Oh, this again. “What?” Anna asked, folding her arms.

  “Anyway, it turns out there are codes in the walls,” Emily said, taking back the conversation. “One of them is here.”

  “Codes?” Anna stepped up beside Emily and looked at the painting. Bamboo stalks—that was all she saw. But to Emily and Charlie, they must mean something else. “What do they say?”

  “They lead to treasure,” Charlie said. “We’re going to need to write these down again. I’ll go get a pen and paper.” He raced out.

  Anna’s eyes widened. “Treasure?” Virginia’s treasure, maybe?

  But Emily shook her head. “We don’t know that. Personally, I think the message is some secret Elaine left behind for someone to figure out later.”

  That was even more interesting. Treasure was all well and good, but what might be so important—so secret—that Elaine Gardner had to say it in code?

  What if she knew what really happened to Virginia?

  Anna’s heart started racing. When Charlie returned with a pen and a page torn out of one of his puzzle books, she snatched them from his hands. “Read out the numbers, Emily,” she said. “I’ll write them down. It will be faster this way.”

  “Well, excuse you,” Charlie mumbled, but he didn’t fight her.

  “Huh? Okay. They’re in sets of three. The first one: one, one, six,” Emily said, then moved on to the next panel.

  Anna jotted down the numbers as fast as Emily read them aloud. When she had eight sets, Emily said, “That’s all.”

  Charlie hurried over and took the list from Anna. He pushed his glasses up his nose and leaned over it. Anna watched him. “Does that mean anything to you?” she asked.

  He pulled back. “It definitely looks like a book cipher,” he said. He turned to Emily. “But yeah, without the book, we can’t solve this.”

  “Book cipher?” Anna asked.

  “A code in a book,” Emily said. “These numbers tell us how to read it. But we don’t have the book.”

  Ohh. “That’s the book that went missing from Charlie!”

  Charlie nodded. “Emily found the numbers and I found the book. But someone took both of them from us, which is how I knew it couldn’t have been you.”

  “Thanks, I think.” Anna looked at the numbers. So close and yet so far. “How’d you find the book in the first place?”

  “Another code. Dorky, I know.” He kicked at the carpet.

  “No! It got you here!” As Charlie grinned, Anna thought. “The book was Treasure Island, right?”

  Charlie nodded. “But it might have to be the exact same edition as the one the code was written for. That way the words will be at the right spot on each page. I couldn’t find any copies except for the one on the bookcase upstairs, and that was a really old edition.”

  Wait. A really old copy of Treasure Island? That rang a bell. Anna had seen the copy on the bookcase door, but she was certain she had seen another one. An old one, sitting on an old, dusty chair in an old, dusty hallway.

  She squealed and jumped up and down. “It wasn’t the only copy,” she said to a bewildered Charlie and Emily. “Come with me! Hurry!”

  Anna raced out of the China suite, Charlie and Emily in hot pursuit. All three came to a breathless halt in front of the bookcase at the end of the hall.

  “This is where I found my copy,” Charlie said. “I don’t think the thief would put it back.”

  “Anyone think it’s weird how we haven’t seen any of the adults except that one couple this morning?” Emily asked, but Anna ignored her and yanked on the bookcase.

  It didn’t budge. Well, that was embarrassing. “This used to be a door,” she said. “Now it’s sealed. I don’t know why.”

  Emily touched the side. “I believe you. Where did it lead?”

  Anna pointed up. “Ever notice how Idlewood has three rows of windows but only two floors?”

  “The upstairs.” Emily smiled. “Where the Gardners’ personal rooms were.”

  Charlie also grinned. “So that’s where you’ve been running off to every day.”

  Anna nodded. “There’s all kinds of old things up there. Including another copy of Treasure Island.”

  “Which you discovered by exploring. Wow,” Charlie said. “Then come on. There’s got to be a way to open this.” He grabbed both sides of the bookcase and leaned back, pulling with all his might.

  “It won’t open,” Anna said. “I don’t know why. But there’s another way up.”

  Charlie let go and fell back. He scrambled to his feet. “Let’s go.”

  “You sure?”

