The Ancient Nine

by Ian K. Smith, M. D.

  I hopped on my bike and decided I’d ride over to break the news to Dalton, but as I left the Yard, I got an idea. I turned toward the Crimson offices. A guy wearing the ugliest orange-and-green sweater I had ever seen was sitting at the front desk, reading a book and picking his nose like it was a sport. I asked him if Stromberger was in, and he went back to get her.

  A couple of minutes later, she came bounding down the hall. She actually looked rested. “Hey, Spenser,” she said. “How’s the research going?”

  “It’s going,” I said.

  “Did you call my person at the Historical Commission?”

  “I did, but she hasn’t called me back.”

  “Don’t worry, she will.”

  I waited for the kid in the atrocious sweater to walk out of earshot before I said, “I was stopping by to see if you knew anything about the Harvard fire of 1764 and the only book from John Harvard’s original collection that survived.”

  “I’ve heard the story,” she said. “A student took the book out several months before the fire, and returned it after the rest of Harvard’s collection had burned. It was a religious book. I think it’s over in Houghton.”

  “That’s where I just came from,” I said. “It’s on display in the lobby. But I wanted to find out about an earlier edition of that book. It’s in the Houghton vault.”

  “I don’t really know anything about that,” she said.

  “The book that was saved from the fire was the fourth edition,” I explained. “But Houghton also has a very rare first edition. There’s some mystery about it missing two pages. I’m trying to figure out if that’s true and what’s so important about those pages.”

  “Did you ask one of the librarians over there?”

  “I tried, but the security guard said that I needed to sign up and make an appointment. One of the reference assistants will call me when they have an opening. Seems like a pretty big deal, so I’m thinking the Crimson might’ve written something about it.”

  “Do you know if the book was acquired with the pages already missing, or someone clipped them afterwards?” Stromberger answered.

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

  “There’s not much to go on,” Stromberger said. “I can look in our archives and see if the Crimson covered it, but I’ll have to figure out the right key words to use in the search. Our paper only goes back to 1873, so if this happened before then, we might not have anything.”

  “When could you take a look?”

  “Probably later tonight. I have classes till four, and I have to meet with my advisor. I’ll take a look after dinner. Do you think this book has anything to do with Abbott’s disappearance?”

  “I’m not sure. Every time I get close to figuring out one answer, another ten questions pop up.”

  * * *

  I CALLED DALTON twice before practice, and both times his answering machine picked up and both times I left an urgent message for him to call me. By the time I walked into the locker room that afternoon, my headache had finally abated and my liver had worked the alcohol out of my system. Coach was in a rare good mood and put us through all the drills we liked. He didn’t make us run a single wind sprint, and after an hour, he allowed us to divide ourselves up into teams and scrimmage for the remainder of practice. We were all very suspicious. He was actually making jokes and shadowboxing with guys on the sidelines. After a shoving match broke out between two of our big guys, he actually started taking bets on who would’ve won if it had been an all-out fight.

  What made his behavior even stranger was that we had our first scrimmage against Boston University coming up in a week, a game that meant nothing for our season record, but everything for city bragging rights. Normally he would have worked the hell out of us in hopes we’d take our anger out on the BU team.

  During one of the water breaks, Geilton and I met on the sidelines.

  “What the hell has gotten into him?” I asked.

  Geilton shook his head. “I have no idea. It’s the first time in four years I’ve ever seen him act like this. It’s scary.”

  “Have any of the assistant coaches said anything?”

  “Nothing. They’re acting like everything is normal.”

  I looked across the gym. Coach had his arm around Mitch’s shoulder, and they were laughing about something.

  “I don’t like it,” I said. “He’s being too nice. That’s not a good sign.”

  “Let’s just ride the wave. Maybe the monster will be back tomorrow.”

  Coach blew the whistle, and with a good half hour left of practice, kicked us out of the gym. “That’s it,” he said. “You guys have been working hard the last couple of weeks. I’m calling practice early.”

