The Shadow Cipher

by Laura Ruby

  Tess said, “I thought cuckoo birds flew.”

  The guard said, “Don’t get smart.”

  Theo said, “She won’t.”

  Jaime peered at the chair and back at his drawing. “I’m not seeing anything interesting about this chair.”

  “Well, the chair was lost,” Tess said. She pointed at the plaque marking the exhibit. “Nobody even bothered to store or preserve it until this guy named William Waddell recognized it in 1831 and decided to take it home. His family held on to the chair for fifty years and even let some other presidents borrow it.”

  “Okay, so are we supposed to look into the other presidents who might have sat in the chair?” Jaime asked.

  “I don’t think so,” said Tess. “I wonder if the clues are about things or even people that have been lost or overlooked.”

  “Maybe we should look into this William Waddell dude,” said Jaime. “I’ve never heard of him before. Seems he’s been forgotten, too.”

  Tess peered at the plaque again. “It says here that there’s a painting of one William Waddell in this museum.”

  “There is?” said Theo. “Huh.”

  “Let’s try that painting next,” said Jaime.

  When the guard turned to berate an old lady for getting too close to a silver bowl, Tess flapped behind him like a cuckoo bird, which was a little bit like watching a gibbon attempt to fly. Jaime started doing it, too, and dropped his sketchbook in the process. Theo picked it up, flipped through the pages. Jaime had drawn the Liberty Statue, the stove in the servants’ quarters of the Tredwell House, the archives from above, bony Delancey DeBrule sputtering, Auguste Dupin peering around her shoulder.

  “When did you do these?” said Theo.

  Jaime stopped flapping. “Last night, after we got home.”

  “From memory?”

  “How else?”

  “Huh,” said Theo, handing the book back to Jaime.

  Jaime said, “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “It’s the best you’re going to get from him,” said Tess, who was already jogging to the next exhibit hall, Nine loping alongside her. Another guard told her to quit flying around like a dodo bird—which didn’t make sense, as dodo birds were a) flightless and b) extinct—and made Theo think that perhaps the guards needed some lessons in ornithology. (Odd considering that most of the second floor of the museum was taken up by an exhibit called the Complete Flock of Audubon’s Aviary.)

  But Tess had already reached the painting. Or where the painting should have been. On the wall was a blank space with a small card:

  THIS EXHIBIT IS TEMPORARILY UNAVAILABLE. WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE AND THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE.

  —THE RESTORATION DEPARTMENT

  “Great,” Theo said. “Dead end.”

  Tess said, “No, it isn’t. We just need to get into the restoration department.”

  Jaime said, “Without breaking the law. My grandmother will lose it if I break the law.”

  “No one’s breaking any laws,” said Theo, who had no idea if breaking laws would be required, though he hoped not. “My mom would not approve.”

  “We can’t get in trouble, either, though,” said Jaime. “My grandmother will kill me if we get in trouble.”

  “Nobody’s getting in trouble,” said Tess.

  “Hmmm. You guys probably won’t,” Jaime said, but he followed them from the exhibit area. They went back to the ticket booth to consult a map, but the map didn’t have any particular area marked “Restoration.”

  “Not helpful,” said Theo. His skin was starting to itch. When he got annoyed, he got itchy.

  “Stop scratching,” said Tess. She shoved the map at him and walked up to the nearest ticket clerk, who was chatting on her phone.

  “I don’t know when she’s supposed to do it,” the clerk said. “I just heard that she is going to do it today. I know! That’s her goal. The press, the police, whatever. She just wants attention.”

  Tess tapped her fingers on the counter until the clerk put her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. “Can I help you?”

  “Hi there! My aunt Jane works in the restoration department up on the third floor and I was supposed to meet her for lunch?”

  The clerk said, “You mean the lower floor?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I meant. The lower floor.”

  “What’s your aunt’s last name?”

  “John,” said Jaime.

