Standing behind me, he nudged my hand for the flashlight and placed his head practically inside the drawer.
“Nothing,” I moaned. “Only his passport. He traveled a lot, but believe me, James and I already knew that. Do you think it was Lowry or maybe one of the other mystery men who emptied it?”
“It’s not exactly empty,” Sherlock announced in that annoying tone of his. “It simply doesn’t happen to have anything inside it.”
“Not now, OK? Sometimes that stuff’s cute, but not right now.”
“Think, Moria. If Lowry had emptied it—if anyone had!—then why leave the passport and why return the key to the ashes? That is illogical to the point of absurdity. In point of fact, he left you something on the back panel. Here, help me.” He handed me back the flashlight while he deciphered how to release the drawer from the guides that secured it. The drawer came free and he plunked it down onto the blotter. As I moved the beam of light, I saw it: words had been burned into the wood of the drawer’s back panel, like with a branding iron.
Sherlock grabbed a piece of notepaper from Father’s leather desk organizer. He wrote down the message, carefully checking it for accuracy. Then he turned the drawer over, pulled on each panel, tried everything in the world to make the thing come apart, and returned it to the desk.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“You’re going to lock it and return the key.”
“That’s all?”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“What’s it mean? We have to do something.”
“We did something,” Sherlock said. “I wrote it down. That’s something.” He pocketed the notepaper.
“But what’s it mean?”
“I don’t know any more than you do. Another puzzle, another clue. We will make sense of it, Moria, but not here, not now. We’re taking too long. We need to find the Bible and get out of here.”
“The Bible isn’t—”
“Don’t start with me! I humored you, now you humor me.” Sherlock left the room. A minute later I found him wandering the foyer. He peered into the blue sitting room, the dining room, and finally the library. I followed Sherlock through the kitchen. He moved around effortlessly, as if he knew the place. “His study is too obvious,” he said. “You knew the man. So where would he hide it, Moria?”
“Don’t scold me!” I heard something outside the front door and I shushed him. “Did you hear that?” I whispered.
“I’m not scolding,” he said, also in a whisper. “And I didn’t hear anything, but as you know, I’m concerned we may have been followed. I don’t want someone finding two more ladders.”
“You really are an awful boy.”
“Insensitive of me, admittedly. Apologies.”
“Not accepted.”
“Understood.”
“I don’t have any idea where he might have hidden it,” I said.
“Others will have looked for it. Searched top to bottom. Carefully. Efficiently. Perhaps they’ve found it, but for now we will assume it remains in place. For one thing, having made the search public, the headmaster would likely call off the hunt the moment it surfaced.”
“How would he know any of this?” I asked.
Sherlock said nothing, but looked at me funny.
“Crudgeon’s involved?”
“Most certainly. Motive, unclear. Degree of involvement, unclear. But involved? Yes. Little question of that. Is there a cellar?”
“It’s damp. Father wouldn’t put any books down there, no matter how carefully wrapped or packaged. He treats books with the utmost respect. Mind you, I think you’re wrong about this.”
“Did he have a home safe?”
“I hate the past tense.”
“Sorry. Someplace he locked up important documents?”
“Not that I know of. And if he d . . . did . . .” I stuttered, “I wouldn’t know the combination anyway. James might, I suppose.”
“I think he’d want you and James to be able to find it. ‘When all that’s left is right.’ He would have thought ahead. Where would he think you or James might look?”
“You know what, Lock? You scare me.”
“I don’t mean to.”
“Not that kind of scary. Scary-smart. He’s always told me and James that the best place to hide something is out in the open. The thing is, we never asked him about such things. He would just randomly bring it up at dinner. And not just once, either! It got to where James and I would kick each other under the table when he started into it.” The memory clenched my throat.
“So, something missing, or something added,” Sherlock said. “The genius is that only a family member would know such a thing. Brilliant! It’s an unbreakable code.” He wandered the foyer. “I am positive your house has been searched. No wonder it wasn’t found.”