  “We both are,” Emily said. “Show us the way.”

  “Okay,” Anna said, looking at both of them and landing her gaze on her brother. “I’ll take you there, but I warn you, you’re not going to like it.”

  15

  “I HATE THIS,” Charlie said as the wind whipped through his hair.

  “I knew you would,” Anna said, looking down. She had gone first, to show him and Emily where the footholds were.

  Emily was below Charlie, and Charlie preferred it that way. If he followed Anna, step by step, he’d make it up. And if he fell, well, maybe Emily could stop his fall.

  It didn’t make logical sense, with gravity and human reflexes and everything, but if imagining Emily catching him if he slipped could trick Charlie’s brain into thinking this whole climbing-the-side-of-a-mansion thing was safe, then he wasn’t complaining.

  “Charlie,” Emily called. “That handhold is open.”

  Charlie took a shuddering breath, closed his eyes briefly to recenter himself, and then snapped them open. He reached with a shaking hand to the next stone. The real trick would be managing to make his feet grip the next foothold without his jellylike knees betraying him.

  “You guys didn’t have to come up,” Anna said, pulling herself up to the next stone. “I could have gone up and gotten the book on my own and brought it back down.”

  “And miss out on seeing where the Gardners and Virginia Maines lived while they were here?” Emily said. “Not a chance.”

  Anna had explained everything, how she’d found Virginia’s old room in the tower and had been reading her letters. Neither Charlie nor Emily had been particularly surprised, but Emily had started to bounce on her toes when she heard that they were going to the place Virginia Maines had once lived.

  Charlie wished he had that kind of enthusiasm for climbing a tower. He pressed himself closer to the wall. When Anna explained they’d need to climb the tower, he should have stayed behind. He could have waited down on the grass for the girls to return with the book.

  But if Charlie’s parents found him alone without Anna, then his sister would get into trouble because she wasn’t supposed to be left alone anymore. And even if that weren’t a problem, the book clue was his, from start to finish. He’d started it, and no matter how terrifying it was, he was going to finish it. He had to know.

  That push, that desire to know more, was more powerful than any fear of heights could ever be.

  “Charlie? Do you want to go back down?” Anna was sitting on a ledge, just a few feet above him. She might as well have been half a mile away.

  “Not a chance,” he said, and pulled himself up to the ledge.

  Anna grabbed his arm and helped him up. She smiled at him, and then, as Charlie rested, she helped guide Emily the rest of the way up. They took a few moments to rest together and then finished the climb.

  It helped if Charlie didn’t think too much about where he was. He kept his eyes either up, on Anna and the next stone to grab, or straight ahead at the rock in front of him. Get the book, get the book, he thought, making a rhythm with the words and the beat of his hands and feet hitting the wall.

  Get the book, get the book, don’t look down, don’t look down …

  “Hey.” It was Anna. She was leaning out a window and had grabbed Charlie’s arm. “You’re here.”

  “Oh.” Charlie pushed himself over the windowsill as Anna pulled him in. Then he collapsed against the wall in the dusty tower room.

  “I didn’t know you had it in you,” Anna said.

  “Me neither,” Charlie gasped. Man, his arms ached! And his hands were raw and scratched.

  But look how high he’d climbed! He, Charlie Henderson! He’d climbed up a house, up a tower, without a rope or harness or anything.

  He was never going to do it again.

  “Where’s the book?” he asked Anna.

  “Emily, up to your right,” she called out the window, and then raised a hand to Charlie. “Wait a moment.”

  So Charlie waited for a small eternity until Emily climbed up over the sill, wondering what was happening with the adults downstairs. It had been easy for the kids to escape the house unnoticed. The parlor had been full of the adults, all shouting, with Mr. Llewellyn shouting the loudest of all: “QUIET DOWN! EVERYONE! WE HAVE TO GET TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS!”

  To the bottom of what? Had the grown-ups discovered the puzzles in the house and launched their own investigations? Had Mr. Argent found the treasure with his metal detector? Or had the thief gotten to it first? Were they too late?

