The Extraordinary Book of Doors

by Nydam, Anne

  “Well, what if they confiscated the Book and then threw us in jail,” Chen persisted, “They might think we stole the Book. After all, it’s really rare and valuable - not the sort of book kids would normally be walking around with.”

  “Oh well, it all came out fine anyway, didn’t it. And no harm done.” Then her tone changed. “Except you lied again. And it didn’t even do you any good.”

  Chen frowned. “I don’t believe you never tell any lies. And if you tell lies even a little, then when you say you don’t lie, then that’s a lie, right?”

  Polly retorted, “If I were a liar at least I’d be honest enough to admit it.”

  “No you wouldn’t. Anyway, everybody tells lies at least a little bit. Like saying you’re fine thanks when you’re actually having an awful day.”

  “The only person who ever asks me how I’m doing is Raphael, and I always tell him how I’m doing.” Under her breath she added, “Because he actually cares.”

  Chen looked at Polly curiously for a moment before saying, “Fine. I’m hungry. Do you want some lunch? I’ve got peanut butter and jam here. You’re not allergic to nuts, are you?”

  Polly shook her head, and Chen went to a mini refrigerator under one of the counters and brought out a loaf of bread and the jars of peanut butter and strawberry jam. He set them on the table by the window along with two melamine plates and a couple of butter knives. “There. Have a seat.”

  “Thanks.” Polly sat down at the table and began to flip through her Book again. Chen stared at her aghast.

  “Polly! You can’t have an antique book at the table when we’re eating! Your hands will be dirty – you might get peanut butter or jam on it. Do you have any idea how bad that is for a book? The oils are bad, for one thing, and the sugar can attract insects, and-”

  “Okay, okay! You sound like my mom.” She got up and set her Book down next to Chen’s on the counter on the far side of the office before coming back to make herself a sandwich.

  There was an embarrassed silence.

  After a few minutes of chewing Polly said abruptly, “Are you adopted?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh. Just checking; you can never be sure.”

  After another pause Chen replied awkwardly, “So, what about you? Where do you live? What’s your family? That kind of thing.”

  “I live in Wellesley, outside of Boston. Massachusetts. I live with my mom.”

  “That’s it? No brothers or sisters? No dad? Nothing?”

  “Well, there’s Uber, of course. But my parents got divorced when I was three and my dad moved to California. I haven’t seen him since.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  Polly shrugged. “What do you have to be sorry about?”

  “Don’t you miss him?” asked Chen, surprised.

  Polly shrugged again. “Do you miss your parents?”

  “What do you mean? I live with both my parents.”

  “No, your birth parents. Do you miss them? The way I think of it, my dad pretty much gave me up to my mom just like your birth mother gave you up. Only unlike your new parents, my mom didn’t go out looking for a baby to adopt. She just got stuck with me.”

  Chen raised his eyebrows at Polly’s tone and she smiled ruefully. “Raphael would be mad at me if he heard me say that. My mom’s okay, but she isn’t exactly warm-fuzzy all the time. She’s too busy for warm-fuzziness. I think the auction house is her real baby.”

  “Who’s Raphael?”

  “Raphael Green. He’s my mom’s assistant. That makes him sound like some young minion, but he’s really more of a partner than an assistant. He does everything: oversees stuff in the warehouse, brings the lots out for the auctions, arranges deliveries, cleans things, even a little restoration… All that sort of thing. My mom says he should get a degree in art history and then go to grad school for a business degree, and be a full, official partner, but he never even went to college, let alone grad school. He’d never be able to afford it. I bet he’s smarter than most people who went to college, though. He knows some of everything.”

  Chen could see Polly’s face brighten when she talked about Raphael Green, but at the moment he was more curious about the Book. He nodded his head toward the counter across the office. “So how did you find The Extraordinary Book of Doors?”

  “Well, my mom owns this auction house for art and antiques. She got the Book from some really rich millionaire guy who got it from his great grandfather, who collected stuff from Benjamin Franklin. I don’t know where Benjamin Franklin got it.”

