The Curse of the Ancient Mask and Other Case Files: Saxby Smart, Private Detective: Book 1
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The Curse of the Ancient Mask and Other Case Files: Saxby Smart, Private Detective: Book 1
176eBook
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Overview
Solve It With Saxby, a new series aimed at unraveling the mystery of getting boys excited about reading.
Saxby Smart is no ordinary ten-year-old. He's the best detective in the world, or at least the best one who also happens to be in elementary school. In this brand new series--with three cases in each book--the reader solves the mystery alongside Saxby, getting peeks at pages of his casebook as the crimes unfold, and searching for clues rather than letting the main character do all the work and have all the fun.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429959780 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Roaring Brook Press |
| Publication date: | 04/12/2011 |
| Series: | Saxby Smart, Private Detective , #1 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 176 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
| Age Range: | 8 - 11 Years |
About the Author
SIMON CHESHIRE lives in Warwick, England.
R.W. ALLEY is best known for "Paddington Bear" but has published more than 70 books with his wife Zoe. He lives in Barrington, Rhode Island.
Simon Cheshire is the author of numerous books for children, including the second Saxby Smart book The Treasure of Dead Man’s Lane and Other Case Files. He lives in Warwick, England.
My parents saved everything, so I know that I began drawing sometime around age two. I haven't paused since. In fact, my drawings now and my drawings then bear a rather strong resemblance. I have gotten slightly better at hands, but horses remain a problem. For an only child, growing up in New York, Texas, South Carolina and finally for most of the time in Annapolis, Maryland, drawing was fine self-entertainment. Then, as now, I have always enjoyed most making pictures that illustrate a story rather than hang on a wall. Today I live in Barrington, Rhode Island with the lovely Zoë B. Alley, author, wife and mother of our two clever children, Cassandra and Max.
I make my pictures in a studio that has a rolling ladder, more books than I can count and many tubes of half-used, rock-hard paint. For the last ten years one of my big projects has been to illustrate new and old stories of Paddington Bear. I have also made pictures for over one hundred other books since I started doing all this right out of college in 1979. I didn't go to art school, but received a BA in Art History from Haverford College and then spent four years as a staff artist at several greeting card companies. Since then, I have spent my working time in my slippers trying to avoid illustrating stories with horses.
R.W. Alley's books include the Paddington Bear series and the Jigsaw Jones books.
Read an Excerpt
The Curse of the Ancient Mask and Other Case Files
Saxby Smart Private Detective
By Simon Cheshire, R.W. Alley
Roaring Brook Press
Copyright © 2007 Simon CheshireAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-5978-0
CHAPTER 1
My name is Saxby Smart, and I'm a private detective. I go to St. Egbert's School, my office is in the tool-shed, and these are my case files. Unlike some detectives, I don't have a sidekick, so that part I'm leaving up to you — pay attention, I'll ask questions.
My full name is Saxby Doyle Christie Chandler Ellin Allan Smart. Yes, believe it or not, I'm named after all of my dad's favorite crime writers. The Allan is from Edgar Allan Poe. I mean, even my dad wouldn't call his kid Poe Smart! Mind you, he called me Saxby Smart ... (Saxby isn't a crime writer, by the way; Saxby is apparently a Ye Olde English name, originally pillaged from the Vikings).
Dad is a big fan of crime novels, and ever since I could read I've worked my way through his library of great detective stories. He has an impressive collection. It was all those books that made me want to be a detective in the first place. I love them just as much as he does. Which I guess is another reason I'm beginning my case files here: to show you that I can be just as good a sleuth as Sherlock Holmes or Nancy Drew.
You might think my dad was a detective himself, but actually he's a bus driver. Not that there's anything wrong with being a bus driver. In fact, he loves being a bus driver. And I love him being a bus driver, because it means all the local bus drivers know me, and that's very useful when you're a kid detective trying to get around town following clues.
What I mean is that he only reads detective stories. I live them.
My mom? She programs computer games for a living. She works from home and spends all day in her office, which is the closet under the stairs. And that's all there is to say, really.
The only reason I mention my parents at all is to let you know that I've got some. They play no part in any of my great cases, and won't be appearing much in these pages.
This is the story of my first really interesting case. Up to that point, I'd dealt with quite easy stuff: The Adventure of the Misplaced Action Figure or The Case of the Eaten Cookies are examples from my files that come to mind. But The Curse of the Ancient Mask was something altogether more puzzling. What's interesting is that I wrapped up the whole case using only a plastic bucket of water.
