Wilma Tenderfoot: The Case of the Fatal Phantom (14 page)

“Actually, you couldn’t go anyway, master,” replied Janty, consulting his notebook as he wrote down Barbu’s wise words. “According to your evil schedule, you’ve arranged to meet Belinda for a follow-up romantic encounter.”

“Have I?” snapped Barbu with a frown. “That sounds ominous. What is it again, Janty?”

“It may involve kissing, master,” said the boy, checking his wooing handbook.

Barbu’s face contorted. “Kissing? Is that the wet thing on the face?”

“Yup.”

“How utterly revolting. Now then, Janty, while I am engaged in repulsive romance, I would like you to get on with that stealing we talked about. Poke
around at the same time. Make yourself a nuisance. Find anything interesting—bring it to me.”

As Wilma and her companions approached the top of the gorge, squalls of snow spiraled all around them and heavy clouds grumbled overhead. The storm, if anything, was getting worse. Wilma tied one end of her climbing rope around her waist and the other around Pickle. “Just in case!” she shouted over the gale. “Climbers have to buddy up for safety. And you’re my best buddy, so that’s why we’re tied together! Now we have to climb down into the gorge. But it’s almost a sheer descent!” The ground before them dropped away dramatically, and as they edged closer to the gorge edge, the wind buffeted them from every side so that each step became an effort.

“We must take care!” yelled Theodore, shielding his eyes from the onslaught of snow. “Stand back! I’m going to test the brink!” Taking the ice pick from his belt, the great detective skied forward gingerly.

As she watched Mr. Goodman, virtually holding
her breath with tension, Wilma suddenly felt a prickling sensation on the back of her neck. It was the Hunchy Instinct again, the one that left her stomach so unsettled. She couldn’t explain it, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being
watched
. She turned to look over her shoulder and something caught her eye—a small flash of movement in the distance. Lifting one of her mittened hands to her brow, Wilma strained to see through the ever-thickening snow. There it was again! Someone large and lumbering. But then, behind that, something else, dark and indefinable. “Mr. Goodman,” she yelled, a little concerned. “Something’s moving behind us!” But even as he turned, the shadows began to withdraw and the detective was left staring at nothing.

Inspector Lemone, who was at his wits’ end with fear as it was, whimpered. “Probably a branch falling from a tree or a deer leaping to shelter. Yes, that’s probably it. Just an animal. Or the light playing tricks on you.”

Wilma nodded. All the same, that feeling in her neck hadn’t gone.

“Okay!” called out Theodore. “Let’s have you and Pickle first. I’ll lower you over the edge. And then I want you to use your rope to rappel down the gorge wall. Make your way toward me! And tread carefully!”

Wilma thrust one ski deep into a large drift of snow and pushed her weight forward carefully, but as she did so, Pickle took a corresponding step, skidded sideways, and before anyone could react, he was careering, skis paddling like crazy, toward the edge of the gorge.

“Oh no!” shouted Inspector Lemone, making a lunge for the dog. His bare legs were so frozen, however, that he couldn’t move quickly enough. “He’s going over, Flatelly! Do something!” Irascimus threw himself at the sliding hound. But he was too late and Wilma, horror-struck, could only watch as Pickle’s startled face slid slowly but surely over the cliff edge and disappeared from sight.

Seconds later, she remembered the rope joining them. “Pickle!” she yelled, grasping for the end at her waist. She felt it jerk as Pickle fell to the limit of its length, and found herself sliding
toward the cliff edge. Grabbing at a large root that was sticking out of the ground, Wilma pushed her skis up against a boulder for leverage, and heaved on the rope with all the determination she had in her small body. The cliff edge began to crumble where the rope chafed and debris showered down on Pickle, but it was working, and before long the hound’s saucepan hat and little face appeared back over the top of the gorge edge. Mr. Goodman scooped him up and delivered him to Wilma’s waiting arms.

“Thank goodness you were wearing that saucepan, Pickle.” She gulped. “Or those falling rocks would have been the end of you!” It was a small comfort, but right at that precise moment, Pickle didn’t care. He just wanted a cuddle.

Behind them, there was a loud tearing noise. “Oh no!” said the Inspector, who had backed up onto a patch of snowed-over thorns. “I seem to have ripped my shorts. I’ll have to make the rest of the journey in my underpants.” He stared down at his hairy, exposed legs and overly large and slightly baggy underpants billowing in the breeze.
“I say, chaps,” he whispered, looking humiliated. “Let’s never speak of this again, eh? Never.”

