The Riddle of the Frozen Phantom

Margaret Mahy

Illustrated by Chris Mould

Contents

Cover

Title Page

1. At the Very Back of the Drawer

2. A Strange Awakening

3. The First Listener

4. The Second Cry for Help

5. The Third Cry of Help

6. On the Trampoline

7. Mukluk Kissing

8. Two Different Careers

9. The Treachery of a Housekeeper

10. A Startling Idea for a Devoted Father

11. Unexpected Air Travel

12. Wicked Plans in Black Planes

13. Getting There

14. A Skiddoo is Stolen

15. Off and Away at Last

16. A Ghost with Problems

17. The End of the Road

18. Up in the Air

19. Ghostly Horror

20. Penguins and Ghosts

21. Whoops!

22. Smotheration by Snow

23. The Captain Waits

24. Sophie Believes the Pendant

25. Who Goes Next?

26. The Riddle at Last

27. Villains Can’t Trust Other Villains

28. The Logbook at Last

29. Antarctic Wishes

Keep Reading

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1 At the Very Back of the Drawer

Suddenly, something clonked softly at the back of the empty drawer.

Sophie Sapwood, sitting in a sea of old photographs, stopped listening to her brothers who were outside, shouting and whistling as they bounced on the family trampoline. She tuned in to the back of the drawer instead.

She had been planning to go out to the trampoline herself, just to show both brothers the best way to turn somersaults in the air. After all, she had already found what she had been searching for – photographs of their dead mother which she had studied carefully. There was nothing left to look for. The drawer was completely empty.

But it wasn’t! It couldn’t be! Somewhere at the very back of the drawer, somewhere behind that first empty openness, something had clonked softly Sophie tugged at the drawer, trying to pull it right out, but it remained obstinately jammed halfway. Reaching in once more, her searching fingers spidered left, then spidered right. Nothing! But then, by flattening her arm, Sophie managed to reach just a little further and her fingertips brushed something smooth. Whatever it was was also icy cold, which was unexpected on such a warm morning. After all, here in New Zealand it was nearly midsummer – nearly Christmas.

The night before, Sophie had dreamed about her mother. She had woken and lain in bed for a few minutes without actually opening her eyes while she tried to work out if her mother had really looked like the mother in the dream. It had bothered Sophie to find that, though she could remember her mother’s voice, though she could remember the songs she had sung and her way of laughing, she was no longer sure about the colour of her hair, or the shape of her nose. That was why she had sneaked upstairs, all on her own, to sort through the bottom drawer in an old forgotten chest of drawers, boxed in by family junk at the back of the upstairs spare room. This drawer was crammed with photographs – some of Sophie’s mother, some of her big brother, Edward, and her little brother, Hotspur, and some of Sophie herself. Most of the photographs, however, showed icebergs, distant mountains and her father, the famous Antarctic explorer, Bonniface Sapwood, proudly posing beside sledges, flags and whole parties of penguins. There were even one or two photographs of the redheaded penguin-expert Corona Wottley, who had been part of an exploring expedition Bonniface had organised several years ago.

Sophie had patiently worked her way right through that jam-packed, higgelty-piggelty, mishmash of Antarctic photographs until she had entirely emptied the drawer… or at least, she thought she had. Yet here she was, touching this clicking, cold shape; this whatever-it-was which must have been left and lost for years and years. Scrabbling busily, she got a grip on it. Gently, she drew it out into the light of day.

Dangling from her dusty fingers was a yellowish-white pendant – a milky tear carved from a bone. Whalebone, perhaps, thought Sophie. It was threaded on a thin strip of leather rather like a long bootlace. The greenish light, filtering through the ivy that half-covered the upstairs window, seemed to love this pendant, stroking it, then sinking into it. Sophie loved it too – loved it so much that she immediately hung it around her neck and then, leaping across the room, stared at herself in the dusty mirror above the old dressing table.

How strange! The pendant had changed her. She had suddenly become a girl with a secret. She touched it wonderingly. It must have been shut up in the drawer for years and years, and during that time no one had worn it or warmed it or wanted it. It’s meant for me, thought Sophie. Even though Christmas was a whole five days away she felt that the house had given her a sort of early Christmas present. “It’s meant for me,” she repeated aloud, and nobody argued or contradicted her. However, just to be on the safe side, she slipped the pendant down under her T-shirt. For some reason she felt certain that, although it wanted to be worn, it also wanted to be hidden. Perhaps there was something it needed to hide from.

As it slid down over her heart, stroking her warm skin, Sophie gasped, for it still felt as cold as – no! even colder than ice! She clapped both hands against her chest as if she were in pain. But within a second or two the pendant began to feel a little less cold. Sophie’s skin was working on it.

