The House of Puzzles (26 page)

Ruby’s lips brushed Gerald’s ear. ‘I don’t think he’s very happy,’ she whispered.

From the other side of the wall came a howl of rage as Sir Mason Green let fly with
a military-grade stream of swearing.

Gerald’s eyes popped. ‘Wow,’ he whispered back to Ruby. ‘That’s impressive.’

Ruby smothered a giggle beneath her fingers and leaned in close. ‘He must know a
swearword for every letter of the alphabet.’

‘Just as long as he doesn’t notice the alphabet at the bottom of the wall,’ Gerald
said. He ducked his eye back to the peephole. ‘Dammit,’ he said. ‘He’s taking my
backpack.’

‘Is there anything important in it?’ Ruby whispered.

‘Just my notebook and all those guesses at Jeremy Davey’s coded message,’ he said.
Then Gerald sucked in a breath. On the other side of the wall, Sir Mason Green was
staring at the knapsack in his hand. Then he slowly raised his eyes to glare right
at the peephole.

Right at Gerald.

In a flash, Green rushed to the wall, running his hands across its surface, searching
for any opening, any chink in the bricks. For a moment, Green’s eye hovered a bare
centimetre away from the peephole, looking directly at Gerald. The width of a brick
away, Gerald held his breath.

Then, just as swiftly, Green turned and was away down the corridor.

Gerald pulled his face from the wall and he slumped back against the bricks with
relief. ‘He’s gone,’ he said. Gerald looked down to find Ruby grinning at him. ‘What’s
so funny?’ he asked.

Ruby’s smile widened. ‘You were very clever working out that riddle, you know,’ she
said.

Gerald’s cheeks flushed.

‘But not as clever as I am,’ she continued. She pointed to a sign screwed to the
wall. It was shaped like an arrow, pointing further along the passage, and had the
words C
ENTRAL
P
ARK
painted in neat capital letters.

‘Our way out of here,’ Ruby said with pride. ‘This tunnel must run all the way under
Fifth Avenue and open out somewhere in the park. If Sam and Felicity have found the
professor our work here is done.’

She beamed up at Gerald again. His cheeks turned a deeper red. There was a stirring
in the pit of his stomach. Gerald looked into Ruby’s eyes.

‘There once was a girl named Ruby—’

Ruby put a finger to Gerald’s lips. ‘Not really the
time,’ she said. ‘We’ve still
got a minotaur to track down, Theseus. Let’s try to get this door open again.’

The colour drained from Gerald’s face and his eyes dropped to his shoes. ‘Oh, okay…’

After a few minutes of searching, Ruby’s hand fell upon a metal lever set into the
wall. She pressed her eye to the peephole to see if the way was clear, then pulled
the handle. The section swung in and Ruby led the way through the gap.

They retraced the path to where they had last seen Felicity and Sam, making sure
to remember the way back to the exit.

‘How long have we been gone?’ Gerald asked as they neared the intersection in the
passageways. ‘It must be longer than half an hour.’

They slowed to a walk and stopped at the ashen cross on the floor.

There was no sign of Sam or Felicity.

Gerald was about to ask ‘What do we do now?’ when there was a hissed whisper from
further down the corridor.

‘Gerald! Ruby!’ They looked up to see Felicity crouched in a doorway where the passage
curved. They rushed to her.

‘We’ve found a way out,’ Gerald said to Felicity.

‘And we’ve found the professor,’ Felicity said. ‘Though, he does seem a bit confused.’
She took them through a zigzag of passages. ‘We think Mason Green
has given him another
bizarre potion,’ she said. As they rounded a bend Gerald recoiled, screwing his eyes
shut and turning his face away. ‘What is that smell?’

A pungent green mist curled from a doorway just ahead. Gerald slapped a hand over
his mouth and nose; the smell was eye-watering. He could not find words to describe
the odour but if a cheese factory could fart that would go part of the way to just
how vile the stench was.

Felicity tugged at his arm. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘You’ll get used to it.’

Gerald paused in the doorway, his hand still over his nose. He stared into a spacious
room. Large white tiles lined the floor and walls. Stainless steel benches were covered
with beakers, flasks and titration tubes. Messy scientific scrawl covered a large
whiteboard. And next to the largest workbench stood two people: Professor Knox McElderry,
wearing a stained lab coat and holding a beaker containing a bubbling iridescent
blue concoction, and a very anxious Sam Valentine, clutching forceps clamped around
a test tube.

