Melvin shoved Caitlin aside and spun around with a backhand swipe of his knife. Phil sprang back as the keen steel opened a gash in the sleeve of his jacket.
“Come on, chump,” Melvin growled, beckoning with the blade.
A deafening blast shook the room. Chunks of plaster fell from the ceiling. The smell of cordite hung in the air.
Harold Hargrave stood in front of his chair, pointing the revolver at the two combatants. “Step back, McKnight.”
Phil took Caitlin’s hand and they rejoined Leo and Teddy.
The chief curator turned to Melvin. “Behave yourself or I swear I’ll use this gun on you too.”
“Sorry. I just wanted to teach him a lesson.”
“I fail to see how stabbing Mr. McKnight can serve a didactic purpose.”
“I wasn’t gonna kill him. I just wanted to make him bleed.”
“I’m sorry, Melvin, but there’s no time for wanton barbarity. As the Preacher says, ‘To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted’; and most important, ‘a time to get, and a time to lose.’”
“Ecclesiastes,” Leo observed. “I see you’ve been perusing that King James Bible Prospero gave you, Professor.”
Hargrave smiled indulgently at Leo’s remark. “Yes, and it appears that this is my time to get and your time to lose. One might say it’s your day of reckoning.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Leo said. “I know a few lines from Ecclesiastes too: ‘I saw under the sun the place of judgment, that wickedness was there; and the place of righteousness, that iniquity was there.’”
A dry, crackling laugh erupted from the chief curator’s mouth. “Very adroit banter, Leo. Unfortunately, rhetoric won’t alter the outcome of this literary treasure hunt.” From a pocket inside his trenchcoat Hargrave removed an envelope and held it up before the group. “It’s too bad, really, that you worked so hard only to fail dismally. I have all your papers right here: Prospero’s letter, with your notes on his ciphers; the three fragments of the Shakespeare letter; and now the priceless manuscript itself. And what do all of you have? Nothing.”
Caitlin gasped. “That envelope was in Carmen’s safe! How did you get it?”
“Melvin’s more dexterous than he appears, Ms. Ciccone. I must thank you for keeping all the pertinent papers in one place. It was quite helpful in deducing where you were headed tonight.”
“But how did you find out about Prospero’s letter, anyway?” Phil asked.
The librarian looked at him imperiously. “Does my perspicacity surprise you?”
“No, but I think you owe us an explanation,” Leo said.
Hargrave grinned. “It would be a pleasure to explain how I outfoxed you.” He sat down again in the club chair, crossed his legs, and rested the revolver in his lap. “Make yourself comfortable for a minute,” he told Melvin, “while I endeavor to enlighten these poor simpletons.”
Melvin seated himself in a chair nearer the group, his eyes trained on Phil and his switchblade at the ready.
Hargrave set the envelope down on the manuscript, which lay on the table beside his chair. “When Reggie delivered Prospero’s gifts to the executors the day before our first meeting, I took the precaution of examining each one before locking them in the closet of the Bohring Conference Room. You see, I never trusted the old man. He was an incorrigible practical joker, and I had already been grievously deceived by him once. Naturally, I wasn’t about to let him have a posthumous laugh at my expense, so I opened the letters.
“When I saw that Prospero intended to bequeath a special prize to Leo, I couldn’t help but wonder about its nature and monetary value. Given Prospero’s renown for munificence, I knew the gift would be very generous indeed. I thought, ‘Why should a mere undergraduate receive this treasure? Wouldn’t justice be better served if it were given to someone more meritorious, someone who had sweated and toiled in the world of books and devoted his life to knowledge?"’
“And you decided that someone should be you,” Phil said, making Hargrave’s implication explicit.
“I didn’t decide. I knew. This invaluable document deserves my guardianship as much as I deserve its rewards. Would you prefer that it belong to some insignificant pedant or, worse, fall into the frivolous and capricious hands of the vulgar, unenlightened masses? I can imagine no greater tragedy or injustice.”
“So you believe you’re acting in the interests of justice?” Caitlin asked incredulously.
