Liberty

by David Wood

  “Probably not, but tell me what you’re thinking before you make like Mrs. O’Leary’s cow.”

  “Two words, Bones. Invisible ink.”

  Bones raised his eyebrows and then a grin enveloped his face. He slapped Dane on the back, causing him to lurch forward and move the lighter perilously close to the document.

  Marshall scowled. “If you two are done playing, maybe you could enlighten me.”

  “Do you have an electric stove?” Dane asked.

  Marshall nodded.

  “Lead the way.”

  They went into the kitchen where Dane turned on a burner and held the document a few inches above it “Notice how there’s a space here between the last two paragraphs?”

  “There’s a space between every paragraph. That’s how they often wrote things back then.”

  “Yeah, but the space between the last two paragraphs is bigger than the others. I’m betting that’s the second riddle – make what appeared before reappear. Heat is what brings out most invisible inks. My only concern is that after all this time, it will have degraded.”

  Bones sucked in his breath through his teeth. “If they used something like lemon, then it will never have lasted. Something protein based like milk lasts longer, but probably not a century. They could have used some sort of invisible sealing agent, that’s probably our best hope.”

  Marshall looked at him. “How do know all that? Are you an ink expert?”

  “No, but I learned about it in my teens. I might have played a practical joke or two on the local constabulary.”

  As the paper heated up, Dane found himself holding his breath. At first, it seemed like nothing was happening,even as the paper grew hotter. Then, words began to appear, faded but visible nonetheless. They formed two short sentences:

  Look in the place where the father of the raven conjured an elk. You will find the noblest of birds and the sign of our Lord where the lover and the hermit meet.

  Bones snorted. “Oh good, that cleared everything right up.”

  Dane allowed himself a weak chuckle. “I think you were right about the library research. But it’s not all a mystery. The father of the Raven has got to be Edgar Allen Poe.”

  Marshall cocked his head. “Was the Raven even written by 1847?”

  “Yep. I memorized the poem back. . .in another life. It was published in 1845 and was pretty much an instant hit. I seem to recall Poe wrote a story called The Elk as well. Haven’t read it, though.”

  Bones stroked his chin, a gesture Dane had trouble not laughing at given how rarely the man seemed to ponder anything seriously. “The noblest bird is probably a bald eagle if we’re talking about the founders and the Constitution.”

  Marshall responded after a moment. “The only thing I can think of is the reference to the Library of Congress. It says Franklin hid something there. The thing is, the original Library of Congress wasn’t founded until Franklin had been dead for a few years.”

  Dane pointed to the document. “It actually said he arranged for it to be hidden. So it’s possible.”

  “Could be. But then we have a second problem. The original library was burned in 1812 by the British. Everything was lost.”

  Bones appraised the older man. “Now it’s my turn to ask: how do you know all this?”

  “History major. I thought I wanted to be a lawyer and that was a common major for future lawyers. It wasn’t for me, though.”

  “Right, instead you decided to fund the mob.”

  Dane hastened to derail this line of discussion. “None of that matters. We have to get to a library. Find the Poe story. Research the original Library of Congress. See if either of the riddles seems more manageable after we do that.”

  “Makes sense to me, dude.”

  Dane looked at Marshall. And you’re going to look into the plane, right?”

  “Right. So we’ll touch base tonight and you’ll share what you find and I’ll tell you what I found.”

  Dane put a hand on Bones’ arm before the big man could protest. “Sure. You want to meet here?”

  “Yes. Make sure you’re not followed, okay?”

  As they drove off, Bones took his eyes off the road and glanced at Dane. “Marshall seemed a little more pushy today.”

  “Bones, when we first met him we were pointing guns at him.”

  “Good point. Still, I think there’s more to this than he’s letting on.”

  “There always is. In this case, one of those things is very obvious.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There’s no such thing as a private investor who lends money to the mob. Assuming he wasn’t completely making it up, there are only two possibilities. One is that he’s paying them off like we first suggested.”

