The Secret Cellar

by Michael D. Beil

  It could use a thorough cleaning, I decide. There is dried ink all over the gold nib, and the silver trim pieces could use a good polishing. I gently unscrew the barrel and start to wipe the inside with a cotton swab, but then something strange happens. The swab catches on something, and as I pull it out, a rolled-up piece of paper comes with it. At first I think it’s just part of the pen, but as I unroll it, my heart starts ka-thumping away; even before I read it, I’m imagining it to be a secret message of galactic importance.

  Unrolled on my desk, the paper is about six inches long and two inches wide, and desperate to reroll itself into a tube. Across the top, hand-printed in tiny letters, is a short poem:

  Mighty Hector, Caesar, and he,

  Worthy men of antiquity,

  Are but the first of trios three.

  This sheet, aligned on the page

  That begins the tale of his age,

  Reveals advice that is truly sage.

  Below that, twelve rectangular holes have been cut in the paper. All the holes are about one-eighth of an inch wide, but they vary in length, with the longest being about an inch. Their purpose is clear from the poem: place the paper on a certain page of a certain book, and a secret message will appear in the boxes. Of course, finding the right page of the right book is the hard part.

  Unless your name happens to be Margaret Wrobel, that is.

  I call her immediately and tell her about my discovery.

  “I would take a picture of it, but you wouldn’t be able to read the poem, anyway—it’s way too tiny. I didn’t even know it was possible to write that small. What do you think it means?”

  “No idea—yet. But the first part of the poem sounds like a riddle; it can’t be too hard to figure out who the ‘he’ is. My question is, why hide a clue about finding advice in a fountain pen? We don’t really know anything about the guy who owned the pen, other than the fact that he’s dead.”

  “Um, yeah, thanks for reminding me,” I say, a little creeped out.

  “Wait—remember what that lady at the auction said? The last thing he wrote was ‘Look inside.’ What if he meant the pen all along?”

  “Oh, right—she just assumed he meant the metal box that was in his other hand.”

  “Which did have something inside—a woman’s picture,” Margaret reminds me. “I wonder if the two things are related.”

  “What about this ‘first of trios three’ line? What’s up with that?”

  “You’ve got me. It’s all probably nothing. Don’t you have some studying to do?”

  “Nope. I’m done. No worries, mate.”

  “Hmm. We’ll see, I guess. Well, I want to go over my notes one more time. I’ll stop by in the morning. Regular time?”

  “Perfecto. Buenas noches.”

  So you think you want to be a detective, huh? Let’s see if you have what it takes. I’m going to give you a little test, but tell you what, instead of a fill-in-the-blank (don’t you just hate those?), I’ll start you off with a nice easy multiple-choice question:

  Who is the “he” in “Mighty Hector, Caesar, and he”? Which name belongs with the other two?

  a. Achilles

  b. Xerxes

  c. Odysseus

  d. Alexander the Great

  And no peeking at the next chapter until you know the answer!

  How long do you suppose it takes to dust eighteen miles of bookshelves?

  But it is a good half hour ahead of “regular time” that Margaret, who lives in an apartment building exactly eleven minutes from mine, sends me a text message. I’m munching on a piece of cinnamon-and-sugar toast (made with Dad’s homemade bread, naturally) when my phone springs to life and this text appears:

  I’m in your lobby, because your

  new doorman won’t let me upstairs.

  What is his PROBLEM?

  I can’t help smiling at the perfectly spelled, perfectly punctuated message—it’s so Margaret. Tearing off another bite of toast, I text back:

  Y R U here so early????

  Two seconds later, in return, I get: !!!!! That is Margaret’s way of saying, “Buzz the doorman and tell him to let me come up.”

  “Hey, Louie!” I shout into the intercom. “It’s Sophie St. Pierre. You see that skinny, goofy-looking kid in the lobby—the one in the bright red blazer? Would you please send her up?”

  “Who are you shouting at?” Mom cries, rushing into the kitchen. “I thought the apartment was on fire.”

