The Fangs of the Dragon Read online

  ‘Why steal the money?’ said Liz Wyndham. ‘Isn’t that inviting suspicion?’

  ‘A little bonus for Harry?’ I said. ‘For services rendered? If Harry wasn’t so flash with his cash, I might not have noticed that! In most cases, for most classes, Monsieur Jacques will have had to spend time cosying up to his customers to find out the sort of household details that the intruder would benefit from. But once he realised that several members of this one particular Thursday morning de-stress class were mums at St Egbert’s, he spotted an opportunity. He had a nephew he could use as an inside man!’

  ‘So who is in my house, then?’ wailed Oliver. ‘Who is this intruder?’

  I was about to answer him when two things happened. First, the front door of Oliver’s house swung open. Second, I felt a distinct and sudden itching in my nose. I glanced at the hedge: it was one of those flowering types. I’d been crouching down with my head in an air current loaded with pollen.

  ‘Ohhh, briddiant!’ I sighed.

  But I had no time to feel sorry for myself. The door of Oliver’s house was standing ajar. So far, no movement came from inside.

  Nobody dared breathe. We all stared through the tiny gaps in the hedge, between the leaves, watching the front door.

  11.04 a.m.

  Suddenly, moving swiftly, a figure emerged. A woman. She was wearing a long red coat and chunky boots, and a cascade of blond hair fell around her shoulders. She was facing into the house, away from us, as if checking that she’d not forgotten anything. The upper part of her was deep in the slab of shadow thrown by the flat porch that jutted out above the door.

  ‘Nobobby bake a sound,’ I whispered. ‘She bite rubb away before we cabb get her.’

  ‘Who is she?’ whispered Miss Bennett.

  Oliver made a slight whimpering noise. ‘I don’t believe it. That’s my mum. My mum is the intruder.’

  The woman shut the front door behind her with a clunk. She took a key from the pocket of her coat and double-locked the door, giving it a rattle to make sure it was firmly closed.

  ‘So your mum’s been the intruder all along?’ gasped Liz Wyndham.

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ whispered Oliver. ‘This is her own house . . .’

  ‘Be quiedd,’ I breathed. ‘She muddn’t . . . know . . . we’re . . . AHHHH-CHOOOO!’ My sneeze was so loud it sent a flock of sparrows into a panic at the other end of the street.

  Instantly, the woman spun round. Spooked, she made a dash for the gate at the side of the house.

  We all leaped from our hiding place. Miss Bennett, with that willowy frame of hers, would have made a good athlete. She caught up with the woman in less than a dozen loping strides, grabbing her by the shoulders.

  The woman cried out angrily. As she tried to wriggle free of Miss Bennett’s grip, she overbalanced and toppled on to the front lawn.

  As she did so, her long blond hair came loose. The wig dropped to the grass, revealing a short, dark haircut underneath.

  ‘Good grief!’ cried Oliver, from the back of the group. ‘My mum wears a . . . Hey!’

  ‘I thingg you’ll find your bubb is safely at her gybb class,’ I said, borrowing a hanky from Liz Wyndham. ‘Say hallo to Uncle Jack’s wife, Harry Lovecraft’s Auntie Sharon.’

  Miss Bennett had her securely pinned down on the grass. Auntie Sharon glared up at us, a mixture of anger and defiance on her face.

  ‘But why was she disguised as my mum?’ said Oliver. ‘How does she even know what my mum looks like?’

  I blew my nose a couple of times. ‘I told you Harry’s uncle, Monsieur Jacques, had been busy snooping around all your houses whenever he held a class there,’ I said. ‘As well as copying keys, he also looked in wardrobes. His wife here, the intruder, could then get hold of similar clothes and hair, and disguise herself as the correct mum every time. With the right key, and the right look, anybody who saw her come and go would think they were seeing someone else. Which happened twice, remember. Those nosy neighbours didn’t see your mums, they saw Auntie Sharon here.’

