The Broken Sun by Darrell Pitt Page A

man asked mildly. ‘Surely you do not fear one so tiny?’
    A sound came from a closed wardrobe. It diverted Mr Doyle for the briefest of moments—enough
for the stranger to act. He swung about in a roundhouse kick and knocked Clarabelle
away, before delivering a series of lightning-fast blows at Mr Doyle’s chest.
    The detective fended them off and delivered a right cross to the man’s jaw. He staggered
from the blow. At first it seemed he was about to collapse, but instead he rolled,
catapulting himself between Mr Doyle’s legs and into Jack’s stomach, driving him
against the wall.
    Scarlet approached, fist raised, but he swept a leg under her feet and she crashed
to the floor. The man kept moving, racing down the hall. Jack, sucking air into his
lungs, gave chase.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    The man raced along the path. It was snowing harder now; his white outfit allowed
him to blend with the landscape as he disappeared between two pine trees.
    Jack’s eyes searched the landscape. Then a shadow moved across the snow. Jack leapt
backwards as the man slammed into the ground. He had been up one of the trees!
    Jack was just in time to deflect a punch, but the man followed up with another thump
to the side of his head that knocked him backwards into the snow.
    Shaking off the blow, Jack raced after him. The man glanced back and now Jack saw
a look of frustration cross his face.
    You think you’re sick of running? Jack thought savagely. I’m sick of chasing you.
    Something stirred in Jack’s gut, a sense of grim determination. The thief had bested
him twice. Once, at the museum, and again on the island. They had already lost two
pieces of the Broken Sun. Jack was not prepared to lose the third.
    The man dashed up the hill and took the left fork in the path. He was moving more
slowly now. Possibly his airship was close by.
    Jack put on more speed. His head was throbbing with the exertion and the sharp sting
of the cold mountain air. The ground grew steeper, but now he was less than fifty
feet away.
    Forty feet. Thirty…
    The thief disappeared over a rise. A few seconds later, an airship leapt to full
power just as Jack reached the gondola. He jumped, but his fingers missed the bottom
of the gondola by inches.
    Damn!
    The airship climbed rapidly towards a bank of low-lying cloud. Jack watched in despair,
breathing so hard he was shaking. He had come so close .
    Snow drifted down from the steel-grey sky, stinging his eyes as the airship entered
more cloud.
    Bang! Bang!
    The shots lacked aim—most likely they were fired as a warning. Jack zigzagged down
the hill to some trees.
    â€˜Damn,’ he said again. ‘Damn. Damn. Damn.’
    He leaned against a trunk, filled with a despair so powerful he wanted to weep. Three
times the thief had been within his grasp and three times he had escaped.
    Jack shivered. The cold was starting to take hold again, despite the sweat dripping
into his eyes.
    His vision blurred. It looked like the ground was moving. Jack stared hard. The ground was moving. Further up the hill, it was shuddering as if a ton of popcorn had been
dumped onto a dance floor. The blanket of snow covering the hill was sliding, the
mountain groaning as if in pain.
    â€˜Bazookas,’ Jack said. ‘It’s an avalanche!’
    He started down the hill as the roar grew louder, balls of loose snow tumbling past
him. Jack ran as fast as he could, but in his panic he had lost the path and now
his legs sunk into deeper snow.
    Where’s the path? he thought. I’m dead if I don’t find it.
    He spotted it, a trail of stone to his left, but it was too late: the entire side
of the hill was racing after him like an out-of-control train.
    Jack’s mind went blank.
    He had to think. Think!
    He had read something about avalanches, that book about mountain climbing in the
library back at Bee Street. There was a strange, obscure detail that had fascinated
him. What was it? He