The Explorer's Code, page 6
“It’s also nice to get away,” Quilted Bag said. “I work at a publishing house. It can get intense.”
“Winners, huh?” Anna’s mom smiled. “Well, as a matter of fact, so are we.”
Great. This again.
No one seemed to want to talk to Anna herself, not even Mr. Mustache’s wife, who smiled from across the table and offered Anna a butterscotch candy from her colorful bag as her husband and Anna’s mom spoke. So Anna finished lunch and then ran outside, sticking the candy in her pocket. Garrett the Gateman was out there, setting up wickets for croquet. Anna’s parents were planning on playing croquet after lunch, but Anna’s own plans included vanishing until the game was over.
Garrett waved at her and called out, “How’s your first day here? Having lots of fun?” But she just waved and ran past.
Anna explored the grounds, finding an evergreen maze behind the house, but as she wandered to the maze, she realized she kept raising her eyes to that elusive third floor.
No. There had to be a way to get there. An explorer didn’t give up just because something was hard. Virginia Maines wouldn’t have found that French treasure room if she wasn’t persistent. Anna must have missed something.
Annoyed, she turned away from the maze and hurried back into the house. The dark-haired snob’s parents were examining a vase and leaped away, looking startled, as Anna marched by. Why were all the adults so jumpy around her?
Anna marched to the big bookcase on the second floor. Without removing the books this time, she wrapped her fingers around one side of the shelves, like she was about to pull on a door. With a grunt, she pulled.
And with a click and a squeak, the bookcase swung open on a hinge. Anna almost fell over. It worked! She thought she’d pulled like that before, but apparently she hadn’t.
She pushed the door open. A staircase, lined with a rug that must have once been beautiful but was now gray with dust, stretched up to the third floor.
The air seemed heavy, muffling the sounds of people going back to their rooms after lunch or heading out to claim their balls and mallets. This was what it felt like to see something no one had seen in a long time. This was what it felt like to be a real explorer.
Anna closed the door behind her and climbed the dusty stairs.
5
CHARLIE HAD a very strange afternoon, but that was his own fault. After lunch with his parents and a distracted and annoyed Anna (his parents had given her a short lecture about going where she wasn’t allowed), his parents tried to convince him to play croquet.
“It will be fun,” his mother said. “Anna’s probably already out there.”
Charlie sincerely doubted it. Hitting a ball around the lawn with a mallet didn’t seem wild enough for Anna. He guessed she was probably long gone into the woods, and they wouldn’t see her until dinner.
“I think I’ll sit this one out,” he said. “Maybe I’ll find that library Anna told me about.”
“You sure?” his dad said, and, when Charlie nodded, simply added, “We’ll do something together as a family tomorrow, then. Maybe a hike.”
They left, and Charlie took his notebook and did just as he’d said: He found the library.
The room, though big, felt cramped with all the closely packed shelves of books. Yellowed light shone through old glass, illuminating specks of dust floating in the air, and in the center of the room stood a dark wood podium with a huge, open book on it. Ignoring the book (for now), Charlie sat in a brocaded armchair and took a deep breath, inhaling the woody smell of the library. Later, he’d browse a little. But for now, he had to get back to solving the code.
CEARMEORSA
Plenty of vowels, common letters. Could they just be in the wrong order? It was worth looking into. Charlie wrote down every possible anagram he could think of using the letters from the code.
Some were really out there (race me soar), but some seemed to make a little more sense. Area comers? That could make sense, since the house had been a hotel. But if that was the answer, what could it possibly mean?
Charlie looked at the other answers. Cease armor? Camera rose? Cameo rears? Wasn’t there a kind of old-fashioned jewelry called a cameo? In this old-fashioned house, maybe he could find one. Same with armor. There was a sword hanging over his bed. Maybe another room had the suit of armor it belonged to.
But where? Charlie packed up his notebook, with his top anagrams circled. It looked like he’d have to go on a hunt. But for what? He’d just have to hope he’d know whatever it was when he saw it. Still, he’d find nothing if he didn’t go out and look.
