Free The Baker Street Boys - The Case of the Stolen Sparklers by Anthony Read Page A

sucked his teeth thoughtfully, then read the telegram again, trying to make sense of it. Queenie had done well. Quickly folding it up and tucking it in her apron pocket, she had hurried downstairs to the kitchen and outside, pretending she needed to fill her bucket again from the coal cellar. She had passed the piece of paper up through the railings to Shiner, and whispered to him to run back to HQ and tell Wiggins she had rescued it from the fire in Gerald’s room. Wiggins had been pleased to receive another clue, but he was puzzled by it.
    “ Tomorrow ten o’clock BHY. Be there. ”
Wiggins read the message aloud and scratched his head. “ BHY, ” he said. “Wonder what that is? Does it mean anything to you, Polly?”
    Polly shook her head. “No. Never heard of no BHY. And who’s this Moriarty feller anyway?”
    “Professor Moriarty’s the king of criminals. He’s Mr Holmes’s most dangerous enemy.”
    “Have you come up against him before, then?”
    “You could say we’ve crossed swords with him once or twice.” Wiggins looked around at the other Boys. They all nodded solemnly.
    “P’raps this time we’ll manage to nail him good and proper,” said Beaver.
    “We gotta find ’im first,” Shiner pointed out.
    “D’you think this BHY’s a place?” asked Rosie. “
Be there
, it says. Be where? At BHY, wherever that is, right?”
    “Right,” Wiggins agreed. “Good thinking, Rosie. If we could work out what the letters stood for …”
    “… we could suss it out and be there afore him!” cried Beaver enthusiastically. “And if he’s takin’ the jewels, we could see who he’s givin’ them to and jump in and grab ’em and…”
    “Whoa, whoa!” Wiggins cut him off. “Hang on, Beav! We ain’t sussed out nothing yet.”
    “Oh. No. Nor we ain’t.”
    “Never mind, Beav,” Gertie said cheerfully. “That’s what we can do when we
have
worked it out.”
    “BHY,” Wiggins muttered. “BHY… It’s like trying to play ‘I spy with my little eye’.”
    “Yeah – with a blindfold on,” said Shiner gloomily.
    “I’m gonna have to think about this,” Wiggins went on. “You lot better go to bed and let me get on with it.”
    He went to pick up his deerstalker hat and pipe from the shelf where they lived. To his horror, they were not there. This was terrible – how would he be able to think properly without them?
    “Where’ve they gone?” he gulped. “Mr Holmes’s hat and pipe? I gotta have ’em!”
    The other Boys were aghast, knowing how important they were when Wiggins had a problem to solve.
    “Oh, those old things,” said Polly. “I cleared them away when I was tidying up.”
    “You didn’t … you didn’t chuck ’em out, did you?” Wiggins asked fearfully.
    “No, course not. I put ’em in that box of clothes over there.”
    Wiggins sighed with relief, dashed across the room to the box and rummaged inside it until he found the missing items. Pulling the hat firmly on his head, he gave Polly a stern look.
    “Don’t ever do that again!” he told her. “Why are you always trying to tidy everything up? You ain’t our mother.”
    Polly’s lips trembled and she looked as though she might burst into tears.
    “I- I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I don’t have anythin’ else to do while you’re out all day. And I was only tryin’ to make the place nice for you.”
    “Course you was,” Beaver said soothingly. “You didn’t have to shout at her, Wiggins. She’s only doin’ her best.”
    The other Boys all agreed, and Wiggins backed away sheepishly.
    “Sorry,” he grunted. “I didn’t mean to, er… Sorry. Go on, now, all of you. Get to bed.”
    Wiggins flung himself into his special chair and prepared for another night of thinking. But hard as he tried, he couldn’t find an answer to the problem. When morning came he told the others that the only thing they could do was watch out for Gerald leaving Mountjoy House and follow him when he