The Sultan's Tigers Read online

  “Tom.”

  “This way, Tom. And keep quiet. If you make a noise, I’m gonna hurt you. Got that?”

  “Yes.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come on, then.”

  He half pushed, half dragged me down the hallway and in to the kitchen.

  I knew who he was. I’d heard about this. There are thieves who read the local papers, looking for announcements of weddings and funerals, the days that houses will definitely be empty. He must be one of them. Well, he was wasting his time today. There was nothing worth stealing in Grandpa’s house. Not unless you wanted eleven cans of tomato soup or some very smelly socks.

  The only thing was, this guy didn’t look like a crook. Not the type of crook who breaks into empty houses, anyway. His clothes were too nice.

  If I’d seen him in the street or been shown a photo of him, I would have guessed he was a soldier or an athlete. Maybe a tennis player. He was a big guy with broad shoulders and strong hands. He had a long face, a strong chin, and a great tan. He had to live somewhere sunny. So he wasn’t from around here.

  He didn’t sound local, either. I couldn’t place his accent, but I was almost sure he wasn’t Irish. His words had more of a twang. He might have been South African or Australian, something like that.

  Once we were through the door, he told me to turn around. For a terrible moment I thought he was going to slit my throat. Instead he slipped a dishcloth into my mouth and tied it tight.

  I tried to scream, but I didn’t have enough breath in my lungs, and before I could suck in any more, he was tipping me forward and yanking my hands behind my back. He was too strong for me. I couldn’t wriggle away. I heard him opening a kitchen drawer. Slamming it. Opening another. He must have found what he was looking for, because he started working quickly and efficiently, tying my hands behind my back with what felt like a piece of string, then sitting me down in a chair and strapping me to that.

  He put his face close to mine.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “But if you make a noise or try to get away, I will kill you.”

  3

  I don’t get scared easily, but this guy filled me with fear. I don’t know what it was. His eyes, maybe, or his voice, or simply the way he’d crept up on me and grabbed me from out of nowhere. Whatever it was, I knew I didn’t want to mess with him. He was serious about killing me, I could hear that in his voice. I sat very still, listening to him pacing around the house. Was he a thief? If so, why had he bothered breaking in to this house? And wouldn’t he leave as soon as he saw the way Grandpa had lived? The TV must have been a hundred years old and nothing else in the house was worth anything. What could this guy possibly be looking for?

  I heard him moving through the ground floor, room by room, then heading up the stairs. His footsteps were directly above me. This was my chance. I didn’t want to stick around and allow him to kill me. Even if he heard me, he’d take a few seconds to come all the way downstairs. That should be enough time to get out of here.

  I started wriggling my arms. My phone was in my pocket. If only I could stretch a little further . . .

  No. Impossible. The string was tied so tightly, I could hardly move.

  I shuffled from side to side. Pulled my arms up and pushed them down again. Shrugged my shoulders. Twisted my wrists. Strained every muscle.

  Finally I got frustrated and started jerking my arms halfway out of their sockets, ignoring how much it hurt, just trying to get free. The chair’s legs suddenly lifted off the ground. I tipped forward and landed face-first, smacking my forehead into Grandpa’s floor. For a moment I was stunned. No problem, I thought to myself. I’ll crawl out of here. Take the chair with me. I scrabbled across the floor like a wounded crab, heading for the door.

  I heard his laughter before I saw him. “What are you doing? You think I don’t know how to tie a knot? Come on, kid. Let me help you.” He must have heard me clattering around and come back to the kitchen. He bent down, reached out a hand, and yanked off my gag. I was still gasping for breath when he picked up the chair, swung it around, and plonked me down as if I weighed nothing at all. We were face-to-face, me sitting and him bent double, peering into my face. “You all right?”

  “I won’t tell anyone you’re here,” I begged. He sounded sympathetic, but I didn’t believe a word of it. He’d just threatened to kill me; why should he suddenly be worrying if I was all right? “Please, just let me go.”

  “I will. In a minute. First we need to talk. What’s your name again?”

  “Tom.”

  “That’s right. Now, Tom, I need you to help me. Your gramps and me, we were doing a deal together. He’s broken his side of the bargain by dying, but I want to keep mine. I’m looking for something. It’s in this house, but I don’t know where. You’re going to help me find it.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Just some old papers. Nothing interesting.”

  He reached into his belt and pulled out his knife. Before I could even think about screaming, he was slitting the string that bound my wrists.

  “You can get up if you want,” he said. “But don’t bother trying to run away.”

  I stood and flexed my wrist, getting the blood moving into my veins. Why was he being so friendly? Was it a trick? I glanced at the door. Should I make a run for it? I looked back at him and I could see he knew what I was thinking, but he wasn’t worried. He knew I wouldn’t get three paces before he tripped me up, knocked me down, and stuck a knife in my ribs.

  “I’m Marko,” he said.

  “Mark-oh?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Nice to meet you, Marko. Not.”

  He grinned. “You’re like the old man, aren’t you?”

  “You knew him?”