  “Oh, just having a little fun with Louie, the temp doorman. Haven’t you noticed how loud he talks?”

  “Maybe he’s hard of hearing, Sophie. I can’t believe you’re teasing him; you used to be such a nice girl.”

  “I am nice,” I insist. “Wait till you see what I got you for Christmas.”

  “You’re supposed to be saving that money you got from that nutty movie star friend of yours. Twelve hundred dollars for a couple of weeks of dog-sitting. Ludicrous. That’s more than I made in five years of babysitting when I was your age. And that was watching children, not a silly dog.”

  Margaret’s knocking saves me (and Nate Etan) from further attacks—or so I think.

  “Why were you shouting into the intercom?” Margaret asks. “Jeez! I could hear you out in the lobby! Goofy-looking? Skinny? This is how you describe me to strangers?”

  “I was kidding. I knew you’d be able to hear me; that was part of the fun. Sheesh. You two used to have a sense of humor.” I plonk myself back into my chair and take a huge bite of toast.

  “I think she’s ignoring us,” Mom says, pouring a glass of orange juice for Margaret.

  “That’s too bad,” says Margaret. “Then I suppose she doesn’t want to hear what I learned about that secret message she found.”

  “Secret message?” Mom asks. “Now what?”

  Margaret looks my way. “You didn’t tell her?”

  I shrug. “Ewastoolay,” I say with a mouthful of toast.

  Mom raises an eyebrow and looks to Margaret for a translation.

  “She says it was too late. Apparently, she was cleaning that fountain pen and found a piece of paper rolled up inside it—there’s a poem, and … Hey, here’s a crazy idea. Why don’t you go get the paper, Sophie? Pretty please?”

  “Only because I’m curious about what you found out,” I grumble, gulping down half a glass of orange juice in one swallow.

  Mom moves in close enough to look over my shoulder when I stretch the paper out on the kitchen counter. She squints, trying to read the writing at the top, but quickly gives up.

  “My old eyes are no match for that,” she says. “And I don’t think my reading glasses would help. What’s it say?”

  Margaret reads the poem aloud:

  Mighty Hector, Caesar, and he,

  Worthy men of antiquity,

  Are but the first of trios three.

  This sheet, aligned on the page

  That begins the tale of his age,

  Reveals advice that is truly sage.

  “Just whose pen did you buy?” Mom asks. “Who puts something like that inside their fountain pen? What was his name—Curtis Dedmann?”

  Margaret nods. “He lived in a townhouse on Eighty-Second Street. He was kind of a recluse, I think. We don’t know much about him. Yet.”

  Mom holds the paper up to the light. “What are all these holes?”

  “It’s like a decoder,” I say. “You put it over a page in a book, and the words that appear in the boxes spell out a secret message.”

  “Well, that’s very exciting,” Mom says. “But … why? You know what I mean—why go to all that trouble?”

  “A good question,” Margaret replies. “Especially if all he’s offering is some sage advice.”

  “Yeah, I was going to ask about that,” I say. “What does ‘sage’ mean, anyway? Isn’t that an herb?”

  “Wise,” explains Margaret, a dictionary in a plaid skirt. “Although you’re right, it is an herb, too.”

  “S
o, what did you figure out?” I ask.

  “I know who ‘he’ is,” says Margaret. “It’s Hector, Caesar, and … Alexander the Great.”

  (Well? Is that who you picked? Give yourself a gold star if you got it right.)

  “You seem awfully sure of yourself,” I say.

  Margaret shrugs. “It was easy. That line about the ‘trios three’ gave it away. Three trios equals nine, so I just typed in ‘Hector,’ ‘Caesar,’ and the number ‘nine,’ and up pops something called the Nine Worthies. And when I realized that the first word in the second line is ‘worthy,’ I knew I was on the right track. Back in the fourteenth century, somebody put together this list of the nine men—”

  “No women?” Mom interrupts.

  “No, just men. Sorry. They were the nine men who were supposed to represent the ideals of chivalry—you know, courage, honesty, honor, that kind of thing.”

