Greenglass House (30 page)

“Doesn't matter.” Sirin leaned against the window with her arms folded. “So regardless of whether somebody else took it or he's faking it, the satchel won't be in his room anymore. He'd have known your parents would want to search the room with him because that's what they did yesterday. And he said it was a
big
satchel. Where could he hide something that size?”

Negret was thinking about the noises he'd heard the night before, but if there were clues in the sounds of doorknobs turning and someone sneaking around in the silences in between, if there was a pattern there that could give some hint about where the thief had hidden the missing bag, Negret couldn't see it. “Plus, he could've moved it,” he mumbled. “The thief had all morning to hide it.”

Three quick raps sounded on the door. Negret closed the notepad and hastily shoved it under his pillow again. “Come in.”

The door opened and Georgie Moselle peeked in. “Hey, sorry to interrupt. Your dad said you might be up here. Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Um. Sure.” He slid off the bed and joined Georgie in the hallway.

She looked much better now, and she carried a plate of blue-frosted cake. “I wanted to say thank you for what you did today.” With her free hand, she held out a thin, rectangular packet wrapped in paper patterned with blue snowflakes.

“A present? For me?”

“A present for you.” Georgie waved it at him. “You gave one to Mrs. Hereward, and you gave one to me—and to Clem, too—when you gave those keys to Owen. It's not much, but I'd like you to have it.”

“Thanks, Georgie.” He took the parcel. “Should I open it now, or save it for tomorrow?”

“Go ahead. I don't plan to be here tomorrow. Open it carefully so you don't tear what's inside.”

He unwrapped the gift gingerly, trying not to rip the paper. Inside was . . . more paper. Brittle, textured green paper. He recognized it right away.

“The chart!” He stared up at Georgie. “I
knew
it was you! You left it for me to find, didn't you?”

“I thought it might make for a good experiment,” she replied. “That was before everybody else in the world showed up, of course. It was an impulse, I guess. I didn't think it all the way through. And yes, I'm the one who took it back. I'm sorry about breaking into your room, but once Clem got here . . . well. But I thought maybe you'd like to keep it. You can keep the little leather thing I left the decoy in, too.”

“I love it!” Negret unfolded the chart carefully. “Do you know—whoops!” Another piece of paper—thicker, almost like cardboard—slipped from inside the folds and fluttered to the ground. He and Georgie nearly banged heads as they both reached to try and catch it.

She got her hands on it first. “Should've mentioned that. Here you go.”

It was a photograph in tones of off-white and gray. It was blurry and smudgy and grainy, and the image was more or less circular, darkening to black at the corners. Even without color, Negret knew what he was looking at. “It's the window on the fourth floor!”

“Bingo. It's the picture I took with the cigar-box camera yesterday.”

“But what does that have to do with Owen or Lansdegown or anything?”

Georgie shrugged. “I needed to make Clem think I was looking for answers in places I wasn't so she didn't notice what I was really up to. The camera was what you'd call a red herring. A fake clue. It doesn't have anything to do with anything. Still, it turned out nicely for a first attempt, didn't it?”

“It sure did. Thanks, Georgie. This is a really great present.”

“I'm glad.” She turned to go, then paused and came back. “You started to ask a question.”

“Oh, yeah. The map—do you know what it's of?”

She shook her head. “I never did find out. I checked it against all the local waterways I could find. The paper's old, obviously—I guess it could date back as far as the time of the original family Mrs. Hereward was talking about. Except for one thing.” She tapped the cluster of curved white marks in the corner. “I think that paint's newer. I don't know how
much
newer, but a lot newer, anyway. Maybe the compass rose, too.”

Negret peered at the bird-shaped compass and the white paint of the curvy things to the north of it. “How can you tell?”

“I'm a thief, Milo,” she said with a little lift of her eyebrow. “You know that, right?”

“Yeah,” he replied slowly. “So . . . ?”

“I'm an expert in a lot of things that might surprise you, but that are critical to my . . . job. Forgery is one of them. A big part of creating a good forgery is making certain that there are no parts of the work that stand out from the rest. Everything I know tells me this paper is a couple hundred years old, and that the ship and the seagull at least were painted on it much, much later. To my eyes, they stick out like sore thumbs.”

“The
ship?
”

“Yup, the white thing there. Pretty sure that's meant to be a ship under full sail, seen from above. I could be wrong, though.”

It was like the flame symbol on the lantern; now that she'd pointed it out, Negret couldn't see anything in the white curls but the shapes of sails. “No, I think you're right. What was it about this chart that connected it with the Lansdegown name?”

“I found it in a stamped envelope with ‘Lansdegown House' on the front. Just the name of the house. No address. Figuring
that
out . . . well, that's a story for another time. And all along I could have just followed that stupid watermark.” She shook her head ruefully. “Anyway, plenty of mysteries left for you.” Georgie gave him a little salute. “Enjoy, Milo, and thank you.”

“You're welcome. And, Georgie? You probably shouldn't eat too much of the frosting.”

She looked down at her plate. “Yeah, Mrs. Hereward said the same thing. Something to do with ink that didn't totally make sense to me.”

Sirin was fairly bouncing up and down when Negret closed the door behind him. “Tell me, tell me, tell me!” she demanded.

He'd just handed over the chart and the photograph—and winced at Sirin's very un-scholiast-like squeal of delight—when another battery of knocks rang out against his door. “Good grief, now what?” He crossed the room and opened the door. This time it was Clem.

“Hey, Milo.” She held out a small cylinder wrapped in the same blue snowflake paper. “For you.”

