"Our other--?" Amy stopped, aghast.
Saladin! She had been so exhausted at the hotel the night before, she hadn't even noticed that the cat wasn't there.
"You--you better not--you just leave him alone!" Dan could barely get the words out.
"Wh-what have you done to him?" Amy's voice quavered. She didn't even want to imagine what they
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might do to Saladin. ... Who were these people who would threaten a poor innocent cat?
"Why, nothing," the man said. "He's perfectly fine. And will continue to be, so long as you cooperate. It's quite simple: All you have to do is get the box to open."
"I want your word on something," Dan said. Amy could tell from his voice that he was still struggling to suppress his fury.
"You're hardly in a position to negotiate."
"You're wrong about that. You want us to do this. If you didn't, you'd just do it yourselves. So I want something in return."
The man said nothing.
Dan went on. "Once you get your precious little secret out of the box, I want it back. The box--and Saladin."
The man shrugged. "I believe that can be arranged."
"I want your word on it," Dan said doggedly. He looked at the man with an expression of disdain. "That is, if your word is any good," he added spitefully.
The man winced, then held up his hand.
"You have my word," he said with a bow of his head. When he glanced up at Dan, Amy was startled to see a look of--could it be respect? Or maybe even pride?--in his eyes. Only for the merest second, though; maybe she had imagined it.
"If you're finished," she said coldly, "we'd like to get started."
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"Miss Gomez?"
Nellie trotted back from her sentry position.
Like his lapdog, Amy thought in disgust.
But beneath that disdainful thought, she could still feel a deep ocean of sorrow over Nellie's betrayal.
"Please retrieve the box," he said, "and then you and I will be leaving these two in peace to attempt the completion of their task."
"What?" Nellie frowned.
"I believe you heard me quite clearly."
"No!" Nellie shouted. "That was not part of the deal--you said I could help them!"
Amy's heart leaped in her chest. Could Nellie be--a triple-crosser? Amy tried to quash the thought; she couldn't bear to get her hopes up only to have them crushed again.
"The deal, Miss Gomez, is whatever we say it is."
Nellie narrowed her eyes. "You think?" She ran to the car, opened the door, and held up the keys.
"If you don't let me help them," she yelled, "I'll drive off right this minute. With the box."
The man in gray seemed unperturbed. "How long do you think it would take us to track you down?"
"Long enough for me to give the box to the Kabras," she shot back.
A flicker of unease crossed the man's face, but in the
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next moment he was back in control. "Now, now," he said. "No need to be hasty about this."
"I mean it!" she yelled. "Just try me!"
The man held up his hands. "Calm down, please," he said, then shrugged. "You may remain with them if that is your desire."
"You got that right," Nellie muttered. She stalked back to the table.
Amy stared at her.
What's going on?
One way or another, they were about to find out.
Nellie removed her nose ring and got out Miss Alice's matching snake. Amy put her dragon necklace and the wolf fang side by side in front of her. Dan took the bear claw off its chain.
"You'll need these," the man said, and produced a small pair of pliers.
Nellie used them to snip the post off her nose ring and Miss Alice's earring. She passed the pliers to Dan, who clipped the hanging ball from the claw.
Amy took up the pliers. She hesitated for only a moment before cutting the dragon medallion free from Grace's necklace.
The man unwrapped the carved box and handed it to Nellie. She fitted the snakes into place on one side.
Dan did the same with the bear claw.
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Then Amy put the fang on the third side of the box. She picked up the dragon medallion and held her breath.
The dragon snapped into place neatly.
The box did not open. Amy let out her breath. Of course not, she thought. It's not magic, for heaven's sake.
She tried opening it the way you would a normal box.
No luck.
"Here, let me try," Dan said eagerly. He worked his way around all four sides trying to open it; he even turned it upside down.
Still no good.
The man in gray was watching them, leaning back in his chair a little with his arms crossed. He had donned sunglasses; Amy couldn't see his expression.
