The Underground City (14 page)

Murdo and Tammy Souter didn’t stand a chance.

A black beetle couldn’t have left the Assembly Hall that night without being thoroughly scrutinized! There were policemen everywhere and it wasn’t at all surprising that Murdo and Tammy were caught fair and square when they tried to leave the theatre with the audience.

After Prince Kalman’s sudden disappearance, the
pantomime
had suffered no more untoward interruptions, much to the relief of Sir James, Matt Lafferty, Lewis and the Stage Manager. The finale was a triumph and the applause had been rapturous.

After many curtain calls had been taken, Sir James had gone on stage and given a short but witty speech, reminding the audience that, as the performance was for charity, he hoped that each and every one of them would contribute generously. There were baskets, he said, in the foyer for their donations which would all be given to Children’s Aid, a worthwhile cause if ever there was one.

The mention of baskets had, at the time, filled both Murdo and Tammy with apprehension and sadly for them, their fears were not unfounded, for as they tried to escape the searching eyes of the policemen scattered round the foyer, they saw many people putting cheques and cash in the same tall, Ali Baba
baskets
that held the takings of their robbery. As there wasn’t a lot they could do about it, they gritted their teeth as they headed for the swing doors that they hoped would lead to freedom.

It was not to be, however, for Sir Archie’s instructions had
been brief, simple and to the point — and it must be admitted that the hand of the law, when it finally fell on their shoulders, was not totally unexpected.

As Murdo had said, it was a fair cop and they’d gone quietly. But when he got to the police station and found that Wullie hadn’t been arrested, he’d really started to worry. With sickening clarity, he’d remembered the arrival of white-faced
policemen
backstage and although they’d been tight-lipped about what had gone on in the Underground City, he had a sneaking suspicion that perhaps it wasn’t only the ghosts that had scared them. Perhaps the Plague People
had
got out? Mary King had warned him. What if they’d got out and found Wullie? Such an innocent! Such a daft idiot! And so scared of the ghosts!

Murdo hammered violently on the door of his cell. “I want to see the Chief Inspector,” he roared through the grill, “and I want to see him
now!
”

The constable who unlocked his cell door looked at him with more than a touch of awe, wondering what on earth Murdo had been up to this time. “You’re in luck, Murdo,” he said, eyeing him strangely, “but it’s no’ the Chief Inspector that wants to see you! It’s the Chief Constable himself!”

Murdo blinked, startled. “Sir Archie?”

The constable grinned. “Aye, Murdo! Sir Archie, himself! You’ve made it to the top this time!”

Inside the hill, Jaikie, who was checking to see if any of the plague ghosts had managed to escape into the High Street, sat up suddenly for the third time that evening. “Didn’t Sir Archie say they’d got everyone out of the Underground City?” he
queried
.

“Yes,” the MacArthur looked up in surprise, “that’s what he told us, anyway.”

“Well, he was wrong! Come over here and have a look!
There’s still someone in there,” Jaikie said.

“It’s not a policeman, though!” Hamish muttered, peering over his shoulder.

The MacArthur and Rothlan got up and moved over to the crystal.

“It must be one of the bank robbers,” Jaikie said. And they watched in horror as the plague ghosts homed in on the lonely figure.

It
was
one of the bank robbers! It was Wullie!

When Wullie woke up under a veritable fortune in used banknotes, he had a head on him fit to burst. At best, it felt as though he’d been hit by a couple of hundred hammers. As this pain-filled daze lasted for some time, it was a while before he remembered about the vault and it was only when the
realization
slowly dawned that he must still be in the bank that he tentatively opened his eyes and sat up, shedding piles of notes.

It was a mistake. His head swam and his eyes glazed but not before he saw the banknotes that lay in piles around him. Hundreds of them! Thousands of them!

Now Wullie was not overly blessed with brains but his
situation
would, at that moment, have left a genius floundering! There he was, in the vault, all the lights were on, there was money everywhere and the whole place was as quiet as the grave. Not another soul anywhere! No police, no bank staff, nobody at all!

