Everyone dispersed. Tony weathered a moment of intense fatigue. Or hunger. He wasn’t sure which. But then Angey raced back into the room. There hadn’t been anything like a crowbar in the toolbox. All he could find was an old fireplace poker.
“It’ll have to do,” Tony said.
“Move that junk off the shelf,” Angey said, pointing to the cap, mezuzah, claddagh ring, and heart hook.
Think quick! “Mind if we work around that stuff?” Tony said. “They’re good-luck charms. And we sort of need all the luck we can get right now.”
“Whatever.” Angey shrugged. He set to work prying up a corner of the first plank. Tony grabbed hold and pulled. Together they wrenched it from the wall.
“You’re not as big a wimp as I thought,” Angey said.
“And you’re not as big a jerk as I thought,” Tony shot back.
They attacked another plank. Tony called a time-out and pulled the cell phone out of his pocket. He set it next to the objects on the shelf, so he could keep track of the time. T minus an hour and a half before Health & Safety arrived. If he didn’t find that treasure soon, he would have to hand over Hagmann’s lost key. Speaking of which, he added his wallet—where the key was still stashed—to the pile so he could move more freely. Back to work. Their progress was slow, but he and Angey were determined.
“Hey,” Angey said. “There’s a fireplace back here!”
Sure enough, an old brick fireplace emerged, plank by plank.
Meanwhile, Angelo and Jack sat cross-legged on the bed, watching Tony. He seemed to be very busy and, at the same time, not really doing anything. Eventually Solly returned to the attic—empty-handed—and joined Angelo and Jack on the bed. “How’s it going over there?” he asked Tony. Tony told him they had uncovered most of the fireplace. But the back of the hearth was a solid plate of cast iron. Angey said he didn’t need a play-by-play; he could see for himself it was just a fireplace. Tony told Angey he was just trying to keep the ghost of Zio Angelo posted. He continued to muse aloud: Above the slate mantel there was a long vertical slot in the brick chimney. There were holes bored into the bricks on either side. So that must be where the missing claddagh went.
“What claddagh?” Angey said.
Think quick! Tony pointed to the heart hook on the spiral. “That looks just like the heart from the claddagh knocker on the front door. But I found it up here in the attic when I was moving in. I’m guessing it belongs to another claddagh just like it.”
That’s when Finn returned to the room. He was also empty-handed. But he was grinning from ear to ear. He had just had a word with Paddy, who had fallen asleep on the sofa down in the parlor. (It was now past midnight of Christmas Eve in their time.) Paddy knew exactly where the second fireplace knocker was. He hadn’t liked the fact the heart was missing from the middle when he’d first moved into the attic. He was sure it meant bad luck. So he had taken the hands and crown down and stowed them.
“Where?” Angelo cried.
“Hang on a sec,” Tony said. He turned to Angey. “Maybe you should double-check that Mikey can’t hear what we’re doing up here.”
“Good idea,” Angey said. “Be right back.”
“All clear!” Tony said, as soon as Angey was gone. Finn dove beneath the bed. The other boys followed him. Finn pried up two loose floorboards. A secret compartment! In it were hidden Paddy’s personal treasures—a few girlie postcards (fairly tame, Tony thought, by modern standards), some stale cigars, a half-full bottle of whiskey. Jack was disappointed he couldn’t see any of it. Meanwhile, Finn pulled out a pair of wrought-iron wings and a crown.
“Better double-check we haven’t missed anything,” Tony said. He reached into the compartment and fished his hand around.
“There is something else in here. It’s tucked way in the back corner.” He pulled out a length of rotting rope, looped at the end. They could all see that.
“You think maybe it’s a lasso?” Finn said.
“Looks more like a noose,” Jack said with a shudder.
“It is a noose,” Tony said. “Maybe it’s, you know, the noose.”
“How do you think it ended up here?” Angelo said.
“What are you doing under the bed?” Angey said, returning to the room. Tony crawled out, leaving the noose behind. “I thought I heard a rat,” he said. “It was just a couple of loose floorboards. But look what I found under them.” He held up the claddagh pieces. “I bet all this stuff fits into those holes and slots above the chimney. Maybe if we put it back, it’ll open the fireplace grate somehow.”