Nellie took a turn, too. For the moment, Amy had decided to stop wondering whose side Nellie was on; right now she and Dan needed all the help they could get.
They went around one more time. Amy tried opening the side panels, then sliding the top instead of lifting it.
Nothing.
The man in gray stood. "It appears that you have failed," he said, and reached for the box.
Dan snatched it up and put it behind his back. He glared at the man so ferociously that Amy almost shivered. She'd never seen him look like that before; she
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didn't know what would happen if the man tried to take the box away from Dan.
"Please," she said in desperation, "can't we have just a little more time? We have the icons, they all fit, we just have to figure out ..." Her voice trailed off.
The man walked away a few steps. He took out a cell phone, dialed a number, and spoke quickly. Then he turned and looked at them.
"It is now five minutes past twelve," he announced. "You have exactly one hour. If the box is not open by one-oh-five, you will have failed. Is that understood?"
Amy nodded.
"Young man?"
Dan was still glaring, but he nodded, too.
"I will be back in"--the man glanced at his watch--"fifty-nine minutes." He paused. "Remember, all sides of this are really one, and you need us to succeed."
The man walked away, leaving them with the box.
Forty minutes later, Nellie looked at Amy helplessly. Amy was near tears, and nothing Nellie could say would comfort her.
They had tried everything. They had taken the icons out and put them back in again, in every possible order. They had put all four icons in at the same time. They had stood the box on each of its four sides; they'd tried
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having two people push on different parts of the box at the same time. They had tapped and poked and prodded every square centimeter of it. Nothing worked.
Amy's head was bowed in a vain attempt to hide her weeping. Sweat was running down Dan's face as he examined the box yet again.
Nellie felt like her head was about to burst. There had to be some way she could help. ...
"Think!" she said. "We must have forgotten something. Think back to the very start--to the Bahamas."
Amy lifted her head a little. "The bear claw," she said. "That was the Bahamas."
Dan stopped fiddling with the box and looked up, too. "After that we came here--to Jamaica--and we found Miss Alice's snake."
Clearly, it was making them feel a little better to focus on something other than the box. "Then what?" Nellie encouraged them.
"Then you called your dad," Amy said, "and--"
"THE RIGHT EXCELLENT NANNY!" Dan shouted. "The gold strip from the horn!"
Amy was already digging into her backpack. She took out the little piece of metal, which had been carefully wrapped in a piece of paper.
Nellie saw her frown almost immediately.
"It doesn't fit," Amy said. "Look. It's longer than any of the sides."
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"What about diagonally?" Dan suggested. "Still too long."
&nbs
p; "Maybe it's supposed to be bent," Nellie said. "But how?" Amy asked.
Nellie's heart sank. Amy was right; there were probably about a million ways the strip could be bent. They'd never figure it out in time.
"This has to be it, this HAS to be it," Dan kept saying.
"Let me see it," Nellie said. "The strip, I mean."
She inspected it closely. Those tiny letters ...
ektomaluja ektomaluja ektomaluja ektomaluja
"Why would it have lettering on both sides?" she asked. "I mean, if it fits into the box like the other pieces, there should be a 'right side' and a 'wrong side.' But there isn't. Both sides are the same."
Dan and Amy bent over the strip in Nellie's hand. Then Amy gasped. She dived into her backpack again and took out her notepad.
"I thought about this once before and then I forgot about it," she said. "Look."
She showed them the page where she'd written down the mystery word:
EKTOMALUJA EK - Ekaterina TOMA - Tomas LU - Lucia n JA - Janus
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"I wondered why Tomas got four letters when all the others had only two," she said. "It's because it's not T-O-M-A for Tomas." She scribbled furiously, then showed them the page again.
EK - Ekaterina TO - Tomas MA - MADRIGAL LU - Lucian JA - Janus
"Brilliant!" Dan shouted.
