The Shadow Cipher

by Laura Ruby

  “Seabury Tredwell,” said Colton, perhaps just a little too loudly, “came to New York City in 1798 when he was eighteen years old. In 1820, when he was forty years old, he married twenty-three-year-old Eliza Parker.”

  “Ew!” said the Morningstarr Scouts.

  “Ew?” said the middle-aged man. His wife socked him. Or maybe it was just a random woman who found him irritating.

  “They had eight children—Elizabeth, Horace, Mary, Samuel, Phebe, Julia, Sarah, and finally Gertrude, who was born in this house in 1840. Only three of them ever married,” said Colton. “The oldest daughter, Elizabeth, wedded a prominent lawyer named Effingham Nichols in 1845. He was one of the people involved in the Union Pacific Railroad before it collapsed due to the competition from the Morningstarrs.”

  And there it was, a connection with the Morningstarrs! Theo elbowed Tess, Tess elbowed Jaime. Nine meowed. Some of the Morningstarr Scouts giggled. Some of them edged away from Nine and her Nine-sized teeth.

  “By the 1860s, this area was packed with bars and cheap hotels, riddled with unsavory characters, but the Tredwell sisters refused to move and didn’t change anything in the house except for adding modern plumbing and electricity. Phebe, Julia, and Gertrude lived out their lives in this house. When Gertrude, the youngest member of the family, died in 1933, she left this house completely intact. So, why don’t we have a look around? If you’ll all follow me, we’ll go downstairs first, where we’ll find the family room and the kitchen.” Colton waved them down the hall toward the back of the house.

  When most of the crowd was out of earshot, Tess whispered, “Let me see the letter again. What was the bit that Theresa Morningstarr underlined?”

  Jaime pulled the letter out of his pocket and read, “‘would be enlightening for all who need it.’”

  “That has to be a clue,” said Tess. “Enlightening as in a book is enlightening?”

  “Maybe,” said Theo. “Or maybe it’s a pun.” He glanced up and stared at a fixture hanging overhead. “Maybe instead of enlightening as in ‘instructional,’ she meant something that actually sheds light? Like a lamp or something?”

  “Or a fireplace,” said Tess.

  “Or a candlestick,” Theo said.

  Jaime put the letter back in his pocket. “I’m sure there aren’t more than a million candlesticks in a nineteenth-century house.”

  They hurried to the back of the house and into the kitchen, where Colton was talking about how all the meals were first cooked over an open fire by the Tredwells’ four servants, and then later on the stove that stood in the fireplace. “A house and a family this size could not have run smoothly without someone to do all the work.”

  “Why didn’t they do the work themselves?” said one of the Morningstarr Scouts.

  “It was a lot more work to cook dinner in the nineteenth century, when you didn’t have running water or modern appliances. That stove wasn’t even there in 1832.”

  Tess sidled over to the large open fireplace, where the stove sat. Nothing seemed unusual about it. There were no strange markings in the bricks, there was no loose mortar to hint at a secret compartment. She looked behind the stove and even under the stove. She risked opening the oven.

  “Please don’t open that!” said Colton, gripping his own tie in alarm. His voice went up about three octaves.

  “Sorry,” Tess said. She closed the door. A little flutter of worry flapped in Tess’s gut. How were they supposed to know where to look? How were they supposed to know what to look for?

  From the kitchen, the group moved into the family room. While Colton was talking about the furniture, Jaime and Theo examined some candlesticks on either end of the mantel and Tess fiddled with a lamp sitting on nearby table.

  “Hello! Please! Hello, don’t touch that!” said Colton, startling Tess so much that the lamp tipped and almost fell over. She caught it just in time.

  “Sorry, sorry,” said Tess, righting the lamp.

  Colton clutched his tie so hard that he made it longer, his overlarge Adam’s apple going up and down. The Morningstarr Scouts went wide-eyed. The middle-aged couple shook their heads, the woman murmuring, “Where are her parents?”

  “Okay!” said Colton, getting control of himself. “Let’s move upstairs. Please don’t touch anything.”

  “Did you hear that, young lady?” said the pickled man to Tess, plumped lip curling.

