Mr Majeika and the Lost Spell Book

by Humphrey Carpenter

  ‘W-w-w-w-why, certainly, madam,’ said the old man, opening the door. Mrs Prott stepped inside, and the old man shut the door behind her. ‘D-d-d-d-do you have any particular map in mind?’ he asked her.

  ‘Well,’ said Pete, because he was the top half of Mrs Prott, ‘I’d like to see anything that shows doors – and very old ones, please.’

  ‘C-c-c-come with me,’ said the old man. He set off down a dark passage, and Mrs Prott tried to follow him, but her bottom half (who was Thomas) couldn’t see where he was going, and bumped into the wall, so that Pete nearly fell off his shoulders.

  ‘N-n-n-n-now,’ said the old man, stopping by a door which said ‘Map

  Room’, ‘it sounds to me as if you need the map that shows the Old Back Door.’

  Ten minutes later, Mrs Prott came out of the main door of the library into the open air. Waiting at the front of the castle were Mr Majeika and Jody. ‘How did it go?’ asked Jody. ‘Did he see through your disguise?’

  ‘No,’ said Pete, climbing off Thomas’s shoulders and removing the Lulubelle wig. ‘And we nearly got to see the map.’

  ‘Nearly?’ said Jody. ‘You mean you didn’t see it?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Thomas.

  ‘Did the old man refuse to show it to you?’ Jody asked. ‘Oh, and by the way, I knew I’d seen him somewhere before, and now I remember where. He’s the old man who kept falling asleep in the governors’ meeting. That’s why he wouldn’t let Mr Majeika into the library – he knows all about him.’

  ‘He didn’t refuse to show it to us,’ said Pete. ‘He went to the shelves and took out an old leather-bound folder with “MAP SHOWING WHERE TO FIND THE OLD BACK DOOR” on it in gold lettering. But when he opened the folder, it was empty.’

  ‘He was very surprised and upset,’ said Thomas. ‘He said that an old lady and her grandson had visited the library earlier today, and had specially asked to see that map. But he couldn’t believe they’d stolen it.’

  ‘An old lady and her grandson?’ repeated Mr Majeika. ‘You don’t think that they could really have been –’

  ‘Wilhelmina Worlock and Hamish Bigmore,’ said Pete. ‘I’m dead certain they were, because in the folder where the map should have been was a tiny scrap of paper, and written on it was: “Tee hee! Got you this time, Majeika. W. W. and H. B.” ’

  ‘I’m afraid there’s no doubt about it, Mr Majeika,’ said Thomas. ‘Wilhelmina is going to make sure you don’t get your magic powers back.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Majeika gloomily. ‘And another thought occurs to me,’ he went on. ‘If Wilhelmina and Hamish can find the Old Back Door, and get into the place where all the magic comes from, then Hamish can get the magic powers that I’ve lost.’

  ‘You mean…?’ asked Jody.

  Mr Majeika nodded. ‘If we don’t get there first,’ he said, ‘we won’t be able to prevent Hamish from becoming a wizard!’

  6. Cosy Corner

  Just at that moment, Thomas spotted Hamish Bigmore. He was walking past the castle, carrying something big that was wrapped up in brown paper. ‘Look!’ whispered Thomas. ‘There he is – and I bet it’s the map he’s carrying.’

  ‘Let’s capture him,’ said Pete, ‘and rescue the map.’

  ‘No, not yet,’ said Jody. ‘First of all, we should discover exactly what he’s up to. Don’t you think so, Mr Majeika?’

  Mr Majeika nodded. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said, ‘I’ll make us all invisible, and then it will be easy for us to follow Hamish without him spotting us.’ He raised his hands as if he was going to do a spell – and then he remembered. ‘Oh dear,’ he said, ‘I keep forgetting that I can’t do magic any more.’

  ‘Never mind, Mr Majeika,’ said Jody, ‘we can follow Hamish just as well without magic, if we do it carefully and make sure he doesn’t see us. If we get too close to him, we can hide behind lamp posts and in shop doorways.’

  They set off, doing just as Jody had suggested, and soon they had followed Hamish to the edge of the town, where there was a big supermarket with a car park. Thomas, Pete, Jody and Mr Majeika hid behind the cars, and they watched while Hamish amused himself by undoing a stack of supermarket trolleys, and pushing them hard so that they scattered around the car park.

