Emily might have laughed or played along with a yelp earlier in the evening, but now she didn’t even crack a smile. She didn’t much feel in the spirit of the game anymore. The prison itself was unrelentingly dour, with a chill that filtered through her clothes. If this was a regular Book Scavenger hunt, she’d say forget it and go home, but they were trapped on the island until time ran out.
“He’s so cranky,” James said forlornly, to nobody in particular. He was talking about Errol Roy. His impression of his beloved author had only gone further downhill after Roy’s dispute with Matthew.
Nisha was the only one of the three who appeared to have retained a chipper and determined resolve. Her notebook was open on the table to the twenty-one clocks she’d drawn.
“What do you think? What could they mean?” she asked, trying to draw their focus back to the task at hand.
James sighed heavily, but leaned closer to scrutinize the pictures. Emily stared at a water stain on the ceiling: an enormous brown ring the size of a bathtub. Being at Alcatraz to play the game had sounded like an exciting idea in the beginning, but now everything seemed to be falling apart, both the old prison and the game. There was the plaster peeling off the walls like a day-old sunburn, and the belongings that had gone missing. The patches of chipped-away flooring all over the dining hall, and her brother accused of being a thief.
“What do you think Mr. Griswold is saying to Matthew?” Emily asked.
James looked up from the notebook. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Mr. Griswold knows your brother. He knows Matthew wouldn’t have taken that bracelet.”
James was probably right. It was likely Mr. Griswold wouldn’t blame Matthew, but then the bracelet had been in his pocket. How did you account for that? The only explanation she could come up with was that someone was trying to frame her brother as a thief, but that was no comfort. Who would do that and why?
Emily eyed the other contestants scattered across the dining hall. Some were camped out at tables like their group; others were running in or running out, presumably on their way to find another puzzle. There was a line at the back food counter, and a group that had settled in around the jigsaw puzzle, laughing and eating snacks. Everyone seemed totally invested in the game, or at least invested in having fun, and everyone seemed immune to the setting, which was feeling more depressing to Emily by the minute.
Nisha adjusted her glasses. “I know you’re worried about your brother, but he was the one who had the idea about the clocks as a code. I bet he’d be disappointed if our time here ends and we never figure out whether or not he was right, and what the code said.”
She turned to James and said, “And I know you feel let down by Errol Roy, but you signed up for the game before you knew he’d be involved. Solve Errol Roy’s mystery for Hollister, if you’re no longer interested in doing it for yourself.”
The three of them looked across the dining hall to where the bookseller stood chatting with Jack. Hollister must have felt their attention because he turned, his gaze eventually finding their group. He raised a thumb, which was reassuring somehow, even though Emily didn’t know if the gesture was telling them he knew about Matthew’s situation and everything was all right, or if he was encouraging them in the game, or if it was simply a way to say hello from a distance.
But the positive gesture connected with Emily. She could hear his voice calling out FUN-raiser at the Lucy Leonard event a couple of nights ago. If Hollister could persevere and be cheery despite nearly losing his business and sentimental items in a fire, then the three of them could certainly rally and at least attempt to solve Errol Roy’s mystery.
“Okay,” Emily said. “So what do we do with these clocks?”
Nisha, James, and Maddie had only found working clocks in the chapel and the shower room, so Nisha kept those in a separate list, thinking they probably were normal clocks and not part of the code.
They stared silently at the drawings. Nisha turned her notebook this way and that. Suddenly James yelped, “Semaphore!”
“Semaphore?” Emily asked. “What does that mean?”
James was already digging through his backpack, and he pulled out his trusty codes and ciphers book. He flipped through the pages, then stopped on a spread that showed a diagram of stick figures holding flags in different positions.
Nisha frowned. “What do flag signals have to do with time?”
“I get it,” Emily said. “The flags are the hands of the clock. Is that what you’re thinking?”
“Exactly,” James said.
They set out assigning letters to each clock based on where the arms were stuck, but when they were done, they were left with a nonsensical list of letters:
“So maybe they’re not in order,” Emily said.
They played around with the letters, trying to arrange them into a message, but quickly decided that would be futile.
“I have an idea.” Emily unzipped her backpack and pulled out a binder that held a printout she’d brought of the prison floor plan. Using Nisha’s notes, she wrote down the letter that corresponded to each clock in the spot where they had found it. At first this didn’t seem to change anything, but then she turned the map on its side, and they realized the letters appeared to be laid out in four rows, and the top row formed the word Follow. Reading each line of the clock letters from left to right, they deciphered the message:
“‘Follow Anglin and Morris,’” Nisha read aloud.
“Anglin and Morris?” Emily said. “What does that mean? Are those names?”
“They sound familiar,” James said. “I feel like I should know this.”
“Maybe we should ask an actor,” Emily suggested. “Maybe there are two men here called Anglin and Morris, and if we can find them, they’ll lead us where we’re supposed to go.”
James leaned toward the prisoner. “Excuse me, sir?”
