Watson's Case (12 page)

Swiftly, Rollie swiped a twig and mimicked Wesley's stance.

“Bend your arm closer to your chest—that's what you have to protect,” Wesley instructed. “Good. Now when I advance, retreat one step.”

Rollie responded as Wesley moved. He blocked a blow, and lunged forward. Wesley gently struck him in the ribs.

“One point for me,” he grinned.

“Again.” Rollie bent his arm closer to his chest.

They repeated their moves, but this time Rollie struck Wesley's ribs.

“Ouch!” Wesley laughed. “It's practice, so go easy.”

Rollie swung again, smacking Wesley's shoulder.

“Hey!” Laughing harder, Wesley blocked another blow and stooped down to the ashes. He grabbed a cooling coal and chucked it at Rollie.

Rollie ducked. His heels slipped on loose ash and he fell back on his rear.

“Sorry, mate.” Wesley offered his hand and pulled Rollie up.

“Rollie, mind your bum!” Mr. Chad called.

Rollie glanced behind him and dusted ash off his rear.

The boys laughed, and tossed their charred weapons into the garbage can beside where Mr. Chad stood. Rollie's spirits were lightening and for a brief moment he had forgotten about Rupert's humiliating antic.

“You're a good competitor,” Wesley praised as they headed inside. “You should try out for the fencing team next year.”

“Am I too young?”

“Ms. Yardsly might allow you to join if you're good enough.”

“Want to coach me?”

Wesley socked Rollie in the shoulder. “I will as long as you don't try to kill me!”

“I guess,” Rollie replied playfully.

“I might regret this someday!”

“You might.”

The Dead Weight of S
ecrets

Risk.

There was a lot of it. Rollie risked being caught by Rupert, the night guards, even Herr Zilch's mole. He risked being taken off the mole case. He risked Zilch finding out he was on the case and coming after his family and friends. But Rollie had learned that risk always played a key role in every case. The more he practiced being a detective, the more comfortable he grew with risk.

His middle still fluttered every time.

He decided to risk just a little more by trailing Rupert Monday morning to confirm his innocence or involvement with the Dancing Men messages in the
Daily Telegraph
. If Rupert caught him, he would tattle to Headmaster. But the risk was worth the outcome . . . or so he hoped.

Groggily, Rollie noticed Rupert leave the room. The alarm clock on the desk showed four-twenty. It was still dark outside the window. The radiator rumbled on to reheat the room. Rollie scooted out of bed and wrapped his arms around his chilly body. He tiptoed out the room and down the hall.

He watched as Rupert walked downstairs. After a few seconds, he crept after him, careful not to make a noise as he followed. He wished he had grabbed some socks; his toes were numb. He obeyed Mr. Notch's ten-pace rule as he followed Rupert all the way down to the first floor. He crouched on the stairs behind the banister and watched Rupert unlock the deadbolt on the front door.

Rupert cracked open the door, leaned outside, and dragged in a small stack of bound newspapers. Shuddering from the frosty air, he hastily closed the door and bolted it. With a grunt, he picked up the newspapers and trudged down the hall.

Rollie padded after him. He peeked into the teacher's lounge, and watched Rupert untie the stack of newspapers and spread out the variety of different morning dailies. With a yawn, Rupert turned to leave. Rollie pushed open the secret passage entrance and crouched inside, leaving just enough of a crack to see through. After a minute, Rupert left the lounge and headed back upstairs. Rollie crept into the lounge.

He quickly found the
Daily Telegraph
. Thumbing through the crisp pages, he found the business section and scanned it for Dancing Men. He spotted several. He whipped out his notepad and pencil stub from the front pocket on his pajama top and wrote down the code. He put the business section back in its proper place and rushed into the hall.

Clip-clop, clip-clop

He froze. He recognized the dull sound of those heels on the thin carpet. Cecily had not yet confirmed if Gwendolyn Gram and Herr Zilch's secretary were the same person. Yet Rollie did not believe it was a coincidence that Miss Gram was showing up right when the newspapers were delivered. Why was she up so early?

He pushed open the corner and ducked inside the secret passage again. He let the corner close behind him just in time as those high-heels
clip-clopped
past. When he was sure Miss Gram was in the lounge, he eased open the corner and crawled out into the hall.

