Wilma Tenderfoot: The Case of the Fatal Phantom (15 page)

“Perhaps Bludsten wrote a code of his own devising,” suggested Flatelly. “Wilma, do you still have his diary with you?”

“I do, yes,” she said. “It’s in my pinafore pocket.”

“Thank you,” said the archaeologist, reaching into her pocket and taking it. Wilma gulped. She didn’t like the fact that Dr. Flatelly had taken evidence from her own pinafore without asking, but she couldn’t hold the lamp and take the diary back.

“There was a small table in the entrance,” Dr. Flatelly continued. “Perhaps if I could just borrow the lantern I can study this quickly and see if there’s a key page.” He edged in that direction, Wilma glued to his side and keeping a careful eye on the diary.

“I thought keys were made of metal, not pages,” she remarked, still wondering how she was going to get the diary back.

“Well, keys normally are made of metal, yes,” explained Mr. Goodman as Irascimus gently prised the lantern from Wilma’s fingers. “But a key page is like a code breaker. It tells you how to decipher something that on first glance may appear unreadable. However, Dr. Flatelly,” he called after the archaeologist’s already receding back, “I—”

“Oh no!” Dr. Flatelly screamed from just beyond the chamber. “Oh please, NO!”

Wilma spun around. Suddenly the air around them seemed even colder. Dr. Flatelly was now framed in the side chamber’s doorway, lantern aloft, backing away from something and trembling. A huge, shadowy mass rushed at him, flinging him sideways into the beam supporting the entrance. Knocked unconscious by the impact, Flatelly collapsed to the floor and the lantern rolled sideways back into the room.

“Take the lantern, Wilma!” shouted Theodore as he raced toward her. “Try to see its face!”

Wilma swallowed, grabbing the lantern from the floor near her feet and holding it up. There, looming above her, was a monstrously tall figure, hooded in black. Wilma stared upward to see a set of vile fangs glistening in the candlelight. “The F…F…Fatal Phantom …” she whimpered, rigid with fear. With a loathsome hiss the form began to move toward her, two horrifying claws extending to grab her, two dark red eyes burning out from within the depths of its cowl.

“Noooo!” she wailed, flailing at it with the lantern. Pickle barked and ran forward, but as he did so, Wilma stepped backward into him and stumbled sideways into a wooden prop supporting the ceiling beam. As she struck it, it shifted suddenly and the wood gave a groan. The monster screamed and edged closer, and Wilma and Pickle scrabbled farther back, this time colliding with Mr. Goodman as he raced to their rescue. Wilma bounced forward as the Phantom, with a dreadful shriek, lunged and struck the edge of the ceiling beam, which began to topple. The ceiling gave way and with the creature’s startling screech ringing in Wilma’s ears, the doorway collapsed in on itself.

Dust filled the room. Wilma was coughing violently. She could hear Theodore and the Inspector coughing behind her, but the room had been plunged into darkness as the candle in the lantern was smothered. Was the Fatal Phantom still in the room with them? As soon as the thought struck her, Wilma found herself frozen to the spot—literally. What was happening? Was it
the ghoul casting a spooky spell on her? Would they all die here, unable to move as the spirit wreaked its terrible revenge on them for daring to go after its treasure? Was this the end for Wilma Tenderfoot, detective apprentice extraordinaire, and the serious and great Detective Goodman? Just then Pickle, who had been sneezing on a loop since the collapse of the doorway, finally gave a loud snort and sent a plume of sticky nose-dust all over Wilma. “Ew!” She wiped herself down frantically. Still spluttering, she reached into her pocket and found another match. She blew into the lantern to clean it, relit the candle, and held it aloft. The doorway out into the rest of the mine was completely blocked. The ghost was gone. But they were trapped. Still coughing, Wilma turned to Theodore, who was just visible through the haze of dust. “Oops!” she said.

“Don’t worry, Wilma,” Mr. Goodman reassured her, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket. “It wasn’t your fault…exactly.”

The young apprentice pushed against the floor to stand up. “OW!” she exclaimed as something sharp pressed into her hand. “Ooh!” she added
when she saw what it was. “Mr. Goodman, I think one of the Phantom’s talons broke off in the scrabble. It’s stuck here, in the floor. It’s even got ectoplasm under the nail.” She shuddered. “Yuck. Now I’ve touched it, does that mean I’ll be possessed too?!”

“I very much doubt it, Wilma.” Theodore reached once again for his pocketknife and levered the long, strangely flimsy nail from the floor. He held it briefly in the lamplight, made a note in his notebook, then tucked it into his pocket. “Well found, though.”