  “Wow, do you have all sorts of cool things?”

  “Yeah, we do, but of course they aren’t really ours and we don’t get to keep them. I only get to see them until they sell.”

  “You mean your mom could sell the Book any time?”

  Polly nodded. “Yup. But she thinks the Franklin collection will be a big deal, so she set up a special auction for it. It’ll be about three more weeks before it goes up for sale. That’s why I want to solve all those clues before it’s gone!”

  “I can understand that. I just wish we knew the point of the clues. I mean, even if you solve them all, what do you get?”

  Polly stuffed the last bite of sandwich into her mouth and brushed off her fingers. “Can I get the Book now?”

  Chen insisted that they both wash their hands with soap before getting the two Books and sitting down in front of the computer. First they checked Plate IV and Plate XXII in Chen’s copy of The Extraordinary Book of Doors and confirmed that they were the same as the pages they’d just gone through in Polly’s copy. They each filled them in on their charts.

  “Are all the doors the same in both Books?” Polly asked, “Like, do you have Pearl’s screen door, too?”

  “Screen door? I don’t think so. And we don’t have the same number of doors, either, do we?”

  A quick comparison showed that the first thirty-one doors in each Book were the same, but after that they were completely different. Chen flipped back to the title page of his Book, where the handwritten translation said, “Containing thirty doors to diverse locations. And space for twenty additional doors.”

  “The doors that are different must have been added later by the Book’s different owners,” he said.

  Polly nodded. “That sounds plausible. So your Book doesn’t have the doors that go with some of Benjamin Franklin’s clues.” She pointed to another notation on her graph paper. “Like here’s his third clue, behind door thirty-five. Shall we go?”

  Still uneasy after their adventure through the last door, Chen shook his head and said quickly, “No. No, I think we should try to figure out what this is all about. If we knew what the clues were clues to, then maybe we’d see some pattern in the places Benjamin Franklin sends us, and then we could be better prepared for what we’d run into when we go through the doors.”

  Polly shrugged. “Okay. There’s a bunch of writing at the beginning. Maybe that explains it.” She turned to the back of the dedication page at the front of her Book.

  “He mentions a secret here,” Chen said excitedly as he struggled to read the old, faded handwriting, “The Fund for the Advancement of Education and something or other? Could there be a secret fund? That would be like a treasure, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes, this is it!” exclaimed Polly, “Listen to this: My trustee and I will be long gone when the Fund is ready to be used. In order to ensure that it will be endowed only upon one familiar with my works, prepared to work diligently, open to travel for the broadening of his mind, and of a certain wit, I have left instruction that this Fund cannot be accessed without a watchword and a key, which I have left for him who has the enterprise to discover them. The full amount of the Fund, which is double that of my other bequests and which I expect in the course of two centuries to become considerable, should be used for the betterment of mankind, the propagation of education, and the sharing of learning with those who will make the best use of it. An investment in knowledge pays the
best interest.” She added, “He says it’s considerable! If I had that fund I could give it to Raphael to go to college! That would be for the betterment of mankind, and it would share learning with someone who would make the best use of it, too.”

  “So the clues must be for finding the password to this fund, then. How many clues are there?”

  Polly ran her finger down the second column of her graph paper. “It looks like five. No wait, six.”

  “And we’ve got two? The number 4 and something about music. Well, I don’t get it so far. Maybe I’m lacking a certain wit.”

  “Ha. No, we just need to collect the rest of the clues first. I’m sure we can figure it out once we put them all together. Let’s go!”

  Still stalling, Chen looked at the clock. “There isn’t time. My parents will be back soon.”

  “Can I meet them?”

  Chen raised his eyebrows. “I guess so. If you want to. Better hide your Book, though. I don’t think we could explain that too easily. Here.” Chen handed Polly a large manila envelope and Polly slid her Book inside and closed the metal fastener at the top. Just then the office door opened.

