by Nydam, Anne
“This is funny,” said Polly, reading one of the plaques, “The body of B. Franklin, printer, like the cover of an old book, its contents torn out and stripped of its lettering and gilding, lies here, food for worms. But the work shall not be lost, for it will… appear once more in a new and more elegant edition, corrected and improved by the author. Ha, Benjamin Franklin like an old book. I like that. And God’s the author.”
Chen read the plaque, too. “Why was it put up by the Poor Richard Club? Was Benjamin Franklin one of those famous people who died penniless like Mozart and van Gogh?”
“No, they’re named after the almanac. You know, Poor Richard’s Almanack was the name of the magazine Benjamin Franklin published.”
“Wait, is that him?” Chen exclaimed suddenly, craning his head to see around the corner.
“Who, Benjamin Franklin?”
“No, the thief!”
“What? Where?” Polly followed Chen to the corner and stared down the street.
“That guy, I thought,” said Chen. “Or wait, maybe it was that one. He was wearing khaki shorts and a blue shirt and talking on a cell phone.”
“Half the men in Philadelphia must be wearing blue shirts and talking on cell phones,” Polly objected, “You can’t recognize him any better than that?”
“Didn’t I tell you there was nothing distinctive about him? I don’t know, maybe it wasn’t the same man at all, but I just had this second where I thought I recognized him.”
“Let’s get him,” said Polly grimly, striding back up 5th Street.
“Get him?” protested Chen, jogging to catch up with her. “I don’t even see him any more! And even if we did catch him, what would you say? Excuse me, are you the thief whose locked room in New York City we magically disappeared from just as you were coming in the door half an hour ago?”
“If it was him,” Polly said, “Then there’s only one way he could have gotten here: by following my Book.”
“Couldn’t he have come here through his own Book just by coincidence?”
“I doubt his Book has this door in it. Yours doesn’t. Independence Hall wouldn’t have existed when Sebastiano Serlio first made the Books in the sixteenth century, and anyway, only the first thirty doors are the same in all three Books. I think this is a door Benjamin Franklin added to his own copy.”
This gave Chen a lot to think about. Why did Sebastiano Serlio make these magical Books in the first place? How could you add a door? Could anyone do it, or only wizards? Did that mean Benjamin Franklin was a wizard? And how could Chen even be thinking about Magic Books and wizards when this was all clearly impossible?
He tried to get a grip on himself and stick for the moment to logic. “Fine,” he said, “So if your Book is the only one with the Independence Hall door, then the thief could only have gotten here by going through his Book’s link to your Book. And because your Book is here, this is where he ended up.”
“Right,” said Polly, her sharp brown eyes flashing in all directions, scanning for men in blue shirts. “His Book, her Book, my Book, your Book, their Book, our Book… It’s getting confusing. Let’s give each Book a name. Mine can be the Wreath Book, because it’s got a wreath pattern on the door on the cover, and yours can be the Dragon Book.”
“Fine, Polly, whatever. The thing is, this means the thief must know how to connect to your Book. The Wreath Book.”
“Or if he didn’t before, he probably does now.”
“We shouldn’t follow him! We should go home right now.”
“Why?”
The real reason was that the idea of confronting a criminal made Chen extremely nervous, but he didn’t want to admit that. After a moment he said, “My copy of the Book – er, the Dragon Book – is lying unprotected in my parents’ office. I’ve got to get back there and figure out someplace safer to keep it.”
Polly slowed her walk and turned to nod at Chen. “You’re probably right. And that reminds me – has your mom checked that database of stolen art recently?”
“Yeah. It was just yesterday when she saw that the third Book was stolen.”
“Well maybe she should check it again,” Polly replied darkly. “Over here, then.” She led Chen aside, out of the main tourist path, and opened her Book. In a moment the two children were once more in the Cleveland Museum of Art, where Polly turned the pages again and soon had her key in the keyhole of her own portal home.
“See you soon!” she called, and disappeared through the doorway that had appeared instead of the office window before her.
