The Initiation

by Ridley Pearson

  “We were paired intentionally,” said Sherlock. “James and I, as roommates.”

  “He told you,” Crudgeon said.

  “He did nothing of the sort!”

  “You will address me properly or your backside will see my closed door, young man.”

  “Now that you’ve confirmed it, I am forced to interpret the pairing as a matter of benefit for James. You believed I could be of assistance. Now that I am of assistance, you’d rather I step back. Is that about right?”

  “I’ve warned you once about civility. I’m not taken to repeating myself.”

  “Did you plan for a good number of students to seek out the missing Bible when you assigned full-school study hall? A brilliant stroke, Headmaster! On the record you’ve told us all to stay away, but at the same time you instigate motivation for the Bible to be found as soon as possible.”

  “Ridiculous.” Crudgeon’s denial sounded hollow.

  “To the contrary,” Sherlock said, “I’m impressed!”

  “I’m forbidding you to advise James to break the rules of this academy. Are we clear?”

  “You wish to protect him. From the danger touching the Bible represents, or something beyond that?”

  “The trouble with students who think they’re so smart is that they never are.”

  “Never or seldom?” Sherlock asked. “Something to do with his lineage as a Moriarty.” He corrected himself, a rare enough event. “As a male Moriarty, since you are in no way cautioning against my advising Moria.”

  The red flash of blood rushing to the surface of Crudgeon’s skin, from shirt collar to behind his ear, informed Sherlock he’d scored a direct hit. “I don’t mean to be bombastic, Headmaster, or rude or disrespectful. I’m quite at a loss as to what exactly your message is to me.”

  “I won’t have you advising James to break the rules. Scholarships come and scholarships go.”

  “Understood.”

  “Do not take this lightly, young man.”

  “No, Headmaster. I do not. Not at all. Which begs the question: Why is it of such importance to you for me to leave poor James to fend for himself? He is woefully inadequate.”

  “He’s brilliant—one of the highest-scoring students in your class.”

  “They must not test for common sense.”

  “Impertinence, Mr. Holmes, is a fast track to expulsion. Am I clear? Do not blur the lines at this academy. Students are students. Proctors are proctors. And the headmaster is very much the headmaster. Do not for a moment assume we are on equal footing.”

  “No, Headmaster. There are few proctors at this school who are on an equal footing with me.” Sherlock stood, without being dismissed. “I am indebted to you and the school for the opportunity you have provided me. However, I will at no time compromise my principles, for you or for anyone. A person in need is a person, indeed. If James, my roommate, needs help, be it on algebra or solving a puzzle, he will have it. If that gets me thrown out of this school, then I didn’t belong here in the first place. I’m tired now, and I’ll be going, Headmaster. I will take your suggestion under consideration. Goodnight, Headmaster.”

  Sherlock left the man still sitting in the chair in front of the unlit fire. He let himself out, and did not pause for a moment as he fled the property. It was only once he was into the dark of the soccer field that he bent at the waist and threw up his dinner.

  CHAPTER 20

  A MOST UNEXPECTED MOMENT

  I MADE THE INVITATION A PUZZLE BOTH FOR secrecy’s sake and because I knew Lock appreciated such things. I waited inside the girls’ dining hall washroom, the door open just wide enough to peek through. Both washrooms, a custodial closet, a computer lab, and a number of school offices occupied the dining hall’s lower level. Most of the building was left dark at night as part of the school’s green program.

  Two long days had passed since Sherlock had been summoned to the headmaster’s house. They had been uncomfortable days with little communication between us. Homework was getting much harder. Our first field hockey game was coming up on Saturday.

  Being confined to a dark, stinky bathroom gave me time to worry more about the lack of correspondence from Father. Each day I opened my school mailbox I caught myself holding my breath. I didn’t want to ever have to follow the instructions he’d left me—the key in the ashes, his desk drawer. Send me another postcard! Anything!

