The Curse of the Ancient Emerald (9 page)

We landed on the street behind the town hall just as the Phantom was sprinting away, heading away from the police station. We set off after him, putting our athletic prowess to good use.

Just as we started to catch up with him, we heard more sirens blaring, closer this time.

I looked over my shoulder and saw two squad cars screech around a corner. Joe grabbed me and we ducked into a narrow alley, leaving the Phantom in clear view.

The squad cars shot past us. We moved deeper into the alley, emerging one block over. Now we were on the same street we had used to get to the town hall in the first place. That meant our parked car wasn't far away. If only we could get to it.

More sirens. We ducked back into the alley, hunkering down in the shadows as they sped past.

“You think they'll catch him?” asked Joe.

“I doubt it. He's too slippery. Speaking of which . . .” I pulled off my mask and stuffed it into my backpack, wiping the sweat from my face.

“You think this is a good idea?” asked Joe, taking his off as well.

“Better than getting caught wearing them. At least like this we can come up with an excuse if we need to.”

My phone beeped, indicating an incoming message. It was a text from Amber.

EVERYTHING OK? WE MADE IT OUT. DROPPING CHET OFF AND HEADING HOME.

I quickly texted back.
SO FAR SO GOOD. THE LOCKER @ 11 A.M.?

SEE YOU THEN.

“Chet and Amber are clear,” I said, putting my phone away.

Joe breathed a sigh of relief. “One less thing to worry about.”

“Let's get back to the car,” I said. I peered out of the alley and saw that the street was deserted. We slipped out and headed along the sidewalk. I wasn't sure if we should run as fast as we could or just walk calmly. Running meant we got away faster, but if we were caught, it would look suspicious. Walking meant it took us longer and there was more chance of being discovered, but if that
did
happen, we could try and talk our way out of it.

We couldn't even dump our masks, because our DNA was all over them. I wasn't sure if the Bayport police had DNA profiling kits, but better to be safe than sorry.

We heard sirens a few streets over as we turned onto the road where we had left our car. It was still there, and even better, there were no police waiting for us.

I climbed behind the wheel and rolled down the window. The sirens were coming from the east, so I started the engine and headed west.

“Where are you going?” asked Joe after a while. “Home's the other way.”

“We're not going home.”

•  •  •

Half an hour later, I hopped out of the car and knocked on Trethaway's door. Nothing. I knocked harder, but there was no answer. I headed around the back and tested the window Joe had opened yesterday.

“What are you doing?” asked Joe, now standing behind me.

“Looking for evidence. And if I don't find that, waiting for Trethaway to get back.”

“Are you serious?”

I paused and looked back at Joe. “Yes. I'm tired of all these games. Our families have been threatened, we almost got busted by the police tonight, I nearly fell off the roof, and who
knows
what he stole from the museum. I want this finished before
he
decides it's over. Which means we have to do it tonight. Tomorrow is the last riddle, remember?”

I climbed through the window and headed into the bedroom, where the pile of magazines still sat. I picked up a few of them, but I couldn't see any that had words and letters cut out.

Next I went for the computer while Joe hung around the front door, shifting from foot to foot.

“I don't like this,” he said. “If you're so sure it's him, we should call the police. Maybe they've already caught him!”

“We can't call the police. If they haven't caught him, he's still free to carry out his threats. We'll wait here and confront him when he comes home.”

Then I heard an ominous click, like a gun being cocked.

“Confront me about what?” growled Trethaway.

I looked up and saw that Joe had stiffened. Trethaway was standing behind him, and from the look of it, he had a gun shoved up against Joe's back.

T
RETHAWAY PRODDED ME IN THE
back with what felt like a pistol. “Next to your brother,” he said.

I moved to stand next to Frank and turned around. The living room was still dark, but Trethaway reached out and flicked the light switch. He stared at us curiously.

“What are you doing in my house?” he asked. “I don't have anything to steal.”

“We're not here to steal from you!” I protested.

“No? Then you won't mind if I call the cops?” He reached into his jacket, and that was when I saw that he wasn't holding a gun at all, but a small cardboard tube of what looked like . . .

Candy? I'd seriously thought a cardboard tube was a gun? In my defense, the candy tube was about the same circumference.

Trethaway upended the tube into his mouth. He tossed it onto the couch and took out his cell phone, crunching away while he studied us.

“Seriously. What do you want?”

“Like you don't know,” I said.

“No. I don't.”

“Where were you tonight?” Frank demanded.

“The movies. Late show.”

“Hah. A likely story,” said Frank. “Any proof?”

Trethaway fished in his pocket and pulled out a ticket stub. He handed it over and I inspected it. It was dated today. And it was for the ten p.m. show.

“That means nothing. You could have bought the ticket as an alibi and slipped out again.”

“An alibi for
what
?”

“For impersonating the Phantom and stealing from the Civil War exhibit at Bayport's town hall.”

Trethaway's eyes grew wide. “Seriously? Kruger's at it again? This is great! Well . . .
obviously
, not great. But great for my book! What did he steal? Has there been more than one robbery? Why isn't it in the news?”

He ran over to his desk and scrambled around for a notepad and pencil.

“Uh, Frank?” I said.

“Yes, Joe?”

I held out my hand. Frank sighed and fished around in his pocket until he found a ten-dollar bill.

“I'll owe you the rest,” he said, handing it over.

“Don't feel so bad. At least we know it has to be Kruger now.”

•  •  •

I woke up the next day ready to take on the world. Well, to take on Kruger, at any rate.

The first thing I did was check the mail. No riddle. Which was a bit worrisome, because this was the final day. If we didn't catch the Phantom in the act tonight, we'd
never
catch him.

Frank was already up. He had the car keys in his hand when I entered the kitchen to grab some breakfast.