In the dim, cloudy, outer-reaches of his mind, Wullie
wondered
about Murdo and this vague recollection strengthened when he saw his bin-liner lying beside him, half-full of money — he looked at it thoughtfully and as he looked, his brain, very gently, began to tick over. Not very fast, mind you, but it was a start! The first thing it told him was that he needed a cigarette. It was a sad fact, but Wullie couldn’t think at all without a
cigarette
in his mouth. So he lit up, tried to ignore his pounding
head and thought about what he was going to do.

Now this was important because until then, it was actually Murdo that had done all the thinking. Murdo said do this, and he did it! Murdo said go this way, and he went! Murdo was always there to see him safely home! Life without Murdo was, in fact, totally uncharted territory and the only thing Wullie was quite sure of was that if he wasn’t careful, he wouldn’t get home. He’d get lost. And that freaked him out because if he got lost, the ghosts would get him!

Now, although Wullie’s thoughts didn’t exactly move with the speed of light, they were nevertheless logical. He lit another cigarette and thought some more. He wasn’t sure about the street that went to the Assembly Hall, even though Murdo said they wouldn’t have heard the bang from up there. But the bang had been a while ago, surely? This reminded Wullie that he had a watch on. He peered at it through the drum-beats of his thumping headache and saw to his amazement that it had been ages since they’d blown the vault. This cheered him up no end. With a bit of luck, he thought hopefully, the ghosts might, by this time, have gone to bed!

But he made his decision. He wouldn’t go near the Assembly Hall. He’d stick to the way he knew. He’d take the old familiar passage to Deacon Brodie’s Tavern and get out through their cellars!

Struggling to his feet was a delicate process as every movement jarred his thumping head and sent lights flashing before his eyes. However, he managed it without too much trouble, lit another cigarette and fifteen minutes later was carefully plodding up the steep slope of the little alley, shining his torch over what, to him, was reassuringly familiar ground.

It was when he heard a strange, horrible, gargling sound and saw some white ghosts heading his way down the alley that Jaikie picked him up in the crystal ball.

Now, Wullie hadn’t seen these ghosts before and although they didn’t look particularly nice, his vision was still
desperately
blurred from the crack on his head, with the result that the nitty-gritty details of the swooping horrors were totally lost on him. Murdo, too, had very successfully instilled the notion into his thick head that the ghosts, however awful they looked, couldn’t do him any real harm. And as Murdo was always right, the upshot was that he didn’t pay the plague ghosts a blind bit of notice. This rather stopped them in their tracks as they weren’t used to being ignored and it made them gurgle and groan even louder as they swooped around him.

The MacArthur, Rothlan, Ellan and Jaikie all watched in fascinated horror as Wullie calmly stopped, lit up again and plodded to the top of the alley with the ghosts streaming behind him! He looked around and ahead of him saw the familiar route to the cellar stretching ahead. Not long now, thought Wullie!

He noticed, however, that the bubbling, moaning noises of the ghosts swirling around him seemed to have subtly changed in tone and now that his head was feeling slightly better and the cigarettes were kicking in, looked at them with more attention. The bubbling noise was now more like a choking, gargling sound and the awful faces were curling up frightfully at his cigarette smoke. One ghost was doubled up in convulsions, another was coughing fit to burst and a third seemed to be in the process of complete disintegration!

The MacArthur and Lord Rothlan looked at one another in startled amazement and Wullie beamed as realization dawned!

It was his fags!

Now revenge is sweet and Wullie hadn’t by any means
forgiven
the ghosts for all the shoves, pushes and icy-cold blasts of the past. He inhaled deeply and blew smoke in their awful faces, watching in delight as they gasped, coughed, choked and
more or less creased up. More and more came swinging along the alley and as he lit up again and again, he took them all on quite happily, even waving his arms from time to time so that the fumes of long-standing that lurked in his overcoat wafted towards them and doubled them up in an agony of self-
destruction
.

It was an unequal battle at best and one that Wullie won, hands down.

“Well!” said the MacArthur, when they had all stopped laughing, “that’s certainly solved all Sir Archie’s problems, hasn’t it?”

“It has that!” Lord Rothlan said, shaking his head in awe as he watched the last of the ghosts fizzle and disappear. “The man deserves a medal!”