  Sherlock arrived to the bottom of the darkened stairs as a specter. The hallway floor of gray vinyl tiles and the dreary gray-green walls reminded me of French class from my former middle school.

  Sherlock seemed to float, rather than walk, toward the computer lab. He produced what I took to be the same rabbit-footed master key I’d seen him with outside the observatory.

  “You may come out now, Moria,” he said softly.

  I had not signed the invitation, nor had I so much as breathed a breath upon his arrival. “But do be a love and bring me a damp face towel with you.”

  I was so annoyed, so humiliated I’d been discovered, that I considered not responding at all. I could wait it out if need be. Anything but admit defeat to Mr. Pompous.

  “Come on,” he said, “it was a good effort.”

  I wetted a paper towel and brought it to him. I didn’t bother asking how he knew where I was; I didn’t want to give him that satisfaction of acknowledging his superiority.

  “Over here,” he said, leading me to the bottom of the stairs. “Holding the rail, take two steps down and then onto the floor.”

  I did as he asked, again without questioning him. I was determined not to feed that runaway ego of his. He placed the wet hand towel onto the vinyl floor where my foot landed, inspected his work, and led me to the computer lab. We entered and kept the lights off, presumably because of the classroom’s glass door. The far wall was also glass, creating a room of metal racks filled with the blinking colorful lights of computer servers and storage drives.

  Lock caught me staring. “They wall it off, in part because they keep the room uncomfortably cool for the betterment of the computer equipment.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “You’re angry because I sussed you out. Don’t be. It was a clever puzzle and a decent enough hiding place. It happens I know your handwriting, so sourcing the note was easy enough. The lavatory was about your only choice for a hiding place. Process of elimination. And of course I knew you’d arrive ahead of me, which is why I was hiding in the bushes for ten minutes before you showed up. So . . . there’s that.”

  “You know,” I said, “it’s not that you’re smart, practical, and logical that gets me. I actually admire, even respect your abilities. They’re uncanny, really. It’s that you’re a show-off, a conceited boy who gets no pleasure from his own intelligence without waving it like a flag for others to see.”

  “Yes, I know,” he said quite delightedly. “It’s annoying, isn’t it?”

  “If you know that, then why not dial it back a bit? You’d have all the friends a person could ask for.”

  “I have you,” he said bluntly. “Why would I need more?”

  “I . . . ah . . .” Tongue-twisted, stammering, blushing, flooded with warmth and alarm, I simply shook my head, shrugged, and worked to compose myself.

  “So,” he said, “the purpose of the cloak-and-dagger?”

  “What’s the nearest building to the chapel?”

  “Alumni House,” Sherlock answered automatically. I pictured his mind like a map; he always knew north.

  “The nearest building that counts,” I said.

  “The dining hall, the building above us, the building we’re in.”

  “The nearest building with a room that locks?” I qualified.

  “Point taken. Right here. You think the Bible is here in the computer lab.”

  “You sound so skeptical.”

  “Proximity is rarely a player in crimes of this nature. Theft of the Bible from its case in the chapel was premeditated. The thief was not looking for the nea
rest building in which to hide it. He, or she, had a plan for it from the beginning.”

  “Precisely!” I said, stumping him. “Who said anything about hiding it?” I waited for him to attempt to join my thought process; I loved being a step ahead of him for once.

  I followed on his heels as he walked the towering aisles of ordered shelving holding blinking computer servers. The room was insanely cold; I crossed my arms tightly in defense.

  “What are you up to, Moria?” He continued to stroll and observe, his hands clenched behind his back. I appreciated his taking in every little detail no matter how small; he directed my attention to things I hadn’t seen: wires connecting devices; a timer; a candy wrapper. He saw it all. He peered through the glass wall into the joining room that held a number of computer terminals—keyboards and screens—on a central table. Around the edges were more tables supporting various devices.

  “What’s that big one?” he asked, seeing through to the largest of the machines. Leave it to Sherlock, I thought, to know exactly what this was all about. “The one . . . the Kirtas Technology thingamajiggy?”

