Read Online The Black Dragon by Julian Sedgwick - Free Book Online Page B

further, stage by stage . . .”
    He started to draw radiating lines, write down new subheadings, expanding the problem across the sheet.
    â€œAnd so, old son, the burning rope part has at least nine elements including thickness of rope, the kind of fuel you put on it, and so on . . . and then those can subdivide.”
    And pretty soon his tea would be cold and the paper would be covered in writing and lines.
    â€œBut that looks impossible,” Danny said.
    â€œNo, it’s not. It just looks bad. But now all the problems are little ones. Solvable. It’s just a matter of working through it one by one. You write them in the order you need to solve them and then you just go at it one at a time, Danny. Lock by lock, so to speak!” And then he crumpled up the paper into a tight ball, tucked it down into his left fist, blew on it—and it was gone, vanished into the bright light from the window. “But we don’t want anyone getting their hands on trade secrets, do we now?!”
    Danny grabs his notebook. He takes a pen and writes down
HOW TO RESCUE AUNT LAURA
.
    He looks at the problem and adds a new line.
How to find Aunt Laura. How to release her
.
    Zamora looks over his shoulder. “We’ll need clues.”
    â€œWe’ve already got some,” Danny says. “The man in the Bat had a Star Ferry ticket marked today. Yesterday, I mean. The ticket had our room number on the back. He must have been stalking us. And he had a shoe repair receipt for somewhere called the Wuchung Mansions.”
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œFrom the man with the ponytail. I checked his pockets.”
    â€œMaybe you should have left that to the police?” Danny shakes his head. He writes down a new line:
Work out who to trust
.
    â€œWhat do you mean?” asks Zamora.
    â€œWhen we were answering Lo’s questions, he wasn’t typing what we said. Not all the time. I could see where his fingers were going. He typed our names all right. But when you said ‘Golden Bat’ he typed something that had at least three p’s or o’s in it. Top right on the keyboard. Like ‘Happy House’ for example. Something like that.”
    â€œ
Madre mia
—you sure?”
    â€œSure. Same again when we told him what Laura was doing in Hong Kong. He didn’t type ‘journalist.’ I think it was ‘shopping!’”
    â€œThat’s the last thing your aunt would do.”
    Danny draws two lines from the last question and puts
Detective Lo
and
Detective Tan
in little boxes.
    â€œBetter add Charlie Chow to that list. I don’t trust him at all,” Zamora says, tapping the sheet. “Not at all. Made himself scarce. That girl too.”
    Danny’s hand hesitates for a beat. And then reluctantly he adds Sing Sing to the list.
    â€œWe might have one more clue here,” he says, taking the blank Post-it note from his back pocket. He holds the paper up to the light, turns it side on.
    â€œI don’t see what that’s going to tell you,” Zamora says. “I saw you swipe it, of course. Nicely done.”
    Danny takes a pencil from his bag and the craft knife he uses to sharpen it. He snaps the pencil in two, and quickly pares away the wood from one side, exposing the graphite core. He spreads the note out, rubbing the cored pencil across it.
    â€œClever lad!” Zamora says, leaning over.
    Clearly revealed—negative white lettering through the graphite—is the imprint of what Inspector Lo scrawled on the sheet above.
    A short string of Chinese characters—and two numbers below: a 4 and a 9. The goosebumps prickle up Danny’s skin.
    â€œAre you still sure this is just a wind-up, Major?”
    â€œI’m not sure about anything, to tell you the truth.”
    â€œAnd Detective Lo claimed to know nothing about it. We need to find Laura’s notebook. That’s what she shouted as they pushed her into the car.