Copyright

HarperCollins Children's Books An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in 2011

Copyright © Lauren Child 2011

Lauren Child asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

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Source ISBN: 9780007334063

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780007447428

Version: 2019-02-01

Dedication

For AD

Epigraph

'If the eyes truly are the window to the soul, then some people would be wise to install blinds' Anya Pamplemous, from her book The Puzzles That Lie Within.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

There was a girl called Ruby

An Ordinary Kid

Chapter 1. You can never be completely sure what might happen next

Chapter 2. There’s a lot of truth in fiction

Chapter 3. ‘Sounded like dessert’

Chapter 4. Full of nothing

Chapter 5. More of nothing

Chapter 6. Fifteen dollars and forty-nine cents

Chapter 7. Don’t call us we’ll call you

Chapter 8. Getting Lucky

Chapter 9. A small dark space

Chapter 10. The voice

Chapter 11. The eyes followed the hands

Chapter 12. The silent G

Chapter 13. As good as gold

Chapter 14. Don’t erase me

Chapter 15. Strictly confidential

Chapter 16. Don’t look now

Chapter 17. Strange and uneasy

Chapter 18. If in doubt, say nothing

Chapter 19. One little lie

Chapter 20. Unlikely but not impossible

Chapter 21. The blink of an eye

Chapter 22. Don’t breathe a word

Chapter 23. Funny peculiar

Chapter 24. A total yawn

Chapter 25. Some likely suspects

Chapter 26. The little brown box

Chapter 27. A formula for murder

Chapter 28. Secretly super

Chapter 29. A Regular Girl

Chapter 30. Room Service

Chapter 31. When you’re out, you’re out

Chapter 32. The advantage

Chapter 33. Crisp and lean

Chapter 34. ‘They could feed my toes to a pack of vultures but I would never blab’

Chapter 35. Nine Lives

Chapter 36. A colony of vultures

Chapter 37. Time waits for no man

Chapter 38. The sands of time

Chapter 39. Lucky twice

Chapter 40. Look into my eyes

Cat Woman

Keep Reading

Acknowledgments

About the Author

About the Publisher

There was a girl called Ruby

IT WAS A CRISP OCTOBER DAY in Cedarwood Drive and a two-year-old girl was standing on a high stool in front of a huge picture window. She was watching the leaves fall, studying the patterns they made as they whirled their way through the air. Her eyes followed them until her gaze was caught by a single yellow leaf, almost exactly the shape of a hand. She watched as it swooped down into the yard and then sailed up high over the fence and across the street. She watched as it danced up and down in the breeze and then slapped flat onto the windshield of a passing truck.

The truck pulled up in front of old Mr Pinkerton’s grey clapboard house. The driver climbed out, walked up the path and knocked on the door. Mr Pinkerton stepped out onto the porch and the driver produced a map – the two men struck up a conversation.

Exactly one minute later an elegant woman turned the corner, carrying a large green picnic basket. With a glance to the house and the slightest nod from the driver, the woman slipped out of her heels, scooped them up and nimbly scaled Mr Pinkerton’s fence. Mr Pinkerton was busy studying the map and noticed nothing; the child saw everything. Forty-five seconds passed and the woman reappeared: she was carrying the same basket but it looked much heavier than before and its contents seemed to be moving.

The little girl attempted to grab her parents’ attention but since her use of language was still limited she could not get them to understand. She watched as the woman pushed her feet back into her black shoes, walked to the rear of the truck and out of view. Mr Pinkerton chatted on. The girl jumped up and down, pointing at the window. Her parents, sensing she might be eager for a walk, went to put on their coats.

The child drew a truck on her chalkboard.

Her father smiled and patted her on the head. Meanwhile, the driver folded his map, thanked Mr Pinkerton and returned to his vehicle – waving to him as he drove off. The yellow hand-shaped leaf fluttered to the ground. The woman, now minus the picnic basket, walked on by. She had a fresh scarlet scratch on her left cheek.

The child spelled out the truck’s license plate with her alphabet blocks.

Her mother tidied them away and dressed her in a red woollen bobble hat and matching mittens.

The family left the house and strolled down Cedarwood drive. When they reached the grey clapboard house, the little girl paused to pick up the yellow leaf, and there underneath it, found a small tin badge embossed with an image of something. What was it?

A sudden cry shook the stillness of Cedarwood Drive. A cry that cut right through the heart of the child. She gripped the badge tightly and felt the pin dig into her palm. The neighbours came spilling out onto the street to find the kindly Mr Pinkerton doubled up with grief. Despite the best efforts of the Twinford Crime Investigation Squad – a search which continued for sixteen weeks – Mr Pinkerton’s prize-winning Pekinese dog was never seen again.

It was on that October day that the little girl resolved to dispense with the toddler talk and brush up on her language skills. More importantly, that was the day she set her sights on becoming a detective.

The little girl was Ruby Redfort.

An Ordinary Kid

WHEN RUBY REDFORT WAS SEVEN YEARS OLD she won the Junior Code-Cracker Championships – solving the famous Eisenhauser conundrum in just seventeen days and forty-seven minutes. The following year she entered the ‘Junior Code-Creator Contest’ and stunned the judges when they found her code impossible to break. In the end it was sent to Harvard University professors, who eventually managed to solve it two weeks later. She was immediately offered a place for the following semester but declined. She had no interest in becoming, as she put it, some kind of geek freak.

Some several years later…

Chapter 1.

You can never be completely sure what might happen next

RUBY REDFORT WAS PERCHED ON a high stool in front of the bathroom window, her binoculars trained on a cake delivery truck that had been parked on Cedarwood Drive for precisely twenty-one minutes. So far no one had emerged from the truck with so much as a blueberry muffin. Ruby gurgled down the last dregs of her banana milk and made a note in the little yellow notebook which lay in her lap. She had 622 of these yellow notebooks; all but one was stashed under her bedroom floorboards. Though she had taken up this hobby nine years ago, no one, not even her best friend Clancy, had read a single word she had written. Much of what Ruby observed seemed pretty mundane but EVEN THE MUNDANE CAN TELL A STORY {RULE 16}.

Ruby also kept a vivid pink notebook, dog-eared and smelling of bubble gum, and it was in this that she listed her Ruby rules – there were seventy-nine so far.

RULE 1: YOU CAN NEVER BE COMPLETELY SURE WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN NEXT. A truth no one could argue with.

Ruby was a petite girl, small for her years – at first glance a very ordinary looking kid. There was nothing particular to mark her out – that is, nothing until you looked a little longer. Then you would begin to see that her eyes were ever so slightly different shades of green. When they looked at you it was somehow hard to remember the point you were arguing. And when she smiled she revealed small doll-like teeth which somehow made it impossible to consider her anything other than a cute kid. But the most striking thing about Ruby Redfort was that when you met her you felt a strong need for her to like you. The bathroom phone rang; lazily, Ruby reached out and groped for the receiver.

‘Brandy’s wig salon, hair today, gone tomorrow.’

‘Hi Rube,’ came back the voice on the other end; it was Clancy Crew.

‘So Clance, what gives?’

‘Not a whole lot actually.’

‘So to what do I owe the pleasure of this call?’

‘Boredom,’ yawned Clancy.

‘So why don’t you get yourself over here, bozo?’

‘Well, I would you know Rube but my dad wants me home – he’s got some kinda embassy type function and he wants us all smiling, you know what I mean?’

Clancy Crew’s father was an ambassador and there was always some function or other in progress. Ambassador Crew liked to have his children scrubbed and serving canapés to prove what a great family guy he was – though truth to tell he was usually too busy to even remember their birthdays.

‘Some people have all the fun,’ drawled Ruby.

‘Yeah, my life stinks,’ said Clancy.

‘So cheer yourself up why don’tcha. Scoot yourself over, watch a few toons and you’ll still be home in time to smile for the camera.’

‘OK Rube, you’ve talked me into it, see you in ten.’

Ruby put down the phone. It lived on a shelf with two others: one was in the shape of a conch shell, the other disguised as a bar of soap. She had a whole lot more of them in her bedroom. She had been collecting telephones since she was about five years old, all in different shapes and colours. The donut phone was her first – the latest, a cartoon squirrel sporting a tuxedo. Just about all of them had come from yard sales.

She was about to continue her bathroom-based surveillance when the intercom buzzed – Ruby’s parents had sensibly fitted them on each floor to keep shouting to a minimum.

She pressed the ‘speak’ button.

‘Hello, how may I be of assistance?’

‘Howdy,’ came the voice from the other end of the intercom. ‘This is Mrs Digby, your housekeeper, may I please remind you that your parents will be home from Switzerland in two and a quarter hours.’

‘I know, Mrs Digby, you told me that a half hour ago.’

‘Glad you remembered. May I also point out that they may be a little grief stricken to see the state of your bedroom.’

‘It’s my style Mrs Digby – “layered”– it’s very in vogue.’

‘Well may I continue to remind you that some magazine folks are coming to photograph this very house tomorrow and if your mother sees it in its “layered” state, you will be in what’s commonly referred to as “the dog house”.’

‘OK, OK,’ sighed Ruby, ‘I’ll take care of it.’

The Redfort house, dubbed the Green-Wood house, on account of its environmental features, had been designed in 1961 by famous architect Arno Fredricksonn. Even now, a decade or so later it was still considered very state of the art and was regularly featured in architectural journals.

Ruby returned to the bathroom, sat back down on her stool and continued to stare out of the window; the truck was still there but now there was a raccoon sitting on its roof. The bathroom door pushed open and in ambled a large husky dog, which sniffed around before settling down to chew the bathmat.

‘Bored, huh?’ said Ruby, slipping off her stool. She padded into her bedroom and surveyed the wreckage. It was not a pretty sight. Ruby wasn’t so much untidy as she was a spreader – she had a lot of stuff and when she was busy working on something the stuff had a habit of creeping from one surface to another and this was what her mother did not like.

