Free Return of the Emerald Skull by Paul Stewart Page A

splintering
crunch!
    Soon the air was thick with flying wood, as chairs, benches and desks, wardrobes and wainscoting, and even floorboards were torn from the classrooms both upstairs and down, and tossed unceremoniously out into the quadrangle. For a moment the boys in the quad waited.
    ‘
Build
,’ came the insidious voice, close by my ear.
    Around me, the boys of Heron House began picking up cracked, damaged andbroken pieces of furniture and lugging them off to the centre of the quad.
    ‘
Build
,’ the voice insisted.
    To my surprise, I found myself joining in the feverish work. Back and forth I went, working with the other boys, shifting broken desks and splintered benches to the middle of the quadrangle, and helping to build them up into a tall structure. With my highstacking skills, it was easy for me to climb up the growing pile – nudging this broken door across, sliding that splintered chair leg into place – ensuring that the emerging pyramid grew both tall and stable.
    ‘
Higher
,’ the voice urged us on. ‘
Higher
.’
    It was only when I was returning for more broken wood, and happened to glance up and notice a face in a window opposite, that I was jolted back to my senses. The face was that of a late-middle-aged man. He was stooped, sunken-cheeked and wild-eyed – but clearly a schoolmaster of some sort.

    ‘Higher,’ the voice urged us on. ‘Higher.’
    The next moment, he was abruptly gone …
    That must be the teachers’ common room, I thought. Perhaps the schoolmaster and his colleagues could provide me with some answers. I decided to pay them a visit.
    Affecting a casual stroll and checking over my shoulder, I slipped away. I went round the side of the west wing, keeping to the shadows. At the end of the building I discovered a rough stone wall, which I scaled, the surface scuffing my knees and grazing my hands. With a groan of effort, I pulled myself onto a pitched roof above. I was hoping for a skylight, and was disappointed to find myself confronted with an unbroken vista of slate.
    Undeterred, I crossed the parapet, made my way over the top of the central ridge-tiles and down the other side. From there, I was able to shin down an ornately decorated drainpipe – unsteady and swaying – until Ifound a small upper window that had been left ajar.
    With a final effort, I hauled myself in, and found myself in a small and, by the look of all the dust and cobwebs, seldom used stockroom. I cautiously unlatched and pushed the door in front of me. It opened onto a central corridor. I peered out and looked in one direction, then the other.
    ‘Which way?’ I murmured.
    And then I saw it – a gold-painted plaque on the door opposite. MASTERS’ COMMON ROOM , I read. I'd struck lucky.
    Checking again that the coast was clear, I darted across to the door and tried the handle. It was locked. Somehow I wasn't surprised. I removed a skeleton key from the fourth pocket of my waistcoat, and gingerly inserted it in the lock.
    From my left I heard voices. One of them sounded like Thompson's. I froze. To my relief, a moment later they all faded away.
    Click
.
    The lock gave. I turned the handle, pushed open the door and walked into the room. Inside, tied hand and foot, were twenty schoolmasters sitting stiffly on the floor, surrounded by the shattered debris of what had once been finely upholstered armchairs and side tables. It was as if a hurricane had hit the first-class salon of an ocean liner and I was looking at the shipwrecked survivors.
    They turned wide, staring eyes towards me – eyes filled with fear and trepidation, rather than any hope of rescue.
    ‘It's all right,’ I tried to reassure them, sweeping back my curtain disguise and revealing my waistcoat and swordstick. ‘I'm an outsider. I'm not from the school.’ I looked from one to the other. ‘Can any of you tell me what's going on here … ?’
    I stopped, for I'd suddenly noticed, lying at my feet and staring up at me with unseeing