Alex’s eyes went suddenly wide. Oh no, they weren’t all about to witness – he blushed – any of, you know, that going on, were they? Not with the four Young Magicians as hidden observers. That would really be hashtag AWKWARD!
Sophie’s eyes also flew wide open as the woman spoke, filling the room with the sultriness of the Deep South and fried green tomatoes.
‘Are you all right? (ahl-rayuht?) I thought you were having a fit!’
‘Oh my, I never thought we’d get away!’ Eric Diva wheezed. ‘One more anecdote about Pickle’s early days and I was going to spontaneously teleport, if no one else could do it for me. The number of times he said, “When I was young”! When Pickle was young, he was entertaining the other cavemen by pulling baby mammoths out of a hat!’
Jonny grinned at Alex. So Eric Diva’s nice-guy image was … let’s just say not entirely accurate – but then this was a magicians’ convention, and everyone knew you shouldn’t take anything at face value.
‘Oh, Eric, you are unkind!’ (ahn-kayuhnd!)
That’s Belinda in a nutshell! Sophie thought. Defending a man who isn’t here.
‘But yes,’ Belinda continued, ‘maybe the Magic Circle is long overdue a new president. We’re doing the society a favour.’
Sophie frowned. Okkkkkkkay, Belinda wasn’t exactly defending President Pickle … But maybe she was just being realistic.
‘Long overdue?’ Eric Diva snorted. ‘Belinda, you know there are telescopes that are so powerful they can look back in time to the furthest reaches of the universe? But let me tell you, we are so long overdue a new president that not even one of those telescopes could spot due from where we’re now standing.’
Surely it couldn’t be that these two were somehow behind the plot?
Could it really be that easy?
‘Well, patience, Eric dear, patience. We have to wait for the AGM before –’
‘Before what, Belinda?’ said a voice. A third voice. An impossible voice.
The jaws of the Young Magicians simultaneously hit the floor. How did he get in with no one noticing?
‘Oh wow, Mr President!’ Eric Diva exclaimed. ‘Didn’t see you there! How are you?’
If the discovery that Belinda and Eric Diva might possibly be behind this plot had been mind-blowing, then this was the mic drop to end all mic drops. Where had President Pickle even come from?
‘Belinda.’ President Pickle’s voice sounded calm and friendly. ‘Eric. What are you two doing skulking in here? Rehearsing some clever trick, like that quite astonishing telepathy act you did earlier?’
The four friends looked at each other as best they could – Alex to Jonny to Sophie to Zack – as their minds collectively whirled, desperately trying to make sense of everything … How had President Pickle managed to appear on a whim at precisely the right moment? Or the wrong moment, depending on whose side you were on.
They were absolutely certain no one else had come into the room – in particular Alex, who could see the door, and who had actually watched two people, and two people only, enter.
The only other explanation was that President Pickle had been hiding here all along. So why hadn’t they spotted him? In fact, why would he have been hiding in here at all? And why hadn’t he emerged to tell them off for sneaking around? No, none of this added up whatsoever.
But, even if you put that to one side, the other question was, how much had President Pickle heard of this potentially mutinous plot from Belinda and Eric? From his affable tone, it sounded like nothing at all.
‘Mr President.’ Belinda oozed concern. She sounded just like the woman Sophie had thought she was. ‘Are you sure you should be walking about on your own? We know about the letters – we’d hate anything to happen to you.’
‘Happen to me?’ President Pickle started to bellow with laughter. It was a mad, deafening sound – the audio definition of unhinged.
‘Oh dear! Oh, dearie me. I’m obviously much better at magic than I thought, if I was able to get it past the likes of you two!’
Silence. None more so than from four watching, waiting, worried young magicians.
‘What you don’t understand is … there is no plot!’
The friends gaped at each other.
It sounded like Belinda and Eric Diva were just as gobsmacked.
‘No … no plot?’ Belinda whispered melodramatically, like this was the rehearsal for some dodgy stage play.
Another bark of laughter from President Pickle. ‘Not the faintest sausage of one! I made the whole thing up from scratch! I wrote those letters to myself and even spiked my own food with a bit of saltpetre to get those authentic-looking cramps.’
