The Emerald Key

by Christopher Dinsdale

  She tried not to look down as the building slid past her body. Above, she watched the rope running past a thick stone protrusion that jutted out from the top of the wall. Her fingers were just about to get crushed by the edge of the stone overhang when she desperately made a grab with one hand over the stone lip. Thankfully, she was able to grab on to the rope once again before she lost her balance. As Beth continued to rise, she bent her body around the stone lip then threw her free leg up over the edge of the roof, allowing her body to roll onto its flat surface.

  Jamie grabbed Beth by the shoulders. Concerned, he looked down at her still body, her eyes tightly closed.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “Please tell me going down is a lot easier than going up.”

  He laughed. “Much easier. Come on. We don’t want to be up here any longer than we have to be.”

  Beth managed to get to her feet. As she stood up, she caught her breath at the sight of Montreal from up high. The entire town twinkled magically as if lit up by the light of a million tiny fireflies.

  “Oh, Jamie. Montreal is beautiful! I didn’t know things looked so different way up here.”

  “It is impressive,” he said, glancing over the edge. “Now don’t forget the rope.”

  The roof was unimaginably huge. They jogged perhaps a city block, or what Jamie guessed to be a third of the roof’s entire length, before they came to a metal hatchway. Jamie lowered the bag and waited for Beth to catch up.

  “So what are we doing here?” asked Beth, dropping the rope.

  “I don’t have time to wait for Canada to sort out all of their rebellion issues before I retrieve my book. Plus, I don’t have the paperwork to prove the book is mine. So this is the quickest way I know to solve the problem.”

  Beth watched Jamie put a crowbar to the hatch. “You mean we’re going to steal it?”

  He glanced up, smiling. “Well, it’s not really stealing if you already own it. I’m a priest you know. That would be breaking one of the Ten Commandments.”

  “But we’re breaking into the parliament building! Surely that’s in the commandments somewhere!”

  “I’m doing this for the greater good.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “You are the strangest priest I have ever met.”

  “Can you lend me some of your muscle, Beth?” Jamie grunted. “This hatch is tougher than it looks.”

  Reluctantly, Beth grabbed on to the crowbar with Jamie and pulled. Suddenly, the hatch sprang open with a metallic snap as they tumbled backwards onto the roof’s cold black tar. Lying together on their backs, trying to catch their breath, she glanced at him.

  “We could go to jail for this.”

  “You’re too young to go to jail, and I’ll tell them I forced you to help me. I’ll tell them that I wouldn’t give you back the peppermint stick I took from you until you helped me break into the most important building in all of Canada.”

  She giggled. “With a story like that, I’m sure the judge will be very understanding.”

  Jamie jumped to his feet and helped her up. They peered down into the gaping hole in the roof. It was dark inside the vacant building, but Jamie and Beth could make out stacks and stacks of books.

  “The library,” Beth whispered.

  “Hats off to Mr. Kessler. His drawing was right on the money. Hmm. Unfortunately, I don’t see a ladder up here that we could lower down to the floor. It looks like I’m going to need your help again.”

  He quickly took the specially rigged poles he had brought with him and arranged them into a pyramid above the hatch. He then took two pulleys out of the bag, hooked one up to the apex of the pyramid and quickly threaded a rope through the other. Back and forth he went between the two pulleys until he gave the makeshift rigging a final tug. Satisfied, he passed the loose end of the rope to Beth.

  “I’m going to need you to lower me down into the library.”

  “Me?” she cried. “I can’t lift you, let alone lower you down by rope!”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “You have more than enough muscle in those farming arms of yours. The pulleys will make the task easy. We need to lower the bag down first anyway. With the crowbar in it, it’s quite heavy, so you’ll get a chance to practise.”

  He pulled out a pair of leather work gloves from his back pocket and passed them to her. Skeptically, she pulled the gloves on and took up the rope. Jamie then placed the crowbar back into the bag, hooked it up to the lower pulley, and dropped it through the hatch in the roof. Prepared to be thrown off her feet by the weight of the bag, Beth was amazed at how she could barely feel its heavy weight on the rope. She let out the rope slowly and the bag soon dropped out of sight.

