Double or Die Read online

  James sighed. ‘I don’t know, Perry,’ he said. ‘If you were caught you’d be in serious trouble, and so would I for lending it to you. I’d feel rotten.’

  ‘Well, come with m-me then,’ said Perry, as if it was the easiest thing in the world. ‘You drive. You take all the blame. I’ll forge a letter from m-my pa saying he’d like to invite you down.’

  ‘Codrose would never go for it,’ said James. ‘It’s too short notice. Couldn’t you just take the train up to Cambridge from London on Saturday?’

  ‘No fear,’ said Perry. ‘I have a full weekend planned, if you won’t let m-me have the m-motor, then it looks like you’ll just have to wait until the holidays. Think it over, James. If you change your m-mind I’m going to Upton at lunchtime before I set off for London. You’ll find m-me at the King’s Head near St Lawrence’s.’

  James watched Perry walking away and cursed. He knew Perry was only trying to get hold of the car for the weekend, but James couldn’t risk it. He’d just have to think of something else.

  James paid little attention in his lessons that morning. In science he got the measurements completely wrong in an experiment and only narrowly avoided blowing up the lab. In history he gave the wrong answer to an easy question about the Napoleonic wars and was jeered at by the whole division. To cap a rotten morning, Mr Merriot hit him with a ruler and accused him of daydreaming in Private Business.

  He wasn’t daydreaming, though, he was thinking, and thinking hard – trying to devise a plan that would get him away from Eton. It was frustrating being stuck here, freezing to death in dark, unheated classrooms when all he wanted was to be out solving Fairburn’s mystery.

  Try as he might, though, he could think of no solution to his problem.

  His plans became wilder and more improbable as the day wore on. He even considered setting fire to Codrose’s, but as it turned out, someone beat him to it and his means of escape came from an unexpected quarter.

  When he arrived back at the House for lunch he found the place in total confusion. There was a burning smell and smoke hung in the air.

  Lower boys were running around excitedly. The senior boys from Library were standing in Judy’s Passage trying to look important and useful. There were two policemen with them.

  James tried to go in but was turned away by one of the policemen as a group of firemen clattered past wearing helmets and big boots.

  James found Pritpal and asked him what was going on.

  ‘There has been a break-in,’ Pritpal explained. ‘Codrose’s study has been ransacked. The intruders made a terrible mess, apparently, and started a fire. The general idea is that it is connected somehow to the incident the other day.’

  ‘What incident?’ asked James.

  ‘You remember,’ said Pritpal, with a knowing wink. ‘When those two local boys threw a brick through the window and ran off.’

  ‘Ah, yes, of course,’ said James, loudly. ‘That incident.’ And then he lowered his voice and added, ‘Let’s hope the police don’t look too closely into that, and find out it was me and Perry.’

  ‘I’d keep out of the way, if I was you,’ said Pritpal quietly.

  ‘Was anything stolen?’ said James as a third policeman came out to talk to his colleagues.

  ‘They don’t know yet, it is chaos in there. Codrose is in a foul mood. His study is a ruin and he hasn’t been able to go up there and see for himself. The firemen are still checking to see if the building is safe. The fire wasn’t very serious, I don’t think; the thieves probably started it to cover their tracks and create a diversion, but the building has been damaged and there is smoke in all the rooms. We’re all to be sent home tonight so that the workmen can come in and make their repairs.’

  ‘It seems my prayers have been answered,’ said James, smiling broadly.

  Just then Tommy Chong hurried over.

  ‘I’ve been talking to the Dame,’ he said, excitedly. ‘Any boy who can’t make arrangements in time is going to be packed off to the Eton Mission in London.’

  ‘What’s the Eton Mission?’ asked James.

  ‘It is a charitable organization that was set up by the school in Hackney,’ said Pritpal. ‘So that Eton could do something for the poor. And the East End of London is very poor indeed.’

  ‘As it’s nearing Christmas, they thought that we might go down and help out,’ said Tommy.

  ‘Did you find out anything more about the fire?’ James asked.