‘But why –?’
‘The Young Magicians!’ President Pickle screamed. ‘Those intolerable, overhyped, untalented brats!’
Who you asked to solve this mystery? Each one of the Young Magicians thought the same baffling thing.
He calmed down, took a couple of breaths and continued in a voice that was almost normal. ‘I … I have given my life to the Magic Circle, I am president of one of the most respectable and honourable societies in the country, maybe even the world, and yet when I say Magic Circle what do people say back? They say, oh yes, those clever children! They say, that elongated marionette …’
Jonny bit back an indignant ‘Hey!’ when he realized President Pickle was talking about him.
‘Plus, the girl-thing.’
Sophie’s eyes narrowed.
‘And the cocky little twerp with the haircut.’
Zack felt a sudden red-hot fury grip his heart. This from the man they had been trying to save! Talk about ingratitude!
‘And the one who looks like an owl.’
Alex shrugged to himself. Fair enough. Some people had said that about him and he couldn’t wholly dismiss it as a pretty reasonable approximation of his look.
‘They say, you must be so proud of them! And I – I have to grin like a constipated skeleton, nodding like a screw has come loose and say, yes, of course, SO proud, because what else can I do? But I’m going to show the world what they really are! A bunch of kids who got lucky with the Crown Jewels plot, but who don’t really know a thing. They’ll never solve this new mystery because quite simply … there is no mystery to solve!’
A stunned pause.
‘Well,’ said Eric Diva after a moment, ‘that was – um …’
‘Most unexpected,’ Belinda filled in for him. ‘Will you be stating all that at the AGM, Mr President?’
‘I certainly shall! I think it’ll make quite a stir, don’t you?’
‘Okaaay …’ Eric Diva still didn’t sound like he knew how to process what he’d heard. Had the president finally well and truly lost it? Talk about going down in a blaze of glory. ‘Well, um, Belinda and I are going back to the bar … Would you like to come along too?’
‘No, you two run along now. I’ll stay here with my thoughts for a while.’
There was a pause, and then the sound of footsteps. Alex counted the legs walking past him again, in the other direction. One, two, three, four – two male, two female, the same as before. The door opened and closed.
Zack could contain his fury no longer.
‘Overhyped!’ he raged. ‘Untalented!’ He leaped up from behind his stack of chairs. ‘We were trying to save y–’
His words dried up as the others all jumped to their feet, ready to confront this meanest of men.
But they found Zack standing stock-still, rooted to the spot, staring round the room in total amazement.
Amazement that they all felt … because the room was now as empty as they had found it. Apart from four totally baffled Young Magicians!
15
11 P.M.
They searched the room again, high and low, pulling back the carpet and knocking on the walls to check for any hidden doors. Jonny was tall enough to reach up and rap on the ceiling, just in case a hidden ladder might fall, revealing President Pickle’s secret passageway. But
no, this particular Pickle-shaped riddle appeared to be frustratingly solution-less.
Eventually they made their way back to the boys’ room, still so baffled that they could barely spare the brain cells for small tasks like breathing and walking without bumping into each other. Their thoughts were so awhirl that they forgot about Jane and Steve at their sentry posts – until they found the two of them fast asleep in their chairs, Jane mid-knit and Steve with a copy of The Stage draped over his face, rising and falling slowly in time with his snoring, animating the picture of some old-time thespians like they were mid-soliloquy.
They sat on the boys’ beds and looked at each other, still keeping their voices down in case the sound made its way through the walls and triggered Deanna’s Sophie-proximity-alert.
‘I mean,’ Jonny said helplessly, ‘it has to be some kind of trick, obviously, but how …’
‘Agreed,’ Zack sighed, equally helpless. They’d been floored by decent magic before, but then they’d never expected it to come from the likes of President Pickle, whose go-to trick was usually the one where you made it look like your thumb had come off. ‘But there’s something about this that still doesn’t add up.’
