The Explorer's Code, page 9
“What?” Charlie turned and slowly slid down the rock, feetfirst. He fell the last few inches and stumbled over to Anna. “What do you get?”
For a moment, Anna didn’t answer. She looked up at Idlewood, at the tower jutting up from its corner. Then she looked at Charlie. “The airplane,” she said, hushed, like she was revealing a big secret. “Virginia Maines’s airplane was called the Dragon.”
“Oh.” For a moment, Charlie had wondered if somehow Anna had found the code word all on her own. But no. This was just another connection to the explorer she loved so much. At least she was having a good time, but it wasn’t exactly helping Charlie solve his puzzle.
Or maybe … there were those big dragon statues in the entry hall. And one of them had been moved! The airplane room baseboard was painted with dragons, and the China suite had dragons in statue and painted form. Could it be that the clue wasn’t hidden in the history of Idlewood but in its decorations?
Charlie started bouncing. “I have to go,” he said, and he ran back toward Idlewood. By the time he’d reached the house, he had slowed to a walk and was wheezing.
Anna hadn’t followed him. As far as Charlie knew, she was still out in the woods, turning over rotten logs and climbing anything that could be climbed. His parents wouldn’t like that, but Anna was the older sibling. She could take care of herself. Probably.
And Charlie had a theory to test. He speed-walked inside and stopped beside the twin dragon statues. Grinning, he patted their heads like a couple of good dogs. Then he went upstairs to retrieve his notebook and bring it down to breakfast. The omelets smelled delicious, and his appetite had awakened as well.
He filled a plate and found a seat in the far corner of the room, away from his parents, Emily’s parents (though Emily herself was absent), Rosie and Xavier, and anyone else. And there, using the code word dragon, he unlocked the Caesar cipher.
THEY ARE SAFE
TREASURE ISLAND
* * *
Emily didn’t have time for breakfast. She had too many mysteries to solve and not enough time to solve them. So while her parents went downstairs, Emily stayed in bed, hair uncombed, still in pajamas, sorting through the history of Idlewood.
She wasn’t sure what she was looking for. Something that didn’t belong to Elaine and Everett Gardner, something that stood out as different, either in the books or the pictures. Something changed, but long ago. Something that could tie the Gardners, Idlewood, and Virginia Maines together in a nice, neat friendship bracelet for Emily.
Had Virginia lived here? Emily had a letter that said so, but that wasn’t proof on its own.
So Emily scoured the pictures, trying to find the details her parents seemed to always see. First the dining room. Then the library. That interesting indoor greenhouse with all the exotic plants. Where was the clue she was looking for?
Emily laughed and pushed her hair back. The clue? She was talking like a conspiracy theorist or treasure hunter! She wasn’t after some pot of gold at the end of Virginia Maines’s rainbow; she was here to end the lies and preserve history. So … evidence, maybe? Artifacts?
Goodness knew Idlewood had enough of them. Emily spread out her pictures, arranging them room by room. Vases, statues, tapestries made of everything from cloth to woven grasses … to say nothing of the porcelain plates and shiny silverware. But those were just trappings, some left there after the house became a hotel, if the old black-and-white pictures in Emily’s parents’ book were anything to go by.
Emily eyed the book, examining a picture of the ballroom in which the fluffy armchairs facing the paintings were notably missing. Not that those mattered—they came with the hotel renovations. She needed something from then, from the night everything went wrong, like the books in the library, maybe, or the paintings—
The paintings. The paintings. Emily scrambled to her knees, swirling the bedsheets and causing Polaroids to flutter to the ground. She snatched up a few before they fell, the ones she had taken of the paintings of the Gardner family, and set them next to the old pictures in the book.
They were old, they were grainy, but there was no mistake: The paintings had been different in the 1920s.
Emily was sure of it. In the original of one painting of Mrs. Gardner, her arm hung straight. Now, it was bent and seemed to be carrying something. Changing the layout of the furniture was one thing, but why change the paintings?
