‘I’ve already tried them,’ Alex said. ‘They’re all locked.’
Gerald grunted, then picked up his pack from the floor. He dropped cross-legged to the rug and flipped open the bag.
‘What are you doing?’ Alex asked.
‘I told you,’ Gerald said. He pulled out the message from Jeremy Davey. ‘I have my own mysteries to work on. But if your dad told you how to get started, crack on.’
Alex stared at Gerald, then kicked a boot at the rug. ‘He never got out of this room,’ he muttered. ‘He said I’d have to work it out for myself.’
‘Then what’s with the secret ops gear?’ Gerald asked.
Alex’s face flushed pink. He unzipped a pocket on his left sleeve and pulled out a chocolate bar. ‘He told me you get hungry after twelve hours of sitting around doing nothing.’
Gerald looked at Alex in disbelief. ‘All those pockets are full of snacks?’
Alex gave a self-conscious nod. ‘Want a Twix?’
Gerald snuffled out a laugh. ‘You little chocolate soldier,’ he said, and held out his hand. Just as Alex tossed the chocolate bar, a telephone rang. The Twix fell to the rug as Gerald’s eyes darted towards a black bakelite phone on an end table. It emitted another jangling ring.
Gerald swapped a curious glance with Alex then crossed to the table. He picked up the handset from the cradle and lifted it to his ear.
‘Hello?’
The line crackled. Then a familiar voice filled his head.
‘Gerald? Excellent—this is Mason Green. Have you solved that code yet?’
Chapter 20
Gerald’s knuckles were white as he clenched the telephone handset.
That voice.
It cut to the marrow.
‘Gerald? I know you’re there. I can hear you breathing. Have you deciphered the code?’ Green demanded.
Gerald’s heart raced. ‘I’ve been trying—’
‘Trying!’ Mason Green shouted the word. ‘Have I not made the stakes clear?’
‘I know,’ Gerald said, his voice pleading. ‘I will do it.’
There was a long pause. When Green spoke again, it was in a tone of deepest displeasure.
‘Is Sergei Baranov’s boy with you?’
Gerald felt like he’d been punched in the chest. ‘How did you know?’
‘I know, and that’s enough,’ Green said. ‘What the devil does that fool Mantle think he’s playing at, inviting that bleached weasel along? He’ll ruin everything.’
Alex took a step towards Gerald. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked. ‘Who’s on the phone?’
Gerald turned his back on him. Green’s voice barked down the line. ‘Don’t tell him!’ Then, quieter, ‘Can he hear me?’
Gerald cupped his hand to the mouthpiece. ‘Only if you keep shouting at me,’ he said.
‘Then listen carefully, Gerald Wilkins.’ Green’s voice dipped to a mortuary whisper and Gerald had to press the earpiece hard to the side of his head to hear. ‘Sergei Baranov is a very dangerous man. You don’t make your fortune on the oil fields of Russia by sending people flowers and baskets of muffins. I suspect he is after the same thing I am. And with the Baranovs, the apple does not fall far from the tree. Do you follow me? Unless I am mistaken, young Alex will follow along as you work your way through the various puzzles. He may even help you. But when you reach the final piece—the box—he will do all he can to take it from you.’
Sir Mason Green paused to let his words rattle around Gerald’s skull. Gerald glanced over his shoulder. Alex Baranov stood just metres away, his commando boots planted wide and looking every inch the Russian assassin. Mason Green whispered again, ‘If he is anything like his father, he will not hesitate to kill you for it.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Gerald said into the telephone. Alex was staring right into his eyes.
Green’s voice rasped in his ear, ‘What you believe, Gerald Wilkins, will get you killed. Know this: in the field of ruthless pursuit, the Baranovs make me look like a stamp-collecting schoolboy.’
‘But…but you’re his godfather,’ Gerald whispered.
Green laughed. ‘Then you should understand my character assessment of both Baranovs is based on detailed personal knowledge,’ he said. ‘Solve the code. Collect the box. Do that or the professor dies. Horribly. And then, I will come for you.’
A vision of Professor McElderry, stumbling dazed and lost in the Scottish highlands, flashed through Gerald’s mind. ‘You’ve been here before,’ he said to Green. ‘Tell me how to get started. All the doors are locked. What do we do?’
Green’s laughter rang hollow. ‘Gerald, on my initiation night I didn’t get out of the room you’re standing in now.’
And then the line went dead.
Gerald looked at the handpiece like it had just licked his ear.
‘Terrific,’ he said.
He looked at Alex. He had not moved.
‘Who was that?’ Alex asked flatly.
Gerald’s mind raced. How much of what Green had said about the Baranovs could be believed?
‘Just a club member,’ Gerald said, avoiding the other boy’s eye. ‘A friend of my great aunt’s.’ He replaced the receiver in the cradle. ‘Wishing us luck.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘You wouldn’t know him.’
Alex stared hard at Gerald. He was clearly making his own assessments as to what should be believed. ‘Did he tell you how to get out of this room?’
‘No. He wasn’t any help at all.’ Gerald looked at his watch. ‘We better get going. You start by the far door and I’ll start over here.’
‘What are we looking for?’
‘Clues.’
‘Like what?’
‘I have no idea.’
Alex marched to a door at the far end of the salon. Gerald turned and crossed to a set of double doors at the opposite end of the room. He took hold of the brass handle on each and pulled. They could have been welded shut for the amount they moved.
‘Terrific,’ Gerald muttered.
Hanging on the wall next to the doors was a simple black picture frame, the glass obscured by grime. Gerald wiped his palm down the front, leaving a smudged view of the contents.
Beneath the fly spots and the dust was a notice, handwritten in thick black ink.
Know it henceforth that:
no person shall enter
or be given specific
cause to enter these
kept premises without
the approval or consent
herewith required by the
Regent of the club.
In making this ruling,
certain death for whom
ever befouls our Order.
Regent of the Billionaires’ Club
of New York, 1830
‘And have a nice day,’ Gerald said. ‘What a cheery welcome.’
Alex loomed over his shoulder. ‘There’s nothing back there,’ he said, jerk
ing his head towards the far door. ‘What about here?’
‘Locked solid,’ Gerald said. ‘Not even a keyhole.’
Alex nodded at the frame on the wall. ‘What’s that?’
‘The club rules, by the look of it,’ Gerald said.
Alex squinted at the old notice. ‘What’s that even mean?’ he said. ‘Certain death for whom ever befouls our Order?’
Gerald shrugged. ‘I guess they didn’t like visitors.’
Alex yanked on the door handles. The portal stood firm. ‘This is rubbish,’ he said, aiming a kick at the floor. ‘What are we supposed to do?’
Gerald scanned the room. ‘Maybe there’s a switch behind one of the paintings,’ he said. He looked back at the notice in its black frame. ‘Or behind this thing.’ He lifted the bottom of the frame away from the wall. A haze of dust rained on his face, and he sneezed. And sneezed again. He glared up at the notice as if it was to blame for their sorry situation.
Then he saw it—seemingly lit up like the shopfronts of Fifth Avenue.
‘Oh my gosh,’ Gerald said. He stared open-mouthed at the sign.
Alex looked at him with suspicion. ‘What?’
Gerald hesitated and turned his face. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing. I thought I saw something, but I was wrong.’
‘Listen, Gerry. Gerald. You must realise that wherever either of us goes in this house tonight, the other one is going to follow,’ Alex said. ‘So if you can see a way of getting out of this room don’t hold back. Otherwise we’re both wasting our time.’
Gerald breathed deep. He knew Alex was right. And time was the one thing that Professor McElderry did not have to spare.
Gerald pointed to the faded lettering. ‘There. On the notice.’
‘What about it?’
‘Take the first letter of each line and read down.’
Alex read the notice again, his lips moving silently. Then he said, ‘K-n-o-c-k t-h-r-i-c-e?’
Gerald crossed to the double doors. ‘That’s got to be how we open these,’ he said. ‘We knock three times.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Alex said. ‘That’s too obvious.’
‘All answers are obvious,’ Gerald said, ‘when you know them.’ He swung his pack to his shoulder and rapped his knuckles on the double door.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
The hollow sound of the final knock echoed to the ceiling. Then somewhere in the hidden distance came a buzzing whirr. The shifting of gears. The popping of locks.
And the twin doors opened.
Gerald pushed the doors and they swung inwards with a disconcerting creeeeaaak. Beyond the doorway stood a wrought iron staircase that spiralled up into the darkness.
‘What do you think?’ Gerald said.
‘You opened it,’ Alex said, ‘You go first.’
‘Thanks. I can see you’re going to be a lot of help.’
Gerald pulled on the shoulder straps of his backpack and started to climb. The clang of his boots on the metal steps rang up the stairwell. He had no idea what he was doing, but he was pretty sure that the club founders would regard it as befouling their Order.
Chapter 21
The spiral stairs wound tightly and the light from the reception salon struggled to penetrate the darkness ahead. By the time Gerald reached the top he could barely see in front of him. He stumbled onto a landing and stepped down hard, expecting another step to be there. A second later, Alex thumped into his back.
‘Watch out,’ Gerald said. He spread his hands in front of him, feeling about. ‘I can’t see a thing.’
There was no apology from Alex. ‘There must be a door or an opening,’ he said. ‘Stairs don’t lead to nowhere.’