  ‘That’s a stupid thing to do,’ whispered Thomas. ‘It’s getting dark, and the cars will bump into the trolleys. Let’s go and stop him.’

  ‘No, don’t,’ whispered Jody. ‘Look who’s coming!’

  A trolley had rolled into the car park without anyone pushing it. After a moment, Thomas realized what Jody meant, because sitting in the trolley and making it roll where she wanted by magic was Wilhelmina Worlock.

  She made her trolley roll up silently behind Hamish and bump him on the bottom. He gave a yell and spun round, then saw that it was Wilhelmina.

  ‘Don’t you treat me like that!’ he snapped. ‘Do that again and I’ll tear up your precious map into a million pieces.’

  ‘Tee hee!’ cackled Wilhelmina. ‘Give me the map! I want it back in case that weaselly worm of a wizard Majeika gets his nasty little hands on it, and uses it to find his way to the Old Back Door so he can recover his magic powers. I’m not letting that happen, oh no!’ And she tried to snatch the map from Hamish.

  He dodged out of her way, and waved the parcel containing the map in the air. ‘Why should I give it to you, you silly old bat?’ he snapped at Wilhelmina. ‘It’s not yours – you stole it.’

  ‘And so did you, my little Star Pupil,’ said Wilhelmina. ‘You helped me steal it and if you’re not careful, I’ll tell the police – ha ha!’

  ‘Ouch!’ cried Hamish, because Wilhelmina had waved her arms in the air and a fierce blue burst of what looked like electricity crackled from her hands across to his. He dropped the parcel and, before he could recover, Wilhelmina picked it up.

  ‘Got it!’ she snapped. ‘I know you wanted to use it to find your own way to the Old Back Door, you slimy little toad, but you shan’t! You shan’t! Tee hee!’ And, sniggering to herself, she made the supermarket trolley zoom up into the air. In a moment, she had vanished into the darkening sky.

  ‘Stupid old bat,’ muttered Hamish to himself. ‘So she thinks she can stop me, just like that. The silly thing about witches and wizards is that they don’t know about modern technology. She’s obviously never heard of photocopying.’ And from his pocket he took a big piece of folded paper.

  ‘He’s photocopied the map,’ Jody whispered to Mr Majeika.

  ‘Let’s jump out at him, and snatch it from him,’ whispered Thomas.

  Pete shook his head. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘For all we know, Wilhelmina may be keeping a close eye on Hamish. They may be quarrelling right now, but if we pick a fight with him, she might just come to his rescue. Anyway, I’ve got another idea. I reckon Hamish photocopied it at a shop near his house – I know the shop myself. Let’s go there, just in case.’

  ‘Just in case what?’ asked Jody.

  ‘It’s only a chance,’ said Peter. ‘You’ll see.’

  So they left Hamish to go on with his game of scattering the trolleys around the car park, and hurried off in the direction of his house.

  ‘There it is!’ said Pete after a few minutes, pointing at a shop that said: ‘COSY CORNER CANDY SHOP – SWEETS, NEWSPAPERS & PHOTOCOPYING’.

  He led them into the shop – and then gasped and stopped in his tracks, because behind the counter was the old man with the beard.

  ‘Good evening, young fellow,’ said the old man. ‘Can I help you?’ He seemed to have lost his stammer.

  ‘Do you work here in the evenings after the library has shut?’ Pete asked him.

  ‘Library?’ said the old man. ‘What library? I work here in this shop all day, young fellow.’

  Jody was going to ask him if he was one of the school governors, but she decided to go straight to the point. ‘Has there been a boy here today, doing some photocopying?’ she asked.

  The old
man nodded. ‘I think you could say so,’ he answered. ‘In a word, yes.’

  ‘Please could we look through the rubbish bin,’ asked Pete, ‘to see if he threw away any copies because they didn’t come out right?’

  The old man nodded again. ‘I think I could allow that,’ he answered. He pointed to the waste-paper basket that stood beside the photocopier and watched while Pete searched through it. There were lots of bits of paper, but no sign of a copy of the map.

  ‘It’s no use,’ said Pete finally to Thomas. ‘You were right – we should have jumped on Hamish and taken it from him.’

