“Friday,” said Rose Rita. “July first.”
“No,” said Mrs. Zimmermann, raising her finger and tilting her head. “It’s Saturday, July second. The witching hour has just struck.”
And then Lewis heard it, from the study down the hall: The cranky old grandfather clock was striking midnight. It sounded horrible, like a trunk full of tin plates falling slowly and solemnly down a flight of stairs.
For the first year or so that he had lived with his uncle, Lewis had come to hate the clunky, clanky gonging of that old clock. It was a sound that woke him up sometimes at night, it was an unmusical, grating noise, it was—well, at that moment, it was the sweetest sound that Lewis had ever heard.
CHAPTER 13
SUNDAY PASSED QUIETLY. THEN the next morning, the Fourth of July dawned overcast, but as the day went on, a warm breeze from the west swept the gray clouds off toward Detroit and Toledo. Lewis couldn’t get used to the fact that his uncle was back safe and sound. He still felt very wobbly on his legs, but he followed Uncle Jonathan around the house like a puppy, bursting with questions and getting no answers at all. But that afternoon Rose Rita came over, and so did Mrs. Zimmermann, and in the Barnavelt parlor they sat sorting out everything that had happened.
“Where did you go when Schlectesherz zapped you?” asked Rose Rita.
Uncle Jonathan made a face and tugged at his red beard. “I don’t really know! Into the abomination of desolation, or the not-so-wonderful Land of Ooze, or some alternate dimension, I guess. It all seemed like a dream—one of those dreams you get when you’re in the hospital after an operation and you’re still fighting off the anesthetic. What saved my sanity was that Dr. Marville was there too, or at least his spirit was. He spooked me at first because he appeared to be wearing that maroon robe that Lewis talked so much about, but that was the only way he could take form so I could see him.”
“Wait, wait. Start at the beginning. How did old Evil Heart catch you out?” asked Mrs. Zimmermann.
“My fault,” confessed Uncle Jonathan. “I’d spent a fruitless day in Lansing trying to hunt down Dr. Marville, or at least find someone who knew what had happened to him. I finally tracked down his housekeeper, who told me that at the end of April she had come in one morning and had found a typewritten note, supposedly from the doc, telling her that he had been called away on urgent family business and would not need her services until he got back in touch with her. When I thought back, that was exactly when I had begun to feel that something had happened to my old teacher. Anyway, then I had a lead.”
“And how did that lead to your capture?” insisted Mrs. Zimmermann.
Uncle Jonathan grinned. “I’m getting to that, Florence! Well, I’m afraid I broke the law next, because I went over to Dr. Marville’s house—I’d been there once already, but no one answered the doorbell, of course—and found a way to slip the lock on the back door. It looked as if a tornado had ripped through the place! Obviously once my late unlamented magical classmate had made sure no one would interrupt him, he had returned to ransack the house. I found this.” Uncle Jonathan reached into his pants pocket and produced a thin piece of wood, one end badly splintered.
“Dr. Marville’s wand?” asked Lewis.
“I think so—the very tip of it, anyway. The rest was just a scattering of splinters.” Uncle Jonathan sighed. “I suspected then that Schlectesherz had really and truly done away with Dr. Marville. The only other times I’ve seen a wand explode like that have been when a magician was desperately trying to defend himself—and failed.
“Anyway, I drove back to New Zebedee after dark, thanking my lucky stars that I’d asked Florence to put those protective spells on Castle Barnavelt. I remember that I’d just pulled the car into the garage when I heard—I thought I heard—Lewis call out, ‘Help!’ I rushed out, and right into a spell that a shadowy figure had just fired at me, and the next thing I knew, I was in La-La Land, with the spirit of my old teacher drifting nearby. If it hadn’t been for his encouragement, I might have floated completely away from the earth forever.”
“What did Dr. Marville tell you?” asked Lewis.
Uncle Jonathan’s expression became grim. “Dr. Marville told me of how Schlectesherz had spent his life gaining more and more magic power. Once some outraged citizens tried to lynch him, but they failed.”
Lewis said, “Hal told me once he had fallen off a scaffold.”
“Not Hal, but his master. That was old Schlectesherz talking through his dummy, like the ventriloquist Edgar Bergen speaks for Charlie McCarthy. Anyway, Dr. Marville let me know that Schlectesherz had attacked him and had destroyed his body—but his spirit was lingering behind in that misty halfway dimension, desperately trying to help us. Dr. Marville had tried to break through to our world in spectral form to warn me of the danger, but he could not manage to hold his shape for very long at all, and he could only briefly manifest close to where Schlectesherz and Hal happened to be. I suspect that is because Schlectesherz used the magic he stole from Dr. Marville to create Hal in the first place, so the doc could still call on it in a limited way. That was why Lewis glimpsed him for a second at the party and then later Rose Rita saw him down on the athletic field. However, Dr. Marville eventually learned that he could project a stronger image of himself into our magical hall mirror. That was why Lewis saw him there! And the number three that he kept sending was supposed to make me think of the third member of our group, old Adolfus. You see, we had a kind of silly rule that Doc Marville had adopted from the Golden Circle. The teacher calls himself One, his first pupil is Two—that was me—and the other pupil is Three. I should have made the connection, but I honestly thought the figure in the mirror was some evil force, and it never occurred to me that it was One trying to tell Two about Three!”
“So Dr. Marville was a good guy?” asked Lewis.
“He was one of the very best,” said Uncle Jonathan quietly. He fished a bandanna from his pocket and loudly blew his nose. “Anyway, Dr. Marville let me know that Schlectesherz was frantically trying to get into my house to find the last thing that the two of us did together magically—our senior project. Since Adolfus did not receive his wand, he had no claim to it. He wanted it, though! He’d already picked up enough magic to create that foul hollow puppet he called Hal. Lord only knows what his ambitions were! To resurrect the German Reich, maybe, or to turn everyone into his slaves and minions. If he’d laid hands on our senior project, he might just have been on his way.”
“What did you do?” asked Rose Rita.
Uncle Jonathan smiled. “Dr. Marville had been a teacher all his life. In that oddball spirit world, he continued to teach me. I learned how to make contact—just the briefest flicker at first—with my house. I could vaguely see through the enchanted stained-glass windows. And then I did the hardest magical feat I have ever performed in my life: I pulled all of my own magic, every single solitary particle of it, right out of the house and into whatever existence I had in that twilight world. I suspected that once he unmade our mirror, old Schlectesherz was planning something awful for me, maybe intending to break my cane and leave me trapped forever, or maybe pull me back to earth and destroy me in a magical duel, so I needed all my strength. Then in the darkness I sensed something happening. I felt the change in the atmosphere when Schlectesherz cast his evil spell over my house—my house! But even so I couldn’t find my way back again!”
“Until we bluffed Schlectesherz. It’s a good thing he didn’t stop to realize that inside a house over which he had cast spells, my magic was absolutely useless!”
“But the mirror was flashing red,” said Lewis.
With a wink, Mrs. Zimmermann said, “Not by magic! We found your red flashlight, and I used that to fake a magical glow in the looking glass—and then Rose Rita put a high, hard fastball right across the plate and broke the mirror. That gave you time to smash the evil magician’s wand!”
Uncle Jonathan nodded. “And the moment his wand broke, I saw a kind of door
way glimmering into existence right in front of me, and the spirit of Dr. Marville told me ‘Go!’ And the rest you know.”
“It was my fault Hal got inside, and I helped him cast his spell,” said Lewis. “I’m sorry.”
“He tricked you,” replied Uncle Jonathan. “And you were trying to help me. I’m proud of you, Lewis.”
“What really happened to Hal?” asked Rose Rita.
With a sigh, Uncle Jonathan said, “There never was a real Hal. He was just an empty shell, manipulated by magic. I’ve checked with the school authorities, by the way. They have no record of Hal’s ever being in New Zebedee—and I’ll bet that even his teachers don’t remember him now. All part of the magic.”
“Hey,” said Rose Rita. “That means I won the history medal!”
“Schlectesherz is really gone?” asked Lewis.
“For good, Lewis, thanks to you. Without his wand, he didn’t have a hope. The tear in space and time vacuumed him up and sent his spirit packing. He won’t be able to come back in any shape, form, or fashion.”
“How do you know?” asked Rose Rita. “Can’t he come back like Dr. Marville?”
“No,” said Uncle Jonathan firmly. “Because his spirit has been called to its eternal reward, which I am afraid will not be a very nice one.”
Mrs. Zimmermann said, “I am sorry, Weird Beard, for breaking your magical mirror. But why didn’t that steal all your power away?”
“Oh, there’s a pretty good reason, Pruny Face. I’ll show you!” Uncle Jonathan got up and walked out of the room. A minute later he returned with a blobby, splotchy painting of a pinto horse, the one Lewis had noticed in his uncle’s bedroom when he and Hal had been searching. It looked like a paint-by-numbers picture, done by someone without any talent, or even the ability to read numbers. He also had a small can of turpentine and a handful of rags. “Watch this,” he said. He began to scrub at the paint, and it melted away, revealing a bright square of glass.
“A mirror?” asked Lewis.
“The mirror,” corrected his uncle with a conspiratorial wink. “The one that belongs in the coat stand in the hall. You see, I have a confession to make: After you had gone to bed the night before my trip, I took a square mirror of about the right size from an antique wash-stand up on the third floor and substituted it for the real one in the coat stand. I spent a lot of the night before I was going to search for Dr. Marville painting my horsie picture on the real one, just to disguise it. Then I stuck it in a crummy old frame and hung it on my wall. By then I had started to think that maybe my old college chum Schlectesherz might just be behind it all, and if he was—”
“Then the magic mirror was what old what’s-his-face would come looking for!” said Rose Rita triumphantly.
“A-plus!” said Uncle Jonathan. “All right, this is clean enough. Come with me!”
In the front hall, Uncle Jonathan tugged the heavy coat stand away from the wall, and going to work with a screwdriver, he soon had removed the old, broken mirror. He replaced it with the now-gleaming one he had disguised as a painting, re-set the screws, and then pushed the stand back into place.
“Viola!” he said, making Mrs. Zimmermann wince.
“He means voila!” she said in a grumpy voice. “Which means, ‘Hey, everybody, look at me!’”
“No—look at my old friend. So long, Doc,” murmured Uncle Jonathan softly and sadly.
In the mirror, the robed figure floated in air beneath a blue sky. It threw them all a salute, and then magically transformed into a white dove that rose into the clear sky. A moment later, the mirror showed only their faces.
“He’s gone,” Mrs. Zimmermann said. “May he rest in peace.”
“Amen to that,” returned Uncle Jonathan.
“Will the mirror still be magic?” asked Lewis anxiously.
“You bet it will, nephew. It has no special significance—it was just a thingamabob that would demonstrate our magic power by tuning into exotic dimensions and places. Now it will be more magical than ever because the bad influences lingering on it from the time when it was made have now gone away. I expect—”
The phone rang, and Jonathan went to answer it. He had a short conversation and then came back looking smug. “Well, well, well,” he said. “That was His Honor Sam Parker, the mayor of New Zebedee himself!”
Lewis said, “Oh, gosh! Maybe you’re still in trouble! I forgot to tell you—he called and left a message.”
Uncle Jonathan waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it, Lewis, no harm done. And no, I am not in trouble! In fact, it’s the other way around—the town has got itself into a pickle, and guess who’s going to get it out?”
“What’s going on?” asked Mrs. Zimmermann suspiciously.
“Wait and see,” retorted Uncle Jonathan with an air of mystery. “And I hope after I pull this wonder off, you’ll realize what a great man you’ve had living next door to you all these years!”
He wouldn’t even tell Lewis what was up. But he chased them all out of his study that afternoon and emerged from it only at twilight, clutching his cane. “Come on!” he ordered. “Haggy, go get your umbrella!”
They all piled into the Muggins Simoon and careened down to the athletic field, where quite a crowd had gathered. The mayor came hurrying up. “Thank heavens!” he said. “My nephew says you did a wonderful display when you threw your party, and when we didn’t get our shipment—are you ready, Jonathan?”
“Ready, Your Honor,” said Jonathan smartly. “I’ve, uh, set everything up down past the trees there. Keep everyone away from the work area! We don’t want any accidents.”
“No, no, of course not! Thank you!”
“Follow me!” said Uncle Jonathan as Mayor Parker hurried back to the speaker’s stand that had been set up in front of the bleachers. He strode purposefully across the field, toward the dark line of trees where Rose Rita had once glimpsed the floating hooded figure.
They passed through the trees and emerged in a broad clearing near the railroad tracks. “Okay,” said Uncle Jonathan. “Here’s the deal: Because a shipping company made a bad mistake, the Fourth of July fireworks were not delivered this afternoon. And the mayor thinks I have my own private store—that’s why the whole town was gossiping about my magic show, Frizzy Wig! They wanted me to help out with the display this year, and now I’ve agreed to give the town a fireworks extravaganza.”
Mrs. Zimmermann grinned. She held out her umbrella, and it immediately elongated into her magical staff. “Ready, Frazzle Face?”
“Ladies first, Prunella!”
Lewis gasped as a brilliant purple streak burst from the tip of Mrs. Zimmermann’s cane, rose impossibly high, trailing a luminous, sinuous tail behind it, and at last burst into a million shooting stars. He heard the distant crowd gasp, “Ahhhh!”
“Watch this!” boomed Uncle Jonathan. He raised his cane, and from it shot a half-dozen silver rockets, screaming up into the dark sky to burst in showers of red, green, gold, blue, and yellow streamers.
“Oh, yeah?” asked Mrs. Zimmermann. “Hold on to your hat!” She fired off a hundred graceful spiraling sparks that transformed as they rose into pale purple pulsing forms like neon jellyfish.
“Try this one on for size!” laughed Uncle Jonathan.
Rose Rita tugged at Lewis’s sleeve. “We might as well sit down and enjoy it,” she said as a red, white, and blue American eagle made of fireworks flapped its wings and soared higher and higher.
The show went on for hours, and later everyone in New Zebedee said it was the best Fourth of July ever. And Lewis, who knew how much he had almost lost and how grateful he was to have his uncle back, wholeheartedly agreed.
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The Sign of the Sinister Sorcerer Page 12