“What makes you think that?” Angey said.
“I read something similar in one of my mysteries,” Tony bluffed.
“We don’t have time for fiction,” Angey said. “Fire up that Ouija game. Ask Zio Angelo what to do next.”
Tony pretended to reconjure Angelo with the Ouija board. He asked how to open the back of the fireplace. Angelo shrugged and turned to Jack. “I think it’s your turn to be the ghost,” he said. Jack told Tony what to do, and Tony relayed the information over to Angey at the fireplace: Place the wrought-iron hands and crown into the corresponding bore holes to form a claddagh. Turn the hands outward, so they crank the metal pulleys and gears inside the flue. Place the heart hook on the mantel in the catch of the vertical slot.
Jack vanished.
“Now what?” Angey—and all the other boys in the room—cried.
Tony tried not to panic. He took a good long look at the chimney. And he totally winged it. He told Angey to turn the heart hook nine times to the right with the clapper. This Angey did, though it wasn’t easy. Next he told Angey to pull the heart hook down through the slot. As Angey did so, there was an ear-piercing screech of metal as the iron plate at the back of the hearth slowly rose. The secret passageway! Tony gave Angey one last instruction: Put the heart hook back on the spiral.
Jack reappeared. “Follow me!” he said, leaping off the bed. He ducked through the fireplace grate, with Solly and Finn right behind him.
Tony told Angey to follow him.
The room contained just what Jack had described: a moldy old mattress laid across several casks on their sides; a chamber pot, washbasin, and ewer; three upright casks arranged like a table and two chairs; several more casks lined up against the wall, all branded with the letters VOC topped by a little star.
Tony made straight for a piece of parchment nailed to the wall. He read the riddle aloud:
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Angey said.
“It’s a riddle,” Tony said. “Maybe it tells where the treasure is.”
“But it doesn’t make any sense,” Angey said.
“It’s not supposed to,” Tony said. “It’s a riddle.” He pondered it for a second. “The only stars in this room are the ones branded on all the kegs above the V in VOC,” he said. “I guess you could say a V is made up of two touching bars.”
“What’s going on?” Angelo wailed from the other room.
“Maybe the treasure’s in one of those dusty old kegs,” Tony said.
Jack piped up that looking in the casks was the first thing he had thought of during his long sleepless night. But they were all nailed shut, and he hadn’t had anything to open them with.
“Wait, how many kegs are there?” Tony said.
The boys quickly counted them. Thirteen!
“Thirteen,” Angey confirmed.
“Four of them are lying on their sides to make the bed,” Tony said. “They aren’t numbered, are they?” He pulled the mattress off. The side of each cask was indeed scratched with a slightly smudged inventory number. The fourth one was number 9! Tony stood it up while Angey grabbed the poker from the other room and pried off the lid.
“What’s that?” Angey said.
Crumbly brown dirt. Like sawdust, only with an oddly fragrant and familiar smell. Hardly the cascade of gold doubloons Tony had been imagining. Tony plunged both hands into the cask. He fished right to the bottom, causing some of
whatever was in there to spill over the sides. He pulled out a handful of the gunk to show the other boys.
“What’s that?” they all said at once, including Angey.
“I don’t know,” Tony said, shoving it into his pocket. “But I doubt it’s what the Hagmanns have been after.”
“Somebody tell me what’s going on!” Angelo shouted from the other room.
Solly shouted back that all they had found so far was a baker’s dozen of casks full of funny-smelling dirt.
“Rats!” Angelo said.
Angey suggested he and Tony hop back on the Ouija board and ask Zio Angelo what the poem meant.
“But what if Zio Angelo doesn’t know the answer to the riddle?” Tony said.
“I don’t!” Angelo cried from the other room.
“Tobias does,” Jack said. “He told me he wrote it himself when he was thirteen.”
“You’re right,” Solly said. “We can conjure him. All we need is something that connects Jack to him.”