  ‘The only person who saw anything was the maid, Katey,’ said Tommy. ‘She’s half barmy with fright, apparently. It happened during chapel and there was no one else here. A man knocked her over in one of the corridors. She didn’t see a lot because the place was full of smoke.’

  ‘She must have seen something,’ said James, looking up at the windows in Codrose’s study where smoke was still drifting out into the cold air.

  ‘She says it was the devil that attacked her,’ said Tommy, laughing. ‘Spring-heeled jack. All sorts of crazy ideas.’

  ‘What did he look like, then, this devil?’

  ‘She says he looked like death himself,’ said Tommy, with a theatrical leer.

  ‘Death?’ said James. ‘You mean a skeleton?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Tommy. ‘Though I hardly think that it really was a skeleton that attacked her.’

  James frowned. An image came into his mind of a man driving a Daimler. A skeletal man with a face like a skull.

  ‘So what do you think?’ said Pritpal. ‘Will your aunt be able to take you this weekend, James, or will you go down to the mission?’

  ‘Perry said he could forge me a letter,’ said James. ‘From his father. In all this confusion we might be able to get away with it. If I hurry I might just catch him. Wish me luck. I’ll see you later.’

  So saying, James turned and sprinted off down Judy’s Passage, images of a skull-faced man drifting through his mind like a ghost.

  7

  A Lovely Wreck

  St Lawrence’s Church in Upton was the other side of the playing fields, on the edge of Slough. As long as he kept the pace up, James could be there in ten minutes. He raced across Agar’s Plough, the cold air cutting into his lungs. A damp, yellow fog hung over the school grounds and he could see barely twenty feet in front of him.

  He knew his way across the fields well enough, but once he came to the town on the other side he was less sure of where he was going. He soon spotted the spire of the church, though, and as he pounded down the Datchett road he saw the unmistakable form of Perry Mandeville, sauntering along the pavement, using a piece of broken branch as a makeshift walking stick.

  James called out to him and Perry stopped and turned round.

  ‘James!’ he cried. ‘You changed your mind! I knew you would.’

  James caught up and for a moment was too out of breath to speak.

  ‘I’m glad you came,’ said Perry, taking him by the arm. ‘I have something to show you.’

  Before James could protest Perry dragged him across the road and round the back of the King’s Head pub into a small, scruffy yard.

  Resting on cinder blocks in the middle of the yard was a once-magnificent 41/2 litre Bentley ‘Blower’, the powerful, long-nosed two-seater motor car that was the favourite of British racing drivers.

  But this model had evidently seen better days.

  It had no wheels, the leather seats had been eaten away and the racing-green paintwork was badly scratched and worn.

  ‘What do you think?’ said Perry. ‘Isn’t she a lovely wreck?’

  ‘It’s a brutal machine,’ said James, running his hand along the big, imposing bonnet. ‘My aunt has one just like it. Although hers is in slightly better condition. What happened to this one?’

  ‘She was racing at Brookfield,’ boomed out a deep voice and James turned to see a man in a tweed overcoat coming out of the back door of the pub. ‘Her first time out,’ he went on. ‘And she threw a wheel.’

  The man approached
the car and lovingly patted her radiator. ‘She came off the track,’ he said. ‘Had quite a nasty smash. That was January. By May they’d put her back together and she was ready to race again. Halfway round the track, on her first lap, the engine caught fire. The driver was nearly killed. She was abandoned, poor thing, no one would take her, they thought she was unlucky. I picked her up in the summer for a song. I’ve been tinkering with her, trying to get her back on the road, but I’m no mechanic. Now my Beverley has said I’ve got to choose between her and the Bentley.’ He sighed. ‘Sadly, she has to go.’

  ‘Who?’ said Perry. ‘Your wife?’

  ‘It was a hard choice,’ said the man with a smile. ‘But I’m not selling the wife.’

  ‘What do you think?’ said Perry, clapping James on the shoulder. ‘M-Mister Hanson’s offering to sell her for two hundred and fifty pounds.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said James. ‘You’re not suggesting we buy her?’

