Night on Terror Island Read Online Free PDF

quite understand …’ he mumbled. ‘I only …’
    ‘Open the watch,’ suggested Mr Lazarus, pointing. ‘You see, there’s a little catch there.’
    Norman pressed the catch and the silver cover flipped open. The watch began to play a familiar tinkling tune.
    ‘The theme from
The Godfather!
’ said Norman. ‘My all-time favourite film!’ He stared at Dad. ‘How did you know?’
    ‘Er … because er … you … you must have … mentioned it some time?’ Dad lifted his glass of wine and took a large gulp of the contents.
    Kip’s mind was racing. How was such a thing possible? He could understand how Mr Lazarus might have substituted the wine, but he had only been told about the gift two hours earlier, before the showing had started. The box had been on Dad’s desk ever since and, as far as Kip was aware, Mr Lazarus had been up in the projection room, all through the film. And besides, even if he had sneaked away for a few moments, there was nowhere around here where you could buy a watch like that and get it engraved in a couple of hours.
    ‘Well, thank you all so much,’ said Norman. ‘I’ll treasure this.’ He returned the watch to its box and slipped it into his pocket. Then he took a large gulp of his wine. ‘You know, this is the nicest wine I’ve ever tasted,’ he said. ‘I do believe I’ll have another glass!’
    Dad dutifully topped him up.
    ‘It is lovely,’ he agreed. ‘We have Mr Lazarus to thank for that.’ He studied the tall thin man for a moment, as though trying to figure him out. ‘While we’re making toasts, I suppose we really should have another one,’ he said. ‘To the man who’s going to take over from our Norman. A man who has already made some … amazing changes. To Mr Lazarus!’
    ‘Mr Lazarus!’ everyone said and they all drank to his health. He stood there, looking back at them, his grey eyes regarding them, a half-smile on his thin lips; and Kip found himself wondering what other changes he might have in store for the Paramount.

CHAPTER SIX
     

    KIP WOKE EARLY the next morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. A weird mixture of thoughts and questions kept bubbling through his head and they all had to do with Mr Lazarus. How did that ‘business card’ of his work? How had he managed to switch Norman’s wine and present without anybody noticing? And how did he know so much about a cinema he had never visited before?
    Eventually, Kip got up and slouched downstairs in his pyjamas. He found a note from Mum on the kitchen table, saying that she’d had to drive over to work to help out with an ‘unexpected crisis’. He was to let Dad sleep late, because Mum thought he was looking very tired. Kip sighed. He popped a couple of slices of bread into the toaster and switched on the kettle.
    When he’d finished breakfast, Kip put his plate in the dishwasher and went through to Dad’s study. He switched on the computer and, while he was waiting for it to boot up, he noticed a brown envelope lying on the desk. It was the envelope that Mr Lazarus had given Dad the day before.
    He looked inside and saw a sheath of papers of various sizes. They were old and mottled, clearly not photocopies but originals. He set them down on the desk and started to leaf through them. They were mostly articles cut from newspapers, though annoyingly there was nothing on any of them to identify when they had been published. However, they all looked ancient, the typefaces all higgledy-piggledy, everything set out in little columns and boxes. When he looked closer, he realised that they weren’t even in English, but what looked like Italian; he wondered how Mr Lazarus had expected Dad to be able to decipher them.
    Kip turned the pages, hoping to find something that he could actually read but then his eye was caught by a black-and-white photograph of a cinema. Carved into its stonework was the name
Il Fantoccini
. And on the hording in front of the cinema was what must have been the title of