The man was using a chunk of bread to scoop up a bite of his chili. He didn’t even glance James’s way.
James tried again, “Do you know Anglin and Morris?”
“The roast beef’s the best thing on the menu,” the man grumbled.
“Uh, okay … thanks.” James turned back to their table.
“Don’t give up yet,” Nisha said. “Let’s ask more of the actors and see what they say.”
Two other prisoners were in the dining hall playing dominoes, but they continued their game like the kids weren’t even there.
Emily and her friends entered the main room with all the cellblocks. None of the three prisoners who were in cells said a word when they were asked about Anglin and Morris.
“There’s also the guard on the second level,” James reminded them, but the stairs going up were roped off with a chain.
“Hello up there!” James called, and soon the guard appeared.
“Authorized personnel only,” he said.
“Do you know where we can find Anglin and Morris?” Emily called up.
“Anglin and Morris?” the guard repeated. “You won’t be able to find them. They’re long gone. They escaped—didn’t you hear?”
CHAPTER
26
“THAT’S WHY the names are familiar! I read about this,” James said. “Those are the men who escaped Alcatraz and were never found.”
“There was a cell that talked about that,” Nisha said. “The one with the fake head on the pillow.”
Nisha led the way to that cell, which seemed to be set up as it would have looked when the men had escaped. The cell had a few personal items—a coat hanging on a hook, a painting and a couple of books propped on the shelf, a notebook folded open with a doodle in it on the small table next to the cell bars. The ventilation grate under the sink had been removed and leaned against the back wall, to show that a hole the size of an encyclopedia had been dug through the concrete. A papier-mâché head rested on a pillow, tucked in under covers to look like a sleeping man.
“So Anglin and Morris were real people?” Emily asked.
“It was three people,” Nisha said, reading a placard hung next to the cell. “The Anglin brothers, Clarence and John, and Frank Morris. All three escaped Alcatraz one night in 1962. They spent months digging tunnels through their cells with a spoon, and then one night they crawled through the holes they’d made, climbed up the utility corridor that’s behind the cell, got on the roof, shimmied down a drainpipe, climbed over a barbed-wire fence, and then launched a raft they made out of raincoats into the bay. They were never found, and most people think they drowned trying to cross to land.”
“They made a raft out of raincoats? What kind of Inspector Gadget sorcery is that?” James asked.
“They dug a tunnel with a spoon?” Emily said incredulously. “Man, they had a lot of patience. That must have taken forever.”
She wished Matthew were with them. He’d have loved hearing this story.
“I think there’s an old movie about this escape,” Nisha said. “My grandpa mentioned one called Escape from Alcatraz, when he heard I’d be here for Unlock the Rock.”
“So what do you think ‘follow Anglin and Morris’ is telling us to do?” James asked, bringing them back to the task at hand.
The question stumped them, until Emily paid closer attention to the doodle on the notebook.
“Look!” Emily said. “Do you think that’s a puzzle?”
Everyone huddled close to the bars, trying to get a good look at the picture. They each pointed out possibilities for what was wrong with the drawing.
“How many toes does the cat have?”
“Is the ear facing the right way?”
“Does the tail look more like a snake to you?”
“Wait!” Once Emily spotted the answer, she couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed it right away. “The answer is is. The word is is repeated twice.”
“Well, that’s a trick,” James said, disappointed.
“What does it mean?” Nisha asked. “What are we supposed to do with is?”
“Maybe it’s not the word is, but an abbreviation for where we’re supposed to go next?” Emily suggested.
Once again Emily removed her floor plan of the cell house, but there wasn’t a room in the building that correlated with IS.
“Mr. Griswold did say some puzzles might lead us outside,” James reminded them. “Maybe there’s another building we’re supposed to go to?” He unzipped his backpack, pulled out a folded-up tourist map of the entire island, and held it out for all three to look at.
“Industries Building.” Emily pointed to a rectangle down by the coastline. “That starts with I.”
“But no S,” Nisha pointed out. “It does end in an S, though.”
“Maybe it’s not a place that starts with IS. Maybe our answer is incomplete and we’re still supposed to follow Anglin and Morris,” James suggested. “Maybe we need to go where they went next.”
“You mean crawl through the hole in that cell? Are we allowed to do that?” Emily asked.
“If we’re allowed, I don’t want to,” Nisha said with a shudder. “Would we even fit through there?”
“If grown men did, we should be able to,” Emily said.
“They were escaping prison,” James added. “It’s not like it was designed with comfort in mind.”
The cell door was locked, however. “There must be a door that accesses the utility corridor,” Nisha said.
“Oh!” James’s eyes brightened. “There was a glass door at that end that shows the space in between the cellblocks. I noticed it when we talked to the guard, and I thought it was weird they made the door see-through.”
“Let’s go check it out,” Emily said.
They ran to the end of the cellblock to see what they’d find. Just as James had said, a glass door sealed off the space between the rows of cells. The utility corridor was a narrow, dimly lit alley with boring things like pipes and ductwork. A combination lock told them they wouldn’t be opening the door.