  ‘Are you perchance looking for this?’

  asked the old man, holding up a crumpled sheet of paper. It had written on it: ‘Map of Where to Find the Old Back Door – Top Secret’. ‘I saved this copy, which your young friend threw into the bin,’ said the old man, ‘because I thought that somebody else might be interested in it. There you are, my friends, and I hope you have fun with it.’

  Pete took it from him, and said, ‘Thank you very much. Are you sure you don’t work at the library?’

  ‘Perfectly sure,’ said the old man. ‘Oh, and before you go, don’t forget this. It belongs with the map.’ He handed them a small packet, labelled ‘Not to be opened until you reach the First Place’.

  They thanked him again, walked out of the shop and took a close look at the map.

  7. Off to the Wedding

  ‘It isn’t a map at all!’ said Thomas. ‘It’s just an empty page with two words on it. That old man in the shop has cheated us. I’m going back to complain!’ But when they turned round, they saw that the shop had shut, and when they looked through the window there was no sign of the old man.

  ‘Well,’ said Mr Majeika, ‘I think it’s a case of, never mind what we haven’t got, let’s take a closer look at what we have got.’ He peered closely at the piece of paper and the two words written on it: ‘Crown Jewels’.

  Mr Majeika repeated them, ‘ “Crown Jewels”. Now,’ he asked Jody, Thomas and Pete, ‘what does that mean?’

  ‘They’re the jewels that belong to the Queen,’ said Jody. ‘I once went to see them.’

  ‘Really?’ said Mr Majeika. ‘Does the Queen let people come to her house to have a look at them?’

  ‘They’re not in Buckingham Palace,’ said Pete. ‘They’re in the Tower of London, and they’re very heavily guarded.’

  ‘Are we supposed to steal them?’ asked Thomas.

  Jody shook her head. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘But maybe when we get there, we’ll find the Old Back Door.’

  ‘Did you say this Tower was in London?’ asked Mr Majeika. ‘We can get there by magic carpet. Oh – I forgot.’ And he started to look very miserable.

  ‘It’s all right, Mr Majeika,’ said Jody. ‘We don’t need a magic carpet to get there. We can catch a coach – but it’s getting late and I think we shouldn’t set off until tomorrow morning.’

  Thomas and Pete wanted to go to London right away, and even Mr Majeika looked unhappy at the idea of waiting till the next day.

  ‘It’s all my fault,’ he kept saying. ‘If I hadn’t been so stupid at Halloween, we wouldn’t have had any of this trouble.’

  Next morning, they were at the bus station bright and early, and quite soon the coach had dropped them in London, right outside the Tower.

  ‘What a very grim-looking building,’ said Mr Majeika. ‘Perhaps they’ll lock us

  up in there if we do anything to the Queen’s jewels.’

  ‘Look!’ said Jody, pointing to a sign that said: ‘Please queue here for visits to the Crown Jewels’. ‘Let’s go and see them – and keep our eyes open for anything odd.’

  ‘As long as it’s not Wilhelmina Worlock,’ said Pete.

  They joined the queue, and had to stand in it for nearly an hour, but finally they found themselves climbing some steps into a darkened chamber. In the middle of it were some big glass cases, heavily guarded by men in Beefeater uniforms.

  The jewels were very beautiful, and there were several crowns, to be worn by the Queen at different times.

  ‘Look!’ said Jody, pointing at the most splendid of all the crowns. ‘What’s that folded up and lying in the middle of it?’

  Pete gazed at it. ‘It’s a piece of paper, just like our so-called “map”,’ he said. He leant over the glass case as far as he could, in the hope of reading what was on it.

  ‘Hoi, my lad, that’s not allowed!’ said one of the Beefeaters. ‘Behave yourself, or you’ll have to leave.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ sighed Mr Majeika. ‘In the old days I could have fetched it by magic. Wait a minute! Who’s got that little packet we were given by the old man at the shop?’

  ‘I have,’ said Jody, taking it out of her pocket. ‘It says, “Not to be opened until you reach the First Place”. Do you think this is the First Place?’

  Mr Majeika nodded and took a close

  look at the little packet. He opened it up. ‘There’s some powder inside,’ he said. ‘I think I know what it is. It’s magic, of course, so I shouldn’t be using it – but you can!’ And he handed the packet back to Jody, and whispered some instructions in her ear.