When he left the library, he looked at the other doors along the hall, so much like the ones upstairs with their misplaced numbers. What if the next clue was in someone else’s suite? Somewhere off-limits?
Anna wouldn’t hesitate. She’d stomp right over to the room with the clue and go inside by any means necessary. She’d get in trouble, but she’d get it done.
Charlie swallowed hard and marched upstairs. He stopped at the first door on the right. Raising a hand, he prepared to knock on the door but then stepped back and scurried down the stairs. This wasn’t running away, he told himself. The clues could just as easily be downstairs in the public rooms.
He searched the dining room, the parlor, and the library—no suits of armor or cameo jewelry, though there was a woman with thick, curly gray hair running her hands over the furniture in the parlor. Odd—and even odder when she knelt down and looked under a sofa. Was she part of the big group of women staying here this weekend? He didn’t notice a sunscreen smell.
The indoor greenhouse, while really cool, had nothing, either. He got chased out of the kitchen when he went looking for “cream arose,” which he interpreted to mean “whipped cream.” It seemed the cook didn’t agree.
Charlie sat in the entry hall, fiddling with his glasses and wondering if it was time to ask the other guests for a tour of their rooms. But the idea made his skin crawl. What if he asked and one of the guests didn’t want him seeing the room, or kept some doors locked? It would be the last try; if one of the guests wouldn’t let him in, and the next clue was inside, that was the end of it. Charlie couldn’t sneak in if he got turned down—even imagining it made him want to turn himself in to Mr. Llewellyn. The puzzle would remain unsolved forever, and Charlie would never find out why it had existed in the first place. Who put a code on hotel doors?
No. He had to find out. Charlie searched the entry hall. Maybe something in here would be the clue he was looking for.
His eyes landed on the carved door between the two dragon statues. (Hadn’t one of the statues been across the room before?) The door was carved with all kinds of flowers, like lilies, poppies, and roses. Some of the anagrams he’d figured out had included the word rose. A cream rose. Camera rose.
Without taking his eyes off the door, Charlie got up and walked to it. Right in the center of the door was a carved bouquet that included several roses.
He ran his fingers over them. The wood felt cool and very smooth. Worn down from lots of people touching it? Pressing it? Charlie pushed down on one rose. Nothing moved. So he pushed on another one, with the same result.
Wait. “Camera rose.” Maybe the roses weren’t switches. Maybe they were convenient places to hide little cameras.
Charlie leaned into the carved tangle of petals, searching for a glint of a glass lens in the warm brown wood. Why would someone put a camera in the roses?
“Ahem.”
Charlie spun around to see the man with the beard and bald head from down the hall. He was the husband of the lady with the graying hair. What was his name? The lady was Rosie; they’d all introduced themselves at lunch, though Charlie didn’t remember most of the names.
“What are you doing?” the thin man asked.
“Looking for hidden cameras,” Charlie said, then mentally scolded himself. Why did he say that? Now the man would laugh or have more questions than Charlie could answer.
The bald man didn’t laugh. He leaned closer. “Did you find one?”
Charlie stepped back to allow the man to look. “No.”
“Then why do you think there is one?”
Good question. “I don’t know.” Charlie wasn’t ready to give up the code. But the man was acting odd, and Charlie pulled at the loose thread. “Why do you think there’s one?”
The man stepped back and laughed. “Got me there. It’s an old house. Makes sense that Mr. Llewellyn would have ways to watch over his property. I’m Xavier, by the way.”
“Charlie. Isn’t there croquet right now?”
“Not really my style.” Xavier looked around. “I’d better find my wife. The Appalachian Trail bends close to the house, and we thought we’d take a hike instead of the scheduled activity. Though if you ask me, I would prefer to stay inside and read a book.” The bald man gave Charlie a quick smile and left.
Charlie looked at the carved door one more time and abandoned it quickly. The code didn’t say camera rose. The house was renovated into a hotel in the 1930s, and Charlie didn’t think they had cameras small enough to hide in a wooden rose back then. And that was when the code would have been set in the numbered doors.