Through a crack in the door he saw Miss Gram laying out a tea tray with toast and jam. The setting was pretty with the rosebud tea set, white doilies, and a little vase of daisies. She sat down and poured herself a cup of tea, then thumbed through a folder of sheet music. She paid no mind to the stack of newspaper on the table near her.

Rollie retreated back into the secret passage. He thought it best to take the passage back up to the fourth floor to avoid anyone else who might be wandering the halls. A soft feathery material dusted his bare soles. It was ash. Regrettably he noticed his own toe-marks; he wished he had been more careful. Mingled with his own footprints were others that didn't belong to him.

Shoe prints.

A few had shuffled the ashes and were hard to determine. But one whole footprint was clearly preserved in the gray ash. The print was narrow with a large star on the heel. Rollie compared the print with his own foot and noted it was an inch longer than his. He had no idea whose shoes had stars on the soles. He would think about that later. At the moment, he could only think that . . .

Someone else had been in the secret passage.

This strange footprint confirmed the mole had found the passage. The mole now could burrow through the tunnel at his leisure. Surely he would discover the stored treasures on the third floor and would tear them apart to find Watson's Case. Then he would deliver it to Herr Zilch.

Rollie swallowed. He had to stop the mole before that happened. He hoped he and Cecily could glean some clues from the footprint. Between his classes with Miss Hertz, and Cecily's superb observation skills, they would find something useful.

In the meantime, Rollie worried about the mole finding Watson's Case. He made his way up to the third floor passage to check on it. After sliding a few boxes aside, he found the lock box where he had hidden it. But that hiding spot was not good enough. He wracked his brain for another hiding spot, but it would not fit under his loose floorboard and his room was not safe with Rupert around. As he thought, he started to wonder why Zilch wanted Watson's Case. What was inside?

He fiddled with the lock. It was old and decrepit. If he had the right tool he could easily snap it off. He perked up with a thought.

Quickly he went down to the second floor passage. It was early enough that the hall was still empty. He lightly knocked on Miss Gram's classroom door, but got no answer. He figured she must still be down in the teacher's lounge. He tried the doorknob. It was open, so he let himself into the dark classroom. He found Miss Gram's pink toolbox, and looked through the tools. Snatching up a pair of wire cutters with a pink ribbon, he darted back to the secret passage in the hallway corner and rushed back up to the third floor.

With one clench of the wire cutters the rusty lock snapped off Watson's Case. Rollie opened the case.

“Papers?”

He lifted out a thick stack of old paper yellowed with age and filled with fading type. He started to read the first page:

As personal biographer to my singular friend and renowned detective Sherlock Holmes, I am obligated to record his cases and have the pleasure of publishing them for the world to read. However, there have been multiple cases of such a delicate nature, that involve powerful figureheads and sensitive state secrets, that Holmes has forbidden me from publishing them. For doing so would jeopardize the safety of our nation. Therefore I have chosen to lock them away, for perhaps there will come a time when all said parties involved in these cases will no longer be living, and all secrets divulged will no longer be a threat to national security. At such time the world will be enriched yet again by the Master of Deduction.

Rollie stopped reading. He remembered Watson mentioning in his other published cases that there were many cases that never made it to the public for exactly the reasons he had just read. He had assumed that Watson had never written them down.

Rollie felt a little thrill at holding the large stack of pages typed by Doctor Watson himself. He felt the pull to continue reading, but stopped. He had no right to read more. He had to respect Holmes' wishes for these cases to be unread, and he had to respect Watson's decision to hide them. And he had no right to know any of these secrets recorded on the old pages he held in his hands.

Neither did Herr Zilch.

Now that Rollie knew what exactly Watson's Case was he also knew he could not let the mole find it and hand it off to Zilch. Surely Zilch was after these secrets.

Again Rollie was faced with the dilemma of where to hide Watson's Case. He still could not come up with a hiding spot. He laid the stack of papers back inside the case. Then he lifted them out again.

Suddenly he got an idea.

* * * *

“There was another Dancing Men code in the newspaper this morning,” Rollie told Cecily later that morning at breakfast.

“What did the message say?” Cecily whispered in between bites of her toast.