Aha! I’m the boss! thought Sophie, and began packing photographs back into the drawer, but neatly this time. She looked at the photographs of her mother all over again.

We do look alike, she thought. That means she’s still here in a way I’m watching the world for both of us. And this thought made her happy.

She leaped up, made for the door and pounded down the stairs on her way out to play with her brothers on the family trampoline.

There was no way that Sophie could have known as she hopped from one step to another, with the pendant slowly warming up against her skin, that far away in a lost part of the wild Antarctic coast, a pair of eyes that had been closed for a long, long time were opening. Someone – someone who had not moved for the last seventy years – had begun to stir.

CHAPTER 2 A Strange Awakening

“Cold!” that someone muttered, hugging himself. “I’m so cold!”

Although he was in a cold place, it wasn’t the cold around him he was feeling. The cold about which he was complaining seemed to be welling out of his very heart. At first that was the only thing he really knew. He certainly wasn’t sure who he was or even what he was (though a lot of people feel like this when they wake from deep sleep). He struggled to open his eyes properly and, at long last, he did open them, looking out into a deep and ancient darkness stained with strange blue light. When he turned his head, this light turned too, as if it were somehow watching him. And horrakapotchkin! What was that directly above him? Long teeth, preparing to bite him in two? The fangs of a ferocious beast?

Frozen with cold! Frozen with terror! the waking man thought. But is the world freezing me or am I freezing the world?

But the faint blue light seemed to be soaking into those teeth. Of course! They were not really teeth. They were icicles. The man took a deep breath.

“Who am I?” he asked aloud. “Where am I? What am I doing here? And why?” He shook some of these questions out of his spinning head. “Pull yourself together!” he told himself sternly. “One thing at a time! Now! Who am I? I am… I am!…”

“The Captain!” said a voice in his head – his own voice. “You are the Captain!”

“Right!” he said aloud. “I remember now! I am the Captain! Well, if I’m the Captain I should be up and doing, not lying around in the dark.” And, flattening himself, he began sliding out from under those glassy teeth. To his amazement, he felt, as he wriggled and slid, that he was much lighter than he had somehow imagined he would be. Indeed, it was as if he weighed nothing at all. This unexpected lightness unbalanced him. He wobbled! He swung one arm into the air. Immediately, the longest tooth of ice plunged greedily into it. The Captain screwed up his eyes, expecting blood and pain, but there was no blood, and no pain either. He lowered his arm and the glassy tooth slid out of it without leaving a single mark even on the sleeve of his heavy jacket. Flattening himself once more, he wriggled out from under the toothy icicles, swung his legs sideways, stood up carefully and looked out into the darkness.

The strange blue glow was slowly eating into the shadows around him. It seemed to be coming from him, seeping out of the folds and wrinkles of his clothes. And suddenly the Captain knew exactly where he was. He had been lying on his very own bunk, in his very own cabin, on his very own ship – the gallant Riddle.

His fingers, muffled in three pairs of fine woollen gloves, crept across the fur collar of his great jacket. Horrakapotchkin! His ears had disappeared. But then he realised he was wearing his balaclava and two knitted hats, and that his ears were tucked quite safely beneath them. He fingered the high collar of his natural wool jersey and below that his shirt, the top of his long johns and then not just one but three layers of underwear. He was searching for his whalebone good-luck charm – a charm he had carved and polished himself during his very first Antarctic winter night, back before he rose to the rank of captain. He had shared many adventures with that charm and believed it had carried him safely through many dangers.

“Where’s my pendant?” he asked aloud. The sound of his own echoing voice frightened him. “Hang on! You’re going too fast!” he told himself in a stern whisper. “Begin again! Now, I’m the captain. Right! I’m in my cabin. Right! There’s my captain’s desk! What’s that lumpy thing sitting on it? Oh, it must be the ship’s logbook. But what’s happened to it? Oh, I see! It’s covered with ice. And it’s very thick ice. I must have been asleep for ages.” He puzzled for a moment, then shrugged and went on. “Never mind! What really matters is that my memory is rushing back safe and sound from wherever it has been.”

But this was where the Captain’s memory stopped rushing back. He found he had absolutely no idea of where in the Antarctic The Riddle might happen to be. “Look around!” he told himself sternly. “Work it out!” So he peered this way and that into the gloom, noticing there was ice underfoot and ice overhead, and at last he stood up and made for the cabin door which he tried to open. The blueish light moved with him.

But the door was iced shut. Why, he could not even turn the door handle! The Captain pushed hard. Nothing moved. He put his shoulder to the door and tried to jolt it open with good old-fashioned sailor-power.

