Scepter of the Ancients Read Free

late.”
    “Who said?” Stephanie’s father asked, and the solicitor looked down at the file open before him.
    “A most unusual name, this,” he said. “It seemswe are waiting on one Mr. Skulduggery Pleasant.”
    “Well, who on Earth is that?” asked Beryl, irritated. “He sounds like a … he sounds like a … Fergus, what does he sound like?”
    “He sounds like a weirdo,” Fergus said, glaring at Fedgewick. “He’s not a weirdo, is he?”
    “I really couldn’t say,” Fedgewick answered, his paltry excuse for a smile failing miserably under the glares he was getting from Fergus and Beryl. “But I’m sure he’ll be along soon.”
    Fergus frowned, narrowing his beady eyes as much as was possible. “How are you sure?”
    Fedgewick faltered, unable to offer a reason, and then the door opened and the man in the tan overcoat entered the room.
    “Sorry I’m late,” he said, closing the door behind him. “It was unavoidable, I’m afraid.”
    Everyone in the room stared at him, stared at the scarf and the gloves and the sunglasses and the wild fuzzy hair. It was a glorious day outside, certainly not the kind of weather to be wrapped up like that. Stephanie looked closer at the hair. From this range, it didn’t even look real.
    The lawyer cleared his throat. “Um, you are Skulduggery Pleasant?”
    “At your service,” the man said. Stephanie could listen to that voice all day. Her mother, uncertain as she was, had smiled her greetings, but her father was looking at him with an expression of wariness she had never seen on his face before. After a moment, the expression left him and he nodded politely and looked back to Mr. Fedgewick. Fergus and Beryl were still staring.
    “Do you have something wrong with your face?” Beryl asked.
    Mr. Fedgewick cleared his throat again. “Okay, then, let’s get down to business, now that we’re all here. Excellent. Good. This, of course, being the last will and testament of Gordon Edgley, last revised almost one year ago. Gordon has been a client of mine for the past twenty years, and in that time, I got to know him well, so let me pass on to you, his family and—and friend, my deepest, deepest—”
    “Yes yes yes,” Fergus interrupted, waving his hand in the air. “Can we just skip this part? We’re already running behind schedule. Let’s go to the part where we get stuff. Who gets the house? And who gets the villa?”
    “Who gets the fortune?” Beryl asked, leaningforward in her seat.
    “The royalties,” Fergus said. “Who gets the royalties from the books?”
    Stephanie glanced at Skulduggery Pleasant from the corner of her eye. He was standing back against the wall, hands in his pockets, looking at the lawyer. Well, he
seemed
to be looking at the lawyer; with those sunglasses, he could have been looking anywhere. She returned her gaze to Mr. Fedgewick as he picked up a page from his desk and read from it.
    “‘To my brother Fergus, and his beautiful wife, Beryl,’” he read, and Stephanie did her best to hide a grin, “‘I leave my car, and my boat, and a gift.’”
    Fergus and Beryl blinked. “His car?” Fergus said. “His boat? Why would he leave me his boat?”
    “You hate the water,” Beryl said, anger rising in her voice. “You get seasick.”
    “I
do
get seasick,” Fergus snapped, “and he knew that!”
    “And we already have a car,” Beryl said.
    “And we already have a car!” Fergus repeated.
    Beryl was sitting so far up on her chair that she was almost on the desk. “This gift,” she said, her voice low and threatening, “is it the fortune?”
    Mr. Fedgewick coughed nervously and took a small box from his desk drawer and slid it toward them. They looked at this box. They looked some more. They both reached for it at the same time, and Stephanie watched them slap at each other’s hands until Beryl snatched it off the desk and tore the lid open.
    “What is it?” Fergus asked in a small voice. “Is it a key to a