Now that he was alone, Chen felt even more nervous. He looked around apprehensively. Apparently as long as The Extraordinary Book of Doors was in his parents’ office, neither he, nor it, nor any of the other works of art in this room would be safe. Maybe nothing in the whole museum was safe.
He carefully fitted the key back onto the spine, where it became an image stamped in gold leaf. Then, after a minute or two of anxious thought, he put the Book in a manila envelope and took it into the closet. The closet was large and the walls were covered with shelves full of paper and other supplies. He hoped that if the thief opened the door to this Book, the Dragon Book, he would come out in this closet instead of the office itself.
Chen carefully buried his Book at the bottom of a cardboard box beneath a stack of file folders under three boxes of pencils and a couple of pairs of cotton gloves. When he left the closet, he locked the door behind him. Only then did he begin to relax.
His parents would be back again any minute now, and in the meantime, he had some more research to do.
IX. An Uneventful Weekend
On Saturday Chen’s parents didn’t go to work at the museum, and Chen stayed home in their new house, worrying about the Book.
“If there was a break-in at the museum, they’d notify you, right?” he asked at lunch.
Dr Burr raised her eyebrows. “I don’t know that they would. Not unless it had something to do with us.”
“But if it was your office that got broken into?”
“Well, yes, I suppose they’d call us in that case. Why?”
“Nothing. No reason. I was just thinking.”
Chen’s parents shared a look. Dr Burr said, “We’ve been thinking, too, Chen. We’ve been thinking you should try to meet some of the kids in the neighborhood. School starts in a month and you haven’t gotten to know anyone yet. Why don’t you go down the street and talk to the boy with the great Afro who walks his dogs with his mom? They live in the brick house, I think. What’s his name: Evan?”
Chen grimaced. “Mom, I can’t just go knock on the door. I’d feel like an idiot.”
“You won’t have to,” Dr Connelly said, “He’ll probably be out in his driveway playing basketball this afternoon. Just walk by when he’s out, and then you can stop casually and say hi.”
Chen groaned. It still sounded horribly awkward to him. However, his parents expected a report on his social duties.
Sure enough, at dinner his mother asked, “So, you met Evan? Was he nice?”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
Chen shrugged. “I’m not really much of a basketball player, and he’s not really much of a… I don’t know, a fantasy reader or a… a whatever it is I am. We just didn’t have anything to talk about. He has really nice dogs, though. Three of them.”
“Couldn’t you talk about them?” his father asked.
“We did, a bit. But…” Chen shrugged again.
Dr Burr smiled gently. “Well, I’m glad you tried, anyway. What about the boy around the corner, with the glasses? He must be about your age. What’s his name? In the blue house?”
Chen sighed. He knew his parents were trying to help. He even knew they were probably right – he ought to make an effort to get to know some of the kids who would be in his class when school started. But…
Dr Connelly said, “Come on, Chen, why don’t you want to give these kids a chance? If you go introduce yourself to the boy around the cor
ner, what’s the worst that could happen?”
Now that was a question that Chen’s imagination spent a lot of time on. “Well,” he began, “He could take one look at me and start laughing at my ears. Or he could slam the door in my face because I’m wearing red and no one in this town wears red. Or he could purposely tell me that I should wear red on the first day of school, knowing that anyone who wears red on the first day will be shoved into the toilets by the football team. Or as soon as I left he could call up every member of the seventh grade class and tell them all that I’m a dangerous lunatic with leprosy and they should all stay at least ten feet away from me at all times. Or he could have lost his glasses and mistake me for the evil cable salesman who mugged him in his home last month, and he’d beat me about the head with his TV remote while calling the police. Or he could be the evil cable salesman and once I’ve glimpsed his secret lair he would have to silence me forever. Or his whole family could be members of a cannibal cult that requires human sacrifice, and he’ll invite me to come in and stay for dinner. Or he could…”
“Okay, Chen, we get the idea,” interrupted Dr Burr, laughing.