It was a sign. Evidence. Dare she say … a clue.
And she had been the one to find it.
Blood racing, Emily closed the book on the Polaroids of the ballroom and scooped it up. Barefoot, still in pajamas, she charged downstairs. She had to see the paintings for herself and know what the Gardners were trying to tell her.
She ran so fast that she barely registered the fact that one of the dragon statues—in fact, the one she’d moved—was missing.
9
NORMALLY, a morning hike would have made Anna’s day, and to tell the truth, it almost did. The forest was beautiful, but more importantly, it held so much stuff to do. It was where she had found the key, after all! If it hadn’t been for her parents pushing her to stay on the path and keep walking, it would have been paradise.
Or if Charlie hadn’t been assigned to babysit her. Again. Anna frowned over her cold omelet. She’d stayed out in the forest long after Charlie had run off like something bit him, letting him be the one to explain to their parents why she was left unattended.
Not that Charlie could do anything wrong in their parents’ eyes.
Still, Anna thought, chewing on a bit of tomato, Charlie had climbed the rock with her that morning. That was unexpected. But nice. Almost like the way it used to be, when they were little. Maybe Charlie hadn’t completely lost his sense of adventure.
Then Anna remembered him huddling on the rock like it was some sheer cliff and grimaced. All that fear, and it wasn’t like the rock was some big risk. It was no secret that Anna understood risks, and she understood them better than Charlie and her parents thought she did. Despite their opinions, Anna didn’t take unnecessary risks. Just necessary ones.
Speaking of which, there was a tower room calling her name. Anna turned in her plate and wasted no time going to the bookcase door. Grinning, she yanked on its shelves.
They didn’t budge.
“What?” Anna pulled harder, but the door stayed firmly closed.
“Open. You. Big. Stupid. Thing!” she grunted, tugging over and over. Exhausted, she said, barely holding back a shout, “I know you can. I saw it!”
But the fact remained that the door was now securely sealed.
Groaning, Anna sat against the wall and wiped her forehead. What now?
She couldn’t stay here. What if Mr. Llewellyn or someone saw her messing with the bookcase? Given her history, they wouldn’t take it well. So she stood up, threw a glare at the bookcase, and left.
What to do? She could stay in the main house today, or go out to the forest again. It was shaping up to be a nice, warm day. The forest would be pleasant and full of adventure. And the wooden roof she’d seen from the tower tickled her mind. She wanted to find the building it belonged to. Yes, that would be a good plan. She passed Charlie rummaging through the library and shot an innocent smile at Mr. Llewellyn, who was talking with Emily’s parents in the entry hall.
However, as soon as Anna stepped into the warm sunlight, she wished she was feeling it through the dirty glass of a dusty window in the tower. They had forests at home, but Idlewood was special. Idlewood had been the home of Virginia Maines, extraordinary explorer! She had to get back up into that tower.
How? The door was sealed.
Anna circled the house to face the tower. Virginia wouldn’t have let a little thing like a locked door keep her out of a place she wanted to explore. This was a woman who built her own raft to sail the islands in the Pacific, storms or no storms, and came back with more supplies than she set out with! She had a secret entrance to her tower, for crying out loud.
And Anna suspected that a woman who had one secret entrance to her room might have another. If she was right, she may have found it already.
There were the raised stones on the outside of the tower, the ones Anna had climbed before. Smooth, like they were made for climbing. They probably were.
Anna pulled herself up to the ledge, just like before. From there, she looked up to a line of jutting stones reaching up to the roof.
She glanced around quickly. This would be a long climb, and she didn’t need anyone tattling on her. No one was on the lawn, so Book Lady with her latest read and the Sunglasses Couple must have gone inside. She wiped the moisture off her hands and started to climb.
It was easy! Virginia had definitely made this wall to be climbed. How much had she been involved with its construction? Maybe new letters would tell Anna everything she wanted to know, if she could find them.