  “You’re warm.”

  “I’m freezing!”

  “It’s an expression,” I said. “It means you’re close. Very close.”

  “A wasted word is ‘very,’” he mumbled. “Oh, that’s precious!” he said, directing his intensity onto me. “Clever, clever, girl!”

  I hoped I didn’t look too proud. I was ready to burst.

  “To each its own purpose. Yes?” he said.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  We both stared at the darkened contraption in the connecting room.

  “The thief didn’t intend to steal it but to copy it! To digitize it! The Kirtas is a book digitizer.”

  “I remembered a school newsletter of Father’s,” I explained. “How proud the school was to have been given a machine that could archive its rare books collection, yearbooks, things like that. The thing turns the page automatically and takes pictures two at a time. It can scan a three-hundred-page book in less than thirty minutes.”

  “Been reading up, have we?”

  “I thought you might quiz me.”

  We laughed. It felt exceptionally good to be able to release the excitement I was experiencing.

  Sherlock theorized. “The thief transports the Bible here to the computer lab and begins scanning. But why? A Bible is a Bible. If, as it has been proposed, the volume contains the genealogy of the Moriarty family, then why not just photograph the first few pages?”

  “Intriguing, isn’t it?” I said.

  “It’s speculation, dear girl. Do not get too smug just yet.”

  “‘Just’ is a wasted word,” I said, attempting to sting him, “just like very.”

  “And ‘got’ and ‘a lot.’ Yes, yes. Shall we debate vocabulary and linguistics?”

  “No, we shouldn’t,” I said, motioning to the computer terminals. “We should find the file containing the scanned pages and see what we’re missing.”

  “There’s a piece of the puzzle missing,” said Sherlock.

  “Only one?”

  “You’re feisty this evening,” said he. “I like it.” He stared at me in a way that made me rubbery and afraid of something. I wasn’t sure what.

  “What?” I asked, my voice warbly.

  “May I kiss you, Moria?”

  I directly recalled it being cold in the room—cold to the point of freezing—and yet I was suddenly boiling hot. I nodded. “Yes. I may not be any good at it.”

  “You can’t go wrong,” he said, bending at the waist, taking my hand, and kissing the back of it. “See? Easy enough.”

  That was it; that was all. A gentle kiss to the back of my hand. I think I’d been expecting something from the movies, but on second thought, Sherlock probably didn’t watch movies; he struck me as more of a reader. This expression of appreciation, tender and kind, affected me so deeply that I felt myself about to cry. Or shout. I wasn’t sure which. At this point, barring the departure of my mother, this was the most unexpected moment in my life, and somehow also the most important. I thanked him in a soft, uncooperative voice. He made a little head bow and I noticed his neck was a violent red. He was embarrassed. I liked that most of all.

  “Well,” he said, slipping into the plastic chair fronting the computer screen, “I suppose the file itself will be difficult to find and password protected once we find it, but it may yet reveal secrets the creator of the file did not intend. Computers hold far more information than we think.” He began typing; from what I could tell, things weren’t going so well for him.

  I suddenly dared to reveal information he wouldn’t know I possessed. “First Jamie headed off to the headmaster’s house. Then eventually you.”

  “You followed both of us?” He seemed devastated.

  “Not exactly followed, but I saw you walk over there, and you never saw me,” I gloated.

  “I may have missed it,” he conceded.

  “Look, I just wanted to apologize for my brother reporting you. He isn’t himself. I don’t know what’s wrong, but he’s different since coming here.”

  “We’re all different, I suspect.”

  “I delivered the second clue as you asked.”

  “Thank you for that.” I wasn’t sure if I’d ever heard Lock thank anyone for anything. “Did he solve it?”

  “He read it. I helped him along some. After Headmaster’s house he was shaken, I think. Not sure why. From what I saw, he never went to the library that night, which is baffling.”

