The Adventures of Tintin Read Online Free PDF Page A

inside, determined to focus on the story.
Marlinspike Hall
, he thought. There was a mystery there. Sakharine was hiding something, and Nestor . . . had Nestor given him a clue? If so, why?
    “Some things are easily lost,” he said, thinking of Nestor’s parting words. “What did he mean by that, Snowy?”
    Snowy cocked his head toward the door.
    “What was he trying to tell me? Some things are easily lost . . .”
    He thought it over as they went up the stairs and into Tintin’s apartment. Snowy growled as Tintin stopped to turn on the light.
    “Great snakes!” he said when he saw what had happened.
    His apartment had been ransacked! The furniture had been pulled away from the walls and overturned. His books had been spilled out of the shelves and lay in heaps on the floor. The table by the window had been swept clean of the books and magazines Tintin had been reading. He leaned into his office and saw more chaos. His papers lay in drifts around the drawers of his desk, which had been pulled out and emptied. His bulletin board, covered with clippings and notes, had been knocked off the wall and lay against a filing cabinet.
    Who had done this? And why? They couldn’t have been after the model of the
Unicorn
. It was already gone, and whoever had come in would have known that right away. Tintin stepped carefully into the mess, searching for any clues as to what the intruder might have been looking for. Snowy whined as he picked his way through the debris . . . and then he made a beeline for the cabinet where he had been scratching earlier in the day.
    “What is it, Snowy?” Tintin asked. Snowy started scratching under the cabinet again.
    It couldn’t be an insect
, Tintin thought. Insects didn’t keep Snowy’s interest for that long. If Snowy wanted Tintin to see something that urgently, Tintin probably needed to see it.
    He moved Snowy aside and pulled the cabinet away from the wall. Snowy barked and pushed against his legs as he looked behind the cabinet and saw a small metal tube lying on the floor against the wall.
    “What’s this?” Tintin wondered. He bent to pick it up, and as he rolled it in his fingers, he figured it out. “Aha! This was hidden in the hollow mast.”
    His pulse quickened. This was what the intruder had wanted. Maybe whoever had stolen the
Unicorn
model had found it was missing and come back to look for it. Or maybe two different people were after it, and the one who had stolen the model wasn’t the same one who had tossed his apartment.
    I’ll figure it out
, Tintin thought.
But the first step is to see what’s in this tube
.
    He went to the table and sat. Snowy bounced around the chair, trying to get a look. Carefully, Tintin unscrewed the lid of the tube and shook out a small rolled-up parchment. It fell into his palm, and he examined it before proceeding. It was tied with a piece of ribbon and also sealed with wax. There was some kind of insignia in the wax, but he couldn’t tell what it was.
    Tintin untied the ribbon and set it aside. Then he gingerly broke the wax seal, taking care not to tear the parchment. He heard Snowy moving around the apartment and looked up, concerned . . . but Snowy was bringing him his magnifying glass again.
    “Good boy, Snowy,” Tintin said. He was lucky to have such a smart dog.
    He took the magnifying glass and unrolled the parchment, smoothing it on the tabletop. Something was written on it in an ornate script that at first he had some trouble deciphering. Then he peered through the magnifying glass and worked out the writing.
    “
Three brothers joined
,” he read out loud so Snowy could hear. “
Three Unicorns in company, sailing in the noonday sun will speak. For ’tis from the light that light will dawn, and then shine forth the Eagle’s Cross
.”
    Tintin paused, thinking over what he had just read. Three
Unicorn
s? He knew of two models, his and Sakharine’s. Was that what the passage was talking about? Was there a third?
    It could