“Again, so confident.”
“For the same reasons I just told you. I’m right about this.”
I looked around with fresh eyes. It was strange to see my family home and everything in it as a kind of stranger.
“It might be a painting. A rug. A piece of furniture. It might be something that’s been moved from one room to another. It’s here, and he’s left you a clue to find it.”
“Don’t get weird about this, okay? Just let me look around.” We wandered the ground floor. I was in the lead, with Sherlock a step behind. The family portraits, the Charles River landscapes, the marble-top dressers, the stained-glass lamps. Everything in its place. The kitchen had never been made modern, other than some new appliances. Miss Delphine worked in a space that hadn’t been remodeled since the 1970s. The decorative copper pots were where they’d always been, the wall clock. Nothing fancy. Nothing changed.
“I’m not sure what I’m looking for,” I confessed to Sherlock.
“It’s okay, Moria. You’re doing great.”
We were prowling the downstairs library—yes, we had two libraries in our home—when I stopped. A distracted Sherlock bumped into me and stepped back. “What?”
“Oh, dear,” I said.
“What?” he said more anxiously.
“See the theme?”
“I’d be blind if I didn’t!”
Our downstairs library housed a coffee table fashioned to look like three gigantic books stacked flat. Each spine opened as a drawer. There were bookends of the same leather-bound look. There was a box made to look like a stack of fake books that Father used as a catch-all for pencils and rubber bands. A credenza with leather spines facing out.
“That lamp,” I said, pointing. “It’s new.” It stood on a small French table at the side of a vast leather chair where Father read in the evenings. The lamp’s design was similarly themed: a wrought-iron stand, a large book facing out contained in a wrought-iron cage, and a lampshade of animal hide. It was a gorgeous thing, but I’d never seen it before.
Sherlock craned his lanky frame over to read the title. “On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin.”
“Fake as well,” I said. “See? It’s wood. Painted like gold-edged pages.”
“But it’s new?”
“It is to me,” I said.
“Then,” Sherlock said, reaching for the wall plug, “we must take it apart.”
“What? No! Why?”
He worked quickly, toying with the brass “rope” used as a pin to lock shut the cage surrounding Darwin’s oversized book. “How clever,” he said, unscrewing the “rope.” “This design, this knot, is called a monkey fist. Get it?”
“No, I don’t get it,” I said caustically. He was growing tedious on me.
“Darwin’s theory of evolution involves apes and man. Monkey fist.”
“Ha ha,” I said, bored.
“And think of this: if it was locked with a real padlock, then it would draw more attention to itself. But this is just a pin, easily opened, so how could it be hiding anything important. See?”
“Just get it over with, would you? It’s late, real late, and I’m not enj
oying being back here.”
Sherlock muttered excitedly, something about how the lamp’s construction hid the wiring inside the cage. “Meaning the book is free and clear, Moria. Usually, the wires go straight up through a tube to the bulb. Why the more elaborate design? I’ll tell you why—”
“There’s a surprise.”
“So one can remove the contents. That’s why.” Either the wooden book was heavy, or Sherlock weak. He carried it with some difficulty to the floor, where it thumped onto Father’s oriental carpet. He stood it up, examining it from all sides.
“It’s a big piece of wood, Lock. Nice try.” I wasn’t sure he’d heard me, so intense was his concentration.
He didn’t look up as he spoke. “Magnifying glass on the dictionary, far corner.”
I looked over behind my father’s desk, astonished to see a large magnifying glass lying on the page of the open dictionary. I wondered what else this strange boy had seen that I’d missed. I delivered the glass to him, knowing that he was instructing me like a servant. He held his eye to the lens, distorting his face, and then lowered it to the upright wooden book. He mumbled and muttered and spoke to himself. I didn’t understand a word. “Yes, yes, yes,” he eventually said. “Clever. So very clever.”
