Edison's Gold (21 page)

W
hat if Keller nabbed them?”

“Don't even joke about that, Colb.”

“Who's joking?”

Tom and Colby waited by the information booth in the middle of the crowded terminal. Afternoon sunlight was streaking through the old building's massive windows, which gave the marble floor and hundred-foot stone support beams a calm, ethereal feel.

Tom's nerves, however, were stretched as tight as they could go. Every face coming up the subway stairs or through the street doors was unfamiliar and potentially threatening. The longer they waited, the more time Keller and Nicky had to find them. Not to mention the
next clue, which Tom had been dying to know since the moment he'd hung up with Noodle.

“Maybe we should head back to Yonkers,” said Colby. “At least we know we'd be safe.”

“No, my dad said to wait here.”

“And your dad is always right,” said a very familiar voice behind him.

Tom spun around to find his soaking wet father standing in front of him, along with an equally sodden Noodle.

“Dad!” He jumped up into his father's arms and, for a moment, let himself be twirled in the air like a five-year-old.

“First question,” said Colby as she approached Noodle and placed a tentative hand on his sopping curls. “How come you two look like you just fell into the Hudson River?”

“How ironic you should say that,” said Noodle with a wide smirk for Tom's dad. “Care to field that question, Big T?”

“Maybe later. For now, I'm just so relieved you all are safe.”

“Well, we're not gonna be for long with Keller still
out there.” Now that his dad knew about the hunt, Tom figured the best plan was to bring him up to speed. The truth was, he was sure he could use his father's engineering smarts for the next leg of the adventure, whatever that was.

“So what's the next clue say?” Tom asked immediately. As relieved as he'd been to see Noodle and his dad, time was simply a luxury they could not afford.

“Don't even think about it,” said Mr. Edison. “This treasure hunt's over. As soon as we get home, I'm calling the police.”

“Dad, you honestly think the police will help us? Keller's probably got people on the inside.”

“I bet you anything Faber's in his back pocket,” added Noodle. “I could tell by the way she was giving me the stink eye in her office.” He did an impression of the officer for the others' benefit.

“Then I'll be the one to deal with Curt Keller,” Tom's dad answered. “But no amount of treasure is worth putting all your lives at risk.”

“This one is!” Tom yelled, so loudly a few commuters turned their heads and shot Mr. Edison irritated stares. “This is our family's greatest secret, and you're just going
to sit back and let Tesla's great-grandson walk away with it. Do you even realize what would happen if a guy like Keller got his hands on the formula?”

“We'll finish this conversation at home. With your mother.” Tom's dad's voice meant business. “Now march!”

Tom, Noodle, and Colby headed toward the exit doors, but after three steps, Tom couldn't bring himself to move any farther.

“You know what the first thing kids at school say when I tell them my last name's Edison?” Tom asked his father.

“T, don't,” Colby whispered under her breath.

“They say, ‘Wow. What happened to you?' ”

It killed Tom to hurt his father like this, but he couldn't keep the words from coming out. But more than that, he couldn't let the adventure end. Not here. Not now.

“My last name,” he continued, his voice choking up, “is just another word for failure.”

Mr. Edison didn't open his mouth. He just stood there, silent.

“We're going home, and that's all there is to it,” he finally said. “Your safety's the only thing I'm worried about.”

Tom closed his eyes. It felt like someone had taken a hot poker to all his internal organs and squished them around.

“Some things are worth the risk,” he said, catching his father's unwavering stare as he trudged toward the doors.

“Please tell me we're not going back the same way we came,” said Noodle in an effort to lighten the mood.

“I'll put the taxi on my credit card.” Tom's dad placed his hands on Colby's and Noodle's shoulders and followed Tom toward the terminal's exit. “Right now we all just need to get home.”

As the four of them walked, Mr. Edison couldn't shake the heavy weight tugging at his heart. He'd felt disappointment loads of times in his life, but today was the first time he'd ever seen that same disappointment in his son's eyes.

He made a silent promise to do better. He didn't want his only son growing up with the same feelings of failure that he carried with him every day. That would not be his legacy.

“… and the terminal's celestial sky was painted in nineteen twelve by the artist Paul Helleu.” Mr. Edison overheard a tour guide passing by with a group of old
ladies, who were all snapping photos like machine guns. Their heads were craned upward to take in the terminal's green-blue ceiling mural that was peppered with stars and gold-shaded drawings of zodiac characters—the Gemini twins, the Taurus bull—all gazing blankly down onto the concourse.

“But due to an embarrassing error on the artist's part, the entire celestial map is painted backward!” continued the tour guide. “The Vanderbilt family, who commissioned the piece, joked that Helleu was painting the night sky from God's point of view.”

Tom pushed through the crowd of eager tourists and exited Grand Central Terminal.

It was impossible for him to accept that the hunt was over—that everything he'd worked so hard for, all the dangers he'd endured, it was all for nothing. His dad had the next clue, and Keller had the rest. It was too crushing.

This is the fate of the Edison men
, Tom thought as they waited in line for the next available cab to take them back to Yonkers.