  We just stood there and looked at each other. No one moved. It was like being a prisoner who’s been locked away in the pen for twenty years and who sees the warden just walk up to him in the rec yard one afternoon, hand him the key to the front gate, and tell him he’s free to go. Instead of sprinting toward his freedom, the prisoner stands there, trying to figure out if this is a trap. Is it better to stay locked up or risk getting shot in the back as he makes a run for it?

  “What the hell are you standing there for?” Coach laughed. He blew the whistle to crack our stupor. “Practice is over. Go home, men.”

  Still no one moved. I looked at the other guys, and no one dared to be the first to leave the court. This had all the makings of a setup.

  Geilton finally stepped up and said, “Everything all right, Coach?”

  “Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

  “Just checking, that’s all,” Geilton said. Then he turned to the rest of us and yelled, “Line up on the damn baseline!”

  The rest of us looked at each other, then at Geilton as if he had suddenly gone mad.

  “You heard me!” he yelled. “Get your asses on the baseline. We’re gonna run five sprints before we leave. We have a game in a week, and we’re not gonna be embarrassed like we were last year. This is where it starts.”

  Slowly we made our way to the baseline, cursing Geilton under our breath. Coach and the assistants left the court and walked upstairs to their offices, but we could see them looking at us out their windows. And I’ll be damned if Geilton didn’t run us harder than Coach ever had. When we had finished the five sprints, he called for another five before we dragged ourselves into the locker room.

  “It was a trap,” Geilton said apologetically as we all lined up in the shower. “He wanted to see if we’d walk off the court and take the easy way out. Today we showed him we’re willing to go above and beyond and do whatever it takes to win. Trust me, we scored some points today.”

  His analysis was probably right, and we might’ve scored some bonus points with the coaching staff, but it was difficult not feeling a bit salty, having left half our lungs on the court. By the time we limped out of the locker room, the Coach’s office lights were already turned off and he was long gone. He probably had a big fat grin on his face when he left the building. The cunning sonuvabitch had put a spin on something my grandfather had always preached. He almost killed us with kindness.

  27

  “I’LL BE OVER in ten minutes,” Dalton said. It was a little after seven, and he had finally called me back. “Meet me out front. I’ll be in my car.”

  “Where are we going? I have a ton of reading to do tonight, and I wanted to tell you about New York and my talk with one of the Divinity School professors.”

  “We’ll talk about it in the car,” he said. “I think we’ll find Abbott tonight or what’s left of him. Just be ready when I get there.”

  Before I could protest, he had already hung up the phone.

  I put on my heavy coat and made my way to the front archway. It was mid November and the weather had taken a decisive turn, and it was downright cold. Thanksgiving was a couple of weeks away, which meant the rest of the campus would be empty while those of us athletes who were s
till in season would be spending another cheerless Thanksgiving night in the one dreary dining hall that drew the unlucky straw to stay open.

  Dalton pulled up just as I stepped into the archway. He wore a thick black turtleneck sweater and sheepskin coat. I said my customary prayer before jumping into the passenger’s seat. I had barely closed the door before he sped off, tires squealing, people on the sidewalks jumping back as the car’s roar approached.

  “So, you wanna tell me where we’re going?” I asked once we had raced through a string of yellow.

  “Rhode Island.”

  “Rhode Island?” I yelled. “Are you out of your damn mind? Stop the car right now! I’m not going to Rhode Island tonight!”

  Dalton mashed the accelerator even harder as we rocketed through the narrow streets and finally climbed over Anderson Memorial Bridge and past the athletic facilities of Soldiers Field. He reached down and turned up the radio as if he hadn’t heard a word I just said. I reached over and turned it back down.

  “Are you gonna tell me what the hell is going on?” I said.

  “We’re heading to the old Abbott estate in Newport,” he said. “It’s only about an hour away, maybe less if we don’t hit traffic.”