  “Dabid abi habeabar whabat?” said Tess.

  The man blinked. “I thought you spoke English.”

  “Abi dabo.”

  The man huffed in confusion until his wife dragged him away.

  Jaime said, “What language was that?”

  Tess said, “It’s Turkish—”

  “Irish,” Theo finished. “You put an ab in front of every vowel in a word. If you talk really fast it sounds like gibberish.”

  “And it annoys the heck out of people,” Tess added.

  “Nabo, rabeabally?” said Jaime.

  “Ha,” said Tess. “You guys see any clues?”

  “Not so far,” Theo said. “We should probably get upstairs.”

  “Yeah,” said Jaime. “There are probably a billion more candlesticks and lampshades to look at.”

  Up on the next floor, Colton was telling the group about the front and back parlors. “If you look up, you’ll see beautiful matching chandeliers, or in this case, ‘gasoliers.’”

  “What’s a gasolier?” said the girl in the headscarf.

  “It’s a chandelier powered by gas!” said Colton.

  The Morningstarr Scouts glanced at one another. In unison, they said: “Gas? In a house?”

  “Well, in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, scientists and engineers were trying to find the best way to provide power—light the city, move the trains, all of that. They were trying to figure out what kind of fuel was best. The Morningstarrs invented the solar glass and solar cells that we now use to pave the streets, so we get our energy from the sun. But back then other people were experimenting with burning coal and oil and gas. Burning gas could be dangerous, though. There’s an old story that one of the gasoliers burst into flames. There’s even a burn mark on this sideboard.”

  Colton kept talking, but Tess was too focused on the gasolier. It was bronze and had six burners, mounted to the ceiling with an ornate medallion. The other Cipher clues were mostly mathematical puzzles, but what if this new Cipher worked differently? What if the clues were riddles or even mechanical clues, hidden writing and secret slots? Maybe one or the other or both of the gasoliers could turn like a clock? But how would she possibly be able to test that without anyone freaking out, and without breaking anything or setting the place on fire?

  She could wait until the group was touring the floors above, sneak back down here, climb up on a chair—a priceless chair—and try to turn or pull or otherwise operate one of the gasoliers. If her mother knew what she was planning, she’d be grounded for months.

  Tess swallowed hard. Nine rubbed against Tess’s legs. While Colton warbled about sideboards and tables and priceless rococo whatevers, Tess walked Nine to the marble fireplace to look at the argon lamps on the mantel. They had etched glass domes and crystals that hung from them, but she didn’t see anything remarkable about them. But that was the point, of course. And what if the next clue had nothing to do with lights or lighting? What if they had this all wrong?

  She wished she could talk to Grandpa Ben. The last time she’d seen Grandpa, he’d—

  Nine mrrrowed and nibbled on Tess’s fingers. Colton stopped talking and narrowed his eyes at Tess. “Why don’t we head upstairs. All of us! Together! Looking at the furniture but not touching any of it!”

  Tess sighed. And then she noticed that the girl in the headscarf suddenly appeared behind Colton. Colton jumped.

  “Hello! Where have you been?”

  “Exploring,” said the girl. “I went to the attic to see where the servants lived.”

  Colton’s smile went tight. “M
ost people like to stay with the tour.”

  The girl shrugged. “I’m more interested in the servants. They’re the ones who had to do all the work. These other people sat around playing cards and having cotillions. What is a cotillion, even?”

  Colton said, “It’s a ball or a dance that—”

  “That was a rhetorical question,” said the girl. “Also, I went up to the attic because I wanted to see ghosts and ghosts live in attics.”

  “Well, since you’re so interested in the lives of the servants,” Colton said, “let’s all go to the top floor to see where they slept!”

  Tess decided that she would wait until the group had reached the attic to sneak back down here to try to get a closer look at the gasoliers. She joined Theo and Jaime at the back of the line. By the time they reached the top floor of the house, everyone was winded.

  “Can you imagine being a servant here and having to carry water and laundry and food up and down the steps every day, twelve or fourteen hours a day?” said Colton.

  No fancy furniture up here. No crystal lamps or chandeliers. Just a couple of beds, a table, and a heating stove.