It started one very hot Saturday, while I was in my Crime Headquarters. I call it my Crime Headquarters, but really it's a shed. In my backyard. It's a small yard, and a small shed, and I have to share this shed with the lawnmower and other assorted gardening-type things. I have an old desk in there, and a cabinet full of case notes and papers. Most important of all, I have my Thinking Chair. It's a battered old leather armchair which used to be red but has worn into a sort of off- brown. I sit in it, and I put my feet up on the desk, and I gaze out the shed's Plexiglas window at the sky, and I think. Every detective should have a Thinking Chair. I'm sure Philip Marlowe would have had things tied up in the space of a short story if only he'd had a Thinking Chair.
Anyway, on that particular very hot Saturday, I was rearranging some of my notes when there was a knock at the shed door. Its painted wooden sign, the one that says Saxby Smart — Private Detective: KEEP OUT, fell off with a clatter. I keep nailing it up, but I'm no good at that sort of thing, so it keeps falling off again.
The door was opened by a girl from my class at school, Jasmine Winchester. She was red and flustered from a long walk, and she fanned herself with her hands while knocking some of the grassy mud off her shoes.
"Hi, Saxby. Sorry, this dropped off your door," she said, picking up the sign.
Jasmine is a very tall girl, the sort who overtakes everyone else in height at about the age of three and never lets the rest of us catch up. I'm pretty average-looking myself — average height, average fair hair, average glasses — but Jasmine is one of those people you can always pick out of a crowd. Mostly because she's poking out of the top of it.
"I know walking along the river looks like a shortcut," I said, "but you'd get here quicker if you stuck to the path across the park."
She stopped fanning and stared at me. "How on earth did you know I'd walked by the river?"
She looked impressed when I told her. It was a simple deduction: there was grassy mud on her shoes, she'd obviously walked some distance — because she was hot — and on a hot day, you'd only pick up mud where the ground was still damp.
"How can I help you?" I asked. I offered her my chair, and I perched on the desk (I told you there's not enough room in that shed ...).
"Well," she said, taking a deep breath, "I can see why everyone at school says you're a good detective ..."
"True."
"... so I need your help to solve a mystery. My dad is cursed."
CHAPTER 2"My dad is an engineer at Microspek Electronics," she began. "He's worked there for years. He's head of their lab, and he helps develop new ideas. He's normally a pretty laid-back, easygoing, jokey sort of dad. But recently he's become very nervous."
"Nervous?" I said. "What about?"
"I know this sounds silly, but he thinks he's under some sort of bad luck curse, put on him by this antique mask he bought on a business trip a few months ago."
"You're right, it does sound silly."
"Yeah. But he's convinced. Ever since this mask came into the house, things have been going wrong for him at work. He's been getting into trouble with his boss."
"Why?"
"His new ideas keep getting stolen. Something must be going on at his lab. He'd worked out a brilliant way of running MP3 players from your TV remote, and then a rival company, PosiSpark, Inc., suddenly came up with the same thing. He'd also made a toaster that never burns bread, even if you forget it's on, and PosiSpark got hold of that idea, too!"
"So there must be a spy for PosiSpark working undercover at the Microspek lab."
"That's exactly what my dad's boss believes. He thinks the spy is my dad!"
"And he's not? Sorry, I have to ask," I told her.
"No," said Jasmine. "Definitely not. Dad's horrified by what's going on. And so is everyone at the lab. Every last one of them has volunteered to take lie detector tests, have their e-mails and phone records checked, and they even let them search their trash cans!" Dad's assistants are loyal to him. There's no sign whatsoever of a spy. Dad's boss still thinks Dad is the only one who could be passing such complicated info to PosiSpark, and he's just waiting to find some proof. Then Dad will be fired!"
"Hmm. No wonder your dad's feeling jumpy," I said. I would have sat back in my Thinking Chair at this point, but Jasmine was sitting on it. So I sat back on the desk and looked thoughtful instead. "This mask. Where did he get it?"
"In Tokyo. It's an old Japanese samurai mask. He found it in a little antique shop while he was on a business trip. He buys stuff like that whenever he travels. He's not an antiques expert or anything; he just likes collecting souvenirs. The man in the shop told him there was a curse on it, but of course he thought that was nonsense. At the time. In fact, he thought it was funny and tried to scare us!"
"But if your dad now thinks the curse is real, why doesn't he just get rid of it?"