Huh. Two dragon statues. The other had been across the room. How had it moved?
That was a puzzle for another day. For now, Charlie turned his attention to the code. There had to be a clear way to read it. No one set a code that nobody was supposed to be able to solve. Maybe he should follow Xavier’s example and read a book, just to clear his head.
Wait. A book. When Charlie had written down the numbers, he’d written them by following the hallway all the way around, starting down the left side and coming back up the right, ending in the same place. But what if he had them in the wrong order? What if he was supposed to read them like the pages of a book: left, right, left, right, following how the doors’ new numbers counted up?
Charlie went back upstairs to the doors. Starting on the left and going back and forth down the hall, he wrote down the numbers again.
3-1-5-19-1-18-18-15-13-5
Here goes nothing. Charlie translated the numbers into letters, fingers shaking with excitement.
CAESARROME
Success!
“Caesar Rome. Caesar Rome!” he said out loud, waving the notebook. Then he stopped, suddenly aware that he was in a public area.
Finally, the message made sense. But what did it mean?
Maybe he should go back to the library. There might be a book about Julius Caesar there. But so far the code had always been simpler than he’d expected. He’d caused himself more trouble than needed by overthinking the problem. So maybe he’d already been given the key to understanding the code. Maybe the placement of the code was part of the code. The numbers were on the suite doors, so perhaps the doors themselves were the key. Or the suites were.
Charlie looked around at the closed doors on either side of the hallway. The Hendersons were staying in the China suite, and from Anna’s explorations earlier, he knew the other suites were themed. What were the rest, and was one of them Rome?
Yes. One had to be Rome. Charlie didn’t know which suite it was, but a few knocks and polite inquiries would get him there.
He’d solved the code. Now it was time to go to Rome.
It took Charlie a few doors to find it. He’d knocked on one, interrupting a couple who were … very much into each other in a Pacific Islands room, but they were friendly enough to let him look around. Another knock led to a lady with lots of dark hair and a book in her hand (A Brief History of Tomatoes), who insisted he come back later with his parents to see her room—the Amazon suite—as she was about to take a nap. Which was odd, because he swore he could hear someone else’s voice from in there.
When he did find the right suite, the person who opened the door was the girl who had bothered Anna earlier. “What do you want?” she asked.
Charlie glanced around her and saw the marble statues and painted walls. Yep. Rome. He turned his attention back to the girl.
She was about his age and wore her hair in her face. Her voice was quiet, and she seemed shy. At least, all the markers were there: the posture, the voice, the hair. But something was wrong with that image. The girl’s voice, though quiet, was steely, and Charlie had seen her showing off earlier.
This was an act. But why?
Like the dragon statues, it was another puzzle to save for later. “I’d like to see your suite,” he said. “If it’s all right.”
The girl eyed him. “Why?”
He shrugged. “The suites are themed. I want to see them all. I won’t be a problem, I swear.”
“You’re the kid they say won a place here. Math contest?”
Charlie blushed. Maybe he should have paid more attention to what his parents had been saying during lunch. “Yeah. It’s embarrassing, I know.”
“Why?”
He looked at her.
She shrugged. “I mean, why be embarrassed? If you like something so much, why not own it?”
“You sound like you know from experience.”
“Maybe a little. I’m a bit of a geek myself.”
Charlie smiled, and the girl grinned back. This was promising. “So, can I look around?”
The girl’s smile dropped. She glanced back into the suite, then at Charlie. “Um, well, my parents just left to go play croquet. And … I’m supposed to meet them.”
“Oh.” Charlie’s heart sank. “I can come back later, I guess. Maybe I’ll come with you to play croquet. My parents are down there, too.”
“No, no! It’s fine,” she said. “It’s fine. What’s your name?”
“Charlie.”
“I’m Emily. So, Charlie, um, you can come in. I can trust you, right?”