  “We don’t know exactly what happened here in the Tredwell House,” said Colton, “but we do know that a lot of domestic servants in New York City homes were poor, uneducated girls, many of them immigrants. Unfortunately, some of these girls suffered all sorts of mistreatment from their employers.”

  The Morningstarrs had employed servants, too, but Tess didn’t like to think about the Morningstarrs treating those people badly or paying them so little. But Grandpa Ben always warned that they couldn’t romanticize anyone from the past, even those who had done great things. “Remember,” Grandpa said, “history is filled with horrors as well as wonders. And so are people.”

  Horrors and wonders. Wonders and horrors. Tess closed her eyes and imagined sleeping up in this attic room, which was probably boiling during the summer and freezing in the winter. Getting up in the gray light of dawn, going downstairs to light the kitchen fires, and then all the other fires in the house so that everyone else would be warm.

  Lighting the fires.

  Lighting all the fires.

  Enlightening for all who need it.

  Theresa Morningstarr had been making a pun. But she’d been serious, too. The servants were the ones who “enlightened” those that needed it. Without their servants, the Tredwells would have to sit in the cold and the dark. And so would all the other rich folks in New York City. Maybe even the Morningstarrs themselves.

  So, would the clue be in the expensive lamps and fixtures on the main floors . . . or right here, in this room, where no one would think to look for anything—or anyone—valuable?

  On the dressing table, there was one simple candlestick. When Colton turned to point out a rosary hanging from one of the bed frames, Tess quickly picked it up. Again, she found no markings. It didn’t twist or fold into a different shape, or telescope into a . . . telescope. There were no tiny scrolled messages curled in the spot where the candle was inserted. She put the stick down quickly before anyone noticed what she was doing.

  Meeting a ghost might be easier than this.

  Then her eyes fell on the little heating stove. She needed to look inside it, underneath it, but she couldn’t get near it because Colton was standing right there, jawing away about the Tredwells’ summer house in Rumson, New Jersey, where they went to escape outbreaks of cholera and yellow fever that regularly swept New York City in the hot months.

  Nobody seemed to be listening. Poor Colton, stuck with a tour group full of ghost-obsessed Scouts, self-obsessed tourists, and Cipher-obsessed seventh graders, disrespectful all.

  Finally, Colton declared it time to head downstairs to see the bedchambers of Mr. and Mrs. Tredwell, and the group dutifully followed. Tess bent and pretended her shoelaces had come untied. Theo and Jaime waited with her.

  “What is it?” Jaime said as soon as everyone else had gone.

  “Help me look in the stove. Hurry!”

  He didn’t ask questions and neither did Theo. As Nine danced around them, they opened the door and checked inside. The interior was spotless, no levers or letters or code. They checked the top and the back and the sides, looking for anything that seemed unusual.

  “Hello!” a voice called from the bottom of the stairs. “Where is the rest of my group?!”

  “Coming!” Jaime said.

  Tess lay on the floor and felt around the underside of the stove.

  “Anything?” Theo whispered.

  “Hold on.” Tess moved her fingers slowly over metal. Totally smooth, except . . . What was that? Some sort of serial number? No. Writing. Writing etched in one corner of the metal. Four lines. A maker’s mark? Or something else?

  “Give me a piece of paper and a pencil!”

  “He’s going to come up here in a second,” said Theo.

  “Go down then,” Tess said. “Stall him.”

  Theo didn’t move. Jaime handed her the paper and pencil. She could barely see what she was doing, but she placed the paper over the writing and quickly rubbed the pencil all over it.

  “Hello!?” called Colton.

  Footsteps marched up the stairs.

  Tess thrust the paper and pencil at Jaime and leaped to her feet. He shoved the paper in his pocket just as Colton’s beige suit appeared at the top of the steps, grinning in that overly cheerful way that said he suspected them all of trying to ruin the Tredwell House forever.

  “What are you guys doing?” he said.

  “I thought I saw a ghost!” Tess blurted.

  “What?” said Colton.

  “Um, there was a guy. Standing in that mirror over there. Dressed in old clothes. He looked like the guy in one of the paintings down in the parlor.”