  “And what are we gonna do there?”

  “A little excavating.”

  “Have you totally lost your mind? What do you mean ‘excavating’?”

  He hiked his thumb over his shoulder, and I turned to find two small shovels barely fitting across the backseat.

  Then he said, “I made some calls yesterday while you were running around New York—which we still need to talk about, by the way—and I found out some interesting things about the Abbott estate. The Abbotts lived in one of the biggest mansions in Newport, which they had purchased from a Philadelphia coal family. They lived through the golden era of Newport society when all the big names like the Vanderbilts, Astors, and Dukes summered there in what they called ‘cottages.’ Collander Abbott bought the Breckinridge estate right down the street from the Vanderbilts’ palace, the Breakers. Abbott didn’t have Vanderbilt money, but he dumped a small fortune into the mansion, trying to rival the others.

  “It took two hundred men almost three years to renovate the house and property. They called it Magnolia Woods because of all the magnolia trees Mrs. Abbott had planted around the property. Collander Abbott left specific instructions in his will that he be buried deep in the woods, underneath a certain tree. He was buried there first, followed by Mrs. Abbott, who died the following year.”

  Dalton turned onto the Interstate 95 ramp, and once he had cleared the tollbooth, shifted the car into warp speed.

  “How did you find all this out?” I asked.

  “I had a long talk yesterday with Aunt Contessa,” he said. “She was Uncle Randolph’s younger sister and spent most of her summers as a kid living on the Winthrop estate called Emerald Meadows, right next door to Magnolia Woods. She said Abbott and his wife spent a lot of their money and time trying to be accepted by Newport society, but to no avail. Only five people attended both their burials. Aunt Contessa was one of them.”

  I looked into the backseat again at the shovels and noticed two pairs of work gloves. “Are you planning to go to Newport to dig up the bodies of Collander Abbott and his wife?”

  Dalton released one of his mischievous smiles. “Better than that. If Aunt Contessa is correct, we’re gonna dig up the body of Erasmus Abbott.”

  * * *

  WE ROARED INTO Newport in just under an hour. On the way, I updated Dalton about what had happened in New York, conveniently omitting “the kiss” from the story. We talked about Campbell, Davenport, and the passage, and agreed that whatever was going on, it definitely had something to do with religious doctrine. Dalton pulled into a single-pump gas station to fill up and get directions to Magnolia Woods. The chatty attendant informed him that the house was one of only a few of the original cottages that remained privately owned. Most of the mansions had been donated to the historical society and turned into museums. The Dann family, who now owned Magnolia Woods, opened the house for one week of the year to tour groups, but it was closed for the fall and winter seasons while the Danns lived on their estate in Barbados.

  Dalton swung the car into the estate section of town and drove down the dark, tree-lined streets. We caught glimpses of the mansions, barely visible behind the tall gates and formidable hedges. He turned toward the ocean, and once we were in a small parking lot overlooking a beach, he turned off the car.

  “This is where we get out,” he said.

  “I thought you had directions to the house?”

  “I do. But we’re not just gonna drive up to the front door and say, ‘Hello, we’re here to dig up a couple of bodies in your backyard.’ We’re gonna walk along the beach and enter through the back of the property.”

  Visions of us sitting in the Newport jail flashed through my mind. How was I going to explain to my mother that I had been busted for exhuming the bodies of a dead printing tycoon’s family?

  “Dalton, have you really thought this through?” I said. “There’s a good chance that we could get caught doing this.”

  “There you go again, looking at things from the negative perspective,” Dalton said. “We’re not gonna get caught. Now, grab one of those shovels and let’s get to work.”

  We walked for at least half a mile along a path that ran beside the ocean and overlooked several steep cliffs. Every once in a while, we could see lights from one of the mansions shooting into the sky. Dalton took out a piece of paper from his pocket, where he had diagrammed the properties. We had only another hundred yards before we reached the estate.