Darn it! muttered Ruby. If the magazine people were coming, her mom would just about freak if this was what they saw. She could almost hear her father saying, ‘for the sake of your mother’s sanity – do something Ruby.’ So she set about slipping records back into their sleeves and pushing books onto shelves. Ruby had a lot of books; they were arranged floor to ceiling across one end of her room.

A FICTION SECTION:

both English and foreign titles.

FACTUAL:

comprising anything.

GRAPHIC NOVELS AND COMICS:

subject – largely crime and mystery.

Ruby and Mrs Digby had a shared enthusiasm for crime and thrillers: fact or fiction, whether in book form or on the screen. They would often settle down with a large bowl of blue corn chips and watch the quiz show What’s Your Poison? or when Ruby was several years younger, Mrs Digby would settle Ruby to sleep by reading one of her favourite Crime thrillers, The Claw at the Window.

PUZZLES:

Puzzles were Ruby’s passion.

Any kind of puzzle: crosswords, anagrams, riddles, even jigsaws – anything that needed to be solved by finding the ‘pattern’ the ‘trick’ or the ‘key’. This had led Ruby to…

CODES:

She had read many books and essays on the subject.

In fact she was a subscriber to Master Code Monthly, a little known Chinese subscription-only magazine. Subscribers had to prove their code-cracking talent before they were permitted to sign up. It was this journal that had led her to read the following:

* Garp Einholt’s, The Theory of Code, its Abstract Duality and Subtext (to be honest Ruby had found this very overstated and not a little tedious).

* Sherman Tree’s more vital Unlock My Brain.

* Anya Pamplemous’s thirty year study of codes, The Puzzles That Lie Within, which she also very much enjoyed.

But her personal handbooks were both written many centuries ago, one, by the Greek philosopher, Euclid with the simple title of X, the other, a tiny indigo book (origin unknown) which was filled with all manner of codes. It explained riddles and poems and equations – patterns, symbols and sounds. It was a code breaker’s bible.

Having dealt with the books, records and papers, Ruby began the more complex task of sorting through clothes; all of which seemed to be on the floor of her closet. It was here, underneath a pile of knee-high striped socks, that she unearthed her glasses.

Boy, am I glad to see you!

Although Ruby would on occasion wear contact lenses she didn’t much care for them; they had a habit of falling out at exactly the wrong moment. If Ruby Redfort had an Achilles heel, it was her eyes; without some sort of visual aid life was just a blur.

There was another buzz from the intercom. ‘Yuh huh?’

‘What are you doing?’

‘Being tidy – why?’

‘Just checking.’

‘Mrs Digby, you are one suspicious woman.’

Having put away as many of her clothes as she could be bothered to put away, Ruby grabbed all the remaining garments and stuffed them down the laundry chute. She was in the habit of tipping all sorts of things down the laundry chute – even, on occasion, herself. It saved time.

Judging her work finished, Ruby’s finger hovered over the TV’s ‘on’ switch, but her attention was caught by what sounded like activity in the kitchen. Seven years ago she had rigged up a reverse periscope device so she could see what was occurring in the kitchen below. Today she saw Mrs Digby taking a fresh batch of cookies out of the oven.

Nice work Mrs Digby.

She slid her notebook carefully inside the hollowed out doorframe, and went downstairs.

RULE 2: IF YOU WANT TO KEEP SOMETHING SECRET, DON’T LEAVE IT LYING AROUND.

Chapter 2.

There’s a lot of truth in fiction

WHEN RUBY ENTERED THE STYLISH, modern kitchen, she was automatically handed a vile-smelling green drink. Ruby glared at Mrs Digby, bearer of the unfortunate liquid.

Mrs Digby shrugged. ‘Don’t look at me, it’s your mother’s orders – she wants you to grow.’ Sabina was always trying to get Ruby to eat foods that might promote growth. ‘Personally I don’t see what’s so wrong with being short,’ Mrs Digby added. ‘I’ve always been short and it’s never stopped me from getting by in the world.’

This was true. Mrs Digby was probably one of the smallest and most determined people one could meet. She had been with the Redforts long before Ruby was born and before that she was housekeeper to Ruby’s mother’s parents. Her face resembled an autumn leaf – dry and covered in lines. When she applied lipstick, it bled along the tiny cracks around her mouth, creating miniature rivulets. She was getting on in years but no one was exactly sure of her age – if asked she usually answered, ‘sixty, seventy, eighty, who’s counting? Not me that’s for darn sure.’

Mrs Digby spoiled Ruby whenever possible but never, ever, went against Mrs Redfort’s dietary instructions. Sabina Redfort was always putting her household under one health regime or another and Ruby and her father dreaded them all.

Ruby took the drink without arguing, brought it to her lips and said, ‘Mrs Digby, could I have just one cookie, just to take the taste away?’

Mrs Digby considered the request for a mere moment. ‘Well, your mother didn’t say you couldn’t – so I guess it would be all right.’ She turned her back just for a second, maybe two, and in this tiny moment Ruby poured the drink down the sink, having been careful to first make sure she got some of the green liquid on her upper lip.

‘Yuck!’ said Ruby.

‘There’s a miserable kid,’ said the housekeeper, wiping Ruby’s face as if she were still just a toddler. Mrs Digby looked at Ruby’s T-shirt, which bore the statement some days stink and muttered, ‘well, who can argue with that.’

She paused.

‘On second thought your mother will. If I were you I might avoid the trouble by changing into something, you know – frilly.’

Ruby made a face – ‘frilly’ was neither in her vocabulary nor her wardrobe. As far as her attire went, she was more often than not dressed in jeans, sneakers, a T-shirt printed with either a somewhat hostile word: bozo, an interesting number: 1729, or some less than agreeable statement: bored beyond belief. But she knew what Mrs Digby meant and she knew she had a point.

The backstairs door opened and in walked a young woman followed by three large boxes of heirloom tomatoes balanced on a pair of skinny legs.

‘Hola Ruby, how are you?’ said the woman.

‘Bien gracias Consuela,’ replied Ruby. ‘Hey, is that you under there, Clance?’

‘I think so,’ muttered Clancy, struggling to heave the boxes onto the counter. He rolled his eyes. ‘I’ll just go and fetch the others.’ Clancy was a good-natured person – mostly he tended to like people, but he didn’t much like Consuela. Too bossy. Mrs Digby was no big fan either.

The trouble had begun when Sabina Redfort rather rashly decided that Mrs Digby’s cooking was too stodgy and that they should adopt a more olive oil and tomato based diet. This had led to the hiring of dietary expert Consuela Cruz. Consuela had been flown over from Seville, Spain, along with many suitcases and countless cooking utensils, and though her salary was eye-watering, Mrs Redfort considered her to be worth every penny.

The new diet, however, may have been helping maintain healthy hearts but it certainly wasn’t generating much love. Mrs Digby made a muttering sound deep in her throat and Consuela clucked her tongue and both women left the room by different doors. Ruby, now alone, piled several cookies on to a plate (ten to be exact) and went about making herself some more appealing drinks (two banana milks with strawberry ice-cream). The banana milk was imported from Europe, for though Brant Redfort had tried, it seemed impossible to find anywhere inside the USA.

Ruby popped straws in both drinks and carefully carried them out of the kitchen – sucking on one of the straws as she went. She was about to climb the stairs, when she caught sight of the little light on the answer phone flashing to indicate a message. She pressed play.

‘Hey there Redfort gang! It’s the Humberts here – Freddie and I were just saying how much we would like it if you all came over – and Quent would just adore to see darling Ruby! Call us back won’t you! Bye bye bye!’

This voice belonged to Marjorie Humbert, a family friend, wife of Freddie Humbert the Twinford City Bank manager and mother of Quent the dullest boy in town. Ruby automatically pressed ‘erase’ and continued on her way. She was followed by the large husky.

‘Hey there Bug,’ cooed Ruby, ‘wanna watch some TV?’

When she entered her room she caught sight of herself in the mirror. Mrs Digby was right: if she wanted to avoid a whole lot of grief she might want to put on a dress. She rummaged through her closet until she found an interesting red and white number she had picked up at a thrift store – if Ruby wore anything other than jeans and T-shirts, then it was usually second hand. She was one of those girls who people talked about as ‘having her own style,’ which was sometimes meant as a compliment and sometimes not. The hem of the dress was secured with sticky-tape, but one hardly noticed if one wasn’t looking too closely.

Ruby pulled on some black over the knee socks and a pair of Yellow Stripe sneakers. The dress still retained its thrift store odour, so Ruby sprayed herself with some perfume. (Oriental Rose: she had a sizeable collection of beautifully bottled fragrances which, when worn mingled with the odour of the bubblegum she so often chewed, creating a unique Ruby Redfort fragrance.)

Clancy had not yet reappeared so Ruby carried the tray of snacks up the open-tread staircase which connected her room to the rooftop. She liked to sit up here on warm evenings looking at the stars, writing in her notebook, reading and, more than occasionally, watching the portable TV. She settled down in the beanbag, in one hand a cookie and in the other a large green apple. She believed that the healthy attributes of the apple might counteract the bad effects of the cookie. (Ruby Redfort had a lot of theories like this one.)

She looked up when Clancy popped his head through the trapdoor. Clancy was a shortish, scrawny looking boy – not exactly your ‘yearbook kid’ but certainly one of the most engaging characters you were likely to talk to, if of course you bothered to talk to him – which a lot of people didn’t.

‘Oh boy! I had to make a dash for the stairs or she would have had me peeling tomatoes for the rest of my life – I wouldn’t mind but tomatoes give me hives.’

He slumped down next to Ruby, who was busy flipping through the channels. Ruby was a keen watcher of TV – she watched a lot. She loved sit-coms, dramas, news shows, quiz shows, documentaries, but it was the detective shows that were her TV passion, and Crazy Cops in particular. Crazy Cops was a police drama that Ruby and Clancy were practically addicted to – it was very informative while at the same time being extremely entertaining. They had both picked up a lot of knowledge about police investigations and human behaviour from watching Crazy Cops. ‘There’s a lot of truth in fiction,’ was something Ruby was fond of reminding her parents whenever they complained about her ‘TV habit’. Sunday night, however, was toon night, and they were just into a fourth episode of Grime Girl of the Crime World, when Ruby heard her parent’s car drawing into the driveway.