Having set up some grappling hooks and made a strong and sturdy hold point, Theodore lowered a trembling Inspector Lemone and an excited Dr. Flatelly to the gorge floor before rappelling down himself with Wilma secured tightly to his back. As they bounced down Wilma couldn’t help reflecting that despite the fact that she was halfway down a sheer and dreadful drop, held on only by ropes and Mr. Goodman’s grip, she had never felt safer. Or happier. Pickle was rappelling down professionally just below them. Mr. Goodman had been about to lower Pickle after the archaeologist when the little dog had given his saucepan helmet head a shake, stepped into his rappelling harness, and made a flying leap into the air, the rope arcing outward behind him like an elongated tail, before executing a perfect flip-twist and coming back in toward the gorge wall, from where he had begun to bounce toward the valley floor with aplomb. Dogs are actually excellent rappellers. It’s a skill they like to keep quiet.
That and quilt making. Brilliant at it. You’d never know to look at them, would you?

As Wilma was unstrapping herself at the bottom of the cliff and giving Pickle an impressed thumbs-up, she caught sight again of something—or was it two things?—moving through the snow farther along the upper rim. Then they were gone again. She frowned.

“Inspector Lemone,” she muttered, tugging at his oversized sweater sleeve, “I don’t want to look silly in front of Mr. Goodman again, but I think…we’re being followed.”

Lemone’s eyes widened. “By something alive?” he asked anxiously.

“I’m not sure,” she whispered, giving his hand a squeeze.

There are some relevant words that you might like to try in this situation. PERIL is one of them and FOREBODING is the other. Whichever you prefer, they both mean the same thing: UH-OH!

T
he valley was a desolate place: Icicles hung from every crevice, dead trees stood petrified, and the odd upturned carcass of a frozen mule did nothing to improve matters. The wind whipped through the gorge, bouncing off the echoey canyon walls so that the sound of its howling was amplified again and again. Skis now strapped to their backs, Wilma and her companions were looking for the mine’s entrance point, but as they didn’t know exactly where that was or what it looked like, and the snow was coming down heavily, the challenge was on. Added to
this, the gorge was a mass of twists and turns, with craggy outcrops that loomed over them and rough gravel underfoot. It was no easy task.

“Crumbs!” said Wilma as she passed the skeleton of an upturned horse. “They don’t call this place Drop Dead Gorge for nothing, do they?” Pickle stared at the bones and drooled. He hadn’t eaten in hours. He sidled toward them. Perhaps if he just had one tiny lick? “No, Pickle,” warned Wilma, seeing what he was about to do. But Pickle had already lost interest in the bones. He had stiffened in the wind, nose straight and true, and with one paw aloft, he gestured upward. Wilma followed Pickle’s gaze. “What is it? A yellow rock…Hey, is that…? Of course—it’s in the shape of an eagle! Like the rock pictures in Bludsten’s notebook, like the golden bird claw treasure itself. This MUST be the mine entrance. Look!” she yelled to the others. “And well done, Pickle!”

The strange eagle-like formation seemed to be flying at them from the gorge wall, huge wings unfurled and beak gaping as if about to scoop them up and swallow them whole. Wilma
shivered a little and pulled her scarf tighter. The rock here was yellowed by a strange lichen, adding to the golden-eagle effect.

Mr. Goodman had made his way toward a fissure just below the bird rock. “Yes, I think we’ve found it,” he yelled, brushing snow aside to reveal some old planks of wood nailed between the two rock walls.

“Bludsten must have boarded the place up,” shouted Irascimus, holding on to his hat.

“Help me break through,” called Theodore, turning to Inspector Lemone. “The wood is quite rotten. It shouldn’t be too difficult.”

Wilma, who had never been on a proper outdoors adventure before, was, she had to confess, finding all of this incredibly thrilling. She was up to her knees in snow, she had almost tumbled off a cliff top, she had rappelled with Mr. Goodman, and now here she was, on the cusp of exploring a disused gold mine that might be jam-packed with missing treasure. Or clues. Or spooks. She looked down at Pickle and grinned, but he was still thinking about those bones. Oh, those lovely bones!

“Wilma!” called Theodore, having broken through the rotten planks. “Light that lantern we brought with us, will you? It’s pitch-black in here.”

