Tooth and Nail: A Novel Approach to the SAT (A Harvest Test Preparation Book)

by Charles Harrington Elster

  “Of course. It’s on the wall over there by the door.” Torres watched him walk to the phone and pick up the receiver. “What do you have up your sleeve, Leo?”

  He checked his watch. “The gallery opens at noon on Sundays, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s 11:25 now. I’m going to call Caitlin and Phil and tell them to meet us there in twenty minutes.”

  Chapter 27

  Operation Ganymede

  Outside the entrance to the Holyfield Art Gallery a small crowd had gathered, waiting for the doors to open. Caitlin, Phil, Leo, and Carmen Torres sat together on the steps, quietly plotting how to proceed with what Phil had already facetiously dubbed “Operation Ganymede.”

  “You said it was hanging in the lobby?” Caitlin asked.

  “That’s right,” Leo said. “As you go in it’s on the right, just past the information desk. You can’t miss it. It’s big.”

  “I don’t know how we’re going to search a painting that’s in the middle of the lobby,” Caitlin said. “Everybody and his mother will be walking by.” She waved a hand at the entrance. “Look at all those people waiting to get in.”

  “She’s right, Leo,” Torres said. “Sundays are busy here, and I imagine especially so today because of this popular exhibit on Elizabethan artists for the festival. On top of that impediment there’ll be gallery workers just a few feet away at the information desk. They’ll have a great view of us.”

  “And don’t forget the security guards,” Phil said. “I’m sure they won’t appreciate it if we start monkeying around with the merchandise.”

  “No kidding,” said Caitlin. “There might even be some kind of alarm system too.”

  “I think we’re okay there,” Torres said. “They do have an alarm system but the gallery director once told me that they activate it only when the building’s closed.” She looked at Leo. “I trust you’re not planning to do anything unethical.”

  Leo chuckled. “I’m certainly not going to try to steal the painting or dismantle it, if that’s what you’re implying. But I think we’ll have to figure out a way to look behind the frame, because it seems to me that’s the only place on a painting you can hide anything. So I guess we’ll need to move it a little, which clearly is a problem since we’ll be so conspicuous.”

  “What if we try this later, maybe around closing time?” Caitlin suggested. “There might be fewer people then.”

  “Perhaps,” Torres said, “but that’s when the guards and gallery workers are intent on getting everyone out and closing up the building, so they’re likely to be even more vigilant.”

  “Then there’s only one other way to go,” Leo said. He paused, and everyone looked at him expectantly. “We’ll have to create a diversion.”

  “What kind of diversion?” Phil asked.

  “A big one. Something that will wreak enough havoc to get everyone’s attention and hold it for a couple of minutes while we check out the painting.”

  “That sounds more like a disturbance than a diversion,” Torres said.

  Caitlin looked at Leo. “Do you have something in mind?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. It’s pretty outrageous, but it just might work.”

  Forty minutes later, Leo and Phil returned from Ericson Hall accompanied by a beefy student with long dark hair slicked back and tied in a ponytail. Although it was warm, he wore an oversized army-surplus trenchcoat with the collar turned up.

  The threesome trotted up the art gallery steps and approached Caitlin and Torres.

  “We were beginning to wonder if you boys had given up and gone for lunch,” Torres said.

  “Sorry we took so long. Max was in the shower when we got there,” Leo explained. “We had to wait till he got dressed.”

  Torres extended her hand to the newcomer. “Hi, I’m Carmen Torres. I teach in the English Department.”

  “Max Meyerhoff, sophomore, biology major,” the student said in clipped, nasal tones. He shook Torres’s hand.

  Torres introduced Caitlin, then gave a circumspect look around the gallery steps. “Max,” she said in a low voice, “I presume you have . . . the ‘diversion’?”

  “Right here where it’s cozy,” Max said, patting a bulge under his lapel. “And by the way, his name’s Irwin.”

  A few minutes later, after settling the last few details of their plan, the five members of Operation Ganymede entered the Holyfield Art Gallery.

