The Secret Cellar (5 page)

Malcolm, who sometimes carries a walking stick (not because he needs it—he freely admits that he just likes the way it looks with his tweeds), perks up.

“May I borrow that paddle for a moment, dear?” he asks.

Elizabeth groans. “Another stick? Good grief. There’s hardly room in the umbrella stand as it is.”

“Yes, dear,” says Malcolm with another wink in my direction.

Bidding on that silly walking stick turns into a small-scale war between Malcolm, a man in the back (old and feeble enough that he actually needs the darn thing), and—big surprise—Marcus Klinger. The bidding quickly goes from one hundred, to two, to three, to four. Malcolm’s final bid is four hundred fifty, and when Klinger promptly raises it to five hundred, Malcolm mutters, “Too rich for my blood,” and hands the paddle back to me.

I’m rooting for the old man, but Klinger keeps raising and raising the bid, never hesitating to hoist his paddle high in the air. Finally, with the bidding at nine hundred dollars, the old man in the back gives up, and Klinger adds the walking stick to his haul, which includes six boxes of books and a small writing desk.

But there’s one thing he doesn’t have: Dad’s fountain pen.

• • •

“Don’t you just love New York during the holidays?” Mom says, slipping her arm through mine as we stroll through the pine forests of the Upper East Side on the way home from Bartleman’s. “The lights, the smells … so lovely. Maybe it’s my imagination, but people even seem nicer.”

“Well, I’m with you about the lights and the smells, but that other thing is definitely your imagination,” I say, picturing Marcus Klinger and the way he treated us in his shop.

Mom squeezes my arm. “Since when did my baby get to be so cynical? What happened to my innocent little Sophie?”

“She started seventh grade,” I say. “It’s a jungle out there, Mom.”

“Don’t let a few Scrooges ruin your holidays,” Mom says. “You have such a wonderful outlook on life; it’s just one big adventure after another for you, and I love that about you. I couldn’t bear to watch it disappear. Promise that you won’t ever stop being so excited, so
passionate
, about … everything?”

“Promise.”

When we get home, it’s after nine o’clock, and Dad is waiting for us—an unplanned-for scenario. He’s usually at the restaurant until eleven or twelve on Tuesdays.

“Guy! What are you doing home already?” Mom asks, caught completely off guard. She recovers quickly,
though; Mom is pretty fast on her feet. “I’m sorry—that sounded like we’re not happy to see you.”

Dad smiles and hugs her. “Nice to see you two, too.”

“Two too,” I repeat, in a singsongy voice. “Like a train. Get it? Choo-choo?”

Dad stares blankly at me, then turns to Mom for an explanation of my lame attempt at humor.

“Never mind,” she says. “Your daughter’s being silly. We’ve been out doing a little Christmas shopping.”

“For youuuuuu,” I add.

“Ah,
ma foi
! All is forgiven. Was it a … successful trip?”

“Very,” says Mom. “I think you’ll be pleased. Definitely surprised.”

“I can’t wait to see your face,” I say. “I don’t know how I’m going to make it to Christmas.”

Dad shrugs. “You could just give it to me now if it will make life easier for you.”

“Oh, no you don’t,” says Mom. “Sophie—to bed! Look at the time. And you have a math test tomorrow!”

“Postponed until Thursday,” I say. “But I do have a Spanish quiz. No problemo.”

I kiss them both and then head off to my room, where I spend a few minutes reviewing my Spanish notes. Before long, I convince myself that I’m fully prepared for the quiz, set my notebook aside, and take the fountain pen out of my jacket pocket. As I unscrew the cap, I realize that I have no idea how the thing works.
I vaguely remember seeing Dad fill one of his other pens: he dipped the end of the pen into a bottle of ink, and somehow the pen sucked up enough ink to write for a few days.

It could use a thorough cleaning, I decide. There is dried ink all over the gold nib, and the silver trim pieces could use a good polishing. I gently unscrew the barrel and start to wipe the inside with a cotton swab, but then something strange happens. The swab catches on something, and as I pull it out, a rolled-up piece of paper comes with it. At first I think it’s just part of the pen, but as I unroll it, my heart starts ka-thumping away; even before I read it, I’m imagining it to be a secret message of galactic importance.

Unrolled on my desk, the paper is about six inches long and two inches wide, and desperate to reroll itself into a tube. Across the top, hand-printed in tiny letters, is a short poem:

Below that, twelve rectangular holes have been cut in the paper. All the holes are about one-eighth of an inch wide, but they vary in length, with the longest being about an inch. Their purpose is clear from the poem: place the paper on a certain page of a certain book, and a secret message will appear in the boxes. Of course, finding the right page of the right book is the hard part.

Unless your name happens to be Margaret Wrobel, that is.

I call her immediately and tell her about my discovery.

“I would take a picture of it, but you wouldn’t be able to read the poem, anyway—it’s way too tiny. I didn’t even know it was possible to write that small. What do you think it means?”

“No idea—yet. But the first part of the poem sounds like a riddle; it can’t be too hard to figure out who the ‘he’ is. My question is, why hide a clue about finding advice in a fountain pen? We don’t really know anything about the guy who owned the pen, other than the fact that he’s dead.”

“Um, yeah, thanks for reminding me,” I say, a little creeped out.

“Wait—remember what that lady at the auction said? The last thing he wrote was ‘Look inside.’ What if he meant the pen all along?”

