everyone. We’ve got fifteen minutes.”
“That should be enough,” Drake said. He grasped the door handle, then paused, feeling his heart pick up the pace. The last time he had opened this door he had almost been killed. But Mel was already nudging him, and his hand was already turning the handle.
The door creaked open, revealing a room devoid of any mechanical monsters. Drake let out a shaky breath as Mel brushed past him into the classroom.
“So, what are we looking for, exactly?” she asked, as she slid open a drawer on the teacher’s desk.
Drake didn’t quite know what to say to that. There had been no need to explain anything to Mel when he asked her to help him sneak into Dr Black’s room. She had agreed without asking any questions, and had seemed genuinely excited by the idea. Now, though, even she was starting to look a little apprehensive.
“I don’t know,” Drake admitted. “But three dead bodies, maybe.”
Mel stopped. She slid the drawer closed. “Doubt they’ll be in there, then.”
“That’s the door they went in,” Drake said. Mel followed his gaze.
“That’s just a cupboard,” she said. “Why would he put them in a cupboard?”
“Not for anything good,” Drake guessed.
Mel crept past him until she reached the cupboard door. She looked round the edges, where the door met the frame, as if checking for booby traps. Finally, she placed her hand on the handle.
“Ready?” she asked.
Drake swallowed. He felt more nervous at that moment than he had in the cave back in Limbo. “Ready.”
“Here goes,” Mel said. She held her breath as she pushed down the handle. The door didn’t open. “Well, that’s disappointing,” she sighed, letting the breath out. She crouched down and studied the keyhole directly below the handle, then put one eye to it. There was only darkness on the other side. “What do we do now?”
Drake joined her at the door. He pressed his ear to the wood, and rapped on it three times. “Hello?” he said.
“Hello,” came a reply, but it hadn’t come from inside the cupboard. “Can I help you, children?” asked Dr Black. He spat the last word out, as if it left a sour taste in his mouth.
“Hi, Dr Black,” said Mel, smiling innocently. Her lips were moving before Drake’s brain had even realised the need for an excuse. “Drake and I were having an argument about the Second World War. I say D-Day came before V-Day, but he says V-Day came first. I know, he’s an idiot, right? Anyway, we thought, who better to help settle—”
“Silence,” Dr Black said.
“To help settle the argument than Dr Black, the most informed history teacher in the whole—”
Dr Black’s voice made the windows rattle in their frames. “I said be quiet !”
Mel stopped talking. The teacher glared at her for several seconds, the air whistling in and out of his hooked nose as he breathed. When he was certain she wasn’t about to start babbling again, he turned his gaze on the boy beside her.
“What are you doing in my room?” he asked. His voice was low and controlled, but menacing enough that anyone hearing it would be in no doubt that it could become very loud again, very quickly.
“We were just looking around,” Drake said. From the corner of his eye, he saw Mel wince. But he wasn’t trying to make excuses. He wanted the truth. Drake drew himself up to his full height. “We were looking for the kids who went missing. I saw them go into your cupboard.”
Dr Black’s expression did not change. “Did you, indeed?”
“And you were there,” Drake continued. “I saw you,” he said, although he realised that this wasn’t strictly true.
“And so you suspect I had something to do with their disappearance,” Dr Black said. He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “And who else have you spoken to about this?”
“No one,” Drake said. A nagging doubt told him this was the wrong thing to say. The feeling was confirmed when a relieved smile spread across Dr Black’s face.
“Lucky for me, then. I dread to think what such wild accusations could do to my reputation, were they to spread to the populace at large.”
He looked from Drake to Mel and back again, as if deciding what to do with them. At last, he turned and strode across to the window. “With me, Mr Finn.”
Drake hesitated. The classroom door was open. They could make a break for it while the teacher’s back was turned. But then what?