The Unknown Spy Read Online Free

your eyes peeled. Whoever did this can’t be far away.”
    The porter went down on one knee beside the body. It was a woman. Her face was lined and her gray hair tumbled over her shoulders, but Danny could tell that she had once been beautiful. As if reading his thoughts, Valant sighed.
    “Ah, that so much beauty should end like this. She’s dead.”
    “Who is she?”
    “No one knows her real name. She is the wife of the Unknown Spy. When they came here many years ago she was like a queen, regal and haughty and quite, quite mad. Look.”
    From her back protruded a knife with a strange metal handle forged in the shape of a raven.
    “The ravens have a part to play in everything. In death as in life,” Valant said, straightening. There was a flutter near the ceiling and a dark shape glided out the door. “Nothing happens here that they don’t know about.”
    “Could they not tell us who did it?” Danny asked.“Spell a name out in twigs or fly to the place where the person lives?”
    Valant shook his head. “The ravens do things for their own reasons, not for ours,” he said. “And a dead human means no more to them than a dead bird lying at the side of the road does to us. No. The urgent thing now is to find the Unknown Spy.”
    They found him five minutes later. He was sitting on a bench in the shrubbery, muttering to himself. He did not look up as they approached.
    “She was dead when I found her, stiff and cold,” he said. “She was dead when I found her.”
    “Did you see anyone?” Danny asked. The Spy glanced up, then leapt to his feet.
    “You!” he exclaimed. “They told me … they said … what did they say …?” His voice trailed off. Danny and Valant continued to question him, but he would not say anything else.
    Valant shook his head and took the Unknown Spy gently by the arm. “I am very sorry for your loss. She was a rare woman.” The Spy raised his head and a single tear ran down his cheek. “We had better wake Master Devoy and give him the news.”
    H alf an hour later Valant, Danny and the Unknown Spy stood in the Spy’s room with Devoy and Brunholm. Devoy was wearing a suit, but Brunholm had on an extremely loud floral dressing gown, which looked incongruous beside the cold dead body.
    “Call McGuinness,” Devoy said. “We have a murderer in our midst.”
    “I’ve already done it,” Valant said.
    “And I wasn’t far away.” They all turned to see the Wilsons detective in the doorway behind them. McGuinness was wearing a raincoat. His gray hair was cropped close, and he had the air of having seen everything bad that people could do to each other so that nothing surprised him. He took in the scene with an expert eye, then knelt to examine the body.
    “Well?” Brunholm growled. Danny resisted the temptation to tell Brunholm that even McGuinness couldn’t solve a crime in two minutes, but McGuinness merely fixed the vice principal with a thoughtful expression.
    “There are two main possibilities: first, that someone wanted to murder her, and second, that she stumbled across someone ransacking the room.”
    “Looking for what?” Brunholm exclaimed.
    “Yes indeed, looking for what,” Devoy said, in a musing voice.
    “For that, I’m afraid you’d have to ask the Unknown Spy,” McGuinness said.
    “Or find out who he really is,” Danny heard himself say. The others turned to look at him.
    “Well, if we find out who he is, maybe we can find out what the killer was after.”
    “Makes sense to me,” McGuinness said.
    “Yes, well,” Brunholm said, “you can get on with working down the normal channels, full resources of the college available to you, no stone left unturned, et cetera, et cetera.”
    Danny eyed him. The slippery Brunholm didn’t seem too enthusiastic about finding out the Unknown Spy’s real identity.
    Devoy turned to Danny as if seeing him for the first time.
    “Ah yes, of course, young Caulfield. Well, at least you have arrived safely. I must