Half Moon Investigations - Eoin Colfer [56]
‘Roddy! Roddy! Keep up, Half Moon.’
My vision was clearing up a bit. ‘Reddy, Roddy, there’s only one letter different. That’s confusing when a person is possibly concussed.’
Red ignored me, shining the torch into his rucksack.
‘You brought a torch?’
‘And antiseptic wipes,’ said Red, mopping his forehead with one. ‘We’re on stake-out, remember?’
‘Technically we’re not on stake-out any more,’ I pointed out. ‘Technically we’re being held prisoner by a bunch of ten-year-old girls.’
‘No one must ever know about this,’ said Red, who looked a lot better now that his face wasn’t completely covered with blood. ‘I have a reputation to consider. If word gets out that I’d been locked up by a shower of fourth-class girls, every hard man looking to make a name for himself will come gunning for me.’
I took a look around. We were in a coal cellar, constructed from steel and concrete. It had probably once been an oil tank, but April’s father had converted it. The cellar’s rear wall was piled high with coal nuggets and thick black dust floated through the pale yellow air. There was one wooden door. And it was, of course, locked.
Red checked his mobile phone for bars.
‘No reception in here. We have to get out.’
He tried the caveman method, battering the door with his palm and shoulder. The door didn’t open, but the banging did disturb more coal dust and sent sonic waves of hollow booming echoing around the chamber. Just what we needed.
The booming subsided and we were left with the sound of Red panting.
‘Less of the panting,’ I said. ‘This place could be airtight.’
I scanned the walls and roof. There was no way to break out, unless Red had a police battering ram hidden in his magic backpack.
Red kicked the door a few times. More dust and still no open door. I coughed loudly to highlight the dust problem.
‘Red, that’s not doing us one bit of good, you know.’
Red whirled. His features were wild. I had never seen him this manic before, not even when he had me pinned to the ground.
‘I have to get out,’ he hissed through clenched teeth. Sweat was running down his face, washing away coal dust and blood. ‘Roddy needs me. I promised Mam I’d look out for him. If he gets kicked out of school, he’ll end up in the pool hall with Ernie.’ Red crossed the bunker in two bounds. ‘You’re the brains. Think of something.’
Red’s eyes were veined from dust and possibly tears.
‘OK. I’ll try. What do you have in the bag?’
Red emptied the backpack’s contents on to the concrete.
‘A couple of cereal bars, my balaclava and a pair of tights. I lost the grappling hook.’
I had to ask. ‘Tights?’
‘You know, for over your head. In case you needed a disguise.’
‘Oh. I think I’m disguised enough, actually. With the hair and the earring and the tattoo.’ I spotted something on the floor. ‘What’s that?’
Red picked up an iron spike. ‘It’s a horn from one of the unicorns on the balcony. It snapped off. That’s why we fell. So I suppose your man on the balcony is technically a horse now.’
The horn was a foot long and tapered to a dangerous spike. Steel painted dark green.
‘A pity it wasn’t magnetic.’ I said.
‘Why?’
‘If it was magnetic, we might be able to draw back the bolt on the outside of the door. Possibly. In theory.’
Red handed me the spike. ‘Can you turn it into a magnet?’
‘Well, in a laboratory, I could place it inside a magnetic field, or pass a current through it, then the horn would become magnetic.’
I said this very confidently, as there was no chance that we could actually do it. In fact, all I knew about magnets for sure was that you could drag iron filings around a sheet of paper with them.
Red grew immediately excited. ‘We can pass a current through it.’
I paled under my coating of coal dust. ‘What?’
‘The light bulb. All we need to do is pull out the wires.’
That sounded extremely dangerous. We were more likely to send the horn ricocheting around the cellar than turn it into a magnet.
‘I don’t know, Red. I’m not sure about polarity and all that stuff.’
‘We have to try something,