LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER FOUR

      ISOBEL MOUSTIQUE IS ONE OF my very best friends. She’s in my class at school and she’s even cleverer than I am! After I texted those pictures of the mask to her, I went to see her the following day.

      Izzy lives a couple of streets away from me. Her room is extremely girly, with a swirly-patterned rug on the mauve carpet, and twinkly lights fixed in a huge spiral around the ceiling. Not the sort of room you’d normally find me hanging out in.

      But don’t let that fool you. There’s nothing pink and fluffy about Izzy herself; she gets top marks for everything at school, and she knows enough facts to fill an encyclopedia (and then still have enough facts left over to compile a really difficult quiz). Believe me, that girl is sharper than a freshly sharpened needle in a sharp needle shop!

      ‘Saxby Smart,’ she said, giving me that lopsided smile of hers. ‘I got your texts. Need my help again, do you?’

      ‘Ooooh,’ I said, doing a quick roll of the eyes, my mouth set in a silly O-shape. ‘I just thought you might like the chance to catch me up on this one. You know, see if you can come to the same conclusions as quickly as I did. That sort of thing.’

      ‘Catch you up?’ said Izzy, with an expression which made her look like a tiger about to pounce. Well, a friendly tiger, anyway. ‘Saxby, I doubt you’ve come to the same conclusions about this mask as I have.’

      ‘Ooooh, really? Here are my conclusions,’ I said. ‘This mask is Japanese. It is very old, it was worn by a samurai warrior. From its weight I’d say it was made of teak or a similar hardwood. Not environmentally friendly, but then they didn’t have global warming in the eighteenth century, did they? And it has a Japanese inscription on the back, which goes on about a curse that will befall anyone who blah, blah, blah. I think that’s about it.’

      I folded my arms and grinned at her.

      ‘Almost totally wrong,’ she said. She grinned back at me, looking more tiger-like than ever.

      ‘WHAT?’ I spluttered.

      Izzy had done her research. She’d checked books, she’d checked the internet, and she’d checked her vast brain for facts about masks. On the screen of her computer, she opened up the photos I’d sent her and pointed out three things:

      1.The mask was made from pine, or a similar softwood, which is light in weight. You could tell this from the patterns in the wood where it had been cut to make the mask.

      2.The face on the mask had nothing to do with samurai warriors. It was based on a demon found in traditional Thai theatre.

      3.However, the writing on the back of the mask was indeed Japanese. It translated as ‘Power plastic wobble television, blue teeth microwave paint circuit between electric lamp.’

      For a second or two I stood there, on Izzy’s curly-patterned rug, completely silent. I was very embarrassed.

      ‘WHAT?’ I repeated.

      ‘It all checks out,’ said Izzy. ‘That mask is a fake. I think it’s nothing more than a cheaply-made souvenir. It looks like Jasmine’s dad simply got duped into buying a rather badly-done imitation. It’s not even very old. You wouldn’t find the Japanese characters for “television” or “plastic” painted on a genuine antique, would you?’

      Unexpected as Izzy’s findings were, there was no disputing them. Izzy is never wrong.

      ‘Your info is as vital as ever, Iz,’ I said sadly.

      ‘Where does this leave your investigation?’ Izzy asked.

      ‘I’m not sure,’ I told her.

      I gave her a cheery wave. She went back to her books. I went back to my shed. I sat in my Thinking Chair, propped my feet up on my desk, and fixed my face into the special detective-type expression I’d been practising in the bathroom mirror: eyes narrowed, one eyebrow raised, everything else showing steely determination.

      I thought about Izzy’s first point. The one about the mask being made of a soft wood, like pine. How could I have got that so wrong?

      And then it struck me! There was a clear difference between what I had thought, based on handling the mask, and what Izzy could tell, by looking at the photos of it. And this difference meant something very important! Something about how the mask was constructed!

      The mask had to be made of something else, in addition to the wood. To me, it felt quite heavy, remember? But Izzy made it clear that the wood it was made from should have been quite light in weight. So the mask must have been made of something else as well. Something out of sight!

      This was getting interesting! I thought about Izzy’s second point, the one about the mask having nothing to do with samurai warriors. It would be very strange for a Japanese souvenir, bought in Japan, to have got a detail like that wrong. After all, if I went on a day trip down to London, souvenirs of the place wouldn’t include the Statue of Liberty, or the Leaning Tower of Pisa! No matter who had made them, or where they’d been made, they’d include Big Ben, the London Eye and so on and so on.

      Which made we wonder: Was it just a cheap, touristy souvenir after all?

      And this made me think about Izzy’s third point, the one about the writing on the back of the mask.

      Immediately, another important deduction snapped into place! I checked my notebook, and Izzy’s translation. There was something staring at me from the words of that painted inscription about who had made the mask.

      Whoever made the mask could not speak Japanese. That inscription was not a curse. Well, obviously. But it wasn’t anything – it was a load of nonsense! The person who painted those Japanese

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