80 Days or Die

by Peter Lerangis

  “It’s another word for umbrellas,” Alex explained. She took one and handed another to Max, but he just laid it down on the stoop. “Maybe Bitsy knows what this means. It’s a note the old guy gave us.”

  Bitsy opened Max’s umbrella and handed it to him while looking over his shoulder. “Looks like some sort of maths equation. Is that his name—Kutor? Hungarian, perhaps? Polish? Czech?”

  “It’s gibberish, from a crazy person,” Alex offered.

  “He said he was our uncle,” Max replied.

  “If he said he was the Easter Bunny, would you believe him?” Alex asked.

  Max scratched his head. “I don’t know, this looks like a code. Was it a coincidence that we nearly ran him over and that he came to the funeral? Maybe he is related. Jules Verne was all about codes. Our family is cool that way.”

  “I do the Times crossword puzzle every Sunday!” Bitsy squealed. “Let’s have a look. But not in the rain. Won’t you join me for a quick spot of tea? There’s a lovely place around the corner. Mummy won’t even notice.”

  “There’s a mummy in here?” Max said.

  “That’s what she calls her mom,” Alex said.

  “Honestly, it’ll be refreshing to be away from her,” Bitsy said. “Not to be disrespectful. She is wonderful, but I believe she missed the memo that I grew up.” She let out a laugh and leaned in, her eyes dancing with curiosity.

  “You sound like you’re about forty years old,” Max said.

  “Max, that’s rude!” Alex turned to Bitsy. “Don’t mind my cousin. You’ll get used to him.”

  “Oh, I love him already,” Bitsy said. “Tell me, did you really find a note from Jules Verne and follow the voyage of the Nautilus? I want all the details. I adore Verne. My favorite book is Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea! So very thrilling to find out that it was actually true!”

  “How about Around the World in 80 Days?” Max asked. “Is it thrilling? I was supposed to read it on the plane, but I couldn’t concentrate because Alex was flirting with the pilot.”

  “That’s a lie!” Alex said.

  “Why do you ask?” Bitsy lowered herself to the stoop. Her umbrella locked with Max’s and Alex’s, forming a kind of tent. “Have you found that Around the World in 80 Days is true too? Oh, I hope so. All those fabulous locales and adventures!”

  “No!” Alex said.

  “Yes,” Max countered. “In a complicated way.”

  “Max . . . no . . . TMI . . .” Alex said through clenched teeth.

  “You needn’t worry about me,” Bitsy said, crossing her heart. “I’m brilliant at keeping secrets.”

  “OK, technically it’s not a true story,” Max said, despite Alex’s wild waving of her hands. “Which is a relief, because it includes elephant abuse. In reality, Jules Verne was being paid to follow a different path.”

  Bitsy’s eyes widened. “By the toffs at that old men’s club!”

  “Yup, the Reform Club,” Max replied. “Those guys wanted his real story exclusively, which was actually a search for some magical waters. So that’s why there were two books. Around the World in 80 Days was the fictional one. The other trip was written in secret.”

  Alex smacked her forehead. “Well, it’s not secret anymore. Hear that thump in the direction of France? That’s your old great-great-great-granddad Jules turning in his grave.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Max insisted. “The book doesn’t exist anymore, because the place where it was hidden doesn’t exist anymore.”

  “What place was that?” Bitsy asked.

  “The LeBretch Forum,” Max replied. “We Googled it—nada.”

  “Oh dear, I’ve lived here all my life and never heard of it.” Bitsy pulled a pen and an envelope out of her purse. “I will make it my mission to do further research. How do you spell it?”

  As Max spelled out the name, he watched Bitsy write LEBRETCH FORUM in perfect, neat capital letters on the back of the envelope. Jet lag was beginning to kick in, and the letters seemed to be dancing before his eyes.

  Max loved letter games. And the first thing he noticed was that three of the letters spelled the. Which could be a coincidence, but it made him wonder about the other letters.

  And something became instantly clear.

  “Wait.” Max sat up straight, snatching the envelope and pen from Bitsy’s hand.

  “Dude . . . manners?” Alex said.