  Emily thumped into the room, shaking Charlie out of his thoughts. “That’s … a lot higher … than it looked,” she wheezed, crouching down, elbows on her knees. Then she looked around at the tower room and instantly seemed to get her energy back.

  “All this time,” Emily said, “this was right over our heads.” She let out a shriek and jumped up and down. “Look! These were Virginia’s travel charts and maps. And that was her bed! It looks like it hasn’t been touched since she vanished.” Emily leaned over the dusty comforter.

  Charlie looked around the little room. It was kind of cool. Like stepping back in time, in a way. Too bad the layers of dust ruined the effect.

  “I found these letters,” Anna said, touching a stack of envelopes on the desk. “From Elaine to Virginia.”

  Emily froze, staring at Anna. “Are you serious?”

  Anna nodded. “And Virginia’s journal was hidden here, too. See?” She pointed at an old, ragged leather book.

  “But you found it?” Emily raced over to Anna and the desk. “Oh my gosh, I have to read them. Who knows what kind of amazing stories are inside, lost to the ages—”

  Charlie coughed, partly from the dust but also to interrupt Emily. “Maybe you read the journal later?”

  The girls nodded, though Emily tucked the journal under her arm.

  “The other copy of the book is this way,” Anna said, pointing down a set of spiral stairs. “In the main hallway. Let’s go.”

  What Charlie had taken for a small tower room was actually much larger. The stairs snaking down it were crossed with ropes and swings, and lined with books and more maps and charts, and once they reached the bottom, there were couches and chairs. Virginia must have had a great living area here for when she planned her next adventure. Charlie could almost see her, surrounded by charts, plotting her journeys, marking a new route.

  Here there was no gold, no silver, no treasure. Virginia had vanished and taken nothing with her, but if the treasure wasn’t in her room, then it must be hidden somewhere. The code would have to show them where.

  The climb down to the main hallway was much easier than the climb up the tower. Anna pointed out the sneaky entrance to the tower, but when she tried the tower’s normal third-floor door from the inside, it opened, so they used that.

  The three entered a hallway that looked like something out of a horror movie. The emptiness, with the gray film of dust everywhere, made the rooms look old and faded, as transparent as ghosts.

  “There are the steps to the bookcase door,” Anna said, pointing.

  Charlie shivered. That moment when the bookcase shook. Now that he knew where his sister had been escaping to, he was sure it must have been her, doing something to shake the hidden door. But, still, there had been that howl he heard just afterward.

  If there was no ghost, what could have howled like that?

  Anna stopped and picked up a torn book. “Here it is,” she said. “Is this the right edition?”

  Charlie took the book, with Emily peering over his shoulder. “It’s a little ratty,” he said. “The cover’s missing. But I’m pretty sure it’s the same edition as the one I lost.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?” Emily asked. “Let’s solve the code.”

  She pulled out the list of numbers, and Charlie opened the book. “What’s the first set?” he asked.

  “One, one, six,” Emily read, and Charlie turned to the first page, down to the first line, and read the sixth word out loud.

  “The.”

  “The,” Anna repeated, eyes closed.

  “Keep going,” Charlie said.

  Emily read out each set, and Charlie flipped through the book until he found every one.

  Unfortunately, it made a bunch of gibberish, when it worked at all. Some of the last numbers were huge, way too big for a single line of text. Charlie had been trying the edition-sensitive “page, line, word in that line” method, but it led to nothing. With the girls staring at him, he muttered, “Must be ‘chapter, paragraph, word,’” and started again. So, they didn’t need the exact edition. Whatever. They still needed the book, and it wasn’t too hard to redo the code.

  Fortunately, the first word was the same. And, this time, it made sense.

  “The.”

  “Door.”

  “Was.”

  “Open.”

  “Between.”

  “The.”

  “Dragon.”

  “Wings. And that’s it,” Charlie said, closing the book.

  “The door was open between the dragon wings,” Anna said.

  “The door was … I’m sorry, I have no idea what it means,” Emily said.

  “We’re looking for a door?” Charlie asked. “That’s what I’m getting. Are you sure that was the whole message?”