Clancy looked at his watch and groaned. ‘I guess I gotta go, my dad won’t exactly see the funny side if I’m late.’

‘That’s too bad Clance, but hey, don’t forget to smile.’

‘Yeah, yeah, some friend you are – I’ll call you later.’

He left by climbing from the roof onto a branch of the large tree handily positioned right next to the house – from there he could shimmy his way down to the yard. Ruby descended more conventionally, by way of the stairs.

Noticing that she had forgotten to tackle the large pile of shoes in the middle of the room, she fetched the beanbag and placed it on top. The room looked magazine-shoot tidy. She took one last look in the mirror, then adjusted the barrette securing her long dark hair in a firm side-part, giving her a look of utter composure.

Satisfied, Ruby sort of half walked, half hopped downstairs, followed silently by Bug.

Chapter 3.

‘Sounded like dessert’

‘HEY HONEY, HOW’S MY GIRL?’ said her father, lifting Ruby up over his shoulder and mussing her hair. It was a ‘welcome home’ ritual Brant Redfort had never grown out of.

‘Hey Dad, d’ya wanna cool it, you’re messing with my look!’ said Ruby in a somewhat strangled voice.

‘Oh Brant!’ said Sabina Redfort, pretending to disapprove. ‘For an intelligent man you really can behave like a total nut.’ No one but Sabina would ever describe Brant Redfort as intelligent. Ruby had been born to parents who would never be giving Einstein a run for his money.

In many ways nature had been generous to Brant and Sabina. They had been given an easy charm and likeability, good looks and generous personalities. But for all their fairytale-like graces, they had little going on upstairs in the smart department. However, you would be hard-pressed to meet a more popular couple, and for this reason they headed up just about every committee or fundraising benefit in Twinford – they were what’s known as ‘socialites’.

The Redfort family walked upstairs to the living room and settled down on one of the large white couches.

‘So how was Switzerland?’ said Ruby ‘Oh it was wonderful, just wonderful, if we hadn’t had to get back for the museum launch we would have stayed on longer,’ said Sabina wistfully.

‘Oh yeah, what museum launch is that?’ said Ruby.

‘Ruby, surely you haven’t forgotten about the Jade Buddha of Khotan!’ exclaimed her mother.

‘Sabina honey, she’s pulling your leg,’ said Brant, raising his eyes heavenwards. ‘You have been talking about nothing but the museum launch for the last two months.’

‘Oh very cute!’ laughed Sabina as she pinched Ruby on the cheek.

Ruby’s parents were both wildly excited about the Jade Buddha coming to Twinford. Stolen from the ancient kingdom of Khotan during the 8th century and missing for over a thousand years the Buddha had recently been rediscovered encased in a block of ice somewhere north of Alaska. The archaeologist who dug the artefact out of the glacier was the senior curator of the Twinford City Museum, Dr Enrico Gonzales. In recognition of this monumental and heroic discovery, the people of Khotan had agreed to have the Buddha displayed at the museum for a limited period before it made its long journey home. Brant and Sabina were, of course, on the museum party committee.

‘You guys sure do travel light,’ said Ruby looking around for their suitcases.

‘Oh yes,’ said her mother. ‘The airline managed to lose every piece of our luggage – can you believe it!’

‘So I guess you lost all your vacation pictures too?’ said Ruby hopefully. Ruby had endured many tedious hours of her parents’ vacation snapshots and would go to any reasonable lengths to avoid the misery of a family slide show.

‘No,’ said her father, ‘luckily I kept all the film in my carry-on luggage – I can’t wait to get them developed, you’ll see I got some beautiful shots.’ Ruby considered this unlikely; Brant was a horrible photographer.

After quite a lot of welcoming from a very excited Mrs Digby – ‘Good to have you back at last, you’ve been away too long!’ and a good deal more fussing, ‘You’ve lost weight Mrs R, you need feeding up,’ – supper was ready and the family sat down to eat. Mrs Digby had gone to a lot of trouble with the table and there was a huge floral display which was very difficult to see over or indeed round.

During dinner, Ruby’s parents burbled on about the wonderful hotel and the delicious schnitzel and the beautiful Alps. And the conversation went something like this:

SABINA: ‘Quite the tastiest schnitzel I have ever tasted.’

BRANT: ‘And what about those Alps! Talk about high.’

Until Ruby wished they would start talking about the Jade Buddha again. But then, of course, they did.

SABINA: ‘Speaking of Switzerland, Marjorie mentioned that the Buddha’s glass display case has all been expertly designed by a Swiss expert – no one’s met him, no one – he’s an utter recluse.’

BRANT: ‘Oh yes, that’s right, a fellow named… what’s his name honey?’

RUBY: ‘Klaus Gustav.’

Ruby hadn’t exactly been listening, but she had been party to so many of these discussions that her brain had absorbed all the interesting and less than interesting details.

SABINA: ‘That’s right Ruby! Well, according to Marjorie the glass display case will be the shape of a cylinder and is going to rise up through the museum floor at the stroke of midnight!’

BRANT: ‘How does he do it, do you think?’

SABINA: ‘Beats me! Must be some kind of magician – no one even knows how you get that glass cylinder open – it’s top secret.’

BRANT: ‘Well if their glass is as excellent as their schnitzel we are going to be in for a treat!’

…and they were back to talking about schnitzel again.

Ruby wished hard for some kind of distraction before her brain froze over – and her wish was granted by a loud thud and a high pitched shriek.

‘Whatever in the world was that?’ exclaimed Mrs Redfort.

‘Sounded like dessert,’ said Ruby.

‘What?’ said her mother.

‘I must say having Consuela around is great if you are looking to lose weight but I am afraid our friend Bug has been pounding it on.’

‘Bug’s been putting on weight? What do you mean? Why would Bug put on weight?’ asked Mrs Redfort.

‘On account of all the low flying food in there,’ replied Ruby. ‘Mrs Digby and Consuela throw ingredients at each other nearly every night. Most of it ends up on the floor and Bug is only too happy to clean up, if you know what I mean.’

‘What!’ said Brant who was very much against pets eating their owner’s food.

There was a crashing sound followed by a yelp.

‘Yeah, I’ve pretty much got used to it but you may get complaints from the neighbours any day soon.’

‘Oh we don’t want that,’ said Brant, looking over towards where Mr Parker lived. Mr Parker was a very difficult man.

‘Get used to what?’ said Sabina

‘Kitchen friction,’ replied Ruby. ‘Mrs Digby can’t stand Consuela and Consuela can’t stand Mrs Digby – it’s been like this ever since you guys went away.’

‘Really?’ said Sabina

‘Oh yeah,’ said Ruby raising her voice a little, to make herself heard over what sounded like the smashing of a cut-glass tulip vase. ‘It’s been terrible – I must say this fish is very good though.’

Sabina slammed down her napkin, stood up and strode over to the kitchen door.

‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Mom,’ warned Ruby through a mouthful of mackerel. But Sabina was not to be deterred. She opened the door just as Mrs Digby took aim with a pitcher of tomato juice. Consuela ducked and Sabina found herself covered in red gloop.

‘Mrs Digby! What has gotten into you!’

Mrs Digby quickly reached for a large dishcloth, put it down and picked up a towel.

‘That’s the second time today that someone has thrown a drink over my Oscar Birdet suit!’ exclaimed Sabina.

‘Really? Who was the first?’ inquired Ruby, who was by now standing in the doorway, and chewing on a carrot.

‘Some frantic little man at the airport – spills my martini all down my front and now this! Boy, this tomato is never going to come out.’

‘Let me clean it up, Mrs R,’ said Mrs Digby, who was looking rather pale in the face.

‘I’ll thank you not to touch it Mrs Digby, it’s dry-clean only!’ replied Sabina, these last words coming out rather more sharply and with more volume than she had intended.

‘Is never gonna be clean again Mrs Redfort, no way José,’ said Consuela giving Mrs Digby a smug look. Sabina was about to try and calm things down when Mrs Digby got in first.

‘Well, I can see whose side you are taking in all this, and me a person you’ve known your whole entire life. I see thirty-six years of service and loyalty count for very little round these parts. Maybe I’ll just go and pack the few sorry possessions I own and get out of here for good! No doubt cousin Emily will take me in.’

‘Oh Mrs Digby! Please don’t… ’ pleaded Sabina, but it was no use. Mrs Digby was already making her way downstairs to her housekeepers apartment – there would be no pancakes for breakfast, that was for sure.

Ruby was relieved when the telephone rang.

‘Redfort high drama society. You want drama, we got it.’

She hoped it would be Clancy Crew, he would certainly lighten the atmosphere – but it was Marjorie Humbert.

The following words were delivered by Ruby at super high speed to avoid conversation.

‘Hello Mrs Humbert yes I’m weller than you could begin to imagine I would love to chat but I know my mother is on the edge of her seat at the prospect of talking to you – bye, bye, bye!’

Ruby handed the phone to Sabina. ‘Gotta walk, Bug,’ she said, and whistled to the dog.

Jeepers, could I use some air.

Ruby and Bug left by the back door and made their way down Cedarwood Drive, turning right on Amster Street. Ruby decided to stop by the tree on Amster Green; a large oak in the middle of a triangle of grass. It stood there surrounded by blossom trees; a wooden bench sat directly under it. The oak tree was old, with branches that twisted towards the ground and swept up again. It was perfect for climbing. Ruby and Clancy liked to sit up this tree and watch the people down below; when the tree was in leaf it provided perfect cover.

Ruby jumped on to the bench, swung herself onto the lowest branch and from there made her way quickly up to the highest climbable limb. Finding the hole in the bark, she felt around with her hand and pulled out a piece of elaborately folded paper. A perfectly formed origami turtle. Ruby and Clancy had got into the habit of leaving each other tree notes, written in code and usually folded in this complicated way as it meant they would be sure to know if someone had got there first – origami was impossible to re-fold without knowing how, and very few people knew how. Clancy had obviously written the note on his way back home because it said,

wvitp xrauuziv vuwp eofyboc efivrlw ay va mq vcwpw *

Ruby smiled, scribbled something on a bubblegum wrapper,

nsyq ltszsjyk wvy ptrwayoe

pushed it into the hole in the tree and climbed back down. When she got home, she found her parents were still discussing the tomato gloop incident. Her mother was saying, ‘I hate for Mrs Digby to be unhappy but we can’t lose Consuela, she is a dietary genius.’

