by Geoff Watson
“No deal.” Mr. Edison’s voice was hard. “I just want Tom and Colby home safe.”
“I’m one of the richest men in New York,” continued Keller, unperturbed. “You’ll get your son when I get my clue. Involving the police will only make things worse. We both know that. Call this number as soon as you have what I need. Good-bye, Tom.”
Help! Somebody! Quick!”
Tom’s fist was throbbing, but he continued pounding on the door. He’d been at it for almost five minutes before he heard a clamoring down the stairs, and then a key was fumbled into the lock.
“Here he comes,” Tom mouthed silently to Colby, who crept closer to the door, coiled on her toes, with one long strip of torn mattress covering in her sweaty hands. The other end was looped into a wide circle on the floor.
After a few moments of key jingling, the bolt clicked, and the door creaked open. As soon as Nicky stepped his foot into their trap, Colby pulled the lasso tight around his ankle and gave it a hard yank, knocking him to the floor with a yelp.
“Aaagh!” His face turned beet red while he flopped on the floor like a beached fish. Tom could see his pained expression.
Once Colby had given the nod, Tom pulled a loose bolt from the iron cot frame, setting off a rapid-fire chain reaction—as the cot collapsed to the floor, so did the heavy armoire that the two of them had placed precariously on top of it. The weight of the falling armoire then pulled the mattress-cover lasso even tighter, dragging Nicky a few feet across the floor and squeezing his chubby leg in a taut bear trap.
“You little brats!” yelled Nicky. “Try gettin’ out now!” And with his one free leg, he kicked the door shut.
“No!” Tom yelped, leaping over a sprawled Nicky to yank on the doorknob. But it was locked from the outside and wouldn’t budge. He could hear the keys jingling in the lock on the other side of the door, just inches away, though they might as well have been on the other side of the house for all the good that did him. Tom yanked again.
Nicky began to laugh behind him.
“Wanna know what happens to kids who think they’re smarter than me?” He had curled his way up to a seated position, and his sausage fingers were slowly working to untie the mattress-lasso knot. “They get dumped into the East River.”
Colby meanwhile was crouched at the other side of the room, working one of the cot’s iron legs apart.
In ten seconds, Nicky would be free. They had ten seconds to keep this treasure hunt alive.
Thinking fast, Tom ripped off his shirt, laid it flat on the ground, and slid it underneath the door.
Bam! He knocked against the wood with his shoulder until—clink! He heard the key fall from the lock, then tugged his T-shirt back with Nicky’s keys now resting on top of it.
“Nice try.” On his feet now, Nicky lunged for Tom, but Colby—who’d grabbed one of the iron posts—whacked him across the knee.
Howling, the thug dropped to the floor.
Tom tried the first key, but it didn’t fit.
“What’s wrong?” asked a breathless Colby, now at his side. “Get us out of here.”
“I’m trying.” The second key didn’t fit either. Tom’s hands were wet with perspiration, and Nicky was on his feet again, limping toward them.
“So close!” The fat man was smiling wide. “And yet—” Nicky flailed a meaty paw just as Tom unlocked the door, and in one swift motion pushed Colby into the hallway and locked the bolt behind them.
“I don’t think my heart arrhythmia can take any more of this,” she said as Tom grabbed her hand, and the two of them tore down the dark basement corridor.
The dull thud of Nicky’s heavy body slamming against the door followed them up a flight of stairs that led back into the heart of the townhouse mansion, but this time they were on a different and unfamiliar floor.
“Who’d eat in this room? Yosemite Sam?” Tom paused for a split second as they raced through a lavish dining room. Its polished oak table was at least twenty feet long, and a mounted, shaggy buffalo head stared blankly from above a wooden fireplace.
“Where you two little mice hiding?” bellowed the voice, so loud it shook the entire frame of the house.
“Sounds like Nicky’s loose!” said Colby, and within seconds, they were off to the races again, spiraling through an opulent living room; an enormous black-and-white checker-tiled kitchen; a pantry with cabinets full of porcelain, china, and silver; another short hallway; then finally into a grand foyer.