“Oh, right—she just assumed he meant the metal box that was in his other hand.”

“Which did have something inside—a woman’s picture,” Margaret reminds me. “I wonder if the two things are related.”

“What about this ‘first of trios three’ line? What’s up with that?”

“You’ve got me. It’s all probably nothing. Don’t you have some studying to do?”

“Nope. I’m done. No worries, mate.”

“Hmm. We’ll see, I guess. Well, I want to go over my notes one more time. I’ll stop by in the morning. Regular time?”

“Perfecto. Buenas noches.”

So you think you want to be a detective, huh? Let’s see if you have what it takes. I’m going to give you a little test, but tell you what, instead of a fill-in-the-blank (don’t you just hate those?), I’ll start you off with a nice easy multiple-choice question:

Who is the “he” in “Mighty Hector, Caesar, and he”? Which name belongs with the other two?

And no peeking at the next chapter until you know the answer!

But it is a good half hour ahead of “regular time” that Margaret, who lives in an apartment building exactly eleven minutes from mine, sends me a text message. I’m munching on a piece of cinnamon-and-sugar toast (made with Dad’s homemade bread, naturally) when my phone springs to life and this text appears:

I can’t help smiling at the perfectly spelled, perfectly punctuated message—it’s so Margaret. Tearing off another bite of toast, I text back:

Two seconds later, in return, I get: !!!!! That is Margaret’s way of saying, “Buzz the doorman and tell him to let me come up.”

“Hey, Louie!” I shout into the intercom. “It’s Sophie St. Pierre. You see that skinny, goofy-looking kid in the lobby—the one in the bright red blazer? Would you please send her up?”

“Who are you shouting at?” Mom cries, rushing into the kitchen. “I thought the apartment was on fire.”

“Oh, just having a little fun with Louie, the temp doorman. Haven’t you noticed how loud he talks?”

“Maybe he’s hard of hearing, Sophie. I can’t believe you’re teasing him; you used to be such a nice girl.”

“I am nice,” I insist. “Wait till you see what I got you for Christmas.”

“You’re supposed to be saving that money you got from that nutty movie star friend of yours. Twelve hundred dollars for a couple of weeks of dog-sitting. Ludicrous. That’s more than I made in five years of babysitting when I was your age. And that was watching children, not a silly dog.”

Margaret’s knocking saves me (and Nate Etan) from further attacks—or so I think.

“Why were you shouting into the intercom?” Margaret asks. “Jeez! I could hear you out in the lobby! Goofy-looking? Skinny? This is how you describe me to strangers?”

“I was kidding. I knew you’d be able to hear me; that was part of the fun. Sheesh. You two used to have a sense of humor.” I plonk myself back into my chair and take a huge bite of toast.

“I think she’s ignoring us,” Mom says, pouring a glass of orange juice for Margaret.

“That’s too bad,” says Margaret. “Then I suppose she doesn’t want to hear what I learned about that secret message she found.”

“Secret message?” Mom asks. “Now what?”

Margaret looks my way. “You didn’t tell her?”

I shrug. “Ewastoolay,” I say with a mouthful of toast.

Mom raises an eyebrow and looks to Margaret for a translation.

“She says it was too late. Apparently, she was cleaning that fountain pen and found a piece of paper rolled up inside it—there’s a poem, and … Hey, here’s a crazy idea. Why don’t you go get the paper, Sophie? Pretty please?”

“Only because I’m curious about what you found out,” I grumble, gulping down half a glass of orange juice in one swallow.

Mom moves in close enough to look over my shoulder when I stretch the paper out on the kitchen counter. She squints, trying to read the writing at the top, but quickly gives up.

“My old eyes are no match for that,” she says. “And
I don’t think my reading glasses would help. What’s it say?”

Margaret reads the poem aloud:

“Just whose pen did you buy?” Mom asks. “Who puts something like that inside their fountain pen? What was his name—Curtis Dedmann?”

Margaret nods. “He lived in a townhouse on Eighty-Second Street. He was kind of a recluse, I think. We don’t know much about him. Yet.”

Mom holds the paper up to the light. “What are all these holes?”

“It’s like a decoder,” I say. “You put it over a page in a book, and the words that appear in the boxes spell out a secret message.”

“Well, that’s very exciting,” Mom says. “But … why? You know what I mean—why go to all that trouble?”

“A good question,” Margaret replies. “Especially if all he’s offering is some sage advice.”

“Yeah, I was going to ask about that,” I say. “What does ‘sage’ mean, anyway? Isn’t that an herb?”

“Wise,” explains Margaret, a dictionary in a plaid skirt. “Although you’re right, it is an herb, too.”

“So, what did you figure out?” I ask.

“I know who ‘he’ is,” says Margaret. “It’s Hector, Caesar, and … Alexander the Great.”

(Well? Is that who you picked? Give yourself a gold star if you got it right.)

“You seem awfully sure of yourself,” I say.

Margaret shrugs. “It was easy. That line about the ‘trios three’ gave it away. Three trios equals nine, so I just typed in ‘Hector,’ ‘Caesar,’ and the number ‘nine,’ and up pops something called the Nine Worthies. And when I realized that the first word in the second line is ‘worthy,’ I knew I was on the right track. Back in the fourteenth century, somebody put together this list of the nine men—”