Wilma untied the small lantern that she’d attached to Pickle’s back. Taking a candle from her duffel pocket, she slotted it into the lantern. Pulling off her mittens and blowing on her freezing fingers, she was able to reach into her pinafore pocket, take out a box of matches and strike one, her back to the wind. The lantern flamed into life.

“Shall I carry it for you, Mr. Goodman?” she asked, hurrying to the mine’s entrance. “I haven’t done much apprenticeship stuff on this trip and I expect lantern holding is probably something I should take a turn at.”

“All right, Wilma,” said Theodore, his voice slightly muffled because his mustache had frozen solid. “But hold it high. And tell me if your arm gets tired.”

Wilma nodded. Yes! This meant she got to go first, which technically made her the pioneer proper of this particular adventure. Everyone knows that
the person who goes first is officially the person who finds stuff. The person credited with finding America, for example, is Christopher Columbus but actually, the whole idea of turning left at Greenland was down to a woman named Zoop Erkins, the real leader of the expedition. Does she get the credit? Oh no. Christopher Columbus does, because he was the one holding the lantern, so he got to go first. That’s just how it works.

The tunnel that spread ahead of them was cramped and dark. An abandoned cart lay on its side, a few lengths of frayed rope hanging from its harness points, and to the right of it Wilma could just make out what appeared to be a side chamber.

Clambering over a broken wheel and holding the lantern as high as she could, Wilma shone the light into the smaller cavern. “Mr. Goodman,” she gasped, “you might want to see this!” Shelves covered one wall, most of them bare except for a small pile of papers. “They’re instructions for a kind of magic box and…old jokes,” said Wilma, scanning them quickly. “What’s brown and taps on your window?” she read. “A poo on stilts.” She blinked and quietly returned the paper to the
shelf. To their left, a large copper boiling pot was sitting on what appeared to be an old furnace. A few chains lay scattered on the floor, and on the wall, in a frame, was a strange-looking map. Wilma held the lantern closer to it so as to get a better look. “It looks like a map of the mine,” she said.

Theodore raised his eyebrows. He took a penknife from his pocket. “Let’s take this with us. It could be useful.” With a few deft flicks, the great detective prised the map from its fixtures. “There you go, Wilma,” he added, handing it to his young apprentice. “You know what to do.”

“Bag it and tag it, Mr. Goodman.” She nodded, trying to take it in her left hand. But the lantern was so heavy, she’d been using both hands to keep it high and as she took the map it fell from her fingers, nearly plunging them into darkness.

“Why don’t you give that to me?” offered Dr. Flatelly. “I’d be happy to hold the lantern for you.”

Wilma blinked. She quite liked being the one to go first, thank you very much. Being the one to go first meant you found stuff, like the map on the wall. So there was no way she was going to let
Dr. Flatelly take the lantern. No way at all. “It’s all right,” she said, smiling sweetly. She pocketed the map and swung the lantern up again.

“Hang on a moment,” Theodore said excitedly. “Wave the lantern back that way again. I thought I saw something on that far wall.”

Following Theodore’s pointing finger, Wilma took a step forward and dangled the lantern to the left. “Oh my,” she whispered as the light hit the other side of the chamber. The wall before them was covered in a series of strange pictures and scrawls.

“Looks like ancient Cooperan,” said the detective seriously (and greatly), stepping closer. “You wrote a paper on that once, didn’t you, Dr. Flatelly? Can you translate it?”

The archaeologist stood in front of the wall and gazed up, taking his glasses off as he did so. There was a picture of a large golden claw, then below it a series of drawings: a cherry, something that looked like a maggot, some mathematical symbols between them, then an arrow that pointed to a question mark with two map scrolls next to it.

“What do you think that all means?” asked Wilma, peering to see better.

“Not sure,” replied Theodore. “Quite interested in those mathematical symbols, though. Is it ancient Cooperan or is it made up? Mind you, it’s not uncommon for people to make up things in order to get what they want. You should remember that, Wilma.” He gave her a meaningful look. Wilma hoped he was onto something and it wasn’t his cold coming back and affecting his judgment again.

“So, Dr. Flatelly, can you make head or tail of it?” she said.

The archaeologist frowned and shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t identify the script. It’s not Cooperan, ancient or otherwise.”

“They look a bit like those symbols and pictures in Bludsten’s diary,” said Wilma, remembering what she had seen the day before.