  “Wait, Beth,” he said, taking the rope from her. “Make sure you wrap the rope around your back like this and then hold the rope on either side of your waist. Let it slowly slide through your gloves. This way you will always keep control of the rope. That’s it. Good! We’ll turn you into a mountaineer yet.”

  “When have you been in the mountains?” she asked.

  “While in France, I visited an abbey high in the French Alps.”

  “Oh,” she muttered as she let more rope slide through her hands.

  Jamie peered through the hatch. It took a while before the bag finally clunked onto the marble floor below.

  “You did it. Now play out a little more rope and the bag will fall off the hook. There! Good! Now haul the hook back up!”

  After a minute of hauling rope, Beth raised the lower pulley and hook back up through the hatch. Jamie didn’t hesitate to sit on the edge of the hatch, add a length of looped rope to the hook and then place his foot in the loop. He looked over to his young friend, who was turning pale with fright.

  “I don’t think I can do this,” she muttered. Her knees were shaking. “I’m going to kill you!”

  “I know you can do this, Beth. I need that book. Without it, my life is meaningless. In fact, all of Ireland needs that book. If I don’t get it, I might as well die tonight, right here and now. But don’t worry, I promise that this rig is safe. Really, it won’t be any different from lowering the bag down to the floor. Just think of me as a gigantic sack of potatoes.”

  Beth managed a giggle and nodded weakly. “I’m ready, I guess.”

  Jamie lowered himself into the hatch. The wooden pyramid groaned at the added weight and Beth had to dig her toes into the raised lip of the hatch, but everything held. Slowly, she eased her grip on the rope and she could feel the coarse fibres slide sideways against her back. Amazingly, Jamie was right. It really wasn’t that much worse than lowering the bag. After a minute of slowly releasing the line through her gloved hands, the rope finally went slack. She didn’t dare let go, however, until she felt several tugs from below. Taking a deep breath, she let the rope fall to her feet. She clambered over to the edge of the hatch and looked down. In the darkness, she could see Jamie waving at her. She waved back and watched as he disappeared out of view. Perhaps it was the tremendous excitement of the moment or the concentration required to track Jamie through the distant library gloom, but Beth was completely unaware of another presence joining them on the rooftop, and that it was moving silently towards her.

  Jamie had been in enough libraries to know where to start his search. He moved quickly through the gloom. He ignored the rows of periodicals and rushed past the long oak study tables. There! He spied a glass door hiding among the impressive stacks of printed knowledge. As he approached, he could make out a sign on the door: angus mccall — head librarian. Taking his crowbar, he unceremoniously shoved it into the door jamb and heaved. The wooden frame made an ear-splitting crack and the door popped open. It only took a brief search before he found an oil lamp sitting on a corner table. He quickly lit it and his heart fell. The office was far bigger than he’d expected, and there were books everywhere. There was a large mahogany desk to the left while rows upon rows of cupboards and cabinets lined the remaining walls. Where should he start looking?r />
  Take a moment to think this through, Jamie thought to himself. If I was the head librarian, where would I store a priceless item that I just recently purchased?

  He examined the office again.

  I would keep it as close to my workplace as possible.

  Jamie went straight to the desk. All of the drawers were locked. It was a beautiful piece of furniture, but Jamie didn’t hesitate to jam the crowbar into the first drawer and send splinters of mahogany flying through the air, snapping the drawer open. He rummaged through numerous papers and letters. Nothing. He broke open the remaining two drawers with the same frustrating results. Where should he look next?

  Suddenly, a loud bang erupted from somewhere deep in the building. Jamie froze. He ran back out into the main library. In the distance he could hear voices … angry voices. His worst fears were realized when he heard thunderous footsteps rushing down the hallway. Torchlight suddenly flickered through the cracks beneath the library’s locked oak doors. He sprinted back to the rope, the hatch far above.

  “Beth!”

  “I’m here!”

  “There are people inside the building! I think the mob has broken in through the front door! Quickly! Pull up the rope and keep it up with you until I call for it! Then close the hatch almost all the way. We can’t let anyone know we’re here! Understand?”