  Once inside the commodious lobby, the group split up.

  Max headed for the marble staircase at the far end and climbed the steps to the landing. He turned and leaned nonchalantly over the balustrade.

  Torres approached the circular information desk in the middle of the lobby, where a man and a woman dispensed brochures and catalogues and answered visitors’ questions. She picked up a catalogue and began thumbing through the pages.

  Phil strolled toward an archway on the left under a banner announcing the gallery’s current exhibit, “Shakespeare’s Colleagues: Artists and Artisans of Elizabethan England.” Next to the archway a stout, impassive security guard stood with her feet apart and her hands behind her back. Phil lingered in the vicinity of the guard, feigning interest in a dour portrait of Queen Elizabeth I that hung on the wall nearby.

  While the others took their positions, Leo led Caitlin to the right side of the lobby and paused in front of an imposing rectangular oil painting, about eight feet long, in an ornate gilded frame. He indicated the bronze plaque on the wall, and Caitlin stepped forward to read it:

  “Ganymede Serving the Olympians”

  Giacomo Bruzzi (1684–1749)

  Gift of Edward Anthony Prospero,

  Distinguished Alumnus and

  Harcourt Professor of English Emeritus,

  Holyfield College

  Donated in 1987

  Caitlin moved back and surveyed the painting. The scene depicted a group of ancient Greek gods and goddesses, dressed in elegant white togas or tunics, enjoying a sumptuous feast while reclining on pillows and divans.

  In the center and foreground of the picture stood a lithe-limbed boy of perhaps thirteen, wearing only a loincloth and leather sandals. He held a pewter pitcher from which he poured an amber liquid into the goblet of an attractive older woman. A strikingly muscular old man with a curly white beard and an imperious expression reclined beside the woman, raising his cup to be served next. Caitlin surmised that the boy was Ganymede, the old man Zeus, god of the heavens, and the woman Hera, queen of the heavens and goddess of women.

  She leaned toward Leo. “The drink Ganymede is serving—is that where the cliché ‘nectar of the gods’ comes from?”

  “Yes. The gods drank nectar and ate ambrosia to ensure their immortality.”

  “I could use a cup of that stuff right now.”

  “Too bad they lost the recipe. Hey, hold on a second, will you?” Leo approached the painting and began making a cursory examination of the frame.

  Caitlin glanced over her shoulder. There were at least fifty people milling around the lobby. She saw Max occupying his vantage point on the landing and Carmen Torres at the information desk, still browsing through the catalogue. She located Phil across the wide room and saw that he was looking at her. When their eyes met, he smiled and gave her a surreptitious thumbs-up sign, which she returned.

  “I don’t see anything on the outside of the frame,” Leo said, appearing at her side. “Are you ready to move?”

  Caitlin nodded.

  Leo touched his index finger to his nose—the signal to begin the “diversion.” Caitlin saw Max touch his nose in response, then sit down on the landing with his feet on one of the steps. She watched him slip a hand under the flap of his trenchcoat. A moment later, from the bottom of the coat, a pointy head emerged, followed by a long, scaly, sinuous body that slithered wildly down the stairs and onto the lobby floor.

  “Look out!” she heard Phil yell right on cue. “There’s a snake in here!”

  Operation
Ganymede was underway.

  At the sound of Phil’s voice, Carmen Torres dropped the catalogue and leapt up onto the information desk like a cat. “Snake!” she shouted, hopping up and down and pointing at the floor. “Snake! Snake!”

  Caitlin marveled at how persuasively Torres played the stereotyped role of a hysterical woman.

  The professor’s shrill cries galvanized the crowd. People pushed and shoved and screamed as they attempted to locate the threat and get out of its path. An erratic wave of people rushing for the double doors collided with the flow of visitors entering through them, causing a human logjam. Phil did everything he could, short of knocking people over, to exacerbate the panic.

  Leo waited until he saw the stout security guard jostling toward the source of the commotion, then turned to Caitlin. “Come on. Let’s go!”