Nellie closed her eyes in concentration. "Remember what he said when he left? Something about how we needed them to succeed. The Madrigals."
"The four branches, one icon on each side of the box," Amy said. "Madrigals, in the middle of the code word ... Madrigals in the middle somehow ..."
Dan was frowning fiercely. He looked at Nellie. "What did you say before? You said something--I'm trying to remember--"
"About the man in black? I mean, gray?"
"No. Before that."
Nellie thought for a moment. "Oh, I remember. I was asking why the letters are on both sides."
She saw Dan go very still; she could almost hear the effort his brain was making.
"The lettering is raised," he said, "and on both sides.
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That means the letters fit--somewhere we can't see. Give me that strip."
Nellie watched as Dan fashioned the strip into a circle by joining the ends.
"See?" he said. "It could go like this, edgewise, not flat, and if you put it in exactly the right place--"
The three of them nearly cracked heads as they bent to examine the box again.
"It has to be the top," Amy said excitedly. "It's not any one of the four sides, so the top is like the middle."
It was Dan who found it: a narrow slit in the carvings on the top of the box. The slit was shaped like a loop, a rough oval into which the strip would fit.
Except that it didn't. The strip almost fit, but not quite. No matter how they positioned it, shifting it a tiny bit at a time, it wouldn't slide into the slit.
Nellie let out a moan of frustration. She took out her cell phone to check the time.
"It's one-oh-two," she said urgently. "He'll be back any minute now."
"There was something else," Amy said suddenly. "He said something else before he left. Besides the part about us needing the Madrigals."
"He said"--Dan narrowed his eyes in concentration--"he said to remember that all sides are really one."
"All sides are one," Amy whispered. "All sides are one. ..."
There was a moment of complete silence.
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Then Amy smiled. It was, Nellie thought, a radiant smile--there was no other word for it.
"Mobius strip," she said.
"What kind of trip?" Dan said.
"Not trip, strip," she said. "Mobius strip. It's a geometric shape that has only one side."
She took up the piece of gold and formed it into a loop again. But before joining the ends, she put a half twist into it. It now formed a wobbly ovalish shape.
"Look," she said. "If I were to put my pencil point here and trace a line down the middle of the strip, I could go all the way around until I came right back to where I started. And the line would show up on both sides, without me ever lifting my pencil. Which proves that it really has only one side."
"I don't get it," Nellie said.
"I'll show you again later," Amy said. "It works better with a strip of paper."
"FORGET IT!" Dan said. "Just see if it fits that way!"
"Okay, okay," Amy said.
Nellie could tell that Amy wasn't in any hurry now. She looked utterly calm and supremely confident.
Holding the strip in its Mobius shape, Amy inserted it into the slit. She tried once, twice, three times.
On the fourth try, the strip clicked perfectly into place.
There was a small pinging sound, and the lid of the box sprang open.
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CHAPTER 21
* * *
"We open it together," Amy said, her eyes gleaming. "Ready? One--two--three--"
Inside, the box was lined with silk decorated with an elaborately embroidered whale. Two objects rested on the silk: a small roll of parchment and a little pouch.
Amy unrolled the parchment carefully. The edges crackled; a few tiny pieces flaked off. The ink on the page was faded but still legible. Amy read aloud:
* * *
The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, Good and ill together. Torn apart by year of greed, no tatter, shred and tangle. So, like the spider, begin anew, one web with many a tether. Our silk tho fine as strong as steel! From united threads we danngle. MC in the year of our Lord 1548
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"Can I see it?" Dan took the parchment gently from Amy's hands. He glanced at it quickly.
"WOO-HOO!" he whooped. "Finally, an easy one!"
With one hand, he made a beckoning motion with his fingers. "Go on, go on, ask me," he said.
Amy and Nellie rolled their eyes at each other.
"Okay," Nellie said, "whatcha got?"
Dan's expression was pure smugness. "I want you to beg," he said.
"Dan!" Amy said, half laughing but completely annoyed.
"Just kidding," he said. He held out the page and pointed to it. "See that? The word 'danngle.' It's misspelled. And it has to be, because without the extra 'n,' it wouldn't be an anagram for ENGLAND. That's where we go next!"
He mimed licking his finger and then touched his temple. "Sssss," he said. "Oh, yeah, I'm good. I'm so good."
More eye-rolling from the girls. In an effort to distract Dan's attention away from his self-proclaimed greatness, Amy reached for the little pouch. It was beautifully made, lined and heavily padded and closed with a drawstring. She opened it carefully and took out a small glass vial.
The vial was filled with a rusty brownish red substance, like a rough powder. Amy uncorked the vial and brought it up to her nose. She sniffed cautiously.
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"I don't know," she said, frowning a little. "You can still smell something, even after all this time, but I can't tell-"
Nellie reached for the vial. She gave it a quick sniff.
"It's mace," she said immediately. "That spice I bought. The outer covering of a nutmeg."
The three of them beamed at one another.
"A clue and the next location, both inside about thirty seconds!" Dan crowed.
The man in gray was standing behind Nellie. They had been so engrossed in the box and its contents, none of them had noticed when he rejoined them.
"Well done," he said quietly.
He sat down and took off his sunglasses. Then, to Amy's astonishment, he wiped his eyes as if they were tearing up.
He cleared his throat and picked up the box. "Made by a renegade Ekat," he said. "Most ingenious, wouldn't you say? The Ekaterinas claimed this area--the Caribbean--long ago and have been very active here. By the way, I thought you would like to know that your cat is safe in Kingston. We will collect him when we leave here."
He put the box back on the table. "I must apologize," he said. "First,
for my earlier unpleasantness. As you will learn shortly, it was all part of the grand scheme.
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And second, because I've never properly introduced myself. My name is Fiske Cahill. And I would like to thank you for bringing such joy to my sister." His sister?
"Grace," he said as he sat down next to Nellie. "Grace was my sister."
Amy's jaw dropped.
Grace had one sibling--Aunt Beatrice. Neither of them had ever once mentioned a brother. It couldn't be true!
"How come we never heard of you?" Dan asked.
The man winced and slumped a little in his chair. "There is no easy answer to that question," he said, almost to himself. He paused and took a breath. "As a small child, I was painfully shy. So much so that I simply couldn't function when I was with other people. My parents allowed me to stay out of school, at home with a tutor. Perhaps that was a mistake because in the end, it made it easier for me to--to disappear altogether when I decided as a young man that I wanted nothing to do with--with the family business."
He gave them a searching look, and Amy knew what business he meant: the hunt for the 39 Clues.
The man laced his fingers together and stared at his hands. "As children, Grace and I adored each other. She was the only one I kept in touch with over the
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years, and on my terms, not hers. I would call or write once in a while, brief visits every other year or so. It was not until she became ill that I went to see her for an extended time."
He shook his head, and his already soft voice lowered to a whisper. "Of the many poor choices I made in my life, the one I most regret is not spending more time with her."
Amy felt her throat clutch a little. What would it be like if Dan disappeared from her life? Then she caught herself and frowned. If Fiske Cahill wasn't telling the truth, he was an awfully good actor. He probably wanted her to think exactly what she had been thinking. She had to stay on guard. ...
"I hope that is sufficient explanation as to why you have never heard of me," he was saying, "because there is no other. Grace, in her last days, asked me to become involved in the hunt for clues. I could not refuse her."
"Not good enough," Dan said. "You still haven't given us any real proof that you're Grace's brother."
Fiske Cahill sat in silence for a moment. Then he lifted his chin, blinked his eyes, and spoke in a nasal, high-pitched voice. "Anyone who plays this silly game is a fool. I'll take the money!"
The 39 Clues Book 9: Storm Warning Page 12