  Bones snapped his fingers. “Can I guess the other one?”

  “Sure.”

  “The other is that he actually is the mob.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Look at that! We gotta have time to do some bouldering, and some of those are V10 problems.”

  Bones gestured to the huge rocks and small cliff faces that surrounded them, glistening with the melting snow. In stark contrast to the blizzard of two days earlier, the early afternoon sun had raised the temperatures north of fifty degrees and the ground was nearly clear.

  Dane decided to push back a little bit. “Nah, V7 at the hardest. Though I understand how you might think it’s harder than it actually is.”

  He and Bones were talking about the difficulty ratings scale for the sport of bouldering, a form of rock climbing targeting small rock formations. A “problem” described the route a climber would take.

  Bones let out a belly laugh. “Oh no, Maddock is talking smack. I forgot you were into this stuff.”

  “I’m more into real climbing, but bouldering has its appeal.”

  “Dude, we have got to go climbing once we’re done solving two hundred year old mysteries and running from killers.”

  “You’re on.”

  They had just left the marked trails in Wissahickon Valley Park, and despite being less than a mile from the city streets, Dane felt like he was in the wilderness. The sound of the nearby Wissahickon Creek heavy with runoff drowned out almost all the sounds of mankind.

  They had spent several hours at the library after leaving Marshall’s apartment. They still didn’t know the nature of the secret of Edmund Randolph and Ben Franklin, nor did they have an exact location for this afternoon’s search. Nevertheless, they had learned enough to give them hope.

  The easiest clue to resolve was the setting of Poe’s story, “The Elk”: Wissahickon Valley where they now stood. They found some information about the original Library of Congress as well. Founded in 1800, it was burned by the British in 1814 and the official Congressional record concluded that its entire holdings were lost. Afterward, Thomas Jefferson provided a large number of volumes to begin a replacement. But they also found several reports that suggested some of the items may have been saved.

  Bones had been convinced of a conspiracy. “I’m telling you, Maddock, this guy Patrick Magruder, the Librarian in 1812, reported that they had taken a whole wagon-load of stuff out of the city to a secret location. Another guy mentions a couple years later that some of the books were saved, but Congress concluded they weren’t. This has cover-up written all over it.”

  “But why would they do that, Bones?”

  “Who knows? Maybe to protect the secret of Ben Franklin.”

  Dane wasn’t inclined to agree with him, not until they stumbled on the answer to another piece of the riddle by accident. The information on the original library of Congress showed that it was founded with seven hundred-forty books and three maps. This had to be what Richard Bache’s letter referred to when it said to look for one of the three not the seven-hundred-forty. They were looking for one of the maps from the original Library or Congress.

  When they looked for more information on the Wissahickon Valley, they found at least part of the answ
er to the riddle about where the lover and the hermit meet. Lover’s Leap was a well-known cliff in the park where a tragic Native American couple supposedly jumped to their deaths due to a tribal dispute. Not all that far away was a deep chasm known as Hermit’s Glen.

  However, the park contained several other hermit references due to the fact that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a lot of mystics and others who wanted to drop out of society gravitated towards Wissahickon. The most notable of these was a man named Johannes Kelpius, for whom a cave in the park was named. There was even a modern Kelpius Society dedicated to a combination of mysticism and Kelpius history.

  Satisfied that they could start looking near the area of Lover’s Leap and Hermit’s Glen, Dane and Bones had been ready to leave the library when Bones spotted something in a report from the Parks Department. A structure known as the Lauriston Cottage, which the city had torn down some years earlier due to dilapidation, was known to have some ties to Kelpius. This seemed like an even better place to start.

  Finding it proved difficult. Standing by the creek and looking up at the rock formations near Lover’s Leap, Dane still didn’t know exactly what they were looking for. A document? The lost Library of Congress? Something else? It was a little like searching for a needle in a haystack, but he wasn’t going to give up without at least looking. He knew Bones felt the same way.

