Skavenger's Hunt

by Mike Rich

  Click.

  Henry heard the hammer inside the lock fall with ease, along with Mattie taking in the shortest of breaths.

  It’s unlocked. She was right! The biggest freaking door on the most expensive house in New York. Totally unlocked!

  Mattie sent Henry a quick grin of disbelief as she leaned all her weight against the door, quickly discovering it really wasn’t necessary.

  Despite its massive size, the door swung open without so much as a single squeak.

  Slowly, the four of them peered inside. The small amount of moonlight coming through the ample windows still left the foyer dark—dark enough, Henry was sure, to hide any number of armed guards ready to shoot intruders. Not to mention the ninja tigers that had to be crouching low somewhere.

  As their eyes adjusted, though, they saw that the large entry room appeared to be empty. It was also magnificent. A foyer larger than any Henry had ever seen, chiseled out of pure granite. Wrap-around stone staircases—not just one or two, but six—curled from the level they were on to the one just above, like the arms of an octopus.

  It appeared as though there were no people anywhere around, but that was only a guess, given the darkness and complicated architecture.

  “Okay, looks like nothing,” Ernie’s voice could hardly be heard. “Can we go now?”

  “No.” Mattie looked at him with friendly disdain. “We’re in here. We might as well look around. Midnight’s the deadline, remember? It’s this or the hunt’s over.”

  She looked to Jack and Henry. “Agreed?”

  “This or nuthin’.” Jack nodded with conviction.

  “Yeah. I guess,” Henry whispered.

  Jack was the first to take a serious step into the foyer. And he didn’t stop at just one step. It looked to Henry like Jack was heading in big-time.

  Hang on, Jack! Not till we can check for . . .

  Crack!

  The sound echoed around the massive hall.

  “Damn it,” Jack whispered, even though the need for keeping his voice low was now somewhat irrelevant. He stooped down to run his hand over the floor, finding nothing for a long anxious moment or two, until his finger finally brushed over something.

  He held it up for a look.

  “What is it?” Henry asked.

  All four of them crowded around as Jack held up whatever-it-was between his two fingers. “Feels like a clump of hard dirt or maybe a rock. I think there might be a lot of it right around here.”

  “Dirt? Rocks? In this place?” Ernie said with fresh concern. “No, no, no. Somebody else has gotta be in here.”

  Creeeaaak.

  The sound was coming from just behind one of the half dozen stairwells.

  “See? See? Come on, let’s go,” Ernie whispered a little too loudly.

  “No,” Mattie cut him off, her eyes suddenly fixed and locked on something in one of the side rooms. She looked almost hypnotized by what the three boys, almost as one, now turned their heads to see.

  The etched-glass French doors to the room weren’t closed, but instead were pulled wide and open. Welcoming.

  For Henry, it was exactly as if he were looking straight into Chief’s quirky study.

  No one was in the Vanderbilt’s side room, but around two dozen candles blazed on a center table, forming a half circle that softly illuminated one glittering item.

  A clock.

  And not just any clock, Henry knew as the four of them walked inside the room.

  “The brass clock at Grand Central Station,” he quietly said under his breath.

  “The what clock at where?” Jack turned to him with a quizzical look.

  “Never mind,” Henry replied, not wanting to explain how he knew the future.

  It is, though. The brass clock. A perfect, smaller version of it. Same color, same look, same everything.

  For Mattie, who had now walked right up to it, it was something much, much different.

  “The grandest . . . of times,” she said, the glow from the candles illuminating her smile of pure wonder.

  Fingers wide, she extended her hand toward the clock, which was all of maybe eighteen inches tall. Her eyes then dropped to the inscription etched into the sparkling gold plate at its base.

  She leaned close to look at it.

  “What’s it say?” Jack put his hands on his knees to get a better look. Henry and Ernie moved closer as well.

  With a proud yet once again disbelieving smile, Mattie read the words out loud for all of them to hear.

