Return of the Emerald Skull (5 page)

Crash!

The schoolmaster bit the dust behind me with a shout of rage as I trotted on to home base and the congratulations of my teammates!

I left them to enjoy the victory and took off before old Cripps started asking awkward questions, and was back in the bustling heart of the city as the newspaper hawkers were
hitting the streets with the late editions.

‘Read all about it!’ they were shouting above the babble of voices and clatter of carriage wheels. ‘Ghost ship found on mudbank!’

Tired as I was, and ready for my bed, that got my attention all right. I stopped one of the newspaper hawkers and bought a copy. As I stood beneath the gaslight on the corner of Ox Bucket Lane, it was all I could do to keep my hands from shaking when I read the inky black newsprint.

eedless to say, I didn't get much sleep that night in my attic rooms, and what little I did get was disturbed by dreams of ghostly ships, wild-eyed captains and bloody cargo hooks. When at last I tumbled out of my bed and dashed some water in my face, I knew I had some decisions to make.

Should I go to the authorities and inform them of my visit to the
Ipanema
? Or should I return to Archimedes Barnett and tell him of my experiences? The more I thought about it, the less point there seemed to be to either course of action. After all, what
had
I seen? A half-crazed captain and a bloodstained
cargo hook. Where the captain and his crew were now was anybody's guess.

If I – a humble tick-tock lad – went to the harbour authorities with a story like that, who knows how they might twist it round? I might even be seen as a suspect. And for what? A small crate containing an emerald bird.

As for the headmaster, if he read the report in the paper, he could go to the powers that be if he wished, but somehow I didn't think he would. He had his precious specimen and seemed happy enough. I've seen my fair share of strange and terrible things in this great heaving city – from sewers infested with flesh-eating salamanders to rooftops haunted by blood-crazed night wolves. By comparison, a crew deserting its ship seemed pretty unremarkable.

Yet there was something about that abandoned ship and the disembodied voice in the fog that kept playing on my mind. In the end
I resolved to research ghost ships and mysterious portents on my next visit to Underhill's Library for Scholars of the Arcane. First, though, I had to pay a visit to my good friend Professor Pinkerton-Barnes, who had summoned me on a matter of some urgency.

I highstacked it across town to the tall university building where he worked. There was a fine drizzle falling by the time I reached the lofty slate turret. I slid down the thin, ridged drainpipe, landed lightly on a third-floor window ledge and climbed into the professor's laboratory.

Professor Pinkerton-Barnes – or PB to his friends – was at the far end of the laboratory, bent over his cluttered desk, one eye clamped to a microscope.

‘Morning, PB,’ I called.

The professor looked up, his shock of white hair quivering. ‘Oh, Barnaby, it's you,’ he said. ‘Is it really too much to ask you to
use the door once in a while?’

He climbed to his feet, groaning slightly and muttering about his ‘aching old bones’ as he did so, and walked round the desk.

‘PB,’ I said as he approached. ‘Your eyebrow!’

The professor's hand shot upwards, and he rubbed the hairless ridge above his left eye.

‘Yes, yes,’ he muttered. ‘A rather unfortunate accident with a Bunsen burner. But I dare say it'll grow back …’

I hoped it would. The professor's expression, fixed in a state of semi-surprise, was rather unnerving.

‘But this is all by the by,’ he went on, ‘and not at all the reason why I summoned you, Barnaby. I have a job of some urgency for you.’

I nodded. ‘Always happy to oblige,’ I said.

‘I have this theory …’ the professor began, and I had to smile.

If I had a mallard's egg for every time I'd
heard those words, I could make an omelette the size of a duck pond. The professor was full of far-fetched theories – everything from the idea that water voles were learning to walk upright because of overgrown canal paths, to bullfinches attacking cats after eating the fruit of the oriental tilberry tree. Most of them proved without foundation, and I should know, because the professor employed me to test them.

But I shouldn't be too sceptical. Every so often the professor was spot on. Like the time he proved that the distilled gizzards of an arctic ptarmigan could cure a bad case of cerebral hives – one theory I was personally delighted to prove …

‘You do?’ I said, suppressing my smile.

‘Indeed, Barnaby,’ said the professor, squinting at me with his newly acquired quizzical expression. ‘My theory is that a week's worth of soiled lab coats will have been freshly laundered and expertly ironed,
and will now be awaiting collection at the Lotus Blossom Laundry in Chinatown …’

He fished in the pocket of the admittedly grubby, not to say singed, lab coat he presently wore, and produced a crumpled laundry receipt.

‘Would you care to prove my theory correct?’ the professor said with a laugh.

‘It would be my pleasure, PB,’ I replied, plucking the receipt from his fingers and slipping out of the window. As I climbed up the drainpipe, I heard the professor call after me.

‘And remind me to acquaint you with my theory of doors and stairs some time …’

I highstacked it across town in no time, skirting the Wasps’ Nest quarter and crossing the theatre district. The rain had cleared, and I arrived in Chinatown in sunshine. Performing an ambitious leap from the end gable of a tall almshouse, I found myself on the roof of the Lotus Blossom
Laundry, slightly winded, but otherwise in one piece.