Almost at once, he found himself standing on the other side of the door, looking back at it in surprise. Had it opened? No! Somehow, he seemed to have gone straight through it, ice and all. Odd! Very odd! He thumped it experimentally Bang! It seemed quite solid. He thumped harder and this time his hand sank deep into the ice and wood. The Captain pulled his hand free and frowned down at his faintly glowing, gloved fingers.

He shrugged. “Perhaps all doors are like that,” he murmured (though deep down he knew they weren’t). “I might have forgotten,” (though deep down he knew he hadn’t). “I’ve been fast asleep, and now it’s taking me a minute or two to remember the way things ought to be.”

Ahead he saw faint, blueish light coming down the companionway. Where were his officers? Where was his crew? Above all, where was his old friend, the First Mate, Escher Black? There wasn’t even the smallest cabin boy in sight. “All hands aft!” he shouted, just in case, but no one joined in with a cheery. “Aye aye, Sir!” He tried again. “Escher! Escher Black! Heave to, Escher!”

Silence!

“I’ve lost my pendant and I’ve lost my memory. I’ve lost my ship’s crew and I’ve lost my best friend,” he said to himself, climbing the companionway. “Something terrible must have happened for Escher Black would never desert me. But I mustn’t waste time worrying. I must remember! Now! Why does The Riddle look so strange? I do know ships don’t usually look like this. It really is a riddle.”

For the ship seemed hung about with frozen sails and veils of ice. Ice curved all the way around The Riddle. Ice arched over it, masts and all. I’m in a cave, thought the Captain (looking high, looking low as he worked things out). So he was.

The cave was dim, but not quite dark. Light, rather like the light that was still seeping out of the Captain himself, was finding its way through cracks and twisting shafts in the white, glittering roof. It was beautiful but very puzzling.

A slanting bridge, swollen with ice, connected the icy ship to the frozen land. That must be the gangplank, thought the Captain. I’ll just slither down it, walk off a little way and look back at The Riddle. If I put a bit of distance between me and the ship – if I look back at it – I might get some clues.

But he couldn’t walk down that gangplank. It wasn’t just the iciness of it. He couldn’t so much as set foot on it. Whenever he tried, the air seemed to thicken and freeze in front of him. Try as he might, he could not take a single step away from The Riddle.

Suddenly, the Captain understood! He wasn’t an ordinary captain any more. He was a ghost captain… a phantom… a spook! He wasn’t living on The Riddle (wherever it might happen to be), he was haunting it. He must be dead.

Just for a moment the Captain was terrified.

“Help!” he cried aloud. His ghost voice sprang away from him like a salt sea breeze. It swirled around the cave then shot off towards the bright, outside world. “Help! Help! Help!” the Captain cried three times. “Help! Help! Help!” went the echoes, on and on, up into the overhead tunnels through which the light was seeping into the cave, and out into the unknown space beyond.

The captain heard his own echoes fly outwards and upwards, but there was no reply. He was all alone, haunting a lost ship, in an unknown cave, somewhere in a desert of ice. He would have wept with despair if he hadn’t been the ghost of a particularly brave man.

What he did not know was that his three cries for help were already flying at great speed through the outside world, every one of them determined to find the right listener.

CHAPTER 3 The First Listener

“Help!” went the Captain’s first call.

If an ordinary person had shouted. “Help!” the cry would have dissolved into the Antarctic air. But the Captain had called out in a ghost voice. His first cry flew like a stormy petrel across the islands and salt seas of the great Southern Ocean. It flew above schools of whales and crossed the secret airy routes of the wandering albatross until it came to New Zealand, a country made up of islands, jam-packed with possible listeners.

Most ears are closed to a ghost cry. All the same, some ghost cries can be very persistent. This one searched for a special ear – an ear that would welcome it and invite it in, and at last it found one. It curled its way through the caves and tunnels of this ear, and into the sleeper’s dreams.

“Help!” The explorer Corona Wottley sat up in bed, running her long fingers through her carroty curls as she did so.

“That’s funny!” she cried aloud. “That’s very strange. Was that someone calling for help?” Her head was swimming with visions of ice and snow. “Albino penguins!” she exclaimed. “It’s ages since I wondered about that colony of albino penguins. There were lots of stories about it, but no one has ever found out if it really exists. And what about the lost ship… what was it called? Yes! The Riddle! I haven’t thought about The Riddle for years either. Why not? Bonniface Sapwood may have given up searching for it, the great big wimp, but that doesn’t mean everyone else has to give up. If I set out now – immediately, if not sooner – and if I am strong and brave and determined, I might be the explorer who finds The Riddle. And I could look for the albino penguins at the same time. Suppose I found The Riddle and the white penguins too. That would show Bonniface Sapwood he isn’t the only Antarctic explorer in the world.”