  Jody nodded. ‘I’ll do my best,’ she whispered back at him. ‘Tell me when to do it. Wouldn’t it be best to wait until everyone else has gone?’ she said, looking around at all the other visitors who had come to see the Crown Jewels.

  ‘It’ll probably work,’ muttered Mr Majeika. ‘Do it now!’

  Jody scattered a handful of the magic powder in the air. All at once, everyone froze. Nothing moved, and all the tourists looking at the Crown Jewels, and the Beefeaters, seemed to have been turned to stone.

  Amazingly, the glass case containing the crown unlocked itself and swung open. Silently, the piece of paper floated up from the crown, out of the glass case and into Jody’s hand.

  A few seconds later, everyone unfroze again. The Beefeaters didn’t seem to notice that anything odd had happened, and the glass case had locked itself up again. Jody unfolded the new piece of paper. Like the first one, it had just two words on it: ‘BBC news’.

  ‘It’s a sort of treasure hunt, isn’t it, Mr Majeika?’ asked Pete, when he had seen what was written on the paper. ‘You go to the place it tells you, and when you get there, you pick up the next clue.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Mr Majeika. ‘But I don’t know what it means by “BBC news”.’

  ‘It’s simple, Mr Majeika,’ said Jody.

  ‘We’ve got to go to the place where they broadcast the BBC television news. I went there once, to be in the audience for a programme, and I know where it is. Come on!’

  Just an hour later, they had managed to join a tour of the BBC television studios.

  ‘The next thing we’re going to see,’ said the guide, ‘is a live broadcast of the lunchtime news. In we all go – but no one is to make a sound!’

  ‘Look, Mr Majeika!’ murmured Thomas as they tiptoed into the news studio. ‘I can see our next piece of paper. It’s stuck to the newsreader’s desk. Get ready with the “freeze” powder, Jody.’

  A red light flashed, and the newsreader picked up her script and started to smile at the camera. Jody threw a handful of the powder in the air, and once again everyone froze. The piece of paper unstuck itself from the desk and floated into Jody’s hand. This time the words on it were ‘Cup Final’.

  ‘This is going to be a difficult one!’ said Thomas, when they had all unfrozen and come out of the news studio. ‘Do you know what the Cup Final is, Mr Majeika?’

  Mr Majeika shook his head.

  ‘It’s the most important of all the football matches,’ Pete explained, ‘and they’re playing it this afternoon. If we hurry, we can get there in time – but we haven’t got tickets, so they won’t let us in.’

  But in the end, the freeze powder did the trick. Jody threw a little more of it in the air as soon as they arrived at the football stadium, and while everyone froze the piece of p
aper came flying over the stadium roof and into Jody’s hand.

  ‘I expect it was stuck to the ball,’ said Jody.

  The words on it this time were: ‘Royal wedding’.

  ‘This is going to be really difficult,’ said Jody. ‘Do you know about the Royal wedding that’s happening today in Westminster Abbey?’

  They all nodded.

  ‘Well,’ said Jody, ‘we’re supposed to go to it to look for our next clue! And there’s only a tiny bit of the freeze powder left. I’m sure it won’t work.’

  8. The Old Back Door

  But the Royal wedding turned out to be as easy as the Crown Jewels, the BBC news and the Cup Final. They waited in the crowd until the royal couple came out of Westminster Abbey, and sure enough Jody spotted the piece of paper attached to the bride’s veil. While everyone was cheering, she threw the last of the freeze powder in the air, and everyone froze immediately – even the bells that were pealing loudly – until the piece of paper had floated over to Jody.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said, looking at the two words on it. ‘It just says “Class Three”. What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I think,’ said Mr Majeika, ‘it means we should go back to school.’

  So they did. By the time the coach had brought them home from London, school had ended for the day, so there was no one around to watch Mr Majeika tiptoeing into his old classroom with Jody, Thomas and Pete. The room was empty.

  ‘So what do we do now?’ asked Thomas.

  At that moment, the door of the big cupboard creaked open, and a voice said, ‘Welcome to the Old Back Door.’

  It was the old man – the one who had been the school governor, the person in charge of the Oldest Library in the World, and the shopkeeper. Seeing him again, Mr Majeika scratched his head.

  ‘Now why didn’t I recognize you before?’ he said. Then he turned to Jody, Thomas and Pete. ‘This is a very important person,’ he told them. ‘The Chief Wizard.’