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

you’re a right-angled triangle.”
    â€œShut it, Sesame. So—Rob designs a little virus with the help of someone. He puts it in chocolates, which he gives to people on the team until he can get in. But then he forgets whichchocolates have the viruses, and keeps giving them to people accidentally. Remember those chocolates he gave us the other day? They’re the ones that were full of viruses.”
    I whistled. “I’d forgotten about those chocolates. The virus could have been in there, it’s true.”
    â€œSee,” said Toby, “my hypothermia was completely right.”
    â€œHypothesis. But no, I’m afraid it can’t be right, Toby. If someone’s clever enough to think up a plan like that, they’re not going to forget where they’ve put the deadly bug. But of course, Rob could well have another reason to want to poison everyone—a reason that’s got nothing to do with being on the first crew.”
    â€œMaybe he’s an evil mastermind,” suggested Gemma, “just doing it for fun and out of pure malevolence. Or an international terrorist employed by Lapland to destroy Cambridge.”
    â€œYes. Somehow, I’m not convinced.”
    â€œWell, do you have another hypochondria?” asked Toby.
    â€œHypothesis. Yes, I do. I think there’s something we haven’t yet thought about. And to find out what it is, we have to go back to the boathouse and investigate.”
    So we escaped through the kitchen window, having checked that Mr. and Mrs. Appleyard were busy doing something else (she was telling him that one and a half buckets of goose fat and six packs of butter was quite enough fat for today’s school lunch). Since Gemma didn’t have her scooter with her, she sat on the back of Toby’s bike, and after he’d finished complaining about how heavy she was (heavier than a blue whale who’s swallowed an elephant who’s pregnant with twins, apparently), we crossed town and stopped at the university boathouse.
    Which was, unsurprisingly, locked and empty. So close to the race, the team must be spending most of the day in Ely, rowing on the river and doing gym sessions to wind down before eating kilos of pasta.
    â€˜They’ve left the changing room window open again!” I said as we reached the little balcony,having climbed up the wooden beam.
    We slithered inside, and immediately switched to supersleuth-and-sidekicks mode. My supersleuth radar, which is a sort of sixth sense you get when the stellar connections in your brain are particularly good at detecting criminal action, was on full blare.
    â€œHere are Rob’s chocolates!” called Gemma from the other side of the changing rooms. She read the label on the box. “An assortment of drop-dead delicious fondants and lip-lickingly luscious ganaches.”
    â€œDrop-dead, I bet,” Toby sniggered.
    â€œBag them all,” I said. “We’ll analyze them later.”
    â€œI don’t have a bag,” remarked Gemma.
    We looked everywhere for an appropriate bag, but of one there was no sign.
    â€œJust put them in that silly woolly hat,” I said, pointing at the red-and-white hat we’d seen last time, and which was lying under a bench.
    Toby dived under the bench to pick it up. “It’s full,” he said.
    â€œOf what? Lice? Dandruff? Brains? It’s funny, it reminds me of—”
    â€œOh wow,” he interrupted, looking inside it. “Not . . . quite. Look at that.”
    And he emptied it on the floor.
    And it went
cling-a-ling!
    Ding-a-ding-a-cling-a-ling!
    And showered us and the room with light.
    Glitters.
    Glimmers.
    Shimmers.
    For that woolly, silly, stripey red-and-white hat had been full of golden, silvery, diamondy, pearly . . .
    â€œ
Jewelry!
’” gasped Gemma. “Geez! Since when has that been here?”

    Since when do you say ‘geez’?”