  Colton gripped his tie, then released it. “You mean Seabury Tredwell?”

  “Yes!” Tess said.

  “I can’t believe it,” said Colton. “I’ve always . . . it’s just . . . no one has ever seen a ghost on one of my tours before!”

  “Well, I did. And it kind of freaked me out.”

  “Yeah,” Jaime said. “She almost fainted, like one of those nineteenth-century ladies. I was about to call for the smelling salts.”

  “I bet!” said Colton, smile wide and genuine now. “Did the ghost, um, say anything to you?”

  “He did,” Tess said, grinning right back. “The ghost said, ‘Everyone else is wrong.’”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Theo

  Of all the possibilities that Grandpa Ben had considered—that there were dozens of clues in the Cipher, maybe hundreds, that the only treasure worth seeking was knowledge, and this was what the Cipher was trying to teach—he’d never mentioned the possibility that the Cipher could have another branch of clues. That the Cipher wasn’t one puzzle, it was two puzzles leading in two different directions. Were there even more branches? Three? Four? Ten? Did they ever converge? And where?

  And the question that had kept Theo up the whole night before: Who could have sent Theresa Morningstarr’s letter in the first place?

  Now Theo sat hunched with Tess and Jaime at Bug’s Burgers, the Loco Burger in front of him untouched. Tessa’s rubbing of the etching from the bottom of the Tredwells’ servants’ heating stove lay in the middle of the table:

  When coming here from Watertown,

  Soon after ent’ring Cambridge ground,

  You spy the grand & pleasant seat,

  Possess’d by Washinton the great.

  Keeping her voice low so that no one else at the restaurant would hear them, Tess pointed at the top of the etching. “Watertown, Cambridge, that’s all about the Boston area, where the first battles of the Revolutionary War were fought.” She took a bite of her burger. Loco Burgers tasted a lot like chicken and toasted sunflower seeds, both nutty and crunchy, but Theo was too hyped up to eat. He was a little surprised Tess was eating; sometimes she claimed she felt bad for the bugs.

  “Do you think t
he next clue is in Boston?” Jaime asked. “I don’t think my grandmother is going to let me go all the way to Boston.”

  “Congress met in New York before they established Washington, DC, as the capital.”

  “Narrows things down,” said Jaime.

  Tess said, “What about this, the word spy? The Morningstarrs hid the other clues in plain sight. Spies are hidden in plain sight, right? So maybe this verse refers to one of Washington’s spies?”

  “Dope that Washington had spies,” Jaime said.

  Tess wiped her lips with a napkin. “A whole ring. It was called . . . um . . . what was it called, Theo?”

  “The Culper Ring,” Theo said.

  Jaime took out his phone and typed in the name. With a French fry, Theo traced the Bug’s Burgers logo on his soda cup. The logo was a grinning locust in a top hat and tap shoes. If this locust knew it was going to be ground into a burger, Theo didn’t think it would feel much like dancing.

  “Okay, here it is,” said Jaime. “Under the leadership of Benjamin Tallmadge, the Culper Ring provided valuable information to General Washington, such as information that the British planned to counterfeit American dollars and that a high-ranking American officer—later revealed to be American Major General Benedict Arnold—had been plotting with the British to surrender the vitally important American fort at West Point.”

  Theo said, “Benedict Arnold used secret writing. Could be referring to him. But I don’t think Arnold spent a lot of time in New York City. And he ended up in London.”

  “And if we can’t get to Boston, we absolutely can’t get to London,” said Jaime.

  “Right,” Theo said. He didn’t mention the fact that if any of the clues required them to travel outside New York City, they probably weren’t going to be the ones to solve them.

  Tess chewed, swallowed. “So, is the verse referring to Benjamin Tallmadge? Or someone else?”

  Jaime said, “I’d say Washington, even with the jacked-up spelling.”

  “Spelling didn’t become standardized till the late eighteenth century,” Theo said.

  “Thank you, Robot Theo,” Tess said. “But maybe that means this was not written by the Morningstarrs in 1855, but by someone else a lot earlier.”