“Sorry,” muttered Lewis.
“Where was I? Okay, I didn’t take the cane, and you didn’t take it, and I’m pretty sure you’re right that David wouldn’t dare even touch it, let alone take it. So that leaves us eleven suspects. I’ll bet you anything we can solve this case!”
“But it might not have been anybody from the party,” objected Lewis. “A burglar might have come in right in the middle of the night! Or what about when I got hit by the ball and Uncle Jonathan rushed over? The house was empty then, and empty again later when he took me to the hospital with my ankle.”
“But why would a burglar sneak into your house and steal just the cane?” asked Rose Rita reasonably. “It was kind of battered and beat-up, anyway. I think if there were a cane-napper at work, he’d take a better-looking one, like that shiny black one with the gold head that your uncle sometimes uses when he wants to look snazzy.”
“Okay,” said Lewis, apparently giving up his objections. “So let’s assume that one of the kids took the cane just as a prank, or because he wanted to pretend to be a magician. So what?”
Rose Rita reached for the phone. “So first we make sure Hal Everit didn’t do it. What’s his number?”
“I don’t know.”
Rose Rita called the operator, spoke briefly, and then hung up, frowning. “There’s no listing for an Everit family,” she said. “Maybe they don’t have a phone. And I have no idea where he lives, do you?”
Lewis shook his head. “But I don’t think he took the wand.”
Rose Rita drummed her fingers. “I don’t know. He pretended with that pencil, remember!”
“Yes,” said Lewis, “but then when he thought he’d done some magic, he ran like a scared rabbit.”
“I don’t really think he’s the thief either, to tell you the truth,” confessed Rose Rita. “He lives somewhere in town, and Mrs. Zimmermann would have sensed the wand if it were that close. So let’s question him, and if he’s in the clear, we can get him to help us interrogate the other suspects! If we find that somebody’s left town on vacation, or that somebody’s parents mysteriously turned into Surinam toads, then that’s our culprit. Are you with me?”
With a show of reluctance, at last Lewis agreed. But he didn’t look happy about it.
As luck would have it, as Rose Rita and Lewis walked toward town, they met Hal Everit coming up the hill toward them. He gave them a sheepish smile. “Hi,” he said. “I was just coming to ask how you were doing, Lewis. I heard about how you hurt your ankle, but it doesn’t look too bad. You’re not limping or anything.”
“It’s okay,” said Lewis grudgingly. In a way, he would have liked to claim that his ankle was worse than it actually was. It was sort of fun to be the center of concerned attention. But he knew that Rose Rita wouldn’t let him get away with that.
“Listen,” broke in Rose Rita, “something very serious happened at Lewis’s house, and we think it took place on the day of the party. There’s a sneak thief in New Zebedee!”
“A thief?” asked Hal, looking startled.
“Someone stole Jonathan Barnavelt’s cane!” said Rose Rita, with the air of a TV detective.
“Gosh, was it expensive?” asked Hal.
Rose Rita jumped right in: “It was made from the heartwood of the Eastern Acacia tree, grown on the banks of the river Nile and harvested only once every century, under a waxing moon, by blindfolded workers who wear golden sandals. King Richard the Lionheart got a staff made of it during the Crusades, and later Robin Hood made it into his best bow—”
“Uh, no, it wasn’t all that expensive.” Lewis shook his head and shot Rose Rita a warning glance. “Not really, but it was special. Uh, he inherited it from my great-grandfather. It has sentimental value.” Lewis was normally an honest kid, and lying did not come easily to him. Rose Rita wanted to be a famous fiction writer when she grew up, and she always enjoyed letting her imagination run wild. Right now, though, there was no reason to get Hal too interested in the cane.
“That’s terrible,” Hal was saying. “I like your uncle a lot, Lewis. He really made me think he was doing magic, you know, sorcery, instead of just tricks. Now that I’ve read your book about conjuring, though, I can see it’s all simple trickery and—well, anyway, who do you think took it?”
“You didn’t accidentally pick it up, did you?” asked Rose Rita sharply.
“Me?” Hal looked astonished. “No! I mean, you would’ve seen me, Lewis! Remember, you walked around to the front of the house with me when I was leaving?”
Lewis furrowed his brow. Now that Hal mentioned it, he did have a memory of opening the front gate for Hal. And he recalled Hal walking down High Street with his hands in his pockets. “That’s right,” he said. “I would’ve seen you.”
“I’m sorry,” said Rose Rita, “but we had to ask.”
Hal shrugged. “One must rule out everything,” he said. “No offense taken. But I don’t know much about the kids at the party. Which of them do you think took it?”
“We don’t know,” said Rose Rita. “That’s what we want to try to find out, and we need your help. It’s a mystery, and we can solve it!”
“Like the Hardy Boys or Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade,” put in Lewis.
Hal gave him a puzzled look, and Lewis realized that none of those names, all famous fictional detectives in books or on the radio and in the movies, rang a bell. “Uh, like Sherlock Holmes?” he said hopefully.
“Oh, right, I read one of those stories once,” said Hal. “It was about this man who sends a snake to kill his stepdaughter—”
“There’s no snake involved here,” said Rose Rita in a decisive voice. “Look, what we have to do is just routine, like they say in the TV show Dragnet. We have to go around and talk to all the kids who were at the party and find out if any of them saw anything. Or if any of them act suspicious.”
“Oh,” said Hal, still looking a bit confused.
“Look,” said Lewis, “besides you, there are eight other guys who were guests at the party. Now, we don’t think it was David Keller. So we have to talk to seven different guys and see if any of them know anything about the missing cane.”
Hal listened to Lewis, nodding to show he understood, and in the end he couldn’t offer any suggestions to improve their plan. They walked on into town, and Rose Rita set off to find the three girls and question them, leaving Hal and Lewis to make the round of the boys.
When Hal and Lewis climbed up the hill to Lewis’s house, they came slowly, because Lewis was limping again. His ankle was a lot better, but the two of them had walked all over town that afternoon, and now it was tired out. Rose Rita sat on the front steps. “What did you find out?” she asked.
Lewis collapsed to sit beside her, and Hal remained standing on the front walk. “I found out that the kids live all over town,” Lewis puffed. “I didn’t think my ankle was going to hold out! Any luck?”
Rose Rita hadn’t had any success at all. “Two of mine are out of town,” she explained. “Diane is off at a band camp in Ann Arbor, and Sandra’s folks are touring the Rocky Mountains with her this summer. I talked to Diane’s grandmother and to Sandra’s next-door neighbor. And the third one was Mildred Pietra, and I remember seeing her get in her mom’s car after the party—without a cane.”
“Well,” said Lewis, “two of ours were out of town too. Alan Fuller and his parents must be away on vacation, and Trip McConnell is up in the North Peninsula, spending some time with his grandparents.”
“How about the others?”
Hal took up the tale: “No luck, Rose Rita. Nobody remembers seeing the cane after the magic show at all, and nobody acted suspicious. Most of the kids left in twos and threes at about the same time, and it would have been difficult in the extreme for any of them to hide something as big as a cane.”
“So we’re right back where we started,” said Lewis.
Rose Rita disagreed. “No, we have something to go on. We’ve got four suspects who have
disappeared,” she said.
“Oh, come on!” said Lewis, irritated by his throbbing ankle and his long, fruitless afternoon. “Nobody’s disappeared. We know where everyone is, except for Alan, and I’ll bet if we went back and asked the Fullers’ neighbors where they are, somebody would know that too.”
Hal said, “It’s too bad we can’t use magic. If we could, we might find a way to trace the thief. I’ll bet Count Cagliostro could have done it. He was a whiz at finding hidden treasures!”
Rose Rita raised her eyebrows, but Lewis just shook his head. “Yes,” he said pointedly. “It’s a shame that magic doesn’t really work.”
Hal sighed. “Look, I’d better get on home. I’ll check in with you if I think of any other way we could help find the cane. I like your uncle, Lewis, and I’d like to help if I can.”
“Sure.”
As soon as Hal was out of earshot, Rose Rita said, “I think we may very well find that one of those four kids has the wand, Lewis. And I’ll tell you something else: The thief probably wasn’t Diane. I mean, Ann Arbor isn’t that far away. Mrs. Zimmermann should have picked up on the cane’s mystic vibrations, at least a little bit, if that’s where it was. So that leaves Sandra, Alan, and Trip. Come on, let’s go.”
Groaning, Lewis followed her across the lawn and up to Mrs. Zimmermann’s door. Mrs. Zimmermann let them inside, and they settled down at her table. Lewis liked her house, where most things, from the rugs on the floor to the oil paintings that Mrs. Zimmermann had collected in France from a lot of famous artists, and even to the toilet paper in the bathrooms, were purple. Mrs. Zimmermann listened as Rose Rita told her about their deductions and their investigation.
“Heavenly days!” she exclaimed when Rose Rita had finished. “Well, I’ll give you two top marks for energy, but as far as solving the mystery—well, no, you haven’t done that, have you?”
“But,” insisted Rose Rita, “if the cane were far enough away, Lewis says you might not be able to sense it, right?”
“Well, no,” replied Mrs. Zimmermann slowly. “Perhaps not. But somehow it feels to me as if the cane isn’t just missing, but magically concealed. Now, I can’t explain it. It’s a magicky, witchy sort of feeling. It’s like—oh, it’s like even if the cane is beyond my range, I should still be able to see the shape of the cane in my mind. Imagine a jigsaw puzzle with one cane-shaped piece missing! That’s sort of the feeling I have, except the jigsaw piece hasn’t even left a blank space behind it after vanishing. Still, I have to confess that it’s just possible the cane is simply somewhere beyond my radar, hundreds or even thousands of miles away. But why on earth would a guest at your party have taken it?”
“Because Uncle Jonathan was waving it around at the party,” said Lewis wearily. “Hal thought the cane might even be a magic wand. He said something about that just before that baseball hit me. And if he thought so, maybe someone else did too.”
“Possibly,” agreed Mrs. Zimmermann. “I have to admit I am getting worried. Something is going on that I can’t quite grasp, and that always puts me on pins and needles. Well, be that as it may, I have dinner in the oven. It’s my famous flaky-crust chicken pot pie, so if you will call and ask your folks’ permission, Rose Rita, and then you will call your uncle over, Lewis, we shall further consult over a nice hot meal.”
Lewis’s mouth watered at the invitation, and the pie was just as tasty as he remembered, beautiful white chunks of chicken floating in a golden sauce with peas, carrots, and tasty little dumplings about the size of marbles.
As they all ate, Uncle Jonathan heard the story too, and he shrugged off their failure. “I will just bet you,” he said, “that I’ve done something boneheaded with the cane and I’ll find it sooner or later. As the old guys at the barber shop say, my remembery isn’t what it used to be!”
“Does a wizard’s wand really break itself when the wizard dies?” asked Rose Rita so suddenly that Lewis choked and had to gulp from his glass of milk.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Zimmermann, “and no.”
“What Prunella means,” said Uncle Jonathan, “is that if a wizard is actually trying to use magic at the time of his demise, his wand will almost always snap itself—even if it’s nowhere around him at the moment, even if he’s not using the wand in his magic. But if a wizard just passes away of natural causes, no, it doesn’t automatically break. That’s why at a magician’s funeral, his or her friends will break the wand ceremonially. That releases anything of the magician’s spirit that is still clinging to the world and lets him or her go to a final reward.”
“What if someone breaks a living magician’s wand?” asked Rose Rita.
Lewis glared at her. He did not want to hear this.
But Mrs. Zimmermann, speaking with authority in her voice, said, “Well, there’s a little more to it in that case. When a wizard passes on and the wand either breaks or is snapped, all the wizard’s spells cease and their effects evaporate. I think that if a wizard’s wand is broken accidentally while the wizard is still alive, it would immediately weaken the magician’s power, just as mine once was weakened by a vengeful spirit. That could be recovered, in time, just like my own magic, which became strong again when I got my present wand. But if an enemy chose to break a magician’s wand on purpose, after having spoken certain spells, then all the spells cast by that magician would freeze, would become permanent, and might even turn against the magician.”
“But if they’re just harmless illusion spells, nothing would happen,” put in Uncle Jonathan hastily.