  “We were good friends.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Maybe not exactly friends. You can call us colleagues if you’d rather. We were working together. He had something I wanted. I was going to buy it off him. Now he’s gone and I can’t find it. Where is it, Tom? Where would the old guy hide something he wanted to keep hidden?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You can do better than that.”

  “I really don’t.”

  “Do I have to tie you up again?”

  “No. But I don’t know where your stuff is.”

  Marko looked at me for a moment as if he was trying to decide whether I could be trusted. Then he said, “Do you want to earn five hundred euros?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m looking for a bundle of old papers. I want them, Tom, and I’m willing to pay for them. Help me find these papers and I’ll give you five hundred euros.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If I find the papers, you’ll just steal them.”

  “You’re wrong, Tom. I’m an honest guy. If I make a deal, I keep it. Here’s the money.” He took out his thick wallet and counted five notes. He offered them to me. I reached for the money, but he pulled it away immediately. “Find the papers first,” he said.

  Five hundred euros. That was more than six hundred dollars. Enough to buy a new computer or a new bike.

  I didn’t like Marko. And I certainly didn’t trust him. But I could deal with five hundred euros.

  “What’s in these papers?” I said.

  “They’re just some documents.”

  “What sort of documents?”

  “Historical ones.”

  “Why do you want them?”

  “I’m working for a collector,” said Marko. “He loves all this old stuff. He wants it for his collection.”

  “How much is he paying for them?”

  “That’s my business, Tom.”

  “How much were you going to pay my grandfather?”

  “A decent amount.”

  “More than five hundred euros?”

  “A bit more.”

  “Ho
w much more?”

  “Like I said, a bit more.”

  “I’m not going to help you unless you tell me.”

  “If you really want to know, we agreed on two thousand euros. It’s a fair price. Your grandfather got in touch with my boss and said he had something to sell. How were we meant to know if he was telling the truth? So I came over here to have a chat with him and see what he was selling. We had a nice chat. I went back to talk to my boss. Next thing I heard, your grandpa was dead.”

  “So you thought you’d break in to the house and steal these documents instead?”

  “That’s right,” said Marko, smiling as if he had nothing to be ashamed of. “But I can’t find them. You know this house better than I do. What do you say? Will you help me?”

  “I don’t see why not,” I said. “For two thousand euros.”

  “That’s not the deal, mate. We said five hundred.”

  “Two thousand or nothing.”

  He laughed. “You really are just like the old man, aren’t you?”

  “He was my grandfather.”

  “I guess he was. Let’s say a thousand.”

  “Two.” I smiled, trying to look a lot braver (and more relaxed) than I actually felt. I remembered how Uncle Harvey dealt with negotiations. He just smiled and pretended he didn’t care. So that’s what I tried to do too.

  It must have worked, because Marko raised his price. “I’ll give you fifteen hundred.”

  “Two thousand euros or nothing.”

  Marko thought for a moment. Then he nodded. “Fine. You got me. It’s a deal. Where are they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I thought you said . . . You little creep.” His hand reached for the knife.

  “Wait.” I backed away, my arms up. “I’ll find them.”

  “You just said you don’t know where they are.”

  “I don’t. But I’ll find them.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll search this house.”

  “I don’t believe this.”

  His lip curled and I suddenly thought I’d made a terrible mistake, trying to play him. I backtracked as fast as I could. “You don’t have to worry. I’m going to find them. I will. I promise.”

  “You’d better.”

  “I said I will.”

  “Come on, then. Where are they?”

  “Give me a minute. Let me think.”

  “We don’t have time for thinking. Just find them.”

  I glanced at the knife, then Marko’s face. If I actually gave him these documents, would he really pay me two thousand euros? Or would he grab what he wanted and stab me?

  I didn’t want to think about that now.

  I just smiled and said, “Let’s go this way.”

  I remembered my grandfather. I thought about my uncle. I told myself: This is the way to be a real Trelawney. I don’t want to be the type of person who surrenders to fear. I’m not going to give up. I’m a Trelawney! Sure, I was scared. Of course I was. This guy was probably planning to kill me. I just had to keep him talking, make him think I was going to give him the documents, and hope my folks hadn’t ordered another bottle of wine to toast Grandpa’s memory.

  We did the living room first, then the kitchen and the downstairs bathroom. Marko must have been through all that already, but he just stood back and watched me search again, opening drawers and cupboards, lifting carpets, tapping floorboards, hunting for hiding places. I could sense his eyes on me all the time.

  We went upstairs to Grandpa’s bedroom. Under the bed, I encountered three socks, a beer bottle, and an apple core so ancient that it crumbled into dust as I tried to pick it up, but no historical documents, nothing that could possibly be worth two thousand euros.

  There were two more rooms on that floor and an attic above, accessed by a shaky metal ladder. We went through everything, even pulling up loose floorboards and checking the water tank.

  We were walking downstairs again, heading for the garden and its mossy old shed, when I finally heard the noise that I’d been waiting for: a car pulling up outside. Marko hurried to the window. A second car was parking behind the first.