‘Hold it still, damn you,’ McElderry said as he went to tip the brew into the tube.
‘I can’t afford to spill any.’

The forceps wobbled in Sam’s grip, and a drop of the mixture spattered onto the floor.
Instantly, a mushroom cloud of purple vapour rose from the tiles. McElderry leaped
back and snatched the test tube and forceps from Sam’s hands. ‘Try not to breathe
that in,’ the professor said, stoppering the beaker on the bench and taking
another
step back from the sizzling puddle on the floor. ‘It could stunt your growth.’

Sam’s face went from anxious to petrified. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, shuffling in behind
Felicity for protection. ‘It just slipped.’

‘Tell that to the people of China when that drop of super acid makes it down there,’
McElderry said. His face coiled into a ferocious scowl. ‘You may well be the stupidest
boy in the world. Has anyone ever told you that?’

Gerald took a step towards the professor. ‘You have,’ he said. ‘At least a few times.’

With a flurry of beard, McElderry swivelled his head to glare at Gerald. ‘Have I?’
he said, taken aback for a moment. Then he returned his suspicious gaze to Sam. ‘How
very astute of me.’

Gerald crossed to the professor and placed a hand on his shoulder. McElderry spun
and glowered at him. The look in his eyes stunned Gerald: the pupils were so dilated
that there was almost no iris visible, just two sink holes into the bottomless depths
of McElderry’s mind.

‘Uh, professor, it’s time to go now,’ Gerald said. He tugged gently on McElderry’s
sleeve. ‘Time to go home.’

McElderry baulked, leaning back. ‘Can’t you see I’m working on something important?’
he growled. Then he blinked, which seemed to make his pupils grow even larger, and
blinked again. ‘You’re the Wilkins boy, aren’t you?’ he said.

Gerald’s face brightened. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I’m Gerald—we met at the museum.
You knew my great aunt, Geraldine.’

McElderry’s brow furrowed, as if he was digging into the far recesses of a long-lost
filing cabinet of recollections. ‘Geraldine Archer,’ he said. ‘I did know her.’
He looked again at Gerald. ‘Gerald Wilkins. I know you too.’ Then, as if a long dry
riverbed had been flooded with memories, the professor took Gerald by the shoulders.
‘You’re right. We must get out of here immediately.’

McElderry dragged Gerald through the door. Ruby, Sam and Felicity rushed after them.

‘We know a way out, Professor,’ Gerald said. ‘It’s just up ahead.’

‘I know a short cut,’ McElderry said, not looking back. ‘Far quicker. Far quicker.’

The professor’s grip on Gerald’s arm tightened as they bustled around a tight corner,
then another, and up a short flight of stairs to a heavy wooden door. McElderry threw
it open and ushered Gerald through with a sharp shove in the back.

Gerald launched through the opening and skidded to a stop. He hardly had a chance
to get his bearings before Sam, Ruby and Felicity bundled into the back of him.

They all looked up to find that they were back in the original cellar where they
had fallen from the street.

And glaring at them from the middle of a floor strewn with broken furniture and shredded
paper was Sir Mason Green.

Professor McElderry gave Gerald another prod between the shoulder blades. ‘There,
Sir Mason,’ he said. ‘Gerald Wilkins and his friends, just like you asked for.’

Sir Mason Green smiled, and raised his gun.

Chapter 27

Sir Mason Green snapped the padlock shut and tested the cage door. ‘That should
keep you in one place,’ he said, ‘while I figure out what to do with you. Now, if
you’ll excuse me, the professor and I have some business to discuss.’ Gerald watched
Mason Green usher Professor McElderry through the door at the rear of the cellar.
He laced his fingers through the wires and rattled at the lock and hinges, but the
door stood firm.

‘Locked tight,’ he said. ‘We’re stuck.’

The cage formed an airy box: three walls and a roof of thick intermeshing wire bolted
against an unyielding brick wall in the corner of the cellar. The storage space had
the look of a junk shop gone to seed. The floor was stacked with dusty wooden tea
chests and random
steamer trunks plastered with the faded stickers of sea voyages
of years gone by: New York, Havana, Montevideo, La Libertad, Tahiti. A roll of mouldering
carpet was propped against a water-stained grandfather clock, its hands forever marking
twelve. Even a ship’s wheel leaned awkwardly, and a little sadly, between a low bookcase
stacked with decaying paperbacks and a filing cabinet that was missing a drawer.
A large red boiler, squat and impressive, sat against the wall like a rust-caked
Buddha with a robust chimney pipe that stretched from its top, through a narrow opening
in the cage roof, and disappeared into the inner-gizzards of the club’s heating system.
A manufacturer’s plate bolted to its rounded belly proclaimed in cast iron lettering:
Product of Kincaid Foundries, Coopertown, Pennsylvania.