‘Why don’t I call that house management agency?’ said her father, ‘see if they can’t send someone to sort of keep control.’

‘I guess it’s worth a shot,’ replied her mother.

The telephone began to ring.

‘I’ll get it!’ called Ruby, she was sure this time it would be Clancy complaining about all the smiling he had had to do at his dad’s dinner, but disappointingly there was no one on the end of the line.

*CLUE 1: THIS IS A VIGENERE CIPHER. YOU WILL NEED TO FIND THE KEY. THE EYES HAVE IT.

Chapter 4.

Full of nothing

THE NEXT MORNING RUBY WAS JUST fixing her barrette the way she always fixed her barrette, when the phone in her bathroom rang.

It will be Clancy, she thought. I’ll bet he’s calling to complain about his hives.

She picked up the receiver.

‘Twinford sewage plant, how may we assist?’

But there was no reply.

‘Weird,’ muttered Ruby, replacing the handset.

There was no sign of Mrs Digby – no doubt she was still smarting about the tomato incident. So Ruby swallowed a large glass of orange juice in a single gulp, grabbed her school bag with one hand and a chocolate peanut cookie with the other, and shouted goodbye to her parents, who didn’t hear because they were engaged in a fascinating discussion about which drycleaners might best remove a tomato stain from a silk jacket.

BRANT: ‘Honey, take it to Quick Clean, then you’ll have it back in no time.’

SABINA: ‘Are you kidding, Brant? This is an Oscar Birdet jacket! Do you even know what that means? I’ll take it to Grosvenors.’

RUBY: Oh brother.

Ruby’s bike had a flat so she was taking the school bus this morning.

Twinford Junior High School was two buildings really. One old, grand and in some ways beautiful – a little run-down on the inside but somehow comfortable. The other starkly modern, stylish and sterile. Ruby sauntered into class just before Mrs Drisco, her homeroom teacher, called out her name. Mrs Drisco made the same comment she always made when Ruby was late, and Ruby made the usual faces behind her back.

The truth was Mrs Drisco found Ruby Redfort ‘rather full of herself, utterly unmanageable and impossible to teach’. Ruby Redfort found Mrs Drisco ‘a royal pain in the derriere’.

They were both right.

When it came to teaching the cleverest student in the history of Twinford Junior High, Mrs Drisco was out of her depth. On the other hand, it was a little pathetic for a grown-up teacher to be so snarky.

Once this little pupil-teacher exchange was over, Ruby went and sat down next to Clancy.

‘So was last night fun?’ whispered Ruby.

‘Well, that depends on what you call fun – my sister Nancy accidentally sat on the Spanish ambassador’s dessert,’ replied Clancy.

‘Oh, well at least she got dessert – some of us weren’t so lucky,’ said Ruby

‘What?’ said Clancy

‘Never mind, I’ll tell you later,’ whispered Ruby.

It was the usual Twinford Junior High day, nothing in any way out of the ordinary. Ruby had the usual interaction with her arch enemy Vapona Begwell, which went something like this…

VAPONA: ‘Hey Ruby, can you see outta those glasses because my suggestion would be – don’t look in the mirror if you don’t wanna give yourself a fright.’

RUBY: ‘Why, you gonna be standing behind me?’

There was a mildly interesting geography lesson followed by a mind-numbingly dreary French class (Ruby’s French was already so good that she spent the lesson reading War and Peace in the original Russian). History had Mrs Schneiderman promising in the next week or so to give a lecture on the Jade Buddha of Khotan. ‘My, is it ever the most fascinating story,’ she said. ‘I could talk about it forever.’

‘Meet my folks and you probably will,’ muttered Ruby.

At lunch time Ruby got into an altercation with Mrs Arthur over the let them eat cake T-shirt she was wearing. Ruby was protesting about Mrs Arthur’s strict guidelines about cake – or, more accurately, no cake. Mrs Arthur had banned cake.

MRS ARTHUR: ‘Cake is in no way essential and should not be present in any child’s diet.’

RUBY: ‘Cake is one of life’s great wonders and who would deny wonder to a child?’

All the pupils, with the exception of Denning Minkle, who had a sugar allergy, supported Ruby. However, Ruby was requested to turn her T-shirt inside out or risk a month of detention.

Ruby said goodbye to Clancy, who was being kept behind so he could retake his French vocab test. He was nervous; French made him feel queasy and Madame Loup gave him the shivers.

‘You’ll be fine, Clance,’ said Ruby, as she secretly slipped him an index card. ‘Copy this list onto your arm and you’ll have no problem.’

The piece of paper had all the test answers written in code – the code they had devised a couple of years ago and perfect for a situation like this. To the regular human on the street it just looked like gobbledygook.

Then it was time to catch the bus back to Cedarwood Drive.

Yes, everything was pretty normal. Things only began to get strange when Ruby arrived home.

She swung open the gate and saw that the front door to the house was standing open and a police car was parked in the drive. As she walked up the stairs to the kitchen she could hear the voice of Sheriff Bridges.

Now what is he doing here?

It didn’t take Ruby long to find out. She stood there in the living room, open mouthed.

Everything had gone. Well, almost everything. The telephone was still plugged into its socket and was sitting on the floor. Apart from that the house was as empty as a house could be. Even the dust was gone. It was obvious to anyone, even someone who had never visited the Redforts before, that they had been burgled.

‘Yes,’ said her mother, second guessing her daughter’s thoughts, ‘Every room is full of nothing.’

Chapter 5.

More of nothing

RUBY TURNED AND RAN UPSTAIRS, right to the top of the house. She went into her empty bedroom and set about pulling at the wobbly floorboards. As she lifted them up she was met by the yellow glow of her 622 yellow notebooks.

Thank goodness, it seemed everything was in order. Next she checked the doorjamb – and was reassured to see that, yes, the 621st notebook was also safe. She checked her other eleven hiding places before breathing a huge sigh of relief.

As Ruby turned to leave the room, she caught sight of her donut phone tucked underneath the bookcase. It was the only remaining phone from her collection and the only remaining visible object in the room. She picked it up and dialled Clancy’s number. He wasn’t home yet so she left a message. ‘Call me, OK?’ Then she went back downstairs. As she walked into the kitchen she adopted an expression of quiet distress.

‘I’m sorry sweetheart,’ said her mother kindly.

‘Don’t worry Ruby, we’re going to track this yoyo down,’ said the sheriff, patting her on the shoulder. ‘I’ll see myself out, Mrs R.’

‘Goodbye Nat,’ called Sabina.

Two minutes later the doorbell rang.

‘Oh, Ruby honey, would you get that?’ asked her mother. ‘It’s probably Nat, he’s forgotten his notepad.’

But when Ruby answered the door she was surprised to see a remarkably handsome, rather tall, formally dressed man. He was neither particularly young nor would he ever be considered in any way old – in fact it was impossible to really put any accurate age on him.

‘You are inside out,’ said the man, extending his hand.

‘Huh?’ said Ruby.

‘Let me guess, the so-called authority figures didn’t like your silent demands?’ he was pointing at her T-shirt which was of course inside out, the let them eat cake slogan no longer visible.

‘Oh yeah,’ she said, ‘something like that…’

How did he know about the school cake protest? she wondered.

Who is this guy?

Her mother by now had made her way downstairs. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked uncertainly.

‘Hitch,’ said the man, looking into the house. ‘I see you go in for the minimalist look.’

‘Pardon me? Oh yes, I see what you mean, we’ve been robbed,’ stammered Sabina. ‘I’m afraid there’s nothing to photograph.’

‘Well, lucky I didn’t bring my camera.’

‘Why ever not?’ Sabina said, shaking his hand – Ruby noticed the man wince as if the action had caused him a sudden flash of pain.

‘Because I take terrible photographs – always getting my thumb in front of the lens.’

Sabina looked blank. ‘But aren’t you the photographer from Living Luxury Magazine?’

‘I’m a household manager – from Zen Home management – you called this morning?’

‘Oh!’ said Sabina, brightly, ‘you’re the butler?’

‘I prefer household manager, but butler if you insist.’

‘But I only called the house management agency a few hours ago, they said no one would be available for weeks, how did you…’

‘I returned from London unexpectedly two hours ago. My previous employers, Lord and Lady Wellingford, suddenly decided to tour the palaces of India and no longer required my services.’

‘But surely they will be back in a few weeks?’

‘Not for three years,’ he replied quickly.

‘It takes three years to tour the palaces of India?’ said Sabina.

‘They are travelling by elephant.’

A likely story, thought Ruby. I’ll bet he got fired.

‘So, do you want to see my references? I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.’ He winked at Sabina and she giggled.

‘I’ll bet I won’t!’ said Sabina cheerily,

Oh brother! thought Ruby

‘I’m so glad you’re here, Mr Hitch.’

‘Just Hitch – that’ll do fine.’

‘Oh of course, that’s a butler thing isn’t it, calling yourself by your last name.’

‘Well in this instance it’s more of a me thing, it’s my only name – only my mother calls me anything else.’

‘Oh, and what does she call you?’ asked Sabina.

‘Darling, usually.’

‘Well, you can call me just Sabina – or darling – no just kidding…’

Ruby looked at her mother. Something strange had happened. Why was she giggling like an idiot?

‘Anyway, I don’t mind telling you, Hitch,’ Sabina went on, ‘things have been none too pleasant around here lately, no siree Bob. First the airline totally lose our luggage, and now look – we have been cleaned out.’

Sabina babbled on excitedly about the tomato incident and Hitch listened. It was if she had fallen under some kind of spell.

What is this guy, some kind of hypnotist?

Sabina was interrupted by the ring of the telephone.