  Marko glanced at me.

  For a moment I thought he was going to pull out the knife and shut me up permanently. Or would he kidnap me, force me to go with him? Instead he said, “I need those letters, Tom. You’d better find them. I’ll be watching you.”

  Then he was gone, running down the stairs and leaving the house through the back door.

  4

  A moment later there was a knock at the door. I opened it. My brother and sister were standing there, looking smug and well fed.

  “Hi, bro,” said Jack.

  “Hi.”

  “We brought you a doggy bag.” Grace held up something wrapped in silver foil. “We thought you must be hungry.”

  “I’ve had lunch, thanks.”

  “What did you have?”

  “I found a can of soup.”

  “Was it delicious?”

  “It was OK.”

  “Ours was delicious. I had smoked salmon, followed by lamb noisettes on a bed of creamed spinach, and a chocolate pudding for dessert.” Grace takes notes whenever she eats out. She wants to be a celebrity chef when she grows up.

  “I had steak and fries,” said my little brother.

  I got mugged by a guy with a knife, I could have said. Instead, I thanked my sister for the doggy bag and scooted into the house before Mom and Dad arrived. I was surprised they hadn’t commented on my appearance. Didn’t I look like a guy who’d just been tied up, knocked over, and pushed around? Obviously I didn’t. I must have looked like just my normal self.

  Once I was safely inside the living room, I stood for a moment with my back against the door, waiting for my parents to come and bug me, but they must have decided to leave me alone. That was lucky. I needed some time to myself. I had to check out these historical documents, whatever they were. I wanted to know why they were worth two thousand euros.

  As soon as Marko started talking about them, I knew where they would be hidden.

  While he was interrogating me, I had tried to push the knowledge out of my mind, not wanting to give any sign that I’d solved his mystery for him.

  We didn’t visit Grandpa often. He lived three thousand miles away, but that wasn’t why. We wouldn’t have visited much even if he’d lived next door. He and Dad couldn’t spend more than a few minutes in the same room without arguing. But we once came to Ireland on vacation and stopped for lunch in Grandpa’s house. Mom, Dad, Grace, and Jack went for a walk in the afternoon, leaving me with Grandpa. He talked to me, telling me some stuff about his life and giving me several pieces of advice, which I’m sure were very useful, although unfortunately I can’t remember a single thing he said. But one thing did lodge in my mind. He had shown me something that he called his treasure box.

  Shelves filled the niches on either side of the fireplace. Most of them were crammed with all kinds of junk—old magazines, tangled wires, jam jars filled with nails, a stack of crappy DVDs—but two of the shelves were filled with books. I scanned the spines, running my eyes over the titles and the names of the authors. None of them meant anything to me. None of the books looked familiar. Had it gone? Had he moved it? Or was it there and I just couldn’t remember what it was called?

  Then I saw what I was looking for. A thick hardback, the creased leather spine embossed with faded gold letters:

  Cornish Highways and Byways; a Description of Some Rambles Around Penzance, Land’s End and Zennor, Incorporating Illustrations of Local Personalities and Wildlife by Edward Charles Trelawney

  I pulled the book from its shelf and opened the front cover. The pages had been cut away, leaving a gap, a space, a place to keep valuables.

  The day that I was last here, my grandfather had pointed it out on the shelf. He said, “Do you want to see a book written by one of your ancestors?”

  When I pulled it down and opened it up, he started l
aughing. “You didn’t really think a Trelawney had written a book, did you? Most of us can’t even read.”

  This was his secret hiding place. Then it had contained a wad of twenty-pound notes and a chunky gold necklace.

  Now it was full of letters.

  Two thousand euros’ worth of old letters scrawled in faded ink on crinkly paper.

  Was Marko really going to be watching me?

  He said he would and there was no reason to doubt him. He might be parked across the street. I just had to walk out of the front door holding the letters. He couldn’t steal them from me in broad daylight. He’d have to make a deal. Give me the money. Give me the two thousand you agreed on with Grandpa.

  I didn’t want to hand them over right away. I wanted to know what they really were, and why they were worth so much to Marko.

  I opened the door. I could hear voices from the kitchen and the clatter of cutlery and dishes. The rest of my family had gotten to work. They were tidying the house. We had to make it respectable before the real estate agents arrived on Monday morning, the day after tomorrow.

  Hoping no one would hear me and tell me to come and help, I snuck upstairs to Grandpa’s bedroom. His bed was saggy and damp—the sheets probably hadn’t been changed all year—but it was comfy enough, so I sat with my back against the headboard, picked the first letter from the top of the pile, and started reading.

  7 June 1795, Southampton, Hants.

  Dear Miss Pickering,

  I much enjoyed our conversation at last night’s ball and hope I may have the pleasure of conversing with you again at your soonest convenience. Our departure has been delayed once more, so with your permission, and that of your mama, would you care to visit the fair with me this coming Saturday? There is supposedly a man with two heads, and a rhinocepede from deepest Africa. If you would agree to accompany me, I should be the happiest man in England.