“What is it?”
Still without looking up or acknowledging me he issued another order. “Paper clip.” He held his left hand out, palm up and open.
“Yes, master,” I said, annoyed with him. But I did as he asked. Just before I dropped it into his hand he spoke again.
“Unfold it! What do you think I want it for?”
“I have no idea what you want it for!” I protested.
“The tiniest, the smallest of holes, just at the corner here. Some glue or wood putty sealing it. The color is off only fractionally. It’s a very good job of it.”
“A nail hole?”
“Think, Moria! Think! A reasonable deduction, but flawed. Why only one? If the entire piece is glued and done so by a true craftsman so the lines are nearly imperceivable, then why a single nail hole?”
“I was asking, that’s all.”
“Then he must have been counting on James to find this, not you.”
“James took wood shop.”
“Well, there you have it. Makes me all the more confident.”
“Of?” Having carefully unbent the paper clip, I handed it to him.
Magnifying glass in hand, Sherlock lowered the paper clip like a pin. It came to rest and he pushed once, hard. I heard a pop.
The lid of the box opened just like the cover of a book.
I reached for our family Bible.
CHAPTER 35
WAKING TO A NIGHTMARE
“YOU’RE MAKING THIS A HABIT,” JAMES SAID, sitting on the edge of an unfamiliar bed. Then I placed it: the school infirmary.
“What? Where?”
The nurse came to the foot of the bed. “Ah, there we are!”
“What do you remember?” James said. I heard the deep concern in his voice, and I considered trying to drag out his sympathy.
“He was shouting at me not to touch it.”
“Who? What?”
I realized I had better figure out what was going on before volunteering too much information. I had no real memory, just fireflies orbiting my head. “Or was that a dream?” I said, trying to cover my mistake while I gathered my senses.
“You were found passed out by the sundial.”
“Was I?”
“Natalie found you.”
“Sekulow?”
“Who else? Yes. She was worried about you. You weren’t in your bed when she woke up from a nightmare at three o’clock last night. She didn’t report you right away—see who got the good roommate? Once she found you, she called for help. You’re lucky.”
“The sundial?” I remembered Sherlock’s face. Had there been a box? I wondered. Sherlock had shouted a warning at me right before everything had gone dark. But not like unconsciousness—more like a sack being pulled over my head. That was it! I recalled faintly. A hood. My hands slapping something soft. Or was that just my imagination?
“I couldn’t sleep,” I said.
“So you violated curfew?” James said. “I told you I would protect you!” He sounded so angry. “How do you expect me to protect you if you go wandering around campus in the middle of the night?”
My head hurt. The nurse saw me reach to my forehead.
“I have some ice water,” she said, moving it to my side table. It bought me a moment to think. My mouth tasted like I’d eaten a sandalwood candle, not that I was in the habit of eating sandalwood candles.
My room held two hospital beds and a window that looked out onto the gym. A metal end table held a pink plastic vomit-dish and my water cup. I felt queasy looking at that color pink. No wonder people vomited. “So Sherlock didn’t care enough to stop by?” I tried to sound like a jilted teen. It wasn’t that difficult.
“He’s AWOL. He’s toast. He’ll be suspended, no question. Maybe expelled.” James sounded far too satisfied by the prospect of that outcome.
I sat up sharply. My head ached horribly. I thought I might throw up. “What’s wrong with me? I feel horrible.”
“There, there, child.” The nurse eased me back and fed me a straw. The water tasted of the plastic cup. It was delicious, nonetheless. “Easy . . . easy . . . that’s enough for now.”
I’d been found by the school sundial. Sherlock was missing. What was going on?
“Why can’t I remember anything? It was dark. There were trees. Blurred trees.”
I saw Sherlock’s face lit by pulsing light. He’d been with me. I spoke without thinking, my headache owning me. “Lock never made it back to your room?”
“What’s that supposed to mean? He was with you?”
