by Geoff Watson
“So if it’s right below our feet, the clue must be in the floor?”
“Except the song says to hop a railway cart,” added Noodle. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
At that moment, almost like a sign from the heavens, the terminal rumbled with the sound of a train departing the station.
“There’s our answer.”
“Oh, God.” Noodle shook his head. “More railroads?”
“It’s worth checking out.” Colby was already jogging toward the railway stairs without waiting for a response.
Noodle raced to catch up with her. “Not to sound like, well, you or anything, but shouldn’t we wait for Tom and his dad?”
“I’m very good at spatial geometry, Noodle,” she answered. “I don’t need Tom to help me find out where the spot is. Plus they’ve got their hands full.”
She continued on toward the stairs, and before Noodle could do anything to stop her, she had already disappeared out of the terminal.
From his pocket, Tom’s dad whipped out a fresh pair of latex gloves that he’d grabbed from the Oyster Bar kitchen and slid them on.
“I don’t feel right about doing this without finding Noodle and Colby first,” he said as he took off his loafers and placed them upside down on the bathroom floor. Tom meanwhile swirled the still steaming, gooey blue liquid in a Styrofoam cup.
“Don’t worry, Dad. Wherever they went, I’ll find them,” Tom assured him. “Besides it’s you and me Keller’s after.”
Mr. Edison nodded slowly. His son had a point, and time was not their friend right now. They had ten minutes until the solution dried completely.
The two had locked themselves in a public restroom stall for privacy, but the ammonia-like stench of the SuperDuperStick solution was sure to draw some suspicion.
On his father’s signal, Tom poured the contents of the cup first onto his dad’s gloves, then onto the soles of his discarded shoes.
“The longer it sits, the stickier the solution gets.” And as his dad stepped back into his goo-smeared loafers, they made a loud glip-glop sound, sticking to the floor but leaving no mark, thanks to the solution’s gelatin-like properties.
“So you gotta move fast.” Tom unlatched the stall door and followed his father out of the bathroom.
But as they stepped into the Main Concourse, a new fear gripped Tom. Had he pushed his father too far?
Digging up old artifacts was one thing, but scaling the Grand Central Terminal wall, in front of hundreds of people, including police—that was a whole other level of insanity.
“Chin up,” his dad said suddenly, as if he knew exactly what Tom had been thinking. “Remember, your double-great-grandfather performed thousands of failed experiments before he perfected the lightbulb. We can learn a lesson from him.”
“And that lesson would be?”
“Never give up.”
“Right.” Tom wanted to add that testing the lightbulb probably didn’t involve any death-defying stunts—not that his warnings would have changed anything. His father was in his own world now, moving purposefully, his shoes quacking against the terminal’s tiles as they stepped out into the concourse.
“I want you to go find the others, okay?” his father whispered under his breath.
“And what if something happens to you? Or you need me?”
“At the very least, I’m going to get in some trouble for what I’m about to do.” Tom’s dad stared into his eyes, letting the weight of this statement sink in. “So whatever happens, you all need to be far away from me. And stay close to any police officers or security guards.”
For the second time that day, Tom nodded obediently, which made his father smile.
“You’re a brave young man, Tom. I’m real proud of you.”
“Just please be careful, Dad.” Tom felt like he could throw up from how nervous he felt. “I’m sorry I brought you into this,” he blurted.
“This was my decision, Tom. And I’m happy you fought me as hard as you did.”
Mr. Edison held his son close for a long moment, then walked on his goo-smeared shoes in the direction of the huge tan support beam that led up toward Pegasus.
He was a tiny spot in the distance now, all the way on the other side of the massive concourse. Tom shielded his eyes as his father placed a gloved hand on the wall, then another. Followed by a left foot. And a right foot.
He was about ten feet off the ground before the first pedestrian noticed him, but it didn’t take long for a small crowd to gather and watch this much less graceful version of Spider-Man scale the wall.
