The Windvale Sprites Read Online Free PDF Page A

morning to have another look.’
    By then Asa and Mrs Fields were approaching the library and he ran ahead and up the steps into the entrance hall. There was the wooden plinth in position but one of the side panels had been prised open at the top and now there was a gap of about an inch along one edge. Asa looked in. Too dark. He was pulling at the panel as Mrs Fields arrived and scolded him, telling him to wait until the workmen got here, before he broke something else.
    But the workmen didn’t arrive for hours and Asa couldn’t concentrate on anything because he was in no doubt as to what was hidden in the cabinet.
    And, he was right. When the builders eventually turned up they did so with crowbars and made short work of the rest of the plinth revealing what was undoubtedly the lost trunk of Benjamin Tooth. But Asa had never imagined it to look like this. The chest was massive, presumably made from wood but covered in riveted metal plates; a sort of homemade armour plating and on the front was a hefty iron padlock. It was so heavy and cumbersome that instead of moving it they had eventually built a box around the trunk and used it to stand the Mereton Warbler on.
    Asa squeezed the key in his pocket so hard that, had it been confiscated, he could have taken an impression of it from his hand.
    There was no decoration on the chest save for two tiny letters stamped into one of the metal plates. Mrs Fields leaned in to take a look.
    ‘B.T.,’ she read.
    ‘British Telecom?’ said someone stupid.
    ‘No – Benjamin Tooth!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s the lost works of Benjamin Tooth!’
    * * *
     
    All morning people buzzed around the trunk and poked things into the keyhole until Mr Trap turned up and cordoned it off with the large-print tape.
    It was arranged that a locksmith would come at lunchtime to open the chest and, with him, a photographer from the local paper to record the event. Mr Trap was in his element running around making phone calls and notifying people of what he started referring to as ‘my discovery’. Asa suspected he was going to try and get in the photo come lunchtime.
    By one o’clock word had spread enough that a small group of twenty or so people had gathered in the library atrium to see the chest opened. The photographer took a few shots of the trunk with the broken-open pedestal and then the locksmith knelt down beside it and set to work with a selection of thin, pokey tools. Everyone held their breath. Eventually they all had to let that breath go and take another one, which they held. But it soon became apparent that this might take some time and before long everyone was breathing normally again.
    The locksmith’s ears and cheeks started to go red as he worked under pressure. He shook his head and tutted. Trap leaned in with a furrowed brow as if he might be able to spot the problem.
    The photographer lowered his camera and said, ‘Can’t you do it?’
    It’s what everyone was thinking but it didn’t go down well with the locksmith, who snapped, ‘I need to concentrate, and you’re standing in the light!’
    The photographer wasn’t standing in the light, he was nowhere near, but he took a step back anyway and adjusted his focus.
    Ten minutes later and the small crowd were starting to drift away when Mr Trap, who had been to answer the telephone, burst back into the atrium and held up his hands triumphantly.
     

    ‘Hold everything!’ he announced, which seemed odd, as nothing had happened for ages.
    He paused dramatically and continued, ‘I have just got off the phone to the BBC,’ another good pause for reaction, ‘who asked me if they can send a television crew, here, to the library, and film the opening of the chest live on tomorrow’s breakfast news!’ With that he looked as if he wanted to take a bow but instead just took a dainty step back and awaited the applause he so obviously thought he deserved. The applause was not forthcoming and as people started to leave he called