  “Let me know if you see a really old bald eagle, dude.”

  “Bones, somehow I doubt that’s what Bache was referring to.”

  “I don’t know, this mystery did involve Edgar Allen Poe. Eagle, Raven, almost the same thing.”

  Dane shook his head. Sometimes it was better just to ignore him.

  Before long, they came to the cave that Kelpius was said to have used for meditation. Outside about a four foot square entrance low to the ground was a stone marker. Bones read the following on it:

  Johannes Kelpius, Ph.D. A.D. 1673-1708

  “The Contented of the God-loving Soul”

  Magister of the first Rosicrucian AMORC

  colony in America which arrived in Phila

  delphia, June 24, 1694, then known as the

  Monks of the Ridge. Fra Kelpius used this

  cave as shelter and as a sanctum for

  his meditations. Lovingly erected to his

  memory by Grand Lodge Rosicrucians

  A.D. 1961 in cooperation with

  The Supreme Grand Lodge

  AMORC

  Dane moved in closer. “You see that Bones?”

  “You mean the cross?”

  “Yeah. Sort of like the symbol the Sons of the Republic. Or the sign of the Lord referred to in the riddle.”

  “Maddock, you know I’m all about conspiracies and secret societies, but crosses aren’t exactly thin on the ground. And this wasn’t put here until the sixties. The Rosicrucians are into all kinds of weird stuff, though. Maybe Ben Franklin’s secret is how they’re taking over the U.S., infiltrating every level of government.”

  “How about we look inside the cave?”

  Bones had to fold his frame nearly in half to get inside. Calling the structure a cave wasn’t really accurate. It had a dirt floor, but the walls and curved ceiling were built with a combination of stones dirt and some sort of mortar. The area was large enough for a number of people to gather.

  Dane and Bones turned on their flashlights and examined the walls and ceiling with care. Neither saw any sign of a noble bird or even a cross other than those spray-painted in the twentieth century.

  “Looks like a dead end, bro.”

  “True, but the ruins of that cottage are what we need to find. We should be pretty close.”

  Bones grimaced. “That parks commission report said that they had filled in the area after demolition. It was a long time ago, but it still ought to look different than the surrounding area.”

  “I don’t think it could be the cottage itself. The clue said near the spot.”

  “Best clue we’ve got, though.”

  They tried to follow the river, but several times they had to detour backwards or away from its meandering course to avoid wading in the near-freezing water. They didn’t cover ground very fast, especially not knowing what they were looking for. After a bit, they sat down on a flat, bluish slab of the schist which made up much of the rock formation in the area.

  “It’s not looking too good, Maddock. We need more to go on. I bet some of those local Kelpius society people know where the ruins of the cottage are.”

  Dane couldn’t argue with Bones, but he wasn’t willing to stop yet. “I bet they do. But let’s take a step back. What are we looking for?”

  “My question exactly.”

  “Well we’re probably looking for the Library of Congress.”

  “Bache’s letter didn’t exactly say that. It talked about a clue to Ben Franklin’s secret. For a secret, there seem to be an awful lot of clues floating around. It’s just that most of them suck.”

  “If it’s not the lost Library of Congress we’re looking for, it’s hopeless. We’ll have no idea. So let’s assume it is. Why would they have hidden it somewhere in here?”

  “No idea.”

  Dane sighed. “I think we’re back to trying to find the ruins of the cottage.”

  “Since you ruled out my ancient bald eagle idea, yeah.”

  Thirty minutes later, after searching by walking parallel tracks thirty yards apart, Dane stumbled on one of the ever present stones. He avoided a face-plant, but when he put out his hand to steady himself with one knee on the ground, something sharp sliced through his glove and gouged his palm. A curse had barely left his mouth when he realized it was a brick. He jumped to his feet.

  “Bones, I’ve got something!”

