The Magician's Tower (6 page)

He set the cone on the stage before plopping down in a chair, where he crossed his legs, unfolded a newspaper, and began to read as if he were sitting idly in his own living room instead of in front of hundreds of eager eyes.

And then there was pandemonium. Like an explosion, the crowd began to force its way toward the park entrance, participants and spectators alike attempting to get to one of the flyers that had been hung all over the street.

There must have been hundreds of flyers, Oona
realized: red-colored pieces of paper, each announcing the opening of the Magician's Tower Contest. She remembered seeing them plastered all over town, in shop windows, on lampposts, the closest of which was … where?

She looked around, certain there must have been some flyers posted in the park itself, but surprisingly, there were none to be seen.

Of course
, she thought,
the architect wouldn't have made it that easy
.

“Shall I fly off and get you a flyer?” Deacon offered.

Oona opened her mouth, on the verge of telling him to hop to it, when she suddenly remembered something that made her arms prickle with excitement.

“The gypsy caravan!” she said.

“I beg your pardon?” said Deacon.

Oona did not answer. She remembered seeing one of the contest flyers hanging from the gypsy's back door only the night before. She whirled around. The caravan was still parked near the far end of the stage, which was quite convenient, seeing as the sea of slowly moving people was heading in the opposite direction.

Oona raced toward the caravan. She circled around the wagon, and there it was: the flyer she had seen the night before. She tugged it from its tack and hurriedly read.

The rest of the flyer appeared to be nothing more than an artistic sketch of the tower itself.

“Do you see a clue anywhere?” Deacon asked.

“I'm looking for it, Deacon,” Oona said irritably. She removed a small magnifying glass from her dress pocket and began moving it steadily along the illustration. The magnifying glass, which was gold plated around the rim, with a well-worn wooden handle, had been her father's very own glass—and, according to Oona's uncle, her father had been the best head inspector the Dark Street Police Department had ever known.

Indeed, the magnifying glass was so special to Oona that she often felt like she was seeing through her father's eyes when she used it to look for clues. Sometimes she got the feeling that he was there beside her, urging her on,
forcing her to see what was really in front of her and not just what
appeared
to be there.

Presently, she peered through the glass at the flyer. It took no more than several seconds to find the hidden clue.

“Aha!” She pointed at a set of numbers that had been cleverly disguised along the edge of the illustration of the tower. “Look, Deacon, do you see? The numbers.”

Once her eyes made them out, the magnifying glass became unnecessary to read them.

“I do indeed,” Deacon said. “But what do they mean?”

Oona stared hard at the numbers. Running down the side of the tower illustration, from top to bottom, they read: 67, 2, 7, 10, 4, 1, 3, 2, 1.

“A strange bunch of numbers,” Deacon observed.

“Strange in what way?” Oona asked.

“Well, I see no immediate pattern,” he said. “Except for the ‘three, two, one' at the end.”

“The end, Deacon?” Oona asked. “And why are you assuming that the numbers run from top to bottom?”

“Well, it only seems natural to read them from the top of the page down.”

Oona considered this. While what Deacon had said made sense, Oona couldn't help but feel as if there was something a little too obvious about it. It was a feeling she had, an intuition that she should look for some other
logical way to read the numbers. A moment later, she had it. She felt a surge of excitement, and more than a pinch of pride at having figured it out so quickly.

“Reading the numbers top to bottom would be natural, yes,” she said. “And yet, look where the numbers are, Deacon. What are the numbers supposed to
be
in the illustration?”

Deacon leaned closer, cocking his head to one side. “I don't follow you. They simply look as if they are part of the tower.”

Oona nodded. “Yes, Deacon. And it is my experience that the numbers in buildings run from the first floor, at the bottom, and go upward in sequence.”

“Ah, I see your point,” he said. “The numbers could easily be read from bottom to top. One, two, three, one, four, ten, seven, two, sixty-seven.”

Oona stared up at the tower. She saw no indication of numbers anywhere.

“Perhaps they are referring to the different floors of the tower,” Deacon said.

Oona considered this, but shook her head. “No. The tower is tall, but nowhere near sixty-seven stories.”

Deacon continued to stare up at the tower as Oona peered at the illustration. She read through the words of the announcement again, then returned to the numbers. The answer was in there somewhere.

An idea came to her. She counted the sentences in the announcement.

“Look, Deacon,” she said, holding the paper up. She flicked at it with her finger. “See this? See how the announcement is written in lines, like a poem? Each sentence, or part of a sentence, is given its own line.”

“I do,” said Deacon. He hopped eagerly from one claw to the other.

“There are nine lines,” she said, and then ran her finger along the illustration of the tower. “And here we have nine numbers.”

“Indeed,” Deacon said.

Oona felt a slight tingling sensation just behind her eyes as she ran her finger up the row of numbers, and then back down the rows of sentences. She knew she was onto something.

“I'll bet that these nine numbers refer to the words in these nine sentences,” she said.

Deacon began to shake his head, seeing the flaw in her theory. “But what about the number sixty-seven? None of the sentences have sixty-seven words.”

“That is true,” Oona consented, “but I think I have that figured out as well.” She returned the magnifying glass to her pocket, and, after fishing around for a few seconds, pulled out a pencil. “Look here. If we go from the bottom floor of the building to the top, the first number is one.”