Tom gave the front doorknob a desperate rattle. “It’s stuck. Maybe they’ve got the place on lockdown.” He surveyed the corners of the high-ceilinged room. “Though I don’t see any video-monitoring equipment.”
“Keller’s probably lurking around here somewhere.”
“May I help you?” The woman’s deep voice made Tom and Colby spin around to find a uniformed maid standing at the top of the steps. Her hair was pulled back in a simple gray bun, and her body was shaped like a broomstick.
For what felt like an eternity, Tom and Colby stood frozen, waiting for the maid to make the first move. The three of them didn’t utter a single word as they stared deep into one another’s eyes, as if all were held under the same spell.
And then …
“Intruuuudeeers!” The maid’s screech was as ear-splitting as an out-of-work opera singer.
“Run!” Tom and Colby doubled back, pushing past the maid, who grabbed Colby’s sleeve for a second before she yanked it free.
Up ahead was a double-spiral staircase, which they took three steps at a time.
“You can keep running, but it’s all a dead end!” warned a voice from beneath them, and Tom didn’t need to glance down to know that Nicky was bounding up the stairs and gaining ground.
The mansion’s third floor consisted of nothing more than a long, narrow, carpeted hallway with two endless rows of doors on either side.
“Next door, next door!” Colby shouted as they darted through the shadowy corridor and into one of the side rooms.
“Looks like a library,” gasped Tom as they entered the stuffy, Victorian study and bolted the door shut behind them. He stalked the room’s perimeter, leaning against its high bookcases and tilting old Tiffany glass lamps. Outside, Nicky’s lumbering footsteps approached like an earthquake.
“What are you doing?” Colby whisper-yelled.
“You know—the old revolving-bookcase trick.”
“This isn’t a Scooby-Doo episode, Tom. Our best bet is just to be quiet and wait Nicky out.”
“Or try one of the windows.” But Tom quickly realized the second option was a bust since the windows were double-glazed, iron-barred, and opened onto nothing but the back view of a brick building.
Colby leaned an ear close to the door and was met with the sound of the doorknob jiggling on the other side.
“He’s right outside,” she mouthed, slowly backing away.
Bam! The two of them winced at the sound of Nicky’s shoulder lowering against the door. It was followed by a long and terrifying silence.
“That’s not gonna hold him very long,” said Colby, barely audible.
Bam! The oil paintings trembled again from the force of Nicky’s weight. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!” he sang from the hallway.
“We’re dead.” Colby stepped behind Tom’s body as they retreated toward the corner of the room.
Bam! The door hinges splintered the frame.
“Wait! Maybe not.” Tom was squinting at something along the far wall.
“Talk to me. What is it?” asked Colby, but instead of answering her, he ran across the room and felt along a needle-thin crack, which, on first glance, looked like it was part of the dark, velvety wallpaper. As he pressed lightly against it, however, a latch clicked and a section of the wall swung open. Behind the hidden door was a small closet filled with cracked leather books and suitcases.
“This whole house is like one giant time warp,” said Tom.
Bam! The door’s hinges wer
e almost loose now.
“Tom!” Colby was pointing toward the closet’s ceiling, where a suspended length of twine was fastened to a ceiling hatch. “Think it’s safe?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. We don’t have much of a choice, do we?” He pulled hard on the twine, and as the hatch opened, a collapsible ladder unfolded. Scrambling as quick as they could, the two of them scaled the ladder all the way up to an unlit, cobwebby attic.
Tom pulled up the hatch behind them, just as the study door fell to the floor with a thud.
Nicky had broken through.
This place just gets weirder and weirder,” murmured Colby as she stared at the eclectic scenery spread out in front of her.
“Seems Curt Keller’s a bit of a pack rat.”
The room was enormous but crammed with steamer trunks, armoires, sheeted mirrors that resembled fat ghosts, and old stacked tables and bed frames.