Wilma was delighted—she was really proving her apprentice detective mettle on this expedition, even if she had also helped to trap them in a very dark and scary mine. “Well,” she said, brushing dirt from the hem of her pinafore, “I don’t suppose you think there’s no such thing as ghosts now, eh, Mr. Goodman?”

The detective patted his pocket and his mustache twitched. “Oh, there is no doubt the Phantom is our newest culprit, Wilma. But not in quite the way that you mean.”

Well, that was that, Wilma thought. He still
didn’t believe in ghosts, even after everything that had just happened. Mr. Goodman had obviously gone quite mad.

“Besides, we have more urgent matters to deal with right now,” the great detective continued.

“Like whether Dr. Flatelly’s been killed by that Phantom, you mean?”

“It doesn’t look good,” interrupted Inspector Lemone. “But more importantly, how are we going to get out?”

Wilma turned to Mr. Goodman, knowing he would have a grand plan.

Wiping the dirt from his mustache, the great detective stood and faced his companions. “I’m about to make a very rare deduction,” he declared, even more serious than when at his most serious. “I think we might be in a vast amount of trouble.”

Wilma gasped. Pickle whimpered. So did Lemone.

You don’t say?

V
ery slowly Inspector Lemone heaved sideways into the rack of shelves, put his head in the crook of his arm, and started wailing. “I don’t want to die,” he blubbered. “And I’m not even wearing trousers. They’ll find our bodies in hundreds of years. And an archaeologist will look at me and think, Why was he only wearing underpants? Baggy underpants at that. WHY? Maybe I can make myself a pair of trousers using this dirty bit of rope.”

“Don’t worry, old friend,” soothed Theodore, placing a reassuring hand on his colleague’s shoulder. “At least we’re in this together.”

Wilma had gotten out her apprentice detective’s notebook and was on her hands and knees flicking through it by the lantern light. She looked up. “I’m trying to find the newspaper cuttings I’ve got of all your old cases, Mr. Goodman,” she said. “I used to have them on my Clue Ring, but I stuck them in here when I got my official notebook. There was that time in the Case of the Damaged Drainpipe where you were trapped in a barrel but you rolled yourself down a hill to get out of that scrape. Although we’re not in a barrel. And we haven’t got a hill. Then there was the time you were stuck in a dungeon but you had a lock to pick, which we don’t. We’ve just got rubble. I could start moving the rocks and things. Shall I do that, Mr. Goodman?”

“I don’t think the structure is stable enough, Wilma,” pondered Theodore, examining the debris that blocked their path.

“And Dr. Flatelly had the diary,” added Wilma, face falling. “When the Phantom got him. So we can’t look at that. You know, for secrets.”

“We’ll have no more chat about the Phantom
right now,” said the great detective sternly, brushing dust from the sleeves of his overcoat. “But I have just realized that we still have the map we took from the wall. Hold up the lantern, Wilma, and let’s take a look at it.”

The three of them crowded into a huddle around the map. “Interesting,” said Theodore, frowning with concentration. “That doorway was the only exit, but look here.” He pointed. “There’s a chamber on the other side of that far wall. And according to this map, there would appear to be a shaft from there that leads to an underground water source. Beyond that, there seems to be a way out.”

“So we need to get into the other chamber,” said Wilma. “But how are we going to do that? There’s a solid wall there. Only spooks can get through it.”

“Oh no!” wailed Inspector Lemone. “Does that mean that dreadful thing can waft through and get us too?”

“I doubt that very much, Inspector,” assured Theodore, rolling up his sleeves. “We are clearly
in a highly unstable environment, but we can make that work to our advantage. If the ceiling can collapse to our left, then we should be able to get the wall to collapse to our right. If the measurements on this map are correct, I estimate that wall is probably no more than six inches wide. And what is more,” he added, picking at it with his fingers, “it’s made of talcum rock. That’s the softest rock there is. We’ll dig through this in no time.”

“But how?” cried Inspector Lemone. “We’ve got no proper tools, and I’ve had nothing to eat since breakfast. My sugar levels are code red. That’s verging on critical.”

Wilma blinked. This was precisely the sort of situation where an apprentice needed to think on her feet. “Number one, I’ve got some dog biscuits in my pinafore pocket.” Pickle’s ears cocked upward. Dog biscuits? Here? Now? “They’re chicken-flavored. They’re no corn crumble of course, Inspector, but if you close your eyes you can probably pretend.” Wilma held out two chicken-shaped biscuits. Pickle licked his lips…
then watched, dumbstruck, as Inspector Lemone took them both.