  “Hi!” Chen said, trying not to feel guilty, even though he didn’t think he was actually doing anything wrong.

  “Hi, Chen!” said his mother, “Who’s your friend?”

  “This is Polly. Er, Polly Goggin. Polly, this is my mother Dr Burr, and my dad Dr Connelly.”

  They all smiled and shook hands.

  Dr Burr said, “Do you live around here, Polly?”

  Polly replied, “No, ma’am, I’m just visiting. But Chen and I met here in the museum the other day.”

  “How nice. What have you two been doing?”

  “Chen was showing me The Extraordinary Book of Doors.”

  “Fascinating, isn’t it?” asked Dr Connelly happily, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for a random thirteen-year-old to be entranced by some crumbly old book. “Did Chen explain the mystery about it?”

  Polly nodded solemnly. “Yes. We were trying to see whether we could figure out anything about it. But Chen, I should probably get going. My mom and Raphael will be expecting me. You want to walk out with me?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “It was a pleasure to meet you, Polly,” said Chen’s parents politely.

  Polly responded cheerfully, “The pleasure is mine, sir and madam,” and led the way out of the office. Lowering her voice she asked, “So, are we friends, then?”

  “What?”

  “Your mom asked Who’s your friend, so does that mean we’re friends?”

  This was not the sort of question you should have to ask, thought Chen. In fact, if you had to ask, you probably weren’t friends, right? It was embarrassing, and he answered irritably, “Don’t you have any actual friends to compare this to?”

  Polly shrugged. “Not really. At least, not except grown-ups.”

  “How can you not have any friends?”

  She shrugged again. “Kids at school think I’m weird.”

  “Imagine that,” Chen muttered.

  Polly looked at him sharply for a moment and then said matter-of-factly, “So, not friends then. When do you want to check out the third clue?”

  “Oh, right,” stuttered Chen, now feeling even more embarrassed and awkward. “Um, well, I don’t think my parents have anything scheduled tomorrow, so they’ll be in the office all day and we won’t be able to use the Books. Maybe we could both try to do some research and then meet on Friday? They’ll be giving a gallery talk Friday at two, so the office’ll be all clear.”

  “Okay. Now, where can I go to get through the Book where no one will see?”

  “How about down here?” Chen led the way to the end of another corridor that led to an emergency exit, and there he watched while Polly found her page and turned her key in the keyhole.

  “See you on Friday at two!” And she disappeared through the opening page of her Book.

  VII. A Missing Masterpiece

  Chen spent much of Thursday on-line researching Benjamin Franklin, and pestering his parents about The Extraordinary Book of Doors. In response to Chen’s nagging, Robin Burr made another search through the International Database of Art Loss.

  “Now this is really odd,” she said, frowning over her computer screen. “There has been a copy of Serlio’s Extraordinary Book reported stolen since last week.”

  Chen’s heart sank. Of course he knew that the Book would have to be returned to its rightful owner eventually… but not yet! He wanted more time to explore it first. What about the doors in the back that were different from any doors in Polly’s Book? It was then that Chen decided he was going to have to be bolder. He simply didn’t have the time to dither nervously before every trip through the Book’s magical pages.

  But Dr Burr, unaware of what was going through her son’s mind, had continued speaking. “Of course I assumed it must be our copy they’re talking about. But look; here’s the photograph of the stolen book, and the cover is completely different.”

  Chen and his dad both came over to stand beside Dr Burr and look over her shoulders at the photograph on the screen. Sure enough, although the book in the photo was the same dimensions as the one Chen had found, and bound in embossed leather with a pattern of a door, the pattern was definitely different. Nor did its design look at all like the door on Polly’s Book. This book had a much more elaborate door for its cover and, on a sudden intuition, Chen grabbed the Book beside his mother and flipped through pages until he reached Plate XXXI.

  “You’re right, Chen,” exclaimed Dr Connelly, “That cover looks like the same design as this page. So clearly a second copy of The Extra Book has been stolen just days after the first copy shows up mysteriously under a park bench here in Cleveland. That can’t be merely a coincidence, surely?”