She leaped out of bed and began to do a few warming-up exercises to get herself fit for the Antarctic, where warming-up exercises are particularly important.

CHAPTER 4 The Second Cry for Help

“Help!” The second ghost cry flew over the great Southern Ocean just as the first had done, and found the same country made up of islands. And at last the second cry found an ear that had been waiting for just such a cry, without quite knowing what it was waiting for. While the beautiful explorer, Corona Wottley, was beginning her exercises, an eye was opening in a mansion high on a hill in the middle of the business area of a great city… an eye so dark with black thoughts and wickedness you couldn’t tell where the iris left off and the peering pupil began.

That eye stared up at a ceiling painted white – white as paper, white as snow – a ceiling that glittered from time to time with sharp little rainbows. Then, on the other side of the long nose, a second black eye opened, too, and these two eyes stared up at the points of rainbow glitter, a little sleepily at first but then sharply, and (within a second) more sharply still. Below those eyes, below the nose, there was a movement. A mouth began curving in a long, thin smile… a smile so cruel and greedy that it couldn’t really count as a smile even if it did turn up at the ends.

The owner of that smile sat up in bed. He was wearing black pyjamas with diamond buttons. His sheets were made of black silk. His blankets were spun from the finest black wool, and his quilt was made from the skins of rare, coal-black foxes. And, though the ceiling was so white and glittering, the walls of his bedroom were made out of polished ebony. So he was cuddled and contained by darkness.

Directly opposite the end of his bed a huge framed map hung on the wall, and any explorer worth his salt would have been able to tell at a casual glance that it was the map of the Antarctic.

“The Riddle!” the man in black pyjamas murmured to himself. “Why haven’t I thought of The Riddle for such a long time? I suppose with all those diamonds Grandaddy stole (and which came to me when he died, ha! ha!) I haven’t really needed to remember it. But that cry I just dreamed – that cry of Help! – has reminded me all over again. Of course, I’ve still got plenty of those diamonds left over,” (here he looked up at his glittering ceiling) “but a man can always do with more. Besides, Grandaddy may not have brought them all back with him, and if he didn’t, it’s my sacred duty to search for any that he might have left behind him. Yes! The Riddle must be found. It will be found. But who can I get to find it for me – because a delicate man like me can’t go turning the Antarctic upside down. A man like me needs someone else to do all the actual searching. I hate walking in snow. Now who? Who?

“Aha! I have it. Bonniface Sapwood! Just the man. Now that I’ve remembered The Riddle, Bonniface Sapwood must be made to think about it all over again. He’s been looking after those wretched children of his for long enough! I’ll get him going, and he can do all the hard exploring work while I keep an eye on him. And if he should find The Riddle, or left-over diamonds, or anything like that, I’ll be able to step in and take over. Oh! and what about that apprentice explorer he once had in his team? What was her name? Corona Something? I might just remind her too. It’s good to have people chasing one another along. It saves you the trouble of having to chase them yourself. And everyone knows Antarctic explorers just love racing one another from place to place.

“Now, what else? Ah yes! A few explosions might be useful somewhere along the line, so I’ll get in touch with that strange firm, Explosions Ltd. I hear the men who run it – the Tambo brothers – are good at explosions, and at wickedness too, a useful combination. Oh, how wonderful it is to be rich and clever! And how wonderful it is to lie in bed admiring myself. It’s a pity I can’t do it all day. But no! I’m too clever to do that. I must get up and get going! Where’s that telephone?”

CHAPTER 5 The Third Cry of Help

That third cry of. “Help!” had found an ear that let it in, and was winding its way into yet another sleeping head.

“I’m coming!” Bonniface Sapwood called aloud, tossing like a ship in a storybook sea as he spoke. The sound of his own voice woke him up and he lay on his back, gasping and goggling and trying to remember just what had woken him.

“That’s funny!” he mumbled. “I thought I heard someone calling for help.”

But his room was full of peaceful, yellow sunshine, and he could hear the distant voices of his children drifting in from the lawn. As he lay there blinking and mumbling, the telephone beside his bed let out a shrill cry Bonniface jumped as if he had been stabbed, then grabbed the receiver. He usually began the day by yawning and stretching – something he was good at – but this morning, with the ghostly word “Help!” still echoing in his head, he felt too sharp – too adventurous – for even a single yawn.

“Bonniface Sapwood!” he announced down the phone, almost expecting to hear someone shouting for help at the other end. But there was no shouting.

“Is it really you, Bonniface,” said an oily voice. “The great Bonniface? The Antarctic explorer who almost discovered the long lost Riddle some years ago?”

“Who is this?” demanded Bonniface crossly. “I was just working out an important dream and you’ve interrupted me.”

“Never mind who I am,” said the voice. “I am a secret admirer. That should be enough for you.”

It was almost enough. Bonniface relaxed and smiled, pleased to think he had a secret admirer. The voice went on.

“I thought you should know that Corona Wottley (that other famous Antarctic explorer) decided (about twenty minutes ago) to visit the Antarctic once more.”

“She is probably going to do more penguin research,” said Bonniface. “She is very sound on penguins.”

“I was just talking to her on the phone, and she is already packing her thermal underwear. She was boasting a little bit, I’m sorry to say – boasting that she would be the one to discover the lost Riddle!” said the oily voice.

Bonniface jumped as if he had been stung.

“How can she?” he cried. “I’m the one with the map – well, not a map, exactly. But I’m the one with ideas. I’m the one who nearly found it last time. And only five minutes ago I decided to set out and search for it all over again.”

“Five minutes ago?” asked the oily voice. It chuckled. Somehow that chuckle had a very dark sound about it. “Five minutes is already a long time ago when it comes to an Antarctic race.”

“Corona Wottley won’t find The Riddle!” shouted Bonniface. “She’s only a junior explorer. I should know, because I’m the one who gave her her first exploring lessons. Anyhow, as it happens, I’m leaving for the Antarctic myself. I know it’s nearly Christmas, but I’ve been at home for four Christmases now, and besides, my children have Daffodil, our housekeeper, to look after them, so they’ll be OK for a little while. And think how proud of me they’ll be when I come home in triumph. It’ll be a wonderful present for them.”

He slammed the phone down and leaped to his feet, so excited that just for a moment he found himself dancing on the spot.

“Tonight will be too late!” he muttered to himself, looking at his watch. “I must go immediately!” he cried. “Or even sooner! No one must find the lost Riddle but me.”

CHAPTER 6 On the Trampoline

Up and down… up and down… the three Sapwood children were out on the big blue trampoline, all enjoying a bit of early-morning bouncing while the early-morning blackbirds sang They were having fun. As usual, Edward and Sophie were trying to outbounce one another. Edward zoomed up, turning a somersault as he did so and feeling like a spaceman on a low-gravity planet. It seemed like practice for space travel and Edward longed to be a space traveller. In fact he was writing a science fiction novel just to go on with, and felt that bouncing on the trampoline was good practice for science fiction as well as space travel.

As Edward zoomed up, Sophie was zapping down. Boing! She hit the trampoline. Up she went, high into the air while Edward zapped down. It was all zap-and-zoom, zap-and-zoom with Sophie and Edward. Meanwhile, to one side of the big blue trampoline, Hotspur did a few little-kid-bum-bounces. He was a beautiful child – everyone said so – with black curls and long black lashes fringing big, blue eyes, but he was slightly strange as well. He was four years old, but had never said a word that anyone could understand. Mind you, he had plenty to say, but he sang and squawked and quacked and crowed and cawed and cooed and clucked and cackled. The trees close to the trampoline were crowded with sparrows and blackbirds all listening intently to Hotspur whistling and chirping as he did his bum-bounces.

Higher! Higher! Higher! went Edward. Higher! went Sophie! Higher, and then higher still! It felt wonderful.

“I’m going into orbit!” cried Edward, turning his usual somersault at the top of his bounce, then diving down again. He was longing to take notes for his science fiction adventure book, but it is hard to take notes when you are actually bouncing. It would be too easy to stick a pen in your eye.

“I can see Daffodil cooking breakfast!” Sophie sang, shooting up past him.

“I almost looked in at Dad’s bedroom window that time,” Edward boasted a moment later.

“And I am looking through Dad’s bedroom window,” Sophie shouted another moment later. “He’s on the phone.”

They kept on shouting cheerfully to one another as they zapped and zoomed.

“He’s just slammed the phone down…” cried Edward.

“…looking excited…” screamed Sophie

“…rushing to the wardrobe…” (Edward)

“…dragging out his explorer clothes…” (Sophie)

“…his explorer clothes and his brown suitcase,” Edward exclaimed. “Wow!”

“Oh-oh!” Sophie and Edward groaned in chorus as they accidentally bounced on top of one another. “This means trouble.” But it wasn’t their collision they were groaning about.

Off to one side, Hotspur whistled in apprehension and every bird in every nearby tree joined in too.

