This is a continuation. In case you missed post g, check here.
The door, unlike the gate, required no effort to push. Immediately suspicious, Radha threw out his hand to stop Priyanka from entering the house.
Seeing his hand, she huffed in irritation. “There are no ghosts here.” Damn it but she was still whispering. What the bloody hell.
“Will you for once just shut up,” he said tightly.
“Why oh my dear hero should I listen to you? What dangers do you suppose await us inside this mausoleum? Crocodiles? Captain Jack Sparrow? Or the worst of the worst…vampires?”
Radha laughed. “Don’t be a moron. There are footsteps in the dust. Look.”
Priyanka’s shoulders sagged as she followed his gaze. The footsteps were clear as stars in the night sky. “Who do you think they belong to?”
Frankly Radha had no idea. But she had asked the question with such sincerity, and without the previous sarcasm, he couldn’t disappoint Mr. Holmes. “Must be some old man who has nowhere else to live. Look at the size of those marks.”
“A caretaker for the house?” Despite all the bravado and misgivings, Priyanka was beginning to enjoy herself. It also helped tremendously that she was missing math tuition and she now had fodder for an English essay she was sure Gayatri miss would love.
“Could be, but I doubt it. The gate was rusted shut, remember? A caretaker would need to leave and enter the compound.”
“Maybe he uses the back entrance,” she said, unwilling to back down.
“That is the only entrance,” he said, nodding towards the gate they had just entered from. “I checked while…”
“There could be a secret entra–,” she stopped abruptly. She couldn’t believe she was getting sucked into his game so easily.
“How about we just go inside?”
She looked pointedly at his hand and he dropped it. “Don’t step on the marks.”
“Why? We’ll make our own prints. In fact it’s better if we step on the marks.”
Now getting angry because he hadn’t thought of that; Radha simply walked ahead, uncaring where he stepped, but jumped when the door banged shut.
“Sorry that was me,” whispered Priyanka but in the cavernous house, it echoed grotesquely. Ignoring their little tiff, the two children moved closer together again.
“What is the point of this exercise?”
“Ask our moronic classmates.”
Priyanka snorted. “We are the ones who are inside. Who is the moron now?”
“How about you tell me why you have been…”
“…stealing, yeah right. Why are you so fixated on that?”
After the bright afternoon sun, their eyes had adjusted enough to be able to make out that the house was one of those mansions really that the two had seen in movies. Though from where they stood, it looked devoid of furniture. But they could see ample disturbances on the floor thanks to the thick layer of dust. There was definitely someone living in this house. Whether it was a human, a ghost, a vampire or a combination of all three, they couldn’t tell.
“Do you really want to explore this house?”
“No,” he said shortly. He had no idea what kind of thing infested this house. He had no intentions of taking any germs home. Germs got him sick and getting sick meant missing school. Missing school could mean he may miss a message from his erstwhile thief – not cool at all!
“Good me neither. I won’t tell if you won’t,” she said extending her hand.
Radha took her hand. It was soft and sweaty, unlike his which had started to become firm. They shook hands, the most sacred of pacts, promising without words that this would remain their secret.
When Priyanka went to pull her hand from his, Radha gripped it and pulled her closer. “I know you have been stealing the pencils. I put a small scratch on all of them to see where they would turn up. And then when I asked if I could borrow your pencil and you happily gave one to me, I saw it had that same mark. You don’t want to say anything that’s fine but I’m onto you.”
He released her hand and opened the door. “After you,” he said with a flourish.
Priyanka’s face was unreadable as she stood there, arms wound tightly around herself. Radha didn’t know if it was fear, anger or a latent form of self-protection. He felt suddenly wrong-footed for a moment, like maybe he had overstepped some line but what she said next wiped any remorse clean.
“Aren’t you a hero.”
“Nope,” he said, “just smarter than you, is all.”
“That’s why we came on this pointless expedition, no?” asked Priyanka as she hurriedly exited and walked on, not waiting to see if Radha would follow her.
If that wasn’t an admission of guilt, thought Radha triumphantly; though it still didn’t clear the mystery of the other thief. Yes, there were two – it was the only explanation that made sense. Priyanka may have been stealing the pencils but she wasn’t the one who had eaten the apple or sent him that cryptic message. This thief was so smart he had sent Radha a note in a girl’s handwriting to confuse him. He was piggybacking on Priyanka’s crime to hide his.
More determined than ever to uncover this mystery thief, Radha squared his shoulders as he walked out of the compound. Something had to give…soon.
This is the eight post in the series. To know more about Radha, click here.
Header image source
tales of Suchita 
Leave a reply to talesofsuchita Cancel reply