  He grasped the frame of the painting and lifted it several inches away from the wall. “Check back there. Quick! And be careful not to tear the parchment.”

  Caitlin stuck her head behind the painting and peered up and down. Nothing in plain sight. She pulled her head out and reached in with her hand, exploring the back of the canvas and then running her fingers along the inside of the frame. She checked as much area as she could reach, finally stretching on tiptoes to touch the top corner. Nothing.

  She glanced at Leo and shook her head.

  “Try the other side—and hurry!”

  As Caitlin scurried around Leo, she saw the security guard waving her billy club in the air.

  “Calm down, everyone,” the guard commanded. “Everything’s under control.”

  But everything was far from under control. Bodies continued to surge in every direction, and the lobby reverberated with shouts and screams as the shiny blue serpent slithered one way and then the other across the slick marble floor.

  “It’s huge!”

  “It’s coming this way!”

  “It’s going to bite me!”

  Caitlin ducked her head behind the painting. Again, nothing. With one hand she searched every inch of the canvas and frame that she could reach. Still nothing. She could feel drops of sweat beading on her forehead. She wanted to scream with frustration. Where was the stupid piece of parchment?

  Maybe Leo was wrong, she thought as she leaned behind the painting and searched the frame again. Maybe he’d misinterpreted Prospero’s clue. Maybe they’d caused this insane disturbance for nothing, and the whole thing was just a horrible fiasco.

  She heard Leo’s deep voice admonishing her. “C’mon, Caitlin. What’s taking you so long? Time’s running out.”

  On the other side of the room the security guard, with the crowd behind her, now had the big snake cornered.

  “Stand back, everyone,” she warned. “This fella may be poisonous. Just keep back. I’ve already radioed for help.”

  “Kill it!” screeched a woman perched on the information desk next to Torres.

  “Crush its noxious head!” a man bellowed.

  Torres’s stentorian voice rose above the others. “No, don’t touch it! That’s cruelty to reptiles!”

  Phil, who had jockeyed to the front of the crowd, advanced toward the guard. “Hold on a minute, ma’am,” he said calmly. “That snake’s not going to hurt anybody.”

  The guard scowled. “What do you think you’re doing, young man? I told you to keep back. Do you want to get poisoned?”

  “No, he’s right!” Max Meyerhoff said as he broke through the throng. “This wayward creature is my pet.”

  The crowd fell silent as Max brushed past Phil and the guard, lifted the snake from the floor, and slung it over his shoulders.

  “Irwin, you bad boy,” he said, shaking his finger at the snake’s head. “What are you doing here? Don’t you know these awful people were going to kill you?”

  Leo glanced over his shoulder and saw Max holding the snake. “Only a few more seconds, Caitlin. Hurry up!”

  Max turned to face the astonished crowd. “I don’t know why you all got so worked up,” he said, flashing a crooked smile. “Irwin’s just a common blue racer snake, Coluber constrictor flaviventris. You can find them all over the Midwest, from Ohio to Texas. They can get pretty big—as long as six feet—but they’re totally harmless.”

  Leo could hear the crowd beginning to disperse. “Time’s up, Caitlin. Let’s get out of here before somebody sees us.”

  Caitlin sighed and brushed away the damp hair that clung to her face. Then, with her head tilted back, she saw it—the yellowed and ragged edge of a piece of parchment. It was wedged inside a deep crack in the upper corner, between the stretcher and the back of the frame. How could she have missed it?

  She reached up and carefully extracted the fragment with her fingernails. “Leo, wait. Here it is!”

  Chapter 28

  The Method in the Madness

  The afternoon had grown still and dark. Raza the cat sat on the windowsill staring out at the fat raindrops that had just begun to fall, splattering on roofs and sidewalks. Across the street a blue sedan pulled up to the curb and lingered, idling under the branches of a sycamore tree. Raza looked across the study and meowed.