CHAPTER 7 Mukluk Kissing

Bonniface was packing quickly. Explorers are good packers. Quickly, quickly he packed seven pairs of underpants, one pair for each day of the week. Quickly quickly he pulled on his favourite red thermal underwear, then lovingly folded his second-best blue thermal underwear and pushed it in beside his underpants. He packed his long johns (top and bottom), his second-best long johns, his woollen shirts (one red, one blue and one green) and his best explorer’s padded waistcoat made of polypropylene.

“I’ll be cosy, I’ll be clean, in my polypropylene,” he sang as he folded this splendid garment. On top of his waistcoat, he packed woollen outer socks, vapour-barrier liner socks and a pair of thin polar-fleeced socks to go inside the other two. He packed sweaters, a fleecy inner jacket, an outer survival jacket, three balaclavas and a neck gaiter (which covered the part of his neck where his collar left off and his balaclava began). He also packed inner gloves, outer windproof mitts, sunglasses and snow goggles.

“But what about my feet?” he cried aloud, and began a feverish search, tossing there sandals and sneakers left and right in his desperation. “Where are my fleecy salopettes? Where, oh where, are my mukluks?”

Shoes flew out behind him in all directions.

“Aha!” he cried in rapture a there moment later. “Mukluks! My mukluks! Marvellous!”

Soaring up from the trampoline and looking through the window yet again, Sophie saw her father hugging two tall, tough, hard-and-heavy laced-up, bright blue boots, especially made for walking in snow. She saw him plant smacking kisses on either shiny toe.

“Dad’s kissing his mukluks,” she cried as she plunged back to the trampoline.

“Uh-oh!” cried Edward, shooting up to see for himself. “Mukluk kissing means trouble. Not just ordinary trouble either. Mukluk kissing means real trouble.”

Little Hotspur gave the cry of a particularly worried thrush.

But then all three children fell down and began rolling around on the trampoline, giggling their heads off. Something exciting was about to happen and, naturally, they loved excitement.

CHAPTER 8 Two Different Careers

Bonniface Sapwood grabbed his passport, some spare money and his notebook, along with various lists and maps which he then packed safely. He unlocked the safe in the corner of his room and took out a covered green folder filled with maps and pages covered with scribbles and question marks.

“Ready to go!” he cried happily and danced downstairs.

Sophie and Edward were trying to tell little Hotspur what was going on. It was hard to know if he could understand them, but they told him just the same.

“Dad’s packed his terminal underwear!” cried Sophie.

“Thermal, not terminal,” Edward said. “Get it right!”

“Terminal means the end of something, and it might be the end of Dad,” argued Sophie. “It nearly was, last time.”

Hotspur crowed like a rooster. Rooster voices answered him from backyards all over the city.

“Hey, what will Daffodil say?” asked Edward beginning to bounce again.

“You already know what she’ll say,” cried Sophie.

“Who’s going to look after the kids?” the two of them cried together, and they began laughing again. Only Hotspur looked uncertain.

“Don’t worry, Hotspur,” Sophie declared. “We’ll look after ourselves.”

“We always do,” agreed Edward. “We’ve had to, haven’t we? I mean, Dad’s done his best, but we’re the clever ones.” And he began bouncing high… high… maybe higher than he had ever bounced before.

“Edward’s going into orbit,” shouted Sophie, looking up at him in admiration. “He’s a distant planet.”

Inside the house, Bonniface Sapwood, faithful brown suitcase in hand, came thundering downstairs in his mukluks.

“What’s for breakfast?” he cried joyously.

But his housekeeper, Daffodil, was standing at the door with her own suitcase (a pink one) packed and bulging beside her. They stared at each other in horror.

“Where do you think you’re going?” they cried together, pointing at one another’s suitcases.

“I’m an explorer, remember!” Bonniface declared. “I’m going to find The Riddle. That’s always been my dream.”

“But I’ve got a chance of dancing in a Christmas ballet,” Daffodil declared right back at him. “And that’s always been my dream. I’ve been practising for weeks.”

“Who’s going to look after the kids?” they shouted simultaneously, glaring across the kitchen at each other.

Out on the trampoline, Edward, Sophie and Hotspur were listening, rolling on the trampoline, and laughing crazily.

“They’re your kids!” said Daffodil at last.

“But listen…” begged Bonniface. “I’ve just had a new theory about where we might find the wreck of The Riddle. Daffodil, I must find that lost ship before anyone else does.”

“It’s just an old ship,” said Daffodil. “It probably won’t ever sail again.”