  “Your aunt’s name is Jane John?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okaaay.” The clerk tucked the phone into the crook of her neck and typed the name. “I’m sorry, I don’t have an employee by that name.”

  “Are you sure?” said Tess. “I know she told me that she worked at the New York Museum of Natural History.”

  “This is the New-York Historical Society Museum and Library.”

  “That’s different?” said Tess.

  “Uh, yes?” said the clerk.

  “Oh! I was wondering why there weren’t any T. rexes.”

  “Come on,” said Theo, yanking Tess away from the clerk. They walked toward the entrance of the museum and then quickly cut right, taking the stairs. On the lower level, there were some classrooms and the children’s museum. The offices were behind a frosted-glass door marked, unsurprisingly, “Museum Offices.” Theo didn’t have to look at Tess to know what she wanted to do. They pushed open the door, and walked into the offices as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if they belonged there. At the end of a long hallway, there was another frosted-glass door, this one marked “Restoration.” It was quite a trick to creep silently down a hallway while still trying to appear as if you’re doing nothing wrong, especially when you were the son of one of the city’s most prominent detectives called in to investigate the city’s worst thefts. His muscles hummed with the effort of it, and that made him itchy again.

  They passed individual offices, some empty, some with people working diligently inside, but no one seemed to notice them.

  Until a man looked up from his desk and frowned.

  “Hey!” he said. “What are you kids doing down here? You can’t be down here. Hey!”

  Tess pushed Jaime, Jaime shoved Theo, and Theo stumbled, then ran. Most of the nearby offices were occupied, but there was one dark door, unlocked, that said “Laboratories.” Theo ducked inside, Jaime and Tess right behind him. It was a long, shadowy room packed with row upon row of lab tables. They dived underneath one of them, squished together. Somewhere, a refrigerator hummed a warning.

  “We’re going to get arrested,” Jaime whispered.

  “Shhhh!” said Theo.

  The door creaked; footsteps echoed. “I thought I saw them come in here.”

  “Who?” said another voice.

  “A bunch of kids.”

  “Why would a bunch of kids come down here? I don’t even want to be here, and I work here.”

  Theo risked a peek around the table, saw a few sets of legs walking in their direction. He crawled to the next table, tucked himself under. He turned around, realized that Tess and Jaime had stayed put. He gestured for them to follow when the legs passed right between the tables. Theo went still. Tess slapped her hand over her mouth.

  The legs kept moving toward the back of the room. Tess and Jaime crawled over to Theo and squeezed in next to him. They tried not to breathe.

  “I don’t see any kids.”

  “I’m going to have to call security anyway.”

  “You don’t want to do that. You know what a freak Sig is. He’ll just do something bugburgers like have the kids thrown in jail.”

  Jaime elbowed Theo and then made frantic motions with his fists like a person shaking a set of bars.

  “We can’t have a bunch of kids running around down here. They could wreck something or steal something.”

  “They were probably just looking for the cafeteria.”

  “Or they’re thieves or in a gang or something.”

  “A gang
? Do you hear yourself?”

  The footsteps rounded the room and then walked out into the hallway. Theo peeked around the table. The legs were gone. And there was a door on the other side of the room with light coming from underneath it. Maybe it opened into the restoration area. Theo pointed at it, waved for Tess and Jaime to follow. They crawled from one lab table to the next until they reached the door. Theo knelt and slowly turned the handle, cracked the door, looked inside. He saw a sea of easels and work tables, each with picks or brushes or other tools. He also saw a sea of feet. Tess tried to push him forward, but he resisted.

  “There are too many people in there,” he whispered.

  And then there were too many people out here; footsteps echoed in the hallway.

  Jaime lunged back under the nearest table. Tess and Theo did the same. The lights came on. Heavy shoes thudded on the floor, then stopped. The shoes walked to the west end of the room, turned north, walked for a while, then turned south. Theo pressed his face to the floor and looked under the table, watched the feet move in straight lines. Whoever it was was walking a grid. The room was big, but not that big. It wouldn’t take long for them to be caught.

