Ruthie nodded even though she wanted to deny it and avoid the attention.
“That’s us!” Jack admitted with a grin.
“I thought so! We were just talking about that whole thing the other day …,” the guard continued on, and on, and on.
How long is she going to talk? And will she stop watching us? Ruthie fretted. They smiled politely until finally an elderly couple approached with a question. The chatty guard left to help them find the elevator. Jack held the key ready and in two paces they were back at the corridor door, swept into the swirl of magic and shrinking.
“Man, I thought she’d never stop!” Jack said on the other side of the door.
“I know, I know.” By the time they had made their trek up and though the air duct to the American corridor, it was nearly four o’clock.
The ladder was still hanging where they had left it, behind the South Carolina room. They had become so expert at traversing the canyon of the corridor, the ladders and ledges, Ruthie felt like a trapeze artist—agile and fast.
“You wait here, okay?” she said to Jack from the ledge. “I’ll be right back.”
She checked for a clear shot, then popped into the room. The ledger was where they’d left it, on the shelf of the cabinet. She put it into her messenger bag and felt a tingle of satisfaction. She had the proof that Kendra’s family needed, safe in her bag, ready to be reunited with Phoebe’s descendants.
“Got it!” she said to Jack, back out on the ledge.
“Great.”
“And we still have time to check on the coin,” Ruthie added.
They had to cross the corridor to get to A12, and before she had even finished her sentence Jack was on the ladder heading down.
“Race ya!” Jack called up to Ruthie. He jumped down to the floor and ran off into the darkness across the corridor.
The distance to the other side was only about ten feet, but at their size it felt like a hundred feet. “You had a head start!” she shouted, watching him become a blurry shape in the gray shadows.
But suddenly Jack stopped—inexplicably—just shy of the battery at the end of the chain.
“Ruthie! Help!”
“What’s the matter?” she called, picking up speed.
“I’m stuck!” He sounded panicked.
Now Ruthie ran. As she came near she could see that Jack appeared to have frozen in midstride. He could move, but not much.
Was this some new twist to the magic?
“Wait!” he exclaimed.
But it was too late. Ruthie felt something attach to her left arm and then her left foot. She tried to pull away, but the substance clung to her arm and sleeve, stickier than chewing gum on a hot sidewalk.
“Oh, this is awful! It’s a spiderweb!” Ruthie couldn’t believe it. The web filament was clear, like fishing line, and nearly impossible to see in the dim light. It was anchored to the wall and the floor, forming a triangular wedge just the right size to capture five-inch-tall prey.
Jack tried to pull himself free. “I’ve always read how strong spider silk is. They weren’t exaggerating!”
“Eww!” Ruthie squealed, and then a horrible thought came to her. Spiders make spiderwebs. What if …? She turned her head and, looking up, saw her worst nightmare coming toward them. “Jack!” she screamed.
He saw it too. And he was nearer to it. It wasn’t a pale little house spider, but a nasty, black furry one. Only the fur looked like barbed armor and had a kind of icy sheen. It was crawling down the wall toward them.
Ruthie looked up once again at the creature armed with weapons for trapping and killing. Pointy toothlike antennae protruded from the lower half of its head and waved about blindly on a search for prey. It didn’t exactly have a face but multiple eyes focused menacingly on Jack. This was no Charlotte gazing down at Wilbur. This was a monster.
“Try to get loose!” Jack shouted.
Jack’s yell seemed to have no effect on it. Are spiders deaf? Ruthie desperately tried to think if she knew anything at all about spider behavior. But she could recall nothing except that they were creepy and unpredictable and now terrifying!
The spider crept slowly—torturously—toward Jack. Each one of the eight legs moved independently but with a jointed motion so synchronized it was impossible to look away.
“I’m trying! I’m trying!” Her right arm was stuck to the web only up near her shoulder and her right foot was completely free. She had a little leverage but the spokes of the web felt like giant elastics covered in adhesive. She tried to yank her left side free but she wasn’t nearly strong enough. Nobody would be.
“Ruthie—can you get big, quick?” Jack was almost shrieking.
“My right side isn’t stuck. But the key’s in my left pocket. I have to get it out without touching the web.” This she could have done easily were it not for her allover, adrenaline-fueled shaking.
Ruthie stopped looking at the horrific creature descending on her best friend and focused on the pocket of her jeans. She kept her right arm close up against her body, wrapping it snakelike across her stomach, under the strap of her messenger bag.
“Hurry!” Jack cried out. The spider was closing in on him.
She slid her hand in; the pocket was deep. She twisted and stretched herself until finally she felt the key. She wiggled it into her palm and closed her fist around it. At first she thought, Don’t drop it! But of course, that was exactly what she needed to do.
In a small motion Ruthie flicked the key away from the web. She expected to grow in the usual smooth process. But it was as though the web were fighting back, clutching half of her body! She felt her right side rising while the left side was being pulled down. She thought she might break in two!
Finally—and although it was only seconds, Ruthie saw her life flash before her eyes—she reached the size where her body was stronger than the spider filament. She burst free of it and in the process the web ripped apart, propelling Jack several feet into the air, like a stone launched from a slingshot. He landed with a strangely loud thump, his small body lying still.
Ruthie dropped down on all fours, her head at his level.
“Jack! Jack! Are you okay?”
“Ki-kill … it” was all he could get out before his head fell back and the color rushed from his face.
She got up and raced over to the wall. The spider was scurrying away as fast as its eight legs would take it. She lifted a foot to the wall. It looked like a wiggly black bug now, no bigger than a quarter. Ordinarily she might let it be. But with Jack wounded on the floor, she had no problem doing what needed to be done. She squashed it fast.
Ruthie fell back to the floor by tiny Jack.
“Jack! Can you hear me?”
He didn’t respond and there was no rise and fall of his chest. He’s not breathing! A frantic dread seized Ruthie.
“Jack!”
12
THE EMERGENCY EXIT
AFTER WHAT SEEMED LIKE AN eternity, Jack finally opened his eyes and sucked in a huge amount of air.
“Winded,” he rasped faintly, his head still on the floor. He lay there, not moving but trying to breathe deeply for a few minutes. At last he said, “Man! I wasn’t expecting that!”
“Me neither.” Her fear of the worst now gone, Ruthie looked over the length of him. His arms and legs were splayed out and seemed limp. “Did you break anything?”
“Not sure.” He wiggled his feet and fingers in response. “I think I need to stay here for a few minutes.” He closed his eyes, then opened one and said, “You stay big, okay?”
Ruthie nodded. Still sitting, she slumped against the wall, her knees weak from the fright. It took about a half hour for Jack to feel like himself and steady enough to climb. But it was time they didn’t have.
“The museum will be closing in five minutes.”
“Sorry about the Cape Cod room,” Ruthie apologized.
Jack, still small but finally able to sit up, looked at his watch. “We’re sunk. I
t’s gonna take us twenty minutes at least to climb up and get through the duct.”
“Then we’ll just have to sneak out the door on this side—like we did before. And hope the guards believe that we were in the bathroom or something.”
“Uh … you’re not going to like this …,” Jack began.
“What?”
Jack shook his head.
“You don’t have the key to the door, do you?” she guessed. The doors to the access corridors locked automatically from both sides. For such a smart guy—he could remember every piece of trivia and history fact he’d ever read—Jack had a crummy memory for homework, tests and other things he didn’t think were important.
“It’s just that we’ve gotten so used to going under the door. I should’ve remembered.”
“Well, we can’t sit here all night,” Ruthie said, standing. “Let me lift you onto the chain as high as I can, so you don’t have to make the whole climb.” She bent down to him and picked him up between her thumb and index finger.
“Thanks,” he said.
Ruthie made sure his footing was secure in the loops, about a foot below the vent, and watched him climb a few inches. Then she lifted the tooth-pick ladder from across the corridor, wound it up and placed it in her bag before shrinking so she could join the ascent. It was slow going.
“We’re gonna be in so much trouble,” Ruthie worried after she had returned to full size again on the other side and pulled the crochet chain through. The museum had been closed nearly a half hour by now.
“Maybe,” Jack said. “Lift me up. Let’s take a look at the map near the door.”
“What map?” Ruthie plopped the balled-up chain in her bag and then picked him up.
“There’s a floor plan with emergency exits on it. I can’t believe you never noticed it,” Jack’s tiny voice said from her palm. “See?”
Sure enough, tacked on the wall above the cleaning supplies and book boxes was a floor plan, the kind on hotel room doors and in schools and other public places.
They knew that there was an emergency exit in the alcove, right next to the access door, but Ruthie had never thought about it. This map showed them what was on the other side of the exit!
“I bet this will work,” Jack said. “See here? There’s a hall that runs behind the gallery. It looks like it leads to a door to the outside—we’ll be near Michigan Avenue when we come out.”
“I get it. And you think we’ll stay small all the way to that exit?”
Ruthie remembered the surprise they’d had when they needed to use the restrooms after staying all night in the museum. They had slipped under the access door and stayed small with the intention of regrowing once they’d made it into the stalls. But when they neared the entrance to the restrooms, they had unexpectedly returned to full size. It was the first evidence that things stayed shrunk only in proximity to the rooms.
“Probably. The hall is parallel to the access corridor, just on the other side of the wall. And that door looks like it’s a little closer to the rooms than the restrooms are. Remember? Anyway, it’s what I’m hoping. Otherwise we’ll have to open that door to the outside, which will probably set off fire alarms.”
That seemed a big risk, but it was their best option.
“Let’s hope there’s enough space to fit under,” Ruthie said.
She set Jack down and went to get the key. Once she had shrunk, she jogged back and together they scooted under the door. Gallery 11 was deserted and they crawled across the carpet the short distance to the emergency exit door.
“Great! Plenty of space,” Jack said, putting his head and shoulders under the door. Ruthie did the same and they both peered out to see what lay before them.
What they saw looked completely unlike the museum galleries. It was a long hall, painted white, empty except for a stray filing cabinet and a couple of office chairs. Fluorescent lights buzzed in the silence.
“Stay to the right, next to the wall,” Ruthie said softly as they emerged from under the door.
They moved fast.
The hall was the length of Gallery 11. Furrows of grout, as deep as the curb on a roadside and about a foot wide, separated the tiles underfoot.
“Tell me if you feel anything,” Jack whispered as they darted along. “You know, if you start growing.”
They reached the end of this section of the hall, where another hall crossed it.
“We’ll be getting farther from the rooms once we cross this hallway—I’d say about six or eight feet,” Jack estimated. They looked way up over the door at the far end of the crossing and saw a big red Emergency Exit sign.
“Might as well be a football field!” Ruthie worried.
“We can do it.”
Ruthie peeked around the corner and saw office doors standing open, and they could hear voices and footsteps. She pulled back. Just because the museum was closed to the public didn’t mean that the people who worked there were finished for the day.
The sound of heels clicking on tile signaled a woman walking down the hall in their direction. As she approached them Ruthie was sure they would be seen. How she wished the key’s magic included invisibility! Just as the woman was about to pass, a man called after her and she turned around.
Ruthie and Jack flattened themselves up against the baseboard; they had nowhere to hide. They not only heard the man’s footsteps but felt the vibrations of each step, the ground rumbling beneath them like a small earthquake. The movement stopped and the man and woman stood talking.
Ruthie and Jack were still as miniature statues. One little movement could catch the eye of either of these people. The two giants talked and talked, but then the woman dropped a piece of paper!