“I was in the right place at the right time. I saw an opportunity I had earned and I seized it. That, Ms. Ciccone, is justice.”
Caitlin rolled her eyes, disgusted by Hargrave’s arrogance. “How virtuous!” she said ironically.
Leo looked Hargrave in the eye. “So, you kept Prospero’s letter, forged a replacement, and put it in my book. Then, when I came to your office to tell you I suspected something was wrong, you implicated Teddy and tried to blame the deception on him.”
“Can you think of a more suitable scapegoat?” Hargrave asked with a supercilious smile. “After all, he was threatening to sue the college. In fact, he tried to get me to enter into collusion with him. He wanted me to use my influence as principal executor to persuade the committee to settle his suit by liquidating a million dollars’ worth of items in Prospero’s collection. He promised me a kickback and said he planned to keep half the money for himself.”
“That’s a lie,” Teddy protested. “You wanted me to drop the suit because you were afraid I’d win and you’d lose your precious collection.” He sniggered and looked at Leo. “He tried to bribe me by offering me books. Can you believe that?”
“A valiant effort, Teddy,” Hargrave said, “but you’re hardly the master of duplicity your grandfather was. The truth is that you and your pathetic secret society are in financial straits because of your obsessive gambling and intemperate speculation in the stock market.”
Caitlin cut in. “We found Prospero’s letter in a book on Shakespeare that Phil took out of the library. It’s by Margaret Hargrave. Is she your wife?”
“Was. She died a year and a half ago. She was a prominent Shakespearean scholar. It’s a pity she isn’t here to share the thrill of my discovery tonight.”
“You mean your theft. It was our discovery,” Leo said bitterly.
Hargrave’s thin lips stretched into a grin. “The rest of the world will never know that.”
“How did Prospero’s letter get into your wife’s book?” Caitlin asked.
“I hid it there temporarily, just before I was assaulted in my office. When I got back from CHS the next morning, the book and the letter were gone. So I hired Melvin to search Leo’s room. Unfortunately Leo returned unexpectedly and Melvin had to take drastic measures. When I realized that whoever attacked me either wasn’t looking for the letter or didn’t find it, I figured a staff person must have reshelved the book without my authorization, which turned out to be the case.”
“The question is,” Caitlin said, “if Teddy didn’t attack you, and obviously Leo didn’t, then who did?”
The chief curator pressed the tips of five spidery fingers against his forehead. “I don’t know. Maybe one of them is lying. It doesn’t matter now.”
Leo wasn’t so sure about that. Something told him there was still a wild card left to be played in this game.
“So you traced the book to me through the library’s records and had Melvin search my room,” Phil said.
Hargrave nodded. “After I knew who my adversaries were, it was easy, with Melvin’s assistance, to keep up with you. Although I didn’t have the map, I knew it was only a matter of time before you’d lead me to the treasure.”
“What do you plan to do now?” Caitlin asked, afraid that she already knew the answer.
The librarian leaned back in his chair, his eyes suffused with the glow of triumph. “I’m an orderly person. I don’t like t
o leave any messes.” He turned to his accomplice and nodded.
“If you think you’re going to get away with this, Professor Hargrave, you’re wrong,” Caitlin said. “You can’t silence the truth. Besides, people know where we are. I’m sure they’ll be here any minute.”
“Maybe so, Ms. Ciccone,” Hargrave said, getting to his feet. “But by the time your rescuers arrive, if they do arrive, you can rest assured that all your ‘truth’ will have gone up in smoke.” He reached into the pocket of his trenchcoat and produced a quart-sized glass bottle. “Gasoline,” he said. He unscrewed the cap and took a whiff. “High octane.”
Melvin removed several pairs of handcuffs from his jacket and rattled them cheerfully as he approached the group. While he handcuffed Caitlin to Teddy and Teddy to a metal ring on the mantel of the fireplace, Hargrave worked his way around the perimeter of the room, pouring a thin stream of the combustible amber liquid onto the carpet.
“I think we’re ready,” he said as he splashed the last few drops at the four students’ feet.
Suddenly the door to the library opened and a sonorous voice boomed from the hallway.