“It means . . . you’re saying he missed curfew?” I’d spoken too quickly and James picked up on it.
“What do you mean by ‘back to’ our room? Was he with you?” he repeated, a dog recognizing a scent. “Where were you two? Did he talk you into meeting him somewhere? I’ll bash his head in! He hurt you and then fled campus?” Every muscle in James’s body tensed. I’d never seen him quite like this. For a moment, for an infinitesimal amount of time, I actually considered lying to my brother to see what he would do to defend me and my honor.
“James! No! Nothing like that! I have no memory of anything. I have no idea how I ended up here. Sherlock did not invite me to anything. Believe me, I’d remember that! James, do you hear me?” I waited, terrified I’d unintentionally wronged Sherlock. I realized how only a few words had gotten James thinking all the wrong things. “I’m just concerned about him,” I said, trying to look embarrassed by the admission. It didn’t take much. “I like him, James. You know I do! Don’t be like this!” I could see his anger brewing. “I don’t want him suspended. I don’t want him in any trouble.”
For once, I wasn’t lying to my brother. I had no idea why I’d been found by the sundial, or what, if anything, Sherlock had to do with it.
Looking down, I saw a bandage on the inside of my elbow. James saw me looking.
“They’re testing your blood, Mo,” he whispered as he leaned in as if to adjust my pillow.
“Why?” I asked, equally confidentially.
His eyes softened. “They think maybe you touched the Bible. Remember Headmaster’s warning us?”
“The Bible? Jamie, I’m scared. I’ve never been unable to remember stuff before. Do you think that’s possible? Do you think . . . our family Bible?”
“No clue. But they think so.” He stroked my hair. “Don’t worry. I’m going to figure this out.”
“Sherlock is innocent, James.”
“Sure he is.” He took my hand. His was warm, nearly hot to the touch.
I reached for the pink bowl.
CHAPTER 36
A MOST WELCOME VISITOR
THE NEXT TIME I OPENED MY EYES, THE WINdow looked hollow, black with night. My ro
om glowed in the frightful pallor of tube lighting. I heard rats scratching the floor. I dropped my jaw to release a shriek when a head popped up. Sherlock, with a long, bony finger pressed to his lips. “Shh!”
“You about scared me to death!” I said, too loudly for his liking. Only then did I process the smudges of dirt on his face, his tousled hair and bloodshot eyes. “You look horrible.”
“Quiet, please.” He moved toward the door, glanced carefully into the hallway, and eased the door shut, leaving it open an inch.
“What . . . is . . . going on?” I asked.
“I’m not officially here. Not exactly on campus,” he said hoarsely. “You might say I’m visiting.”
“James said you didn’t come back to the room last night. Was it last night?” I’d lost all track of time.
“How could I?” he asked.
I must have offered a blank expression.
“You don’t remember?” he said. He followed with a brief explanation. “The Bible? Your father’s house? I escaped. You weren’t as lucky. I did everything I could, Moria, but I was outnumbered. There were at least three of them. My only choice was to run. I felt horrible. Your driver saved me.”
“Ralph!”
“Yes. First he tackled me, then he saved me.”
“Tackled?”
“I ran out the back door. I set up for an attack, but misjudged. The abductors removed you from the house out the front door. Bold of them, I might add. By the time I could get myself straight, you and the Bible were gone.”
“The Bible? It was at our house?”
“You honestly don’t remember any of this?”
I shook my head, embarrassed by the tears spilling down my cheeks. Sherlock took my hand and squeezed. “It’s all right. It’s all going to be OK.”
I doubt my expression altered. Holding my hand, he noticed something or was looking for something. He turned my wrist and studied my fingers. “Excellent! Exactly as I’d suspected.” He gave my hand back to me. I appreciated such spontaneity and enthusiasm; members of the Moriarty family were not allowed to show such emotion.
“Why were you crawling around under my bed?”
The Initiation Page 19