  “Please and thank you,” Max replied, staring at the words. “Verne liked codes. Maybe there never was a LeBretch Forum. But I see a the, and forum is close to form, which is close to . . . wait . . . can you hold the umbrella over me?”

  “Yes, milord,” Bitsy said.

  Steadying the envelope on the palm of his left hand, he began writing with the right:

  “Voilà!” Max said, then turned to Bitsy. “That’s French for ‘bingo.’”

  Alex’s eyes were wide. “Wow. Max, that is impressive. But does the place still exist?”

  “Yes,” Bitsy said. “I can take you there. I’m sixteen. I just got my permit. If we’re quick, Mummy won’t notice. Her Volvo is parked just up the street. She’ll be hobnobbing at Uncle’s service for a while.”

  “This is awesome!” Alex said. “I’m in.”

  “We came for a funeral,” Max said. “Not another mission.”

  “Max,” Alex said. “We talked about this.”

  “And I said no.”

  “You said maybe.”

  “I’ll wait here. I’ll talk to Basile’s picture. You go to the Reform Club and let me know what happens.”

  Even though people were wandering out of the service now, Max stood up from the stoop and headed back inside. Behind him he could hear Bitsy whisper, “Is he always this way?”

  “He’s stubborn,” Alex replied. “When he thinks he’s right, he’s impossible.”

  He kept walking. But he was starting to smell ham. He smelled ham when he was confused.

  As he entered the lobby of the funeral home, he caught sight of the photo of Basile on the easel again. His face was framed in a bushy beard, his eyes all crinkly as if he’d just told a joke. Max smiled. He didn’t trust people easily, but there was something about Basile. When the submarine was stuck, Basile had taken him for a walk on the ocean floor in a pressurized suit. Max had learned the name of every specimen they’d seen. Basile had broken off exotic pieces of coral for Max. Including a very special yellow one that looked like a mass of fingers. “Isis hippuris . . .” Max murmured. “Sea fan.”

  As he got closer, he realized that Basile’s eyes were staring straight back at him. He could have sworn they had been looking off to the left when he first saw the photo.

  It had to be a trick of the light.

  He felt his skin prickle. Really, it was more than his eyes. Basile’s entire face was sharper, more vibrant. It radiated warmth, as if the pixels had been swapped out with real flesh, bone, and blood. It looked so alive, Max half expected Basile to burst from the easel with a big “Haw!”

  People were swarming past either side of the photo now, leaving the service, talking solemnly, checking their phones. Max caught a quick glimpse of Gloria Bentham, still in the room where the service had taken place. A sour-looking man walked past him, complaining to a companion about how long the service had taken. None of them—not one—was talking about Basile.

  “You were an explorer,” Max whispered to the still, smiling portrait. “That’s why you worked for Niemand. You called him Stinky. But you didn’t want to make people slaves, like he did. You wanted to find new things. You wanted to do good and help people—even when you were sick.” He paused, as if the photo would answer him back, which felt a little silly. “I’m not brave like you. Alex wants me to do this crazy thing. But I don’t know . . .”

  Max stood motionless, his eyes locked on the portrait’s. In his mind, he heard Evelyn’s words. It’s important to remember people after they go. That’s how they live on, inside you.

  But he was hea
ring them spoken with Basile’s voice.

  Max turned. He pushed his way back out the door and began running as fast as he could after Bitsy’s green Volvo, which was climbing a hill to his left.

  “Wait for me!”

  7

  NOT knowing what exactly to say to a room full of cigar-smoking old men in red leather chairs surrounded by bookcases, Max opted for the first question that popped into his head. “Who farted?”

  “Beg pardon?” said Howell, the tuxedo-clad man who had let them into the Reform Club. His eyes were wide with shock, his face tilted stiffly as if to balance strings of hair combed across his bald head like a musical staff.

  An elderly man, who seemed to have melted into his seat, raised his sleepy head. His face was papery and mottled, and he cast a glassy-eyed look at Max. As if he’d saved up all his energy for this moment, he spat out a loud “Ha!” Then he sagged again, his eyes falling shut.

