by Darrell Pitt
‘I’m afraid you will.’ The person who spoke was not any of the men. Rather it was Mrs McKay, who no longer looked so tyrannical. She was calm and efficient as she pressed the gun in her hand against the Chameleon’s head. ‘You will drop your weapon or I will blow your brains out. The choice is yours.’
The Chameleon gaped. He tossed his weapon to the floor and Mrs McKay kicked it out of reach. Scarlet scooped it up as the woman gave Jack a small nod. And a wink.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
‘So Mrs McKay was carrying a gun?’ Gloria asked. ‘I thought guests were not allowed to be armed.’
Two weeks had passed since the team’s adventure in the United States. They had been back in their rooms at Bee Street for an entire day before Gloria had insisted on afternoon tea and an opportunity to write up the case for their files.
‘Guests were not allowed to bear arms,’ Mr Doyle said, ‘but Mrs McKay was no guest. She has been in the employ of the Secret Service for more than twenty years and is one of their most competent agents. Indeed, she saved the day.’
‘She and others,’ Gloria said. ‘It seems there are many heroes to be recognised.’
‘Jack, Scarlet and I played some small part.’
‘Small?’ Jack said.
He was about to protest when he noticed a row of jars on a shelf. They were filled with murky water and squids. Live squids. One of them waved a tentacle at him.
‘Mr Doyle saved the president’s life,’ Scarlet explained. ‘The Chameleon slipped poison into the glass when he bent over to autograph his book.’
‘It was a slow-acting but deadly poison from South America,’ Mr Doyle said. ‘It would have killed him within hours. Long after the guests had departed he would have succumbed to its effects.’ He shuddered. ‘The ending would have been most unpleasant.’
‘And was Gabrielle Smith also part of the plot?’
‘Not at all. Gabrielle Smith is a marvellous agent. She had never met her uncle before she visited England to take him back to the United States. The Chameleon had already taken his place when she met him in London.’
‘And the reason for impersonating him?’
‘To gain access to the garden party in case the attempt at the theatre failed,’ he said. ‘When Jack, Scarlet and Gabrielle were taken hostage by Ashgrove, the Chameleon was away in Washington. And a good thing too. Gabrielle would have been in great danger because he would have discovered she was a Secret Service agent.’
‘And what happened to the real Professor Smith?’
‘Scotland Yard found his body buried in his back garden. He was yet another victim of the Chameleon.’
‘But how did you know Professor Smith was the Chameleon?’ Gloria asked.
Scarlet stifled a giggle as Jack blushed. Mr Doyle smiled. ‘Jack might like to fill in the details.’
Jack sighed. ‘Mrs McKay’s necklace broke when I grabbed her hair and tried to pull it off.’
‘Not one of his best moments,’ Mr Doyle said. ‘But it did crack the case wide open.’
‘A few of us, including the professor, bent down to pick up the pearls,’ Jack said.
‘So what did the professor do that revealed his true identity?’
Scarlet spoke up. ‘It’s what he didn’t do,’ she said. ‘He didn’t use his glasses.’
‘Jack had already pocketed them to keep them safe,’ Mr Doyle explained.
‘He didn’t need them to pick up the pearls,’ Jack added. ‘It meant he could see quite clearly without them. Later, he realised he should wear them to sign the book, but he had already given himself away.’
‘They were false lenses,’ Mr Doyle explained. ‘When I examined them later, I found they were ordinary glass.’
‘And what about Charles Ashgrove?’ Gloria asked.
‘Found hiding in the basement of one of his homes like the rat that he is,’ Mr Doyle said. ‘He is now a guest in a United States prison, as is the Chameleon.’
‘So Ignatius Doyle and his team save the day once again.’
The detective shook his head. ‘There were many heroes. The most heroic of all was Olinka Slate. Not only a genius, but also a man who sacrificed his life for his country.’
‘A statue is being built in Washington to remember him,’ Jack said.
‘It hardly seems enough,’ Scarlet sighed.
‘Sometimes it takes time to recognise true genius,’ Mr Doyle said. ‘Olinka Slate is such an example.’
‘Is anyone else continuing his work on electricity?’ Gloria asked.
‘Most of his ideas were never committed to paper,’ Mr Doyle said. ‘And the meteorite was destroyed when he died. The wonders of electricity will remain a mystery until another inventor tries to light up the world.’
Jack thought of the strange blue stone and the effect it had on him. It had been the most unusual experience of his life, and he still wasn’t sure if the secret abyss was an illusion or if it was something more. Maybe even a gateway to another world.
He would never know.
Mr Doyle. Scarlet. Gloria. These people were more important than any meteorites or alien worlds.
Give him Earth any day.
‘There remains one final mystery to be solved,’ Scarlet said.
‘Really?’ Mr Doyle said. ‘And what is that?’
‘The Adventure of the Grinning Glockenspiel!’ she declared. ‘Jack has been reading the first Brinkie Buckeridge book and has not given me his opinion.’
‘That’s true.’ Jack drew the book from his green coat and handed it to Scarlet. ‘It was an interesting read. Thank you for lending it to me.’
Scarlet’s mouth fell open. ‘An interesting read? Is that all you can say?’
‘All right. It was a very interesting read.’
‘Very interesting? I don’t even know what that means! Did you like it or not?’
‘I liked everything in it,’ Jack said, ‘except Wobbly Duskalot.’
‘Wilbur Dusseldorf!’ Scarlet shook her head. ‘But he’s Brinkie’s hero!’
‘He has far too many pectoral muscles.’
‘How can anyone have too many…?’ She stopped. ‘I give up. Some people just don’t know a good book when they read it.’
‘Which leads me to another subject.’ Mr Doyle turned to Gloria. ‘Jack and Scarlet have pointed out to me that some of my ideas regarding women are somewhat old-fashioned. Women play a fundamental role in our society and certainly deserve the same rights and the same privileges as men.’
Gloria raised her eyebrows.
‘I was thinking, Gloria.’ The detective began to turn red. ‘You could become a more active member of our team if you wanted.’
‘Active?’
‘You could become a detective, if you wished.’ He stopped. ‘My dear, is something the matter?’
Gloria was laughing so hard she dropped her pen and pad. ‘Mr Doyle, you are a wonderful friend and an amazing man. But you are sometimes clueless! I would not be a detective if you paid me ten times the wage!’
‘Oh.’ He seemed perplexed. ‘I see.’
‘I am quite happy in my role, but there is something you can do.’
‘Yes?’
‘There is a new doctor who has opened rooms down the block. A Dr Barry.’
‘Dr Barry? Is he good?’
‘She is supposed to be very good, trained in all the latest medical science. Perhaps you could make your next appointment there?’
‘I see. A female doctor.’ He glanced sideways at Jack and Scarlet. ‘Well, I’m open to change. A new doctor may have some modern ideas about how to cure Jack of his arachnophobia.’
‘I don’t have a phobia of spiders,’ Jack said. ‘I think they are perfectly fine—just as long as I don’t have to see them!’
‘Ah, yes. That was unfortunate about Bertha.’
‘What?’
‘I discovered earlier that I had left her cage open.’
‘O-open?’ Jack’s eyes searched the room. �
�And she’s still free?’
‘My boy.’ Mr Doyle stifled a grin. ‘What is that on your shoulder?’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Jack Mason’s adventures owe no small debt to the genius of writers long gone, among them H. G. Wells, Jules Verne and—of course—Arthur Conan Doyle. Possibly every detective story since owes something to Doyle’s creation of Sherlock Holmes. The success of his stories lies with not just the mysteries, but the enduring friendship between Holmes and Watson. So it is with Jack, Scarlet and Mr Doyle.
This latest outing for Jack Mason, Scarlet Bell and Mr Doyle was helped immensely by my editor, Rebecca Starford. Her constant scrutiny has kept me on the straight and narrow, helping to make the writing both lively and consistent.
The efforts of the whole team at Text Publishing made the creation of this book a wonderful experience, and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.
Don’t miss Jack’s next adventure!
