The Eye of Midnight (6 page)

“Well?” he said sharply. “Let's have it, then.”

Maxine hurried out to the entry hall and returned with the envelope, handing it contritely to her grandfather, who tore it open straightaway and immersed himself in the contents.

Mrs. Otto cleared the pots from the stove and put them in the sink. “All right, Colonel, I'm off to see my sister, like I told you last week,” she said. “I won't be back until tomorrow afternoon.”

Grandpa grunted but didn't look up from his letter, and Mrs. Otto shook her head at him and untied her apron. “I've put the groceries in the pantry and left a smoked ham in the icebox,” she said. “You'll have to fend for yourselves this evening.” And she marched off with no further farewell, leaving them alone in the kitchen.

Grandpa turned his back on William and Maxine and reread the telegram, muttering to himself as if the words were all gibberish, but his concentration was broken by the jangling ring of the telephone in the entry hall. Crumpling the telegram and tossing it on the breakfast table, he disappeared from the room.

“Nice going, M,” said William. “Why didn't you give him the telegram last night? He doesn't seem real happy about it.”

Maxine glared at him through slitted eyes. She raised her spoon, letting her oatmeal slowly dribble back into her bowl, and was about to offer a scathing critique of William's own significant shortcomings when they heard Grandpa's startled voice in the hallway.

“What? Are you sure? But when?”

The cousins got up and edged close to the doorway and found that if they held their breath and strained their ears, Grandpa's words were faintly audible.

“So they are here, then, on our own shores. The long arm grows longer still….

“No, no, the timing of your call is more than mere coincidence, it seems. I received a second telegram just this morning. It mentioned a courier—I believe a certain package is to be delivered into my possession….

“That much is difficult to say. The telegram was vague on several points. The time was clear enough, but I'm unsure of the location.”

His voice dropped, and the cousins could no longer make out the words.

“What's Grandpa up to?” whispered William.

“I don't know,” answered Maxine, “but it doesn't exactly sound like he's retired, does it?”

“No, not so much,” said William. His eyes darted to the telegram in the middle of the table, and he crept toward it, his hand outstretched.

“We shouldn't, Will,” said Maxine. Her voice lacked conviction, though, and she crowded close to him and peered over his shoulder as he unwadded the crumpled sheet and smoothed it carefully on the table.

IMPERIAL AND INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS LIMITED

“Via Eastern”

Iskenderun, Turkey

May 20, 1929

—— COL H BATTERSEA C/O REG OFF BROOKLYN ——

THE JACKAL HAS FLUSHED THE FOWL.

COURIER RUNNING. WHEN THE HARE GROWS FAT

SEEK THE NEEDLE FIND THE EYE.

-
YUSUF

“It's like some kind of riddle,” whispered William. “Does any of that make sense to you?”

Out in the entry hall, the telephone receiver rattled in its perch.

“Will, he's coming back!”

William crumpled the paper again, dropping it onto the table like a hot biscuit just as Grandpa rounded the corner.

The colonel's face was troubled.

“Something has come up, I'm afraid,” he said. “There's a matter I must attend to in the city. I'll be gone for a day or two.”

“You're leaving us alone again?” cried Maxine.

Grandpa rubbed his knuckles. “No, not alone. Your parents would never let me hear the end of that,” he muttered. “You can stay here with Mrs. Otto. Now where has she gotten off to?”

“She said she was going to her sister's house, remember? She said she'd be back tomorrow afternoon.”

“Blast. I can never count on that woman for anything,” fumed Grandpa.

He looked at the cousins with irritation.

“I'll have to take you with me, I suppose. Go get yourselves ready.”

“What, now?” Maxine blurted out.

“Yes, now. When else?” he said, checking the weather outside the kitchen window. “Pack your things, and see if you can find an umbrella while you're at it. We have a train to catch.”

Upstairs in the colonel's bedroom, Grandpa and William packed an old leather suitcase, while Maxine searched for an umbrella among the cupboards and chests of the mansion's upper halls. Umbrellas were in short supply at Battersea Manor, it seemed, and in the end she settled for her mother's red hat—not exactly what Grandpa had in mind in terms of rain gear, perhaps, but just the thing a sophisticated young lady would wear on a trip into the city. She clapped it on her head and bounded down the stairs.