“Cease and desist, you despicable scoundrel!”
Chapter 31
Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble
An ancient, wizened man shuffled into the room, supporting his stooped and shriveled frame with a stout oaken staff. A long oilskin cloak hung from his hunched shoulders. His face was sallow and deeply wrinkled; his cheeks were sunken and his crown was entirely bald. But for his eyes, which twinkled roguishly, he was a picture of death.
“Professor?” Leo cried.
“Prospero?” gasped Hargrave.
“Oh my God, it’s a ghost!” Teddy screamed.
“No more an apparition than you are,” said Reginald Burton-Jones, stepping into the room behind Prospero.
“I can’t believe you’re alive,” Leo said.
“What the devil are you doing alive?” Hargrave demanded.
“Don’t you remember The Tempest, Harold? I’ve come to play the good magician to your scurrilous, usurping Antonio.”
Melvin abandoned Teddy and lumbered to Hargrave’s side. “You want me to handle these clowns?” he asked, cocking a thumb at Prospero and Burton-Jones.
Prospero looked at the bestial henchman. “Ah, I see we have already cast our Caliban,” he quipped.
“Just a moment,” the librarian told Melvin. “This is an interesting development in the plot. Let’s see where it leads.”
“I don’t get it,” Teddy said, aghast at the sight of his grandfather returned from the grave. “How did you manage to fake your death?”
Prospero shook his head ruefully. “Obviously you still haven’t read Romeo and Juliet.”
Teddy scowled defiantly and looked away.
“Did you drink something, like Juliet, that made you appear dead?” Caitlin asked.
The old man nodded. “Yes. As you remember, Friar Laurence gives Juliet an elixir that will put her in a state of suspended animation. ‘In this borrowed likeness of shrunk death,’ he instructs her, ‘thou shalt continue two-and-forty hours, and then awake as from a pleasant sleep.’”
“Where did you get this elixir?” Phil asked.
“On one of my archaeological expeditions I came to know a group of Yaqui Indians in Sonora, Mexico. They had maintained their primordial ways, living an austere existence entirely isolated from society. Among them was an old soothsayer and savant who knew the many secrets of roots and cacti and herbs. During one of their sacred ceremonies he gave me an acrid potion to drink. I didn’t know what it was, but not wanting to offend him, I took it.
“When I awakened, I felt strangely rejuvenated. I was told that I had died and that my soul had sojourned in the house of the spirits and returned two days later, reborn. I was so impressed by this potent bit of wizardry that I persuaded the shaman to give me the recipe. To feign my death, I simply procured the necessary ingredients and repeated the procedure. Reggie handled all the bureaucratic details, of course—the death certificate, cemetery plot, and so forth.”
“An enchanting tale,” Hargrave said, his voice reeking with sarcasm. “It’s too bad you had to come back to life.”
“Too bad for your avaricious schemes, perhaps,” Prospero said, shaking his staff at the librarian. “I’d hoped for a tranquil and obscure retirement, but when Reggie apprised me of Leo’s visit to your office, I suspected you had uncovered my coded letter to Leo and were attempting to subvert my plans. I was compelled to intervene. I instructed Reggie to try to recover the original, which resulted in your being chloroformed.”
“See, I told you I had nothing to do with that,” Teddy said.
Prospero gave his grandson a contemptuous look. “That may be true, Teddy, but it hardly exonerates you from the host of improprieties you’ve committed, all of which have debased the Prospero name.” He turned toward Caitlin and Phil. “At any rate, it was fortuitous, and in this case most fortunate, that my letter wound up in the hands of Leo’s resourceful friends, Mr. McKnight and Ms. Ciccone.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, sir,” Phil said, “in your condition how did you . . . how could you know . . .”
Caitlin interrupted. “Let me clarify Phil’s question. After we got your letter to Leo, how were you able to follow what we were doing and know we’d be in Tooth and Nail tonight?”
“Ariel,” Prospero said, extending a gnarled hand in the direction of Burton-Jones. “Like Shakespeare’s Prospero, I had a covert and discreet assistant. Reggie was my eyes and ears and, in not a few cases, my hands and feet.”