‘At least we still have the telephone!’ cried Sabina, delighted that one small possession had escaped the burglar’s grasp. ‘I expect that’ll be the airline! Get that would you Ruby?’

Ruby walked over to the phone and picked up the receiver. ‘Chucks Cheesery, you want cheese we aim to please.’

But for the third time there was absolutely no one on the end of the line. She hung up and was about to dial Clancy’s number when the phone rang again.

‘Look buster if you ain’t gonna talk, why call?’

‘I’m sorry?’ said a low, gravelly voice.

‘What’s with all the heavy breathing and hanging up? It is considered rude you know,’ snapped Ruby.

‘I have no idea what you are talking about – I am not in the habit of calling people with whom I have no intention of conversing,’ replied the voice.

So who called me those other times?

‘I am looking for Ruby Redfort,’ said the voice.

‘Well you found her,’ replied Ruby.

‘Good, so now I’ve found you, all you’ve got to do is find me.’

‘Excuse me?’ said Ruby, ‘what is this, quiz night?’

‘Well,’ the voice said, ‘a little bird told me that you notice everything – but do you notice everything Ruby Red?’

‘The name’s Ruby Redfort.’ Ruby didn’t like her name to be messed with.

‘As I was saying,’ continued the voice. ‘I hear that you are quite the code cracker, that you are capable of noticing the smallest things, the tiny details and how they connect. I bet you can see when something is plum square in the wrong place, while everyone else just walks on by. You can see that something ordinary might mean something extraordinary once it’s put in context. Am I right?’

‘I can crack a code,’ said Ruby struggling to sound more confident than she felt.

‘Good,’ said the voice, and the line went dead.

‘So what’s the code, buster?’ said Ruby to no one but herself. She slowly put down the receiver.

Now what?

Hitch meanwhile, true to his job description, had been managing the Redfort household. By the time Brant Redfort walked in the door Hitch had brought in some of the lawn furniture, conjured camp beds from nowhere, and ordered sushi for dinner. Sabina was leaning on the countertop, and chatting as if she had known him a good deal longer than one hour and forty-two minutes. Though Ruby observed that the conversation was not exactly scintillating.

‘So would you believe it, Hitch, I take my little Oscar Birdet jacket to the drycleaners – you know, Grosvenors on Harling Street? And what do they say? ‘Sorry Mrs Redfort but we won’t be able to fix this, it’s too delicate.’ Can you believe it? What kind of drycleaning service are they?’

‘Well it is an Oscar Birdet, maybe they felt a little out of their depth.’

‘You know Oscar Birdet?’

‘Sure I do.’

‘Aren’t his designs exquisite?’

‘Divine. Look, leave it with me, I’ll take it to my drycleaner tomorrow, he knows what he’s doing,’ said Hitch. ‘And if he can’t fix it, he’ll send it to someone who can.’

‘Boy, I can’t wait for Mrs Digby to meet you.’

‘Mrs Digby?’ he asked.

‘Our housekeeper. We had a misunderstanding, I expect she’s still at her cousin Emily’s cooling off – she’s going to just love you.’

Ruby wasn’t so sure. Mrs Digby ‘couldn’t abide fools’, and as far as Ruby was concerned this guy struck her as a prize turkey.

He was busy unpacking something from one of his bags.

‘Hey, how cute – you travel with your own toaster,’ exclaimed Sabina.

‘Well,’ said Hitch, placing it on the countertop. ‘It’s a good one, and who doesn’t love toast?’

There it was again, the little flash of pain, vivid just for a second when he lifted his right arm.

‘I can’t argue with you there,’ nodded Sabina.

‘That’s some butler,’ said Ruby’s father, impressed.

Ruby made a face. ‘Because he carries a little toaster every place he goes?’ Had the body snatchers broken in and removed her parents’ brains?

She went up to her room and pulled out her yellow notebook – she was thinking about what Hitch had said about his previous employers. Who are these people who can just up and tour India for several years on elephants? And why at such short notice? Ruby couldn’t help feeling this Hitch guy wasn’t telling the whole truth about the Wellingfords, if indeed the Wellingfords ever existed. And what if they did?

Probably cast them adrift in the middle of the North Sea and stole all their money. No, there was something about the timing of his arrival which made the hairs stand up on the back of Ruby’s neck. It reminded her of Mary Poppins – the way he had just arrived out of thin air.

Only thing was, Hitch was no Mary Poppins.

Ruby thought about RULE 29: JUST BECAUSE A LION SAYS IT’S A MOUSE, DON’T MAKE IT A MOUSE.

All evening Ruby waited to hear again from the mystery caller – but the phone didn’t ring and that night Ruby lay on her makeshift bed running over the conversation again and again in her mind.

Why did the caller hang up? You want a person to crack a code – why not give them the code? Geez! There were some strange folks out there.

But then, when the hands of her watch reached 4.43am, Ruby sat bolt upright.

Of course! How could she have been so dumb – the mystery caller had given her the code! The whole conversation was code!

Chapter 6.

Fifteen dollars and forty-nine cents

DESPITE THE UNPLEASANT PROSPECT OF having to wear yesterday’s socks, Ruby was in a good mood and was eager to get up and dressed, long before her school day began. She was surprised to see her morning drink (one third grapefruit, one third cranberry, one third peach – with a straw) sitting waiting for her. How did that Hitch guy know what she drank for breakfast? What’s more, where did he get the straws from?

So mind reading is what they teach them in butler school.

The morning paper was lying on the countertop and Ruby glanced at the headlines.

Mayor wages war on garbage: ‘Litter bugs are trash’ says Mayor Abrahams

Good as Gold: five tons of gold bullion to be deposited in Twinford City Bank vaults

Heaven Scent: Twinford National Blossom Day set to be the most spectacular since records began

Hitch had obviously been to some all night supermarket because the countertop was covered in a vast array of breakfast possibilities.

‘That’s some butler,’ muttered Ruby, as she set about pouring Choco Puffles into a paper bowl. Out of habit she rummaged in the pack to find the free gift : it was a brain teaser puzzle consisting of five shapes which when arranged correctly would make a perfect square. Ruby did it in six and a half seconds. She threw the paper bowl into the trash bag and stood listening for sounds of life. There was no sign of Hitch, and her parents weren’t up yet, so she gave Bug his breakfast and went out to patch her bike tyre – but miraculously it was already fixed.

‘Boy! That’s some butler,’ muttered Ruby again.

‘Thanks.’

Ruby looked up to see the amused face of Hitch. He looked kind of pleased with himself, which irritated her.

‘So what’s wrong with your arm?’ said Ruby

‘I’m sorry?’

‘What’s wrong with your arm?’

‘I’m surprised you noticed.’ And he was surprised too; he thought he had concealed his arm injury well.

‘I notice things, I’m good at that.’

‘I guess you are,’ he said.

‘So what happened?’

‘Just a touch of housemaid’s elbow – I need to lay off the dusting.’

‘Oh yeah, housemaid’s elbow, that well known complaint.’

Stuffing her notebook into her bag, Ruby whistled to Bug, got on her bike and cycled off towards the centre of Twinford, her dog running along side. All the way there she tried to remember exactly what the mystery caller had said.

‘…Do you notice everything Ruby Red?’

‘…A little bird told me… that you are capable of noticing the smallest things, the tiny details… I bet you can see when something is plum square in the wrong place, while everyone else just walks on by.’

Bug had no trouble keeping up with her and in no time they had reached Chatter-Bird Square. She was pretty sure she was right about Chatter-Bird Square – there wasn’t a Plum Square in Twinford, at least not one that Ruby knew about and in any case Chatter-Bird fitted with the clue, ‘a little bird told me’. She looked around her. There was nothing obvious to be noticed – but then that was the point wasn’t it?

‘The smallest things…’

Look for something tiny, Ruby. That could take all day. The square, in fact a park, was big and would soon be teeming with people on their way to work.

‘…people walking on by…’

Bug had wandered off. He was busy going from tree to tree sniffing and doing what dogs do. Ruby watched him snuffling along the ground, making his way over to the tree in the middle where the footpaths met. He had spotted a brown paper bag on the ground under the tree and was busy trying to get whatever was inside it, out.

‘Geez Bug, do you have to eat everything? You just had breakfast a half hour ago.’

Ruby went over and picked up the bag and out fell three squishy plums.

Kinda weird to find plums at this time of year, thought Ruby. And then she looked up at the tree and down at the fruit and she remembered what the voice had said. This was a plum tree and it was in the middle of the square.

Plum in the middle of the square…

…where… everyone just walks on by…

She walked right up to the tree and then walked around it and then she saw it, something red.

‘Do you notice everything ruby red?’

The voice had not been saying her name, it had been telling her to look for something red. The something red was a price sticker – it had Joe’s Supermart printed across the top and a price, $15.49, printed in the middle.

Is this the clue or is this just a price sticker?

She looked at it some more.

If it’s a clue then I guess I’m meant to go to Joe’s Supermart – but fifteen dollars and forty-nine cents? I’m meant to go in there and find something for fifteen dollars and forty-nine cents? I bet there’s nothing in Joe’s Supermart for fifteen dollars and forty-nine cents. No one who had fifteen dollars and forty-nine cents would shop there.

The dog looked at her stupidly – he didn’t know what was going on but he wouldn’t mind doing something else. Ruby was taking no notice though – she was just staring at the little sticker. After a couple of minutes of silent staring she got back on her bike and headed off towards school.

When she got to the crossroads in the middle of Bird Street she called over her shoulder, ‘OK Bug, time to go home.’ The dog looked at her, disappointed, but he knew what to do and he took a left and Ruby cycled on up the hill. She would be early for once.

As soon as she arrived at Twinford Junior High she went to look for Clancy. He was there already of course – overly punctual was his style.

‘Hey, what happened to you?’ he asked. ‘You sorta look like a truck ran over you and then decided to reverse.’

‘Yeah well, I didn’t get too much sleep on account of someone stole my bed,’ replied Ruby

‘Someone stole your bed?’ said Clancy, his mouth open like a fish.