  “Your adventure will soon leave Gotham, but only after a successful trip to . . . the Jennings Establishment.” Her eyebrows scrunched in bewilderment. “There you must search for the origin of my own favorite adventure, the nine-year-old answer clearer than you might expect.”

  Before anyone else could say a word, all four of them heard a gracious and generous voice coming from the door behind them.

  “Congratulations.”

  They spun around to see a slender tuxedo-clad gentleman stepping out of the darkness, wearing a smile so subtle it could turn into a frown with perfect ease. At this moment, though, his expression assured them without a word that they weren’t in any danger.

  Henry thought the man looked to be in his early forties, dark black hair combed straight back, long sideburns, and arching eyebrows that somehow gave the perfectly postured man a look of bemusement. The pocket square in his sharply tailored coat was exactly that: a tidy and precise square.

  “Cornelius Vanderbilt,” he introduced himself. “Cornelius Vanderbilt the Second.” The gentleman gave those last two words the emphasis the hunt required. “A pleasure to meet you all.”

  “You too, sir,” Mattie spoke for the group. “Sorry about . . . coming into your house. It’s really nice, though.”

  Vanderbilt held up a hand to assure her all was fine. “Not to worry, miss. The four of you solved the puzzle. You now have the next clue.” He nodded toward the brass clock. “With how much time until midnight? When my front door will lock tight again?”

  Mattie glanced over at the clock, then turned back to Vanderbilt and smiled. “Less than two hours, sir.”

  “Again, well done.” He nodded.

  Henry’s eyes strayed over Vanderbilt’s shoulder to the enormous window behind him. The thought of Doubt and his shadowy men still out there prompted him to look back just as quickly.

  “Everything all right, son?” the railroad tycoon asked him.

  “What?” Henry looked up. “Oh . . . yes. Everything’s fine, Mr. Vanderbilt, sir.”

  “You looked like you might have had a concern.”

  Well, yes . . . a few, actually. And a question too.

  “Sir?” Henry asked. “Aren’t you worried at all about leaving your front door unlocked? I mean, there’s no way of knowing who might come in here.”

  Barely had Henry finished asking when two lines of men wearing polished black shoes, white gloves, and crisp dark coats with four buttons walked into the room. At least thirty of New York’s finest. The only thing they weren’t wearing was a smile.

  “Not really, no,” Vanderbilt the Second answered Henry’s question with a confident smile, letting the officers’ presence be felt.

  His next words, though, signaled they had best keep the proceedings moving.

  “I’m afraid the four of you have quite a bit of catching up to do. More than a few other hunters have already paid me a visit tonight.” He then reached into his suit pocket and pulled out a light blue envelope, handing it to Mattie.

  “The Jennings Establishment, Third Avenue at 55th Street. It’s written down in there, along with the message on the clock, and enough money to help you through the next stage of the journey. Mr. Skavenger does place a premium on fairness.”

  Vanderbilt offered one last smile, which was accompanied by a word of caution.

  “And do be careful,” he said to them with a serious voice. “The four of you aren’t exactly the proprietor’s usual clientele.”

&n
bsp; TWELVE

  Clearer than One Might Expect

  THE JENNINGS ESTABLISHMENT—EST. 1884.

  As the small brass nameplate informed Henry, the structure belonging to a certain Mr. Jennings had been open only a year. But judging from the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd inside, he was pretty confident it’d be open for a good many more.

  The “Establishment” was a street-corner tavern; a fairly narrow one, if you were looking at the red brick two-story exterior that framed the smoke-stained front windows. It was more than made up for, though, by how deep the building stretched alongside the neighboring street.

  From the size of the crowd, Henry guessed the establishment didn’t have any rules concerning the exact number of people allowed inside. For that matter, it didn’t appear to have any rules about smoking either, other than it seemed to be mandatory.

  Despite the late hour, the place was packed with an odd assortment of customers. Men wearing bowler hats and suits, even though the business day was long over; exhausted, irritable Irish laborers; and a smattering of mostly quiet immigrant dockworkers. It looked to be an uneasy alliance that Henry could only assume was held together by a shared love for what was steadily pouring from the barrel taps.