  Dr Burr said, “It was stolen from the Christopher Wren Museum in London, it says. I wonder why all the sudden interest in Serlio? It seems a little random.”

  “But still nothing about our copy?” Chen pressed.

  “No. Assuming it was stolen, it must be from some place that hasn’t yet noticed it’s missing. But I suppose it’s possible it wasn’t stolen?”

  Dr Connelly answered, “Possible, but unlikely, I think. Maybe instead of checking the International Database we should check the local police reports for break-ins.”

  “That’s a thought. But it had better be a job for another day. I’ve got plenty of other work to do, I’m afraid.”

  Dr Connelly nodded. “That’s all too true. You could research local break-ins, Chen, if you’re finished with Benjamin Franklin. Why Franklin anyway, by the way?”

  “Polly got me interested,” Chen answered.

  “I see. It’s nice you’ve found someone to spend some time with. Too bad she’s only visiting.”

  Chen shrugged noncommittally. “Yeah. She is a little weird, though.” This, he thought, was a serious understatement, but he was feeling guilty for snapping at her yesterday.

  Dr Burr smiled. “There are worse things than being weird.”

  “I guess so.” Chen thought about his friends at his old school. He had never hung with the fashionable in crowd, but his friends weren’t the weirdo losers, either. They’d been a nearly invisible group of quiet kids, reasonably good in their classes and never making any trouble at school. At the thought of them a wave of homesickness passed over Chen – except it wasn’t his home any more. This was supposed to be his home, and he’d met no new friends here at all, unless he counted Polly, which he really wasn’t sure he was ready to do, even if she had been from around here. She seemed nice enough but, well… definitely weird. Some of his old friends were a little goofy, he had to admit, but at least not one of them wore a hip pouch full of cat treats all the time. With a picture of a rubber ducky on it.

  He sighed, but he couldn’t help being excited about the treasure hunt he and Polly had discovered. At least he couldn’t complain that Polly was boring.


  “What is there about Benjamin Franklin here at the museum?” he asked.

  “I know we have at least one engraving,” his mother said, “You can look him up in the catalogue and see.” She closed the window with the photograph of the third Serlio book, when Chen abruptly stopped her from logging out of the International Database of Art Loss.

  “What’s that?” he exclaimed, pointing to the thumbnail at the top of a list.

  Dr Burr clicked on the small image and brought up a larger photo of an elaborate golden sculpture featuring four bored-looking nymphs sprawled lackadaisically in a giant seashell. Each held in her left hand a large pearl, and each supported with her right hand one edge of a second, smaller seashell raised above.

  “This is the most recent theft that’s been reported to the Database,” said Dr Burr. She read out, “Salt dish in gold with enamel and baroque pearls, 31 cm in height, latter half of the sixteenth century. Stolen from chateau in Île-de-France during the night of 23 July. Looks like it was quite mysterious, too. Apparently all the doors and windows were locked, and everyone with a key has a solid alibi.” She turned to Chen. “Why?”

  “Nothing,” Chen stuttered, “I just thought maybe I recognized it. But it’s nothing. I… I think I’ll read for a while now.” He quickly retreated to a chair in the corner of the office and picked up his library book. But though he held it open in front of his face, he wasn’t reading. His mind was in a whirl.

  He had seen that gold sculpture before. He was sure of it. It had been sitting on an inlaid wooden side table in the room he’d stepped into when he was trying to get home from his first trip through the Book. It was in the fancy parlor through Plate XIII, and now someone had stolen it without triggering alarms or having to break through any locks. Which was clearly impossible… unless you had a magic Book that opened directly into that room… And Chen knew he hadn’t gone through his copy of the magic Book and stolen anything. But he did know someone else with a magic Book. Someone who thought it was exciting to be chased by police. Someone who thought it might be funny to be thrown in jail because she could simply walk out again…