“It kinda reminds me of the Titanic.” Colby tiptoed farther into the space, spinning a 360 of pure wonder. “So many places to hide.”
Tom pried open a trunk. “If we get into one of these, we’re sitting ducks.”
Then came a loud creaking of the attic hatch as it was pulled down.
Like scared bats in sunlight, Tom and Colby scurried to the far end of the room and skidded onto the floor behind an enormous wooden table that had been turned on its side.
With their faces pressed against the ground, they peered around the side of the tabletop and saw Nicky’s scuffed dress shoes stepping gingerly across the floorboards, stopping every so often as he peeked under a cloth-draped couch or inside a footlocker. At one point, they even saw him check a dresser drawer.
“We gotta hide somewhere,” Tom whispered after they’d been watching him for a moment. “He knows we’re up here. He’ll eventually make his way over.”
Colby nodded, then army-crawled quietly back toward an open armoire behind them. It was packed with formal clothes that looked as though they were from somewhere around the turn of the last century. There were old tuxedos and puffy, whalebone-hooped skirts crammed together on a wooden clothes rack.
“Inside the dresses,” she said. “He’d never look there.”
“Colb,” Tom hissed back. “There’s no way I’m hiding in a lady’s dress.”
“Yes, you are! One of us can signal when it’s safe to come out.” Nicky was getting closer now. “Now get in that dress!”
Yanking the fabric over their bodies, soon both were enveloped by the long, frilly skirts.
Inside his pink cocoon, Tom pulled his knees to his chest and listened. The footsteps were closer, and he could hear Nicky shoving furniture out of the way. A trunk opened. A muttered curse under his breath. Fatty couldn’t be more than five feet from the old armoire now, Tom guessed. His every muscle was held motionless. Above his head, a hand crawled through the clothes, giving them a cursory search.
Then the steps grew fainter as they made their way toward another corner of the attic. Nicky was now on the opposite side and, with any luck, Tom and Colby might even be closer to the attic hatch.
Tom knew this guy wasn’t leaving until he’d found them, so if there was ever a moment to make their escape, that time had to be now.
“You ready to bolt?” Tom whispered in what he assumed was Colby’s direction.
“No, but let’s go anyway,” she whispered back. “Now?”
“Now!”
They jumped out of the wardrobe. Nicky spun in their direction, tripping over a coatrack as he chased them toward the attic hatch. Colby was the first to descend. Tom’s feet accidentally stepped on her fingers as they climbed back down to the study.
“My bad,” he said as they bolted into the hallway.
“Every door in this house is locked!” Nicky called after them. “You’re only making the punishment worse for yourselves.”
“We’re definitely making it worse for you!” said Tom.
Out into the hallway again, they flew back down the spiral staircase, then crossed the mansion toward the rear kitchen.
“Wait!” Tom skidded to a stop next to a metal trash chute that opened like an oven door. “What do you think?”
Colby raised an eyebrow. “You wanna go down that thing?”
“Think of it as a very, very smelly waterslide.”
“Hmmm. Not comforting.” Colby shuddered at the thought, then shrugged. “But I’m game.”
“And you realize it probably leads to a humungous pile of trash, right? With eighty thousand species of germs.” Tom couldn’t help laughing.
“Just get your butt in that chute before I change my mind.”
“Who are you?” Tom stared at her for a moment. “And what have you done with Colby?”
“Har-dee-har.”
Tom flipped down the metal door, and in they dove, headfirst, just like a waterslide.
Swoosh! Their bodies whipped and bent, one flight down to the belly of the mansion’s basement, where they dropped into an industrial-size rubber garbage bin.
“Whew.” Tom sat up, glancing around the dark cellar. “I was half scared it would lead to an incinerator.”
“Can we just get out of here?” Colby looked terrified and squeamish as she brushed old lemon peels and coffee grounds off her shirt. “I smell like a sewer rat.”
The small, ground-floor window was their best and only chance of escape. Tom leaped up onto an old water heater and unlocked the latch.
