Argleton, Chapter 7: Thirds
Is there a third phantom town? If so, where might it be?
Read Chapter 6 first or start at the beginning.
“Hm,” Charlie murmured as soon as Matt entered the living room. She looked up from the dining table, her face reflecting concern.
“What’s up?” Matt took the seat next to her and she quickly minimised her email application out of sight.
“I’m just thinking that it’s time I hardened both our laptops. I’ve been wanting to make sure your security was up-to-date anyway. Now is as good time as any to do a number on both our machines.”
“Who would try to hack us?”
Before Charlie could reply, the doorbell rang. Matt bounced up to answer it.
“Delivery for a Mr… Matthew Ingleston?” a man in a smart blue uniform said.
“What is it?”
The man looked at his paperwork.
“It’s from… Handy Mobile.”
“Weird. I already got my new phone. It came yesterday.”
The man looked puzzled. “Well, do you want it or not?”
“I’ve already got it.”
“Yeah, but do you want this one? I mean, if they’ve made a mistake, you can always send it back later.”
“I suppose.” Matt signed for the package and returned to the lounge.
“Hey, Charlie, want a new phone? For some reason, I’ve got two.” Matt flollopped on the sofa and opened the new package. He read through the paperwork, which looked identical to the papers he had already received. He turned the box over in his hands, noting that this phone was the same model as his old one. Perhaps the upgrade had been a mistake. Well, if they called him, he’d hand it back, he thought, but it was just far too nice a phone to give up voluntarily. “So,” he said, putting the box to one side. “Where did we get to?”
“I was just going to say, ManyHands hasn’t turned up anything new.”
“Are we looking in the right place?”
“The clue was ‘bisect me’ so we’re bisecting the line between Argleton and Ibemcester.”
“That shouldn’t take too long?”
“No, it shouldn’t. So the fact that we haven’t hit pay dirt leads me to believe that we might need to look elsewhere. I suspect that ‘bisect’ refers not to a line, but to an angle.”
“An angle?”
“Yes. If there are three points on the map, that would describe a triangle. We would then have to bisect one of the vertices of that triangle. So, what we need to do is find the third vertex.”
Charlie beckoned Matt over to look at her laptop. She typed ‘Argleton’ into the search bar of GeoMaps.
“This is Argleton, top left of England, roughly speaking.” She typed in Ibemcester and a second pin sprang into view. “This is Ibemcester. See how it’s right on the Dorset coast. You couldn’t get much further away from Argleton if you’d tried.” She gestured to the eastern coast of the UK. “And there’s plenty of room over here for a third point on dry land to make a triangle.”
“Not that a triangle is hugely exciting, as shapes go.”
“True, but perhaps this is another proof of concept.”
Matt scrutinised the map a little more closely. “So, let’s assume that if you’re going to draw a triangle you want to draw something that really does look triangular. A fat little triangle. That’s going to put the third point somewhere over here, in… what’s that? Suffolk?”
“I reckon so.”
“Let’s see what ManyHands thinks.”
If you want to read Argleton all in one go, download the free ebook now. And why not try The Gates of Balawat or The Lacemaker as well!