by Nydam, Anne
Was it really possible that Polly had stolen that golden sculpture? All those claims about never telling lies were probably just intended to lull people into a false sense of security. Now he felt stupid for even considering that she might really be honest. He’d even kind of started to like her. In a weird way. He thought angrily, “You just can’t trust a person who never lies.”
Shortly after two o’clock on Friday afternoon, Polly slipped through her magical Book into the Department of Prints and Rare Books.
“Hi, Chen! Did you learn anything yesterday?”
Chen crossed his arms and swiveled his mother’s desk chair around to face Polly. “As a matter of fact, I did. I learned that a fancy Renaissance gold sculpture was recently stolen from some place in France.”
“Yeah?” inquired Polly, without much interest.
“Stolen from a room in France that you just happen to get to through the thirteenth picture in The Extraordinary Book of Doors.”
“Really!” Polly said, clearly more interested now.
Chen looked at her narrowly. “Quite a coincidence, isn’t it,” he said significantly.
Polly stared back at him blankly for a moment before her eyebrows lowered into a fierce frown. She exclaimed, “Oh Chen, you didn’t!”
“What? I didn’t? No, Polly I didn’t! But what about you? Thought it would be exciting, did you?”
“Me? I would never steal something!”
“How can you expect me to believe that when I know it was stolen by someone with a magical Book of Doors?”
“How can you know that?”
“I read the report about the robbery. Every-thing was locked, the alarm systems on the doors and windows were untouched, no guards saw anyone, security cameras on the street show no one entering or leaving the building. But if you open up Plate Thirteen the sculpture is practically the first thing you see just sitting right there. The Book is the only explanation.”
Polly let out a low whistle. “Holy cow. That seems plausible. You know what this means?”
“Yeah, I know what it means. It means you
stole it.”
“Don’t be stupid,” retorted Polly irritably, “I already said I didn’t. No, it means there’s a third magic Book! There must be!”
“Oh, duh! There is.” Chen replied, slumping back in the chair. “I can’t believe I didn’t make the connection. A third copy of Serlio’s Extraordinary Book of Doors was reported missing from some place in England. My mom found that on the International Database, too.”
Chen and Polly stared at one another.
Slowly Polly spoke, piecing things together as she went, “So there are three magical copies of the Book…”
“At least three,” interrupted Chen.
“True; you can never be sure… And it’s probable that they all share the first thirty doors, so presumably they would all be able to make a portal to that place in France where the sculpture was stolen… And the Louvre!”
Chen’s mouth fell open. “Oh man, whoever has that third book can just pop into the Louvre and steal anything he wants from one of the most famous museums in the world! The Mona Lisa! The Venus de Milo! Anything!”
“Well, I doubt anyone could just lift up the Venus de Milo and carry her out through the door, even if it is a magical door,” Polly pointed out practically. “She’s a pretty big chunk of marble.”
“Whatever!” Chen exclaimed impatiently, “The important thing is that this thief will be unstoppable! We’ve got to tell the police what we know!”
Polly raised an eyebrow. “Really? You’re going to tell the police you suspect a mystery man with a magic Book? I know I’m weird, but even I don’t believe for a minute that that story would fly.”
“But if we showed them one of the Books?”
“Just think about that a minute, Chen.”
Chen thought about it, and smacked his forehead into his hand. “If they believed us about the magic, they’d say we had the opportunity. And they’d probably say our parents had motive, too.”
“Especially my mother,” Polly said, “There are way too many unscrupulous art dealers. It would be the first thing the police would think of.”
Momentarily distracted, Chen asked, “Does your mom ever tell lies?”
“She lies to clients all the time. She tells people they have exquisite taste when they can’t tell the difference between a Picasso and a paint-by-number. She tells people it’s like ‘Monet must have had them in mind when he created this.’ She tells people their home just won’t be complete without some ghastly daub or insipid sentimental sculpture.” Polly shuddered. “But she wouldn’t lie about something’s provenance. She wouldn’t lie about stealing.”
The two children were silent for a moment, thinking, until suddenly Polly sat bolt upright. “We know something else about the Books! We know that two of them have doors connecting them. I’d bet anything the third Book must connect, too! If we could just figure out which Plate would take us there…”
“But I do know that!” Chen jumped up and grabbed his Book, turning to Plate XXXI. “It’s got to be this one! This is the same door design as the cover of the stolen Book. I saw the photograph on the Database!”
Polly beamed. “Well then, this is easy. All we have to do is walk through door thirty-one and find the stolen sculpture and the thief. Let’s go!”
Chen hesitated. Walking through a mysterious door after a thief seemed to him neither easy nor necessarily smart. But then he remembered his recent determination to stop dithering and use the Books before they were gone. He took a deep breath. “Fine,” he said.
He picked up the golden key, took another deep breath, and fitted it into the keyhole in Plate XXXI.
When he felt the page unlock, Chen lifted the paper the slightest amount. Putting his eye to the crack, he peeked through. Polly stood close behind him, craning to peer over his shoulder. The room they saw was dim, with blinds pulled down over the windows. The walls were lined with cupboards and shelves looking almost like some kind of small higgledy-piggledy museum. Chen didn’t know what most of the items were, but there were several coiled loops of thick chain hanging from a large hook, and a white canvas thing with leather straps that he was pretty sure was a straitjacket.