Ruby, Sam and Felicity sat in a disconsolate group, each perched on a tea chest,
their chins cupped in their hands, as if waiting to be sold along with the rest of
the junk. ‘What is going on with Professor McElderry?’ Ruby said. ‘He seemed pretty
normal, and then he takes us straight to Green like some trained chimpanzee.’

‘Did you see the look on his face when Green thanked him?’ Felicity said. ‘If McElderry
had a tail he would have wagged it. Pathetic.’

Gerald shook his head and frowned. ‘He must be under the influence of some drug,’
he said. ‘But instead of being a zombie lurching around the place he’s able to do
whatever Mason Green needs him to do. Sam, what
was that blue stuff in the beaker?’

Sam screwed up his face at the memory of the stench that had filled the laboratory.
‘The only thing he said was not to get any on my clothes. Or fingers. Or anywhere
else for that matter. It was like whatever he was working on was the most important
thing in the world. Nothing else mattered.’

Gerald scoured his brain for anything that might make sense of the situation. The
only conclusion he could reach was that the professor was the victim of another potion
from the poisoner’s cookbook that was the Voynich manuscript. ‘Whatever the reason
he’s acting this way, Professor McElderry still needs our help,’ he said.

Felicity jumped down from her tea chest and wandered towards the rear of the storage
cage, kicking at boxes and trunks as she went. ‘In case you missed it, we could do
with some help ourselves,’ she said. ‘It’s still hours before Jasper Mantle is due
to turn up and let you and Alex out of the house.’

‘And what’s he going to find when he does get here?’ Ruby said. ‘An empty room and
no sign of either of you. No one has any idea where we are. We might as well have
been swallowed up by the earth.’

‘We can’t wait for someone to come rescue us,’ Gerald said, rounding on Ruby. ‘We
have to rescue ourselves.’

‘And how do you suggest we do that?’ Ruby said.

Gerald narrowed his gaze. ‘Whatever it is, we need to do it before Green comes back.
We’re wasting the time
we’ve got while he’s not here.’

‘Then don’t let us slow you down, oh fearless leader,’ Ruby snapped.

Frustration rose in Gerald’s belly. He flashed out a hand and grabbed Ruby by the
sleeve. She had dismissed him one too many times that day. Ruby’s response was instant
and explosive. She thrust both her hands against Gerald’s chest. ‘Don’t!’ she cried.

The force of the shove took Gerald by surprise and he stumbled backwards. His foot
caught the corner of a steamer trunk and he lost his balance. He threw out his hands
for support. They landed flat against the boiler.

Ruby’s eyes widened with horror. ‘Oh no—’

Gerald’s face contorted. He peeled his outstretched palms from the red steel and
held them up to Ruby.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Ruby said, dread in her face. ‘Oh, what have I done?’

Gerald’s mouth opened wide…

‘Well, there’s a strange thing,’ he said. ‘The boiler’s stone cold.’

Ruby unleashed a storm of fists onto Gerald’s chest. Gerald held up his arms to ward
off the blows and laughed. ‘You’re not so worried about hurting me now, are you?’
he said, as the punches continued. ‘Serves you right for being rude to me. Again.’

Ruby gave Gerald one last punch and glared at him. Gerald thought he caught a twinkle
in her eyes. ‘I hate you, Gerald Wilkins,’ Ruby said. She tried to suppress
a grin
but the corners of her mouth twitched upwards.

Felicity popped her head around from behind the boiler. ‘Hey, there seems to be a
riddle of some sort on the back of this thing.’

Gerald’s head bobbed up like a dog spotting a squirrel. He looked at Ruby.

‘A riddle?’ they chorused. Gerald and Ruby dashed to the back of the cage.

They found Felicity kneeling on the floor, peering up at a cast iron plate riveted
to the boiler’s underbelly. ‘It’s a bit difficult to read,’ she said. Ruby eased
in next to her, sliding onto her stomach.

‘Let’s see,’ she said. ‘
Who makes me does not need me; who buys me does not use me;
who uses me will never see me
.’

There was a long silence, broken when Sam said, ‘Well that’s just stupid. Who buys
something then never uses it?’