His father murmured wryly, “Here I had no idea just how dangerous it could be to meet our new neighbors. And this seemed like such a nice neighborhood!”
Polly, meanwhile, had troubles of her own. When she arrived at Goggin Antiques, Appraisals, and Auctioneers with her mother on Saturday afternoon, something wasn’t right. The first thing she noticed was a faint smell like a blend of furniture polish, burnt matches, and musty socks. It was a strange odor and she couldn’t place it, although she couldn’t help thinking she’d smelled it somewhere recently. Nothing new had been brought into the office since yesterday, and no one different had been in here, so why should it smell different? Still, there must be a logical explanation, and Polly shrugged off her questions and went to get the Wreath Book from the white plastic bin of Franklinia. That’s when she paused again, feeling distinctly uneasy.
There was to be an auction in four days and Miranda Goggin was already hard at work in the showroom. Polly heard Raphael Green’s cheerful greeting when he came in, but it didn’t cheer her. The Extraordinary Book of Doors was in the corner of its plastic bin, and Polly was quite sure she had left it neatly in the middle.
She thought back to yesterday afternoon. She had returned from the Cleveland Museum of Art to find that, once again, her mother had barely noticed her absence. She had toyed with the idea of visiting another door, but decided that Chen’s worrying might not be wholly unfounded. If this mysterious thief knew about the connections between the Books, it might not be wise to travel alone. So she had laid the Wreath Book neatly in the bin on top of Benjamin Franklin’s other papers, closed the lid carefully, and gone to help her mother and Raphael for the last few minutes before they closed up shop for the day. And now the Book was in the corner instead of the middle.
She went out to the showroom, frowning.
“Mom,” she called, “Did you do anything with the Benjamin Franklin stuff yesterday evening?”
“No, Polly. Raphael, where’s the sheet for Lot 5?”
“Here, Miranda.”
Polly tried again, “What about you, Raphael? Maybe even just bumped the boxes while getting something else? Before you went home?”
“The Franklin collection? No, babe, I haven’t done anything with that in days.”
Polly stood for a moment, thinking, while her mother and Raphael busied themselves around her. And then she remembered. It was the smell of the thief’s study she and Chen had been to on Friday, and there was only one logical conclusion. The thief had been in her mother’s back office and had looked at the Wreath Book. Why he hadn’t simply stolen it Polly didn’t know. Perhaps he was hoping to be sneaky and keep anyone from realizing he’d been there at all. Perhaps it was because the Book’s key wasn’t with it, since Polly kept it in her hip pouch. But even though the Book wasn’t stolen, if the thief had been here, then nothing at Goggin Antiques, Appraisals, and Auctioneers was safe.
“Mom, can I talk to you?”
“Now is not a good time, Polly,” Ms Goggin said. She was bustling about with her clipboard. “I need you to help us put these lots in order.”
“This is really important, Mom. I just need to talk for a minute. It’s about something for the Franklin auction.”
That at least got Ms Goggin’s attention, but she only shook her head. “Can’t it wait, honey? I’ve got the auction of decorative pieces on Wednesday. We can worry about the Franklin Collection after that.”
Polly shrugged, scowling. “Sure, Mom. Whatever.”
“Great. Now go get me Lot 7, will you? It’s a set of three Lalique-style vases.”
It was more than an hour before Polly scuffed over to the loading dock and sat down, kicking her polka-dot sneakers disconsolately over the edge and not humming at all. A few minutes later Mr Green sat down beside her, looking out at the parking lot and the scrubby sumac trees beyond the fence.
They sat in silence for a minute or two before Raphael said, “Okay, babe, what’s up?”
“I’m just worried about something. I’ve got to tell my mom something important and she won’t even let me talk to her.”
“Maybe you can talk to her tonight at dinner?”
Polly shook her head, dark eyebrows low. “She never has time to talk. Not today, not tonight, not tomorrow. I might as well not even have a mother if she can’t ever take five minutes to hear what I’ve got to say.”
