The Magician's Tower (27 page)

“You're next,” she said, pointing to the trapdoor.

The phony architect frowned. “Do I have to?”

Oona gave the wand a jabbing motion. “Do it, or I'll turn you into a worm.”

Oona knew very well that she had no such power, but the architect certainly did not. He let out a small whimper, and then dropped through the trapdoor opening. Oona
peered over the lip of the trapdoor, watching him slide until he was out of view.

She took a moment to collect herself, peering at the powerful magical object in her hand, and realized all at once that the last person to hold this wand had been Oswald the Great himself. What great and terrible powers this wand had conjured; it made her nervous simply to hold it.

At last, still feeling thoroughly shaken, Oona retrieved the box from the floor and tucked it beneath her arm. Her hands trembled as she allowed herself a sigh of relief. She was alive, and Red Martin's plans had been thwarted. She could only hope that the spectators waiting below would see him emerge from the slide at the bottom of the tower. Reminding herself that the man still had a gun, her heart lurched at the thought of someone attempting to apprehend him and getting shot in the bargain.

Glancing down at the open trapdoor, she said: “Well, I'm certainly not going down that way.”

She had a better idea.

D
eorsum tardus!”

Oona tapped the rope at the top of the elevator cage with the tip of Oswald's wand, and she and the cage began to descend. The ride down was quite slow, but Oona was afraid that if she made the rickety elevator travel any faster, its rope might come loose or break altogether.

The rain had receded to a slow drizzle, and Oona was thankful for it; but as the park drew closer and the spectators became larger, Oona began to feel quite anxious. What would she find when she got down there? Would anyone have tried to apprehend Red Martin? Would they have succeeded? She had not heard a gunshot, but then
again she had been very high up and might not have heard the explosion from so far away.

Deacon was the first to see her as the cage came level with the tops of the trees. He flew to the top of the cage and looked from the wand in her right hand to the black box in her left.

He shook the water excitedly from his wings. “You did it! You solved the puzzle box. You've won!”

Oona looked urgently around. “Where is Red Martin? And the architect?”

“Red Martin?” Deacon asked.

“Yes, Deacon. Didn't you see him come out of the slide? And the architect, too.”

Deacon shook his head. “I'm not sure what you are speaking of, but we haven't seen either of them.”

Oona scanned the spectators below. Deacon was right. There was no sign of the architect or Red Martin. Not that she thought they would have stayed nearby, but she didn't understand why no one saw them.

The cage came to a halt on the stage. A round of applause emanated from the sparse crowd, but Oona hardly noticed. She spotted Isadora Iree beside her mother near the front of the stage. She stood, arms crossed, refusing to applaud with the others. Oona strode swiftly across the stage to meet her.

“Come to gloat?” Isadora asked sulkily.

Oona shook her head. “Isadora, where did you come out of the tower?”

The question seemed to take Isadora by surprise. “What?”

“The slide,” Oona said. “Where does the slide come out?”

Isadora squinched up her nose at the memory. “Oh, that? It was just horrible. I thought I was going to die, swirling around and around like that. It made me quite dizzy, and I thought I might be sick.”

Oona looked impatiently around. “But where did it come out?”

Isadora waived a hand vaguely toward the tower. “Through a hole at the back.”

Oona turned to her uncle and Samuligan, who stood near the steps to the stage. She snapped her fingers. “Quickly. To the back of the tower!”

She descended the steps in a single bound and began hurriedly making her way around the side of the building.

“What is it, Oona dear?” the Wizard asked, struggling to keep up with her.

Deacon landed on her shoulder. “Yes, where are we going?”

Oona glanced back, happy to see that Samuligan was following closely behind.

“It's Red Martin,” she said. “He's been living at the
top of the tower. He went down the slide … and he has a gun.”

Before she could round the back corner, a hand grabbed her arm, stopping her in her tracks. It was her uncle.

“A gun?” he asked. “Are you sure?”

She gave him a peeved look. “Of course I'm sure. Red Martin has been behind this tower competition all along. That architect wasn't an architect after all. He was just a phony whom Red Martin paid to play the part. They used me to open the box and get this.” Oona held up the wand. “Oswald's wand.”

The Wizard's eyes rounded in surprise. “Oswald's original wand?”

“Yes,” Oona said. She glanced at the box beneath her arm. “This is what was in the puzzle box. But there's no time to explain. We mustn't let Red Martin get away.”

She turned, intent on heading around the corner, but the Wizard's hand prevented her from moving forward.

“Oona, stop,” he said. “Think. If he has a gun …”

“But we can't let him get away,” she said, and her voice broke with emotion. “He killed my father!”

“But he has a gun,” the Wizard repeated.

She felt like her head might explode with frustration, and she bit at her lip, holding back a retort. She knew her uncle was right. Not only did Red Martin have a gun, but
also a glove that could repel magic. She could think of no one more dangerous.

“Why don't I take a look?” Deacon suggested. “I can fly to that tree over there.”

“An excellent idea,” the Wizard said.

Oona glanced sideways at Deacon. “Be careful.”

“Without a doubt,” he replied, and then soared into the air.

They watched him circle high in the air and land in the tree. His head twitched this way and that, peering in all directions behind the tower. At last he called to them.

“I don't see them anywhere. Neither the architect nor Red Martin.”

Samuligan tipped his hat back on his head before poking his faerie face around the corner of the building. At last he stepped forward. “All seems clear.”