Tumbling into the entry hall, Maxine was surprised to find the front door slightly ajar. She gave it a puzzled look and pulled it shut, but she suddenly felt a disturbing tingle at the nape of her neck and let out a sharp gasp. She was not alone in the front hall. Two strangers stood behind her, pressed flat against the staircase. They wore coveralls and long black coats, with heavy boots and short-billed caps, and one of them carried a pair of hooked ice tongs across his shoulder. As she turned, both of them reached for something inside their long coats.

“H-hello?” said Maxine warily. “Are you here to deliver the ice?”

The men's vigilance relaxed when they saw her face, and their hands returned to their sides.

“Where is Colonel Battersea?” asked the man with the iron tongs, his words laced with a peculiar accent.

Something about the men chilled Maxine to the bone. They had dark complexions and hungry eyes, and they moved stealthily, licking their lips as if they could taste her fear.

“He's upstairs somewhere,” said Maxine, growing more alarmed by the second. “He'll—he'll be down any minute.”

She opened her mouth to call for Grandpa, but the man lunged at her, clamping his hand over her mouth like a pipe wrench. Maxine's eyes bulged above his fingers. The man said nothing but forced her gaze to meet his.

The second man inspected the room calmly, methodically. He rapped on the blue tiles of the fountain and opened the case of the old clock, then brushed his fingers across the keys of the typewriter and disappeared into the kitchen.

The man who held Maxine looked down into her eyes with a soulless stare. He tilted her head sideways and scrutinized her profile, then shook his head indifferently.

His confederate returned from the kitchen waving a wrinkled slip of paper that Maxine recognized straightaway as Grandpa's telegram, and the two men exchanged words in a foreign tongue.

There was a noise from above—footsteps on the stairs. The intruders glanced at each other and pushed Maxine aside, and then, as if they shared a single mind, they sloped toward the door. At the threshold the hindmost stopped and turned, producing a silver coin from his pocket.

“Give Colonel Battersea our regards,” he said, tossing it at her feet.

The door slammed shut behind him, and Maxine sank to the floor and sobbed.

Grandpa's voice drifted down from upstairs. “Coats and hats, both of you. It may be chilly this evening in the city,” he called. He carried his leather suitcase and was pulling on a pair of driving gloves as he descended, but when he saw Maxine, he took the last few steps two at a time and crouched at her side.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, helping her to her feet.

She shook her head slowly.

“What happened?” asked William, pelting down behind.

“They took it,” choked Maxine. “They took the telegram.”

“Who? Who took the telegram?”

“There were two of them, dressed like icemen. They had strange accents.”

Grandpa peered out the window and opened the front door, but they were gone. The muscles in his jaw knotted, and he turned his attention to the grandfather clock. Opening the case, he stopped the pendulum and slid back an interior panel behind the counterweights to reveal a small brass knob. With a twist and a heave, the clock released from the wall and trundled out into the middle of the room like a prodigious drawer, pulling behind it a glass display case fully ten feet in length.

“I knew that old clock was hiding something,” breathed William. He pressed his nose to the glass and gaped like a fish. The top shelf of the display case was lined with a long column of sinister daggers—black-hilted, razor sharp—each one glinting like a silver thorn. The bottom shelves housed an arsenal of pistols and scatterguns and a handful of grapefruit-sized clay spheres of indeterminate purpose.

“What's with all the knives?” William asked.

“Hmm…,” replied Grandpa distractedly, “trophies, I suppose.” He opened the case and selected a worn Webley revolver, and the cousins watched with morbid fascination as he checked the cylinder and holstered it under his coat.

“And these funny little clay pots?” asked William, plucking one from the case and tossing it casually in his hand.

Grandpa caught the sphere in midair and gave him a reproachful look. “Perhaps it's better not to touch, my boy. The grenadoes contain Greek fire—a combustible concoction that explodes when the shells are shattered, igniting an inferno of startling proportions.”

He turned the clay sphere over twice in his hands, checking it with care, and then replaced it gently.

Maxine, understandably, had lost her train of thought for the moment, but it returned to her presently. “The men who took the telegram—they left you this,” she said, holding out the silver coin.

William took it from her and raised it to catch the light. “It looks old,” he said.

“A Persian obolus,” said Grandpa without even glancing up.

“Is it supposed to mean something?” asked William, pocketing it.

The colonel nodded. “It's a threat of sorts,” he said. “The coin is meant to be placed in the mouth of a corpse, to pay the ferryman for passage to the shores of the dead.”