  “Well, you excited Queasly with that remark,” said a broad-shouldered man with a trim brown beard and tightly gelled hair. He stood from his seat and held out a hand to Max. “That counts for something. Afternoon. I am the club’s vice chairman and chief archivist, W. Prescott Wooster.”

  “That’s your first name, W?” Max asked.

  Alex gave him a swift kick in the shins. “He’s Max Tilt. I’m Alex Verne.”

  “And I’m Elizabeth Crowninshield Bentham,” said Bitsy, holding out her hand. “But please call me Bitsy.”

  Walking toward them was an older man with a shock of silver-white hair that rose thickly on his head like a coconut muffin. “To what do we owe the pleasure of a visit by these American gold diggers?”

  “Glimp, be a gentleman,” said Wooster.

  The other men in the room were coming to life now, murmuring to one another. Max couldn’t hear the words but it sounded like “Humph humph . . . grabble grabble . . . fuff fuff fuff.”

  “You were right, Alex,” he said. “They do say that!”

  Glimp raised a monocle to his eye and stared at Max. “Whot whot?”

  “May I interject?” said Bitsy. “My friends have come with a simple question. It seems they’ve found evidence of a manuscript lost to the ages but perhaps secreted right here at the Reform Club. It was left by none other than Jules Verne.”

  The men all fell silent. Max could feel their glares burning into his and Alex’s faces.

  “What she said,” Alex squeaked.

  “I assume you want to sell it, do you? One tidy fortune isn’t enough?” hissed Glimp, stepping closer to Max. “What has the world come to? You, young man—I’d think you would be a bit young for this class of shenanigans.”

  As Max backed away, Wooster stepped between them. He pulled a gold-chained watch from his pocket and announced, “Gentlemen! I believe our customary glorious lunch is served in the Corinthian Room.”

  Grumbling, the men rose from their seats. Two of them flanked old Queasly’s chair and began shouting into the old man’s ear.

  “Up and at ’em, young fellow!”

  “Today’s your dancing day!”

  “Dolores . . .” Queasly muttered in his sleep. “Is that you, Dolores?”

  As the two men laughed, Wooster turned away. “Come,” he said over his shoulder.

  He led Max, Alex, and Bitsy out of the drawing room and into a smaller empty chamber. It smelled of cigars, its dark-green walls festooned with framed paintings of hunting scenes and basset hounds. The patterned carpet was thick but badly worn out, and at the center was a solid oak table surrounded by six chairs. “I apologize for the frosty reception,” Wooster said. “We don’t reveal our ages here, but I regret that some of these men behave as if they were alive during the nineteenth century, when your ancestor Jules Verne graced these old rooms. Some grudges die hard, I’m afraid.”

  “What grudges?” Alex asked.

  “He made an agreement to write two books,” Max added. “And he did it—didn’t he?”

  Wooster took a deep breath. “Very good. You’ve done your homework. One of those books was Around the World in 80 Days, to everyone’s delight. But the other book—the actual account of his voyage—that was a bit of a problem. Verne did not do the writing himself, but assigned it to his nephew Gaston, who accompanied him.”

  “I could have told you that,” Max said.

  “This trickery may have been forgiven, all things considered,” Wooster went on, “but as it happened, this Gaston provided not a book but a one-page list. He said the list contained hints to the secret findings of the voyage. However, upon opening it, the club was dismayed to see that it was utter gibberish! A secret code, Verne claimed. The club would need a cryptographer—not even for the book, mind you, but for a list of findings! The whole thing was a mockery. You can imagine the perplexity of the club officers. And here is where things went very wrong. Verne demanded a payment, otherwise he would withhold the key to this code. Only if the club solved it would he release the book. In other words, a ransom!”

  “I would have given him the money,” Max said.

  “Indeed?” Wooster said. “Well, we are gentlemen, and gentlemen do not welsh on agreements. Nor do they extort money.”

  “Did anyone try to break the code, without the key?” Max asked.