Oona circled the word
Take
, which was the first word in the first sentence:
Take
the ultimate challenge.

She then circled the second word in the second sentence: Be
the
ultimate hero.

“Take the,” Deacon said.

Oona circled the third word in the next sentence: It's the
Magician's
Tower Contest.

She studied the numbers again. 1, 2, 3, 1, 4, 10, 7, 2, 67.

“Here is where the pattern changes,” she said, and pointed to the forth number in the sequence: number one again. She circled the first word in the forth line:
Tour
the depths of the mind.

“Take the Magician's Tour,” Deacon said, reading the circled words aloud. “What is that?”

“I believe we're about to find out,” Oona said, and, following the sequence of numbers, she quickly circled the fourth word in the line that read: Overcome physical tasks
at
risk of life and limb—and the tenth word in: Must be at least thirteen years old to enter
the
tower.

After circling the seventh word in: Winner receives a plaque at the
museum
—and the second word in: (courtesy
of
McMillan's trophy shop)—Oona understood the clue perfectly. And she also realized that her original theory about the last line had been right.

“You were correct, Deacon,” Oona said, pointing at the final line with her pencil. “There are not more than
sixty-seven letters in the final line, which reads: ‘And will go down in magical history.' ” She circled the last two words in the sentence. “But there are words six and seven.” Beaming at the paper she added: “What say you, Deacon?”

Deacon read: “Take the Magician's Tour at the Museum of Magical History.” He paused a moment to consider the clue before exclaiming: “Well done!”

“And now,” Oona said, “we know our next destination.”

Glancing around, Oona noticed that—with the exception of the architect himself, who sat calmly on the stage reading his newspaper—she was the only person left in the park. A light breeze wound its way through the trees all around her, causing the bells hanging from the gypsy caravan to tinkle playfully against the side of the wagon.

Oona walked toward the caravan, her curiosity getting the better of her.

“Where are you going?” Deacon asked. “The museum is in the opposite direction.”

Oona felt a tug of anxiety, but couldn't seem to help herself. Now that there was no one around, it seemed a perfect time to do a little snooping … to see if the Punchbowl Oracle thief might have left behind some clue.

“It's all right, Deacon” Oona said. “I've no doubt solved the first clue before anyone else. I'm sure there's time.”

Deacon squawked. “Don't be so sure. There are some mighty smart people competing against you.”

His tone was harsh, and Oona felt sure that she deserved it. She knew how arrogant her statement must have sounded, but still, Deacon wouldn't have understood her real purpose for wanting to find the thief. He had no idea how terrible it had been for her to lose her mother and sister, and then to be forced to live with the knowledge that it had been her fault.

But what if what Madame Romania from Romania had hinted at was true?
she wondered. What if the burden was not hers after all? Oona could not fathom how that could be, but if the punchbowl could show her …

“I'm just going to take a few moments,” she said, searching the ground as she circled the wagon, “to see if there are any clues.”

Deacon shifted restlessly on her shoulder. “This is ridiculous. We are wasting time!”

“Wasting time?”
Oona snapped, but then bit her tongue.

“Dear me,” Deacon said. He fluttered away from Oona to the ground.

Oona was silent as she scanned the ground, feeling both guilty for having spoken so sharply at Deacon—who she knew had only her best interests in mind—and frustration at finding nothing. At last she straightened, shaking her head.

“Nothing at all.” She puffed a strand of hair from her face and then shrugged apologetically at Deacon. “I'm sorry for snapping, Deacon.”

The raven stood on the dried ground near one of the caravan wheels. He turned away from her in a clear attempt to show his injured feelings. But after a moment he spoke: “Fine, fine. Water under the bridge. Now can we please get on with the … the …” He trailed off.

Oona's eyebrows furrowed. “Deacon? What is it?”

Deacon was silent, moving his head about, as if examining something beneath the caravan.

“Deacon?” Oona said.

“It's some sort of trapdoor,” he said finally.

Oona squatted down and peered beneath the wagon. Sure enough, she could see precisely what Deacon was referring to. In the bottom of the caravan was a hinged hatch: a second way for someone to have gotten inside. Why a wagon would need such a hatch, she did not know. Beneath the hatch, she could see where the dried mud had been smeared, as if someone had been crawling around down there.

“So that's how they got in,” Oona said. “Well spotted, Deacon.”

“And look here,” Deacon replied, hopping directly beneath the hatch. He poked his beak into the dried mud, jabbing at a shiny object. He managed to pry it
out of the ground and then dropped it into Oona's palm.

“It seems that the thief left a bit of evidence,” Oona said, surprised. “A silver ring. Look how slim and delicate the design is. See how the jeweler created a heart shape at the top? By the shape and size, Deacon, I would say this is a woman's ring. And quite expensive.”

She closed the ring in her fist, stood up straight, and then shoved the evidence into one of her handy skirt pockets.

“Excellent work, Deacon,” she said, feeling justified that she had taken the time to snoop. Her mind suddenly raced with possible suspects—it could have been any one of the women from the party last night, or even someone who had not attended but had sneaked into the park unnoticed. She put her arm out, and Deacon flew to her sleeve.

“Now, my friend,” she said, “let's go win this challenge.”

Y
ou see, Deacon,” Oona said, “there was no need to hurry. There is no one else here.”