The Sign of the Sinister Sorcerer

by Brad Strickland

  But Mrs. Zimmermann had at least a temporary solution. “If anyone asks,” she said briskly once they had returned to her house, “we’ll tell them that Jonathan is out of town for a while on business. That’ll keep everyone quiet, because no one really knows what his business is!”

  “He has stocks and things,” said Lewis in a small voice.

  Mrs. Zimmermann nodded. “Oh, of course I know,” she said. “Yes, Jonathan inherited money from his grandfather, and he has invested carefully and has a tidy income from his stocks and bonds. But no one else in town, with the possible exception of Mr. Deitz at the bank or Mr. Conwell, Jonathan’s lawyer, knows just how he earns his bread and butter. So our official position is that Jonathan is out taking care of some big business deal and that while he’s gone, you’re staying temporarily with me. That cover story will do, at least for a while.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  Mrs. Zimmermann looked suddenly fierce. “We,” she announced, “are going to get to the bottom of this mystery! We are going to find my friend and neighbor, and if he has been harmed in any way, those who did it will regret hurting him! Chin up, Lewis. As John Paul Jones once said, ‘I have not yet begun to fight!’ But,” she added, “I am just about to start!”

  Lewis called Rose Rita right away with the bad news, and she too tried to cheer him up: “If Mrs. Zimmermann’s on the case, you don’t have anything to worry about,” she said. “I’ll round up Hal, and we’ll come over and see if there’s any way we can help.”

  It took a while—Rose Rita complained that Hal’s family didn’t have a telephone, and she had no idea where he lived, but luckily, he had stopped by her house to ask about the search for the cane. They both looked serious at the news of Uncle Jonathan’s disappearance, and a gloomy Lewis quickly filled them in. He left out all mention of magic, leading Hal to think that maybe an international gang of kidnappers had made off with his uncle, but clearly Rose Rita got the message. “What’s Mrs. Zimmermann going to do?” she asked.

  “She’s got her own way of investigating, she says,” Lewis answered carefully. “We agree that the first thing to do is to try to find out what Uncle Jonathan learned in Lansing about Dr. Marville, so she’s gone up there for the day.”

  “Who?” asked Hal, sounding shocked.

  “Dr. Marville,” said Lewis, darting a sharp look at Hal, who looked very startled.

  Hal gulped and stammered, “D-did your uncle have to go see a specialist or something? Is he really s-sick?”

  “Not that kind of doctor,” explained Rose Rita. “A doctor of philosophy, a college teacher that Lewis’s uncle had classes with at Michigan Agricultural College.”

  “He must be old!” exclaimed Hal, his voice still oddly shaky.

  “He’s pretty old,” said Lewis.

  “Well, I hope your uncle finds him,” said Hal. “Are you two hungry? Do you want to go to the drugstore for sandwiches and sodas?”

  Lewis realized it was time for lunch. “We don’t have to go into town,” he told Hal. “Mrs. Zimmermann said I could help myself to anything in her pantry. She’s got plenty of sandwich things.”

  They made sandwiches, munched them, and then spent a long couple of hours talking round and round Uncle Jonathan’s disappearance. Hal thought that whoever stole the cane might have come back for Uncle Jonathan. Rose Rita confessed she didn’t know what was going on, but she was itching to do something. The afternoon crawled by until four o’clock. They were sitting on the steps of Mrs. Zimmermann’s house. In her absence, Lewis felt even more nervous than he had. “There might be a clue in your house,” Hal suggested at long last.

  “I don’t think there is.”

  “But we could check,” argued Rose Rita. “There might be something you’ve overlooked. I have to do something, I tell you! I can’t stand just sitting around.”

  Lewis couldn’t hold out against the two of them. They crossed the lawn, he unlocked the door, and he went inside. Hal and Rose Rita hovered on the porch until Lewis remembered that he had to specifically invite them in because of Mrs. Zimmermann’s spells. He hastily said, “Come in, come in!”

  Hal grinned sheepishly as he and Rose Rita stepped over the threshold. “Thanks. I just felt kind of funny, for some reason,” he apologized. Hal quietly closed the front door.

