The Case of the Vanished Sea Dragon (20 page)

In another part of London, in the back of his Bentley, Brant Buchanan was also watching the news report, laughing, clapping his hands together.

‘How are the share prices, Weaver?' he asked.

Weaver's face appeared on the plasma screen. ‘It looks like it's worked, sir,' he said. ‘The insurance payout for the three islands is so big that the share prices for the insurance company are plummeting, meaning you can purchase the company at a bargain price.'

Sensing the disapproval in his employee's voice, Buchanan said, ‘You think it's extravagant to erupt three volcanoes in order to buy an insurance company on the cheap, don't you, Weaver?'

‘I think some would call it extravagant,' replied the driver, choosing his words carefully.

‘What would you call it?'

‘I'd call it a rich man's hobby,' he said.

‘It's lucky you made a copy of the instructions,' said Buchanan. ‘Talking of which, let's have a look at that security tape.'

The image of Weaver's face slid to the side of the screen and grainy CCTV footage appeared, showing three angles of the upstairs office in the lab. Across the bottom of the screen ran the time.

19:44:58 …

19:44:59 …

At 19:45:00 something about the size of a golf ball dropped into the room.

‘It was rather bold of these thieves to use our own camera-neutraliser to break into the office,' said Buchanan.

‘Luckily, as it was our own equipment I was able to isolate the scrambling frequency and recover the picture,' said Weaver. ‘The thief should be entering any second.'

Brant Buchanan wasn't used to being surprised. He wasn't surprised when Malcolm Bigsby had told him the location of the VE 6.2 in exchange for a good job with a generous salary. He wasn't surprised that Weaver's remote-controlled mice had successfully stolen the weapon. He wasn't surprised when the
weapon actually worked, giving him the single biggest insurance payout in history.

But his jaw literally dropped as he watched, on the CCTV footage, from three different angles, a real, live dragon fall into the picture. The dragon glanced around, surveying the room. Weaver paused the footage on his large face, as it looked directly into one of the cameras. In spite of his childhood fantasies, Brant Buchanan had never dreamt that dragons actually existed, let alone that one had broken into his office. But there it was in front of him. Evidence.

The billionaire leant forward to get a closer look. ‘What have we here?' he uttered.

‘I'd say you have a new hobby,' replied Weaver drily.

The Dragon Detective Agency:
The Case of the Missing Cats
The Case of the Wayward Professor

Look out for
The Case of the Stolen Film

First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

This electronic edition published in September 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Text copyright © 2008 by Gareth P. Jones
Illustrations copyright © 2008 Nick Price

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
eISBN: 978 1 4088 3686 6

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