“It’s The Riddle!” yelled Bonniface. “The First Mate, Escher Black, led the crew to safety after the ice closed in on it, but that’s only part of the story. If I find The Riddle, I’ll find the ship’s logbook, and then I’ll know exactly what happened and why. I’ll write a book about it all. It’ll be a bestseller and someone is bound to make a film of it. Maybe even a ballet – a mukluk ballet!”

“Listen!” said Daffodil. “I told you when I came to work here that I’d have to go when I had a chance to dance. I thought you understood. Well, you said you did.”

“But I’ve already packed my thermal underwear and my best polypropylene waistcoat,” said Bonniface. “Be reasonable!”

“And I have packed my tights and my tutu,” said Daffodil. She leaped to straighten the curtain at the kitchen window – a leap so graceful that Bonniface was distracted by her footwork and failed to see the expression of great cunning which crossed her face. “Oh well, perhaps I will be reasonable,” she cooed, turning round again, “Eat up your fried egg and we’ll argue about it later.”

The fried egg certainly smelled good.

But out on the trampoline, Edward, Sophie and even Hotspur had all seen that expression of cunning cross Daffodil’s face.

“Shall we tell?” asked Sophie, while Hotspur twittered like a fantail. Fantails came out of the garden trees and twittered back at him.

“Let’s just see what happens next,” said Edward. “That’s what you do in stories. I might take a few notes.”

A writer never knows just what is going to turn out to be useful.

CHAPTER 9 The Treachery of a Housekeeper

What happened next, in this particular story, was that their housekeeper sneaked out of the back door. She ran over to the trampoline, holding a finger across her lips. Then she took the finger away and kissed Edward, Sophie and Hotspur, but very quietly. (She usually gave them great smacking, musical kisses like cymbals being flicked together). Then she vaulted lightly over the garden wall with the grace of a trained ballet dancer, and slid into her car – a red ‘Snifitzu’ – which was parked in front of the garage.

Gently and silently, she put it into reverse; gently and silently she took off the handbrake and coasted down the sloping drive. When she hit the main road (after looking carefully both ways), she took off like a rocket.

Three minutes later Bonniface called out, asking where the tomato sauce was.

Four minutes later he got up and began to search the house for tomato sauce, calling Daffodil’s name as he did so. His voice echoed in empty rooms.

Five minutes later a howl of fury and anguish rang out in the Sapwood kitchen.

CHAPTER 10 A Startling Idea for a Devoted Father

“How could she do this to me?” Bonniface complained bitterly. He mopped up the last of his egg with the last of his toast – toast he had been forced to make himself.

“It’s nearly Christmas,” said Sophie, for the children had come in from the trampoline to comfort their father. “You could put off going to the Antarctic until after Christmas.”

“You don’t understand,” cried Bonniface. “I’ve just had a dream. I heard a mysterious voice. ‘Help!’ it cried. Now, a lot of people would be confused by a voice calling ‘Help!’ but not me. I knew – knew for sure – that it was an Antarctic voice. And it was calling me! ME! And it wanted me now! And not only that, I had the strangest feeling that I knew where it was calling from. I suddenly remembered an inlet – the Inlet of Ghosts, they called it – which people talked about without quite knowing whether it was really there, and I woke up with a sudden new theory about where I might find The Riddle, so…”

“You’ll have to take us with you,” interrupted Edward. “I’d rather go to another planet, but going to the Antarctic might be a sort of science fiction practice.” Hotspur gave the cry of an excited goose.

“Antarctic explorers never take their kids exploring with them,” shouted Bonniface. “Scott didn’t! Shackleton didn’t! Amundsen? No way!”

“It might have been more fun for them if they had,” said Edward.

Bonniface crunched his toast thoughtfully. Slowly, his expression changed till suddenly he thumped the kitchen table with his clenched fist. He thumped it so hard that the bottle of tomato sauce leaped high in the air.

“You’re right!” he cried. “Why should I copy Scott and Shackleton? Why shouldn’t I be the first explorer to take my children with me? I want to look after you kids. I long to try out my new Riddle theory. And I absolutely need to answer that cry of ‘Help!’ I’ll do all three things at once. It’s settled. We’ll all go south!”

“Hooray!” shouted Edward and Sophie, while Hotspur chortled like a happy magpie. “We’ll pack at once.”

“You will need thermal underwear,” their father shouted after them.

“You gave us some last Christmas,” Sophie called back. “And the Christmas before that.”

Bonniface smiled proudly, thinking what a good father he had been.

“What I really wanted was a reflecting telescope,” Edward muttered. Still, it was no use worrying about past disappointments.

“And do you have polypropylene jerkins?” Bonniface shouted again.

