get into it.
And on Friday, no one would come to teach Class Three, so Mr Potter had had
to do it himself, and very boring this had been.
‘It was so dull with Mr Potter teaching us,’ said Pete, ‘that I reckon Hamish Bigmore must have been missing Mr Majeika too.’
‘Look,’ said Jody, ‘there he is!’
‘Do you mean Hamish?’ asked Thomas.
‘No – Mr Majeika!’ Jody pointed across the street to the park. Mr Majeika was sitting on one of the benches. He was looking very miserable.
They ran over to him at once. ‘What have you been doing all week, Mr Majeika?’ Pete asked him.
‘I’ve tried all sorts of different jobs,’ he told them. ‘I’ve been a postman, a milkman, a newspaper-delivery man, a gardener and a builder, but I always make silly mistakes and get the sack. When I was a postman, the letters I was carrying all blew away in the wind. When I was a milkman, I tripped over my own feet and dropped all the milk bottles, so that they broke. When I was delivering newspapers, there was a huge shower of rain, which turned all the papers into soggy sludge. When I was a gardener, I pulled up a root and the tree to which it belonged fell on top of me. And when I was a builder, all the scaffolding that I had put up fell down.’
‘Poor Mr Majeika,’ said Jody. ‘You have had a lot of bad luck.’
‘Oh, it wasn’t luck,’ said Mr Majeika. ‘It was Wilhelmina Worlock.’
Wilhelmina Worlock was a wicked witch who had made a nuisance of herself to Mr Majeika ever since he had come to St Barty’s School.
‘You mean,’ asked Pete, ‘that she blew away the letters, tripped you, made it rain on the newspapers, pulled up the tree and pushed the scaffolding down?’
‘Exactly,’ said Mr Majeika. ‘She was always invisible, but I knew it was her, because I could hear her cackling with laughter whenever things went wrong for me.’
‘Couldn’t you use magic to stop her, or to get your revenge?’ asked Jody.
Mr Majeika shook his head sadly. ‘I tried to, but it didn’t work. I said the spells, but nothing happened. You see, my spell book vanished after it had finished chasing Hamish, and now when I shut my eyes and wave my hands, nothing magical happens at all.’
‘Isn’t there any way you can get your magic powers back again?’ asked Pete.
Mr Majeika thought for a moment. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘there is one way. But it would be impossible.’
‘Tell us about it, Mr Majeika,’ said Thomas.
‘A long time ago,’ said Mr Majeika, ‘I was told by another wizard that, if I ever lost my magic powers while in this world, the thing to do would be to find the Old Back Door, which is a secret way into the place where all magic comes from. I asked him where the Old Back Door was, and he didn’t know. But he did say that there was a map showing it. He said this map was the oldest in the world, and it was kept in the oldest library in the world. I asked him which was the oldest library in the world, and he told me that – good gracious, how could I have forgotten about that?’ And suddenly, Mr Majeika was roaring with laughter.
‘What is it, Mr Majeika?’ asked Jody. ‘What’s so funny?’
‘He told me,’ explained Mr Majeika, ‘that the oldest library in the world is in St Barty’s Castle.’
‘St Barty’s Castle?’ repeated Thomas in amazement. ‘But that’s just down the road!’
‘Exactly,’ said Mr Majeika. ‘Come along – we can be there in five minutes!’
5. Who Stole the Map?
The castle was a big building near the railway station, made of old grey stone. Alongside a notice giving the opening hours and the ticket prices was a signpost that said: ‘To the Oldest Library in the World’. They followed the direction in which the signpost was pointing, and found themselves at the back of the castle, where there was a very old-looking door with the word ‘Library’ painted on it. Above a big iron handle were the words ‘Please Ring’, so Thomas pulled the handle very hard, and they could hear the jangling of a bell some distance away.
For what seemed like a long time, nothing happened. Then suddenly a flap in the door sprang open, making them all jump, and a face poked through – the face of an old man with a beard.
‘Y-y-y-y-yes?’ he said very sharply, but with a stammer. ‘You r-r-r-r-rang the b-b-b-b-bell?’
‘We d-d-d-d-did,’ said Thomas, who seemed to have caught the stammer from the old man. ‘I mean,’ he went on, without a stammer, ‘we did. We want to see the map that shows the Old Back – ow!’ He ended like this because Pete had just stepped on his toes, to shut him up. Pete thought it wasn’t a good idea to mention the Old Back Door just yet.
‘We’d like, please, to look at your collection of old maps,’ Pete said.
‘H-h-h-h-how old?’ asked the old man, looking very suspiciously at Pete.
‘Oh, very old indeed, please,’ said Jody.
‘And w-w-
w-w-which of you wants to s-s-s-s-see them?’ asked the old man, peering around at them all.
‘Our teacher, Mr Majeika,’ said Thomas, rubbing his foot where Pete had stood on it. ‘He needs to see the map, so that he can discover the Old Back – ow!’ Pete had stepped on his other foot.
‘Mr Majeika?’ repeated the old man. ‘N-n-n-n-now where have I heard or seen that n-n-n-n-name before?’ He looked Pete straight in the eye. ‘Are you Mr Majeika?’ he said.
Pete shook his head. ‘No,’ said the old man, ‘I thought you weren’t.’
He shifted his gaze to Thomas. ‘Are you Mr Majeika? No? I thought not.’ This time he looked at Jody. ‘And you d-d-d-d-
definitely aren’t Mr Majeika,’ he said to her, ‘which leaves – you.’
Mr Majeika nodded.
‘Yes, I thought so,’ said the old man. ‘Well,’ he said to Mr Majeika, ‘you very d-d-d-d-definitely cannot come into the library.’
‘What about us?’ asked Jody.
‘Ch-ch-ch-ch-children not allowed,’ snapped the old man, removing his face and shutting the door-flap with a bang.
Thomas grabbed hold of the bell-handle, and was going to pull it again, but Pete said: ‘No – it’s no good arguing with someone like that. We need a better plan.’ Then he whispered in Thomas and Jody’s ears, and they both nodded, so Pete whispered the plan to Mr Majeika, who nodded as well. ‘We’ll have to go home first, to get the clothes,’ said Pete. So off they all went to Thomas and Pete’s house.
Half an hour later, a very strange-looking lady was walking along the path that led round the back of the castle, to the library. She was very tall, and bulged in some rather odd places, and she had lots of very bright yellow hair. She reached the library door, and rang the bell.
When the flap opened, and the old man peered out, the lady said, ‘How do you do? I am Mrs Lulubelle Prott, and I would like to see your collection of old maps.’
Mr Majeika and the Lost Spell Book Page 2