  ‘I m-most certainly am,’ said Perry. ‘We’ll never find another m-motor like this for that sort of m-money.’

  ‘But we don’t have that sort of money,’ said James. ‘At least I don’t. Do you?’

  Perry dragged James out of earshot of Mr Hanson.

  ‘Not so loud,’ he said. ‘I’ve hinted that we have the m-money.’

  ‘Well, do you?’

  ‘Of course I don’t,’ hissed Perry. ‘But we can work on it. I’m sure we can come up with the cash from somewhere, hard graft and toil, armed robbery if we m-must. Just look at her, James. Between us we could put her back into shape and she’d be really something. The pride and joy of the Danger Society.’

  ‘We already have a car,’ said James.

  ‘That’s yours,’ said Perry. ‘And you won’t ever let anyone take her out for a blast. M-My plan is for everyone in the society to club together so that it can belong to us all. That’d be something, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it, though, just?’

  ‘I don’t know, Perry,’ said James. ‘It’s madness.’

  ‘Life would be empty without m-madness,’ said Perry.

  ‘I can’t think about this now,’ said James. ‘I need to talk to you.’

  ‘Doesn’t it break your heart, James?’ said Perry. ‘Seeing her sat there like that?’

  ‘Perry,’ James snapped. ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Perry and he arranged to come back and see Mr Hanson at a later date.

  Once they were out of earshot and heading back towards Eton, James told Perry about the fire. Perry thought it was the best thing to happen at the school for a long time.

  ‘So, shall we drive down to London together in style?’ asked Perry.

  ‘You have a one-track mind,’ said James. ‘For the last time, we are not taking the car.’

  ‘Do you have no sense of urgency?’ said Perry. ‘Who knows what’s happened to your M-Mister Fairburn.’

  ‘If we could only work out the rest of the clues,’ said James. ‘I could answer that question. We got off to a good start, but the cipher’s gone cold on us. We’ve only managed to solve two clues out of seven so far. The anagram of the boys’ names and the crossword clues that pointed us towards Professor Peterson in Cambridge.’

  ‘Remind m-me what the other ones are,’ said Perry.

  ‘There’s one about scoring in the Field Game and captaining a boat on the Fourth of June.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘There’s one about Nero and Cleopatra. There’s one about me not liking crosswords. Oh, yes, and there’s that awful poem about the Wall Game.’

  ‘You have no idea why he put the poem in the letter?’

  ‘None at all,’ said James. ‘Pritpal has looked for it in every poetry collection he can get his hands on, but he can’t find any mention of it, or the man who wrote it, David Balfour.’

  ‘Like in the story?’ said Perry.

  ‘What story?’ said James.

  ‘Oh, come along, James,’ said Perry, ‘you must have read it. Everyone I know has read it.’

  ‘Read what?’

  ‘The book by Robert Louis Stevenson!’ Perry exclaimed, throwing up his hands. ‘David Balfour must be just about one of the m-most famous fictional characters around.’

  James stopped walking and clutched his head in his hands.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ he said. ‘I know I’ve read it. Now you say it, the name sounds so familiar…’

  And then it hit him and everything changed.

  ‘My God, Perry,’ he said. ‘You’ve solved the next clue.’

  ‘Have I?’

  ‘Yes,’ said James. ‘I know the book, now, it’s Kidnapped, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is,’ said Perry.

  James grabbed him by the shoulders, a wild look in his eyes.

  ‘Perry,’ he said, ‘we’re going to Cambridge.’

  ‘In the m-motor?’ said Perry, grinning.

  ‘It’ll be the quickest way,’ said James. ‘I knew this was more than a game. Fairburn’s been kidnapped and we’ve got to find him before it’s too late.’

  It had been almost too easy arranging things with Codrose. The House was in chaos, with parents, policemen, boys and workmen coming and going. Codrose barely looked at the forged letter and seemed glad to be getting rid of James. It was one less thing for him to worry about.

  And now it was an hour later and James and Perry were skirting round London in the Bamford and Martin, disguised in their goggles, hats and overcoats.

  ‘Let’s hope you’re right about all this,’ Perry bellowed into the wind.