  They searched the basement and through all the rooms on the first floor, though Lewis was convinced there was nothing to find. When he was sure Hal was nowhere close, Lewis even looked into the secret passage that led from the kitchen to the study, but it was empty and dusty. After two weary hours, he and Rose Rita ran out of places to pry into, and the two of them found Hal seated at Uncle Jonathan’s desk in the study. He had a pile of books open all around him. “I’ve been reading,” he said unnecessarily. “You know, we could try to use some magic. These books all seem to say that magic works, anyhow.”

  Lewis grimaced. He had not thought about Hal’s discovering the books of magic in his uncle’s collection. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  Rose Rita looked indecisive. “Even if magic is real, we don’t have any training. It probably wouldn’t work,” she said.

  Lewis’s heart was thumping hard. He had never even told Rose Rita all the details, but the time he had tried casting a spell from one of these books, an evil ghost had risen from the dead and had almost ended the world with the help of a magical clock hidden in the walls of the Barnavelt house! “I don’t think we should,” he said, his voice thin with worry.

  Hal held up a book. “We might have a chance. This book says that three is a very powerful magical number. There are three of us. It has a spell for finding lost things. Let’s try it, just to do something.”

  “That’s not a smart idea,” Lewis said again.

  “If it’s just a seeking spell,” Rose Rita said slowly, “I can’t see the harm.”

  “But none of us are real magicians,” objected Lewis desperately. “And anyway, I told you magic wasn’t real.”

  Hal shrugged. “The book says magic is real. This is a simple spell that any student of magic can easily do. But if you don’t want to find your uncle—”

  “No, I do,” said Lewis, beginning to feel trapped.

  And so somehow or other, he found himself drawing another magical sign on the study floor, this time an equilateral triangle with one point to the east, one to the north, and one to the south. He finished, checked his Boy Scout compass to make sure it was properly oriented, and said, “Now what?”

  “Now,” said Hal, holding the big book at chest level, “I stand on the eastern point. Rose Rita, you stand on the southern one, and Lewis, you’re on the north one. Just stand there quietly and think thoughts about Jonathan Barnavelt while I read this incantation.”

  With surprising fluency, Hal began to read a long, repetitive incantation in Latin. Lewis was good at Latin, but he didn’t know all the words that Hal read aloud. He recognized many of them, even though Hal was reading at a furious pace: invocatio, a calling, an invocation; sceptrum, rules; and a sentence that sounded something like “I ask great powers for a turning back.”

  Lewis’s heart pounded, but when Hal’s voice grew silent, nothing seemed to have happened. “Is that it?” asked Rose Rita.

  “That’s all it says in the book,” Hal told her. “Lewis, do you sense your uncle?”

  Lewis shook his head. “I told you it wouldn’t work.”

  Hal shrugged. “It was worth a try.”

  They obliterated the triangle and then replaced the throw rug. In the hallway, Rose Rita stared at the mirror so hard that Hal asked, “What are you looking for?”

  “Thought I might have chalk dust on my nose,” replied Rose Rita. “I’d better call my folks. I’ll see if Mrs. Zimmermann is back and tell her what we’re doing too, so she won’t be upset if she sees lights in the house.”

  “We can search the two upstairs floors,” said Hal.

  “Okay,” replied Lewis unwillingly. “But I don�
�t think we’ll find a thing.”

  Rose Rita walked over to Mrs. Zimmermann’s house. The front door was unlocked, and Rose Rita went straight in, calling, “Hey, Mrs. Zimmermann?”

  No one replied, and Rose Rita began to feel a little creeped out. When the phone suddenly rang, she jumped in surprise. But she picked up the receiver. “Hello,” she said. “Zimmermann residence.”

  Mrs. Zimmermann’s voice came over the wire: “Rose Rita? Is Lewis handy, please?”

  “Uh, not right now,” said Rose Rita. “Where are you?”

  “I’m still up in Lansing,” she said. “I’ve found someone who knows both Jonathan and Dr. Marville. And I’ve learned a thing or three from her! She’s, well, of our kind, Rose Rita.”

  Rose Rita knew that Mrs. Zimmermann was telling her that her informant was a witch, or maga, as she preferred. She also understood that Mrs. Zimmermann didn’t want to say too much over the phone. “What did you find out?”