They watched the huge white rectangle, bigger than a bedsheet, waft gracefully to the ground. A few feet over and it would’ve landed right on them! Ruthie felt sure this would be the terrible moment she had feared might happen. They would be caught and they could never explain their size without giving away the secret of the magic.
The woman began to bend down, but as luck—amazing luck—would have it, she appeared to be left-handed, which caused her to turn away from them, just enough so they weren’t in her peripheral vision!
She picked up the paper and the two walked off.
Ruthie and Jack exhaled simultaneously but were still too petrified to move. After her heart rate returned to something closer to normal, Ruthie looked around the corner again.
“Okay—now!” She grabbed Jack’s sleeve and they began a mad dash across the wide-open space, hopping over the grout-filled trenches and hoping above all else to stay small.
They skidded to the emergency exit.
“Quick, under!” Jack exclaimed. “Something’s happening!”
“I know!” Ruthie echoed, already on her belly and in position to roll under the door. She felt the neck of her T-shirt beginning to readjust but she saw late-afternoon sunlight just in time. Her upper body was on the outside now and she yanked her growing legs from under the door. Jack was doing the same. In less than three seconds, they were sitting, full size, at the bottom of an outdoor stairwell.
Panting, Jack declared, “That was awesome!”
Ruthie felt overwhelming relief to be safely out of the museum and protected from view. She checked in her messenger bag to make sure no harm had come to the ledger from the narrow escape. It was in good shape, snug in the bag. She looked at Jack, able to read his scowling expression like a book.
But the look faded and he shrugged, saying, “We’ll come back and check the Cape Cod room tomorrow, after we find the Maison Gris.”
They arrived at the south end of Wadsworth Street on Saturday morning to begin the hunt for Isabelle St. Pierre. Jack did an Internet obituary search for her on the way and had come up with nothing. It didn’t prove she was still alive, but it gave them hope. Ruthie fought to keep her expectations in check. Still, if they found her, Ruthie thought, this woman just had to know something!
“Le
t’s start looking at the mailboxes on this side of the block first and work our way up the street,” Ruthie suggested.
Fortunately Wadsworth Street was fairly short, running about six blocks. But it would take time to look at all the names on mailboxes and door intercoms. The buildings on the street were either old brick row houses or gray stone, each with a tidy garden in front. Many had stained-glass windows and elaborate doorways.
They went up the front steps of six or seven of them, checking for names or initials, until a lady on the sidewalk, walking her dog, stopped them.
“May I help you?” she queried, a trace of distrust in her voice.
“We’re looking for someone who lives around here, but we don’t have the exact address,” Jack answered.
“Do you know someone named Isabelle St. Pierre?” Ruthie asked.
The lady’s eyebrows arched.
“I’ve heard of her but I’m not sure she’s still alive. Nobody has seen her for years.” She gestured to the next block and across the street. “Good luck.” That last was offered with a note of skepticism.
“Thanks!” they said, and rushed down the street.
They weren’t sure which house was hers, but one of them stood apart; it was larger and much grander than the others.
“That should have been obvious,” Ruthie said, looking up at the imposing façade and pointing to the words Maison Gris carved over the front door.
A wrought-iron fence surrounded a small front garden of enormous old rosebushes that filled the space with a complicated web of thick, thorny stems. The heady perfume of the roses filled the air. The gate was latched but not locked. Ruthie pulled on the handle and they followed the brick walk to the front steps.
“Why do I feel nervous?” Ruthie said to Jack.
“Because you want her to tell us everything. You don’t want to be disappointed.”
The door held a large brass lion’s head door knocker. Jack gave it a few good raps. They waited for some time. He was about to repeat the knock when the knob turned.
A man in a fancy dark suit opened the door. He was very old and the wrinkles in his skin were so deep that Ruthie wasn’t sure if she’d be able to discern any expression at all through them.
The Pirate's Coin Page 6