  ‘I don’t know whether I’d rather be right or wrong,’ shouted James. ‘If I’m wrong, and this is all just part of a damned silly game, then we’re risking a hell of a lot for nothing, but if I’m right, then it could get pretty serious.’

  Perry slowed down as they came to a village and the drumming of the wind quietened down.

  ‘Are you sure we shouldn’t just tell someone and let the police deal with it?’ he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the road ahead.

  ‘No, of course I’m not sure,’ said James. ‘Which is why I want to check it all out myself before I go blabbing to any grown-ups. What if it came out that we’d broken into Codrose’s study and stolen that letter? Especially as I promised the Head that I’d keep out of trouble. And now look at us. On top of everything else we’re driving a motor car.’

  ‘Best not to think about that,’ said Perry, accelerating as they left the village.

  ‘We’ll talk to Professor Peterson,’ James shouted. ‘He’ll know what to do.’

  ‘It’s pretty thrilling, though, isn’t it?’ Perry yelled, at the top of his voice, skilfully manoeuvring the car around a lumbering farm lorry packed with sheep. ‘To think that we could be solving a m-major crime.’

  ‘We’re not going to solve anything,’ James shouted. ‘If we find out for certain that Fairburn has been kidnapped then Peterson will probably go straight to the police and we’ll just have to face the consequences.’

  Two hours after leaving Windsor they were driving into the outskirts of Cambridge. They didn’t want to risk being spotted on the busy streets so they parked the car in a quiet side road south of the town around the corner from a cafe whose brightly lit windows were fogged with condensation.

  They climbed out of the car, their cold stiff limbs complaining.

  James removed his goggles. ‘We need to hurry,’ he said.

  ‘Listen, James,’ said Perry, hanging back. ‘I don’t think we should both go.’

  ‘What?’ said James. ‘Why?’

  ’Just to be on the safe side,’ said Perry. ‘What if this Professor Peterson is m-mixed up in this, somehow? What if the m-man who came to the Crossword Society meeting was him after all? We don’t know what Fairburn’s letter m-meant, he could have been trying to warn us. I’ll stay here and look after the car, then if anything happens I’ll be able to help you.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ said James. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t bot
h go blundering in there.’

  ‘I’ll m-meet you in that cafe we passed,’ said Perry. ‘Good luck.’

  James thanked him and walked off towards the centre of Cambridge.

  All the light had gone from the day. The streets were lit by flickering orange street lamps and an enticing glow that spilt from the windows and doors of the shops. There were already some Christmas decorations up and James spotted a toy shop that he would normally have stopped to have a look round.

  The route was well signposted and James soon found the right way to Trinity. There was a lively, busy atmosphere in the town. Students on bicycles, wearing long scarves, clogged the roads, ringing their bells and calling out to friends. Mothers and nannies with small children strolled on the pavements, looking in the shop windows. A group of music students stood on a corner opposite King’s College, singing carols accompanied by a four-piece brass band.

  In the same way that Eton was a town entirely dominated by a school, Cambridge was a town entirely dominated by a university. The huge rectangular chapel of King’s, with a pointed spire at each corner, reminded James of the chapel at Eton, and he vaguely recalled that it had been started at the same time. The king who had founded this college was the same king who had founded Eton, Henry VI, and the idea was that boys educated at Eton would come to study here when they left school.

  James walked on a little further and found the Trinity gatehouse; again he was struck by a resemblance to a building in Eton, this time the tall, red-brick Lupton’s Tower in School Yard. The gatehouse was squatter, though, and looked something like a miniature Tudor castle. An ancient and rather pathetic statue of Henry VIII stood above the entrance clutching a chair leg where his sceptre should have been, probably put there by a drunken student.

  Inside the gatehouse he found the porter’s lodge where a porter, wearing a dark-blue suit and bowler hat, was sitting drinking a cup of tea. James told him that he was running an errand for someone and had to deliver a message to Professor Peterson.

  ‘He’s popular this evening,’ said the porter, cheerily. ‘You’re his third visitor. Hang on a mo’.’