by Bill Doyle
Nora rushed to her.
And that’s when it hit me. By cracking this part of the case, I was driving Nora away. Because of me, she will be sent home.
I was sorry to see Nora leave.
AUGUST 4, 1977
10:45 AM
This morning, I helped Nora and James carry their bags downstairs to a waiting taxi, which would take them to the airport. James was already inside the cab. Nora and I stood next to the passenger door.
“So …,” Nora started and her voice trailed off.
I had spent most of last night thinking about things. “So, I believe you. I don’t think you were using me. At least not the whole time.”
Nora’s smile was like a bright bulb flashing to life. “San Francisco isn’t so far from Hartland, Nebraska.”
We both laughed, knowing we might never see each other again.
Her eyes were shiny with tears. “Will you write me?”
“Of course,” I said, and I will.
She gave me a quick peck on the cheek and ducked into the taxi. I could hear her brother telling the driver that his hero was Kojak, the bald detective from TV. He sounded like he had embraced his baldness.
I didn’t even have to look. I knew R.T. was standing behind me, making sure that I was okay.
As I watched the taxi drive away, my brother walked over next to me. “What are you going to do?”
I answered, “What we’ve been trained to do.”
I realized that I’d gotten sidetracked and hadn’t followed up the Histaiaeus clue. I’d been wasting time with our silly plot to shave John’s head. “We need to figure out what that clue really meant.”
We headed back to our room to discuss the case.
“Let’s get Judge involved,” I said.
“Sure …” R.T. didn’t sound convinced.
“What?”
“I mean that would be the right thing to do …,” Said R.T.
“But you don’t think we should.”
R.T. shrugged. “Look, it’s easy for you to say. Nora is gone. But I want to dance tonight. I’m the lead, bro. If we tell Judge, she’s going to pull the plug on the whole thing and ship up back to Nebraska.”
After a moment’s thought, I nodded. “Okay. We’ll keep quiet for now, but we tell her right after the show.”
R.T. gave me a worried smile. “She’s going to be mad.”
I shuddered. I’d seen Judge when she was upset, and it wasn’t pretty.
12:10 PM
The BIG SHOW is just hours away! Not only is it the last show, it’s the one where Mrs. Craffin will be appearing to return the ankh necklace to the Egyptian authorities on live television.
Even though Judge knows the notes to Mrs. Craffin came from Nora, she is still concerned about security. So she changed Mrs. Craffin’s routine and switched the guards around. Frank was replaced by another exhibition guard.
I watched R.T. during dress rehearsal. It looked like he finally had the incredible leap down. He could do it now without even a grunt of effort.
That’s why it was so shocking when Madame Katerina stormed out on the stage.
“What are you doing?” she shouted at R.T.
R.T. made the incredible leap look easy!
“I’m sorry?” R.T. looked stunned.
“This is all wrong!” Madame Katerina announced angrily. “My Muse has made a special daytime visit and spoken to my head. All the dance must be changed!”
I wanted to suggest that someone who heard so many voices in her head might want to think about a visit to the doctor.
Madame Katerina must have sensed a pep talk was in order—either that or face mutiny from her dancers. “That old leap is for little children,” she told R.T. and the others. “You are TEENS FOR TUT. You must dance like the great king! That nine-year-old king would have laughed at your silly efforts! You must jump farther and higher. Now watch as I show how new dance will be done.”
“I… don’t… know… if…,” R.T. started to say an hour later, but he was so out of breath, he couldn’t finish. The two of us were running through the new dance steps on the empty stage again and again.
“Yes, you can do it. We just have to practice,” I told him.
Just then, someone called my name. I turned to find Lucy holding out a letter to me.
“This just came for you,” she said, and scurried off before I could thank her. I looked down at the envelope and the return address.
“Don’t tell me it’s already a note from Nora?” R.T. teased.
“I’m not sure,” I said. I couldn’t make out the postmark, and there was no return address.
“Why don’t you take a break?” R.T. said. “Go back to our room and read your letter.”
Once I was back in our room, I tore open the letter quickly, but I was disappointed to see that it was from King Richard He was writing to me from his hospital bed.
Dear Assistant,
Thanks for the code puzzle you sent to keep me busy while I recover. I think I cracked it.
—King Ridchard
I smiled. Good for Richard. He’d cracked my code. My eyes continued down the page and suddenly, my heart started pounding as I read the rest.
P.S: To answer your question, yes, there was a hieroglyph on the floor next to me. I thought I might have bear hallucinating. But your question spacked a memory. I saw a hand take it away. The Symbol looked like this:
So there had been a hieroglyph!
I deciphered the hieroglyph. It said PORTA.
Porta… porta… porta… What could that mean?
I know of a famous cryptologist named Porta.
TEC TIP
SOUR EGGS
Mix together one ounce of alum and one pint of vinegar. Use the mixture to write a secret message on the shell. The mixture will disappear through the porous shell but show up on the hardened egg white inside. All the recipient has to do is peel off the shell to read message! This clever trick was invented by sixteenth-century Italian scientist Giovanni Porta.
The egg!
I thought about the egg that R.T. had been about to eat on the bus. He had snuck it from somewhere, but I never found our where. Had he eaten it yet?
There was one way to find out.
I walked slowly to the mini refrigerator that we kept in our room.
The egg was still there. With a slightly trembling hand, I reached out and took the egg.
Just from the solid weight of it, I could tell it had been hardboiled.
I tapped the shell on the corner of the refrigerator, and a spiderweb of cracks appeared on its surface. Slowly, carefully, I peeled the shell from the egg.
I forced myself to remove the entire shell before examining the white surface of the hardened egg.
And sure enough, I found a message written there.
It read:
FAIL AND PAY THE PRICE!
1:15 PM
Is the person sending these messages causing the accidents?
I wish I had someone to bounce ideas around with. But I decided to let R.T. keep rehearsing.
I opened up my notebook and started making a list of suspects. I listed the ones I could by last name first, thinking this would be a great way to treat each person more objectively. I decided I could rule out anyone who had suffered an accident. I guess they could have faked them, but it seemed unlikely.
Finally, I had to complete my list of possible suspects, and reluctantly added the last name.
MR. MYLES: A strong suspect. The “accidents” and the curse were great ways for him to build publicity. Plus, they were the only way that he could get rid of the people that he had signed contracts with.
MADAME KATERINA: She had wanted to fire Max and Carla—were the “accidents” her way of following her Muse?
MR. MYLES’S ASSISTANT: Lucy always seemed to be around.
FRANK THE SECURITY GUARD: Also always around when “accidents” occur.
MOORIE, R.T.
Suddenly, I flashed back to
the faceless villain who kept appearing in my dreams about Sherlock Holmes. It was Moriarty. Had my code-breaking mind been solving the case the whole time? Had it been trying to tell me the answer to the mystery?
I wrote a new line:
MORIARTY = MOORIE, R.T.
Suddenly, everything made way too much sense, and images flashed through my mind. My brother telling me he would do anything to be the lead dancer. My brother pulling me back before I could try to save Carla. My brother daring Max to go outside on the skates…
Who would have the most to gain from all the accidents? The answer was obvious: R.T.
“No! That can’t be!” I said out loud. But a voice in my head told me it was true.
Okay, take a breath, I told myself. Just suppose it was true. Why would R.T. leave hieroglyphs behind after the accidents? That didn’t make sense.
But he would never have been lead dancer if Max had not sprained his ankle.
And he had sidetracked me from the Histaiaeus clue. Maybe R.T. had an accomplice, and they communicated by using the hieroglyphs.
Plus, R.T. had the egg.
Could my twin brother be the one behind all this?
No matter what, this egg could have something to do with Mrs. Craffin. She could be in danger. I have to tell Judge.
AUGUST 4, 1977
2:00 PM
I might as well tell the truth. It’s been me this whole time. I’m the one who has been sending the hieroglyphic messages. Now that I have no fear of getting caught, I can tell the truth. I planned the whole caper by myself and pulled it off during the show. I sent the messages out to everyone in the world, and no one even realized it. I am the mastermind!
2:45 PM
My head… my head… is spinning!
I don’t know who left that previous entry, but I surely didn’t! Someone wrote it in my handwriting.
I was just finishing my entry, writing the words “I have to tell Judge,” when someone put something over my nose and mouth, and I lost consciousness.
When I woke up, my head was resting on top of my journal. I flipped through it groggily, and that’s when I discovered that the previous entry had been forged.
Someone was trying to frame me for the accidents and for a crime that will take place during the show!
I looked at my watch. I must have woken up early, because the show had not even started yet. There was still time for me to stop whatever it was that was about to happen!
But who knows my handwriting? Who would want me out of the way?
The only person who could gain from something like this is my brother, R.T.
When I got to the stage, everyone was rushing about, preparing for the show. The live audience was being led to their seats.
Mrs. Craffin might be the target of the “caper” mentioned in the false journal entry. No matter what loyalty I have to my brother, I had to tell Mrs. Craffin to get out of the building.
But as I got close, I realized it was Judge—in disguise!
When she saw the recognition in my eyes, she held a finger to her lips, indicating I should speak quietly.
“Where’s Mrs. Craffin?” I whispered.
Judge disguised as Mrs. Craffin
Judge smiled and leaned closer to me so on one could overhear. “She is safe until she is to make her appearance. I wasn’t feeling right about all the accidents lately and wanted to take some precautions, like switching the security guards around and wearing this disguise.”
What a relief! Mrs. Craffin was out of danger. The urgency had been removed. I still had time to investigate and warn Judge before Mrs. Craffin made her appearance.
Judge’s blue eyes were staring at me. “Are you all right, Zeke?”
What to do? Should I reveal what I thought my brother might be up to? That seemed wrong until I was sure of what was happening.
I plastered a big fake smile on my face, and hoped it looked a little convincing. “I’m fine. I just have to straighten something out.”
Before Judge could say another word, I rushed off, looking for R.T.
I knew where I’d find him.
I went behind the curtain where the other dancers were warming up. But there was no sign of R.T. The floor lights had been plugged in, and as I watched their feet, I thought more about the forged entry in my journal, especially the line: “I sent the messages out to everyone in the world.”
But how? On the TV show? How would you be able to send a message to the whole world without anyone on the show or in the audience or at home knowing it?
It wasn’t like a telegraph system where I could just follow the wire that led from the sender to the receiver.
Or was it?
I watched the feet tapping on the dance floor.
Tapping.
And then it hit me—the dance floor!
Of course!
The dance floor served as a telegraph!
The dance floor was actually like a telegraph machine, and the feet of the dancers were like transmitters, tapping out messages.
While I was helping R.T. learn the latest dance, I had memorized the steps, and so I started to decode the pattern of the floor.
The message I uncovered knocked me to knees. I was trembling when the skinny chorus girl put her hand on my shoulder.
“Zeke? What is it?”
I couldn’t answer her.
“My brother,” I managed to say. “I have to find my brother and stop him—”
“Did you say your brother?” she asked, her eyes getting all dreamy. “Not that I’m watching him constantly or anything, but I just saw him.”
“Where?” I asked.
She answered, “He went into the control room a few minutes ago.”
Mr. Myles was unconscious!
AUGUST 4, 1977
2:55 PM
I burst into the control room.
R.T. was there in full costume except for his mask, which sat on the counter behind him. He was standing next to Madame Katerina. They both looked up in shock. They were standing over the slumped body of Mr. Myles.
Chloroform sat on the desk in front of them.
“What did you do to Mr. Myles?” I demanded. “R.T., answer me.”
R.T. looked stunned. “You don’t think I did it, do you?”
There wasn’t time to worry about his hurt feelings. “What happened to him?”
“Chloroform. He should be okay in about an hour,” R.T. said. “Enigma … Zeke, you DO think I did it!”
“I just read the forged entry in my diary. I found your egg and the message written on it.”
“What did it say?” Madame Katerina asked.
I glanced back at R.T. “I don’t know,” I told her. “It was written in Japanese.”
Madame Katerina shook her head. “That’s impossible—”
She clamped her mouth shut, and her eyes went wide. But it was too late. She had given herself away. R.T. was innocent. The villain was Madame Katerina!
“R.T., run!” I shouted and turned toward the door.
Madame Katerina spoke with such cold venom, she stopped me in my tracks. “Close the door. You’re not going anywhere.” Her Russian accent had completely disappeared.
When I looked at her again, she had pulled a short dagger out of her cane. She waved it in the air, motioning for me to do as she said.
After I closed the door, I turned back to her. “Who are you working for? Who is your MUSE?”
Madame Katerina said, “I don’t know their real names. Only that they promised me buckets of money and a ticket out of here, out of this stupid job. I had no direct communication with them. They sent me the original key to send a message using the dance floor. That key had to remain the same no matter what.”
“What messages have you been sending out?”
Madame Katerina shrugged. “Every night, Mr. Myles showed the Secret Map Box. Afterward, Frank locked the box back in its display case and used a new combination to lock the case. Then he wrote the combination inside
the cover of the book he was reading. I would take a peek early the next day and change the choreography so that we were sending out the new combination to the lock. The robbers were supposed to get the combination and use it to steal the box.”
“So why have you had to do this all more than once?” I asked. “Why didn’t they just use the first combination you sent?”
Madame Katerina’s expression turned to rage. “The messages kept going out garbled or incomplete. First, the lighting designer messed up the lights, then Carla mixed up the music and the dancers skipped some steps, and finally, Max couldn’t do the dance needed to send out the message. And the people I work for got angrier and angrier. They would cause ‘accidents’ and leave me secret, coded messages. They are worried about being detected, so I had to use hieroglyphs to crack the code. But they all said pretty much the same thing.
Automatically, I said, “‘Fail and pay the price.’”
Madame Katerina looked impressed. “That’s right. And I’m not going to fail them again. But it won’t be easy. Thanks to your friend Justine Pinkerton, the security guards have been switched. The new guard memorized the new combination and didn’t write it down. So I don’t know the new combination to unlock the display case. The dance tonight tells them that.”
That didn’t make sense to me. “But that will make them even angrier, won’t it?”
Madame Katerina smiled. “I find honesty is the best policy, don’t you?” She held out her hands like a small child who’s been caught with cookie crumbs on her face. “The fact the guards were switched is not my fault. I know my employers are desperate to prevent anyone other themselves from opening that box. If they can’t get to the Secret Map Box, they will not allow it to be unlocked. I imagine they will do the next best thing to keep the box from being opened.”