James pressed his nose to the glass and cupped his hands around his eyes. “Hey! There’s something posted in there. Can you see? I think it’s a sign.” He stepped away to give someone else a chance.
Nisha peered through the glass and slowly read out loud, “‘The first … is for a … boat’? ‘On the sea’?” She stepped back. “It’s hard to make out, but I think that’s the first line.”
After taking turns and double- and triple-checking to make sure they were all in agreement, Nisha wrote in her notebook:
The first is for a boat on the sea
The second is for the job of a key
The third is for what’s keeping you dry
The fourth is for colors in the sky
These four combined will unlock
the pronoun that helps you off this rock
“It’s a riddle!” Nisha said.
“A boat on the sea? That could be all sorts of things,” Emily said. “Battleship. Sailboat. Yacht. Dinghy. Skiff.”
“Look at the last one,” Nisha said. “That has to be rainbow, don’t you think? So the letter R?”
“Or sunset,” James said. “And the job of a key is to lock or unlock something.”
“A jacket keeps you dry, or an umbrella,” Emily said.
Nisha jotted down a quick list of the possible letters they’d come up with for each position.
“I can’t think of any four-letter word that has a J as the third letter. And if the third letter is U, then the second letter wouldn’t also be U,” Emily said.
Nisha revised their list accordingly:
“Blur!” James called out. “I can make the word blur out of those letters.”
“Also slur,” Emily added. “But neither of those words is a pronoun. A pronoun would be something like he, she, or you.”
They studied the original riddle for a minute, and then Nisha suggested, “Maybe there’s more that a key can do besides lock or unlock.”
“Like the key to a cipher can solve,” James said.
“And what about a piano key? Its job would be to make music,” Emily added.
“But using M or S with the other letters doesn’t create another word,” Nisha said.
“Oh! What about open?” Emily asked. “If you unlock a door with a key, you can open it.”
Nisha updated her list of letters, and a pathway appeared, hopping from one letter down to another to form a word that was also a pronoun:
“Your!” they said in unison.
Emily and her friends jumped up and down, excited to have found and solved the second of what they hoped were Errol Roy’s puzzles, when a peppy voice asked, “What did we find, gang?”
CHAPTER
27
STANDING BEHIND them were Fiona and her mother.
“So where’s the puzzle?” Fiona asked. Her wide-open eyes and smile made it seem like a friendly question, but her mother’s rigid stance and mouth pinched in concentration as she appeared to scan the area for puzzles said otherwise.
Emily realized that because the riddle had been hung inside the utility corridor, you’d only really notice it if you pressed your face up to the glass door.
“We won’t spoil the fun by telling you,” Emily said. She couldn’t resist adding, “We’re on our way to the third puzzle now.”
Mrs. Duncan bristled. “You’ve found two of Mr. Roy’s four already? How do you know they’re part of his solution?”
Over his shoulder, James called to them, “You’ll figure it out.”
They found a quiet corner between Michigan Avenue and the plastic wall with the plywood door that closed off A-Block.
“The first two puzzles were in locations along the prisoners’ escape route,” James recounted. “After getting into the utility corridor, they climbed to the roof, slid down a pipe, climbed a barbed-wire fence, and entered the water near an old power plant.”
Nisha shuddered. “I am not doing those things. Mr. Griswold is crazy if he expects us to.”
“Maybe there’s a normal way to get to the roof,” Emil
y pondered. “Stairs or an elevator with roof access—”
Her words were cut off by ringing bells, the kind you hear on a game show when someone wins a prize. Hollister’s voice echoed over the loudspeaker.
“Hey, folks! We have a group of detectives who think they’ve solved the case! Join us in the dining hall to see if their solution is correct!”
“Already?” Nisha said.
“It feels like we’ve only been playing for an hour.” James’s shoulders slumped in disappointment.
Funny how quickly they could go from feeling confident they were doing well to plummeting to the bottom. Contestants hurried from all corners of the prison to enter the dining hall, eager to learn if the mystery had been solved. Even park rangers and security tagged along.
James came to a sudden halt when they entered the dining hall. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he said when he saw who stood on the platform with Hollister and Errol Roy.
The team claiming to have won was Bookacuda and his cronies.
Ugh. Emily could already imagine the gloating that would surely ensue if Bookacuda’s solution was correct. He’d stand exactly as he was now, with his skinny frame ramrod straight and his pale, freckled face tilted up, like he was trying to stretch himself a couple of inches taller than he actually was. He’d boast about how much more impressive his win was than cracking a historical cipher that had only gone unbroken for so long because people stopped paying attention to it, or solving the clues in a Book Scavenger game nobody else was even playing.
Hollister swooped an arm in a welcoming gesture, encouraging everyone to gather around. Errol Roy stood behind him, bundled in his coat with his arms folded over the front like he was freezing. The temperature inside the prison had crept down with the sun, so Emily couldn’t blame him, but he looked miserable, like he’d eaten something that disagreed with him.
The Alcatraz Escape Page 12
