The Treasures of Weatherby

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  So there was a conference in the library attended by all the west wing people, which included Matilda and Sheila and the Galworthy sisters and several others. And after John and Sally Farley finished telling their grandson’s sad story, Sheila and both of the Galworthys were sobbing and even Matilda seemed about to, and the verdict was that they’d all be happy to have Tyler as a neighbor.

  Tyler arrived two weeks after the school year had already started at Riverbend Junior High, and it turned out that he, too, was in the eighth grade. But when Harleigh met his new classmate and fellow Weatherby House resident, his immediate reaction was a stunned, Great! Just what I need.

  That meeting happened in Weatherby House’s grand entry hall, and having seen lots of other people’s reaction to its size and splendor, Harleigh wasn’t surprised by Tyler’s open-mouthed amazement. However, in Tyler’s case that open mouth did make his extremely buck teeth a little more noticeable. Those teeth, along with the fact that he was incredibly skinny and had hair that looked like it had been combed by an eggbeater, made for a really bad first impression. Harleigh’s first impression was that having to take Tyler with him to Riverbend Junior High wasn’t going to make his own life any easier.

  And it certainly didn’t, except briefly, while most of the really dedicated torturers were too busy going after poor old toothy Tyler to torment Harleigh as much as usual. But that didn’t last very long, because for some strange reason Tyler didn’t seem to mind. When Frankie Nelson and his gang of really smart-mouthed guys went after Tyler, he just grinned as if he thought it was all in good fun and went right on with whatever he was doing. His reaction didn’t make any sense to Harleigh until it suddenly occurred to him that maybe he was doing what Edgar said he’d done—pretending he didn’t care. But when he asked Tyler about it he said no, that wasn’t it. He wasn’t pretending.

  “I guess I’m just used to it,” he said. “It was a lot worse where I was before I came here. It’s great living in Weatherby House with my grandparents, and . . .” He grinned at Harleigh. “And having somebody to go to school with is . . .” He shrugged, and his grin was even toothier than usual. “That part is really—okay.”

  And Harleigh managed to hold his tongue, but what he was thinking was a sarcastic, Well, I’m glad somebody’s happy.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  As September turned into October and then moved on into November, some things at Riverbend Junior High began to improve, at least for Tyler. One of the big improvements was that after three months of eating Matilda’s cooking, he wasn’t nearly so skinny, and the Galworthy sister who had once worked in a beauty shop had managed to tame his hair down a little bit. And then one day, after another conference with Harleigh, Edgar announced that he’d decided that having braces put on Tyler’s teeth would be a worthwhile investment of a bit of the Weatherby treasure.

  The braces made a big difference, and more quickly than you might think. Even before the slant of Tyler’s teeth had changed all that much, there was a noticeable change in his social life. It just so happened that several of the most popular kids in the class had braces that year, so it seemed that Tyler suddenly became part of an exclusive in-group. An in-group that gradually, because Tyler insisted on it, began to include Harleigh as well.

  At home Harleigh went on visiting the tree house when he had a little free time, which wasn’t all that often anymore. He would climb up, easily now, and think about how much things had changed since he had first been there. He thought about Allegra, too, and wondered where she was and if she was ever going to come back.

  But then one day, when he happened to have a little extra time, he found his way back to the tall tree where he had watched while Allegra had somehow managed to jump—or swing, or fly—over the fence. Studying the impossibly difficult climb to reach the top branches, and then even farther up, the open space that she must have somehow crossed to get to the other side, he began to feel that the whole Allegra thing must have been a kind of fantasy. Of course she really had existed. He had the piece of her dress and her good-bye note to prove it. So parts of the Allegra story had actually happened, but other parts must have been mostly his imagination. She really must have been, not really a fantasy, perhaps, but something pretty close to it.

  Meanwhile, back at Weatherby House Aunt was still watching television, so Harleigh and Edgar had to go on making a lot of important decisions—such as whether there was enough money now to hire gardeners. And they did. Not the huge crews that had once worked on the Weatherby property, but a couple of hard-working guys who gradually began to replant lawns and flower beds, and get the water flowing again in the Italian garden’s fountain.

  And then one Saturday in November, Harleigh decided to show Tyler, as well as Tom and Pete, the two new gardeners, the entrance to the maze. It took a whole afternoon, and all three of them were what Tyler called “absolutely a-mazed!”

  Tom and Pete immediately set to work finishing the job that Harleigh and Allegra had started, and before long most of the Weatherby House residents, except for a few of the most ancient ones, had visited the maze and been “a-mazed” at its size and beauty and the incredibly complicated route that finally led to the exit. But only on Saturdays, when Harleigh and Tyler could be available to rescue them after an hour or so and show them how to find their way out.

  Dinners were another thing that changed that winter. Starting in December, nearly all of the Weatherby descendants, maybe fourteen or fifteen people at a time, began to meet, now and then, in the big dining hall for one of Matilda’s banquets. Only now Matilda had a lot of helpers, Weatherby descendants who might not be able to cook as well as she did, but who could peel and chop and stir, and help clean up the mess afterward.

  At first Harleigh always sat next to Tyler at the banquets, but then Edgar suggested that the two of them should move around and sit with different people. “Why?” Harleigh wanted to know. “Tyler and I have things to talk about.”

  “I’m sure you do. But so do some of the rest of us. Why don’t you give it a try?”

  So Harleigh sighed and said he would, but when he told Tyler about it, he added that he thought it would be a bore listening to all the “olden days” stories. And sometimes it was. Some of the stories had parts that were boring or sad, or even both at once, but after a while he and Tyler agreed that if you kept on listening, a lot of the descendants’ stories had some fairly interesting parts about things they’d lived through. Things like earthquakes or shipwrecks, or even attacks by poisonous snakes.

  Later, on his way to the tower, Harleigh sometimes thought about stories and what Allegra had said about them. About how the walls of old houses were full of whispers and how, if you held your breath and listened closely, you could almost hear them. He had tried it. He’d stopped to listen, sometimes in one room and sometimes in another, without a great deal of success. But if he didn’t learn much from the walls that winter, he discovered that the real people who were living in Weatherby House did have interesting stories to tell, when they could get anyone to listen.

  Quite often, when it was his turn to tell a story, Harleigh told about how Junior had tried to kill him with a crowbar and steal the Weatherby House treasure. That one always went over big with the descendants, no matter how many times they’d heard it before. Harleigh always tried to make it more exciting by mentioning some new and especially exciting details, such as how Junior had grabbed his foot as he started through the tunnel, and he’d had to kick his way free.

  But one detail he never mentioned was Allegra. The part about Allegra, he’d decided, was just too fantastic, and the rest of the story, the part about Junior and the Weatherby treasure, definitely hadn’t been a fantasy.

  It was on a cold, drizzly Saturday morning that same winter that Harleigh discovered something that might possibly add a whole new chapter to the Allegra story. He happened to be looking through Edgar’s copy of the Riverbend Press, something he didn’t do all that often, when he noticed two
pictures in a special section called “Riverbend Residents.” The larger picture was of an old woman who had been, the story said, a resident of Riverbend for many years. But it was a smaller photograph that suddenly grabbed Harleigh’s attention. There were five people in that one, and under it was a caption that said, “The Famous Flying Fairchilds.”

  The story that went with the pictures said the old woman was Anna Fairchild, and she was the mother of Archibald Fairchild, who was in the second picture along with his wife and three daughters. Harleigh glanced at the picture of Archibald’s family, looked back, and then stared for a long time. All five Fairchilds seemed to be wearing sleek, shiny costumes. Two of the daughters seemed to be almost full grown, but the smallest of the three, a very slender little girl, looked—looked strangely familiar. The Flying Fairchilds, the newspaper story said, were a family of acrobats and trapeze artists who had performed in many countries, all over the world.

  Harleigh cut out the story and the two pictures and took them up to his room, where he spread them out on his bed next to the ragged scrap of Allegra’s costume and the note he’d found in the teacup.

  Sitting there on his bed, he moved the piece of cloth and the note and the pictures, arranging them in a special way. The piece of cloth first, because he got it first, and then the note, and finally the newspaper clippings. It was beginning to make a kind of pattern. A pattern, but with some important missing pieces.

  The weather was a little better by the time Harleigh set out for the tree house that afternoon. Still gray and gloomy but no rain and very little wind. In the Italian garden the dolphin fountain was spouting again, and the marble gods and goddesses were sleek and white. But the weed-grown clearing that surrounded the tall black walnut tree looked the same as ever.

  In the tree house everything—the rug, the walls, and the canvas roof—was slightly damp. Harleigh sat on the damp rug, looking at the broken teacup and the dead flowers in the tin can, and thinking over some of the things Allegra had told him about herself, and some other things she hadn’t mentioned. Things that he now was beginning to be able to imagine.

  It was easy to guess what her life had been like in Riverbend, living with her grandmother and probably hating it that she couldn’t be with the rest of her famous family. After all the places she’d been and the exciting things she’d done, Riverbend must have seemed pretty dull—at least until she found Weatherby House.

  So she’d discovered how to get over the fence, which would have been impossible for anyone who hadn’t been trained to climb and “fly” across big, open spaces. Then, of course, because she was that sort of person, she’d started exploring everywhere. So she’d found things like the tree house and the maze and Weatherby House. And because she was so crazy about old houses she started looking for a way to get inside. Then she’d found Harleigh, or he had found her, right there in the tree house clearing, and he turned out to be just what she was looking for—a way to get into Weatherby House.

  The whole Allegra thing was—well, more than just a story because he himself had been a part of it, but there seemed to be some chapters that he hadn’t known anything about and that he was just now beginning to understand.

  Harleigh grinned, wondering if even a tree house’s stained and splintery walls could whisper, if you knew how to listen. Reaching into his pocket, he took out the newspaper clippings and the ragged piece of cloth, and finally the note she’d left in the teacup, and spread them out on the braided rug. The small girl in the photo was certainly Allegra. The ragged bit of material looked as if it could have come from a costume very much like the one she was wearing in the picture.

  And then came the note. The note that said she would be back someday. Harleigh thought that was probably true, and if it were, there would be new chapters to the Allegra story. In the meantime, all he could do was to try to listen.

  Also by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  And Condors Danced

  Black and Blue Magic

  Blair’s Nightmare

  Cat Running

  The Changeling

  The Egypt Game

  The Famous Stanley Kidnapping Case

  Fool’s Gold

  The Ghosts of Rathburn Park

  Gib and the Gray Ghost

  Gib Rides Home

  The Gypsy Game

  The Headless Cupid

  Janie’s Private Eyes

  Libby on Wednesday

  The Magic Nation Thing

  The Runaways

  Season of Ponies

  Song of the Gargoyle

  Squeak Saves the Day

  The Trespassers

  The Truth About Stone Hollow

  The Unseen

  The Velvet Room

  The Witches of Worm

  Atheneum Books for Young Readers

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, New York 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2007 by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  Illustrations of dingbats copyright © 2007 by Brandon Dorman

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Book design by Debra Sfetsios and Tom Daly

  The text for this book is set in Throhand Regular.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Snyder, Zilpha Keatley.

  The treasures of Weatherby / Zilpha Keatley Snyder. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Determined to be as strong and powerful as the first Harleigh, who built the rambling Weatherby Hall, twelve-year-old Harleigh Fourth and an equally diminutive new friend try to foil the plans of a distant relative who is seeking the long-lost Weatherby fortune.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4169-1398-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)

  ISBN-10: 1-4169-1398-X (hardcover : alk. paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4814-0082-4 (eBook)

  [1. Family life—Fiction. 2. Buried treasure—Fiction. 3. Size—Fiction. 4. Dwellings—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.S68522Tor 2007

  [Fic]—dc22 2006010808