She pulled herself up on the roof. The wind was cool, and sunlight rippled on the pond. Some of the older guests, especially the lady tourists, were sunning by the water. Down below, on the other side of the house, the family with all the little kids (today, wearing neon-blue shirts, though Anna couldn’t tell if they had a slogan on them) played tag beside the maze. One of them stopped and looked up. He pointed at Anna.
Ducking, Anna crawled away. She searched the tower, looking for another way in. What if Virginia had built the steps only to get to the roof? Maybe she liked to take her tea up here or something.
Anna looked over the edge and swallowed. Normally she wasn’t scared of heights, like Charlie was, but that was a long drop. It would be hard to climb down. But once she got inside, she’d be okay. She could just take the stairs down. Surely the door would unlock from the inside.
If she could get into the tower.
A moment later, Anna found the next row of climbing stones. They were right under the window, where any intelligent person would guess they’d be. Feeling silly, Anna climbed up to the window. She sat on its sill and fumbled with the clasp. Thank goodness Virginia had been the type to know the importance of a window with clasps on either side!
At first it didn’t move, but with some pushing, Anna was able to overcome the years of rust and dirt and force the window up.
She slid inside, sending up clouds of dust.
“Hello, Virginia,” she said, grinning. “I’m back. And guess what? I have all day.”
* * *
There were many interesting things about the Idlewood library, Charlie decided. The sheer number of books crammed into the little room was one strange thing. Most old libraries he saw were much better organized.
Another odd thing was the podium left totally empty in the middle of the room. Hadn’t there been a book there earlier?
But the oddest thing, to Charlie, was that although the library had everything by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and much of Agatha Christie, and even books on codebreaking and the history of Rome (a book Charlie rifled through, looking for more hidden clues), it did not seem to be in possession of a single copy of Treasure Island.
He spent the whole morning searching book by book, title by title. He scanned the shelves so many times his eyes ached, and he ran his hands over the spines for so long his fingertips stung.
Sucking on his fingers and worrying slightly about what effect the old germs on the books might have on his body, Charlie sank into a crouch beneath a large window. “Where is it?” he moaned.
It had to be here. The code’s solution was They are safe / Treasure / Island. Why put that book’s title in a code unless it meant something?
Standing, Charlie went to look for the records about Idlewood. He needed to know more about the house. What was the significance of the book he was looking for?
Silver? The name of the overseer and also the name of the pirate in Treasure Island? Could that be the connection? The book title could have been a sign-off, a code name from the sender. Made sense if it was Silver. But the title was separated from the message, and it had even been broken in two, with the codes for “TREASURE” and “ISLAND” appearing separately in the mural.
The record book Charlie found was basically a coffee-table book about how the house went from being residential to being a hotel. There were pictures of before and after, though they were so grainy and old that Charlie didn’t see how any of them could be helpful. He needed a story.
So he read. He read on and on about Mr. Gardner’s courtship of his wife, Elaine. He read about their three children and their peaceful lives at Idlewood. And he read about the way they suddenly left the house they had loved, turning it over to the town as a fancy hotel.
And Elaine demanded it be left as it was. Loose threads of a puzzle teased at him. Why leave it at all, if they loved it enough to want it unchanged, if they hoped to come back one day? What had happened?
Or had they left it unchanged? Hmm. Maybe he should check those pictures again. If he saw a change, then maybe that would be the clue he needed. Or perhaps he needed to research more, find another book, spend more time searching for the background he needed to solve this puzzle.
Charlie checked the time. He’d been reading for an hour. Smiling, he tried to imagine Anna sitting quietly and reading a dusty book for so long. No, she’d be out doing something instead of hanging around here.
And he should be, too. Charlie left the library, carrying the record book with him. If this was a treasure hunt, like in Treasure Island, then he shouldn’t leave the map behind. He’d return it when he was done with it.
“But please don’t lead me into someone’s bedroom,” he muttered to the book.