  Bones came over and looked at the brick. After scanning the area, he slapped Dane on the back. “Paydirt. See how the contour of the land is smoother, like a mound?”

  Dane scanned the surrounding area. “Yeah, so we’re now looking for a noble bird.”

  “Don’t forget the sign of our Lord, too.”

  “Right. So we need to start walking some grids out from here. How about we start with about four hundred yards?”

  They had already been at it for almost three hours, but finding the clue energized Dane. And this time, they didn’t have to go far before they found something else. On their second grid out from the center of the mound, near the river, Bones found an old grindstone. He and Dane zeroed in on the area and it became clear that they were standing amid the ruins of one of the many old mills that had once dotted the landscape.

  Their initial search revealed three grindstones. When Dane caught sight of the third one, he sucked in his breath. Chiseled near the hole in the center of the round stone slab was a cross with each of its four points wider than the center.

  “A Celtic cross.” Bones looked at Dane, eyes wide. “I gotta admit I thought you were leading us on a wild goose chase.”

  Dane grinned. “Not a wild goose. We’re looking for a nobler bird than that.”

  Bones squatted down and wrapped his fingers around the edge of the three foot diameter stone. “First place we look is on the other side of this bad boy. Give me a hand, Maddock.”

  Dane joined him and they attempted to turn the stone over. Between the two of them, Dane estimated they could probably lift at least seven hundred pounds off the ground in a weight room, but their first attempt with the grindstone didn’t move it at all.

  Bones snapped his fingers. “I know what this is! This is Thor’s hammer. Only someone worthy of Thor can pick it up.”

  Dane raised an eyebrow. “Thor’s hammer was round with a cross in the middle?”

  “Those old myths usually get some details wrong, it’s true. Let’s give it another shot.”

  “Sure, but I’m betting you’re not the God of Thunder.”

  “Are you kidding? You’ve been around me after I’ve eaten Mexican food.”

  They tried again, this time straining w
ith everything they had. Dane felt it shift slightly to the right then back to where it started, but it was a sliding motion, it didn’t come even a millimeter off the ground.

  “Did you feel that, Bones?”

  “Yeah, this thing must be made of some alien element with the density of a neutron star. No other explanation makes sense.”

  “I thought it was Thor’s hammer. But I meant how it moved to the side.”

  Bones raised an eyebrow. “The side? How about we trying rotating it rather than lifting it?”

  They squatted back down and were able to spin it about an inch in either direction, sort of like turning a massive steering wheel. After a few attempts to get it to move further, Bones dropped onto it, elbows on his knees.

  “I hate to admit defeat, but we need to try something else. Maybe that noble bird is somewhere else around here.”

  “Agreed,” Dane said. “It’s odd that the grindstone is set up like this, though. Flat on the ground, it wouldn’t be any use for grinding, yet the little bit of rotation and lack of movement in other directions suggest it was done on purpose.”

  They resumed searching the area. Very little of the old mill remained, though Dane spotted the occasional stone or piece of mortar that clearly didn’t fit in naturally. He could feel the tingle of anticipation as he looked. They had followed all the clues thus far, and only one remained.

  “Score one for the red man!” Bones’ voice boomed from twenty feet away, startling Dane. Bones had uncovered a flat stone on the ground, one of those omnipresent pieces of blue schist. Carved in the middle was a logo of a bald eagle with outstretched wings. The logo contained words in a circular pattern around the center of the eagle, with some sort of figure inside the circle of words.

  “Is that what I think it is?”

  Bones laughed. “Well I imagine it’s supposed to be an eagle, but it kinda looks like a turkey to me. You know, I remember now that Ben Franklin once called the turkey a more noble bird than the bald eagle. Of course, he probably had the munchies when he said it.”

  “That’s true, but that’s not what I meant. I know this logo. This is the logo of the Society of Cincinnatus. Want to guess who was an honorary member?”