Oona and the Wizard stepped around the corner. The end of the slide stuck out of a hole in the building like a long, flat tongue. Red Martin and his minion were nowhere to be seen.

“Where could they have gone?” Oona asked.

The park was enormous, nearly a mile long and a quarter mile deep. But still. Someone must have seen them.

“Unless …,” Oona said, and ran to the end of the slide. “Look.”

Several paces from the end of the slide a green gas lamppost stood forlornly against the drab, gray sky. Many of the street's lamps had not yet been converted to the Wizard's ever-burning lamplight, and here was one of them. She approached the post, but stopped several feet away and looked down. At her feet she found a thick, round piece of iron, approximately three feet across, set into the grass: the letters
UH
were embossed on top.

“A utility-hole cover,” Deacon said.

Oona nodded. “Yes. It leads down to underground passages where the utility workers can work on the gas lines. I know about them from my father's files. He believed that all sorts of criminal activity happened down in those tunnels.” She knelt. “And see here, how the wet grass is flat on this side of the hole? This is where the cover was recently moved so someone could crawl inside before sliding the lid back into place.”

“Or two people,” Deacon reasoned.

“Yes,” Oona said, straightening her knees. “The false architect … and Red Martin. He has managed to escape once again.”

Oona's shoulders slumped. It was simply intolerable to know that her father's murderer was still at large.

“But look at what you have, Oona,” the Wizard said, and there was a hint of reverence in his voice. “You have Oswald the Great's wand, and Red Martin does not.”

Samuligan leaned down to get a better look at the wand. Oona could not read his expression, and yet, suddenly, something occurred to her.

“This is the very wand used to turn you into a lifelong servant of Pendulum House, isn't it, Samuligan?”

He nodded, his expression still unreadable. “It is one of them. Oswald did not act alone.”

But still, Oona wondered if this wand might be the key to setting Samuligan free. It was, after all, rumored to be the key to the Glass Gates. It just might be the way to send the faerie home.

She thought of how sad that would make her. Samuligan was like family. How empty the house would seem without him.

The faerie servant, who sometimes gave the impression that he could read thoughts, straightened beside her, and said: “It is an interesting find, indeed.”

The Wizard cleared his throat. “Now, Oona dear, you must tell us everything that you have learned.”

As the four of them wound their way back around to the front of the tower, Oona recounted all that had happened in the pyramid. She was in the middle of explaining how pompous and arrogant Red Martin had been acting—boasting of how cleverly he had been to steal the wand box five hundred years ago, and how he had used his eidetic memory to paint a picture
of the wand locked inside—when Oona suddenly stopped.

They had just come around the front side of the tower to where the spectators remained, scattered sparsely around the stage. Perhaps they were all waiting to find out what had happened, Oona wasn't sure. But one realization suddenly did jump into her mind that she could not believe she had not seen before.

Oona marched across the wet grounds and arrowed a finger at Sir Baltimore. “You, sir, are the reason Isadora Iree was able to cheat her way through the contest!”

“Me?” Sir Baltimore said. “I haven't the slightest idea what you are—”

“Not only did you hire that phony fortune-teller to distract me with a faerie tale,” Oona said, “but you were also the one who stole the plans from the architect the night of the party. And this is how it happened.” Oona turned to Madame Iree. “You, madame, purposely ran into the architect so that he would spill his soup on your dress.”

“Why would she do that?” Deacon asked.

Oona peered hard at Madame Iree. “She did it because Mrs. White, the wife of our very own Inspector White, was wearing a similar dress.”

Madame Iree opened and closed her mouth several times before saying: “It was horrible. I couldn't stand the
humiliation of being the most celebrated dressmaker on the street and attending a party with someone in a similar dress.”

“So instead,” Oona continued, “you suffered the humiliation of having your own dress soiled with soup, so you could then have an excuse to run back to your dress shop for a change of wardrobe.”

Madame Iree looked at her daughter, and the two of them nodded as if this were a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

“Originality is very important,” said Madame Iree.

“But what does that have to do with Sir Baltimore?” Deacon asked.

“I was just getting to that,” Oona said, returning her attention to Roderick's tall, handsome father. “You, sir, were in the group of people who rushed to help the architect back to his feet after he and Madame Iree collided, and in all that commotion, you saw your chance and took it. You slyly unbuckled the architect's satchel and removed the papers. You then used your eidetic memory to take a mental picture of the plans, memorizing all the clues and their answers in the few minutes that they went missing. In the chaos caused by the incident, no one would have noticed you, and even if someone had, I'm guessing that you used Penelope's book of obscure faerie tales to hide the plans from view as you glanced them over.
Once you'd finished, you then dropped the plans on the ground, where they were soon found by Deacon. You later gave the answers to Roderick and placed a large bet on him to win. Of course, what you did not know was that the final clue in the plans was false.”

Isadora Iree stood between her mother and her boyfriend. Her hair and dress were as wet as ever. Presently, she slapped Roderick on the shoulder. “You told me the final answer was ‘rutabaga'!”

“Hush, Isadora,” Roderick said, his face going just as red as his father's.

“Isadora?” Madame Iree said. “You were cheating this whole time? I simply don't believe it.”

Isadora's mouth clamped shut, and she gazed up at her mother with large innocent eyes.

Adler, who was leaning on a nearby tree, gave a quick disbelieving laugh. “Ha! So those notes that Roderick was giving you … They weren't love poems after all, were they, sister? They were the answers to the contest clues.”

Isadora scowled at Adler.