‘Well, the main thing is we’ve cracked it,’ pronounced Jonny with as much chutzpah as he could muster for this somewhat small victory, ‘in that there wasn’t really anything to crack in the first place! We should at least tell Cynthia, though. Clearly she doesn’t know that her vile husband is the one who concocted this whole plot.’
Zack’s face clouded with anger again as he remembered how President Pickle had talked about them, and the lengths he was clearly prepared to go to, to humiliate the Young Magicians. Talk about petty!
‘Why just tell Cynthia?’ he grated. ‘Let’s tell everyone! You know, at the AGM. Bring it all out.’
‘Yeah, but President Pickle would just deny it, wouldn’t he?’ Jonny pointed out. ‘He’d be all, “You think I’d give up food just to get at these four?” I mean, I can’t even believe he’d give up food just to get back at us, so you can bet no one else will.’
‘Hr-r-r-r-m-m-m …’ Zack growled and sank into contemplation, scowling at the corner of the room, resting his chin on his hand.
Suddenly he looked up again, more thoughtful. He shook his head as if physically removing the idea from inside it.
‘What?’ said Jonny in an instant, knowing that this particular movement from Zack often meant he was on to something.
‘Well,’ began Zack, slowly mulling it over, ‘I wonder if there’s a connection …’
‘Between?’ asked Sophie immediately, also keen to catch Zack’s train of thought mid-flow. She was with Jonny on this one. These were undoubtedly the moments when Zack’s inside-out thinking was invaluable.
‘Between this and the inexplicable act Belinda did in the Gala Show. I just feel there might be a connection between what we saw earlier this evening and President Pickle’s disappearance … I just don’t know what, but something tells me there’s a missing link!’
‘Well, maybe we shouldn’t start here then,’ said Jonny thoughtfully.
‘And instead you’d suggest …?’ Zack encouraged him to go on.
‘So Belinda’s act was a re-creation of Ron and Nancy Spencer’s, right?’ Jonny continued. ‘Presumably people have been talking about it, and writing about it, for years. And everything they wrote will be in the Magic Circle library, back in London. So that’s where we start. Solving Ron and Nancy means solving Belinda, which means solving President Pickle.’
He smiled happily at them, waiting for them to congratulate him on his genius.
‘The Magic Circle library?’ Zack said. ‘The Magic Circle library back in London? The Magic Circle library that’s approximately a three-hour train journey away? That library?’ Zack started to smile as he peered at his oldest friend, his mouth widening into a classic Zack-shaped grin. ‘You’ve got an idea, haven’t you?’
‘Damn right!’ Jonny grinned back. ‘We phone a friend!’
They looked at him.
‘Alf!’ he exclaimed as if they were all totally stupid for not realizing. ‘He’s back at HQ, there’s no one else around because they’re all up here, and he’s got access to the full Magic Circle library, records – absolutely everything!’
They all had to admit that this was a pretty good idea and, if anyone could help them get out of a sticky situation, it was Alf Rattlebag. And to think they had only been talking about him that morning!
‘But,’ Sophie pointed out, ‘without our mobile phones, how …?’
‘Way ahead of you!’ screamed Jonny, almost knocking himself out on one of the bed posts as he leaped up in a move that was designed to impress but had EPIC FAIL! written all over it.
Steve and Jane were still fast asleep as the four cautiously tiptoed past them down the stairs towards reception. As their eyes adjusted to the gloomy-green light of the exit signs, they spotted the huge, sarcophagus-like desk they had all hidden behind earlier that day, brooding in the corner like a giant sleeping beast. Jonny was right: there was a phone!
All of a sudden, a shadow swivelled towards them, causing the four Young Magicians to make a noise between them that was indistinguishable from the sound of a velociraptor playing a prank on a chimpanzee being watched by a group of audibly appreciative gazelles.
The green lights shone on the face of … the receptionist. But now with a different hairstyle, plus he’d lost the fanboy T-shirt. Maybe this was his night-time look?
‘That’s rather a long shift, isn’t it?’ Sophie asked boldly, trying to hide how startled she’d just been. ‘Weren’t you on reception this morning, when we got here?’
The man blinked slowly.
‘I’m the night porter,’ he announced, like it was the saddest fact in the world. ‘The one you saw this morning was my twin brother.’
