Then he started to climb. Alex moved in close behind him. The stairwell wound up and up, taking them higher into the house of puzzles.
At the top of the stairs a gas lamp mounted by a wooden door shone a pale light over a small landing.
Gerald glanced down the staircase. Alex was directly below him, the butterfly knife still in his hand.
This could be his only chance.
Gerald lunged at the door and shouldered it open. He dived through the gap and spun on his heel, throwing all his weight behind the door to slam it shut behind him. The impact rocked the wall. Gerald’s hand darted to the doorknob, searching for a lock or a key. There was none.
Fists pounded on the door from the other side. Alex screamed blue murder. Gerald latched on to the doorknob with both hands and pressed his shoulder into the wood.
But the knob began to turn, slipping through his grip. Gerald clenched his teeth and squeezed his hands like a vice. It was no good. The handle edged around, opening the latch millimetre by millimetre.
Gerald’s eyes darted about, searching for something to stop Alex from getting into the room. They landed on a sturdy iron bolt, attached to the top of the door. All he had to do was push it home. But to reach it he would have to take a hand off the doorknob.
Alex’s cursing reached a new level of toxicity, and the handle slipped further in Gerald’s grip. He had to move now, and he had to move fast.
Gerald shot his right hand high, like a shell from a cannon. The heel of his hand jammed against the base of the bolt. The iron shaft shifted sharply upwards, but not before the door exploded open. Alex rammed his way into the room, sending Gerald flying backwards.
He landed hard on an oriental rug, the air knocked from his lungs. Before he could right himself, Alex was on top of him. Knees and hands held Gerald to the floor, pinned and as powerless as any of Kincaid’s butterflies.
Gerald strained to roll free but Alex was too strong. He slumped back onto the rug and glared up at his victor.
Alex smiled. A tangle of blond hair fell across his forehead. Then he smacked Gerald hard across the face. The blow raised a glowing red welt on Gerald’s cheek. ‘Just repaying the favour,’ Alex said. He pushed himself up, grinding his knees into Gerald’s biceps on the way.
Gerald swallowed a yelp of pain. He refused to give Alex the satisfaction of crying out loud.
‘Don’t try that again,’ Alex said.
‘Or what?’ Gerald said. He held a hand to his cheek and sat up. ‘You’ll fillet me like a fish? Even your family couldn’t keep you out of prison for that. Stop being an idiot and help me find this machine. Then you can run back to Daddy for a pat on the head.’
‘Don’t speak to me like that!’
‘Again,’ Gerald said, ‘or what?’
The two boys eyed each other. Then they noticed where they had landed.
The place looked like it had been shipped, piece by piece, from a Parisian garret. Piles of artists’ canvases were stacked against one wall. A dusty overcoat lay discarded across an even dustier chaise lounge. A gentle light filled the space. It took Gerald a moment to realise it was coming through a bank of dormer windows that ran the length of the room. It was his first glimpse of the outside world since he had walked into the bizarre confines of the Billionaires’ Club hours before. He could feel the vibrancy of Fifth Avenue seeping through the glass from twelve storeys below.
Gerald climbed to his feet and crossed to a large canvas on an easel by the closest window. A grey drop cloth was draped over it. Gerald tugged on a corner and the cloth tumbled free, clouding him in dust. He emitted a colossal sneeze, then looked at the canvas and gasped.
Standing before him was a full-sized painting: Liberty Leading the People.
Gerald’s mouth dropped open. His eyes darted to the bottom right corner of the painting, to just below the satchel slung from the young boy’s shoulder. There, in blood red, was the name: Eug. Delacroix 1830.
The roll of canvas tucked into Gerald’s backpack weighed heavy on his own shoulders. ‘What’s this doing here?’ Gerald said. His eyes soaked in the detail of the French masterpiece. He slid off his pack and pulled out the cardboard tube that Mason Green had given him. He unrolled the section of canvas and held it up. It matched the painting perfectly. ‘So is this a copy?’ Gerald wondered aloud, ‘Or is the one in the Louvre the copy?’
A sudden thought flashed through his mind and he walked to the back of the easel. The reverse side of the canvas was stark white.
‘Interesting,’ he said.
His thoughts were interrupted by a shout from Alex Baranov. ‘Over here, Gerry. Come and make yourself useful.’
Alex stood in a far corner of the studio looking at a large wall cabinet that reached from the floor to the ceiling, similar to a display case in a department store. When Gerald got closer he saw that the shelves were lined with identical boxes: a grid twenty high and twenty across. The boxes were all painted a gloss black, the same as the one on Mason Green’s desk at the Rattigan Club all those months before.
Gerald’s heart pounded.
The key to Professor McElderry’s life was hidden inside one of those four hundred identical boxes. Gerald mouthed a silent wish that Alex did not realise the significance of what he had found. He scanned the expanse of boxes, and his eyes lit on a gap in the grid. Nine rows up, seven in from the left. The alcove was empty.
‘I spotted that as well,’ Alex said coolly, following Gerald’s gaze. ‘Strange that one is missing, don’t you think? I expect that’s the one Sir Mason had in his possession before he went on the run. So, which one has Drebbel’s machine in it, do you think?’
Gerald closed his eyes in despair.
‘Honestly, Wilkins. Who do you think told my father about the machine in the first place: the tooth fairy?’ Alex said. ‘Green wasn’t asked to be my godfather for his moral guidance. This was a partnership, until he went and got himself in trouble with the law, the old fool.’
Gerald shook his head. ‘He speaks highly of you as well,’ he said. ‘Something about a bleached weasel.’
Alex grunted and pulled one of the caskets from the case. He turned it in his hands, inspecting it from all angles. ‘It’s locked,’ he said, pointing to a small gold key plate on the front. He slid the box back into its place. ‘Mason Green and my father were business partners for years, long before you inherited your pile. Don’t think for a second that you have any advantage over me in this venture. Drebbel’s machine is in one of these boxes. We’ve just got to figure out which one.’
Gerald gave Alex a sideways look. ‘So it’s ‘we’ now is it?’ Gerald said.
‘Don’t get above yourself, Gerry. Only one of us is walking out of here with the right box. Care to wager who that might be?’ Alex crossed to a shabby desk and rifled through the drawers. ‘There must be a key here somewhere.’
‘How are we going to know which is the right box?’ Gerald asked.
‘By opening all of them, you idiot. Instead of asking stupid questions, how about looking for the key.’
Gerald scuffed across to a table next to the display cabinet. It was pushed up against the wall
and scattered with the artist’s tools: tubes of paint, thumbtacks, a palette, mixing knives, a bulbous glass decanter stuffed with brushes. Gerald picked through the odds and ends on the table with no real hope of finding anything of use. He gathered up the paint-stained brushes from the flask, like taking flowers from a vase. He peered down the neck.
‘Holy crud!’
Alex looked up from where he was searching the desk. ‘What is it?’
Gerald raised his head and blinked. ‘I think there’s a key in this thing.’
Alex almost knocked Gerald to the floor as he shouldered him out of the way. He wrapped two hands around the decanter and peered down its neck. At the bottom was a tiny golden key attached to a brown fob the size of a pea. ‘It is! Wilkins, you’ve done well.’ The opening to the decanter was too narrow to reach in so Alex went to pick up the flask to tip it over.
It wouldn’t budge.
‘Blast it!’ he said. He tried to shake the base of the decanter. ‘It’s cemented to the table.’ He tried again with frustration. ‘It won’t move. Why would anyone glue it down?’
Gerald picked up a brush and elbowed Alex aside. ‘Let me have a try,’ he said. He poked the handle down the narrow neck. ‘Maybe I can hook it with this.’ Gerald prodded the handle through a fine chain that looped the key to the fob. But when he tried to slide it up the side of the decanter, the key slid off and tumbled back to the bottom. ‘The neck is too narrow,’ he said. ‘I can’t get enough of an angle.’
Alex snatched the brush from him. But he had no more success than Gerald. Every time he managed to hook the keychain, the brush choked in the slender neck and the key slid free.
Alex threw the brush hard against the wall. ‘Damn it! I’m just going to have to break it.’ He looked about for a suitable object but couldn’t find anything. In desperation, he seized the largest paintbrush he could find and clubbed it against the side of the decanter.
The thick glass emitted a low-pitched dong, but stood firm.
Alex cried out in frustration. Gerald was worried he would blow a valve.
Alex cursed and swept an arm across the table top, sending paint tubes and other bits and pieces scattering over the floor. He grabbed the lip of the table and went to toss it into the air. But the table wouldn’t budge.
‘The stupid thing is bolted to the floor!’ Alex clamped both hands around a table leg and strained. His neck muscles coiled like restless pythons in a sack.
The table did not move a millimetre.
Alex threw his hands in the air and fell back from the source of his torment.
Gerald looked at the table and the decanter, anchored in place. ‘Interesting,’ he said.
‘It’s not bloody interesting,’ Alex fumed through clenched teeth. ‘It’s bloody infuriating. Why would anyone do something like this?’
Gerald peered down the neck of the decanter at the golden key. ‘Maybe there is a way.’
He grabbed up his backpack from the floor and pulled out his water bottle. Alex put out his hand to take a drink, but Gerald batted it away. ‘Not for you,’ he said. ‘For this.’
He took the lid off the bottle and poured the contents into the flask.
‘What is that going to achieve,’ Alex said, ‘apart from a wet key?’
Gerald kept pouring. ‘Watch,’ he said.
The pea-sized fob on the keychain began to bob with the rising water level.
‘It’s floating!’ Alex stared as the fob rose from the bottom of the flask and dragged the key up with it. ‘That’s genius.’
Gerald smiled to himself. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes it is.’ He poked a finger through the mouth of the flask and hooked the chain.
‘Cork,’ he said, nodding at the fob. ‘Clever, yes?’
Alex went to snatch it but Gerald whipped his hand clear. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I think I’ve earned the right to open the first one.’
As Gerald took a step towards the cabinet of boxes something caught his eye. He stopped and stared at the wall behind the table.
‘What’s the problem?’ Alex said. ‘Pick a box and get on with it.’
Gerald tried to process what he was seeing. Something that, for some reason, looked familiar. On the wall behind the decanter was what appeared to be an inky stain. Perhaps the remnants of where a painter had wiped dry his almost-clean brushes. But on closer inspection the pattern morphed into something quite recognisable.
‘It’s the boxes in the cabinet!’ Gerald said.
‘What are you talking about?’ Alex asked.
Gerald pointed to the smudged drawing on the wall. ‘Squint your eyes. It’s the same pattern as the grid of boxes.’
Alex lowered his head to be level with the image. ‘You’re right. Hey! There’s an ‘x’ in one of them.’
Gerald nudged Alex aside. ‘It’s marking the empty space. The one with the missing box.’ He jerked his head up towards the display cabinet. ‘You don’t suppose that this is a map showing which box contains the machine, do you?’
Alex didn’t move. His eyes were fixed on the glass decanter. It was Gerald’s turn to ask, ‘What’s the problem?’
A smile spread on Alex’s face. ‘It is definitely a map showing which box to choose. But not the one that’s gone missing.’
‘What do you mean?’
Alex grabbed Gerald by the collar and shoved his head in front of the decanter.
‘Hey!’
‘Stop complaining,’ Alex said. ‘And look.’
Gerald stared straight ahead. His eyes widened. Looking at the wall through the water-filled decanter, the image transformed from a smudged ink stain into a sharp and very clear likeness of the cabinet of boxes. But the ‘x’ was in a different square—the cubicle three down and four from the right.
‘The water must bend the light,’ Alex said. ‘No wonder the stupid bottle and table are bolted into place. The only way to see the picture properly is for everything to be lined up in the right spot and then only if the jug is full of water.’ He slapped Gerald hard on the shoulder. ‘Nice work again, Gerry. Looks like there’s more than one key to this puzzle. That’s why Mason Green had the wrong box. Whoever took it in the first place used the picture on the wall. They didn’t work out the water part.’
Alex lashed out and grabbed Gerald’s right wrist. He squeezed hard until Gerald’s hand popped open.
‘Ouch!’
Alex grabbed the key. ‘I’ll be taking that,’ he said and crossed to the cabinet. He counted three down and four in from the right, slid out the glossy black box, inserted the key and turned it.
The lid popped open and Alex stifled a gasp. Nestled in a bed of coarse black silk was a silver oblong the size of a large eggplant. A band of tiny rivets ran along its length.
‘It’s the symbol from the Triple Crown,’ Alex said. ‘It’s identical to the shape that was carved into the keystone in the castle cellar in Scotland. The symbol that represents—’
‘The perpetual motion machine,’ Gerald said. ‘That’s it?’
Alex lifted the silver egg from the case and cradled it
in his hands. ‘Heavy,’ he said. ‘Does it open? Should I just twist it?’
Gerald stared at the glittering object in Alex’s hands—the prize that would win Professor McElderry’s freedom. If he did not act now, his friend’s life was as good as gone.
‘I’ll buy it off you,’ Gerald said.
Alex’s eyes moved from the egg-shaped machine to Gerald. He took a moment to study Gerald’s expression. ‘How much?’ he asked.
‘Anything,’ Gerald said. ‘Name your price.’
Alex raised an eyebrow. ‘You have an interesting approach to negotiation.’ He paused, his eyes laser-like on Gerald. ‘All right. If it’s that important to you, you can have it.’
Gerald let out a slow breath. The weight of anguish that had bound up his being for the last months started to fall away.
Alex placed the egg back in the box and locked the lid. ‘Fifty billion dollars,’ he said.
The sounds of Fifth Avenue filtered up from twelve storeys below: car horns, traffic, a shout.
Gerald wasn’t sure he had heard right. ‘How much?’
‘Fifty. Billion. Dollars. No—make it a hundred billion, if you want it that much.’
‘But I don’t have that much money. No one does.’
The smile returned to Alex’s face. He slid the golden key into one of his pockets and zipped it shut. ‘Then I get to keep it.’ He tucked the box under his arm. ‘Like I said, Gerry: everything is a competition. And a Baranov never loses.’ He turned to the line of dormer windows. ‘I expect there’s a way to the fire escape from here. I have a car and driver waiting downstairs. I’d offer you a lift to the airport,’—he raised his nose in the air—‘but I don’t want to.’ Then he went to the closest window and unlocked the latch.
Gerald’s vision turned red. He couldn’t let this happen. The professor’s fate could not be decided this way. He launched himself across the floor at Alex, catching him around the ribs and knocking the box from his grasp. It flew free and clattered onto the floor, chipping its gloss exterior. Alex lurched to the side, stunned. Gerald twisted, desperate to take Alex to the ground. The two boys hit the rug, slamming into a side table. They rolled in a clinch, legs thrashing. Gerald winced at a knee to his ribs and a punch to his gut.
The House of Puzzles Page 19