Rollie leaned in. “It said
today in park
.”

“What does that mean?”

“Not sure, but it doesn't really matter since we have a footprint that could expose the mole.”

“Do you think it's Rupert? Do you remember how big his feet are?”

Rollie shook his head. “I need to look at his shoes, but I haven't seen him all morning.” He sipped his tea. “I'm starting to think it's not Rupert.”

“How come?”

Rollie glanced around to check that no one was paying attention to them. Again they had distanced themselves from the other students eating breakfast. Eliot sulked, feeling hurt that they had not sat with him and Tibby. Wesley did not seem to notice as he swapped weekend news with Todd and Jimmy.

Rollie cleared his throat. “Rupert delivered the newspapers, but he did not read them.”

“If he was the mole, he would have checked the
Daily Telegraph
.”

Rollie nodded. “He barely glanced at them. Guess who was the first person to go to the teacher's lounge.
Miss Gram
. I heard her high-heels come down the hallway.”

“No! I checked my notes on Herr Zilch's secretary. I wrote that she was tall and thin. She stood as tall as Herr Zilch.”

“And he's almost as tall as my dad.”

“And Lady Gram is the shortest adult here at school.” Cecily gave a nod of finality.

“Fine, she's not Herr Zilch's secretary in disguise. That doesn't mean she's completely innocent though. She could still be the mole. Why was she up so early?”

“She's an early riser.”

“Four-thirty is really early. The mole would have to get to the lounge and read the message before anyone else went in there. Cecily, I have to face the evidence that Rupert may not be the mole. You have to face the evidence that Miss Gram might be.”

“We don't have all the evidence. I need to see the footprint.”

“Will you recognize it?”

“I might. I
am
a good observer, after all. Was there anything unique about it?”

“There was a large star on the heel.” Rollie took a bite of toast.

Cecily choked on her tea and stared wide-eyed at Rollie. “Did you say a star?”

“Yeah. Do you recognize it?”

In a small voice, she answered, “I do.”

“Whose is it?”

“I don't want to say until I've seen it for sure. I must be one hundred percent positive because it's a huge accusation. Trust me.”

Rollie saw worry in her green eyes. “I trust you. At recess I'll show you.”

“Good. In the meantime, prepare yourself for a shock if I'm right.”

Breakfast ended, ushering the students to classes. On route, Rollie and Wesley bumped into each other.

“Rugby drills at recess?” Wesley checked.

“Sorry, I've got to do something.”

“Maybe after school I can get you started on some fencing lessons,” offered Wesley.

“That would be great!”

Rollie and Cecily, joined by a pouting Eliot and a chipper Tibby, entered Ms. Yardsly's class. They got to work on the Dancing Men code Ms. Yardsly had drawn on the blackboard. She led the class in code-cracking exercises for the first half of the hour. The last half was spent listening to a heated discussion among a group of students who claimed to have discovered an evil scheme. They were certain that all the bus stop timetables in London were really encoded warnings of coming Nazi attacks. The whole time Rollie fidgeted in suspense, running through possible mole suspects. Whose footprint was tattling in the secret passage? Rupert's? Miss Gram's? Or someone else he had overlooked?

The minutes dragged by, but eventually ten o'clock struck. While the other children scampered upstairs to the roof for recess, Rollie and Cecily loitered on the third floor, which was the least populated at that time. When the hall was clear, Rollie pushed in a corner and led Cecily into the secret passage. They blinked their eyes to adjust to the dim light from the flickering light bulb overhead. Finding no footprints in the ashes, they hurried through the passage, stopping on each floor to spin the combination locks and open the doors. They flew down two flights of stairs to the first floor. Rollie pointed to the clear footprint.

Cecily studied it closely, and groaned. “I'm right. I know whose footprint this is. This evidence confirms my suspicion.”

“Tell me. I'm ready.”

“Well, judging by the size, it's not quite an adult's.”

“Does that matter? You know who it is.”

“It does matter because there are
two
people who have stars on their heels. One's an adult and one's a kid. The shoes are Converse.”

Rollie stared at her, forcing his brain to deduce the truth, but not wanting to.

“Rollie,” Cecily whispered sadly, “the mole is Wesley.”