  They had two choices. They could crawl into the restoration room and take their chances, or try to zigzag to the door leading to the hallway so that they could make their escape.

  The footsteps stopped again. Theo pressed his cheek to the floor again to see where the shoes were.

  Except he didn’t see a pair of shoes. He saw a cheek pressed to the floor just the way his was. And a pair of eyes. And a mouth that smiled.

  Theo sat up so fast he whacked his head on the underside of the lab table. The footsteps thundered in their direction. Tess squeaked and scooted to the next table. Jaime went the other way. Meaty hands reached for Theo just as he threw himself out from under the table, slid down the empty row. He scrambled to his feet and caught a glimpse of a guard uniform before he ran, making random lefts and rights like a Morningstarr elevator. Tess squeaked again as the guard caught her, and then the guard roared as Tess’s sneaker came down on the top of his foot. Jaime reached over the top of a lab table, grabbed her by the arms, and hauled her across it to the other side. The guard lunged for them and missed. They split up, pinging around the tables like some reenactment of the world’s worst video game. As soon as Theo thought, Why is this man chasing us around tables, why doesn’t he just block the door, who is this bad at geometry? the guard gave up the chase, blocked the door. But he didn’t block the door to the hallway, he blocked the door to the restoration room.

  Mistake!

  Theo broke for the other door.

  And ran headfirst into a wall.

  He fell on his butt. Which hurt.

  The wall said, “Hello, children. My name is Sig.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Jaime

  The man named Sig was built like Ben Grimm of the Fantastic Four—almost as wide as he was tall—and had no tolerance for these shenanigans. Jaime knew this because Sig said: “I have no tolerance for these shenanigans.”

  When Tess tried to explain about her aunt Jane John and how she worked here and how they were supposed to meet her and—

  “I don’t like shenanigans and I don’t like fibbers,” Sig said.

  Fibbers?

  Sig pushed them down the hallway as if they’d already been tried and sentenced and were off juvie till they were twenty-one.

  His dad was going to kill him. Mima was going to kill him.

  “Where are you taking us?” Tess demanded.

  “My office. I’m calling the police. I’m calling your parents. None of you are leaving till both of them get here.”

  “We didn’t do anything!” Tess said. Nine mrrowed in kind.

  “I’m also calling animal control,” Sig said, sniffing at the cat.

  “She has a license!”

  “Faked,” said Sig.

  “My mom got that license!”

  “Your mom faked a license?”

  “What? No!”

  Someone behind them called: “Mr. Sigurd! Wait!”

  Sig whirled around so fast that Jaime went whipping around with him. A woman in a blue suit brandished a phone. “We may have a situation.”

  “Take care of it,” Sig barked.

  “It’s a pretty big situation,” she said.

  Sig grunted, shoved them into the nearest office, and sat them down in three chairs. “Stay!” he said, as if he were talking to a bunch of puppies. Then he stepped back out into the hallway. Jaime leaned close to the open door to hear.

  “This is unacceptable. Where’s everyone going?” Sig said.

  “To see Lora Yoshida.”

  “Who?”

  “The performance artist? She’s staging a flash mob outside on the street. They want to watch.”

  “A flash what?”

  “A flash mob,” the woman said, overenunciating loudly as if Sig was hard of hearing. “They’re dancing. At least, I think it’s dancing. Or maybe it’s just wiggling? I don’t know. They’re blocking the museum entrance.”

  “Super,” said Sig.

  Next to Jaime, Tess muttered a series of what-if questions, getting more and more breathless as she talked. What if these guys called the real cops? What if they were arrested? What if they were taken downtown and put in a cage with a bunch of mobsters? What if the mobsters recruited Theo to run numbers for them? What if Theo became the most notorious mobster in the history of the city? What if he were known as Theo “The Hairball” Biedermann? What if rival gangs put out hits on Tess and her mom and dad to get back at Theo, and they were forced into the witness protection program, and had to move to a ranch in New Mexico, where they would raise chickens, cattle, and alpaca?