  “The members, at that point, had lost faith in Verne,” Wooster said. “They did not believe his story. If Verne had succeeded in finding the so-called magical waters, why would he ask for this money? The club had agreed to share any profits, and a discovery of this magnitude would have made him rich beyond his wildest dreams! The club reasoned that Gaston, being a deranged fellow, may have filled the pages with doodles, blatherings, meat drippings—and Verne was too embarrassed to admit it. But most likely he had simply failed to find the mystical serum. After all, no one ever saw it! By asking for a payment he knew the club would not give, Verne would save face. No one would expose him as a failure. And he would never have to provide a key that did not exist.”

  “What if the club had called his bluff?” Alex asked. “What if they’d given him the money?”

  Wooster shrugged. “If, if, if. We can never know if, can we? The club held on to this infernal list, in the hopes that Verne might relent. Surely if his voyage was successful, if he’d indeed found this miraculous cure, he would come clean. But this did not happen. The list was deemed worthless and forgotten. It eventually made its way into the archives. Of which I am the current keeper.”

  “Can we see it?” Max asked.

  Wooster gave him a sharp look. For a moment he said nothing, as if searching for words. Then he reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a thick ring of keys. “If you insist.”

  They followed the man to the opposite end of the room, where he opened a padlock on a thick wooden door. A musty smell wafted out as he flicked on a light switch and then descended a stairwell. Max followed first, with Alex and Bitsy behind him. The rickety stairs creaked loudly, swaying side to side, as Wooster batted away cobwebs. At the bottom, he turned on another switch. Before them, lit by harsh fluorescent lights, was a low-ceilinged basement with tightly arranged rows of shelves. On the shelves were musty books, wooden and cardboard boxes, and bundled stacks of paper.

  The lights let out a soft buzz as Wooster led them around the stairs and into an open area. In the center was a simple table that contained a thick, leather-bound book. Around it were several metal chairs, and against the wall was a set of dark wooden cabinets.

  Wooster flipped open the book. “I apologize. We intend to digitize these records in the coming years, but it’s been hard to drum up support among the members. They’re used to the old system. It suits them.”

  Max, Alex, and Bitsy gathered around, looking over Wooster’s shoulder. “About fifty years ago,” he went on, thumbing quickly through the pages, “the archives surpassed the limits of this space. Papers were stacked floor to ceiling, a real fire hazard. It is rumored one of the members died down here and wasn’t found for weeks. So the club und
ertook a cleanup. Anything deemed inferior quality was purged. The rest was organized precisely so every item could be easily found.”

  He lay the book open and pointed to an item on a long list.

  RCQ Cleanup Records V1/2Q Row 34 Box 115

  “That’s Gaston’s list?” Max asked.

  “It is the record of how the archives are arranged,” Wooster said, jogging away into the catacombs of the basement. “I shall be right back.”

  “This is thrilling!” Bitsy squealed. “May I join you? I love old catacombs.”

  “No harm in that!” Wooster said.

  As she scooted away, Alex gave Max a look that was excited but also wary. “Do we trust her?” she whispered.

  “I thought you did,” Max said.

  “She’s a stranger,” Alex said.

  “Her mom is Basile’s sister. We like Basile.”

  “But Basile worked for you-know-who. That puts the Benthams one degree of separation from him. I just don’t like it. Let’s keep our eyes and ears open, OK?”

  Max shrugged. “Sure.”

  In a moment, Wooster and Bitsy returned. He was carrying a white box secured with a string, which he quickly untied. Inside was a stack of spiral notebooks. He fingered through and picked out one labeled VOLUME 1, SECOND QUARTER and set it on the table.

  He opened it to the first page. Max’s eyes went right to the handwriting on top:

  The Reform Club

  London

  Organizational Report of Archival Consolidation

  Roderick Chesterton Queasly, Scribe

  “Queasly?” Max said. “Is that—?”

  “The old fellow upstairs who appears to have become part of the furniture?” Wooster said. “Yes. In his time, he was a clever and useful fellow. He masterminded this entire project. This is a record of what happened to all the items during the cleanup.”

  Under the writing was a list in carefully written, tiny letters.

  Misc. photos taken in clubhouse, 1897–99.............Storage

  Annual expense records, 1816–20.............Row 17, Box 30

  List of club menus, 1931–52............. Taken by G. Schermerhorn