Charlie nodded, making his glasses slip down his nose. He pushed them up. “I’ll be in and out.”
“Okay. I guess it’s okay. Just … hold on a moment.”
Charlie waited as the girl, Emily, closed the door. He could hear her bustling around inside the room. “Okay,” she said, opening the door again. A huge bag hung from her shoulder, and a brown-paper-covered math book poked out of it. “There,” she said. “I’m on my way. Just … be careful, okay? And close the door when you leave.” Her eyes were wide.
Again, Charlie felt the tug of something that didn’t make sense, and again he filed it away for later. You couldn’t get distracted by one puzzle while in the middle of another one. It would divide brain energy.
So he nodded, smiled, and watched as Emily left. Bringing a math book on vacation? Maybe he’d found a kindred spirit in her.
Then he turned to face the suite. Time to work.
The entry room of the Rome suite was exquisite. The furniture was in purple and gold, and there were white pillars at each corner. The rest of the furniture was sparse, allowing people to see the beautiful Roman cityscape painted on the walls.
The code had said Caesar Rome. He was in Rome, so it made sense that the emperor would be here, too. Charlie searched the entry room, and then every other room, for pictures or statues of Julius Caesar. Not one. He even went into the master bedroom (feeling very awkward, as this was parental space) and found nothing besides a couple of suitcases (which he didn’t touch) and some history books (stacked under the bed) about the 1920s and the explorer Virginia Maines.
Interesting. That was Anna’s favorite explorer.
But no Caesar. No busts, statues, or anything. He’d even checked the baseboards and the people in the Roman cityscape painting, searching for anyone who looked like the pictures he’d seen of Julius Caesar. He’d turned up nothing, which was weird. Who thought of Rome and didn’t also think of Caesar?
Charlie wandered the suite, his footsteps echoing in the emptiness. Who knew how long that emptiness would last? Emily and her family could come back any minute now. They couldn’t find him here! He said he’d be in and out. Staying so long, poking around, looked suspicious. What would he say?
What would Anna do? Mouth off, probably. But she wouldn’t be afraid. So he shouldn’t be afraid.
Easier said than done. Maybe it would help if he focused on the search, one last time.
With a huff, Charlie fell into the purple couch in the entry room. His eyes roamed the painted walls. One of the faces there could be Caesar; it wasn’t like he had the man’s face memorized.
Or maybe he was stuck on the wrong idea. Charlie took off his glasses, letting the world turn into a blur. Clear the slate. Start again.
He put the glasses back on and stared at the painting. Time passed. He needed to find his clue. If Emily’s family came back, he might be able to leave without getting into trouble, but he wouldn’t get another chance to come in.
It really was a beautiful, intricate painting. Not something you’d expect as a mural in a hotel suite. There were people on the streets of Rome, with a blue sky and light brown buildings. The faces of the people had been painted clearly, and everything, down to the last pin on a person’s robes and individual blades of grass, had been carefully stroked in.
Charlie sat up. So clear, so intricate, you could probably read the signs if there were any.
And there were! Leaping up from the couch, Charlie ran to the painting. Near the door was the beginning of the road that passed through Rome, and beside it was a stone sign. The sign’s words, carved in simple cuts, were not in English or Latin. They were a jumble of letters:
TCOY DQO SDNO
Another code! Charlie jotted the letters down in his notebook. He stood up and stepped back, taking in the whole painting.
It was like putting on his glasses. There, painted in tiny strokes on the hem of a man’s toga, was TQODSUQO. And a guard near a graffitied wall was gesturing at ESIDKG with a key.
The key. Caesar Rome. There was no Caesar here (which was a clue in itself), but there was a kind of code called a Caesar cipher. It used a shifted alphabet, sometimes moving the letters up or back. Shifting the alphabet “four ahead,” for example, would make A=E, B=F, and so on until Z=D. But a “keyed Caesar” was a specific variation that used a code word to “unlock” the cipher. For example, if Charlie used his own name as the key, all the letters of his name would go first, and the shifted alphabet would look like:
