The House of Puzzles

by Richard Newsome

  The wrestling match was over in seconds.

  Alex stood on Gerald, pinning him down with a combat boot to the throat. Every time Gerald moved, he pressed a little harder. Gerald struggled to breathe and finally he gave up, like a fish too long out of water.

  ‘You really are an annoying little tick,’ Alex sneered down at Gerald. He emphasised his words by pushing on Gerald’s neck as if it was an accelerator pedal. ‘Are you familiar with the carotid arteries, Gerry? They run up either side of the neck and take blood to the brain. Funny thing is, if you restrict them your brain doesn’t get the oxygen it needs to function.’

  Gerald could feel Alex’s boot pressing harder against his neck. Numbness spread across his face.

  The last words Gerald heard were, ‘And then you pass out.’

  Chapter 24

  Gerald woke to a blast of icy wind in his face. He lay on his side on the rug and blinked away the mist that shrouded his eyes. Thin curtains at the windows fluttered inwards like washing on the line. It took him a moment to realise that Alex was gone. Gone, along with the glossy black box and the perpetual motion machine.

  Drebbel’s machine.

  The last hope for Professor McElderry.

  And Gerald had let it slip through his fingers.

  With a weary breath, he sat up and held a hand to his neck. The skin was scuffed raw from the sole of Alex Baranov’s combat boot. Gerald muttered an oath. What was he to do?

  Call the police?

  And tell them what? Two boys were fighting over something that neither of them was entitled to? Gerald laughed to himself. He could hardly see the New York Police Department rushing to investigate that.

  A sudden tiredness washed over him. He looked at his watch. Three o’clock in the morning. Five hours before Jasper Mantle would arrive to let him out. And five hours before he could expect some contact from Sir Mason Green. What would Gerald tell him? That the perpetual motion machine was on its way back to England in someone else’s bag?

  Gerald got slowly to his feet. His head was still foggy as he limped across to his pack. He knelt to scoop its contents back into place when his hand fell upon the square of canvas from the Delacroix painting.

  He paused, laid the canvas flat on the floor and studied the detail of the messenger bag. ‘Fat lot of good this has been,’ Gerald thought. ‘Supposed to help me find the black box.’ He flipped the canvas over, and looked at the smudged pattern on the reverse side. ‘Now the professor is good as dead.’

  And then he saw it.

  The rush of blood to his brain almost knocked him sidewards, as effectively as any blow from Alex Baranov’s boots.

  The smudged pattern on the back of the canvas square.

  The inky stain on the wall behind the decanter.

  They were almost identical.

  Gerald snatched up the piece of painting and stumbled to the table. He picked up two thumbtacks from the assortment of junk that Alex had scattered across the floor. His hands were shaking as he pinned the canvas square over the pattern on the wall.

  He took in a deep breath then looked through the water-filled decanter. The smudged stain on the canvas refracted into a clear impression of the grid of black boxes. But this time a different hole was marked. Gerald’s heart raced—the square on the grid three up from the bottom and seven in from the left contained an egg-shaped symbol, ringed with a band of dots: the mark of the perpetual motion machine. Gerald grabbed the edge of the table with both hands to steady himself. He swallowed hard.

  Alex had taken the wrong casket.

  Gerald’s eyes darted across to the wall of boxes.

  Three up. Seven across from the left.

  He hauled the box out and marvelled at the heft of it in his hands. He ran a finger over the lock at the front. Alex had pocketed the key, but Gerald was not worried—he could keep it. Gerald had the box that Mason Green desired. And that was all that counted.

  Gerald scooped up his backpack and tucked the box under his arm. He didn’t spare the Billionaires’ Club a second glance as he climbed out the window into the frosty morning. He clambered down the fire-escape stairs. It was only as he neared the footpath that Gerald realised he had no way of contacting Mason Green. After all he had been through with Alex Baranov, he was left with the wooden box but still no way of freeing the professor. Gerald paused midway between steps and catapulted a curse-strewn tirade into the air to join the thrum of traffic noise rising from the street.

  He was answered by an unexpected voice.

  ‘That’s no way to speak to your friends.’

  Gerald leaned over the railing and stared to the street below. His gaze was met by the upturned faces of Felicity Upham and Ruby and Sam Valentine.

  ‘You really should see someone about that anger problem of yours,’ Sam continued. ‘It’s really unattractive.’

  A huge smile lit Gerald’s face. He scampered down the last few flights, his boots knocking snow from the iron steps and creating a mini blizzard that chased him all the way to the street. He leapt over the final three stairs and landed in the tangled embrace of his friends.

  ‘What are you all doing here?’ Gerald asked amid a flurry of questions about his adventures during the night. ‘How did you know to come?’

  Ruby pushed herself free of Gerald’s arms and looked at him with mild confusion. ‘What are you talking about?’ she said. ‘We got your message at the Plaza. We came straight away.’

  ‘I was halfway through a dusk-to-dawn zombie movie marathon and a cheeseburger the size of my head,’ Sam said, exposing a sliver of gherkin between his front teeth, ‘so this better be important.’

  It was Gerald’s turn to look confused. ‘I never sent you any message,’ he said, shifting the wooden box from one hip to the other. ‘I was lucky to get out of this stupid place in one piece. I didn’t have time to send a message to anyone.’

  A frown creased Felicity’s brow. ‘The note was quite specific,’ she said. ‘Someone slipped it under the door to our suite. We were to meet you here at the foot of the fire escape straight away.’

  Gerald looked around them. The zigzag of iron stairs had deposited him in a narrow alley that ran along the side of the building, just off the bustle of Fifth Avenue.

  ‘If you didn’t send the message,’ Ruby said, ‘who did?’

  Her words were barely out when a large metal grate in the footpath beneath their feet gave way, swallowing them like a midnight snack.

  Gerald opened his mouth to scream, but the sudden drop seemed to wedge his stomach into his throat, blocking any chance of noise escaping. The combination of no ground at his feet together with the pull of gravity sent terror into his heart and a chill wind up his trouser legs that caused instant clenching of eyes, teeth and buttocks.

  He landed awkwardly, his knees buckling under him. He sensed a body dropping close to his left, then two more to his right. Gerald opened his eyes to find himself buried to the armpits in a giant nest of shredded newspaper.

  For a moment, no one spoke. Gerald still clutched the black box to his chest, as if cradling a small child.

  ‘What
just happened?’ Sam’s voice filled the dimly lit space.

  Gerald looked around. They appeared to have fallen into a cavernous cellar and landed in an industrial vat the size of a backyard swimming pool. Above him, Gerald could make out a tangle of grey metal pipes and rusted steel girders that disappeared into the gloom up towards the street. To their right, in a storage cage against a brown brick wall, were a large red boiler and an assortment of junk. And to their left was—

  ‘Well hail, hail! The gang’s all here.’

  Gerald spun his head to see Sir Mason Green standing over them with a smug grin on his face. ‘I am so glad you are all right,’ Green continued. ‘It was the devil’s own job trying to calculate how much paper to shred to provide you with a comfortable landing. It’s a good seven-metre drop from the street and I really couldn’t have you shattering anklebones or popping knee joints. That would have been most inconvenient. So I erred on the side of caution.’ He lowered a rope ladder into the vat and beckoned Gerald across.

  Gerald twisted his way through the mass of shredded paper, holding the wooden box above his head. ‘Now I know how a guinea pig feels,’ he muttered. He finally made it to the side, took hold of the ladder in one hand, tucked the box under his arm and climbed out.

  ‘I could hardly afford to damage the contents of that casket,’ Green said. ‘Not after you went to such lengths to secure it for me. It wasn’t too much trouble, I trust?’

  Gerald stared at the box in his hands. Ruby, Felicity and Sam dragged themselves to the side of the vat. ‘You have no idea,’ he said. ‘Why all the fuss over a perpetual motion machine? Is it really that important?’

  Sir Mason Green stiffened as if all the joints in his body had frozen. His eyes locked onto the wooden casket. ‘Oh, Gerald, it is more important to me than you can possibly imagine. I hope you have the correct one. I understand there are a few from which to choose.’

  Gerald tightened his grip on the black box. ‘There’s a couple fewer now,’ he said. ‘Alex took one as well.’

  Green’s eyes seemed to glow in the dim light of the cellar. ‘I was wondering how you fared with Baranov the younger. Did he prove as outrageously deceitful as his father?’

  Gerald ran a hand across the rough graze that Alex’s boot had burned across his throat. ‘You have your faults but you are a good judge of character,’ he said. ‘Alex pulled a knife on me and took off with a box. It had a silver egg in it that looked just like the symbol for the perpetual motion machine. But I’m pretty sure it was the wrong box.’

  Green laughed with gusto. ‘I am absolutely certain he has the wrong one,’ he said. ‘Now tell me, Gerald, did that piece of the Delacroix painting prove useful?’

  Gerald nodded. ‘How did you even know about that?’ he asked.

  ‘I didn’t. At least, not for sure,’ Green said. ‘There were rumours that Delacroix left a hidden design on the canvas that might point to the perpetual motion machine. But I had no idea how it might work.’

  ‘There’s a whole artist’s studio on the top floor,’ Gerald said. ‘Are you saying Delacroix painted there?’

  ‘Apart from being a collector, Jim Kincaid was a patron of the arts,’ Green said. ‘If gossip is to be believed, he brought Delacroix to New York to get him away from the dangers of Paris after the revolution of 1830.’

  ‘That makes sense,’ Ruby said. ‘I’m fairly sure Delacroix’s painting inspired the design of the Statue of Liberty.’

  ‘So, while Kincaid was in his workshop trying to reinvent Drebbel’s machine, Delacroix was upstairs working on Liberty Leads the People,’ Gerald said. His brain raced. ‘Kincaid was storing all his attempts at recreating the machine in those black boxes. I bet he had one spot set aside for Drebbel’s original and Delacroix recorded the location in a puzzle on the back of the canvas.’

  ‘But how do you know the box Alex took isn’t the right one?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Because, Mr Valentine, I have located the only key for the correct box. The fact young Baranov was able to open his casket is all the proof I need that the poor boy is on his way to present his father with a sad attempt at Cornelius Drebbel’s engineering masterpiece.’ Green chuckled to himself. ‘Sergei will be livid.’

  ‘Why would Alex’s father want this machine so much?’ Felicity asked.

  ‘To protect his oil business,’ Gerald said. ‘He wants to make sure no one else can use the machine to compete with him.’

  ‘You are partially correct,’ Green said. ‘If I know Sergei Baranov, he wanted to keep the machine in a Siberian bunker until his oil supplies run low, then open the Baranov Perpetual Motor Company and make a fortune selling the technology. Except, of course, he doesn’t have the machine.’ Green reached out to take the box from Gerald. ‘I do.’

  Gerald whipped the casket away and shoved it into Sam’s hands. ‘Not until we know Professor McElderry is safe,’ Gerald said. ‘That was the deal.’

  Green stared at Gerald for a moment, then crossed to a wooden bench and picked up the handset of an old rotary telephone. He dialled a single number and waited.

  ‘Professor?’ he said into the mouthpiece. ‘Can you show your face, please?’ He put the receiver back in its cradle and turned to Gerald. ‘I will keep my end of the bargain,’ he said. His eyes locked onto the box in Sam’s hands. ‘I hope for all your sakes that you have managed to do the same.’

  Gerald felt something brush against his fingers. Ruby was rubbing the back of his hand. ‘What happened in the club?’ she asked.

  ‘Let’s get the professor out of here and I’ll tell you all about it over a mountain of pancakes, whipped butter and maple syrup,’ Gerald said.

  Sam placed the black box at his feet and nudged it with his boot. ‘If Sergei Baranov wants to dominate global energy with this thing, what’s your scheme?’ he asked Green. ‘Why do you want it?’

  Sir Mason arched his fingers. ‘Nothing as mundane as that,’ he said. ‘I have a far more creative plan for my little machine.’

  Gerald glanced at his watch. ‘What’s taking the professor so long?’ He stared hard at the silver-haired billionaire. ‘What are you up to?’

  Green raised an eyebrow in mock indignation. ‘Up to?’ he asked. ‘Why ever would you think I was up to something? The cellars under the Billionaires’ Club are vast. The building above us is twelve storeys. From my cursory investigations down here, the complex may have as many levels beneath the street. It has a labyrinthine quality about it—so many criss-crossing corridors and stairways. The cellars are a puzzle in themselves. Another of Diamond Jim Kincaid’s eccentric touches.’ Green extended his arms wide and turned a slow circle. His jacket billowed open, and Gerald started at the handgun tucked into Green’s waistband. ‘It’s draughty and dank and be it ever so humble, it is certainly no place like home, but it will do for my time in the city,’ Green said. ‘A handy bolthole to keep tabs on you while you retrieved my treasure box.’

  ‘You’re welcome to it,’ Gerald said. ‘As long as it buys the professor’s freedom.’

  Sir Mason smiled coolly. ‘Once I have the box, the professor is free to do whatever he pleases.’

  Then, from a shadowed doorway at the rear of the cellar, a figure shuffled into the
room. Professor Knox McElderry of the British Museum—his red beard combed and trimmed, his brown herringbone suit shambolic as usual but neat enough—stood blinking in the soft light. He had the air of a large brown bear that had just emerged from a long winter’s sleep, not certain which way to turn first.

  ‘Professor McElderry?’ Ruby said softly, not wanting to startle him. ‘Are you all right?’

  McElderry blinked again, his shaggy eyebrows knitting into a single auburn hedge across his forehead. He looked at Ruby for a moment before a glimmer of recognition showed in his eyes. A gruff rumble rolled from his throat.

  ‘Miss Valentine?’

  Ruby’s face lit up. ‘Oh, you remember!’

  Mason Green held up a hand, gesturing for the professor to stay where he was. ‘Your friend has been off the Voynich juice, as it were, for a few weeks now,’ Green said. ‘He was only on it for the trip to Scotland so he wouldn’t make a fuss. I should bottle the stuff and sell it to new parents. But as you can see, he is fit and well.’ Before Gerald could say anything, Sir Mason tuned to the professor and said, ‘Can you excuse us now, McElderry? I have some business to transact. If you would be so kind as to return to your quarters until I summon you again.’

  The professor blinked once more and shuffled back into the shadows.

  Gerald looked after the disappearing form, aghast. ‘Where’s he going? What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘He will be free to leave at the appropriate time,’ Green said. ‘I’ve waited long enough. Let me open my little treasure chest.’