  “Get a piece of paper and a pencil,” said Mrs. Zimmermann. “You have to tell Lewis all this as soon as possible. I’m leaving for home as soon as I get off the phone. What time is it? Half past six. I should be there no later than nine.”

  Rose Rita knew where Mrs. Zimmermann kept a notepad, the paper lined in light purple, and a pencil (also purple). She got these and said, “Shoot.”

  “Tell Lewis that his uncle’s old schoolmate is indeed back in town. Furthermore, I think I know what—Mr. S. is looking for. That project that Jonathan mentioned is the key. I don’t know what it is, but it’s probably hidden in the house next door to mine. You know the one. It is vitally important that Lewis not let anyone get into the house. My you-know-what will keep anyone with evil on his mind from coming in under his own power, but if he’s invited inside by someone who lives there, that’s a different kettle of squid. Got that?”

  “. . . don’t let anyone in,” murmured Rose Rita. “Got it!”

  “And let Lewis know that Mr. S. had a special study and was very good at it—the arts of confusion and concealment. He might be in some elaborate disguise. Of course, there are rules to ma—to the art, I mean, and the rules say he would have to play fair and at least give someone a chance at seeing through his surface appearance.” Mrs. Zimmermann snorted. “Jonathan should never have had anything to do with that man! And Dr. Marville must have been pretty slow on the uptake not to realize that he was a bad lot! Why, just look at his name, for heaven’s sake! It means ‘Evil Heart’ in German! Anyway, Rose Rita, warn Lewis. I’ll be back as soon as Bessie can get me there.”

  “Okay,” said Rose Rita, taking down what Mrs. Zimmermann had said about Dr. Marville and Schlectesherz. Bessie was the name that Mrs. Zimmermann had given her purple car. She said that, viewed from the front, it had a face like a sleepy cow named Bessie that she had once known.

  Mrs. Zimmermann hung up, and Rose Rita was just finishing her note when her hand froze. She had written: “Mrs. Z says Schlectesherz=evil heart in German.”

  She had spelled out “evil heart” on the page. Rose Rita was great at crossword puzzles and codes—that was why she still remembered the mind-reading code she and Lewis had once used in a magic act—and those nine letters tugged at her in an odd way. E, V, I, L, H, E, A, R, T. What was it? With her pencil she began to rearrange them. H-A-L E-V-E-R-I-T.

  “Oh, my gosh!” She flew across the lawn to the Barnavelt house, reached for the doorknob, and tugged. The door seemed to be nailed shut. “Lewis!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. “Lewis, let me in!”

  A bolt of sizzling green light leaped from the doorknob and struck her in the stomach. The next thing Rose Rita knew, she was tumbling through the air like a rag doll. And then the lawn slammed into her back, hard, and she lost her breath. Everything went black.

  CHAPTER 10

  “YOUR UNCLE SURE HAS a lot of stuff,” grumbled Hal. He and Lewis had climbed up to the unused third floor of the Barnavelt house. They were poking around in one of the old bedrooms, which now held a million bits of junk jammed in willy-nilly. Lewis had just thought that if his uncle had been puttering around up there to look for anything, it would have been easy for him to lose his cane among all the clutter. “Does he have anything, you know, special? I mean besides his cane?”

  Lewis shrugged that off. “I guess lots of this stuff must seem pretty special to him, or he would have dumped it. He inherited most of it from my great-grandfather, who used to have a great big mansion somewhere.”

  “Rich, was he, then?” asked Hal, and Lewis thought he heard a faint sneer in the question.

  “I guess,” said Lewis. “My great-grandfather Barnavelt made a lot of money with railroads and livestock sales and things like that. My uncle says he was a hard man to get along with, though. He and my grandfather, Uncle Jonathan’s and my dad’s father, I mean, had some kind of real falling-out. But then he liked the fact that Uncle Jonathan was studying in an agricultural school, because the old man had started out as a homesteader and a farmer himself, so when he died, to everyone’s surprise, he left all of his money and possessions to Uncle Jonathan.”

  “It must have been nice for your uncle to have a fortune just drop in his lap.”