  “How are we gonna find this burial site when we can barely see two feet in front of us?” I said.

  “It shouldn’t be too difficult,” he said. “Aunt Contessa said it was under the widest tree in the woods, and it was easy to find amongst the others because one of the branches hung so low, it was like an arm reaching down to pick you up. She insisted that it’s such an odd-looking tree, that it sticks out from everything else around it.”

  The path had ended, but we continued to walk along the ocean, scrambling with difficulty over a gaggle of boulders perilously towering over the whitecaps breaking below.

  “This is where the property line starts,” Dalton said. He pulled the diagram out again and confirmed our location. We walked until we reached a tall wrought-iron fence that dead-ended against an enormous tree. There was just enough space between the last fence post and the tree for us to slip through.

  I was so nervous, my hands trembled. I couldn’t stop thinking that if we got caught, I’d get expelled and there would be no medical school, no career in medicine, and no payback to my mother for all her sacrifices. Dalton didn’t need to graduate from Harvard to have a successful life. His name and money could buy him anything he ever wanted and then some.

  We walked into the heavily wooded part of the property, and at one point we got a full view of the house. It stopped me in my tracks. It was as if someone had stacked ten houses next to each other, then just knocked down the walls between them and made it one gigantic compound. I counted five dark rows of windows and at least twenty chimneys on the sections of the roof that I could see.

  “What’s wrong?” Dalton asked.

  “If that’s just a cottage, what do they call a house?” I said.

  “And this isn’t even the biggest cottage on the block,” Dalton said. “The Breakers makes this look like a carriage house.”

  We walked deeper into the woods, and separated about ten feet from each other, figuring that would help us cover more ground and make us less likely to miss our target. There were all kinds of strange sounds, owls whooping in the branches above, four-legged critters scampering in the darkness. It was cold enough that the mosquitoes weren’t out, but I could imagine what a feasting ground it must’ve been during the summer. After twenty minutes, we reached the fence at the other end of the property. We had
n’t seen any tree even closely resembling what Dalton’s aunt had described.

  “This might be a lot harder than I expected,” he said, taking off his gloves and leaning against the fence. “I didn’t know we were gonna be searching a damn forest.”

  “It could take us days to find this tree,” I said.

  “Aunt Contessa said it was in the middle of the property,” Dalton said, wiping his sweaty forehead with the back of his hand.

  “Yeah, but how in the hell can we tell what’s the middle? These woods could cover more than a square mile of land. And your aunt was here more than twenty years ago. Who knows how much things have changed since then?”

  “I say we separate more and take another pass,” Dalton said.

  I remembered a movie I had seen where three kids were looking for a buried treasure in a campground. They eventually found it by marking off the property in evenly spaced sections.

  “We could make a sectional grid,” I said. “It took us about twenty minutes to walk across the entire property. So, let’s move over another twenty-five feet, walk back in the same direction, then stop at about ten minutes. We’ll do a ninety-degree turn either left or right and walk till we get to the other end of the property. That should help us sweep by the center. If we don’t see it on that portion of the grid, then we’ll turn around and walk back toward the other end.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Dalton said, pushing off the fence and grabbing his shovel.

  We walked laterally about twenty-five feet from where we stood and separated from each other by twenty-feet this time instead of ten. Once we had marked off the distances, we slowly made our way back through the dense woods. Dalton called out twice, thinking he had found the tree, only to be disappointed when we got closer and realized that they were really two trees next to each other instead of one.

  Each time we had a false call, we went back to our positions and restarted the sweep. After forty minutes, I was starting to lose hope. Then something up ahead on the left caught my eye. It was the silhouette of an enormous tree, about four times the size of the others and sitting by itself with a wide clearing around it. The closer I walked, the more massive it became. But I couldn’t see the low-lying branch that Dalton’s aunt had described. Was it possible that someone had cut the limb down or that it had broken off?