  “All right!” she shouted back.

  The rope and pulley quickly ascended up toward the ceiling.

  Jamie ran back into the office. As quickly as he could, he started to snap open the nearest locked cupboards. Files, more letters, and books that were in need of repair filled the shelves. Just as he was about to jam the crowbar into a smaller, locked cabinet, the library’s doors exploded open and the vast room was inundated with a tsunami of enraged shouts and flickering firelight. Jamie blew out the lamp and dove under the desk. He could hear men shouting instructions. People were knocking over shelves and throwing irreplaceable collections onto the marble floor. Then, to Jamie’s horror, the dim flickering light in the library began to grow in intensity.

  The mob was setting fire to the library! This was insanity! Jamie had always bemoaned the fact that the great library of Alexandria had been destroyed by pillaging Roman armies in what was considered the greatest loss of ancient knowledge in human history. He had always chalked up such insanity to the fact that it had happened almost two thousand years ago. He had assumed that human nature had grown and matured since then, that a repeat of the destruction of the library of Alexandria could never be repeated in today’s nineteenth century.

  But at this very moment, he was being proven wrong. The records of an entire nation were being put to the torch! Suddenly, it became crystal clear to Jamie why the ancient Irish had kept their sacred texts hidden from the general population. If a modern society could do this to a library, it didn’t deserve the irreplaceable works of knowledge and art that were hidden in the Irish countryside. His thoughts were interrupted as a large man stomped into the office. He threw a torch onto the pile of papers and books that Jamie had made next to the desk and then ran for the hallway. The clamour of insanity faded away from the library and was slowly replaced by a much more ominous sound, the snaps and crackles of a growing fire. Jamie crawled out from under the desk and got to his feet. He almost died from the horror of what he saw.

  Tongues of fire were already licking bound volumes of reading material all over the library. Centuries of written records and Canadian history were turning to smouldering ash. The thrown torch had also set off a small fire in the office. Jamie whipped the sweater off his body and used it to whack the flames. With a combination of determination and panic, he managed to extinguish the fire in the office, but there was nothing he could do about the rest of the library.

  Desperately, Jamie returned to fetch the crowbar, and with it he cracked open the small cupboard. Loose papers filled the shelves. He moved on to the next locked cabinet. The crowbar threw the doors open wide, and Jamie collapsed in relief. There, sitting on the bottom shelf, was his beautiful, leather-bound Irish text. He plucked it gingerly off the shelf and placed it against his chest, wrapped his arms around it, and wept. He wept for his brother. He wept for Ireland. He wept for the destruction of knowledge happening all around him.

  The collapse of a burning shelf of books snapped Jamie back to reality. He wrapped up the text in a special oilskin, then turned to leave the office. But suddenly more voices echoed from the outer hallway. He dove behind a shelf next to the office as several men ran in through the library doors, aghast at the sight of the growing inferno.

  “Quick! Grab what you can! We must save some of these volumes!”

  Jamie ducked as about a half-dozen men poured into the library, filling their arms with irreplaceable volumes of Canadian history.

  “Mr. Curran! I hear a gas leak!”

  “Then everyone out! We have to leave before this whole building goes up in a ball of flames!”

  The men staggered out of the library, their arms filled with as many books as they could carry. Jamie tucked his book into his shirt, and then ran through the burning periodicals until he was below the hatch. He looked up to the glowing ceiling.

  “Beth! Lower the rope!”

  Beth opened the hatch and peered over the edge. “Oh, Jamie! Thank heavens you’re safe! We have to hurry! There’s fire everywhere!”

  The pulley quickly descended to the floor. Jamie clipped on the bag.

  “Quickly, Beth! Take the bag up, then send the pulley down again for me!”

  “Why the bag? Why not you?”

  “We need the bag!” he shouted. “Hurry!”

  The bag shot upwards and disappeared through the hatch. He waited impatiently for the pulley to return. Instead of the seeing the pulley reappear above his head, Jamie heard a terrified scream. Shadows moved on the roof, but the small hatch didn’t allow Jamie the chance to see any other detail.