“You crazy, guy? You’re gonna get yourself killed!” a college student wearing an enormous backpack yelled as he crossed the concourse toward the subway.
“How’s he doing that?” remarked a squirrelly gray-haired woman.
Tom knew he had to go find Noodle and Colby, but he couldn’t take his eyes off his dad.
Now thirty feet in the air, Mr. Edison tried not to look down at the cluster of rowdy gawkers who were clapping and cheering from below. Everyone seemed to have forgotten about their commutes and transfers for the moment.
“Grand Central Main to base. Got a public disturbance in progress!” Tom’s dad heard another voice yell above the others and immediately knew it was a policeman calling for backup. No matter what the outcome, there would be no smooth-talking his way out of this one.
This was by far the craziest stunt he’d ever pulled in his life, and though he was certain he’d end up in jail for it, something kept him climbing. Part of it was that disappointed look on his son’s face when he’d told him they’d have to give up the search; the other part was a nagging desire to finally achieve something memorable with his life. But none of those swirling emotions could keep him from sweating through his clothes as he came within an arm’s reach of the golden Pegasus. It was even more beautiful up close, and its sheer size left Mr. Edison staring in awe.
“Sir! You are in violation of at least a dozen different safety codes!” The bullhorn made a fog of noise in the station’s echoing acoustics.
The Pegasus was only a foot from his grasp. He placed another hand along the curved edge of the ceiling, terrified. His body was almost completely inverted, and he knew the moment he looked down, he would lose the courage to keep going.
With each passing second, it was getting more and more difficult to pull his hands and shoes from the plaster. The solution was drying! If he didn’t get down off the ceiling in the next four minutes, he’d be stuck up there for good.
Up close, the horse’s gold-painted face was bumpy from the texture of the ceiling, and Mr. Edison noticed a small hole where its eye should have been.
He leaned forward to inspect it. There was something about the shape of the horse’s eye cavity that struck him as familiar. Its sharp angles almost made it look like a missing puzzle piece, like something belonged in that empty space.
“ ‘The circled rose will light your course,’ ” he whispered to himself like a mantra. “The circled rose, of course!” Laughing, he unsheathed his hand from the latex glove so he could scrounge around his pocket for his grandfather’s Sub Rosa ring.
He took it out, holding its emerald face and circled rose design to the waning light before stretching to insert it within the pupil of the horse’s eye. Miraculously, the ring snapped into place with a soft click.
Mr. Edison backed away, waiting for the magical explosion or fireworks that he knew were coming, but to his surprise, the Pegasus didn’t budge.
Ten more seconds. Nothing.
Maybe the mechanism is broken, he wondered. Or it got destroyed during a renovation. Since he had no idea what to expect, he had no idea what could have gone wrong.
His entire body trembling, Mr. Edison turned his neck to glance down at the grand marble-floored concourse. There was a crowd of a hundred people gathered now, including at least fifteen police officers and security guards, watching his every move.
He struggled to lift his hand
to retreat back down the wall, but like the Pegasus, the SuperDuperStick solution wouldn’t budge either.
Mr. Edison was stuck. One hundred twenty feet above Grand Central Terminal.
Track 107 was peppered with passengers waiting impatiently to catch the Metro-North local to New Haven.
As they weaved through the crowd, Colby kept glancing up at the ceiling to get her bearings. It was almost as if some internal homing device was guiding her size six sneakers.
“Okay,” she said, stepping out onto the train platform and pointing a finger into the shadows. “This track’s directly in line with the Whispering Gallery.” She paused for a moment, double-checking the calculations she’d made in her head. “I’m guessing the next clue’s gotta be somewhere in that tunnel. You up for a repeat performance?”
“And you really think some Sub Rosa mystery cart is gonna be there waiting for us?” Noodle peered over the edge of the platform. “That seems highly unlikely.”
“When have we ever known what to expect from these guys?”