‘Yeah, and that wasn’t all they took.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Clancy, flapping his arms.

‘We don’t have a single piece of furniture left,’ said Ruby dramatically.

‘You got burgled?’ mouthed Clancy.

‘I guess you could call it that – though it looks more like we moved house, but no one bothered to tell us where we were moving to.’

‘They took everything?’ said Clancy his eyes widening.

‘Everything except the phones,’ said Ruby. ‘By the way, thanks for your call buster.’

‘What call? I didn’t call,’ said Clancy. ‘My dad grounded me, wouldn’t let me call, so I didn’t.’

‘No, I noticed,’ said Ruby. ‘But someone did, I tell you I got some super strange telephonic activity last night.’

‘You did?’ said Clancy. ‘What kinda super strange, weird strange or creepy strange?’

‘It’s hard to say,’ said Ruby. ‘One was a hang-up and the other was this gravelly voiced woman.’

‘Like the woman in A Date with Fate ?’ asked Clancy.

‘Sorta,’ said Ruby. A Date with Fate was a show that had been running for years; each week some mildly creepy ghost story was introduced by this old actress with this raspy voice – the stories tended to be a little lame.

‘What did she say?’

‘It’s hard to explain exactly – some kinda code.’

‘You crack it?’

‘Not yet, but listen, before that this kinda chiselled guy turns up at our house and says he’s the house manager my mom requested, only of course my mom being my mom is calling him a butler.’

‘You got a butler! Wow,’ said Clancy impressed, even though his family had never been without one his whole entire life. ‘What’s he like?’

‘A total airhead,’ said Ruby.

‘That doesn’t sound good,’ said Clancy. ‘You don’t want an airhead butler.’

‘Well, technically he’s not a butler, he’s a household manager – whatever that means.’

Clancy whistled. ‘Mrs Digby’s not gonna like that!’

‘Yeah well luckily she’s with her cousin Emily right now, but you’re right – she’s bound to notice there’s something a little off about this guy.’

‘How dya mean – off?’

Ruby paused for effect. ‘I think there’s something sorta strange about him.’

‘Like what for example?’ said Clancy, unable to keep the thrill out of his voice.

‘He seems to know too much. Things he couldn’t know – well, not unless he was psychic or something.’

‘So where did he come from?’ asked Clancy – he was on the edge of his seat or at least would have been had he been sitting down.

‘London, supposedly, but who really knows,’ replied Ruby.

‘He’s English?’

‘No, just been living there – the people he used to work for have ‘suddenly’ gone off riding elephants for three years.’ Ruby loved getting Clancy all wired about the possibility of some dark mystery.

‘Perhaps he stole their money and did away with them,’ he said earnestly.

‘Well that might explain the flashy car – he’s got this silver convertible, but I am not sure it explains the arm injury.’

‘The arm injury? You’ve got an injured butler? You don’t want an injured butler. He’s really injured?’

‘Oh yes,’ nodded Ruby. ‘He looks like he was involved in some kinda accident.’

‘Or shoot out!’ whispered Clancy conspiratorially. ‘You know what Rube, I’ll bet he’s not even a butler – he’s almost certainly a hit man or something.’

‘You’ve got some imagination Clance my old pal!’

But she didn’t tell him the thought had crossed her mind.

Ruby wasn’t one to get in trouble unnecessarily, but she was finding it hard to concentrate and several times during class it was noted that she wasn’t paying attention. The thing was she just couldn’t put it together – what was the significance of fifteen dollars and forty-nine cents?

After lunch it came to her – she couldn’t believe she had been so stupid, it was the most simple kind of clue, the staring you in the face kind. So obvious you missed it. As Ruby all too often remarked, PEOPLE OFTEN MISS THE DOWNRIGHT OBVIOUS {RULE 18}.

It was Mr Walford who got her to see it. He used to be in the military and liked to be precise about things. He was a stickler for using the 24 hour clock.

‘Redfort, Ruby,’ he barked. ‘It is precisely 13:31, recess is no longer in progress, march your way swiftly to class, please.’

Ruby stopped in her tracks, paused, and then suddenly turned to Mr Walford. ‘3:49pm! Of course! Not fifteen dollars and forty-nine cents but fifteen hundred hours and forty-nine minutes – or put another way, eleven minutes to four.’

The price sticker is telling me to be at Joe’s Supermart at 3.49pm.

Mr Walford looked at her as if she was a complete crazy but that didn’t matter, nothing mattered… oh, except for the school basketball tournament, scheduled to begin at sixteen hundred hours.

Darn it, Del is going to kill me.

Ruby would be sorely missed if she didn’t show. Del’s team, the Deliverers, were playing Vapona Begwell’s team, known as the Vaporizers, and there was always a lot of rivalry. Del Lasco would not forgive her unless she had a good excuse, and even then, she still might not.

Inspiration came during afternoon recess when Ruby dramatically faked a foot injury – everyone saw as she tripped down the outside steps. A stuntman couldn’t have done a better job.

‘Jeepers! My toe, I think I just broke my little toe.’

Ruby knew that toes get broken all the time and that they don’t necessarily require a trip to the emergency room. More often than not one is simply told to ice it. She had no trouble convincing anyone that she wasn’t going to be playing basketball anytime soon – Ruby was an accomplished actress.

‘Too bad Ruby, we’re really gonna miss you,’ said Del, kicking furiously at a weed. This was no lie, Ruby Redfort would be missed because what she might lack in height she made up for in skill. She had the amazing knack of distracting the opposition and scoring before they knew that they had even lost possession of the ball.

‘Yeah Del, I know, I’m sorry,’ said Ruby, wincing as she hobbled towards the medical room.

Mrs Greenford the school nurse couldn’t get either of Ruby’s parents on the phone, unsurprising since some time ago Ruby had changed their contact details in the school files. The numbers now sent any member of the staff to an answerphone with the reassuring message, ‘if Ruby should need to come home early today, I am around, please pop her in a cab.’ (Ruby could do a flawless impression of her mother.) This way, if ever she wanted to pull a stunt like this, her parents would not be informed.

Ruby limped off to the taxi.

‘So I’m to take you to Cedarwood Drive?’ said the cab driver.

‘Nah, change of plan – Joe’s Supermart on Amster,’ said Ruby.

The driver gave her a knowing look and nodded. ‘Yeah, I was a kid once – don’t worry, my lips are sealed, sweetheart.’

Chapter 7.

Don’t call us we’ll call you

WHEN RUBY ENTERED THE SUPERMART her ears were assaulted by the tinny sound of the worst kind of muzak. Ruby caught sight of old Mrs Beesman, who was busy filling her cart with what looked like two hundred cans of pet food. It was rumoured that she had somewhere approaching seventy-four cats but as far as Ruby knew no one had ever been in Mrs Beesman’s house to count them. She noticed Mrs Beesman was wearing ear-muffs.

Smart lady, this music could damage your brain.

Ruby walked slowly round the aisles, studying the shelves carefully until she saw what she was looking for. In the middle of a shelf displaying unnaturally vivid cookies and cakes, she saw an item that just didn’t belong. A box of very cardboard looking Real Health Crackers. They claimed to be ‘delicious nutritious yummy snacks – no sugar no eggs no wheat no additives’, but the truth was the packaging looked tastier than the contents.

Something wholesome in Joe’s Supermart, now that is unusual.

Ruby looked at the price sticker and sure enough, across the top it said, ‘Organic Universe’. The words of the mystery voice came back to her.

‘You can see when something is plum square in the wrong place.’

With the box of crackers under her arm, Ruby left the store and made her way across the street to Organic Universe. The wooden chimes jangled as she entered and the smell of sensible food hit her. She headed straight for the cookie aisle, and there, right next to two boxes of Health Crackers, sat a telephone directory. She replaced the box of Health Crackers she was holding, picked up the directory and carried it over to the phone booth by the door.

Now what? she thought.

Above the phone were hundreds of cards advertising all kinds of different health giving treatments, from colour therapy to Watsu, and then… a card which simply said, Don’t Call Us We’ll Call You.

Ruby took the card down from the board and looked at it closely, but apart from a decorative pattern round its edge, there was no other information. She sat down on the wooden stool by the phone booth and waited. After twenty-five minutes the man behind the counter was eyeing her suspiciously.

DON'T CALL USWE'LL CALL YOU

‘Can I help you?’ he asked in an extremely unhelpful tone. He was a young guy, nervous-looking with a nose which seemed too big for his face. The nose made his face look awkward.

‘No, I’m just fine thanks,’ replied Ruby doing her best to sound casual. ‘I’ll let you know if I need anything.’

The big nosed guy obviously didn’t want to get into an argument with a school kid but he wasn’t about to let her out of his sight.

Ruby silently watched the minute hand tick slowly round the clock face, while the big nosed guy walked around the store, eyeing her furtively. If someone was trying to test Ruby Redfort’s patience, they were doing a good job, though patience was not a thing that Ruby had ever been short of.

However, she was relieved when at exactly two minutes to five, the phone rang. She jumped and almost knocked the receiver off its cradle. ‘Hi, hello,’ blustered Ruby.

‘Am I talking to Ruby Redfort?’ asked that same gravelly voice.

‘Yuh huh, yes,’ confirmed Ruby

‘Good, glad you made it this far. I have a job offer for you – let’s make a date… how about tomorrow night at eight for eight not a minute sooner not a minute later. And keep it zipped.’

‘Anything else you wanna tell me?’ asked Ruby.

‘Yes,’ said the voice. ‘Be lucky.’

No goodbye, just the dial tone.

I guess directions would be too much to ask for, thought Ruby, as she left the store.

On her way back home Ruby stopped off at the green. Up in the tree she found a neatly folded origami cuckoo. She knew what that meant without even reading the note.

THE CUCKOO: a parasite bird who takes over the nest of another by pushing the host’s eggs out and laying its own in their place. If necessary the cuckoo will devour the host-bird’s young.

In other words,

THE CUCKOO: a ruthless killer and imposter.