  With Auntie Sharon pinned on her side, items were starting to drop out of the pockets of her coat. The house key she’d used, a pair of gloves and a jotter pad. I stooped down and picked the jotter pad up. Clipped inside it, next to a string of copied-down account numbers and email addresses, was a USB memory stick.

  ‘Downloaded a batch of browser cookies and firewall settings, have you?’ I asked, wiping snot off my upper lip with Liz’s hanky.

  ‘Never seen that before in my life,’ snarled Auntie Sharon.

  Miss Bennett handed her phone to Oliver, while trying to keep a grip of the wriggling woman beneath her. ‘Here, call the police. Then call the school. We’ll need to speak to all your parents.’

  Once the police had taken charge of Auntie Sharon, and been given the address where they’d find ‘Monsieur Jacques’, we all returned to school in the minibus. Miss Bennett’s entire class gave me a huge cheer, which was nice, and Harry Lovecraft got called to the Head’s office, which was even nicer.

  As it turned out, the police had been on the trail of Uncle ‘Jacques’ Lovecraft for half a dozen different crimes. Although, I’m sorry to say, impersonating a Frenchman wasn’t one of them. Auntie Sharon’s USB stick was shown to contain the personal details of seventy-seven local people, and of another two hundred and thirty from other parts of the country.

  Unfortunately, that low-down rat Harry Lovecraft got off scott-free. His uncle and auntie denied his involvement, and he denied even knowing his uncle and auntie. In the end, there was no firm evidence against him – the money for those new goodies of his could have come from anywhere – and the Head had to drop the matter.

  At the start of lessons the following day, he glided past me with a sneer so extreme it almost fell off his face.

  ‘Don’t think I’m going to forget this, Smart,’ he whispered. ‘One day, I’ll have my revenge. One day.’

  ‘Looking forward to it,’ I said, with a polite smile.

  That afternoon, I retreated to my shed, and my Thinking Chair. I propped my feet up on my desk, and jotted down some notes for my files.

  Case closed.

  Crack all the cases!

  In each story Saxby Smart – schoolboy detective – gives you, the reader, clues which help solve the mystery. Are you ‘smart’ enough to find the answers?

  1 – The Curse of the Ancient Mask

  A mysterious curse, suspicious sabotage of a school competition, and a very unpleasant relative all conspire to puzzle Saxby Smart, schoolboy private detective.

  Stories include: The Curse of the Ancient Mask, The Mark of the Purple Homework and The Clasp of Doom

  2 – The Fangs of the Dragon

  A string of break-ins where nothing is stolen, a rare comic book snatched from an undamaged safe, and clues apparently leading to a hidden treasure – Saxby solves three more challenging crimes.

  Stories include: The Fangs of the Dragon, The Tomb of Death and The Treasure of Dead Man’s Lane.

  3 – The Pirate’s Blood

  A bloody handprint inside a museum case containing pirate treasure, a classmate with a mysterious secret, and a strange case of arson in a bookshop for Saxby to unravel.

  Stories include: The Pirate’s Blood, The Mystery of Mary Rogers and The Lunchbox of Notre Dame.

  4 – The Hangman’s Lair

  A terrifying visit to the Hangman’s Lair to recover stolen money, a serious threat of blackmail, and a mystery surrounding a stranger’s unearthly powers test Saxby to the limit in this set of case files!

  Stories include: The Hangman’s Lair, Diary of Fear and Whispers From The Dead.

  5 – The Eye of the Serpent

  A valuable work of art vanishes into thin air, a notorious crook returns from the dead, and there’s an eerie case of stolen identity . . . Time to call in Saxby Smart!

  Stories include: The Eye of the Serpent, The Ghost At The WIndow, The Stranger In The Mirror.

  6 – Fiv
e Seconds to Doomsday

  Saxby’s arch enemy plots his ultimate revenge, video games vanish off a truck, and the school office is the target of an apparently pointless robbery. What’s really going on?

  Stories include: Five Seconds to Doomsday, March of the Zombies and The Shattered Box.

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