The Sign of the Sinister Sorcerer
Page 7
Lewis craned his neck. The man standing on the right looked familiar. Then Lewis realized he was looking at a face a lot like his memory of how his father, Charles Barnavelt, had looked in life. “Is this you?” he asked, pointing.
“I did not have a beard then,” said Uncle Jonathan with dignity. “Yes, that is me, just prior to the Honors Convocation. The older gentleman in the middle, with the eccentric headgear and old-fashioned long side whiskers, is my mathematics professor and mentor in magic, Dr. Mundale Marville. And the crabby-looking fellow on the other side of him, who looks as if he had just swallowed a cactus and it went down the wrong way, is my fellow magic student, Adolfus Schlectesherz. He was German, come to America to learn all about growing wheat and potatoes.”
“Funny name! And he certainly looks very unpleasant,” said Mrs. Zimmermann.
Uncle Jonathan nodded. “That may be because, just two minutes before this picture was taken, Dr. Marville had informed Adolfus that he was not going to become a fully licensed and board-certified magician after all. He and I had completed our senior project—every pair of student magicians used to have to create an enchanted object, usually just some useless but magical doodad that contained equal parts of their magic powers to prove they were worthy of the rank of ‘sorcerer.’ Well, we had done that, but it was difficult because Adolfus was a pushy sort who never could control his bad temper, and since he had often warned Adolfus about that, Dr. Marville finally approved our project but refused to present him with a real magician’s wand. So while I received my wand in a special little ceremony that Dr. Marville probably just made up on the spot, Adolfus had to settle for being named the Mathematics Student of the Year at the convocation.”
Lewis stared at Adolfus. He looked older than Uncle Jonathan by five or ten years, and he certainly did not have a pleasant face. His narrow shoulders were bent forward, and his deep-set eyes stared out at the camera with a chilling expression of resentment. His prominent nose reminded Lewis of an eagle’s beak, and he wore a bushy mustache and a dark pointed goatee that concealed his mouth and chin. Lewis shivered a little, just looking at this foreboding figure.
“Why show us this?” asked Mrs. Zimmermann.
With a sigh, Uncle Jonathan said, “Because as far as I can guess, there is only one person in the whole world who might resent the fact that I own a wand. I mean, the Izard family are all dead now, and I have no other magical enemies that I know of. But Mr. Schlectesherz really blew his stack when he found out I was to be wanded and he was to be turned away empty-handed.”
“Where is he now?” asked Lewis.
“That’s just it—I don’t know,” said Uncle Jonathan. “He went back home to Germany before World War II broke out, and I haven’t heard from him since then. For all I know, he may have perished in the war, fighting for the Germans. But this is silly. Even if old Adolfus wanted to purloin my walking stick, it wouldn’t do him a parcel of good. He couldn’t use my magic!”
“Could he use any?” asked Mrs. Zimmermann.
“Oh, sure, he learned at least as much as I did,” replied Uncle Jonathan. “A magician doesn’t have to have a wand, as you know. A good wand is an enchanted staff that helps a magician focus and increase his power, but it isn’t strictly necessary. And who knows, Adolfus may have found some other master magician to finish his education when he went back to the Continent. There were enough of them hanging around there back in the late thirties! That’s where the big blowup among the Golden Circle really started, you know. If Adolfus hitched up with a couple of those, he might have become the third in a cozy little magical triangle.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Zimmermann, putting her hand to her mouth in a startled gesture as she stared down at the photo.
Lewis looked harder. In the picture, the two students stood on either side of a desk. The teacher sat between them, behind the desk, his fez at a jaunty angle on his head. Beyond the desk was a blackboard with abstruse mathematical signs and figures crowded on it. And to the right of the blackboard, partly obscured by Mr. Schlectesherz’s narrow left shoulder, stood a coat tree. And hanging on one of its hooks was a shapeless sort of garment that just might have been a hooded robe.
“Yes,” said Uncle Jonathan wearily. “You’ve spotted it, Florence. As I say, Dr. Marville was at that time a member of the Golden Circle. But he was one of the good guys. And I might add, he never pressured either of us to join that odd outfit, and we never did. I never did, anyway. I just don’t know about Adolfus.”
“He may still have a mystical connection with you,” warned Mrs. Zimmermann.
“Possibly, but I doubt it. When he didn’t receive his wand, he lost his claim to be one of our group of three.”
Mrs. Zimmermann began, “If Dr. Marville presented you with the wand—”
“He may have some notion of how I can find what’s happened to it,” finished Uncle Jonathan. “I’m way ahead of you, Haggy Face. In fact, I’ve been thinking about calling Dr. Marville for weeks, jut to see how he is. However, he is quite elderly, and it is now extremely late—close to ten twenty! So I’ll ring him up tomorrow morning. I think he still lives in Lansing, though he’s bound to be retired by now. In the meantime, Florence, you can do me a great big favor if you’d care to.”
“What’s that?”
Uncle Jonathan seemed to Lewis to be trying to put a loud, booming sense of laughter into his voice, as if he were proposing a wonderful joke. But his words were anything but funny: “Why, with your superior magical know-how and your personal superduper wand to focus it, you can cast some protective spells over this house! Let me see. Linnaeus’ Superior Ward, for one, and perhaps Alcazar’s Charm Against Evil Enchantments. Oh, and Fogleburke’s Sure-Fire All-Purpose Handy-Dandy Protective would be nice.”
“And how about a nice fat red cherry on top?” asked Mrs. Zimmermann with an impish grin. “Yes, very well! I agree with you, there’s no need to take chances, and I will humbly admit that my spell-casting abilities are better than yours, especially now that you don’t have your cane. I’ll run home and get my wand, supposing nothing has happened to it, and get right to work.”
She did, bringing back her plain-looking old shabby umbrella. The only unusual thing about it was the bronze gryphon’s talon gripping a sphere of clear crystal somewhat larger than a table tennis ball. Lewis knew, though, that it was a disguised version of her own magical wand. The crystal held great power and had been given to her by a powerful powwow magician, one who practiced spells of good fortune and healing in the Pennsylvania Dutch country. When Mrs. Zimmermann spoke a word of command, her umbrella transformed into a tall staff with a brilliant purple star at its head. Her ordinary purple dress became a billowing cloak with purple flames flashing and dancing in its folds. And she herself seemed to grow taller and fiercer.
Three times she chanted spells, and after each one the old house seemed to settle in a little more cozily, a little more comfortably. When the last spell had been spoken and Mrs. Zimmermann had returned to her everyday appearance, she brushed some wispy strands of hair from her face and said, “My heavens! That’s the lot, I think, Jonathan. It would take a very powerful wizard indeed to break through those barriers—and if one tried, I’d know in a flash! Until the spells are lifted, absolutely no one can get into your house unless you or Lewis invite them in. I think you can sleep safe tonight.”
“Thank you, Florence,” said Uncle Jonathan. He started to say something else, looked hesitant, and stopped. Then he muttered, “One more thing. I don’t really have any right to ask you this, but—well, we’ve been neighbors for a long time, and—and I don’t know who else I could ask—”
Lewis’s spine felt creepy. He thought, Uncle Jonathan is going to tell her to take care of me if he dies! His heart pounded, and he struggled for breath.
Mrs. Zimmermann touched his uncle’s hand. “Jonathan,” she said seriously, “you know you can ask me anything. We have been through the wars together, you and I! Ask away.”
“Oh, you!” Mrs. Zimmermann shook her finger in Uncle Jonathan’s face, but she was grinning. And she did go to get the coffee cake, and it was indeed every bit as delicious as Uncle Jonathan had said.
That night as he lay in bed, Lewis made himself recall the details of the robed figure he had seen in the mirror. It had a wand, a short stick, and it used the wand to sketch the number 3 in the air. However, it did not hold a cane—Uncle Jonathan’s wand was much longer and heavier than the little one the figure wielded. Maybe the figure wasn’t evil, after all, but some kind of mystical warning meant to protect the Barnavelts. That thought comforted Lewis a little.
And perhaps it was the cake or perhaps it was the protective magic that now enveloped the Barnavelt house, but that night Lewis fell asleep with no trouble and no pain from his injured ankle, and he passed the night in pleasant dreams.
The nightmare began soon after.
CHAPTER 7
ROSE RITA ANSWERED THE door and to her great surprise saw Lewis standing there on the Pottinger porch, his face pale and his lip trembling. “What’s wrong?” she asked, letting him into the house. “Come on into the living room, we can talk in there. Dad’s at work and Mom’s out back with her roses.” She led Lewis to the sitting room and noticed for the first time that he was carrying a thick reddish book. “What’s that?”
“Something I wanted you to see,” croaked Lewis in a voice very much unlike his own. He had marked a place in the book with a playing card, a three of diamonds from one of the many packs of cards Uncle Jonathan had lying around the house. “Read this.”
Frowning, Rose Rita took the volume from him. It was the same collection of odd beliefs and superstitions she had seen back on that first Monday of vacation, when Lewis had been sprawled in his lawn chair, munching crackers and reading. She saw that the chapter Lewis had marked was headed “Of the accouterments and paraphernalia of those supposed to be sorcerers.”
Following Lewis’s pointing finger, Rose Rita read:
A wizard’s staff or a magician’s wand (the two are often but not always interchangeable) is intimately bound up with its owner’s life force. Although stage-conjurors typically wield white-tipped black wands some one foot to eighteen inches long, I have seen a variety of so-called “wands” in the possession of both men and women who fancy themselves workers of magic. These have ranged from a stout walking staff, more than six feet tall, belonging to an old man in County Cork, Ireland, to a curiously twisted twig not even three inches long that was always in the possession of an old crone of Glasgow.
But regardless of form or substance, all of the self-proclaimed wizards and witches told me the same thing: Whenever a worker of magic expires during a magical effort, his or her wand inexplicably snaps itself, breaking into two pieces. By this token, they say, they know the magician has actually passed away from the circles of this world and into the Great Beyond; for it is fully within the powers of many wizards and witches, they say, to feign death so perfectly that no one could say the wonder-worker had even a spark of life remaining. And so no witch or wizard is ever buried until his or her wand has been found to be broken in twain.
Rose Rita looked up. “So what, Lewis?”
“My gosh, Rose Rita, don’t you see? I told you on the phone that Uncle Jonathan’s wand is missing! This says that when a wizard dies, his wand breaks. What if it works the other way too? What if somebody breaks a wizard’s wand? Do you think it would kill him?”
“No,” said Rose Rita firmly. “And I remember a couple of years back, when a magician friend of Mrs. Zimmermann and your Uncle Jonathan died. They went down to his house in Florida, remember? And they had a memorial service for him and broke his wand then. So this isn’t true. A wand doesn’t automatically break when a wizard dies. It must happen only if the magician dies while using the wand.”
“I’d forgotten,” said Lewis as he appeared to relax a bit. He fished a handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his face. “Phew! I came all the way over to show this to you because I was afraid to show it to Uncle Jonathan.”
“You didn’t use your crutch?” asked Rose Rita.
Lewis shook his head. “I stopped using it last weekend. My ankle’s better, as long as I keep the stretchy bandage on it. And I didn’t exactly run.”
Rose Rita felt sorry for her friend. Lewis’s face looked as if he was worried half to death. She wasn’t bothered by superstition herself—well, not much, anyway. She had a couple of lucky charms that she really didn’t take seriously, and when she played ball, she always liked to wear her lucky socks and Detroit Tigers cap. But she’d never bothered about tossing spilled salt over her shoulder, as her dad did, to “hit the devil in the eye” and avert bad luck. And she never tried to avoid a black cat crossing her path, and more than once she’d walked under a ladder or had broken a mirror with no bad luck at all, let alone seven years of it.
“I’m surprised your uncle hasn’t found that cane by now.”
Lewis gulped a deep breath. “He’s been searching for more than a week now. Mrs. Zimmermann says it’s crazy, it’s just as if it’s vanished from the face of the earth. Uncle Jonathan thought he might ask someone about it, one of his old college teachers who is also a sorcerer, but he hasn’t been able to get him on the phone.”
“Hmm,” said Rose Rita. “It seems to me we could figure this out if we put our minds to it. When was the last time you saw the cane?”
Lewis thought. “It must have been at the party, when he was using it to do his magic. But you were closer to him than I was, especially there at the end.”
“With the purple smoke,” agreed Rose Rita. She scowled thoughtfully. “I know he had the wand then. Right after the show ended, he went inside to wash his hands before lunch. I don’t remember seeing the cane around after that, so he must have taken it inside with him. I suppose you’ve checked the kitchen and the first-floor bathroom.”
“About twenty times,” responded Lewis with a hint of sarcasm. “Rose Rita, we practically turned the house inside out! And if Mrs. Zimmermann can’t even find it by magic—”
Rose Rita nodded, nibbling her lower lip. “I know, I know, it must really be gone. Hmm. Okay, who’s been to your house since the party?”
“Just you!” exclaimed Lewis.
“No, not just me. Mrs. Zimmermann’s been there, and one day Hal came over to borrow a book. And there’s the man who reads the gas meter, and the one who reads the electric meter, and the mail-man, and—”
“Well, sure,” said Lewis. “And the milkman, and so on. But I thought you meant, you know, anyone suspicious who actually came inside.”
Rose Rita closed the book and tapped her fingers on it. Behind her round black-rimmed spectacles, her eyes were bright. “Watson, the game is afoot!” she said, quoting a famous line from a story about Sherlock Holmes, the great detective. “During the party, everyone was going in and out to use the bathroom and wash their hands and so on. I’ll bet you anything one of the kids stole the wand!”
“And then what—took it to Timbuktu?” demanded Lewis. “Rose Rita, if that wand was anywhere within a hundred miles, Mrs. Zimmermann says she would’ve found it with her magic!”
“What,” asked Rose Rita slowly, “if it was farther away than that? What if it was in Boston, with David?”
“That’s crazy,” objected Lewis. “You know David wouldn’t steal my uncle’s cane! He’s scared silly of magic, after that deal with his house being haunted!”
Rose Rita had to agree. Their friend David was in some ways even more timid than Lewis. “But what if another kid took it and that kid and his family are somewhere on vacation, in Miami Beach or sunny California?”
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��His family?”
“Or hers,” said Rose Rita. “But there were only three other girls there, remember: Mildred Pietra, Diane Tieg, and Sandra Costick. The other nine guests were boys.”
Lewis took a deep breath. Rose Rita was a great friend of Mrs. Zimmermann, and she always hated to hear him offer the least little criticism of her. “I guess it’s possible. Mrs. Zimmermann admits that she might be fooled if the cane is a long way off,” he said.
To his relief, Rose Rita just nodded. “Okay. So ten boys and four girls were at the party.”
“Nine and three,” said Lewis.
“I’m counting us,” explained Rose Rita. “Fourteen in all. And if you want to count your uncle and Mrs. Zimmermann, there were sixteen.”
“Yeah,” said Lewis. “I invited Hal so there wouldn’t be thirteen kids, I remember.”
Rose Rita shook her head. “Don’t start that nonsense about thirteen!”
“Well—the number three seems to have some sinister meaning!” Lewis exclaimed. “Why not thirteen?”
“Because if you start looking for it, you’ll see thirteen everywhere! Your house is at 101 High Street. If you add those numbers together, one plus zero plus one, you get two, right? And if you add two to the last one in your address, you get 103! And if you disregard the zero because it’s nothing, you get thirteen! Woooo!” She laughed a little at Lewis’s stricken expression. “Oh, relax! It’s just silly numerology, that’s all. Look, my house is here at 39 Mansion Street. If you add those numbers together, you get twelve! But one and two are three, so if you replace the two with the three—oh, come on, Lewis! Keep your hair on your head, for Pete’s sake. I’m talking nonsense, trying to show you there’s nothing to this.”