Wullie, who hadn’t, until then, appreciated the fact that he was a walking weapon of mass destruction, looked round in satisfaction at the empty alley, but it was only when he was convinced that all the ghosts had choked their last that he resumed his journey, a misty figure enveloped in a gauzy haze of cigarette smoke. On reaching the pile of crates that gave onto Deacon Brodie’s cellars, he scrambled through the trapdoor and replaced it gently with a sigh of relief. He felt a great sense of achievement. Murdo would be proud of him!

He stopped on the stairs on the way up to the bar and spent quite a while in the Gents, tidying himself up. The shelving had given him a whacking bump but his hair covered most of it and if anyone asked he could always say he’d been in a fight, couldn’t he? Not a lot of people ever argued with Wullie, him being over six-feet tall and broad with it, so he wasn’t too
worried
at being asked anything, really. He even stopped to have a quick pint before setting off up the road to his own wee flat on the High Street, well content with his night’s work.

The High Street, needless to say, was stiff with police and
although they stopped many late-night revellers, checked
identities
and patted people over for concealed weapons, none of them stopped Wullie.

And it wasn’t because he was six-feet tall and broad with it either; it was because the MacArthur and Lord Rothlan
reckoned
that Wullie deserved to get back to his flat unhindered and, just to make sure, cast a wee spell that quite successfully protected him all the way home!

Lewis couldn’t wait to get home. He’d been on tenterhooks ever since Casimir and the Sultan had vanished. Not only Casimir but Prince Kalman and Neil and Clara as well!

Casimir had told him when they’d got home from the
ice-rink
that Neil and Clara had magic in them but he hadn’t really believed it until he’d seen them stand up to the goblins on stage. There was no doubt about it. They’d known who and what the goblins were, all right! He’d expected his parents to make some remark about them at the interval but, like the rest of the audience, they seemed not to have noticed anything amiss. Everything, as far as they were concerned, was totally normal. Magic again, he thought!

After the show, they’d gone backstage and although he’d smiled and chatted with Matt Lafferty and been polite to his father’s friend, Sir James, his mind had been elsewhere. He’d liked Sir James, although the understanding twinkle in his eye when he’d said he hoped living in Edinburgh wasn’t proving too dull, had been a bit unnerving; almost as if he’d known that he was the Shadow! All he could think of was Casimir and he’d been glad when his parents had eventually said their final goodbyes.

“Well,” said his father, putting the car into gear and pulling out into the traffic. “That was quite an evening!”

“It was a super pantomime!” Lewis agreed. “Matt Lafferty was marvellous as the Grand Vizier!”

“Yes,” murmured his mother, with a yawn, “the theatre is really quite magical. It takes you into quite a different world, doesn’t it?”

“I guess so,” Lewis nodded, quite determined to get into the “other world” that very evening! For he still had Casimir’s
carpet
and he was going to use it!

Once in his bedroom, he quickly changed into warmer clothes and as he zipped up his anorak, he looked at the carpet, propped in a corner, against the wall.

Clapping his hands together sharply, he said “carpet,” the way Casimir had done. Nothing, however, happened.

“Now listen, carpet,” he said seriously as he bent to pick it up, “I know you can hear me, so don’t pretend you can’t!” He spread the carpet over his bed and looked at it thoughtfully. “Lots of things have happened tonight,” he explained, “and I’ve just
got
to see Casimir! He might be in Arthur’s Seat or he might have gone to Ardray but I
have
got to see him. He found his son tonight, that Prince Kalman, and his son didn’t want to know him! Would you believe it? After all the time he’s spent searching for him?”

The magic carpet wriggled uneasily. “I’m only supposed to carry Prince Casimir,” it said.

“Come on, carpet,” pleaded Lewis. “Didn’t I make you
beautiful
again when I had my magic wishes?”

“Yes,” the carpet breathed, thinking back to the perfectly awful time when it had been threadbare, shabby and full of holes.

“And you’ll be taking me to Casimir,” added Lewis
persuasively
. “It’s not as if I’m going anywhere on my own. And Casimir might call you, you know, and you’d never get out of here with the window shut!”

The carpet thought about it and then lifted gently into the air. Lewis pulled a blanket off the bed and folding it up, spread it over the carpet, for the snow still lay deep over Edinburgh. He ran to the window and opened it wide so that he and the carpet could get through and a few minutes later they were
soaring over the city towards Arthur’s Seat.