Raphael sighed deeply. “Let me tell you something, babe. I was always on my own when I was a kid. My mom had to raise me and two brothers all by herself and she worked two jobs to do it. Seemed like she was never home. So there we were, my brothers and me, just hanging out on our own. Now, lots of kids in our neighborhood were getting into drugs, fooling around with shoplifting, all that stuff. But any time I had a chance to get myself in trouble, I just remembered how hard Mom was working to take care of us, and I knew I couldn’t let her down. I knew she’d’ve been home with us if she could, and the only reason she worked so hard was how much she loved us.
“So now you listen to me, babe; your mom is a remarkable lady. Don’t you ever forget that. It’s not easy being a single parent and it’s not easy owning your own business, but your mom has to handle both. She’s smart, and determined, and big-hearted, and she looks for the good opportunities in bad situations... Maybe you don’t see it because she works so much, but she works like she works because she loves you, so give her a break, okay?”
“She works like she works because she loves the work,” Polly muttered.
Raphael punched her gently on the arm. “Polly, I don’t know any woman better than your mother. I think the world of her.” He looked suddenly embarrassed and added quickly, “And I think the world of you. You’ve got more in common than you realize, the two of you.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to get back to work, babe.”
“Okay. Thanks, Raphael.”
“And if it’s important, don’t give up. Give your mom another chance, okay?”
“Sure.”
He was already standing, but at her tone he stopped and said seriously, “And if you still can’t talk to her, you know you can always talk to me. I’ll make the time, I promise. Okay, babe?”
Polly nodded, and as she watched him stride back into the warehouse she thought, scowling, “That’s what parents are supposed to do. Mom needs to go to college to learn how to be a parent way more than Raphael needs college to learn how to run the stupid business.”
X. Another Run-In with Security
As soon as he arrived at the museum with his parents on Tuesday morning, Chen rushed to the Department of Prints and Rare Books to look around. There was no sign of anything amiss. He unlocked the closet nervously, expecting to see paper everywhere and boxes rifled through, but all looked undisturbed. He dug down to the hidden envelope and pulled it out, just as he had left it. But he didn’t heave a sigh of rel
ief until he’d peeked inside the envelope to confirm that it really was The Extraordinary Book of Doors in there. Then he hid it back away and locked the closet door again behind him.
Once he was sure everything was okay, Chen asked his mother to bring up the International Database of Art Loss on her computer. He spent twenty minutes searching through the most recent reports of thefts, but as far as he could tell, none had any connection to the Books. So far, so good. Maybe the thief was going to lie low for a while.
He relaxed, feeling better than he had in days. Maybe this was going to be fun after all. He typed “Benjamin Franklin” into the browser and began to read. There was a lot he wanted to know.
On Wednesday morning Chen checked the Book again. Still safe. He checked the Database again. Still no suspicious new thefts. He sat at the computer, eyes no longer focused on the screen. He felt too restless and impatient to settle down to research. Anyway, why should he just look stuff up on the internet when he could walk through magical portals to real places? He should be solving Benjamin Franklin’s clues, meeting Polly again, and maybe even figuring out some genius way to thwart the thief.
Visions of exciting adventures filled his head. Intrepid Seventh Grader Foils International Art Thief! Brilliant Boy’s Bravery Brings Back Burgled Book! Maybe with something like that behind him, people at the new school would be happy to meet him. They’d ask him about his adventures, and it would be easy to get talking, and in no time he’d have found some new friends.
“I need my computer, Chen,” his mother broke into his daydreams, “You’ll have to find something else to do today.”
“Okay. I’ll go wander, then.” After a minute’s hesitation he went into the closet and dug out the manila envelope before leaving the Department of Prints and Rare Books. He felt horribly guilty sneaking the Book out of his parents’ office, but they’d be in there all day, and how else was he going to use it? He carried it around the corner toward the emergency exit and paused to feel on the spine for the hidden key. Then he opened to Plate XXXII and unlocked the door.