“Go on,” whispered Polly, “There’s no one there.”
Reluctantly, Chen turned the page wider and stepped through. Polly followed, looking around eagerly. She said, “Hey, there’s the Book!”
Sure enough, lying on a table was the third copy of The Extraordinary Book of Doors, the reason Plate XXXI had brought them to this dim, mysterious room.
“Do you see the stolen gold sculpture any-where?” asked Polly.
But Chen was staring in horror past the table at a large metal box mounted on legs. It had a hole in one end for a person’s neck and the other end for ankles, and it was fastened with rivets along all the edges. A slit down the middle of the box had a huge steel saw blade embedded in it. And beside that was another torture device, an upright iron box like a coffin, bristling with long, evil-looking spikes driven into slots all around it.
“What is this place?” whispered Chen, shuddering.
Polly, following his gaze, grinned suddenly. “A magician’s study! That’s for sawing a lady in half, that’s the sword trick, and see, there’s a top hat. How ceremonial!”
Chen felt relief flow through him and realized he had been tense with the effort of trying not to imagine that he had entered the lair of a sadistic murderer. To hide his embarrassment he said briskly, “We need to figure out exactly where we are. If we can get an address we could send the police an anonymous tip of where to find the thief.”
Polly nodded and walked to the window to pull back the blind and look out. “We’re in a city,” she reported. “New York, maybe? I’ve been to New York with my mom a lot and this looks like it.”
Chen was poking around among the papers on the table. “Yeah, you’re right. Here’s an envelope and the a
ddress is in New York City.”
But before he could read out the address, let alone copy it down, he froze. They could both hear the footsteps approaching from the next room.
Chen grabbed his Book and flipped it back open. “Hurry!” he hissed to Polly, who tiptoed swiftly back across the room.
He had the key in the page when he heard the steps stop right outside the study door. He was shoving Polly through the Book’s portal as the doorknob turned. And as he stepped between the pages into his parents’ office, jostling as closely as he could behind Polly, he looked back over his shoulder and saw a man enter the dim room he fled.
VIII. The Final Resting Place of an Old Book
Chen slammed the Book shut and gasped, “I think he saw us!”
“What did he look like?”
Chen shook his head and shrugged. “Just a man.”
“Well what sort of man?”
“I don’t know, Polly. Just an ordinary man sort of man.”
Polly muttered disapprovingly, “You see, but you do not observe.”
Stung, Chen retorted, “I do too observe. But I’m telling you there wasn’t anything to notice. He was mediumish height, mediumish age, mediumish white skin, medium length medium brownish hair. He didn’t have a beard or a mustache or any unusual clothes that I saw. I only caught a glimpse of him, and I’m telling you there wasn’t anything distinctive about him.”
Polly hmmphed, unconvinced. “I wonder whether he did a better job of observing you.”
“Well, you’re hardly inconspicuous in a pink and orange shirt with gold embroidery! At least I wear normal clothes in normal colors!”
“This tunic is made from the fabric of a genuine Indian sari,” she replied primly.
“Whatever. It’s not exactly nondescript.” Chen sighed, “I doubt he got more than a glimpse of us, but that’s the thing, Polly. It really doesn’t matter how much or how little he saw, because the point that matters is that he saw us at all. We know he’s used his Book, and that means he must recognize a magic Book in use when he sees one. And that means he knows we have one, and he probably knows we know he has one… So if he’s figured out that the Books are connected, he can come straight through to either of us any time he wants!”
“Oh, that’s creepy.”
Chen nodded. “Yeah. And both of our Books are kept in places full of valuable art and stuff which isn’t safe any more. We’d better tell our parents so they can take precautions.”
“I don’t know, Chen. I’m not sure what I could possibly tell my mom that she’d believe.”
“Doesn’t she know you never lie?”
Polly shrugged. “She’d probably think I was just being imaginative. No, what we’ve got to do is get the third Book from him before he steals a Book from us. We should have grabbed it off the table on our way out!”
“I thought you said you’d never steal anything.”
“It wouldn’t be stealing. According to your mom’s database, he’s the one who stole it. We would be heroically rescuing it.”
“Well, we can’t go after it now! He’s probably holding it in his hands right this very second!”
“Okay, then let’s finish solving Benjamin Franklin’s clues as quickly as possible, and then we can put the Books away in some safe place where no one can get at them, even with magical doors.” Polly grinned at Chen’s dubious look. “Come on! We’ve got plenty of time before your parents come back, right? There’s no point in stopping our treasure hunt just because we’re worried about something else. I want to find that special fund full of money for Raphael.”
Reluctantly, Chen nodded.
“Magnificent,” Polly said, checking her table of contents and then flipping through her Book to Plate XXXV. “Here’s the third clue. Let’s go.”
Moments later the two children were standing in a tall-ceilinged, light-filled hallway. The wood paneling and pillars were beautifully carved, strictly symmetrical, and painted a soothing white. Ahead they could see into another hallway with a staircase in pale blue trim, while to their right, beyond a row of pillars, was a courtroom with a raised area for judges and pews for a jury. Sunlight flooded in through multi-paned windows and glowed on the smooth brick floor.
“Why did Benjamin Franklin send us here?” asked Chen, gazing around curiously. “Read the clue.”
Polly turned to the back of Plate XXXV and read, “Having entered through a door, go back out through a door, to find in the number of windows on the two sides thereof the third of my name; for the doors of wisdom are never shut and without its windows man has no light.” She looked up from her Book and added, “There’s a door straight ahead. Shall we go out through it?”
But Chen shook his head. “It says to go back out, so I think that means we go out through the door behind us.”
“Well, you can never be sure, but that seems plausible.” Polly turned and led the way through a pair of narrow double doors and down a few stone steps. Once she’d reached the brick sidewalk below, she spun around and looked up at the building they’d left. “What is this place, I wonder?” she asked.
“See, this is why I need an iPhone,” muttered Chen, “I could just bring up a map and answer all our questions. Hey, check this out,” he added suddenly, “Abraham Lincoln stood here when he raised the flag of Independence Hall February 22nd, 1861.”
Glancing behind her, Polly saw that Chen was reading from a bronze plaque set into the pavement. “So this is Independence Hall, then. I suppose that’s certainly a building Benjamin Franklin would have known well. So, how many windows, do you think?”
“Four on each side equals eight.”
“But should we count the basement and second floor windows?”
“Nope. Just the ones on the two sides of the door, like Benjamin Franklin said. I think I’m beginning to get the hang of these clues, and they always seem to be very specific. Of course, I still have no idea what the answers are supposed to mean when you put them all together.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out. Let’s explore around a bit before we leave.”
It was a hot, humid afternoon here in Philadelphia, and Chen was already sweating. So were the families in shorts and tee shirts who strolled around the large grassy area across the street. Chen took off his sweatshirt and tied it around his waist. He glanced at his watch. “It’s 2:45. We should probably get back.”
Polly shook her head in disbelief. “Are you kidding? No way. You’ve got a magic Book to whoosh you off to places you’ve never been, and you can’t even take the time to explore?”
“Fine. But just for ten minutes. Do you want my parents to be there in the office and see us walking back out of a portal?”
“Fair enough. Here, hang on!” Polly abruptly darted toward a woman with three children who were looking at the statue of George Washington that stood in front of Independence Hall. “Excuse me, madam,” Polly called to them, “Do you happen to have a map so we can see where we are? We’re in Philadelphia, right?”
Chen cringed, thinking, “If only I had an iPhone we wouldn’t always have to act like brainless weirdos in front of strangers.”
The woman gave Polly a funny look but replied politely, “The Welcome Center’s just a block down and they’ve got lots of maps there. But I think I’ve got an extra here if you want it. And yes, we are in Philadelphia.” She pulled a rather crumpled brochure from a large diaper bag and handed it to Polly.
“Thanks very much.”
“No problem.”
Polly brought the brochure back to Chen and unfolded it to the map, as tourists continued to stroll past them in all directions. “Let’s see… Here’s Independence Hall… so we must be here.”
“Look, there’s Franklin Court. What’s that?”
Polly looked up the corresponding number of the location Chen indicated on the map and said, “The site of Benjamin Franklin’s last house! But the building isn’t there any more.”
“Then there wouldn’t be any
clues or anything there. Oh, here’s Franklin’s gravestone.”
“Cool. It’s only a couple blocks from here. Let’s go check it out.”
They crossed the street and set off across the grass.
Polly was staring around eagerly at everything and humming tunelessly, but Chen was busy thinking about Benjamin Franklin’s clues. After a minute he said, “The first three clues give us 4, something about music, and 8, so it looks like we’re trying to discover a number. Maybe an account number or the combination for a safe or something.”
“That seems plausible.”
“But what could the number be that has to do with the organ?”
“Maybe the number of pipes or the number of keys?”
“Yeah, but with the other clues Benjamin Franklin was very specific about what we were supposed to count. I’m thinking since he never mentioned a specific thing about the organ, it must be something that’s general to all music, like maybe 8 for the notes in an octave.”
Polly shrugged. “Well, you can never be sure. Here’s Market Street, so we go one more block and then it’s just around the corner.”
Chen persisted, “There are only three more clues, right? So say it begins 4 8 8, it won’t be a very long number.”
“But account numbers back in Benjamin Franklin’s time were probably a lot shorter than they are now. I mean there can’t have been millions of accounts in thousands of banks back then, could there?”
“That’s true.”
There was now a brick wall running along the other side of the street and as they neared the corner, Polly said, “There he is!”
“Who?”
“Benjamin Franklin, of course.” She pointed at a picture of Benjamin Franklin on a sign mounted on the wall. They crossed the street, turned the corner, and stopped, along with a cluster of other tourists, in front of a section of wrought iron palings set into the brick wall. Here they could see through the fence to a flat marble gravestone. Big bronze plaques were set into the brick pillars on either side of the fence.