He returns with Scarlet and Mr Doyle in
The Broken Sun
available from November 2014
Here is a sneak preview of
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER ONE
‘I need a seven-letter word that means difficult to find,’ Scarlet Bell said, peering at the crossword puzzle in The Times.
‘Hmm.’ Jack Mason looked up from a book on mountain climbing. ‘How about exciting?’
They were sitting in Ignatius Doyle’s library on the top floor of 221 Bee Street. While it contained books—thousands of them—the shelves were empty; books were instead stacked on the floor in piles according to colour while the shelves held odd items that had no place in a library: the chimney from a Stephenson steam engine, a fish tank containing a preserved snake, two stuffed monkeys, a jar marked ‘toenail clippings’, a vase with a bronze plate that read ‘Ebenezer Jones—Much Loved but Easily Forgotten’, a pile of men’s undergarments and a cluster of oval spheres that looked like dinosaur eggs.
‘I can see two problems with that answer,’ Scarlet said, pushing back her fire engine red hair. ‘The first is that exciting has eight letters.’
‘Can’t you just squeeze it in?’ Jack said. At fourteen, Jack was a year younger than Scarlet, and small for his age. His expertise was not tests of the mind but the body. He and his parents had been trapeze artists in the circus. After their deaths, he lived in an orphanage until Ignatius Doyle, the famous detective, employed him as an assistant.
‘I’ve never heard of anyone doing that,’ Scarlet said.
‘What do the rules say?’ Jack asked. He reached into one of the voluminous pockets of his green coat and withdrew a boiled lolly. ‘I bet it’s allowed.’
‘There are no instructions saying you can’t do it, but there is also a second problem. Difficult to find can hardly be defined as exciting.’
Jack wasn’t so sure. Discovering the unknown with Mr Doyle often took them to exciting places. Surely they are the same thing?
Scarlet threw down the newspaper. ‘We need a mystery to solve,’ she said, giving up on the elusive word. ‘I fear our brains are stagnating.’
Jack didn’t mind a little stagnation. Their previous adventure had taken them all the way to America in the pursuit of the world’s most deadly assassin. It was only through their efforts that a second civil war had been averted.
Wheeeeez.
Jack and Scarlet looked up. Mr Doyle’s apartment contained a multitude of rooms with no ceilings. Instead, high above them, leaky steam pipes and ventilation shafts crisscrossed the rafters. Nothing unusual there—except now a long metal wire was strung across the roof. Jack was sure it hadn’t been there before.
A single pale feather seesawed lazily to the floor. The sound came again, and this time an enormous shape attached to the wire flashed overhead. Larger than a man, it had a beak and two great wings covered in white feathers.
‘If I didn’t know better,’ Scarlet said, ‘I’d say that was a giant seagull.’
‘But that’s impossible.’
‘Which means Mr Doyle is conducting another of his little experiments.’
A crash came from the far end of the apartment.
‘Oh dear,’ Scarlet said. ‘I think it may have failed.’
They followed the wire, weaving through more piles of odd possessions that clogged the apartment: a laboratory table covered in mouldy petri dishes, a tank containing a rat skeleton, a model of the Eiffel Tower and a gorilla costume. They also passed Isaac Newton, the echidna. Sniffing the air, he disappeared through a curved hatch that had once been part of the Carlsdale Lighthouse.
Reaching a corner crowded with oversized chess pieces, a bust of Queen Victoria and a four-poster bed, they were just in time to see a birdman clambering off the mattress. He shoved back the mask to reveal Mr Doyle.
‘Fascinating,’ he spat through a mouthful of feathers. ‘I now believe the giant gull of Sumatra may have been a man in a costume suspended by a wire.’
‘Ignatius Doyle! What on earth are you doing?’
Gloria Scott, the receptionist and live-in housekeeper, stormed into the room. Tall, with a mess of blonde ringlets, her kindly face was now creased into an expression of disbelief.
‘Just conducting an experiment, my dear,’ Mr Doyle said. ‘Recent reports in the Malaysian press have told of a giant flying bird.’