  “Raza, honey, I’m sorry but I’ve already fed you,” Carmen Torres said without looking up from her work. She was sitting at her computer, typing in a final transcription of the writing on the three fragile pieces of parchment that Leo, who was sitting beside her, had assembled on the surface of a clipboard in his lap. He was spelling out the words for her, letter by letter. Caitlin and Phil stood behind them, eagerly watching the message materialize on the screen. They were nearly done.

  “‘Does in play and player too’? It sounds like a double homicide,” Phil remarked.

  Torres looked over her shoulder at Phil. “Or it might be a reference to that disconcerting moment when an actor forgets his lines or falls out of character. The dramatic ‘mask’ comes off, the spell over the audience breaks, and so the play’s ‘done in.’”

  “—e-r, break, t-h-a-n,” Leo dictated.

  “Carmen, that last line looks bungled,” Caitlin said.

  Torres turned around and looked at the screen. She had just typed “R3HD3 95Y34 5YQH.” “Oh lord,” she said.

  “What happened?” Leo asked, taking a look for himself.

  “Wait a second. Let me delete this and then we can go over it again.”

  Torres hit a key and Leo watched the line of gibberish disappear from the screen with a blip. His eyes widened as an idea took hold of him.

  “Okay,” Torres said. “Where were we?”

  “Carmen, is there some way you can retrieve what you just deleted?” Leo’s tone was urgent.

  “I’m afraid not. Why?”

  “Just a hunch. Mind if I use the keyboard?”

  “Go right ahead. But what’s this all about?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” Leo said as they switched seats, “but I think I may have figured out Prospero’s last cipher.” He glanced at the fragment they’d been working on and began to type, slowly pecking the keys with his index fingers. The characters “R3HD3 95Y34 5YQH” appeared on the screen.

  “There,” he said. “Isn’t that what you had before?”

  Torres was amazed. “How did you recall all that from a glimpse?”

  “I didn’t. I reconstructed it.”

  “But it looks like the mess Raza makes when she walks across the keyboard. How could you possibly reconstruct it when there’s no pattern?”

  “Typographical errors are usually random, but this thing’s uniformly off. When you turned to talk to Phil, your hands must have moved one row up and to the left.”

  “So are you saying that the key to the fourth cipher is some kind of keyboard shift?” Torres asked.

  Leo nodded.

  “As usual, Leo, I’m impressed.” Torres got up and crossed the room to the bookcase.

  “Won’t the fourth clue tell us exactly where the treasure is?” Caitlin asked Leo.

  “That’s what I’m hoping.
”

  Torres removed several volumes from the middle shelf of her bookcase, reached through the clearing into a small wall safe, and pulled out Prospero’s letter. “I believe we’ll be needing this,” she said, unfolding it and waving it in the air.

  “Okay, let’s get the cipher on the screen first,” Leo said.

  “And then it’s on to the treasure,” Phil added, rubbing his hands together in expectation.

  Torres sat down and handed Leo the document. He set it on the table and typed in the code for the final clue. It looked like this:

  0813 093W O35534 5Y3 E9D7J3H5 8W

  Q5 YQHE 59 7W3 59 T99E 07409W3.

  “Well, it’s definitely a shift down,” Phil said. “Look at all the numbers. The numbers are on the top row of the keypad.”

  “Let’s try down and to the left then,” Torres suggested.

  Leo hunted and pecked. Caitlin watched the o become a k and the 8 turn into a u. The key below and to the left of i was j. “K-u-j? That’s weird,” she said. “How about down and to the right?”

  This time the results were comprehensible. Phil and Caitlin almost danced with anticipation as the message began to unfold on the screen.

  Like Poe’s letter . . .

  Phil pointed at the screen. “That must be ‘The Purloined Letter’!”

  . . . the document is at hand to use to good purpose.

  “I think I know the very passage,” Torres said, rising from her chair again and striding across the room to the bookcase. “I’ve taught that story to freshmen for years.” She pulled out an old dog-eared anthology and flipped through it. When she found the appropriate page, she read the passage aloud: