The House of Puzzles

by Richard Newsome

  Gerald cocked his head. The curiosity machine?

  Mason Green paused and turned to stare directly into the cage. ‘I agree,’ he said. ‘They serve no further purpose. I will—’

  A sudden outburst down the phone line cut him off. Someone was giving Sir Mason Green a royal roasting.

  Green glanced towards the cage and, seeing four sets of eyes observing everything that was happening, turned his back to them.

  ‘Who’s giving him a bollocking?’ Sam said. Then, after a moment’s thought, ‘Does he have a boss?’

  The idea that Sir Mason Green might take orders from someone else struck Gerald with such force that it took him a moment to realise Felicity was tugging on his jacket sleeve, as if trying to tear it off at the seams. With her other hand she was pointing to something on the side of the boiler. Gerald leaned closer to see. It was a neat cross-shaped hole in the sheet metal. Felicity grabbed Gerald’s hand—the golden key still dangled from his fingers.

  Mason Green still had his back to them and the phone to his ear.

  Gerald put the key into the hole and turned it.

  A jagged crack appeared in the bricks at the rear of the cage, and a section of the wall popped ajar. Gerald shoved the key into his pocket and ushered Sam, Felicity and Ruby through the opening. He glanced over his shoulder at Green, who was still occupied on the phone, and ducked through. As soon as he was on the other side, he pushed the brick portal closed and turned, beaming, to find Sam, Felicity and Ruby frowning back at him, arms crossed and brows furrowed.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Gerald whispered. ‘I got us out of the cage.’

  Ruby’s eyes narrowed. ‘Oh yes, we’re free at last,’ she said.

  Gerald looked about him. They had escaped into a space the size of a broom closet. A single gas lamp flickered beside a yellowed sheet of paper fixed to the back wall. Gerald pushed past Sam to get a closer look. ‘This is just like the mechanical drawings that Kincaid had in his workshop upstairs,’ he said. ‘But this is much bigger than the perpetual motion machine.’ He ran his fingertips over the title, written in neat block letters at the top of the sheet.

  THE CURIOSITY MACHINE.

  ‘This must be what Green is looking for,’ Gerald whispered.

  The diagram showed a complex schematic of gears and widgets, handles and dials, cranks and pistons. Gerald unpinned the page from the wall and held it under the lamp to get a better look. ‘This is amazing,’ he said. ‘What do you think a curiosity machine does?’

  ‘Generate pointless questions?’ Ruby said. ‘Do you really think that’s important just now?’

  Gerald ran his eyes across the tangle of ruled lines and technical writing. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Maybe this house of puzzles has a few more secrets to reveal.’

  Gerald turned at a sharp jab to his ribs. Ruby had her eye to a peephole in the bricks that looked back into the storage cage. ‘Shush. Mason Green has just got off the phone.’

  Gerald glanced back at the plans, folded them into a neat square and zipped them into his jacket pocket. ‘What’s he doing?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s looking this way. Ruby whispered.

  ‘Do you think he’ll notice we’re gone?’ Sam said.

  The scream that pierced the bricks and the shrill cry of I’ll kill them! was all the answer they needed.

  Chapter 28

  Ruby pressed her face to the bricks. Her voice dropped to the merest hint of a whisper. ‘He’s coming this way.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Felicity whispered back.

  Gerald looked to Felicity. She held the fingers of one hand across her mouth, as if trying to plug a leak. Sam was crouched on one knee, his head slumped forward. Ruby was motionless at the peephole, both hands spread flat to the bricks on either side of her face.

  Gerald stood by the rear wall. His knees were shaking; he was like a little boy standing before the schoolyard bully. If Mason Green found them, there would be no escape this time. The sound of boxes crashing to the floor came through from the other side of the wall. Shouts. More crashing. A single gunshot. Yet more crashing.

  The wobbling in Gerald’s knees intensified.

  After an age, the sound of Green’s fury abated, and Ruby turned slowly around, her face grim.

  ‘He’s gone,’ she said. ‘But who knows for how long.’

  ‘What was he doing out there?’ Sam asked.

  ‘He unlocked the cage and turned the place upside down,’ Ruby said. ‘He found the open panel at the back of the boiler. He almost exploded with that little discovery. That’s when he fired the gun. He’s gone now, probably to check on the professor.’

  ‘Terrific,’ Sam said. ‘Now we’ve gone and made the madman with a gun even madder.’

  ‘There is some good news though,’ Ruby said, the hint of a grin on her lips. ‘He left the cage door open. We’re free.’

  Some stability returned to Gerald’s knees. ‘It’s time we got out of here and told the police about Green’s hiding place,’ he said.

  Ruby looked at him with surprise. ‘That’s a remarkably sensible suggestion,’ she said, ‘coming from you.’

  Gerald shrugged. ‘When all else fails, try being rational.’

  ‘What about Professor McElderry?’ Felicity asked.

  ‘If we see him between here and the exit feel free to invite him along, but if he’s under some magic spell he might take some convincing,’ Gerald said.

  Ruby found a metal lever by the wall and wrapped her hand around it. ‘We need to do this quickly,’ she said. She pulled and the brick section opened. They poured through, vaulted the wreckage left from Green’s fury and ran out of the cage. Gerald swooped on his backpack that Green had dumped by a workbench and hoisted it to his shoulder.

  Four sets of boots scuttled along the stone floor of the corridor.

  Gerald was last in line as they weaved their way through the cellar maze. They passed over the ash cross on the floor where they had first parted ways, and Gerald felt a glimmer of hope that freedom was close by.

  Ruby darted around a corner to the left, then stopped. Sam almost ran into her. ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘Why are you stopping?’

  Ruby glanced back the way they had come, then turned to look further down the corridor. ‘This doesn’t look right,’ she said. ‘I must have taken a wrong turn.’

  ‘Which turn was wrong?’ Sam asked. ‘There have been a lot of them.’

  Ruby’s face flushed. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said.

  Gerald stepped in before Sam could say anything to aggravate the situation. ‘Let’s just retrace our steps until something looks familiar,’ he said. ‘We can’t have gone too far off track.’

  They turned to go back when Felicity called out to them from halfway down the passage. ‘Look at this.’

  She pointed to a pair of bas-relief sculptures in the wall: one of a devil’s face, the other of an angel. Beneath each sculpture was a brass handle set into the bricks, with an arrow indicating a clockwise turn. Under all of this was a wooden door, less than a metre high.

 
‘It’s another puzzle,’ Ruby said, inspecting first the devil, then the angel.

  ‘What are you supposed to do?’ Sam asked. ‘Pick the one you like the most?’

  ‘Or the one that the puzzle maker thinks you’ll pick?’ Gerald said. ‘Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. We know a way out. We’ve just got to find it and quick. I don’t want to see Mason Green again today. Or ever.’

  He turned to head back up the passage. Staring at him from the end of the corridor was a tall, silver-haired man with a pistol in his hand.

  ‘Steady, Gerald,’ Sir Mason said in a cool voice. ‘Anyone would think that you didn’t like me.’

  Gerald spun around and, for a crazy second, thought about running. But then Professor McElderry stepped into the opposite end of the corridor.

  They were trapped.

  There was a moment of tense silence, then Ruby spoke up, staring straight at the professor. ‘You remember us,’ she said. ‘Try to think. Try to see through the haze of drugs that you’ve taken.’

  McElderry took an unsteady pace forwards.

  Ruby’s voice rose. ‘Try to remember. Please.’

  The professor stopped and swayed on the balls of his feet, as if he had entered the room and forgotten why. His eyebrows knitted together. After a moment they relaxed and Professor Knox McElderry took a determined step down the corridor. ‘It’s all right, Sir Mason,’ he said in a clear voice. ‘They won’t get past me.’

  Ruby’s shoulders dropped.

  Gerald turned to see Mason Green advancing on them. He shrank back as the professor and Green herded the four friends into a cluster in the middle of the corridor.

  Felicity grabbed the handle under the angel. ‘Should I give it a try?’ she asked.

  Mason Green aimed the handgun at Felicity’s head. ‘That is enough, Miss Upham,’ he said. ‘This house has sprung enough surprises on me for two lifetimes. Take your hand away from the switch, thank you.’

  Felicity did not move. She turned her eyes to Ruby. ‘What should I do?’

  A brick an inch above Felicity’s head exploded as Mason Green fired two quick shots into the wall. The sound reverberated in the confined space. Felicity screamed and dropped to her knees, her hands covering her head. Ruby and Sam rushed to her.

  Gerald stared at Green, who was wreathed in a swirling cloud of gun smoke. ‘I am through with kidding around,’ Green said. ‘You will all come with me.’

  Gerald held up his hands, as if surrendering. He knew what he was about to do was a massive risk, but he had no choice. ‘I’ve got the plans for the curiosity machine,’ he said as boldly as he could. Gerald had no idea what the machine did or why Green wanted it, but the effect of his announcement was electric. Sir Mason’s face flushed red; the gun dropped to his side.

  ‘How could you possibly—’ he began.

  Felicity raised her head and glared at the man. ‘You foul human being,’ she said, then lunged at the switch beneath the angel. She jerked the handle to the right.

  The floor along the length of the corridor juddered violently, as if shaken by an earthquake. Bodies were thrown from their feet like struck tenpins. Gerald tumbled onto his back, his hands flailing as he tried to find something stable to cling to. Another shot exploded from Mason Green’s gun. Then, with a violent lurch and a wrenching roar, the floor fell away. It split across the middle and dropped as if hinged at each end, forming two steep slides that plunged into a black abyss. Gerald’s stomach lurched and he closed his eyes as he slid straight over the edge.

  All was darkness.

  Gerald heard his name being called—it might have been Ruby or Felicity, he couldn’t tell. He was overwhelmed by a sense of weightlessness, as if he was floating amongst the clouds in some ethereal play land. He was falling; he was flying.

  And then he stopped. A brutal tug on his shoulder yanked him and his eyes popped wide open. Gerald jerked his head about in dazed confusion. His breath caught in his throat. He looked down to see his feet thrashing and a bottomless black pit yawning beneath him. He twisted his head up to find the sloping floor of the corridor metres above him. A searing pain in his armpits told him his backpack had caught on something. He craned his neck and saw it: a rusted iron rod jutting out from the side of the pit. He was dangling in space.

  ‘Gerald!’

  It was Ruby.

  Gerald strained around to see Ruby flat on her stomach, clinging to cracks in the steeply sloping floor and scrambling to stop from sliding into the black hole. Further along the corridor, Sam and Felicity held each other in a desperate embrace, pressing the soles of their feet onto opposite walls and forming a human bridge across the passage.

  Professor McElderry and Mason Green were both sprawled on the floor, further up each end of the corridor. They both looked too panic-stricken to move.

  ‘Gerald!’ Ruby cried again. ‘Are you all right?’

  Gerald struggled to lift his head. A sharp pain ripped into his sides. The iron rod that held his backpack could give way at any movement. He looked up as high as he could. The sculptures of the devil and the angel looked down at him in seeming bemusement.

  ‘Ruby,’ Gerald called back. ‘You need to turn the handle under the devil. And you need to do it quickly.’

  Gerald lurched to the side. One of the shoulder straps slipped in its buckle, sending him into a teetering swing across the chasm. ‘Really quickly!’ he shouted.

  Ruby twisted her head to stare into Gerald’s eyes. ‘I’ll try. But if I slip you better catch me.’

  Gerald managed a weak smile. ‘Always,’ he said.

  Ruby sucked in a breath and wedged one foot against the far wall, bracing herself.

  ‘You can do it,’ Gerald urged. The shoulder strap slipped another centimetre, shunting him sideways. ‘Remember your gymnastics.’

  Ruby pushed with her hands and launched herself upwards. She pressed her other foot against the near wall and straddled the corridor in an arched split. Slowly, she leaned forward, her outstretched fingertips crawling spider-like across the bricks towards the devil carving. Then, with a heave, she wrapped her fingers around the brass handle. ‘I’ve got it!’ she cried.

  ‘Turn it!’ Gerald yelled back, just as the shoulder strap pulled free. His right side fell away and he dropped hard, swinging wildly from the left strap. ‘Hurry!’

  ‘But Green still has the gun,’ Ruby called back.

  ‘Turn the handle!’ Gerald screamed.

  Then Mason Green’s voice joined the clamour. ‘Stop, Miss Valentine, or I will shoot you.’

  ‘Turn it!’

  Ruby twisted the handle.

  The corridor juddered even more violently than before. Sam and Felicity cried out as the floor fell away beneath them.

  Gerald’s head slumped. ‘Crud,’ he muttered.

  A thunderous rumble rolled along the corridor. Hidden sluices at either end of the passage opened and unleashed a torrent of water. Twin tidal waves swept into the enormous funnel formed by the sloping floor. The barrel of one wave swept Mason Green clean away, sending him spinning straight under the human bridge of Sam and Felicity an
d into the maw of the chasm. Gerald caught a glimpse of him as he disappeared into the velvet blackness, his screams receding and lost to the roar of the water that poured down the giant spout.

  Gerald clung to his backpack, buffeted by the waterfall that broke over his head. He caught the sound of Ruby crying out. The only word he could understand was ‘professor’.

  A moment later there was a flurry of movement above him. Gerald tilted his head to see Professor McElderry dangling over the edge of the sloped floor, his legs swinging into the emptiness.

  Then Gerald saw a way to save them both. He threw out his right hand and, as his body swung across, latched onto the professor’s waistband.

  ‘Hold on, Professor,’ Gerald called out, water gushing into his mouth. ‘I’ve got you.’ He shook his head to clear the spray from his face. ‘We can save each other.’

  McElderry turned his head and looked straight into Gerald’s eyes. ‘Gerald,’ he said, ‘you’re as stupid as your friend.’

  Gerald’s mouth dropped open but the professor cut him off before he could speak. ‘Did you ever once ask if I wanted to be saved?’ McElderry said. He lashed out a shoe and knocked Gerald’s hand away from his belt. Then he raised his arms from the floor and let the torrent sweep him over the edge and into oblivion.

  Chapter 29

  Gerald watched helplessly as the professor dropped past him. There was no screaming or wails for help. Professor McElderry went to his fate as calmly as a baby drifting to sleep.

  But his kick had sent Gerald into a whirling spin. At any moment he expected to be joining McElderry in a plunge into nothingness.