Tony knew what that was! But first he needed to get rid of Angey. He suggested his brother sneak back onto Michael’s computer and surf for the meaning of VOC. Maybe he could find some connection to the riddle. Or maybe the brown gunk, whatever it was, was actually valuable. Meanwhile, Tony would have a word with Zio Angelo on the Ouija board. They needed to start multitasking now, or they were toast. Reluctantly, Angey agreed. He ducked out of the hearth passageway. Tony waited until he heard his sneakers clomping down the stairs before pulling the riddle off the wall.
The thirteen-year-olds trooped back out of the fireplace, where Angelo was waiting for them at the slate shelf—which was, in actual fact, a mantel. “It’s kind of weird to watch you all walk out of the paneling like that,” he said. Tony showed him the fistful of brown flaky dirt in his pocket. “Time for Plan C,” he said, pointing to the 9 in the 1779 dating the riddle. He told Jack to place the parchment on the spiral, since he had the closest connection to Tobias. This Jack did. The others all crowded around, waiting in suspense.
Nothing.
“Maybe you should read it aloud,” Tony said.
“I can’t,” Jack reminded him.
Oops. Tony read the riddle, line by line. Jack repeated the words. There was an echo in Tony’s ears of someone else reciting the poem along with Jack.
A boy their age suddenly stood at the fireplace. He was bent in concentration over the spiral, scratching out the 9 of 1779. Tony couldn’t actually see what he was writing with, but it had to be a quill pen. Because the boy had long golden hair tied in a ponytail, and he was dressed in britches and a billowy homespun shirt. “Which animal does he look like to you?” Tony whispered to Angelo.
“A wild colt?” Angelo said.
“That’s what I thought,” Tony said.
“What made you ask that?” Angelo asked.
“I’ll tell you later,” Tony said.
Tobias looked up—having obviously overheard them—to see that he was not alone. “Crikey!” he said.
“Tobias?” Tony asked.
Tobias backed away in terror.
“You are Tobias Tucker,” Tony insisted, “and today is your thirteenth birthday—isn’t it?”
“And yet I’m clearly still a Jonah,” Tobias said, sighing. “I have the blackest luck.”
Once again Tony launched into the complicated tale of who they were and how they had conjured him with the pawcorance. They could prove they were from the future because they knew about the secret room behind the fireplace—they had just been inside—and they also knew about the riddle Tobias had just written. They were pretty sure it was a riddle that revealed the location of a treasure. And they were almost positive the treasure wasn’t in any of the barrels. Tony showed him the fistful of brown flaky dirt. “All we found is this,” he said.
“Tea,” Tobias said. “But you can’t arrest me for that. The Tea Act was repealed last year.”
Tea? “We don’t care about tea,” Tony said. “We want the treasure.”
“I’ll never tell you where it’s hidden!” Tobias cried. “The fact that you know about it only proves, in my mind, that you’re Tory spies working for the Hagmann family!”
He was clearly not getting the “we’re from the future” part.
Tony tried again. He assured Tobias that, in spite of how oddly they might be dressed, they were all patriotic Americans from the future. Not only that, but they hated the Hagmanns as much as Tobias did. In fact, their sole purpose in being there was to prevent a Hagmann from getting his hands on the treasure.
“So you’re with Revere?” Tobias said, relieved. “I’m a future American too. And a patriot. Does Revere want to take the chest with him after all?”
“No,” Tony said, “You don’t understand. We’re actually from—”
Angelo stepped on Tony’s foot. “Revere,” he interrupted. “You’re right. Revere did send us to collect that chest. That’s why we know it’s in the secret room behind the fireplace; Revere told us himself. Now if you’ll just show us where you hid it—”
“Not so fast,” Tobias said, still suspicious. “If Revere sent you, you’ll know where he’s headed and why.”
Clearly, Angelo was drawing a blank. Spelling was not his only weak subject.
“Wait,” Tony said. “It’s 1779, right?”
“When else would it be?” Tobias said.
“The Penobscot Expedition,” Tony said. (Thank God Michael had collared him about his unfinished dissertation earlier that afternoon.) “Revere is Artillery Train Captain under Dudley Saltonstall,” Tony said. “He’s headed for Maine to keep the British from establishing a stronghold in Penobscot Bay.”