“Really?” Two presents in less than ten minutes? From people who'd known him a grand total of two days? This was crazy.

“Really.” For the first time, Clem's face was very serious. “Thank you.”

“Well . . . you're welcome.”

“Well, open it!”

Normally Milo didn't need to be invited twice to open a gift, but now he hesitated. “Clem, Georgie said you came to Greenglass House because you somehow worked out from a piece of watermarked paper that this is where she was coming. That you followed the watermark itself, which was a picture of a gate.”

Clem nodded. “Yes, I did.”

“How did you know the gate had something to do with this house?”

“Ah.” She put her hands in her pockets. “You know, I had a piece of incredible luck. I found the gate itself in an antique shop.”

“You found the
actual gate?
”

“The actual gate. Well, half of it, anyway.”

“Did you . . . steal it?”

She laughed. “It was pretty heavy, Milo. No, I didn't steal the gate. I was actually there . . . well, for something else.
Looking
at something else,” she added sharply. “But I recognized it right away, and fortunately, proper antique shops—as opposed to the dodgy ones down on the Harbors and in Shantytown—are supposed to know the provenance of the things that they sell.”

“Provenance?”

“The origin of the thing. Where it came from, and who owned it before. And according to the shopkeeper, the gate came from this estate. I guess the spot where we all came up the hill wasn't always the main way up. There was a different route when the house was first built, farther east along the ridge. There was a clearing there, and the gate stood at the top.”

Where on earth could anyone have gone down to the river, except where the
Whilforber Whirlwind
now ran? The rest of the ridge was steep and rocky and dangerous, and all of it was covered in trees and undergrowth. “Where could that have—Oh.” There was no other route down, but there
was
a place where there was a break in the woods.

“You know where that would've been?” Clem asked.

“I know where there's a clearing. But there's no way down from there. It's a garden now. I didn't think of it because it's not just steep; it's a real cliff. We had to put up a fence, and Mom's always saying one of these days even the fence is going to go right over the side.”

Clem nodded. “Well, a lot can change in a couple hundred years. Rivers, hills . . . probably part of the slope did collapse. Maybe that was the spot; I don't know. I only know the shopkeeper said the gate was the original entrance to the grounds, and that it stood in a clearing in the trees, and when the sun set, it shone through the iron and looked like another one of the house's stained-glass windows. I recognized it as the same gate as in the watermark.” She shrugged. “And that's how I found my way here. Now, open your present! What's wrong with you? When I was your age I couldn't resist a present for ten seconds.”

He grinned and turned his attention to the package. When the paper came away, he was left holding a piece of leather tied into a cylinder by a knotted cord. “What is it?”

“Good grief, open it!” Clem blurted, all seriousness gone again. “I'm dying of anticipation.”

He picked loose the knot in the cord and unrolled the leather in his palm. Inside was a collection of little metal sticks. Each one had a handle at one end and a long, thin middle. He pulled a few out of their pockets and saw that each had a different shape at the other end. One was hooked, one had teeth like a key, another had a triangular bit. “I still don't know what it is.”

“It is,” Clem said dramatically, “a lockpick kit.”

Negret blinked and stared at the thing in his hand. “A
lockpick
kit?
”

She shrugged. “I figured you're going to need something for getting locked doors open, considering you gave Owen your keys. Plus, every blackjack needs a lockpick kit. That's just basic provisioning.”

“But”—he frowned—“won't you . . . I mean, won't you need it again?”

Clem waved a hand carelessly. “Worry not, my young apprentice. I have plenty.”

A real lockpick kit.
Wicked.
“Thanks, Clem!” He rolled the kit back up and put it in his pajama pocket. “Um—do you think you can show me how to use the different pieces?”

She held up her hand. “One, they're called
picks,
except there are also a couple torsion wrenches in there, which are called, well, torsion wrenches. And two . . . maybe.” Clem winked, and then, silently as ever, she padded away.

 

eleven

“Do you think the thief probably avoided the attic and the spare rooms this time?” Sirin asked after Negret had repeated Clem's information about the gate and they'd spent ten minutes or so taking each pick and wrench out of its leather pocket, examining it and speculating on its function. “Now that he knows we're onto the places he hides things?”

“Probably. If it was me, I'd try to find a better spot. Especially since the satchel is bigger. It'll be harder to hide.” Negret was already running through the possibilities. The basement . . . maybe the covered woodpile outside . . .

“Still, I'll feel better if we check,” Sirin remarked. “I don't like the idea of leaving rooms unexplored. It's bad reconnoitering.”

“That makes sense.” Negret put the spiral notepad and the lockpick kit in his rucksack and slid Georgie's map and photograph into one of its pockets. “Let's start with the empty rooms, then.”

Different rooms were empty now than had been yesterday. Last night Clem had asked to switch to a room on four so she could be across the hall from Owen, which had prompted Georgie to move up to an empty room on five. Then, after breakfast, Brandon and Fenster, who had slept in the living room, had taken rooms on the fifth floor too. All of this shuffling left Negret and Sirin four rooms to go through, after Negret had taken a few minutes to draw a floor plan that looked like a house-shaped layer cake and noted where everyone was now staying. They needed to double-check the still-empty room on three, then properly search two rooms on four and one on five.

They started on the fifth floor, in the gold and green light cast by the window in which starburst fireworks erupted over the ever-present gate. “You know,” Sirin observed, “if Dr. Gowervine's right about the windows having been brought here from somewhere else, then the gate must have come from wherever these windows came from. If it's important, it's probably important because of something to do with that original house.”