‘Try not to wet yourself, okay?’ Gerald said. Not for the first time that night he wished that Ruby, Sam and Felicity were with him. If for no other reason, at least they had a sense of humour. Gerald’s hands pressed up against a smooth and featureless wall. He ran his fingers down to where a doorknob ought to be, and they wrapped around a cold lump of metal.
‘I’ve got something,’ Gerald said. He turned the knob and pushed. The door creaked open. Out of the darkness, the interior of an enormous chamber lit up in a flash. A line of crystal chandeliers ignited, one after the other, like a string of Chinese firecrackers.
From the open doorway, Gerald and Alex stared in slack-jawed wonder at what lay before them. Flames erupted in an enormous stone fireplace, a bare grate transformed into a welcoming blaze in seconds. Wall lamps crackled into life. A music box the size of a barrel organ spouted a plinking version of Für Elise. It was as if the room was waking from a long winter’s hibernation and stretching the cricks from its joints.
The room was twice the size of the ballroom in Gerald’s Chelsea townhouse back in London and seemed to occupy the entire floor of the building. Wooden display cabinets and workbenches were laid out in rows, as if in an enormous workshop. At the end of each bench stood a tall wicker basket, stuffed with rolled-up documents. Gerald looked upwards to take in the scale of the place. The walls stretched up and kept on going. A broad mezzanine balcony extended around the walls, home to an enormous library of books, but there seemed to be no way to get up to it.
‘Wow,’ Gerald said. ‘Just, wow.’
He followed Alex into the room. The moment Gerald stepped over the threshold, the door slammed shut behind them. He spun around and went to grab at the doorknob but instead snatched at air. Polished wood panelling on the back of the door matched the rest of the wall seamlessly. It was impossible to locate the opening.
‘Looks like we’re going to have to find another way out,’ Gerald said. ‘This is locked tight.’
He crossed to the nearest workbench. Wood-handled screwdrivers and other antique tools were laid out across the top. Gerald bent down to inspect a shiny silver sphere about the size of a cricket ball in a squat display stand. The moment he picked it up a tiny slot opened on the top and a brass flag sprang out. Engraved on the flag in neat block letters were the words, PUT ME DOWN!
Gerald almost dropped the ball in surprise. He replaced it delicately in its cradle; the flag popped back inside and the slot closed.
‘What is this place?’ Alex asked. He was at the other end of the room, looking up at a collection of ancient keys that was hanging in a frame on the wall. There were at least fifty keys, in all shapes and sizes.
Gerald looked at the tools and the boxes of screws, springs and rivets, spread across each bench top. ‘It’s like an inventor’s playhouse,’ he said.
Alex crossed to the fireplace and tapped a fingernail against the glass of a mantel clock, its hands set on the twelve. They did not move. ‘This must be Diamond Jim Kincaid’s workshop,’ he said.
‘What makes you think that?’ Gerald asked.
‘The enormous portrait of him above the fireplace,’ Alex replied.
A grey-haired man with an alarming handlebar moustache stared out from an ornate frame with an expression that said the rest of mankind were, clearly, all idiots. A narrow wooden plaque on the bottom
of the frame identified the subject as ‘Diamond’ Jim Kincaid.
‘Looks like all that money didn’t make him very happy,’ Gerald said. His eyes dropped to the signature at the bottom right corner of the canvas. His heart skipped in his chest. Signed in blood red was: Eug. Delacroix 1830.
Gerald tried to keep his face blank.
Eugène Delacroix—the French artist whose Liberty Leading the People sat vandalised in the Louvre, the section hacked from its canvas rolled in a cardboard tube in Gerald’s backpack; the painter whose work was supposed to lead Gerald to the box that would save Professor McElderry.
That Eugène Delacroix.
Gerald swallowed his breathing and walked as calmly as he could across to a workbench.
If there’s a Delacroix painting here, the box can’t be far away.
He had to remain calm. He had to think.
Gerald’s hand shook as he pulled a document from one of the wicker baskets and unrolled it, trying to appear casual. The document was titled: Design #35. The paper was covered in line drawings of a bizarre device packed with cogs, gears and springs. Gerald’s brow wrinkled. He pulled out another document. Design #26. This one had a giant flywheel with a hand crank. The drawings looked just like Sam’s attempt at a—Gerald’s eyes grew wide—‘perpetual motion machine,’ he whispered to himself.
He glanced at Alex, who was across the room inspecting the contents of a display case. He hasn’t noticed, Gerald thought. He doesn’t realise what could be hidden in this room…
Alex reached into the case to a metal box inside. But when his fingers were centimetres away the lid popped up, a mechanical hand stretched out and smacked him hard on the wrist, then zipped back inside. The lid banged shut.
‘Ow!’ Alex said, rubbing the back of his hand.
The House of Puzzles Page 16