  Jack was busy peering inside through the window, trying to snag a view in between the nearest line of black suits—if he could even see anything through the hazy, thick smoke stains.

  “All right,” Jack whispered to the gang, “we go in and see what we can find. And remember, we’re looking for Skavenger’s favorite adventure, something nine years old.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything in there that’s only nine years old,” Ernie quietly chimed in. “Where’d this Mr. Jennings get all this junk?”

  “I’m sorry, did I ask for smartass comments?” Jack shot back. Ernie wisely chose not to answer.

  Henry was already scouting out the front door, trying to guess how long he’d be able to hold his breath once he got inside.

  My first bar. Wouldn’t have guessed this would be happening when I went to bed last night.

  Jack overheard him let out a nervous breath. The big kid shook his head at Henry’s edginess for about the hundredth time that day. He popped one of his suspenders as his eyes moved to Mattie.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Would you take that stupid thing off?” Jack nodded at her cape.

  “How come?”

  “I’ll tell you how come. We’re about to go into a place where we don’t want to stand out. That’s gonna be hard enough even if you’re not wearing that.”

  Mattie frowned. “All right,” she said, sounding annoyed. “I’ll take it off. But I’m putting it back on when we come back out.”

  The main door whipped open and three businessmen stumbled out, trailed by a thick yellow cloud that quickly rose to the second-floor windows. Only one of the men bothered to look at the four kids, and just long enough to toss the last inch of warm beer from his glass at their feet.

  “Get outta here, you ragamuffins,” he growled before placing his empty glass on the bricks below the main window. The other two men laughed and put their empty glasses there as well.

  This time it was Henry who grabbed Jack by the collar. “Don’t,” he warned him. “It’s not worth it.”

  Henry held on tight, but not before Jack yelled as loudly as he could, “We’re not ragamuffins! We’re not garbage, okay?” The three men simply laughed and stumbled off to find their next round of drinks.

  Mattie had finished removing her cape, her look telling Henry she was worried it might have been the reason for the ragamuffin comment. She shoved it in a chunk of the wall where four or five bricks were missing.

  Jack whipped around and gathered up the three empty glasses.

  “Forget it. Don’t let ’em bother you,” Ernie told him, not wanting to see the empties flying toward three heads.

  “I’m not gonna do anything. Don’t worry,” Jack assured him, handing a dirty glass to each of them.

  “Okay,” he said, “we’re not gonna have much time before they toss us out of this place. Anyone asks? We found empty glasses, and we wanted to see if they’d give us a penny or two for bringin’ ’em back. They want ragamuffins, we’ll give ’em ragamuffins.”

  A pair of Irish dockworkers burst through the door, much more stable than their singing suggested they should be.

  “AND IT’S NO! NAY! NEVER! NO NAY NEVER NO MORE! WILL I PLAY THE WILD ROVER!” The two men laughed and staggered left, then right, before deciding left felt right in the first place.

  Ernie caught the door before it could close. Jack moved to go in, but not before offering one last bit of advice.

  “Stay behind people and don’t let the bartenders see you,” he said with an encouraging nod. “And look at everything. Let’s find what we’re supposed to find and get outta here.”

  The smell of beer—a good share of which was on the floor—was the first thing to greet them. That, and the smoke from the cigars and what passed for cigarettes.

  Once inside, Henry couldn’t help but stare. There was no Yankees baseball game on TV, because, of course, neither the team nor the screen to broadcast a baseball game existed. Same applied for music. There wasn’t any—besides the occasional spontaneous Irish vocalist.

  The customers were here for the serious business of doing two things: drinking and smoking.

  How did anybody live past thirty? Henry caught himself thinking. Oh, right . . . a lot of ’em didn’t.

  Without a sliver of hesitation, Jack was beginning to elbow his way through the drunken clientele, while the other kids—Henry included—quickly moved to study the walls, the old paintings, even the bar itself from a discreet and hopefully safe distance.