A small yellow minivan pulled up to the curb, and as the four of them stepped into it, Tom's dad was also
wrestling with his decision not to tell his son about the stock ticker clue. Although he understood Tom's frustrations, he simply didn't know what a man like Curt Keller was capable of.

Better to let the authorities handle things
.

The van turned right onto 42nd Street, and Tom's dad watched Grand Central's imposing entrance grow smaller in the side-view mirror. It was really was quite striking to look at. The ornate stone-chiseled facade encircling the old clock, the two reclining Roman gods staring up at—

Now which one was it?
Mr. Edison wondered. He could never remember.
Zeus? No, it was the one who wore the hat. The messenger god …

As the van continued along the road, the messenger god's name finally came to Mr. Edison, and as it danced around in his brain, he wondered why it sounded so familiar, so strangely important.

Then the answer dawned on him, and the color drained from his face, while excited goose bumps formed on every inch of his body. It was a feeling he hadn't experienced for longer than he could remember. It was a feeling of hope.

“Mercury!” he yelled out of nowhere, frightening the
cab driver as well as the kids in back. “ ‘Through Mercury's gate, you'll reach the backward horse!' ”

“Dad, who are you talking to?”

“Turn the car around,” Mr. Edison practically screamed to the driver. “We have some unfinished business to attend to.”

No, failure would not be his legacy.

T
here's the little twerp!”

Relief washed visibly over Curt Keller's face when he saw young Tom Edison, along with his friends and his father, enter the terminal concourse.

“Let's hope they've got some answers for us,” said Lieutenant Faber, who was standing to his left in a sweatshirt and jeans. “Because I don't know how else I'm going to be able to get you out of these kidnapping charges if they come up.”

“You'll get me out of trouble if you want those checks to keep coming,” said Keller. “And I assure you, the alchemy formula is well worth the risk.”

“So do you want me to arrest the Edison kid or not?” Faber didn't like her strange old benefactor too much, but
ten thousand dollars a week was certainly worth putting her neck on the line.

“Hang tight.” Keller wore a mischievous grin as he flicked an invisible speck of dust from his impeccable Italian suit. “Let's see if old Edison leads us right to it.”

“Lemme call in a couple off-duty cops, just in case.” Lieutenant Faber grabbed her cell and speed-dialed a few guys she knew she could trust. Guys who, like her, weren't afraid to bend a few rules.

“I hope you're calling someone more competent than that imbecile private investigator you pawned off on me.” Keller spun on the heel of his alligator-leather loafer and retreated a few steps from the balcony ledge to make sure he wasn't spotted.

“Hey, Nicky Polazzi's one of the best private eyes in the business,” Faber called after him, bristling at the attack. “You're the genius who tried to make your own rules when you had him throw two seventh graders into an unmarked van.”

“It was meant to be an empty threat,” said Keller. “Just to shake them up.”

“Well, it's against the law.”

“We've all broken a few laws, Lieutenant.”

He'd be happy when this hunt was over and the alchemy formula was safely in his hands. Between feisty police officers and bratty children, it was all giving him quite a headache, but he knew it would be worth it in the end.

Nikola Tesla's revenge was just within his grasp.

H
ow do we get close enough to see it?”

Tom stared up at the golden Pegasus, the winged horse, that had been painted in the corner of the Grand Central ceiling.

“ ‘Through Mercury's gate, you'll reach the backward horse,' ” his dad repeated for maybe the hundredth time in the last twenty minutes.

“We all got that part, Big T,” said Noodle with an exaggerated eye roll.

“ ‘The circled rose will light your course.' ” Mr. Edison whispered the second part of the riddle softer to himself. His hands hadn't stopped shaking from nerves and excitement.

“What circled rose?” Tom scanned the entire ceiling for some kind of clue, a sign, anything. “I don't see it anywhere.”

“The only way to find out what it means is by taking a much closer look at that horse.” Mr. Edison took several steps one way, then another, in hope of seeing the problem from a different angle. It wasn't working.

All around them, commuters were flooding the station's Main Concourse as the evening rush hour ritual began. Uniformed police officers had begun popping up all over the place, too, and Tom couldn't help noticing the sheathed guns and nightsticks holstered at their waists.

“Shame I left my web spinners at home,” said Tom, letting out a frustrated sigh.

“Like I've always said, nothing's ever easy with the old Sub Rosa.” Colby collapsed onto a nearby bench and dropped her head in her hands. It was the second time she'd closed her eyes in almost forty-eight hours, and she could feel herself quickly dozing off.

“Spider-Man, huh.” Tom's dad wiped his glasses with the bottom of his still-damp shirt. “It's an interesting proposition.”

“Where're you going with this, Dad?”

“Well, I know it might sound crazy, but …” His voice trailed off.

“But what?”

“No, never mind. I really shouldn't even be thinking like this.”

“Out with it, Big T.”

“Well.” He paused for a moment. “Remember the Clorox SuperDuperStick patent you helped me with last summer?”

“Yeah, but we couldn't get it to work.”

Mr. Edison nodded. “Because I think we didn't use a strong enough binder. Perhaps if we reworked the ratios a little …”