  “Beth! What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

  Suddenly, instead of the pulley, Beth herself fell through the hatch screaming and tumbled through the air towards the floor far below.

  With the bag in hand, Wilkes ran for the edge of the building. He knew it would be only a matter of seconds before the building exploded like a giant bomb. He had to get off this roof or he would not be seeing that huge payday that was so tantalizingly close now that he finally had the book in his hands.

  He didn’t much like the thought of killing a child, but if it meant he could leave undetected with one of the most valuable books in the world in his possession, then it was an easy choice for him to make. Besides, a fall from that height would be a quick and painless death for her. He looked at it as doing her a favour, compared to the other options he could have chosen for her.

  He placed the bag down at the edge of the roof. He didn’t need all of the climbing equipment in the bag for his escape. He had already rigged up his own escape rope, which lay just ahead. He was an expert climber, and he could descend the wall in a blink of an eye. All he needed now was the book. He ripped open the bag and began to pull out the equipment. He threw aside the crowbar, the hook, two more coils of rope, and some clothes. His hands searched for more. The bag was empty! Where was the book! He turned the entire bag inside out in desperation. From the top of the parliament building, Jonathon Wilkes cried out in unbridled anger.

  “No!”

  Chapter 14

  Jamie watched in horror as Beth fell through the hatch high in the ceiling towards the hard marble floor below. He threw himself directly underneath her falling body, extending his arms to catch her, bending his knees and readying himself for the impact.

  Two things saved both Jamie and Beth from major injury. Beth was as light as a feather from her mistreatment on the farm, but still, the violent impact of her body knocked Jamie violently backwards. The other miracle occurred when their bodies crashed not onto the marble floor but into a large pile of leather-bound books that had been knocked over by the earlier
rampaging crowd. As Beth landed hard into Jamie’s chest, the careening couple sent volumes of statistical reports flying in all directions.

  For a moment, the two of them lay stunned on the floor. Ignoring the fiery pain from his shoulder and with the wind still knocked out of him, Jamie managed to roll awkwardly onto his hands and knees. Beth lay beside him. She wasn’t moving. He crossed himself, said a prayer to the Virgin Mary for help and, with a shaking hand, touched her face. Just then, a massive explosion shook the entire building. Bits of plaster fell from the ceiling like a violent summer hailstorm. Jamie threw himself over Beth to protect her from the crashing debris. His back was pelted with chunks of plaster. In the remaining dust cloud, he pulled himself off and checked her again. He sighed in relief when she moaned and her eyes fluttered to life.

  “Beth! Thank God! Are you all right?”

  Beth looked around, confused. “What happened? Where am I?”

  “You fell through the hatch and now you’re in the library with me! This whole place is about to blow up! We have to get out of here!”

  She sat bolt upright, remembering, then flinched in pain. She grabbed her shoulder, her eyes wide. “Someone took your bag from me, then threw me down the hatch! Jamie, he tried to kill me!”

  He took her hand and helped her to her feet.

  “The rope …” she looked up.

  “It’s gone. We can’t go back up. We’ll have to find another way out. Come on!”

  A second, closer explosion ripped through the air. They crashed hard into a bookshelf but kept their feet and made it to the library entrance. They stared down the hallways, dismayed at the growing inferno. The tongues of flame seemed to be coming at them from all directions.

  “Which is the fastest way out of here?” he muttered.

  “Is that the main entrance down there?” she pointed.

  “Good!” Jamie agreed. “Let’s go!”

  Together they ran hand in hand through the burning hallway. They coughed as the heat and smoke burned their lungs. The main entrance still seemed impossibly far away when a third, larger explosion ripped through the building. A giant fireball hurtled out of a door halfway between them and the main entrance. Huge sections of the upper floor collapsed like an avalanche into the hall. Beth screamed as Jamie pulled her sideways through an open doorway. As he landed, he kicked the door closed with his feet. A sudden whoosh of heat and light sizzled past the glass door. They gasped for breath on the relatively cool floor of the darkened office.