Several yards down the platform, two plainclothes police officers, Sergeants Gilbert and Mancini, kept their eyes trained on Colby and Noodle. They were rumored to be two of the most crooked cops in the department, which was why they were the first two cops Lieutenant Faber thought of to help her keep tabs on these elusive kids.
“What’s the freckly one doing now?” Gilbert, a thick-limbed man with a lumberjack’s build, turned to his shorter, olive-skinned partner.
“Just hang back,” said Mancini. “They got nowhere to go till the train comes.”
“Is that a fact, Einstein?” Gilbert smacked Mancini on the back of the head seconds after watching Colby and Noodle jump off the four-foot-high platform and disappear into the darkness of the station tunnel.
Several worried passengers shouted after them, but Mancini and Gilbert were the only two who leaped off the platform and chased them down the railroad tracks.
“Thirty-six, thirty-seven …” Colby counted out her steps while they ran. “Here.” She stopped. “This is exactly the spot.”
Colby could barely make out faint outlines of the gravel bed and black-walled tunnel as they ran.
“You seeing anything?” she called out into the dark.
“I may have just saved us. Yet again,” Noodle answered, seconds before dropping to his knees and running a hand along a tiny crawl space chiseled into the tunnel’s bricks. It was no higher than their knees.
“Either that was built by the Sub Rosa or one giant, freaking rat,” he said.
“A rat with really strong teeth,” Colby said as she began to crawl straight into the narrow passageway. “Only one way to find out, I guess.”
“This isn’t going to end well,” said Noodle, taking a couple hops to psych himself up and ducking his head to follow her through. “Not well at all.”
If there was a color darker than pitch-black, this was it. Neither of them could even make out their hands and knees as they dug into the damp pebble- and soot-covered ground.
“This feels like the catacombs,” said Colby after they’d been crawling for a while.
“I know. I bet we’re touching skeletons right now”—Noodle let out his most ghoulish cackle—“of all the people who tried to steal Edison’s secret before us.”
“I’m way more scared of making skin contact with mouse droppings.”
“Oh, nasty, Colb.”
A few yards farther, the narrow crawl space finally opened up into a larger, high-ceilinged cavern.
“Train tracks!” Noodle shouted into the darkness when his hands brushed up against the metal rails.
“Let’s follow them.” Colby popped to her feet and, after grabbing Noodle’s hand, walked with slow, careful steps along the broken and decayed tracks.
“Ow!” She collapsed suddenly as her knee made contact with something solid.
Noodle reached out a blind hand and felt a metal lever in the darkness, which rolled away with a mournful groan when he pushed against it.
“Colb! I think it’s the railway cart.”
Their eyes had adjusted a tiny bit now to the dark, and they could just make out a simple wooden plank on steel wheels with what looked like a playground seesaw attached to its top. The metal was rusted over and flaked at the touch, and the wood was bent, moldy, and warped.
“Wish I had one of these bad boys at my house,” said Noodle, wobbling to a stand up on the plank. “I’d totally cruise around Yonkers on it.”
“Hold it right there!” A gruff voice penetrated the darkness. “Put your hands where we can see ’em.”
Colby squinted into the face of the two flashlight beams that were tracking steadily toward them.
“Hop on the seesaw, Noodle!” Colby shouted as she gritted through the throbbing pain in her knee and swung onto the far seat. “Go!”
Noodle pumped his legs, flying up into the air, which propelled the squeaky car forward a foot. Then Colby pushed herself up to build more momentum. Up and down they went, the railway cart gaining speed with each push.
“You kids slow or something?” yelled the voice again. “I told you to stop!”
“We have guns!” yelled another voice.
Faster now, the railway cart bumped and lurched along the rusty track as Noodle and Colby pushed up and down. Headwind was whipping at their bodies, and their legs were growing tired with strain.
“See?” said Noodle. “I told you this wouldn’t end well.”
“What do you mean? This rocks!”