He pulled himself up onto a bustling Manhattan sidewalk, and strangely enough, not a single pedestrian batted an eyelash at the two children who’d just crawled out of the low window by their feet.
“For a moment there, I never thought I’d get to smell that sweet New York air again.” Colby inhaled from the bottom of her lungs and stretched her arms wide. “Where do you think we are?”
“I’m guessing midtown.” Tom gave a nod in her direction. “There’s the Empire State Building right behind you.
“Let’s move.” He pulled her arm. “For all we know, he’s contacting outside security. And I’m never going back to Camp Keller again if I can help it.”
Tom and Colby lost no time making themselves scarce. They’d run all the way across 34th Street, then eight blocks up Park Avenue, never looking back once, until they’d reached Grand Central Station. Its large arches and Roman god facade were a welcome sight. Inside the Main Concourse, they blended into the lunch crowd, who were all scurrying to catch their subway connections.
“I keep thinking I see Nicky behind every corner,” said Colby, her head on a constant swivel, as they made their way to a long bank of pay phones.
“I’ve felt that way ever since Mitzi’s.” Tom grabbed the greasy receiver and dialed Noodle’s cell phone number collect. After a few rings, he heard his friend’s voice through the staticky connection, and a comforting relief washed over him.
“Who’s this?”
“Noodle! It’s me!” Tom yelled as the operator asked if Noodle would accept a call from Tom Edison.
“And me!” shouted Colby.
“Yes, I accept. Where are you guys? Is this a ransom call?” Noodle’s voice was shrill with fear.
Tom chuckled. “We’re fine.”
“What’s so funny?” said Noodle. “Do you know how worried I was about you guys?”
“Nothing’s funny. You just sound like your mom when you get anxious. It’s cute.”
“For now, I’ll pretend you didn’t say that. Then I will administer the beat-down when you get home.”
“Did you find out what was in the metal box?”
“An Edison stock ticker,” said Noodle, like it was no big deal. “One of the first ever made. Your dad and I’ve been in the basement all morning, trying to crack its riddle.”
“My … dad?” Tom’s heart fell into his shoes.
“Yep, and we gotta move quick, because someone set you up with the cops to make it look like you stole that old museum book about alchemy.”
“Wait, slow down, Noodl
e. Start from the top—”
The phone was then snatched from Noodle’s hands.
“Tom, it’s Dad. Are you and Colby okay?”
“Dad! Yeah, we’re safe. We escaped from Curt Keller’s, but one of his guys might still be after us, I’m not sure.”
Mr. Edison nervously paced the length of the basement. This was not the type of phone call most parents could ever prepare themselves for.
“Where are you?” Tom’s father whispered, careful not to let his wife hear his conversation. She’d peeked her head down a few times that morning, but he’d told her he was just packing up his tools. She didn’t even know Noodle was in the house.
Better not to worry her at this point, Tom’s dad had told himself.
“We’re at Grand Central. What’s the next clue say?”
“Stay right where you are. I want you to go to the information booth and find an adult. Preferably someone in a uniform.”
Tom exhaled an annoyed sigh. It was such a parent move to focus on all the unimportant details.
“Dad, there’s no time!” Tom had no idea how much his father knew about the hunt, but things on Noodle’s end definitely sounded complicated. A setup? A stolen book? Safe to assume it all had something to do with Keller.
“Mr. E!” Noodle waved his arms in front of his face like a madman. “Get off the phone.” Tom’s dad looked at him quizzically. “That Keller guy’s probably listening to this whole conversation.”
“Tom, we’ll talk when I get there. Stay right where you are. And do not try and be a hero. Are we clear?”
Tom was shocked at his dad’s new stern tone. He seemed so in control of the situation. He never acted like that. Usually, he let worry and second-guessing control him, and then smiled politely while people took advantage of his kindness and smarts.
“Okay, Dad. I won’t go anywhere.” It was all Tom could think to say, even though every ounce of him wanted to keep moving and chase down the next clue before Keller.
“Good. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Tom nodded and hung up the receiver.