“You gave us jerkins and jackets for our birthdays,” Edward’s voice came back faintly. “We have complete sets of explorer clothes! And mukluks! Even Hotspur has mukluks – though he really wanted trainer skates.”

Hotspur! Bonniface suddenly frowned. The older children might be useful. They could cook, do up their own jerkins and jackets and mukluks. But Hotspur!

“Perhaps we should send Hotspur to Granny’s,” he suggested. But this suggestion made Hotspur squawk like an angry seagull.

“Dad!” cried Sophie. “We can’t leave Hotspur behind. I know he’s little, but every little helps.”

Oh well, thought Bonniface, there wouldn’t be too much work in looking after anyone as small as Hotspur. He ran to his fax machine, planning to contact Scott Base on Ross Island, on the very edge of the great, frozen continent. He wanted to let them know he was coming and to order a particularly good skiddoo – a sort of Antarctic motor-sledge.

“It must be a state-of-the-art skiddoo!” he muttered to himself. “Nothing but the best will do. And when they hear that I’m bringing the kids, they’ll make sure that I get the very best. After all, it’s nearly Christmas. They’ll want the children to be safe as well as happy at Christmas. There might, after all, be great advantages in taking the kids with me.”

CHAPTER 11 Unexpected Air Travel

The Sapwood children always travelled by plane when they visited their grandmother. They were used to airline seatbelts, and looked forward to free aeroplane lollies. But the inside of the Hercules aircraft (which was waiting to take explorers and scientists to Antarctica) took them by surprise. For travelling by Hercules turned out to be rather like flying in a second-hand-clothes-and-general-junk shop. There were seats, of course (you didn’t have to stand all the way to the Antarctic), but they weren’t like ordinary aeroplane seats. They were made of a curious orange webbing and they ran around the edge of the Hercules cabin. You strapped yourself in and sat there, staring inwards towards the middle of the plane. And down the middle of that cabin ran tall racks on which people hung coats and slung luggage. A man in an orange-coloured overall and headphones moved around, handing out plastic bags. Sophie thought perhaps they were being given large bags full of sweets, or something to be sick into, but it turned out he was handing ear-muffs to everyone.

Of course, the Hercules was full of people all going to Antarctica and, while they waited for the journey to start, Bonniface pointed them out to his children… helicopter pilots, geologists, penguin experts, drill-operators, and so on.

“It’s almost as good as going to another planet,” Edward whispered to Sophie, who nodded in a rather distracted way. As she had climbed on to the plane, suddenly the pendant, hidden under layers of warm clothes, had shifted against her skin as if it were startled. She had the odd idea that, even through layers of jerseys and jackets, it had recognised someone, and that somewhere in the Hercules, someone smiling and cheerful had also recognised – not the invisible pendant, perhaps, but certainly the whole Sapwood family, and had stopped smiling. Sophie peered around anxiously, but there wasn’t a single person looking disturbed, dismayed, or disgusted by the sight of a famous explorer taking three children on a dangerous expedition.

The Sapwood family settled down on the webbing seats and strapped themselves in. A merry crowd of Antarctic helicopter pilots were settling themselves opposite, and singing a fine old Antarctic helicopter-pilot’s song.

“Oh, let us meanderOut over Lake VandaWhere we’ll take a ganderAt prospects of snow.

Or we may be nosierAnd make for Cape CrozierThe prospect is rosierAt forty below!”

Sophie touched the front of her jacket under which the pendant was nestling – a warm tear just over her heart. Then something caught her eye. A cluster of bright orange waterproof coats with hoods was hanging almost opposite her, billowing out over the end of an empty section of seating, and below these coats she saw a pair of mukluks that looked as if they might have real feet in them. It was hard to be sure. But, feet or not, these mukluks were particularly interesting in themselves. They were blue, and decorated with gold and silver stars. Sophie liked the look of them. She liked the idea of someone taking starry strides across the Antarctic. But was there someone concealed by those coats… someone sleeping or, perhaps, hiding under them? It was hard to tell.

“There aren’t many windows,” muttered Edward interrupting Sophie’s thoughts.

“Where’s the air hostess?” she asked her father.

“There aren’t any air hostesses on an Antarctic Hercules,” cried Bonniface scornfully. “We’re not tourists!”

But just then the Hercules started up, and the cabin immediately became far too noisy for any of them to hear a word. Bonniface hastily slid ear-muffs on to Hotspur’s head, and gestured to Edward and Sophie to put on their ear-muffs as well. He pointed at the bag of books dangling from the rack that ran down the middle of the plane, meaning that they were both to read quietly because it was going to be too hard to talk during the flight.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.