Scam on the Cam by Clementine Beauvais Read Free Book Online Page A

closed the door, and then I was alone with them in this shadowy, sneezingly dusty cellar—alone with them and the pirate chest.
    I peeped around the ancient curtain.
    â€œOkay,” said Gwendoline. “Give me the tools.”
    Julius opened his backpack and handed his sister a hammer and a long, slim metal bar. She stuck the metal bar just underneath the lock and started hammering at it as energetically as if the closed chest contained a year’s supply of gummy bears.
    We waited, and waited and waited. I would have fallen asleep, if it hadn’t been for the deafening racket she was making.

    â€œWant me to take over?” asked Julius after a while.
    â€œAlmost . . . done . . . ,” she grumbled between her teeth, still banging at the pirate chest and showering it in pretty sparkles of sweat.
    â€œWould have been easier if you hadn’t lost the key,” said Julius.
    â€œVery . . . funny,” said Gwendoline. “Haven’t. . . lost it . . . someone . . . stole it!”
    And finally the lock exploded into splinters of metal and wood, some of which landed dangerously close to my shiny shoes.
    â€œGood job,” said Julius. “Let’s see. Anything missing?”
    Gwendoline opened the chest, which groaned as if annoyed to be so rudely awakened (I certainly would have been). They peered into it for a while, moving stuff around.
    â€œNot that I can tell,” murmured Gwendoline. “No, everything seems to be just as we left it.”
    â€œI told you,” said Julius. “No one stole that key—you must’ve lost it somewhere.”
    â€œI was worried about those kids roamingaround,” said Gwendoline. “Your little friends from Goodall.”
    â€œOh, they’re completely harmless,” said Julius. “I got one of them talking this morning. She told me they suspected that someone was poisoning the team. So I made up a story about seeing Rob Dawes mixing stuff into their food. That should keep them busy for a while.”
    I mentally cursed Gemma so abundantly that her unearringed ears must still have been ringing the next morning, though she probably interpreted it as a foreboding of wedding bells with the devious Julius.
    â€œWell,” said Gwendoline, “until I find the key, let’s leave that thing here. We can’t hide it anywhere in the boathouse, and we can’t leave it outside now that the lock is broken. Let’s get what we need from it immediately and come back for more whenever necessary.”
    They crouched down and filled Julius’s backpack with things I couldn’t see. Then they closed the chest again, pushed it against a wall, covered it with old furs and a Persian rug andfinally left the room, helpfully neglecting to turn the lights off.
    As soon as they’d gone, I leaped out of my hiding place—my lungs as dusty as if I’d been vacuuming up the room with my nostrils for the past two hours—and pushed away all the rags that they’d dropped on the chest. Gingerly, I opened it.
    It was half-full of bags.
    Bags of
powder
.
    Blue powder, white powder.
    â€œWell, well, well,” I murmured, “what can that powder be, then? How about
poison
?”
    So I took one, stuck it inside my dress pocket, and put the chest back into place. Then I took some time to congratulate myself.
    â€œWell done, Sesame. This was a good evening. You hadn’t planned to go on a mission, but a good supersleuth knows that the unpredictable is always the best ally.”
    I shook my own (right) hand with my own (left) hand and merrily prepared to make my way back to the door.
    And then the only lightbulb in the cellar burned out with a
ding
!
    I didn’t panic. Supersleuths don’t panic. They embrace the unpredictable. “Hurrah!” I said to the darkness around me. “The lights have gone out. This gives me a