"Ah!" said Jasmine, holding up a finger like an exclamation point. "That's the sneaky part. There's Japanese writing on the back of the mask. The man in the shop translated it for him. It says that the curse stays with you even if you throw the mask away! The only way to lift it off yourself is to give it to another person."
"And since your dad believes in the curse," I said, "he doesn't want to pass it on."
"Exactly. He says he couldn't deliberately give someone an ancient curse!"
A possibility was coming to mind. The mask turns up, information begins to leak from the lab, PosiSpark snatches all the new ideas ...
"Where exactly is the mask kept?" I asked. "At his lab?"
"You're thinking of bugs, right?" said Jasmine. "Secret agent–type cameras and stuff?"
"The possibility came to mind."
"The mask is at home, in Dad's study. He works from home sometimes. The mask is nowhere near the lab. In any case, the lab's been scanned for bugs, listening devices, hidden cameras, you name it. There's nothing. Dad's examined the mask, and searched every inch of our whole house. He's come up with precisely zero. He's convinced it's the curse."
"Well, it's a strange sort of curse, bringing such specific bad luck," I said. "Must be a very intelligent and technologically minded curse."
"The thing is," said Jasmine, "there is a security problem. My dad will get fired. Him buying that mask could just be a complete coincidence, but one way or another, this needs to get sorted out."
"And it will," I said. "Saxby Smart is on the case!"
CHAPTER 3I have to admit, I wasn't feeling as confident as I sounded. Here was a genuine, serious mystery, and, at first sight, a pretty baffling one. I had absolutely no firm clues, ideas, or theories!
My first move might have been to check out the lab. But I decided it wasn't necessary. If all those security measures hadn't found the leak, then logically the leak was probably coming from somewhere else. Besides, I somehow doubted they'd let kids into that lab!
So I went to Jasmine's house. Or rather, I got Jasmine to invite me over after school. Every day.
Naturally, Jasmine's parents had no idea that Saxby Smart, kid detective, was on the case. They assumed Jasmine had gotten a new best friend. Or else that I just kept following her home and had nowhere else to go after 3:30 in the afternoon.
As I mentioned, Jasmine is very tall, and the Winchesters, when they were all together, looked like a small herd of giraffes. Jasmine's mom is exactly like Jasmine, but even taller. Her dad is so long and thin he's like one of those distorting mirrors come to life.
Their house is quite fancy. My house has a flat roof and is shaped like a shoe box. The Winchesters' house is all chimneys and old-fashioned windows and interesting little bits of architecture.
"Nice to meet you, Saxby," said Mrs. Winchester. "Excuse me, I'm just finishing something up in the backyard." She loped away down the hall on those giraffey legs of hers. I thought she'd be in the garden pruning roses or something, but then loud clanks, bangs, and sawing noises suddenly started up outside.
"She's working on a motorcycle," explained Jasmine.
"Oh!" I said. "I wondered why she was covered in oil."
"Yup. It's not violent gardening, it's bike maintenance," said Jasmine, smiling. "All the local bikers come to her to get their motorcycles fixed. She can strip the engine of a Jujitsu T60 in twenty minutes."
"Very impressive," I agreed quietly, nodding wisely.
Jasmine showed me around the house. Nothing in particular caught my eye, clue-wise, but because Jasmine had said that her dad works from home sometimes, a couple of questions occurred to me.
"You haven't had a break-in or anything recently?" I asked.
"No," said Jasmine. "Mom put in a high-tech alarm system a couple of years ago."
"And have any repairmen come by? No, I guess your mom does all that too?"
"Right."
Another possibility had occurred to me, but Jasmine's answers had ruled it out. It had crossed my mind that someone from PosiSpark had managed to sneak into the house, but that now seemed unlikely.
The last stop on the tour was Mr. Winchester's study. I stepped in carefully, making sure I didn't disturb so much as a paper clip. It was a small room, with stripy wallpaper and a plain, brownish carpet. It contained:
• One large bookcase, overflowing with books.
• One set of shelves, displaying Mr. Winchester's collection of knickknacks from around the world (more on those in a minute!).
• One small desk with drawers.
• One small table holding: one coffeemaker, one set of five mugs, and one stack of filters resting on top of the coffeemaker.
• One comfy office chair, behind the desk.
• Four more chairs, stacked.
Something bothered me.
"Does your dad drink a lot of coffee?" I asked.
"I don't think so," said Jasmine, puzzled. "Why?"
"And when he works from home, he works alone?"
