Sally Bangle by Melinda Szymanik

Author:Melinda Szymanik
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: girl power, junior fiction, intermediate fiction, junior mystery
Publisher: Melinda Szymanik

CHAPTER SIX

Leroy unlocked the door. He ushered the girls into the room and locked the door behind them, standing with his back against it. Once inside Sally could see that it looked like any other hospital room; a large rectangular space with two beds on each side, a patient to each bed, although not all the patients were in their beds. One man sat reading a book in an easy chair. As she walked past, Sally noticed the book was upside down. Another sat in a chair by the barred window sketching the view. Vanessa walked towards the bed on the far right and Sally followed her.

A thin man sat up in the bed wearing a helmet on his head and a doctor’s mask on his face. Sally’s heart did a little flip flop. Why was his face still covered up? Just like the picture in Milo’s book. Could it be her father had been here this whole time? Had Professor Angstrom drowned on the trip, and the Major hidden the truth by covering up the Captain’s face in this locked room for the last seven years? It was like the story of the man in the iron mask. Sally shivered with excitement and hurried after Vanessa, feeling breathless and impatient. Vanessa was pulling a chair over from the end of the room where there was a stack of them for visitors, the man in the last bed following her with his eyes. The girls sat, Sally’s chair behind Vanessa’s.

“Hello Professor,” Vanessa said.

The masked face looked down at Vanessa and Sally from the high bed. The man wore striped pyjamas and a blood-red dressing gown with a white cravat tightly knotted at his scrawny neck. He looked like he should be smoking a pipe in front of a log fire in the drawing room of a posh house, except for the helmet and mask. Up close Sally could now see he was uncomfortably skinny with bulging eyes. He didn’t look at all like the man in the photos on the hall table at home, Sally thought dismally, although it was impossible to be a hundred per cent sure. His hands lay crossed in his lap. He nodded at Vanessa but said nothing.

“I’ve brought someone with me today.”

The man nodded some more.

“Professor, this is Sally …” Vanessa hesitated for a fraction of a second, “Sally … Bangle.”

The old man frowned.

“I knew a man called Bangle,” he said slowly, his voice sounding croaky with disuse and a little muffled by the mask.

Sally straightened, her heart pounding.

“Changed his stripes though. More bungle than Bangle, I’d say. Bad form. Most disappointing,” the man wittered on.

Sally’s heart sank right down to her toes.

“Now the Major stayed true. Clever man the Major. Married a trout though. Slippery things, trout,” he said brightly, like it was the answer to everything. Then he started coughing.

Sally sighed.

Vanessa made a face at Sally as if to say, “Well you wanted to come.”

Leroy cleared his throat loudly, and looking over Sally could see the interview was about to end.

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