Free The Switch by Anthony Horowitz

searching the room. I think he was looking for something to steal.”
    “Tad, darling?” The voice came from outside the room and the next moment Lady Geranium Spencer appeared. She took one look at Tad and her face paled. “How frightful!” she exclaimed. “It’s a burglar!”
    “Mummy . . . !” Bob Snarby ran into Lady Geranium’s arms. “He attacked me!” he wailed.
    “Spurling! Call the police immediately,” Lady Geranium snapped. She pushed Bob away from her. “Do be careful, darling,” she continued. “You’re going to rumple Mummy’s hair.”
    “Wait a minute!” Tad shouted. “You’re not his mother! You’re my mother!”
    “I’m nothing of the sort!” Lady Geranium replied. “Oh, Spurling! Take him downstairs. I think I’m going to have one of my headaches.”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    Tad opened his mouth to speak again, but Spurling shook him so hard that all the breath went out of him. There was nothing he could do as he was carried out of the room, half across the chauffeur’s massive shoulders.
    Spurling carried Tad back downstairs, threw him into a closet and locked the door. Suddenly everything was black, apart from a tiny chink of light coming through the keyhole. Tad pounded at the door, then, realizing it was useless, sank to his knees. He heard something outside. He pressed one eye against the keyhole. Spurling was on the telephone, waiting to be connected. There was a movement and Lady Geranium appeared, hand in hand with the boy she thought was her son.
    “We’re going out, Spurling,” she snapped.
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “Come along, Tad!”
    Inside the closet, the real Tad watched Bob Snarby turn around and gaze directly at him. Bob’s lips twisted in a cruel, triumphant smile.
    And then he was gone.

ACID
    The office was small and square with a desk, two chairs, a filing cabinet and a low coffee table. There was no carpet. A single window looked out over a tangle of railway lines with King’s Cross Station in the far distance. Tad was sitting on his own. He had been here now for twenty minutes, but he still had no idea where he actually was.
    After Bob Snarby had left with his mother, Spurling had unlocked the closet door. Of course Tad had tried to speak, to explain who he was, but after just two words the chauffeur had cut him off.
    “You don’t talk to me. I don’t want to know. Keep your mouth shut—or else!”
    Tad had known Spurling all his life. Only two weeks before, the man had been picking him up at school, carrying his suitcases for him. But it was a completely different creature who had pulled him out of the closet and who towered over him now. Behind the fancy uniform, the brightly polished buttons and the chauffeur’s cap, the man was a thug. He had the same lifeless eyes as Finn. Tad didn’t try to speak again. But he found himself wondering what such a man was doing working for his father.
    With his arm twisted painfully behind him, Tad had been led out of the house and thrown into the back of a black Volkswagen station wagon. It must have been Spurling’s own car. Tad had never seen it before. They had driven in silence for about half an hour, passing King’s Cross Station. Then Spurling had suddenly swerved off the road, through an archway and into the parking lot of an office building. Tad hadn’t had time to see what the building was. They had gone in through a side door, up two flights of stairs. Tad had glimpsed one large room, full of people talking on telephones, tapping at computers, shuffling papers among themselves. But the chauffeur had led him away from there, along a corridor and into the room where he found himself now. As soon as Spurling had gone, Tad had tried the door. It was locked.
    He wasn’t in a police station. At least, he didn’t think so. There had been no police cars near the building and anyway it didn’t have that sort of smell. But if it wasn’t a police station, what was it? Tad looked around, searching for