The entry hall echoed with Charlie’s footsteps. From the parlor, he could hear Book Lady and Suitcase Man bickering over something, though he couldn’t make out what they were saying. From the dining room, a busy conversation was going on between Rosie and Xavier and a few of the older guests. Emily’s parents were leaning over a little table, muttering excitedly over a crystal clock.
Idlewood was full, but Charlie suspected it wouldn’t be for long; it was a beautiful morning, and soon everyone would head outdoors, like the T-Shirts family had. He could hear the joyful shrieks of the younger kids running around outside. That was probably where Anna was—out exploring the grounds. He hoped she didn’t do something stupid.
He had wanted to spend time with her this vacation. But she was always missing, and besides, he couldn’t keep the code out of his mind.
Taking the book, Charlie traveled to each room, turning the pages to the pictures of the rooms as they had been when the Gardners lived there. He went back to the library first, since it was empty. It looked the same, so the clue he was looking for wasn’t here.
The parlor was filled not with Suitcase Man and Book Lady but with an older couple by the time Charlie arrived. The wife, a gray-haired lady who had been examining the furniture, asked him about his morning, while the husband, a man with a huge mustache, asked where Anna was. After just shrugging as his answer, he noted that the parlor was the same, and the dining room also seemed the same, down to the little table outside with its menu for the day’s meals. Rosie was there, eating a slice of apple pie. She smiled at Charlie as he passed through. “Hello,” she said. “What are you up to?”
“Exploring,” Charlie said, tucking the book away.
Rosie nodded. “Just like your sister.”
“Have you seen her anywhere?”
Rosie shook her head. “I’m sure she’s fine. Probably just looking for ghosts or something. That’s what I would have done when I was her age.”
The skin at the back of Charlie’s neck grew cold. “Ghosts?”
The woman chuckled. “It’s an old house. Who knows what’s happened here?” She wiggled her fingers and smiled. “You know, I still haven’t been able to to see your family’s suite. Any chance you could get your parents to give me a tour?”
“Um, sure,” Charlie said, and then he left, happy to escape. Not that he believed in ghosts. They were … totally irrational. Still, in the old, empty house, with its secret, irrational codes, it was easy to feel every draft of air like a pair of ghostly hands on his skin.
Emily’s parents were wandering the entry hall. When they saw Charlie, the father waved, and then both adults went into the parlor. Charlie heard them greet the Gray Hair and Mustache couple.
What had that woman been doing when Charlie had seen her before, kneeling down to look under a sofa? Probably nothing. Probably dropped a piece of candy.
The indoor greenhouse was wildly different from the pictures in the book, but that didn’t seem too odd. In the book, the garden was neatly kept, which made sense if Everett was a gardener himself. After time, it would become a bit wilder, the way Charlie saw it now. As for the ballroom, it seemed pretty much the same: wide-open floor, paintings around the sides.
The armchairs were different, though. Charlie sat in one, but as he did, he realized it was probably a change made to accommodate all the people who would be staying in a hotel. They couldn’t all loiter in the parlor.
A snap, like a book slamming closed, echoed in the room, and Charlie stood up. Someone else was here with him. He glanced around until he spotted Emily, in front of the paintings on the other side of the room. She had her math book tucked against her chest and was darting out of the ballroom in a fast walk just shy of a run.
Charlie closed his book. Not loudly, but the little sound there echoed, and Emily stopped and faced him.
“Oh, Charlie,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said.
“You didn’t. I just … I didn’t hear you come in.”
Was she in her pajamas? It was almost lunchtime.
She’s distracted, he thought. But why?
“You were busy.” Charlie walked over to her. “The pictures are nice. How long have they been here—do you know?”
“The paintings? Yeah. I guess they’re okay. I have to go,” Emily said. “You caught me at a bad time. I have a lot of important … stuff I need to do. I need to get dressed, and I haven’t eaten yet. See you later.”