  Lewis was rummaging about in a closet, but the only things in it were stacks of shoe boxes that contained faded old photographs, the blacks and grays now sickly tones of brown. He felt odd, twitchy and nervous, and he thought Hal was sounding inexplicably sour. “Look, maybe this isn’t such a hot idea,” he said to Hal. “Maybe we should just go. Rose Rita should have been back by now.”

  “Let’s look around at least.” Hal rubbed his hands together. He took a yellow pencil from his pocket—Lewis remembered he’d had one that day when the baseball had knocked him silly—and began to twirl it in his fingers. “Does your uncle have any interesting mirrors?” he asked suddenly.

  Lewis frowned at him. “Interesting mirrors?” he asked, his voice suddenly squeaky. “You mean like a shaving glass?”

  “Because you see, my boy, I’ve been reading about magic mirrors,” Hal said smoothly. “It would be about ten inches square, with beveled edges on the glass. And it might not always show you your face.”

  Lewis shook his head, now feeling something was definitely wrong. “That’s sort of crazy talk,” he said. “Come on, if we’re going to look—”

  “Where are the mirrors?” asked Hal. And all at once he—jerked. He shivered all over, his head rolling horribly back, his limbs loose. “Curse these spells!” he snarled. “And the puppet must hold the wand too!” His voice sounded completely different, strange, raspy, like an old man’s voice, and oddly accented. A second later, Hal straightened up and smiled. “I really think we ought to look at mirrors,” he said in his normal tone.

  Lewis agreed—anything to get out of this cluttered, claustrophobic room!—hoping that once they were downstairs he could bolt for the front door. Something was wrong with Hal, badly wrong. They trooped from room to room as the evening outside grew darker. Hal snarled in frustration as he looked at round mirrors, big rectangular bathroom mirrors, hand mirrors, every kind of mirror but the right one. “It should be in a rich gold frame because it is precious and valuable!” he growled. “Perhaps it is hidden away! He’d never risk its being broken. Too much of his power is in it! Come!”

  They made their way through the second floor, with Hal rifling through everything. Hal pulled pictures off the wall, peering behind them—a photo of Uncle Jonathan shoulder to shoulder with Lewis’s late father, Charlie Barnavelt, a rather good painting of the Eiffel Tower at sunset and a horrible one of a knock-kneed brown and white spotted horse, and others. Hal tossed them aside, and at least one framed picture broke with a clink of glass. “Hey!” Lewis objected, but Hal ignored him.

  Lewis cried out again when Hal began to pull open the drawers in his uncle’s wardrobe, flinging things left and right, and the boy whirled on him, his face a mask of anger. “Be still!” he yelled, flicking the yellow pencil as if it were a wand.


  And all at once Lewis couldn’t move a muscle. He felt himself fall sideways, toppling like a felled tree. He collapsed against the bed, then slid from the bed down to the carpet. His arms and legs had lost all their feeling, and he lay there helpless, with the scary sensation of total paralysis. He could see under the bed. Hal was pacing around the room, muttering, “Where is it, where is it?”

  Finally, Hal stood over him and waved the wand again. The old man’s voice came out of the boy’s mouth: “I shall have to inspect in person! Come! You must invite me in!”

  Lewis rose to his feet. If he could have produced even a squeak, he would have roared in fright. But he couldn’t. He felt as if he were a puppet. His arms and legs would not respond to his will, but somehow his legs marched him down the stair and to the back door. “Open it,” said Hal.

  Lewis saw his hand reach out and open the door.

  In the rectangle of night outside stood a fierce-faced man, skinny and tall. His beaked nose was the same as in the photo Lewis had seen of him, but his bushy mustache and triangular goatee had turned gray. He was clad in a faded monk’s robe, with the hood down. He glared at Lewis from deep-set, angry-looking eyes. The man’s lips moved, but the voice came from behind Lewis: “Invite me in!”

  “C-come in,” Lewis said, though he tried not to say it.

  “Thank you,” said the man sarcastically, stepping through the door. It slammed by itself, and he spoke a harsh, unintelligible word. Instantly vivid green sparks crept over the door. “We are sealed in,” the man said. He grinned very unpleasantly. “You foolish children! You agreed to the spell that I performed through my puppet. You reversed the magic the witch cast on the house—reversed it so it now protects me, not you! Fools, so easily led. My wand!” He held his hand out, and Hal gave him the pencil.