  “He must find that third clue. My sense is that time is of the essence. It was a drastic move for the headmaster to reprimand me.”

  “Did he? Reprimand you?”

  “Actually, I think of it more as baiting me.”

  “How so?”

  “He said he doesn’t want me helping James find the Bible. I was under the distinct impression he knows that’s not what I’ve been helping with. It’s the clues. I think he was hoping I’d contradict him and mention the clues.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “I did not. I can spot a trap, especially when I’m led into it by the nose ring.”

  “What exactly does he want you doing?”

  “Nothing. He’d rather I do nothing to help James in any way. How do you find that?”

  “Interesting,” I answered honestly.

  “Contradictory!” he proclaimed. “The school promotes teamwork at every turn. As head of the school, the headmaster is bound to that dictum, that policy. Yet, with me and your brother he makes an exception. One has to ask why.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “Haha. Very good!”

  “Thank you. He’s testing James?”

  “I haven’t sorted it out,” he said. “But Crudgeon’s interest, his apparent role in this, is intriguing, confusing, befuddling.”

  “There you go, showing off again.”

  “Am I? Apologies. Diarrhea of the mouth.”

  “That’s disgusting!”

  “May I remind you,” Lock said, “that of particular interest is his mention of your family Bible? Clearly there’s something to it beyond its value to the school as an heirloom treasure. Now, we suspect someone may have scanned the thing page by page. Any idea what it may contain?”

  “Honestly, I didn’t know we had one, much less that it was here at Baskerville, much less what’s in it. But a family Bible? Birth records, baptisms, that sort of thing. Right? Like we said.” I recalled James saying this nearly verbatim to Natalie, me, and Bret Thorndyke.

  Sherlock nodded. The fun thing about being around him was the energy his thinking produced; it was like standing next to a nuclear reactor—particles flying in every direction, dangerously volatile, ridiculously powerful.

  “I believe,” said he, “the two to be mutually entwined, the clues and the Bible. Entwined, but not connected. The nature of that relationship has yet to be worked out, but it can’t be coincidence that one arrived on the
heels of the other.”

  “So the clues lead to the Bible?”

  “Are you listening? No! I might have thought so at one point, but now I have my doubts. The headmaster advised me to leave James on his own. To stop helping him. Does that mean Crudgeon knows about the clues, I wonder. If so, how could that be? And why should he care about some hazing ritual, which is what this feels like? If not, is it merely Crudgeon’s fear that James might find and touch the Bible—something he’s warned us against—or is it more involved than that?”

  “So he is testing Jamie. Why?”

  “I think Dr. Crudgeon knows a great deal more than he lets on about everything that goes on in his institution. Never underestimate the resources of a strong leader. They have spies, technologies, and treasure at their disposal.”

  “You are very strange,” I said, without meaning to.

  “‘Very’ is a wasted word. We’ve touched on this. It has no strength or meaning. I advise removing it from your vocabulary at once, along with ‘just’ and ‘a lot.’”

  “See what I mean?”

  He laughed. Arched a brow in an insightful way. “Yes, you keep saying so! Guilty as charged.”

  I laughed with him. He was having no luck getting past the computer’s opening password prompt.

  We heard it together: someone slipped and fell at the bottom of the stairs. Now I understood Sherlock’s putting the wet paper towel on the floor by the stairs. He’d made a slippery spot, a way to slow down and announce an unwanted visitor.

  Sherlock and I ducked beneath the table, balled up, arms around our shins. The lights in the big room switched on.

  Proctor Sidling, coach of football and wrestling, wore XXL gym clothes around campus, and carried himself like one of those army generals in a World War II movie. His wiry mustache was broken by a thickly curving harelip scar; he wore a permanently twisted smile to one side of his face. A math proctor, he had a head for numbers and ran the computer lab. It seemed conceivable he had followed one of us—unlikely Sherlock, since . . . he’s Sherlock. I cautioned myself to be more careful in the future—if I had a future at Baskerville after this.