  “The ability to kill other men,” scoffs Mom. “Those three are soldiers. That’s what you get when you have men deciding who is ‘worthy.’ ”

  “Holy cow, Mom. Why are you so anti-man all of a sudden?”

  “The first three are all considered pagans,” says Margaret. “The next three are Jewish—they’re all from the Old Testament: Joshua, David, and Judas Maccabeus. Not the apostle Judas—he was Iscariot. The last three are Christians: King Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon.”

  “Okay, I’ve heard of all of those except the last one,” I say. “Godfrey who?”

  “First Crusade,” answers Margaret, whose brain reminds me of a lobster trap I saw in Maine. Once the facts crawl inside her head, they’re stuck there forever. “Anyway, we’re looking for a book about Alexander the Great. Or all nine of these ‘worthies’; maybe it’s in the chapter about him.”

  “Cool,” I say. “When do we start?”

  After school, the four of us knock on Elizabeth’s door, hoping for an update on the Perkatory situation.

  The housekeeper invites us inside, immediately reminding me of our first visit to chez Harriman, and of Winifred “Winnie” Winterbottom. Besides being a so-so housekeeper, Winnie was in cahoots with her sleazy, chain-smoking husband, Gordon, my personal nemesis during the quest for the Ring of Rocamadour. She spied on us and passed the information along to Gordon, who then used it to try to steal the ring from under our noses.

  Helen, Elizabeth’s new housekeeper, is nothing like Winnie, who was carved from a block of granite: gray, cold, and hard as stone. Rather, Helen is a four-foot-nine bundle of cheerful energy, inviting us in and immediately offering to make a pot of “Flower Power” tea, which she somehow knows is our favorite.

  “No thank you,” I say. “We just have a couple of quick questions for the professor.”

  “Uh-oh,” Malcolm says, appearing at the kitchen door and wiping his hands on an apron that looks as if it has been used to clean up a major environmental disaster. “Questions for me?”

  “Just two,” says Margaret. “One, have you made any progress on the Perkatory story, and, two, when you were looking at those boxes of books before the auction last night, did you happen to notice any books about Alexander the Great? Or the Nine Worthies?”

  Malcolm chuckles. “The Nine Worthies. I hadn’t thought of them in years, but, yes, there was a book—three volumes, in a beautiful slipcase, actually. Nine Worthy Men, I think it was called. Why on earth are you interested in those old fossils?”

  “Wait! What about Perkatory?” Leigh Ann asks.

  “Sorry, nothing yet,” says Malcolm. “I’m waiting to hear back from Mr. Varone, the building owner. I’ll send you a note the second I hear anything. I promise. Am I to understand that there’s been no change—no new signs on the door?”

  “You understand correctly, good sir,” says Becca. “That place is locked up tighter than Helm’s Deep.”

  “It’s so depressing,” I say. “I thought I was going to cry when I walked past this morning. And just seeing that ridiculous COFFEETERIA sign across the street—grrrrr. Makes me want to go over there and pull the stupid thing down.”

  “Back to the worthies,” Margaret says. “Malcolm, the books you saw, were they in one of the boxes that Marcus Klinger bought?”

  “Klinger? Yes, I’m pretty sure he bought all the books. And overpaid for them, I’d have to say. He seemed determined to buy them. Same thing with that blasted walking stick. Had to have it, too. Just who is this Marcus Klinger character, anyway?”

  “He’s a jerk, that’s who he is,” I say. “He owns this cruddy little used-book store up on Eighty-First.”

  “My goodness, Sophie,” says Malcolm. “You are not having a good week, are you?”

  “Tell me about it,” I grumble.

  Margaret tells him the story of our experience in Sturm & Drang Books, and then I bring him up to date on the paper hidden away in Dad’s fountain pen.

  “And now we have to go back for more Sturm and Drang,” says Margaret.

  “What? Why?” cries Leigh Ann.

  “Because he has Nine Worthy Men,” Margaret says. “We don’t have to buy it, we just need to look at it for a minute—if he’ll let us.”