  “That was every set of numbers in those paintings,” Emily said. “I don’t know if there were other paintings like that in your suite, but I’m guessing there weren’t. And are you sure you got the whole message from the Rome wall?”

  “I’ve heard this message before,” Anna was muttering, eyes still closed. “Where have I heard it before?”

  “I’m sure. Dragon wings,” Charlie said. “Dragon wings. The door must be marked with dragons.”

  “Yes!” Emily said. “But which ones? There are so many dragons in Idlewood. All the ones in the China suite, for example.”

  “Between the dragon wings,” Anna said again, opening her eyes.

  Emily snapped her fingers. “The downstairs hall,” she said. “Those two big dragon statues!”

  “They’re on either side of that carved door!” Charlie said.

  “But they weren’t earlier! Someone moved one.”

  Charlie grinned. “That has to be it.”

  “No,” Anna said. “It’s not. Can I see the journal?”

  Emily handed Virginia’s journal over and Anna flipped back and forth through the pages. “I knew that sentence sounded familiar,” she said. “There’s this story in here about Ginny jumping out of her plane over the Amazon jungle.”

  “Ginny?” Charlie asked.

  “Jumping out of a plane?” Emily looked over Anna’s shoulder. “I’ve never heard that story.”

  “Neither had I. I think Ginny kept it to herself. Here it is.” Anna stopped and read aloud, “‘The door was open between the dragon’s wings, and I soon grew wings of my own as the green jungle rushed up to meet me.’”

  “That’s the line,” Charlie said. “Or close enough.”

  “But it’s not about China or dragon statues,” Anna said. “She was in her plane.”

  Emily’s eyes widened, and Charlie felt the realization hit him like a freight train. “Her plane’s name was the Dragon,” he whispered.

  Anna snapped the journal closed. Her eyes blazed. “I know where the treasure is,” she said.

  16

  THE CLIMB BACK down the tower was even trickier than the one up. Anna went down before Charlie, pointing out handholds. It was slow going; all those years of sitting around, reading instead of playing outside, had caught up to him. Maybe Anna should have invited him out more often. She just never thought he’d come with her. Watching him puff and tremble but still climb the tower had proved her wrong. Maybe he did care about things outside his books.

  Emily was struggling to climb down, too. She’d taken Virginia’s journal and was balancing that on her way down the wall. Anna sighed. This was why she never brought anything down with her. And the fact that it was stealing.

  “Borrowing,” Emily had called it. “We might need the journal later. We’ll put it back.”

  Anna had no response to that, other than to suggest they hurry.

  When they reached the grass, Charlie dropped to the ground and hugged it. “I hope someone got a picture of that, because I’m never doing it again,” he said. “Never, ever again.”

  “Get up,” Anna said, smiling. “It wasn’t that bad.”

  “Maybe not for you,” he said. But he was also smiling when he stood. “Okay. Take us to the door.”

  “This way. It’s on the second floor.” Anna took off, and Emily and Charlie ran after her.

  When they stepped through the front doors, they stopped short.

  Idlewood, usually so quiet in the morning, had turned into a madhouse. Mr. Mustache was yelling at Mr. Llewellyn, who was trying to calm him down but whose own face had turned as red as his tie for today.

  “I understand wanting to stop thieves, but this search is too much,” Mr. Mustache was saying. “My wife is easily exhausted! She’s taking a quiet stroll on the grounds to calm down, but I don’t think we can stay here another night.”

  Book Lady, hair loose, had dragged her suitcase downstairs and had it open on the carpet. Piles of books, titled everything from Spaghetti in Space to How to Pan for Gold, spilled out. “There,” she said. “I have nothing to hide.”

  “Nor do I,” Suitcase Man said, one of his hands resting on Braid Lady’s arm. A metal detector hung from his other hand, and his pinned suitcase lay open in front of him. Behind them, Garrett and the cook were dragging one of the dragon statues across the hall. Garrett was chatting with the cook the whole time. “I can’t believe they thought a tarp would hide this. Seriously, it was the first place I looked. Where was it supposed to go, again? By the door? That makes sense. The other dragon looks just like it…” He was still talking after they placed the statue by the carved door and left the hall.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21