Burton-Jones chuckled. “It was my pleasure, considering the magnanimity you showed me in your will.”
“My will, of course, was not to die but to disappear,” Prospero said. “After all,” he added in a droll tone, a wry smile spreading across his wrinkled face, “death is a rather irrevocable event that tends to lend an air of finality to things. It’s curious, but people are more likely to take you seriously when you’re dead than when you’re alive. All in all, I felt there were singular advantages to appearing to have made my exit while remaining onstage, as it were.”
Hargrave sighed and sat down in a club chair. “Since you’re so loquacious, Professor, why don’t you turn your gift of gab to a subject that I’m curious about. This remarkable manuscript—how did you ever manage to obtain it?”
“I’d be glad to tell you that story,” Prospero said, “but I’m afraid I must rest my decrepit old bones. May I sit down?”
Hargrave acquiesced and Burton-Jones helped the old man get seated.
“In June of 1973,” Prospero began, his resonant voice filling the room and showing none of the ravages of time that had debilitated his once sturdy and vigorous physique, “I was invited to attend an academic conference in the north of England and deliver a paper entitled ‘The Ontology of Place: Landscapes in English Literature.’ As you know, these conferences are not wholly devoted to studious endeavors.
“One night I found myself at the gaming table. There were four of us playing: a cold-eyed fellow named Benjamin Bulben from Trinity College, Dublin, who was a specialist on William Butler Yeats; some ostentatious fop from the Continent who claimed he was Baron-Something-or-Other—the exact title escapes me now; and a roly-poly young Welshman who fancied himself a poet. He was an impetuous player and drank heavily at the table. He had pluck, I’ll grant him that. During one hand he tried to bluff me by betting a huge amount of money on nothing but a pair of fives.”
“I don’t have time for senile digressions,” Hargrave interrupted. “Get to the point, and try to be concise.”
Professor Prospero gave the chief curator an obliging smile. “This fellow, who had recently come into a sizable estate, ended up owing me quite a sum. When I mentioned that I collected books, he said that his inheritance had included a fine library, and he proposed that I take my pick of it in lieu of cash. As one who has found many treasures in unexpected places,
I agreed to the arrangement without reservation.
“At first, however, I was sorely disappointed. The young man’s collection, not unlike the one you see here in this room, had more than its share of undistinguished volumes and worthless junk. But something told me not to give up. Finally, in a dusty corner of the attic, underneath a pile of old records of negligible value, I found the extraordinary manuscript now resting on that table.”
“What about Shakespeare’s letter to Rowena and Hester?” Leo asked, gesturing toward the envelope lying on top of the manuscript. “How did you come across that?”
The lines on Prospero’s face deepened as he smiled. “To my utter astonishment and delight, the three fragments were tucked right inside the manuscript of the play. It was, as they say, a veritable gold mine.”
“Precisely what I was thinking,” Hargrave said. “Why on earth did you keep these manuscripts so long? You could have sold them for a fortune or used the discovery to further your career.”
“This may be hard for you to understand, Harold, but I had no desire for money or fame. When the materials came into my hands, I was about to retire. My wealth was already great, and as a scholar I had long since established my niche in academia. The last thing I wanted was to be in the midst of the tumult such a revelation would inevitably ignite around the world.
“And so, although I had always intended to share my discovery, I found myself constantly putting off the difficult decision of how and when to do it. My procrastination was exacerbated by my growing fear of the evil that would ensue should these texts fall into the corrupt hands of those who would exploit them for personal gain. I felt compelled to protect these wondrous documents, even if that meant withholding them from conscientious scholars with the most upright and lofty intentions.”
The old professor sighed deeply and shifted in his seat. “Months turned into years and the years into two decades. Then one day, after coming through a bad bout of pneumonia, I realized something had to be done, for my days were surely numbered. It irked me to think that I would die and the letter and manuscript might be lost again on account of my indecision; after all, they had already languished in obscurity for nearly four hundred years. Finally, I devised a plan.
Tooth and Nail: A Novel Approach to the SAT (A Harvest Test Preparation Book) Page 26