The Secret of Platform 13 Read Online Free PDF Page B

woman who’d lost her umbrella and still hovered over the Left Luggage Office keeping an eye on it . . . And there were others haunting shyly in various parts of the station, not wanting to put themselves forward, but ready to lend a hand if they were needed.
    The hands of the great clock moved slowly forward. Not the clock on platform thirteen which was covered in cobwebs, but that of the main one. Eleven-thirty . . . eleven forty-five . . . midnight . . .
    And then it happened! The wall of the gentlemen’s cloakroom moved slowly, s lowly to one side. A hole appeared . . . a deep, dark hole . . . and from it came swirls of mist and, very faintly , t he smell of the sea . . .
    Mrs Partridge clutched Ernie’s arm. ‘Oooh, I am excited!’ she whispered.
    And indeed it was exciting; it was awesome. The dark hole, the swirling mist . . . and now in the hole there appeared . . . figures. Three of them . . . and hovering high above them, a clear blue eye.
    ‘Welcome!’ said Ernie Hobbs. He bowed, the women curtsied.
    And the rescuers stepped forward into the light.
    It has to be said that the ghosts were surprised. They knew that the Prince was to be brought back without a fuss, but they had expected . . . well . . . something a bit fiercer.
    Of course they could see that the ancient gentleman now tottering towards them was a wizard. His face was very wise and there seemed to be astrological signs on his long, dark cloak though when they looked more carefully they saw they were pieces of very old spaghetti in tomato sauce. The wizard’s ear trumpet, which he wore on a string around his neck, had tangled with the cord holding his spectacles so that it looked as if he might choke to death before he ever set out on his mission, and though they could see a place on his shoulder where a mighty eagle must have once perched, it was definitely not there any more. Yet when he came forward to shake hands with them, the ghosts were impressed. How you shake hands with a ghost matters, because of course you feel nothing and someone who isn’t a true gentleman can just wave his hands about in mid-air and make a ghost feel really small.
    ‘I am Cornelius the Mighty,’ said Cor, ‘and I bring thanks from Their Majesties for your Guardianship of the Gump.’
    He then introduced Gurkintrude.
    The fey was wearing a large hat decorated with flowers, but also with a single beetroot. It was a living beetroot – Gurkie would never have worn anything that was dead – and she carried a straw basket full of important things for gardening: a watering can, some brown paper bags, a roll of twine . . . The ghosts knew all about these healing ladies who go about making things better for everyone, and they had seen fairy godmothers in the pantomime, but Mrs Partridge was a bit worried about the hat. The beetroot suited Gurkie – it went with her kind pink face – but of course vegetables are not worn very much in London.
    But it was the third person who puzzled the Ghosts of the Gump particularly . Why had the rulers of the Island sent a little girl?
    Odge’s thick black hair had been yanked into two pigtails and she wore a pleated gym slip and a blazer with ‘Play Up and Play the Game’ embroidered on the pocket. The uniform was an exact copy of the one that the girls of St Agnes wore in the photograph that Gurkie’s mother had had on her mantelpiece, but the ghosts did not know that – nor did they understand why the suitcase she was clutching, holding it out in front of her like a tea tray, was punched full of holes.
    Fortunately the Eye at least belonged to the kind of rescuer they had expected. Because they themselves were often invisible, the ghosts could make out the shape of the ogre even though he was covered in fernseed. They could see his enormous muscles, each the size of a young sheep, and his sledgehammer fists and while the embroidered braces were a pity, they thought that he would do very well as a bodyguard.
    Cornelius now