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impossible!
    “Very disappointing,” Mr. Kilgraw said, but there was something strange in his voice. It was as soft and as menacing as ever, but there was something else. Was he pleased?
    Eleventh . . . David felt numb. He tried to work out where it left him on the standings list. Linda had scored seventy-six points. He was eleven behind her, three behind Vincent. He had lost the Grail. He must have.
    “I was quite surprised,” Mr. Kilgraw went on. “I would have thought you would have known the meaning of thanatomania .”
    “Thanato . . . ?” David’s voice seemed to be coming from a long way away. He turned to Mr. Kilgraw. He could hear footsteps approaching. News had gotten out that the results were there. Soon there would be a crowd. “But I do know,” David said. “I wrote it down . . .”
    Mr. Kilgraw shook his head with a sad smile. “I marked the papers myself,” he said. “You didn’t even tackle the question.”
    “But . . . I did! I got it right!”
    “No, David. It was Question Three. I must say, you got everything else right. But I’m afraid you lost thirty-five points on that one. You didn’t hand in an answer.”
    Hand in an answer . . .
    And then David remembered. Vincent had collected the papers. He had handed them to Vincent. And following the instructions at the top of the exam, each question had been answered on a separate sheet. It would have been simple for Vincent to slip one of the pages out. David had been so confident, so sure of himself, that he hadn’t even thought of it. But that must have been what had happened. That was the only possibility.
    There were about twenty or thirty people milling around the bulletin board now, struggling to get closer, calling out names and numbers. David heard his own name called out. Eleventh with sixty-five points.
    “That means he’s tied for first,” somebody shouted. “He and Vincent King are tied for first.”
    “So who gets the Unholy Grail?”
    Everybody was chattering around him. Feeling sick and confused, David pushed his way through the crowd and ran off, ignoring Jill and the others who were calling after him.
    There was no moon that night. As if to add to the darkness, a mist had rolled in from the sea, slithering over the damp earth and curling up against the walls of Groosham Grange. Everything was silent. Even Gregor—sound asleep on one of the tombstones in the cemetery—was actually making no sound. Normally he snored. Tonight he was still.
    Nobody heard the door creak open to one side of the school. Nobody saw a figure step out into the night and make its way over the moss and the soil toward the East Tower. A second door opened and closed. Inside the tower, a light flickered on.
    But nobody saw the lantern as it turned around and around on itself, being carried ever higher up the spiral staircase that led to the battlements. A bloated spider scuttled out of the way, just managing to avoid the heel of a black leather shoe that pounded down on the concrete step. A rat arched its back in a corner, fearful of the unaccustomed light. But no human eye was open. No human ear heard the thud, thud, thud of footsteps climbing the stairs.
    The secret agent reached a circular room at the top of the tower, its eight narrow windows open to the night. To one side there was a table, some paper and what looked like a collection of boxes. From inside the boxes came the sound of flapping and a strange, high-pitched squeak. The agent sat down and drew one of the sheets of paper forward. And began to write:
    TOP SECRET
    To the Bishop of Bletchley
    All is going according to plan. Nobody suspects. Very soon the Unholy Grail will be ours. Expect further news soon.
    Once again there was no signature at the bottom of the page. The agent scrawled a single X , then folded the letter carefully and reached into one of the boxes. It wasn’t actually a box but a cage. His hand came out again holding something that looked like a scrap of torn leather