The cuckoo of course was Hitch. It was classic Clancy Crew – he was joking but kind of serious at the same time. He had a sixth sense for trouble. He was often saying, ‘the thing is Rube, I got a hunch about this’, or ‘trust me, I got a feeling I’m right about that’. He could never explain why he had a hunch or where it had come from but the remarkable thing was, he was almost always right. Ruby unfolded the bird and read the note.

vc spf jdyye l fucefy xrs, C ussxubu ds!

Ruby smiled. It wasn’t easy to fool Clancy Crew. Ruby tore a piece of paper from her notebook, wrote

zvuu lvh miv, dsps mpcxd zcf oiwswuzv?

folded it and pushed it into the knot.

When Ruby got home she saw the same police car once again parked in the driveway, and as she walked up the stairs she heard the familiar voice of Sheriff Bridges and also another voice, a police detective.

‘So you didn’t notice she was gone, Mrs R?’ asked Sheriff Bridges.

‘Well to be honest, Nat, what with everything else disappearing I just didn’t get around to noticing. I wasn’t surprised not to see her yesterday – she said she was going to stay with Emily – but Emily says she hasn’t seen her for two weeks.’

‘Emily?’ inquired the detective.

‘Her cousin Emily – lives in North Twinford. You see the thing is she was offended, she shouldn’t have been, but that’s Mrs Digby all over, she gets offended at the drop of a hat.’

‘Offended? By what, Mrs Redfort?’

‘You know, anything really, it can be the smallest criticism, one has to be so careful, the slightest thing can set her off; I ask her to dust, she thinks I’m criticising, I ask her not to, she thinks I don’t trust her with a duster…’

‘No, Mrs Redfort,’ said the detective, trying hard to hold on to his short temper. ‘I meant to say how did you offend her this time?’

‘Well look, it’s like this Detective,’ interrupted Brant Redfort. ‘Sabina stepped into an argument between Consuela our talented new chef and Mrs Digby our much loved housekeeper – some tomato juice was thrown and Sabina was understandably rather upset.’

‘It went all over my new Oscar Birdet jacket. It’s most probably ruined – tomato juice is a stubborn one to get out,’ assured Sabina.

‘The thing is,’ continued Brant, trying to keep the conversation on track, ‘Mrs Digby felt Sabina was taking Consuela’s side – she’s very high-strung.’

Ruby was by now standing in the doorway quietly observing. The detective was writing something on his notepad, obviously thinking very hard.

‘What is it?’ asked Sabina.

‘Could just be that your Mrs Digby is somehow involved in all this – have you thought of that?’ He waved his arm to indicate the now furnitureless house.

‘Oh now come on Detective! Nat, you’ve seen Mrs Digby – you really think a little old lady is capable of stealing every stick of our furniture?’ Brant was appalled by this suggestion.

‘Well as it happens, I don’t, but as the Detective says, we have to follow up every lead.’

‘Maybe she wasn’t acting alone,’ said the detective.

‘Oh, you must be out of your mind – Mrs Digby practically raised me,’ exclaimed Sabina. ‘That’s an awful thing to say.’

‘Maybe I am, and maybe it is, but you have to admit it’s quite a coincidence her disappearing at the same time that you lose all your million-dollar stuff, wouldn’t you agree, Mrs Redfort?’

‘Well yes, but, but…’

‘I’m just saying, we need to look into it,’ said the detective, closing his notepad. ‘Thanks for your time.’

He left by the back door.

‘Sorry not to come with better news,’ said the sheriff.

Just then his radio crackled. ‘Nat, you there? We got a problem at the City Bank.’

The sheriff sighed and spoke into the radio. ‘Not again! OK, I’ll get over there right away.’

He looked up at the Redforts. ‘Darn it, this gold delivery’s causing mayhem – the new alarm system keeps triggering. It better be fixed before that shipment arrives.’ He smiled reassuringly. ‘Look, I’ll let you know if I get any more leads. You take care. Remember, get those locks changed!’

‘What’s left to steal?’ said Sabina, closing the door.

Ruby glanced over at Hitch. He looked far from the suspicious character Clancy wanted him to be – he was busy making cocktails and seemed not the slightest bit interested in this latest development. Was he listening? It was hard to be sure – he seemed a lot more concerned about squeezing limes than he did about a little old lady who was missing, presumed felon. Maybe there was nothing sinister about him at all, maybe he was just a bit dumb.

Handsome but probably not a lot going on upstairs, thought Ruby.

Brant caught sight of his daughter. ‘Hey, Ruby honey, what happened at basketball?’

‘Oh, you know, bounced a ball, shot some hoops, came home. What’s going on?’

‘Well that… detective fellow wanted to interview Mrs Digby about the robbery, but no one can find her.’

Ruby took a breath. ‘Do you think it’s possible…’ her voice was hushed so her mother wouldn’t hear. ‘Do you think it’s possible that Mrs Digby was stolen, you know, along with all our stuff ?’

Brant Redfort smiled, ‘That’s a good one Rube!’

But Ruby wasn’t joking.

‘I’m serious Dad, perhaps she was kidnapped?’

‘If she was kidnapped then we would know about it,’ said Brant.

‘Not necessarily, the kidnappers might be waiting a while before they make contact – you know, to build up the tension.’

‘You know what?’ said Brant conspiratorially.

‘What?’ said Ruby

‘You watch too much TV.’ He laughed, patted his daughter on the head and walked into the living room. Ruby sighed as she straightened the barrette in her hair.

‘And you guys probably don’t watch enough’, she muttered under her breath. This kind of situation was always coming up in Crazy Cops. Ruby had learned a lot about the workings of the criminal mind from watching this show. It was on tonight and if Mrs Digby were here they would be watching it together – side by side on the couch. Except there was no couch. Wherever Mrs Digby was now, Ruby wondered, was she watching Crime Night?

Ruby’s sleep was fitful that night – she had a hard time dozing off, and when she did, she dreamt dreams which gave her no rest. Dreams where the telephone rang and the voice on the other end spoke in riddles. Dreams where her mother was taken hostage by a dangerous toast eating butler and her father was shot at by crazy furniture thieves, and all the while the voice of Mrs Digby called out to her from some faraway prison cell. She was woken by her own voice calling, where are you Mrs Digby?

She sat up and rubbed her eyes. Mrs Digby, a criminal? That detective was a prize bozo. Mrs Digby would never commit a crime – well, not a crime against the Redforts anyway. Ruby’s mind began sifting through worries, exploring solutions, hitting dead ends and double-backing to square one. She consoled herself with RULE 33: MORE OFTEN THAN NOT THERE IS A VERY ORDINARY EXPLANATION FOR THE ‘EXTRAORDINARY’ HAPPENING.

But it was no use, she was wide-awake.

She got up, pulled on a sweatshirt and quietly made her way downstairs – she didn’t want to wake Bug. But Bug was already awake and staring intently at the man sitting in the kitchen. Ruby froze: from her vantage point she could see Hitch, perched on a stool, his right shirtsleeve rolled up high to reveal a bandage at the top of his arm, which he slowly began to unwind.

She held her breath and became as still as the walls.

She watched as gradually all the gauze was removed to reveal what could only be a gun-shot wound.

Meanwhile,somewhere in themiddle of nowhere…

Mrs Digby was crawling out of a floatation tank. She emerged in a polka dot bathing suit, somewhat dazed and disorientated, finding herself not quite in the Redfort’s spa gym. Certainly most things were familiar but at the same time everything was very, very unfamiliar. All the furniture was the same, all the objects were the same, all the art was the same, what was odd was there was no house.

‘Where in all heaven have the darned walls gone?’ she exclaimed.

She appeared to be in an enormous aircraft hanger containing just about everything the Redforts had ever owned.

The last thing Mrs Digby had been aware of was climbing into the floatation tank at three o’clock the previous day – she had been suffering from angry thoughts concerning her rival in the kitchen, Consuela, and thought she could do with some isolation time – or who knew what she might do.

Sabina Redfort had had the floatation tank installed only the other month, having taken advice from her personal healer, who had persuaded her that she needed more time with herself.

Mrs R always finds it very calming – what harm could it do? I guess it prunes the skin a little but at my age what’s a little pruning?

Mrs Digby had thought these thoughts as she climbed in, lay down, pulled the door shut and instantly fell into a heavy sleep.

Boy, had she slept!

What was the day, she wondered? Better not be Tuesday, she thought, catching sight of the Redfort’s kitchen clock. If it is then I’m missing Crime Night, and I never miss Crime Night.

Chapter 8.

Getting Lucky

BY DAYBREAK RUBY WAS UP, showered and pulling on her school clothes despite the fact that there was no one to nag her. Ruby was no early-bird, everyone knew that – in desperation her parents had given her an alarm clock which showed a bird pecking at a worm. It made a pleasant tweeting sound if set for any time before 7am – later than that and it made a sort of strangled squawking noise. Ruby walked into the bathroom and was surprised to see, laid out in neat piles, jeans, T-shirts, over the knee socks and other essentials. On closer inspection she saw that these garments were more than acceptable, in fact they were exactly the clothes she might have chosen herself. There was even a T-shirt printed with the words, keep it zipped.

This could not be the work of her mother.

She spotted a typed note next to a pair of size 3 Yellow Stripe sneakers.

Hope you approve. Had my stylist friend Billie pick these things out for you – she’s good at that kind of thing. Hitch.

Airhead he might be but he was certainly good at his job. Ruby moseyed downstairs to say thanks and found Hitch examining a piece of toast very closely, almost as if he were reading it.

He looked up, startled, and immediately began to spread it with peanut butter.

‘Toast?’ he said.

Not just an airhead but a weirdo too, thought Ruby.

Today, Ruby felt like taking the bus. She made it to the stop in plenty of time, clambered aboard, and sat down, barely acknowledging her friends, Del and Mouse. The two girls tried to get her attention.

‘Hey Rube,’ called Del.

Ruby didn’t even look up.

Del looked at Mouse. ‘Was it something I said?’

Ruby was staring at the card she’d picked up in Organic Universe and chewing furiously on her pencil – what was it she wasn’t seeing? What was there to see? Just the words Don’t call us we’ll call you and the simple decorative border – nothing to give any indication as to where the meeting would take place.