"Well, yes, that's why he's got this study," said Jasmine. "Nobody ever comes in here, apart from him, of course."
Suddenly, looking at the contents of the room, I made a very important discovery. From the items in the study, I could tell that Jasmine was wrong.
There was evidence here that Mr. Winchester used this room as more than a home office. Not all the time, but now and then. Can you work out what he used it for?
Mr. Winchester held meetings here. There's a coffeemaker (odd in a study, for someone who doesn't drink it much), a set of mugs, and extra chairs. Why would he keep these things unless they were used? Not used every day, because he probably wouldn't have left a big pile of filters on top of the coffeemaker if it was used all the time, would he? And the chairs wouldn't be stacked, either.
"Your dad holds meetings in here," I said. "People come here regularly."
"I never knew that," said Jasmine. "When do they happen?"
"During the school day, I presume," I said. "This makes a big difference. It establishes a link between people outside this house, and that!"
I pointed to the shelves above the desk. The antique mask sat among Mr. Winchester's collection of items gathered from his travels.
There was a little model of the Eiffel Tower, a snow globe from New York, and a small brass plate with a curly pattern stamped into it. ("Indian?" I asked. "Yeah," said Jasmine, "he got it in Delhi.") The mask was propped between a carved figurine of an Ancient Egyptian god and an old china dolphin holding up a little sign that said Souvenir of Maui.
Jasmine got the mask down from the shelf, and we took it into the living room to get a better look at it. She was allowed to handle the collection, she explained, as long as she was careful.
The mask was rather beautiful. I turned it over in my hands — it was very heavy. It was carved out of a single piece of wood, with holes for the eyes and a kind of grille effect over the mouth. The front was painted to give it a fierce-looking face, and painted onto the back, in red, were several vertical lines of Asian writing.
"That's the inscription that sets out the curse," said Jasmine. "I bet a genius detective like you can read exactly what it says."
I blushed. "Umm ... actually, no. Not a word. But I know someone who'll be able to translate it."
I took my cell phone out of my pocket, snapped a few pictures of the mask — front, back, side view, and so on — and sent them to my friend Izzy.
"Aarrrghhhhh!"
That was the wailing sound made by Jasmine's dad, when he walked into the living room and spotted the mask. His face went almost the same shade of gray as the slacks he was wearing, and his tie seemed to wriggle around in shock. He picked up the mask with the very edges of his thumbs and forefingers, and held it out at arm's length as if it were a bomb.
"Let's put it back, shall we?" he said, shuddering. "We don't want to upset it!"
"Oh, Daaaad!" cried Jasmine.
Mr. Winchester wasn't listening. He was busy dabbing the sweat off his forehead with the end of his tie. "The curse is bad enough as it is. We shouldn't do anything to make it worse!"
"Mr. Winchester?" I said politely. He paused in the doorway, midstep.
"Yes?" he said quietly, as if a raised voice might make the mask explode.
"How often do you hold meetings in your study?"
"Oh, about once a month," whispered Jasmine's dad. He turned to tiptoe away, then suddenly stopped and looked at me. "How do you know about my meetings?"
I felt like saying "I know eeeeverything," all intense and spookily waving my arms about. But it would only have frightened him.
"I guess you have these meetings with a few people from your laboratory? From Microspek Electronics?" I asked.
"Yes," said Mr. Winchester. "But that's a secret! I mean, what we talk about is a secret. It's not a secret that we have meetings. Excuse me, I've got a lot on my mind at the moment."
He hurried away to put the mask back in its place.
"Does all of this tell you anything else?" said Jasmine. "Apart from the fact that my dad's normal intelligence seems to have drained away since this curse stuff started?"
"It's too early to say," I admitted.
Over the next few afternoons, I made careful notes about whatever I saw at the Winchesters' house. A lot of it turned out to be irrelevant to the case, so I won't write it all down here. But I filled several pages with information about Mr. Winchester's movements between the hours of half past three and seven p.m., about Mrs. Winchester's motorcycle repair activities, and about the workings of the Jujitsu T60 she was fixing that week.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Curse of the Ancient Mask and Other Case Files by Simon Cheshire, R.W. Alley. Copyright © 2007 Simon Cheshire. Excerpted by permission of Roaring Brook Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Case File One: The Curse of the Ancient Mask,Case File Two: The Mark of the Purple Homework,
Case File Three: The Clasp of Doom,
Questions for the Author,
Questions for the Illustrator,
Preview,