Mrs. Zimmermann looked at Lewis for a long moment and then said softly, “I am not so sure. Jonathan, you said that Lewis deserves to know about this, so I’ll tell the truth. Even in the case of illusion spells, well, I think the wizard might suffer something like a mental breakdown if his wand was maliciously snapped by an evil wizard. No one really knows much about that, though, and if ifs and supposes were posies of roses, we’d all have a colorful summer.” She smiled sympathetically at Lewis. “Oh, I know you’re worried, Lewis. But look on the bright side: Even though the wand is missing, it can’t have been broken. Jonathan would certainly have sensed that—it would have pained him. And as for an enemy breaking it, well, Brush Mush doesn’t seem to be any odder than usual to me.”
“Thank you!” said Uncle Jonathan loudly.
Mrs. Zimmermann leaned forward, her eyes sparkling mischievously behind her spectacles. “Of course,” she said, “even at his most normal, Jonathan Barnavelt is quite odd enough!”
Everyone laughed at her joke, but Lewis’s heart wasn’t in it. He kept darting nervous glances at his uncle, looking for any sign of a mental breakdown and wondering if that—a broken wand, and then a broken mind—might be the second and third bad things in a curse on Uncle Jonathan.
CHAPTER 8
DAYS PASSED, AND NO one could find any trace of the missing wand. At breakfast on the last Thursday morning in June, Uncle Jonathan said casually, “Lewis, would you mind spending the night over at Mrs. Zimmermann’s house this evening? I have an out of town errand to do, and it may keep me away until sometime tomorrow.”
“Out of town? Where are you going?” asked Lewis, his spoon with its load of cereal and milk poised halfway up from the bowl.
“I’m going to drive up to Lansing to see if I can find out what’s happened to Dr. Marville,” replied his uncle with an anxious smile. “I can’t help worrying about my old friend, you see. I’ve had an uneasy feeling about him for weeks, and no one I’ve called seems to know where he is or what he’s up to. Oh, he’s probably just off on summer vacation, but I have to admit I’m concerned about his well-being. After all, he’s nearly ninety, and I hate to think of him in his house all alone, maybe lying on the floor with a broken leg!”
Lewis didn’t say anything, but he thought that he understood just where his own overactive imagination had come from.
Uncle Jonathan finished his cup of coffee and then in a voice that sounded a little too casual to Lewis, he
added, “Anyway, I’m leaving for Lansing in a couple of hours or so, and I may not get back home until late tonight or perhaps even tomorrow afternoon. Now, I know you’d get nervous here in the house all by yourself, so Florence has kindly agreed to put you up in her guest room.”
“Why can’t I go with you?” asked Lewis. “My ankle is much better, and—”
“No. I simply don’t want to have you out at all hours of the night,” his uncle said firmly. “And I may need to do some snooping around in Lansing. I’m sorry, and I really don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but I can do that sort of thing a lot better on my own.”
“Then why can’t I just stay here at home?” asked Lewis. “It’s not like I need a babysitter or anything!”
His uncle grinned sympathetically. “Oh, you’re old enough to spend one night here in the house alone, and I really don’t think anything bad could possibly happen, especially not after Florence put those magical whammies of hers on the joint. Still, just for your peace of mind—and I’ll admit it, for mine too!—I’d much rather you take advantage of Florence’s hospitality, just for tonight.”
“Okay,” said Lewis with reluctance. He stared unhappily at his bowl of cereal. He had lost all of his appetite.
Lewis knew it was about a fifty-mile drive north to Lansing, the state capital of Michigan. His fifth-grade class had even taken a field trip there once, crowding for the ride onto a jolting, clanking yellow school bus that smelled a lot like vomit. It had seemed to take forever to get to the city, and then the class had toured the State Capitol building with its stretched-up cupola like an egg with the narrow end pointing straight up and its walls covered with nine acres of decorative paintings of everything from hibiscus flowers to worms.
Remembering his own visit, Lewis guessed it would take Uncle Jonathan about an hour and a half to drive there and the same amount of time to drive back. If he left at eleven in the morning and had good luck finding his old college professor, maybe he would be back by ten or eleven o’clock at night. Anyway, Lewis determined he would try to stay awake at least that long.
The Sign of the Sinister Sorcerer Page 8