‘Ah! The evil twin!’ Jonny tried to make a joke of it, but soon regretted the attempt as the man’s head swung slowly round.
‘No, I’m the evil one,’ he uttered dolorously.
‘Please can we use the phone?’ Alex asked, getting to the point of why they were there and not wanting to dwell on why this man was self-proclaimed evil.
The head swung slowly back and forth between them as the night porter just as slowly chewed the idea over.
‘Now that’s a bit of a conundrum. You have to remember I’m evil. So, being evil, should I say yes or no? Using the phone is plainly something you want to do, so I’m inclined to say no, to spoil your fun.’ He shrugged. Slowly. ‘Evil, see? Of course, you could be up to some kind of mischief that will cause no end of problems for everyone, and the evil side of me – which is, to be frank, all of me – would quite like to observe and actively encourage that, so, on that basis, I’m minded to say yes.’
‘Great, thanks!’ Jonny reached for the phone. With surprising speed, a long-fingered, claw-like and surprisingly strong hand clamped itself round his wrist.
‘Ah, but your faces all lit up so happily at that moment,’ said the night porter, ‘that I’m afraid it’s tipped the balance. I’m inclined to disappoint you. So the answer’s no, you can’t.’
The man let go of Jonny’s wrist, and Jonny rubbed it thoughtfully.
But, before the night porter could fully withdraw his hand, Sophie reached out and took it in both of hers. He stared at her with a tiny facial twitch that, by his standards, meant extreme surprise. Sophie’s touch was precisely calculated: not so hard as to be unpleasant, not so soft as to be annoying. Firm, warm, almost feline. She ran both hands up his forearm as she locked eyes with him.
‘You really don’t mind, do you? We can use the phone, can’t we? Of course we can. You don’t mind. If that’s what you want.’
Sophie’s biggest strength, her main skill, her thang was mental magic. And her ability to access another person’s subconscious and sync it with her own was now second nature.
The night porter smiled, creepily, and gently plucked her
hands from his arm like he was picking off a couple of gangrenous scabs.
‘I can see you’re trying to use some form of power of suggestion on me. Sadly, you need a subconscious for that to work, and I don’t have one.’
Sophie stared at him, for once totally flummoxed.
‘Not even an evil one?’ she managed at last.
The night porter tapped his head with a bony finger.
‘Oh, it’s all evil in here, but there’s no subconscious. Nothing is sub anything. Everything’s on the top level, as it were. What you see is what you get. Hyper evil but nothing less.’
‘Can you stop us going outside?’ Jonny asked suddenly.
Another slow blink as the night porter turned the idea over in his head.
‘What, four against one and me at my age? I doubt it.’
‘Will you raise the alarm if we do go outside?’ Jonny clarified.
‘Will you be going out to cause mischief?’
‘No end of it,’ Zack assured him.
‘Will people be angry you’ve gone?’ For some reason the question was directed at Sophie.
‘Almost certainly.’ She nodded vigorously.
‘Will you get into trouble?’
Alex nodded so fast that his glasses were in danger of coming off, though he had no idea why Jonny wanted them to go outside.
‘Absolutely no doubt,’ he said. Two bony, pointy shoulders shrugged through the gloom.
‘Then off you go,’ the night porter said.
The moment they stepped through the hotel doors, it was as if someone had switched on a fan the size of an aeroplane propeller, poured two or three buckets of freezing cold water into the airstream and blasted the icy mix directly into their faces.
No one was actually there, of course. It was just the beautiful Lancashire coastal weather reasserting itself and reminding them what a good idea buildings were, especially buildings with walls and windows and central heating, and especially, especially on a night like this.
They huddled together in the hotel porch, like emperor penguins on the south polar icecap, keeping each other warm by sheltering their friends with their bodies. Except that emperor penguins are all about the same size, and there are usually several hundred of them, and they rotate to take turns on the outside of the pack to minimize ever getting too cold. Four humans of assorted sizes huddling together were not going to have the same effect, and they soon worked this out for themselves.
The Young Magicians and the 24-Hour Telepathy Plot Page 15