‘Tomorrow night at eight for eight’ was all the voice on the telephone had said.

What am I missing?

‘So Ruby, I see your toe is all mended,’ said Del.

Ruby looked down at her foot – she had forgotten all about her fake injury. ‘Oh, yeah,’ she answered.

Mouse looked at Del and sort of widened her mouth and rolled her eyes – this was her silent way of suggesting that all was not right with Ruby Redfort. Even Clancy Crew couldn’t get any sense out of her – and when Vapona Begwell dared to suggest that Ruby’s ‘recovered’ broken toe was either a miracle or she was some cowardly faker who had chickened her way out of the basketball tournament, she barely even blinked.

‘Hey Redfort,’ sneered Vapona. ‘Did those burglars steal your guts along with the furniture?’

Clancy couldn’t believe it. ‘You gonna let her get away with that Rube?’

‘Look, my mind’s got bigger concerns than Bugwart right now.’

‘Has something else happened?’ said Clancy eagerly. ‘More burglars? Something else go missing?’

‘As a matter of fact, yes.’

‘What?’ said Clancy.

‘Mrs Digby,’ replied Ruby

‘Mrs Digby?’ mouthed Clancy.

Ruby nodded. ‘She isn’t at cousin Emily’s and she isn’t back home. We don’t know where she is.’

Clancy’s eyes were saucers. ‘Do you know what I think? I think the butler who isn’t a butler took her.’

‘And why would he do that, Clance?’

‘So he could get her job – get her outta the way.’

‘My mom didn’t give him the job because Mrs Digby had gone – she didn’t even know Mrs Digby had gone when she hired him.’

‘Yeah well, I still think he’s some bad news,’ Clancy said firmly.

‘Yeah well maybe you’re right ’cause guess what? I saw his injured arm – he doesn’t know I saw it but I did and I am telling you Clance, that’s no housemaid’s elbow he is suffering from – more like Gangster’s Shoulder.’

‘So I was right,’ marvelled Clancy. ‘He was in a shoot out.’ His face lit up. ‘You know he’s probably on the run, hiding out at your house, stealing your stuff and selling it.’

‘Clance, that brain of yours never ceases to amaze.’

But she couldn’t help thinking he might not be so far from the truth.

Ruby pretty much sleep-walked through her morning classes, so distracted was she by the puzzle she needed to solve. And then at 2.30 during her history lesson she suddenly saw what it was she couldn’t see before.

Mrs Schneiderman was giving a very tedious lecture about the ancient Greeks, and those students who weren’t staring out of the window were busy painting their fingernails with Wite-Out and generally working hard to keep from falling asleep. It wasn’t that anyone didn’t want to be interested, it was just that Mrs Schneiderman was one of those people who managed to make even the most interesting things sound very dull indeed. It was something to do with her delivery – she tended to ramble. Ruby was brought out of her thoughts and back into the classroom by the sound of one hundred thumbtacks falling to the floor. Ruby looked across the room and saw the ever accident prone Red Monroe frantically trying to scoop them back into their container.

‘Sorry, Mrs Schneiderman,’ she said. ‘They just sorta fell off my desk.’

The tacks had rolled right across the room and a few had ended up under Clancy’s chair – as he stood up to help, a couple of them lodged themselves in the sole of his left sneaker. Mrs Schneiderman was trying to regain the attention of her students and rapped her ruler on the wall. Ruby looked up and saw, projected on the screen, a slide showing a simple repeat pattern, the famous Greek key pattern used on pottery, mosaics and, it seemed, almost everything ancient Greek.

‘This is a decorative border called “meander”, first used in the Greek Geometric period,’ said Mrs Schneiderman loudly. ‘The name “meander” conjures up the twisting and turning of the Mæander River. “Greek key” is a modern term used to describe the pattern. It is always useful to remember that, in history, decoration is very rarely purely decorative, it is usually there to symbolise something or convey a message.’

Ruby was suddenly very alert. She reached behind her and felt for the jacket hanging on the back of her chair. Locating the left pocket she pulled out her notebook containing the little white card – the one from Organic Universe. On it were the six words, DON’T CALL US WE’LL CALL YOU, but it wasn’t the words that Ruby was interested in. The thing that got her attention today was the pattern decorating the edge of the card. She had previously overlooked this, considering it to be simply decorative – thus forgetting one of her own rules, RULE 13 in fact, THERE IS MORE TO MOST THINGS THAN MEETS THE EYE.

Now she studied the decorative border carefully – it was made up of interlocking figure eights which repeated all the way around the edge of the card.

‘… tomorrow night at eight for eight…’

Ruby knew the time was set for eight but what if the destination was also eight? ‘Be lucky,’ the voice had said – why? Why did she need to be lucky?

After school, Clancy and Ruby picked up Bug, and cycled out to the ocean. Ruby found watching the husky racing in and out of the waves helped her mind relax but still she had no answer. It wasn’t until they started off for home that something clicked. Ruby was cycling very slowly along the sidewalk – Clancy was on foot; his bike chain had broken and he was telling her about how this oil sheik had been on the way to meet with Clancy’s dad when he ran out of gas.

‘Imagine the scene – he is an actual oil baron and he runs out of gas!’

‘That’s pretty funny,’ said Ruby.

‘But that’s not all, his chauffeur flags down this old truck and who does it belong to?’ Clancy didn’t wait for her to guess. ‘Only old Mr Berris who owns the local gas station, that one that’s closing down due to lack of business. Old Mr Berris has a spare can, fills up the sheik’s car and the sheik makes it to dinner on time!’

‘That’s really something,’ smiled Ruby.

Clancy couldn’t get over the irony of the situation. ‘Here is a guy with all the fuel he could ever want but he has to borrow a can from some little old guy who is about to close down due to no one buying his gas!’

‘He certainly got lucky,’ said Ruby, and then she stopped – she had stumbled on the final piece.

‘What’s up? What did I say?’ asked a bewildered Clancy.

‘Sorry Clance, gotta split – I promise I’ll tell you tomorrow!’ she said, steering herself off the kerb and back on to the street. ‘Drop Bug off would ya,’ Ruby called as she turned in the direction of Mountain Road and pedalled like crazy up the hill.

‘What?’ shouted Clance. ‘What just happened?’

‘I think I just got lucky!’ she shouted back.

Chapter 9.

A small dark space

RUBY PULLED UP AT EXACTLY THE SPOT she was sure she was meant to be. It was just out of town on Mountain Road, at a place where the road bent round to the left. It was the site of the old gas station. The only thing remaining of it was the faded sign which still pronounced, ‘Be Lucky, Treat Your Automobile to Some Lucky Eight Gas.’

It had been an unusually sunny afternoon and the road still felt warm under her feet. She took a look around.

Am I meant to be meeting someone?

There was nothing in any direction, nothing at all. Ruby was about to admit to herself that she had made a mistake when she noticed a manhole cover. She walked slowly over to it and brushed the dust from the cover with her hand. The manhole cover had a company logo on it – a picture of a fly with the words Bluebottle and Larva underneath it. Around the edge was the same repeating pattern as on the card, and there was a number in the middle: 848.

Eight for eight.

She waited, only taking her eyes off the manhole to check her watch. At precisely eight o’clock she began working on how to open the cover.

There was a trick to it, and after only a few minutes she had worked it out: eight turns clockwise, four anticlockwise and another eight clockwise – bingo. With some effort she lifted the lid and peered down into utter blackness.

Ruby Redfort’s one real fear was the small confined space. Not cupboards or tiny rooms, or tunnels she knew her way out of – no, it was the small dark space she had never before encountered… the small dark space with no way out… with no oxygen… that’s what she was scared of.

She stared into the void for five minutes, thirty-two seconds before she got a grip on herself.

Was she really going to come this far and no further? Her instinct told her it would be OK, her body wasn’t so sure. Very slowly she eased herself down into the drain and jerkily pulled the manhole cover over her head. She merged with the dark; no more hands, no more feet – it was as if she had dissolved into black. The panic rose up through her body and started to play its usual tricks on her mind. Her breathing became short and rapid; she felt dizzy and sick.

‘Get a grip Ruby,’ she hissed. There was something reassuring about hearing her own voice spilling out into the darkness. She thought of Mrs Digby – all her life, Mrs Digby had been there to squash her fears and prop up her spirits. If she were here now she would say,

‘Don’t tell me you’re troubled by a little darkness Ruby? Good gracious! You don’t want to be bothered being scared of the dark when there are so many other bigger things to be frightened of – like for example getting to my age and losing your marbles or being run down by one of those city buses with their maniac drivers. These are fears – the dark’s the least of your worries, kid.’

Just thinking about Mrs Digby made Ruby breathe more easily. ‘Mind over matter,’ that’s what Mrs Digby always said and she was right. Ruby had made it RULE 12: ADJUST YOUR THINKING AND YOUR CHANCES IMPROVE.

Actually, it was probably the best rule there was.

Never panic!

RULE 19: PANIC WILL FREEZE YOUR BRAIN. Panic will get you nowhere. Panic can get you killed.

She began to edge forward through the nothingness, and as she moved her senses got sharper. She felt the tunnel getting steadily bigger, and realised that the surfaces were smooth – not gritty as she might expect them to be. It didn’t smell dank; in fact it didn’t really smell of anything. She could feel twists and turns and before long was standing not crawling – yet still there was no light. All sense of time had melted away and she could not accurately say how long she had been down there.

She was hot and tired when she stumbled into what amounted to a brick wall. She felt around her, stretching up and reaching across in all directions but there was no way forward, only back. It seemed the tunnel led nowhere – it had all been for nothing.

Ruby sank to the ground, put her head in her hands and wondered how she was ever going to summon the energy to get herself out of there. How long she sat there she did not know.

A sudden deep shuddering sound as if the earth were on the move.

A blinding light – light as white as the dark was black.

Ruby was jolted to her feet, eyes squinting, heart racing.

And then the voice.

‘So you made it, Ruby Redfort.’

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