‘Are you sure it’s not a bat? As in a belfry?’
The detective removed the outfit, reached into his long black coat and produced a piece of cheese. He popped it into his mouth. ‘I don’t know why you’re so annoyed, my dear,’ he smiled. ‘Scientific experimentation lies at the heart of innovation.’
Gloria’s face softened as she plucked a feather from the detective’s ear. ‘You are supposed to be setting an example for these young people,’ she said. ‘Children don’t do as you say, they do as you do.’ She pulled a letter from her pocket. ‘Some mail arrived for you, Ignatius.’
‘Mr Doyle?’ said Jack, as the detective examined the handwriting and frowned.
‘I had best go to my study,’ Mr Doyle murmured, the lines around his eyes appearing deeper than ever. ‘I am feeling a little tired.’ Without another word, he disappeared down an aisle, still clutching the letter.
‘Gloria,’ Jack said. ‘What was all that about?’
She sighed. ‘You’ll have to ask Mr Doyle, but it’s best to give him a few minutes.’
And without further explanation, she too departed the room, leaving Jack and Scarlet to stare at each other.
‘What on Earth is going on?’ Scarlet cried. ‘I hope it’s not bad news.’
Maybe it was bad news. ‘Could someone have died?’ Jack suggested. ‘Possibly a friend?’
‘I’m not sure Mr Doyle has any friends. Apart from us.’
Jack frowned. Mr Doyle did live a solitary life, immersed in solving crimes and carrying out strange experiments. And now that he thought of it, Jack had never seen him entertain a visitor not related to a case. ‘We need to make sure he’s all right,’ he said.
They made their way through the apartment to the door of the detective’s study.
‘Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,’ Scarlet said.
‘Mr Doyle may need a friend. Who is that if it isn’t us?’
Jack reached into his jacket, absently touching his two most prized possessions: the picture of him and his parents, and a compass. His mother and father had given them to him before their deaths, serving as a reminder that he would never be alone.
No one should be alone, Jack thought. Especially when they need a friend.
Jack knocked at the door.
‘Come in,’ Mr Doyle called.
Unlike the library, the walls of the study were covered in bookshelves filled with books. So many, in fact, that they overflowed onto the floor, with others teetering precariously on the desk. Nestled behind the books was Mr Doyle wearing a pair of magnifying goggles. He was examining the letter before him.
‘Mr Doy
le. Is everything all right?’
‘We were worried,’ Scarlet added.
Removing the goggles, the detective offered them a seat.
‘We didn’t mean to pry,’ Scarlet continued. ‘But you looked a little upset.’
‘Possibly more surprised than upset.’ Mr Doyle slid the letter across the desk. ‘Take a look at this.’
Jack and Scarlet examined the letter, written in neat handwriting.
Dear Ignatius,
I know we have not spoken for some time, but a mystery has arisen concerning Phillip and I require your assistance. I would not have broken my silence with you unless I felt this matter to be of the utmost importance.
Yours,
Amelia.
Jack frowned. The names were familiar, but where did he know them from?
Scarlet said, ‘Amelia is...?’
‘My daughter-in-law. I have not seen her for many years.’
Now Jack remembered the story. Mr Doyle and his son Phillip had been in the war in France. It had been a terrible time with thousands of men dying in battle every day. After being ordered to attack an enemy emplacement, Mr Doyle and his men had charged across a field, but the detective had become entangled in barbed wire. Struggling to free himself, artillery fired upon them and Mr Doyle had been knocked unconscious.
On waking, he searched for his son and the other men for hours, but it seemed they had all been killed. The only remains of Phillip Doyle had been his dog tags and some scraps of clothing. Nothing else was recovered.
Phillip’s wife, Amelia, had been distraught. Blaming Mr Doyle for the loss of her husband, she had driven him away, forbidding him from seeing her or his grandson, Jason.
‘A mystery concerning Phillip,’ Jack said. ‘I wonder what she means.’
‘I have no idea,’ Mr Doyle said. ‘But I may be away for some time.’
‘Then you will need our assistance,’ Scarlet said.