The Complete Ruby Redfort Collection. Lauren Child

      What if the pirate caves did exist?

      What if the Seahorse really did sink somewhere near the Sibling Islands, and for some reason the currents were still then too, like they were for my parents? Like they are right now?

      And if it WAS the asteroid that calmed the waters for them, could the same one have passed by the earth all those years ago?

      Ruby was well aware that asteroids can come back again and again, in very long orbits. Two hundred years didn’t seem impossible. And Martha did talk about seeing a falling star as she lay on the shore…

      Then of course there was the matter of the whirling thing.

      A giant whirlpool?

      It was certainly possible.

      The cave?

      Perhaps the huge rock Martha heard crashing down covered the cave entrance so it could no longer be seen.

      The sea devil?

      Maybe the lightning had conjured the illusion of a sea monster by casting strange shadows on the cave walls.

      The whispering and mournful sounds?

      Just voices of woe and fear combining with the sound of sharp splitting rock as the cave collapsed and the water rushed in, no monster, no supernatural being, just weather and sea colliding.

      The picture was getting less blurry. Ruby and Blacker’s theory about ships being rerouted to keep them out of Sibling waters, the calmed currents… someone out there wanted something from the Siblings seas, and if Ruby Redfort could believe in the treasure of the Seahorse, then maybe she wasn’t the only one.

      Maybe, a mere 200 years later, someone was trying to dive the wreck and secure its sunken bounty.

      The only thing was how to prove it.

       Chapter 29.

      A schoolboy error

      WHEN RUBY GOT HOME, SHE WENT IN SEARCH OF HITCH: he was nowhere in the main house so she guessed he must be downstairs in his apartment. She could hear him playing music – the clarinet, something he often did if he got more than a few moments to himself. He claimed it helped him think, but Ruby wondered if it didn’t help him block out the noise of the day, the tricky thoughts that must buzz endlessly around that head of his. The music, his own form of white noise.

      He didn’t seem to hear her knock, but the door was ajar and Bug, who had followed her down, pushed his way in. Hitch continued to play until he noticed Ruby standing there in the doorway.

      ‘Hey kid, you not out cycling the streets of Twinford fighting crime?’

      ‘No, I’ve been at the library.’

      ‘How very civilised. Any new books I should be reading?’

      ‘Maybe an old one,’ said Ruby.

      ‘I’ve always enjoyed the classics. What’s it about?’

      ‘Pirates, treasure, sea monsters – that kinda stuff,’ she replied.

      ‘Sounds gripping,’ said Hitch.

      ‘Yeah, it was,’ said Ruby. ‘I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.’

      ‘I look forward to it kid. Oh, by the way, I got you the radio tapes, left them in your room.’

      ‘Thanks,’ said Ruby. ‘I’ll go check them out.’

      She spent the rest of the night listening to the tapes, to the eerie music, the music that wasn’t quite music. Eventually, the cassette clicked off and she fell asleep, her head resting on Bug, and for a couple of hours they both slept well.

      The next morning Ruby felt terrible – she was suffering from lack of sleep and was kinda grouchy. The tiredness was building up in her and she was finding school a chore. All she really wanted to do was prove herself right: this Chime thing had to be more than it seemed, it had to be a code. It was the only way to make sense of it.

      She was sitting in Mrs Drisco’s class listening to the noises in her earpiece. She had this neat little device, very discreet – a tiny tape player tucked into her satchel. In her exercise book she wrote the notes she was hearing. The tricky thing was that she kept having to stop and start the machine. This made a rather obvious clunking sound, a sound that did not escape the sharp ears of Mrs Drisco.

      Ruby felt a yank as the little speaker was pulled from her ear, and she looked up to see Mrs Drisco’s face level with hers, the teacher’s eyebrows arched in the angry position.

      ‘Can you explain yourself?’ said Mrs Drisco in a chilling whisper.

      Ruby looked down at her satchel, and her alphabetic notes and excuses folder. She had a good one from Dr Franton at the lice and flea clinic, asking her to please avoid all cheerleading activities or indeed anyone involved with cheerleading – but it wouldn’t really work for this occasion since cheerleading was not the issue. And the note from the president was far too useful to be sacrificed merely to prevent a detention.

      Ruby paused. ‘If you could give me a little time Mrs Drisco,’ she said. ‘I’m a little fuzzy today, so I might need a few minutes to come up with something good.’

      ‘That’s it!’ boomed Mrs Drisco. ‘Principal Levine’s office now!’

      Ruby sighed. She would take the punishment; she could do with a little quiet time. What did it matter if it involved sitting in a dreary classroom on her own? But what she had forgotten was that the tape player, and more importantly the tape, would be confiscated by Mrs Bexenheath. A schoolboy error on Ruby’s part.

      Darn it Ruby, you’re off your game.

      She would need to enlist the help of a couple of her friends. When Clancy came by the detention room (as she knew he would), she passed him a coded note under the locked door. He read the note, which told him all he needed to know, and immediately snapped into action.

      Clancy knocked on Mrs Bexenheath’s door and began some complicated story about a water bubbler that wasn’t bubbling in the lower hallway. He was halfway through this unnecessarily detailed explanation when Red Monroe knocked on the door, supposedly to tell Mrs Bexenheath about a pigeon that was flapping around in the girls’ locker room, but in fact she was actually there to ‘accidentally’ knock the large piles of carefully sorted mail onto the floor.

      While Mrs Bexenheath was picking it up and Red was apologising and Mrs Bexenheath was struggling not to curse, Clancy Crew was opening the ‘confiscation cupboard’ and retrieving the tape player.

      He ran to the window and threw it down to Del, who sprinted round the back of the building and passed it to Mouse, who was standing balanced on Elliot’s shoulders.

      From there, Mouse managed to just about pass it up to the window of the room where Ruby was enjoying detention. A small hand reached out and took the tape player from Mouse and… mission accomplished.

      Of course no one but Clancy knew what was on the tape – Mouse, Del, Elliot and Red just assumed it was some music and that Ruby needed it to relieve the tedium of several hours of isolated study.

      Ruby listened to the tape over and over. She worked hard and felt she was getting pretty close to cracking the code. She looked at her watch: forty-seven minutes before detention was over, then wrote her 3,000-word essay on why it was a good idea to pay attention in class – not an essay Mrs Drisco was likely to enjoy.

      When she was released, she went to meet Clancy at the Double Donut. He was moaning on about physics class. ‘Mr Endell just went on and on and on about YKU 726,’ he said, slumping down in his seat and resting his forehead on the table.

      ‘You mean YKK 672,’ corrected Ruby.

      ‘I mean he just went