  “Nobody’s joining the mob,” Theo said absently. And then he said, “Wait . . . did you just call me ‘The Hairball’?”

  Nine licked frantically at Tess’s fingers.

  Footsteps thundered down the hallway. Jaime scooted closer to the open door to see a wave of people—museum employees?—rushing up the stairs.

  “This is unacceptable. Where’s everyone going?” Sig said.

  “Well, Mr. Sigurd, as I was saying, everyone wants to see Lora Yoshida. She has torches.”

  “Torches? Why does she have torches?”

  “She’s erected a scale model of the city on the street. They’re supposed to set fire to it. That’s what I meant by ‘situation.’”

  “It’s the middle of the day! Why would they set anything on fire?”

  “It’s supposed to symbolize the destruction of the city by greedy corporations. Or something like that.”

  “How is that art?”

  The woman shrugged. “Ask Lora Yoshida.”

  “Why don’t they do this stuff downtown and annoy the kooks at the Modern Art Museum?” Like a bull, Sig exhaled loudly through his nose, stormed over to the office. Jaime threw himself back in his chair. Sig barked, “None of you move.” Then he slammed the door.

  And locked it.

  They stared at the locked door.

  Tess stopped muttering her what-if questions. “That can’t be legal.”

  “But he did it anyway,” Theo said.

  “What are we going to do?” Jaime said.

  “Well, we can’t stay here,” said Tess. She rummaged around on the desk and found a paperclip. She straightened it out, jammed it into the lock on the door. In a few seconds, she was easing the door open.

  “Do I want to know where you learned that?” Jaime said.

  “Our great-aunt Esther,” said Tess. “She was a locksmith.”

  “Among other things,” Theo said.

  “See anyone?” Jaime said.

  Tess shook her head. “No, it looks like they’re all gone.”

  They sneaked out into the hallway.

  “We should get out of here while they’re distracted,” said Jaime.

  “Yeah,” said Theo.

  “Totally,” said Tess.
r />   But instead of making their escape from the museum, the three of them turned toward the frosted door of the restoration room. It was now or never; Sig didn’t seem like the kind of man who would forget a face.

  Nine chirped softly as they crept down the hall, but if she was trying to tell them they were being stupid, well, they already knew that. Jaime knew that. If they got caught again . . .

  But there was no one in the restoration room, either. No one alive, anyway. Faces watched them from all around the room—faces in paintings and in etchings, faces in sculptures.

  “How do we know which one it is?” said Tess.

  “What’s the guy’s name again?” Jaime said. “The dude in the painting?”

  “William Waddell,” Theo said.

  Jaime found his phone, searched images. “Got it,” he said. He glanced around the room. “There.” He pointed at a painting in the corner.

  They moved closer. The first thing you noticed about the painting was the pale, thin man with the high forehead and the sunken eyes, then the way his black suit was swallowed up by the foliage and the grass around him. Next to him sat a woman in a bright orange dress, a little girl in pink perched at her feet. Two other girls, one standing, one lounging on an elbow, had those odd sorts of faces Jaime had seen on children in other old paintings, tiny middle-aged-lady faces. On the other side of the tall man was a boy in a blue coat, his dark pants also disappearing into the background. Behind the family a large stone house, almost a castle, loomed.

  Theo swiped a magnifying glass off the nearest table. “Let’s see if there’s anything hidden in the painting.”

  “We have to hurry,” Tess said. “We have no idea how long they’ll be outside.”

  “One minute,” Theo said. But it took much longer than a minute to examine the painting, which had all kinds of detail in it—bushes and trees and grass.

  “Make sure you check out all the bushes and trees, too. If I wanted to hide some kind of writing or code or whatever in this painting, that’s where I’d put it,” Jaime said.