“Close my eyes, you say?” answered Lemone, popping the biscuits into his mouth. “Imagine they’re corn crumbles? Ooh!” He chewed, eyes clamped shut. “They are…meaty! Dry as a bone! Slight gristly texture! Mrs. Speckle! Oh dear,” he panted as he struggled to swallow the last bits down. “That was AWFUL.”

Pickle blinked and stared. This was an OUTRAGE.

“Number two,” continued Wilma, hitting her stride, “we don’t have any proper tools, but my Academy textbook says that you should always try to make the best of things with what you’ve got. There’s a proper word for it, but I can’t remember.”

“Improvise,” chipped in Theodore with a solemn smile.

“Yes.” Wilma nodded forcefully. “That. So I think we can impy…that thing…with Pickle’s saucepan helmet. We can use it to scoop and dig.” She untied the pan from under her beagle’s chin,
marched toward the wall, and began to scrape at it. “There you are,” she said, beaming. “It’s working already! I may be small, Mr. Goodman, but I’m very determined!”

“That you are, Wilma.” Theodore smiled. “Good work. Now then, Lemone! Help me move this shelving unit out of the way. You carry on with the pan, Wilma; I’ll use this bit of broken plank; you can use one of your shoes, Lemone, and Pickle, you can dig with your paws! If we work together, we’ll be through and out of here in no time!”

Some people like to do things on their own. That way they get all the credit and they don’t run the risk of losing their temper with anyone or having to chat about terrible holidays or unpleasant skin complaints for hours on end. And some problems are often best dealt with by one person—constructing flat-pack furniture or trying to work out the mystery of soufflés, for example. However, other things are best tackled in a cheerful group, and it just so happens that escaping from a certain slow and terrifying death
in an underground mine is pretty much at the top of the list. Which was fortunate for everyone concerned.

Working together, the team dug furiously and within an hour they had a big enough hole in the wall to be able to see another chamber beyond. “A few more scoops,” panted Wilma, “and I’ll squeeze through!”

It wasn’t long before Pickle, Wilma, and Theodore had wriggled their way through the hole and were standing in a vast cavern filled with stalagmites. Now the latter two had hold of Inspector Lemone’s arms and were pulling with all their might to get him through as well. It’s a basic law of physics that round things generally can go in holes, but when the round things are as rotund as Inspector Lemone, a gentleman with a woeful weakness for biscuits and buns, this is how things end up. “Pull…a…bit…harder!” shouted Wilma, throwing her head back and tugging.

“Breathe in, Lemone!” panted Theodore, put-ting one foot up against the wall for extra grip.

Pickle looked on and did nothing. Maybe if
Lemone hadn’t eaten his dog biscuits he might be slipping through that hole like a greased banana. But he did. As far as Pickle was concerned, he had only himself to blame. The lesson to learn from this, children, is NEVER eat a dog’s biscuits. Ever. Especially when the dog is watching.

The Inspector was well and truly stuck and, finally, they had to admit it. Theodore stopped pulling and wiped his brow, his mustache twitching as he thought. “We need some sort of lubricant,” he announced.

“Looby what?” asked Wilma, hands on knees and gasping for breath.

“Lubricant,” explained Theodore. “Anything that makes things feel slippery. Like grease, or oil.”

“Oh!” said Wilma, brightening. “That! Well, I packed a can of crushed slugs with the adventure gear. In case of mechanical mishaps!”

“We haven’t got anything mechanical with us.” Mr. Goodman frowned.

“Well, it was a just-in-case thing. So I thought I’d pack it nonetheless.”

“Good job you did, Wilma!” Theodore beamed, bending down and extracting the can of crushed
slugs from Pickle’s saddlebag. Wilma could hardly contain her pride. She was on a roll. Being trapped underground in perilous circumstances obviously suited her. “Now then, Lemone, you might want to hold your nose,” Theodore continued. “This does have a rather powerful odor.”

Try to remember the worst smell you have ever smelled. Perhaps it was a dead rat stuck under some floorboards? Or a large rotting mackerel stitched into some curtains? Or, heaven forbid, the stinking feet of any teenage boy who likes to wear the same socks every day for a year without washing them. Imagine that smell now. Then multiply it by a hundred. Even then you are nowhere near close to experiencing the foul stench of crushed slugs. It is literally the worst odor known to man. Or woman. Especially woman.