“Ready?” he asked.

“For breakfast? Always.”

“No. To go see Kruger.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

“But—”

“Come on, Joe. We don't have much time.”

I sighed, then grabbed a couple of apples from the fruit bowl, and we headed out to the car.

Sunday traffic was light; it didn't take us long to get to Kruger's. His home wasn't anything impressive. A small, one-story house with a neatly trimmed yard. It looked deserted.

“You think he's flown the coop?”

“No,” said Frank. “Still one more riddle. One thing I've learned over the past couple of days is that this guy has an ego. He won't leave without finishing what he started.”

As we sat there, an old pickup truck pulled up. It was Kruger. He got out and stretched.

We hurried across the street. Kruger saw us coming and, I have to say, did
not
look happy.

“Boys,” he said, “I'm in a bit of a hurry. Have to drop some parts off at the shop.”

“On a Sunday?” I asked.

“Need them for tomorrow. Rush repair job. I had to head out of town yesterday to get the parts.”

“Wait,” said Frank. “You're saying you've been out of town?”

“Uh . . . yeah.”

“Last night, too?”

“Yes!”

“Where?” I asked.

“Why?” he demanded.

“We're curious,” said Frank.

Kruger sighed. “Last night I was about two hundred miles away. Sleeping in a horrible motel, if you must know.”

“Can you prove it?” I asked.

“Why should I?”

“Please, sir,” said Frank. “Just do this for us and we'll leave you alone.”

Kruger muttered something I couldn't hear and fished around in his wallet. He pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to me.

“I'll do it since you're Fenton's sons. This is a receipt from the motel, so I can claim expenses.”

I studied the receipt, then handed it to Frank.

“Sir,” he said. “We're really sorry. We . . . we messed up.”

“Can I go now? I'm tired.”

“Of course.” Frank handed back the receipt, and we both hurried back to the car.

We sat in our seats and stared out the window at Kruger. There was movement inside as someone—a guy who looked to be a few years older than Frank—flicked back a curtain to see who was outside. Kruger waved up at the window, and the boy waved back. I figured it must be his son, the one he'd mentioned when we first interviewed him.

“So . . . ,” Frank began.

“Both have alibis,” I said.

“Yup.”

“Which means we're no closer to knowing who it is than we were yesterday.”

“Yup,” said Frank.

I pulled the ten-dollar bill out of my pocket and gave it back to Frank. “Better hold on to this then.”

Frank took the money and started the car. “Where to?”

“Home. I want a proper breakfast, and then I need to sit down and think this case through.”

“Me too,” said Frank with a sigh.

No chance of that, though. As we pulled into the driveway, both of us saw an envelope sticking out of the mailbox.

“Here we go again,” I muttered, running to grab it while Frank drove the car into the garage.

When he joined me, I tore the envelope open. It was two pages long this time. The first was a note to us, made once again from letters and words clipped from magazines and newspapers.

Tick-tock, boys. Midnight tonight is the time. See you there?

I turned to the next page. It was filled edge to edge, top to bottom, with the numbers one and zero handwritten over and over again in random patterns.

I turned it over. Nothing on the back.

Frank took it from me. “This looks like binary code,” he said. “It's used in computing to encode instructions.”

“Can you read it?”

Frank laughed. “No.”

“So what are we supposed to do with it?”

Frank tapped the paper to his chin. “Maybe we scan it into a JPEG, then use text recognition to turn the scan into actual numbers again?”

“And then?”

“Then we search on the Internet for what those numbers mean,” he said, hurrying through the door.

“Okay. Sounds like you know what you're doing.”

Frank already had the letter in the scanner by the time I got to his room. We waited while the scanner buzzed and whined. Then the numbers flickered to life on Frank's monitor.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Now I search for a handwriting recognition website.”

I flopped onto his bed and leafed through a graphic novel. I knew from past experience it was best to let Frank do his thing with computers. He tended to get irritated if I hovered at his shoulder.

“Done,” he announced about ten minutes later. “I ran the scan through a website, and it sent me a Word file.”

“And what's next, O Wise One?”

“Now I copy and paste the binary numbers into a converter.”

“And you've managed to find a binary converter?”

Frank looked at me. “Binary isn't some kind of rare, magical language. It's computer code. Pretty well known.”

“If you say so.”

Frank returned to his work. After a minute I heard a sigh of frustration.

“It's just gibberish! There's no meaning here.”

I glanced at the screen. The converter had turned the ones and zeros into a series of meaningless letters and numbers. We sat there and scanned each line, but there wasn't anything that made sense.

“So much for that,” said Frank.

My phone rang. “Hey, Amber.”

“Hi, Joe. We still on for the Locker at eleven?”

“Yep. We got another clue this morning—a page filled with ones and zeros.”

“Oh, you mean binary?”

“Uh, yeah. Binary.” I turned away from Frank. “That was my first thought too.”

I heard Frank snort behind me.

“So have you translated it?”

“We tried. It's just nonsense. Random letters and numbers.”

“Well, send it to me. Chet, too. Four heads are better than two, remember?”

I smiled. “Sure, we'll send it over.” I turned around, but Frank had already e-mailed it. “It's on its way to you now.”

“Thanks. See you at eleven. We'll compare notes.”

After I had hung up the phone, I examined the physical letter. I had a feeling we didn't need all the fancy stuff Frank was doing. Surely the puzzle had to be solvable from this single piece of paper?

“Can we somehow add the numbers up? Maybe each line? Then each line might correspond to a letter of the alphabet?”

Frank grinned at me. “Isn't that the code we used when we were six years old?”

I nodded. “You never know.”

Frank spent the next twenty minutes adding the numbers on each line, then using that number to pick a letter of the alphabet. When he had finished he turned to me in amazement. “By Jove, I think you cracked it!”