Tobias slapped him on the back. “You can never be too sure, what with all these traitors about,” he said.
“What’s in the chest?” Tony said. “Revere was in too much of a hurry to tell us what we’re actually picking up for him—or why you have it to begin with.”
“I helped him forge it,” Tobias said. “I’m an apprentice in his shop. He hired me back in seventy-three after I showed him where to hide all that tea. Little did he realize I’d bring such terrible luck to his house. I was born a Jonah, you see—”
n 1773, Tobias was sweeping the ashes out of the grate in the parlor when he heard an unexpected rap at the front door. He dusted off the knees of his britches and headed for the stairwell. For though he was only seven, this was his lot in life: cleaning fireplaces, lighting and snuffing candles, answering the door. His mother had died giving birth to him. His father had been trampled to death at the Boston Massacre a few years later. He was now a Jonah in everyone else’s eyes. Cursed. Bedeviled by bad luck. What more could he expect than to toil as a servant for the only aunt who would take him in?
It was Paul Revere at the door.
The silversmith was no stranger at Aunt Polly’s house—Uncle Nathaniel had also been a Son of Liberty, like Revere, before he was shot (as opposed to trampled) at the Boston Massacre—though Revere was, Tobias had to admit, strangely dressed at the moment: in war paint, a feathered headdress, and buckskin. But like any good footman, Tobias didn’t ask why. He just went to fetch Aunt Polly.
“Is there a masquerade ball tonight?” Aunt Polly asked Revere.
“We need a place to hide a baker’s dozen of tea casks,” Revere said. “They’re sitting in a wagon directly out front.”
Aunt Polly peered over his shoulder. The items in question were indeed stacked on a wagon at the bottom of her stoop—on top of which sat a half dozen similarly clad Sons of Liberty. “I’m afraid I can’t help you,” she said. “It’s plain by the VOC brands on the barrel staves that they’ve been smuggled from Holland to evade the Crown’s tax on English tea.”
“Your late husband would have been all too glad to protest such blatant taxation without representation,” Revere exploded.
“Yes, well, patriotism aside, there’s simply no place in this entire house to hide thirteen barrels,” Polly insisted.
<
br /> “What about the secret room?” Tobias said. “Up in the attic where I sleep?”
“Secret room?” Revere said.
“What secret room?” Polly said.
“The one behind the fireplace,” Tobias said. “I felt a cold draft coming through the hearth last winter. While I was trying to block up the gap at the bottom of the grate, I noticed there was a little room behind it.”
To Aunt Polly’s dismay, Tobias led everyone upstairs to prove his point.
Revere immediately recognized the iron ornament on the chimney—two hands clasping a crown—as a very old and very clever lock. He claimed it was designed by Irish pirates of yore to safeguard their booty, back when Hangmen Court was their favorite lair. An accomplished locksmith himself, Revere soon worked out that the back of the grate could be raised by pulling the heart of the ornament through a slot in the mortar of the chimney. His companions duly stowed the casks of tea inside the secret room and resealed the grate. Revere then manipulated the ornament’s iron parts to remove the heart—which was actually a sort of hook—and tucked it into his pocket. “And now we have a pressing engagement on the waterfront,” he said. Whereupon he and his companions trooped out of the house, climbed aboard the empty wagon, and rattled off into the night.
The next morning all Boston was abuzz with the news of a so-called Tea Party at which the Sons of Liberty, disguised as Mohawks, had sneaked aboard three cargo ships and dumped casks of British tea into the harbor, with very un-Mohawk-like cries of “No taxation without representation.” The daily papers wryly observed that spoilage of so much English tea would hardly present an inconvenience to any patriot refusing to buy it; there was plenty of contraband Dutch tea around to brew.
About a week later, Revere returned to Aunt Polly’s—dressed in his customary frock coat and three-cornered hat—with a strange gift: a door knocker of two hands clasping a heart fashioned out of wrought iron. An exact replica, in fact, of the chimney ornament in the attic. Aunt Polly thanked Revere for his thoughtfulness. Though her family was indeed of Irish origin, wasn’t the knocker a bit … elaborate?
13 Hangmen Page 19