  Henry was in the neighborhood of Mattie as she peered between two men whose ample bellies were squished tightly against the bar. She looked to be studying the chalk-written prices for beer and whiskey that surrounded the smoke-tainted prints of Abraham Lincoln.

  “Ay! Little mot!” An elderly patron’s hand fell hard on her shoulder. “Whatta ya doin’ in here?” he demanded to know.

  The deeply wrinkled man’s bleary eyes weren’t the most pleasant she’d seen, and for a second, Henry could tell Mattie may have forgotten what she was supposed to say if she ran into trouble. He tried to edge his way closer.

  “Speak up now,” the man grumbled at her as he took a pull from a hand-rolled cigarette, followed by a sip from a chipped glass that looked to be half-filled with equal parts beer and ash.

  “Oh, I forgot!” she suddenly blurted out. “I’m returning empty glasses, they told us to bring ’em in.”

  “There ain’t more of ya, are there?” The man looked ready to call for someone, but Mattie was able to convince him otherwise.

  “I can take yours if you want?” she offered with an innocent look, just as Henry showed up.

  “Agggh,” the crusty old voice scratched out. “There are more of ya.”

  The man kept his smoky stare locked on Mattie, until he downed his beer and handed her the smoke-darkened empty. “Tell ’em I want another.” He burped. “Then you two and however many else ya came with, get outta here.”

  “Yessir,” Mattie assured him.

  She turned to Henry. “I’m gonna go over and look at that side of the place.” She nodded to a far corner and immediately headed in that direction.

  Henry decided to work his way toward the opposite side of the crowded bar, trying his best to avoid suspicion.

  Nothing on that wall, nothing up there on the shelves, a couple of photographs of . . . could be anyone. Man, does this place reek. Worse than Hell’s Kitchen ever dreamed of reeking.

  Henry spotted a map of the United States on a cluttered wall without windows. He wandered through the smoky haze for a look. Something about it looked odd.

  Ernie shouldered his way past him. “Anything yet?” he asked, barely stopping.

  “Nope,” Henry replied. “How ’bout you?”
>
  Ernie tapped the bag on his shoulder and said, “Enough food for a couple more days!”

  Henry grinned, then turned back to study the map again, quickly shaking his head.

  Would ya look at that. Dakota Territory, Utah Territory, Arizona Territory. They’re not even states yet!

  “You!” a voice called from across the room. A young man who looked to be of considerable means—by Henry’s guess, at least—lifted a finger and motioned for the young map-gawker to come over.

  Oh, c’mon. C’mon! Are you kidding? Not already. I’ve been in here, like, maybe five minutes. I’m not even close to finding anything!

  Ignoring the man was out of the question—the look in his eyes already made that much clear. A tingle of fear rolled down Henry’s back as the young man motioned to him a second time.

  Okay, think smart here.

  Henry let out a breath and wedged his way through the crowded room, easing his way between one swaying customer after another, until reaching the table and finding it home to not just one young man of considerable means, but two.

  They were twin brothers; maybe twenty-five years old, both wearing ink-black suits, along with identical looks of curiosity. Each looked at least six feet tall with dark brown hair the color of a bay thoroughbred horse—an appropriate comparison given how athletic the young men looked.

  “Evening, young sir,” the one who’d been doing the motioning greeted Henry. “What brings you to such a fine and up-standing establishment tonight? Or should I say, this morning?”

  “Oh . . . well . . . just . . .”

  “Yes?” The other brother raised an eyebrow.

  Henry looked between the two brothers, pretending to search for his friends, trying to hide his percolating panic.

  “Excuse me, have either of you guys seen—”

  “We have,” the second brother interrupted, as they both stood up. “We’ve seen all four of you.” The twin brother who’d just spoken switched his beer from one hand to the other so he could properly introduce himself.

  “Clyde Colton. My brother Clifford.”

  “Henry Baaaaaaaab . . .” he started to reply, then winced as Clyde took his hand in a crushing grip.