I sat for a few moments on the broad sloping roof with its glazed green slates, and caught my breath. Then, feeling rather hungry, I pulled a small bag from the left-hand pocket of my topcoat and a bottle of ginger ale from the right-hand one. The bag contained a hot wrapped parcel. I unwrapped the greaseproof paper gingerly. As I did so, the pasty it contained released its wonderful aromas – aromas so scrumptious my mouth watered. The pasty was a Stover's Special – especially designed for the men who worked at the great coal furnaces.

I'd had the foresight to pick one up on my way over to the professor's. After all, I reasoned as I took a bite, I had to keep my strength up, didn't I?

I took another bite from the half of the pasty that was decorated with a pastry leaf. That was the half that contained a savoury
mixture of lamb, carrots and turnips. I took several more mouthfuls, wiping the salty gravy from my chin with my handkerchief. Then, when I reached the little dividing wall of pastry in the middle, I paused, unstoppered the ginger ale and took a swig. The second half of the pasty was filled with a sweet, spiced apple mixture, dripping with syrup and laden with plump sultanas.

‘Delicious,’ I muttered to myself. I brushed the crumbs from the front of my waistcoat, finished off the ginger ale and climbed to my feet.

It's strange that such a simple meal, eaten up on the rooftops under the warm mid-morning sun, should have proved so memorable. Yet it has. Perhaps because I associate it with one of the most remarkable episodes in my life, and a meeting with someone who would change me for ever. To this day, I only have to catch the smell of a Stover's Special to be transported back to the Lotus Blossom Laundry in Chinatown
on that fateful day …

I climbed down from the rooftop into a side alley, hot and humid from the laundry steam vents, and turned the corner to enter the laundry by the front door. Great West Street, the main thoroughfare of Chinatown, was as crowded as usual. Shops of every type and description thronged with people, as did the myriad market stalls that lined the broad road.

Moneychangers, letter writers, bird sellers and silk merchants touted for trade alongside herbalists, fortune-tellers and firework makers. However many times I passed through Chinatown, I never tired of its sights and sounds – the brightly painted statues of its gaudy temples, the delicious odours wafting up from cellar dining halls and the glowing lanterns that decked every lintel and doorway.

Pausing to retrieve the professor's laundry receipt from my top waistcoat pocket, I pushed open the heavy rosewood door of the
laundry and entered.

A large paper lantern cast a yellow glow over the high-ceilinged chamber, which was lined on three sides by huge shelves piled high with neatly folded laundry. Facing me across the tiled floor was a broad counter, at which sat an elderly Chinese man with a long, stringy white beard and a tall hat of folded paper perched on his head.

Behind him, a great glass window revealed the cavernous laundry beyond, teeming with an army of laundresses clustered round copper vats of boiling water, troughs frothing with soapsuds, and giant mangles that took five pairs of arms to turn. Beneath his tall paper hat, Chung Lee – the laundry's owner – didn't notice me come in. He seemed to have his hands full with a heavy, thick-set customer in a velvet jacket and green Epsom, who was jabbing a stubby finger into the laundry owner's chest to emphasize what he was saying.

‘My point is, Mr Lee,’ the jug-eared thug said with a jab that made Chung Lee's paper hat wobble, ‘you don't have till next month to pay up. Or next week. Or, for that matter’ – he jabbed again – ‘till tomorrow. You pay up
now
, understand?’

‘But your friend, the little one, he say, “Pay next month,”’ the laundry owner protested weakly. ‘I don't have money now …’

Jug-Ears pushed the brim of his green Epsom back on his close-shaven head with a stubby finger, then made a fist.

‘I'm beginning to lose my temper, Mr Lee,’ he snarled.

I'd seen this sort of shakedown a thousand times before, and it made my blood boil. Jumped-up strongman using his muscle to squeeze protection money out of tradesmen. The thug was even dressed for the part in his vulgar velvet jacket and felt-covered hard hat. Probably had a cosh and a knuckleduster
in the pockets of his embroidered waistcoat. I wasn't taking any chances. I flicked the catch on the handle of my cane and unsheathed my sword, before tapping the thug lightly on the shoulder.

‘What the—?’ he grunted in surprise as he turned to find a steel blade pointed at his chest.

‘I'd be on my way if I were you,’ I said coolly, although inside I could feel my anger rising like steam in a linen press.

Jug-Ear's eyes narrowed and his lip curled. ‘A tick-tock lad!’ he sneered. ‘Are you old enough to be playing with sharp swords, sonny?’

In answer I gave a deft flick of my wrist, and my sword tip plucked the green Epsom from his shaven head, sending it clattering to the tiled floor. With a downward cut, I sliced the ivory buttons off his waistcoat – and sure enough, a leather cosh and iron knuckleduster fell out and clattered to the floor, to
join the green hat.