Their cart was really flying now, and Colby could tell by the swinging flashlight rays that the two men were falling behind them.
“We need to stop this thing,” screamed Noodle when one of the policemen’s beams happened to illuminate a wall directly ahead of them, where the tracks dead-ended. “We’re gonna crash!”
Colby turned her head to catch a glimpse of the thick cement wall, now only twenty yards away. She stopped pumping the seesaw, but the cart didn’t slow down.
“Should we jump?” she yelled.
“That’s a death wish! We’re moving too fast.”
“Noodle! What do we do?”
Five feet from the wall, the cart’s wheels clicked against a section of the track and at the last second veered so abruptly that Noodle almost pitched over.
The cart careened around a final bend before lurching to a stop.
“Gotta love the Sub Rosa,” said Colby as she struggled to catch her breath.
Moments later, the flashlights reappeared behind them, their light now bouncing against the golden tint of a metal door frame ten yards in front of the railway cart.
Noodle and Colby scrambled off the cart and headed toward the doorway, which opened into a small, musty elevator.
In the dark, Colby’s fingers fumbled the gold-plated panel knobs, madly hitting the floor buttons as the searching beams swept closer and closer. But the doors would not shut.
Mancini and Gilbert approached the elevator, both breathless and angry.
“Hey, you guys aren’t packing heat?” asked Noodle, once they were close enough to see.
“Doesn’t matter. You two brats are still coming downtown with us,” Mancini answered with a smug grin, flashing his silver badge.
“Let’s go.” Gilbert gripped Noodle forcefully by the arm. “How did you two even know about this place?”
“Lucky guess?” Noodle offered weakly as Gilbert dragged him away by the elbow.
Mancini motioned for Colby to pass, but as she exited the elevator, she noticed a small golden circle next to the elevator panel, with the word Excelsior scripted on a brass plaque above it.
She placed her hand on the gold circle, sliding the latched piece of metal to the side to reveal a small light switch underneath.
“Let’s go, princess!” Mancini snapped. “While we’re young.”
Curious, she flipped the switch on, but nothing happened.
“Strange,” she said to herself after Mancini had
none-too-gently shoved her out of the elevator. “I wonder what light that was supposed to turn on.”
Out of nowhere, emerald light shot from the winged horse’s eye, surprising Tom’s dad as it bathed the entire terminal in a soft green that gave it an otherworldly glow. The emerald beam descended in a perfect line, connecting the Pegasus to the top of the four-faced brass clock above the station’s circular information booth.
Every single person standing in the concourse gasped in collective wonder, and then the whole giant crowd went silent. All of their faces were turned toward the ceiling, and the only sound came from the whirring motors of the escalators.
“Tom!” His dad called down from the ceiling, his finger pointing toward the terminal clock. “The circled rose will light your course!”
He didn’t even need to say anything, though, because Tom was already sprinting toward the information booth as fast as his feet could carry him. Up ahead, he could see Curt Keller’s wiry frame vaulting the balcony stairs, and to his left Lieutenant Faber was pushing her way past pedestrians.
Tom leaped onto the information desk, sliding along its glassy surface past two confused attendants until he was face-to-face with the clock. Circling its wide base, he noticed that a thin door, no taller than his baby sister, was slightly ajar. It must’ve been opened by some unseen mechanism built into the clock.
“Fifteen years I been working here,” gasped one of the attendants as Tom crouched down and pushed the mini door open a little wider. “And I’ve never even noticed that little hobbit door.”
“Must be some Keebler elves living in that clock,” joked the second attendant.
Nestled inside was an old Louisville Slugger baseball bat, browned and grimy from use. Tom snatched it from the clock’s base and crawled to the other side of the booth, ducking out of Keller and Faber’s sight. An inscription was burned into the barrel of the bat, just under Babe Ruth’s signature. But there was no time to read it.
As Tom peered over the desk, he was met with a familiar face.