So he had been right, he thought, as the hill loomed nearer. Casimir
had
gone to the friends he had told him about; the MacArthurs, the magic people that lived inside Arthur’s Seat. The air was frosty and cold and Arthur’s Seat was deep in snow as the carpet sailed towards it and he wondered apprehensively how on earth he was going to get in. He needn’t have worried, however, as the carpet had been there many times before. The tunnel entrance was cunningly hidden but it knew its way and slid deftly with the ease of long practice, into the hill.

Lewis switched on his torch as the carpet sailed downwards through the inky blackness of a tunnel that seemed to go on for ever. Would it never end, he wondered. And just when he thought it never would, the carpet sailed into a huge cavern, brightly lit by blazing torches in iron sconces that were fastened to the walls.

As the carpet sailed into the cavern, Lewis almost fell off in fright, for the first thing he saw was a huge dragon, its scales glittering red in the light of the torches. Even as he gaped at it in wonder, it sent a stream of bright, sparkling fire across the cavern in a blaze of heat. Casimir had never mentioned a dragon and Lewis, keeping his balance only by a miracle, looked at it in awe as his carpet circled round and took him to a raised dais where several people were seated round a high throne. Thank goodness! Relief flooded through him. One of them was Casimir! His carpet drew closer and although he’d half guessed what to expect, his jaw nevertheless dropped at the sight of Sir James!

Everyone stared at him in amazement and, as he got off the carpet, he felt suddenly lonely and awkward. Casimir had told him about the MacArthur, however, and he’d no hesitation in picking out the strange, regal little figure perched on his throne. He bowed to him and waited.

“Welcome to the hill, Lewis,” the MacArthur said. “Or should I call you ‘The Shadow?’”

“I
was
the Shadow,” Lewis admitted. “With Ca … Prince Casimir, that is.”

Casimir grinned at him sourly. “Lewis was learning!”

“So this is Lewis?” the Sultan said.

Lewis looked up as he recognized both the face and the voice. It was the Sultan of the pantomime!

“Make your bow,” the MacArthur said, “to His Majesty, Sulaiman the Red, Sultan of Turkey!” So involved had Lewis become in the affairs of the world of magic that this actually came as no surprise at all and he bowed low as he had seen Casimir do on stage. Even as he straightened, a huge eagle spread its wings. Amgarad, he thought, and its master, Lord Rothlan. The goblin at Ardray had talked about them.

Then there was Casimir! “I had to come, Prince Casimir!” he said, going up to him and grasping both his hands, “I wanted to help you and I … well, I thought you might need your carpet.”

At a nod from the MacArthur, Sir James got to his feet and, smiling at Lewis reassuringly, introduced him to the others: Lord Alasdair Rothlan, Lady Ellan and several of the MacArthurs who sat on cushions by the chairs. Archie, Hamish and Jaikie got to their feet and, eyeing him with interest, shook his hand. Sir James then took him towards another man in Highland dress who rose to his feet as they approached. “And this,” he said, “is Neil and Clara’s father, John MacLean, and their mother, Janet.”

The black crow perched on John MacLean’s shoulder,
fluttered
its wings.

“And Kitor,” Janet MacLean smiled, her hand reaching up to stroke the crow’s black feathers, “Clara’s crow!”

“And that,” Archie said, indicating the dragon, “is Arthur, our dragon.” At the mention of its name, the dragon let loose
another burst of flames and turned its great head towards them. Archie grinned. “I’ll take you over to meet him properly afterwards. He’s not in a very good mood just now. A bit upset that Neil and Clara have been kidnapped, you know.”

Sir James interrupted. “You were in the audience this evening, Lewis, and you saw what happened. We’ve just been wondering how we can get Neil and Clara back from Prince Kalman.”

“Why does Prince Kalman hate them so much?” Lewis asked.

“He hates Clara more than he hates Neil,” the Sultan said, taking charge of the conversation. “It was Clara who spoke the magic words that broke the spell round the crown. They were my words and I was able to take my crown back from him when she said them.”

“Where have they gone? Do you know?” Lewis asked,
looking
around.

“That’s what is troubling us,” the Sultan admitted. “Prince Kalman has used a hex to hide them from the world of magic. We can find no trace of them in our crystals. No trace at all.”