Faerie Wars

Twenty-five

Henry went straight round the back. Even if Mr Fogarty was alive and well he wasn't likely to open the front door. The grass hadn't been cut and the flower beds hadn't been tended, so no change there. He glanced towards the buddleia bush for a portal – he knew that's where Mr Fogarty would try to open one -but there was nothing.

He peered through the kitchen window, then the glass pane in the back door. There didn't seem to be anybody inside. He knocked loudly on the door and then the window. The noise echoed, but no one came. Somehow it sounded like an empty house.

Henry fished in his pocket and pulled out a key on a long piece of string. Didn't know about that, did you, Mum? He opened the back door and slipped inside. 'It's me, Mr Fogarty!' he called reassuringly. 'It's Henry.' He waited. Once when he'd used the key and startled Mr Fogarty, the old boy'd come at him with a kitchen chopper.

Nobody appeared, not Mr Fogarty, not Pyrgus. 'Hello…' Henry called. 'Hello…' He moved cautiously from the kitchen into the cluttered living room. 'Mr Fogarty? It's Henry, Mr Fogarty.' The room smelled musty and there was nobody in it.

Ten minutes later, he'd been through every room in the house. The only living thing he found was mould on a half-eaten hamburger beside Mr Fogarty's rumpled bed.

He came back to the kitchen and noticed something he'd missed earlier, a brown envelope held down by an empty salt cellar on the kitchen table. There was one word written on the outside in black Biro:

Henry

Henry grabbed the envelope and found a single sheet of paper inside, torn from a ruled notebook. On it were just four words in Mr Fogarty's neat handwriting:

Npx uif gspou mbxo 6851

Henry stared at them. You could always read Mr Fogarty's handwriting, so there was no doubt about the spelling, but the words themselves didn't make sense. He didn't think they were in a foreign language – they certainly weren't French, which he learned at school – although they might be something weird and East European like Serbo-Croat. Except that Mr Fogarty didn't speak Serbo-Croat, or anything but English as far as Henry knew. Anyway, didn't languages like Serbo-Croat have a different alphabet?

It was code! All of a sudden, Henry knew it was code. It had to be! Mr Fogarty had never left him a note in his life, but if he'd left one now, it would have to be in code. Especially if it was something important, maybe something to do with Pyrgus and the portal. Fogarty would never leave stuff lying around for others to read – he was far too suspicious. Suddenly Henry was excited.

Then the excitement died abruptly. How was he going to crack the code?

All sorts of stupid thoughts poured into his mind. Maybe Mr Fogarty kept a codebook… maybe this sort of thing dated back to his bank-robber days… maybe there were clues hidden about the house… maybe the numbers were the clue… maybe… maybe…

Maybe he should stop flapping around like a headless chicken and see what he'd got here. It couldn't be too difficult. Mr Fogarty knew he wasn't Brain of Britain, so it would have to be fairly easy. Maybe a little like charades. Ignore the numbers for the moment and concentrate on the words. First word NPX. OK, first word, three consonants. But you didn't get words that were all consonants. So one of those consonants had to stand for a vowel. And it was a short word, just three letters, maybe 'the'. If the first word was 'the' that made 'X' stand for 'E'. Were there any more 'Xs' in the message? Yes, there was one in the fourth word. This was looking good.

If 'X' stood for 'E' then 'N' had to be "T and 'P' must be 'H'. Any repeats there? No more 'Ns' but there was another 'P' in the third word. So the whole sentence read:

THE /--/- -H- – /- – E- – Henry stared at it for a while, then ran out of steam. Four words, first word 'The', second word unknown, third something with an 'H', fourth something with an 'E'. The something something something…

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Henry saw it. The first word wasn't 'the'. What you did was displace a letter of the alphabet. The simplest way was to displace by one: A became B, B became C, C became D and so on.

Mr Fogarty's code was a straightforward, one-place displacement. So to decode, you just displaced one back again. N became M, P became O, X became W. He

found a leaky ballpoint in his jacket pocket and jotted down the transpositions underneath the original message: NPX UIF GSPOU MBXO 6851 MOW THE FRONT LAWN 6851

He stared at the message stupidly. He'd cracked the code. He knew he'd cracked the code because everything fell neatly into place. But the message didn't make any sense. Mow the front lawn? Why would Mr Fogarty leave him an instruction like that in code?

The lawnmower! Mr Fogarty had always told him not to touch the lawnmower! Now he was telling him to mow the lawn. It had to be something to do with the lawnmower in the shed.

Henry crumpled the paper and stuffed it in his pocket, then raced down the back path to the shed. Inside was the usual mess. (He'd never got round to cleaning it for Mr Fogarty that day Hodge caught Pyrgus in his fairy form.) There were cobwebs and dust coating the largest collection of junk, machine parts, garden tools and flower pots he'd ever seen. On his left was an ancient grow-bag for tomatoes, with the wizened brown remains of last year's plants emerging from it like a spider. The lawnmower was at the far end of the shed.

Henry picked his way across. As he reached the mower, his heart began to pound. Mr Fogarty was up to something, definitely trying to send him some sort of message. He cautiously unwrapped the plastic covering the mower, looking for another envelope. There was none. He detached the grass box and looked inside that, but couldn't see because of the gloom of the shed. He stuck his hand in and fumbled around, then gave up and carried the box outside. When he tipped it to the light, there was nothing inside there either.

He started to drag the mower from the shed so he could see a little better. There was a cavity underneath it in the concrete floor.

The cavity had been covered by a thin sheet of plywood, but as Henry dragged the mower a loose fitting caught and moved it slightly. Even then he might not have noticed the cavity if he hadn't been so hyper. But he was watching out for clues and spotted the dark crack at once. He pushed the mower clear and lifted the plywood.

The cavity was no accidental flaw. It was a three feet by two feet rectangle, three feet deep with neat, clean edges, obviously built in when the concrete was first laid. Inside was a metal strongbox with a combination lock.

Mow the front lawn

Henry's heart was thumping so loudly now it was making his whole body shake. That's what the numbers were for – the combination lock! His fingers were trembling as he dialled the combination and jerked the lid.

The lid didn't move.

Henry tried again, taking great care to do it right this time. 6

… 8… 5… 1… But while he was certain he'd dialled exactly, the strongbox remained locked.

What was going on here? The numbers had to be the combination -nothing else made sense. He frowned. The message wasn't Mow the front lawn 6851. The message was Npx uif gspou mbxo 6851. To get it right you had to shift the letters. Maybe you had to shift the numbers as well!

Henry tried the new combination. 5… 7… 4… How did you shift one backwards? Zero, he supposed. He dialled in the final 0 and the strongbox opened easily. Inside was a brushed aluminium cube with two inlaid concave plastic buttons on the top. Lying beside it was another scrap of paper. He picked up the paper. There were eight words, but no code nonsense this time. Mr Fogarty's second message said simply, GONE ON AHEAD. FOLLOW SOON AS YOU CAN.

Gingerly Henry picked up the cube.