  “Well, this time please make sure your hands are clean,” Becca teases.

  “Have you tried the library?” Malcolm asks.

  Margaret nods. “I checked online. Believe it or not, they don’t have it. Maybe they used to have one, but someone lost it, and they couldn’t replace it. It’s been out of print for a long time.”

  “Okay, then. How about the Strand?” Malcolm asks. “What do their ads say they have, eighteen miles of books? If they don’t have it, I’ll eat my hat.”

  “You’d better be careful, Malcolm,” I say. “I think you already owe us one good hat-eating. Those tweed caps of yours must taste really good.”

  “That’s a great idea,” Margaret says. “Why don’t you come with us?”

  Malcolm glances toward the kitchen, shrugs, and pulls his filthy apron over his head. “I was going to bake some bread, but it can wait. And Elizabeth called to say she’s going out to dinner with her friend Alessandra, so I’m on my own for dinner, anyway.”

  On the way to the Strand Book Store at Broadway and Twelfth, we decide to turn the search for Nine Worthy Men into a competition, with the losers treating the winners to ice cream. It’s Margaret and Malcolm versus Becca, Leigh Ann, and me as we hit the doors running.

  There’s a good reason Margaret picked Malcolm instead of me to be her teammate: she knows that when I walk into the Strand, I’m like a moth in a room filled with flashing lights, flitting from aisle to aisle and table to table. Self-control? HA! It’s a bookstore with eighteen miles of books! Within thirty seconds, I have completely forgotten what I’m looking for. Nine … something, I try to remind myself, but, really, who cares, because I just stumbled into a whole section that should be called “Sophie’s Choices”—so many books by my favorite authors, mingling with a kajillion others that I simply must have. Right now.

  Leigh Ann is about to zoom past me, but she puts on the brakes when she sees me with my nose in an old hardcover. “Did you find it already?” she asks.

  “What? Oh, um, no. I was just … This is a classic,” I say, showing her the cover of Walter Farley’s The Black Stallion.

  “Sophie! Come on!”

  “Okay, okay,” I say, carefully reshelving the book and running after her.

  I make it about thirty feet before I spot something out of the corner of my eye—one of those red notebooks, which I just love. This one is jammed in between a couple of worn copies of The Catcher in the Rye. When I’m sure that no one is watching me, I take the notebook from the shelf and glance at the cover. There’s a piece of masking tape with “DO YOU DARE?” written across it in black marker.

  Do I dare? Well, of course I dare. I flip it open to the first page, where I find the following message, done in neat cursive:

  I’ve left some clues for you.

  If you want them, turn the page.


  If you don’t, put this book back on the shelf, please.

  “Sophie!” hisses Leigh Ann, who then drags me away by the arm. “Come on!” She grabs the notebook out of my hand and jams it between the two closest books.

  “But that’s not where it goes,” I protest, returning it to its proper place as Leigh Ann physically pulls me down the aisle toward the nonfiction section.

  Ugh. Nonfiction. A strange, alien place, this realm of books about real people. I glance back longingly at the fiction section. “But—”

  “No! Stay here, and start looking!” Becca scolds. “Do you even remember what we’re looking for?”

  “Y-yes. Of course. Nine … famous … guys.”

  Becca stares at me, openmouthed. “If we lose, you’re buying the ice cream.”

  “Okay, jeez. I get it. It’s Nine Worthy Men. And you think it ought to be around here? Where are Margaret and Malcolm?”

  “A couple of aisles over,” answers Leigh Ann.

  “Well, that’s probably a good sign,” I say, my eyes already scanning the top shelf. The fact is, when I want to find a book—even nonfiction—I have a gift.

  And my gift doesn’t let me down; less than a minute after I start looking, I spot a copy of Nine Worthy Men. It’s on the lowest shelf, and I dive to the floor to pull it out.

  “Hey—got it,” I whisper to my teammates.

  They join me on the floor just as I realize there’s a problem. “Uh-oh.”