The Extraordinary Book of Doors

by Nydam, Anne

  Maskelyne & Cooke, Herrmann, Anderson,

  Houdini, etc. (pieces to be located)

  Cleveland Museum of Art

  Guelph Treasure

  Praxiteles Apollo (too heavy? get Z to help?)

  Van Gogh exhibit

  custom work – masterpieces to order

  X Rolex (to keep)

  plenty of cash, electronics, jewelry, etc

  Chen looked up, frowning. “I hadn’t thought of that possibility,” he said, “But it takes away the limits of where the doors go. We thought it was bad enough that Ammon Blank could get into the Louvre because there happens to be a portal to the Louvre… And I thought the Cleveland Museum of Art would only be in danger as long as the Dragon Book was there in my parents’ office. But this means Mr Blank could break in almost anywhere, right? It goes like this: he walks into any museum through the front door like a normal tourist, and leaves one of the Books in the coat check. Say, the Wreath Book. That night he uses the Ornate Book to go through the magic door to the Wreath Book, picks up the Wreath Book, steals whatever he wants, and as soon as an alarm sounds, he disappears back through the Ornate Book without a trace. He could plant a Book in a big jewelry store. He could take a Book on a tour of the US Mint or Fort Knox and hide it somewhere inside. He could even mail a Book different places. He’d be practically unstoppable!”

  Polly nodded grimly. “Even if we don’t get the money for Raphael, even if Ammon Blank wants to give the money to his dear and deserving brother, we can’t let him just start stealing whatever he wants. Think of all the treasures that would be gone forever from museums. Think of all the people who would get hurt by him, or blamed for his crimes. Think of all the trouble your parents could get into when he steals that stuff from the Cleveland Museum of Art. We can’t let this happen, Chen. We’ve got to get the Books away from him.”

  Despite the example of the young heroes in his favorite books, Chen was sure it made no sense at all for a couple of kids to try to take on a murderous magician-thief bent on crime.

  “Yeah, but…” he began. He could imagine so many, many ways this would surely end badly. But he could not imagine any way at all that he and Polly could hand the problem off to their parents or the police and go home safely without another worry. He couldn’t think of any way they could avoid the need to do something heroic. Despite the fact that they were surely doomed. Slowly Chen nodded.

  “Fine. Where do we start?” he said.

  XIII. Doors and Traps

  “We need to go on the offensive,” Polly declared firmly, “We’ve been running away, and we don’t seem to be able to get anywhere. But what if we met him head-on?”

  “How would that change things?”

  “Well, I’ve been thinking...”

  “Thinking?” Chen interrupted irritably, “When have you had a chance to think recently? Was it while you were getting thrown around by defective magic portals, or was it while you were getting clobbered with a stick, or maybe it was while you were getting chased with assault rifles through a top-secret government office?”

  “Ha, not quite. But we looked all over Mr Blank’s study and living room and we didn’t see a trace of his Book, right? So he obviously puts his Book away somewhere when he isn’t using it. I’m thinking that now that he has two Books, he’ll keep one of them with him to use, but he’ll put the other one away. And if we wait until he comes here chasing after us, then we’ll know he won’t be where the other Book is, right? We could portal right to it.”

  “Maybe. But how would we know which Book he’s using now?”

  “We’ve got a 50-50 chance of picking the right one, don’t we?”

  “I don’t like those odds,” Chen muttered, “And even if we got it right, how long would we have before he realized we weren’t here and returned?”

  “But that’s the beauty of this library. He could spend quite a long time looking for us before concluding that we’re definitely not here. I say he’ll be wanting to finish Benjamin Franklin’s clues, so he’ll be using the Wreath Book now and it’ll be the Ornate Book that’s put away. Come on.”

  Reluctantly, Chen opened his Book to Plate XXXI. He was still pretty sure this was a bad idea. He fitted his key into the hole in readiness, but didn’t turn. They were waiting to hear the sounds of a murderous magician-thief stalking them.

  Chen looked at his watch. It was past noon. No wonder he was hungry. And his parents would be expecting him back in their office at the museum. Of course, at this point having his parents annoyed with him was the least of his worries. He wondered how long it would be before he was hungry enough to beg Polly for some cat treats. He sighed and glanced over at Polly. She was studying her list of doors from her hip pouch.

  “The clue is not easy,” she muttered, “Just what we need: for the hardest clue to be one we can’t even look at. But we’ve got to be able to figure it out anyway. Fruits on the chimneypiece… Apples? Grapes? French people always eat grapes, right? They wouldn’t have had bananas in France back then, would they?”

  But Chen sat bolt upright. “Wait a second! The clue is not easy! I bet it’s like that part in The Lord of the Rings where the password to enter Moria is right there in the clue, remember? Benjamin Franklin says the clue isn’t easy, so that means it’s hard!”

  Polly stared back at him excitedly. “Ha, the fruit on the mantel would be hard, too, because they were probably wood or marble, not real! Fun art fact brought to you by Goggin Antiques: mantelpieces carved with garlands of fruit were very popular in the seventeenth century.”

  “And it makes sense with the end of the clue, too. All that is worth having is worth hard labor, right?”

  “But hang on, I thought all the clues were going to be numbers.”

  “Maybe I was wrong abou- ” Abruptly Chen fell silent. He had heard footsteps sounding somewhere between the tall bookcases. He stared at Polly and she stared back while they listened, frozen.

  “It could just be someone looking for a book,” Chen whispered hopefully.

  Polly shook her head. She gestured to the Book and hissed, “Go!”

  Chen turned the key and lifted the corner of the page. A muted cry on the other side made him flatten the page shut again, heart pounding.

  “It’s just a cat,” Polly whispered, “Come on, let’s go. Hurry up.”

  Chen could hear the footsteps coming closer down one of the aisles. He thought they sounded sneaky yet determined, and he could picture Ammon Blank on the prowl.

  Shuddering, he opened the page all the way, and cautiously followed Polly through the door.

  “Is this Mr Blank’s bedroom?” Chen asked in a hushed voice.

  “It looks like it,” Polly replied, “I stuck my head in here for a second when we were looking for his Book after escaping from him this morning.” She went to the door of the room and peeked out. “Yes, that’s the main room we were in before.”

  As she turned the knob, there was a scrabbling of paws, and a cat emerged from under a chest of drawers to run to the door. Startled, Polly slammed the door quickly and stared at the cat. It was a slender calico cat with a black-tipped tail and a white-tipped nose.

  “Uber?” Polly gasped in astonishment. In answer, Uber purred loudly and snuggled against Polly as she scooped her up. “Holy cow, Uber, what are you doing here?”

  “She must have dashed through the door this morning when the thief went to your mom’s office and stole your copy of the Book.”

  “And you’ve been here ever since?” crooned Polly, rubbing noses with Uber, “You poor darling idiot.” She took a kitty treat from her hip pouch and gave it to the cat.

  “Come on, Polly,” Chen interrupted, “We’d better get to work. We’ve got to find this Ornate Book and get out of here before Mr Blank decides we’re not in that old library.”

  Polly nodded and they both began to look around, as Uber wriggled down from Polly’s arms and went to sit beside a large wardrobe. Chen checked under the bed while Pol
ly opened the dresser drawers. Chen flipped through the magazines on the bedside stand while Polly went into the closet and began digging through the racks of nondescript clothes.

  “It’s got to be here somewhere,” Polly pointed out, “After all, the door wouldn’t have sent us here if this isn’t where the Ornate Book is.”

  “Yes, but if we can’t find it…” muttered Chen anxiously. He was sure the thief would be popping back into the apartment any second now. “I don’t think we should go back to that library when he comes here,” he added, “I think we should go to one of the pages that’s only in the Dragon Book, not either of the others. Then at least maybe we’ll have some options about keeping away from him.”

  “That seems plausible,” Polly replied, poking gingerly through the laundry hamper.

  So Chen turned to the last woodcut in his Book, and kept his finger in the page in readiness to flee. It hampered his search slightly, but there was no way he was going to risk setting the Book down, or having to shuffle through pages to find a safe picture in an emergency.

  The wardrobe door was locked, but Chen had seen a key in the bedside drawer, and when he fetched it and tried it, the wardrobe opened. To his surprise and slight annoyance, Uber jumped immediately into the wardrobe and sat down expectantly at the back behind several tuxedos and red and black capes hanging from a rod. This seemed to be where Ammon Blank kept his magician costumes, but although Chen searched thoroughly, even climbing right into the wardrobe to reach the upper shelf and the back corners, he still saw no sign of any old leather Book. There was no trace of the stolen gold sculpture or the mysterious St Salvator’s Mace, either.

  Uber mewed disapprovingly as Chen stepped back out of the wardrobe.

  “Come on,” he said to her, “I need to lock the door back up and leave it like we found it.” But the cat didn’t budge. “Polly, come get your cat so I can shut this thing up. We really need to get out of here.”

  “It’s got to be here somewhere,” Polly repeated stubbornly, but she didn’t look as calm any more. She stood in the middle of the bedroom floor staring slowly around in every direction. “Did you check between the mattresses?” She knelt beside the bed, slid her hand under the mattress, and swept back and forth. Then, mid-sweep, she froze. There was a sound in the next room.

  “Get Uber!” mouthed Chen.

  Polly nodded and tiptoed swiftly to the wardrobe to grab the cat. But inside the wardrobe she paused again.

  “What’s taking her so long?” Chen wondered frantically. He could hear Ammon Blank pacing around just on the other side of the bedroom door, and he nearly had a heart attack as Blank’s voice rang out.

  “Hi, Zenon. Sorry I missed your call; I’ve been all over the place and I don’t always get reception. Uh huh. You did what? Zenon, everyone wants to get rich without working, but if you get yourself thrown in jail for some stupid embezzlement scheme, you’ll ruin everything. Yeah, that’s what I’ve been working on. I’m almost there – just a couple annoying little things have come up.” He laughed briefly at his own joke. “But the performance for the magic tournament is all worked out, and I’m hoping to have the money soon.”

  Mr Blank was still walking around as he spoke, and at any moment he might decide to come into this room. Chen tiptoed to the wardrobe.

  “Come on!” he whispered urgently.

  “I feel it,” Polly breathed.

  Chen had no idea what she was talking about, but he wasn’t about to argue with her now. And then he heard Mr Blank’s footsteps approaching the bedroom door. In a panic, he climbed into the wardrobe beside Polly and pulled the door shut behind him.

  It was lucky that his finger was still marking the magical door he had chosen as their escape route, for the wardrobe was completely dark inside, and now they could hear Mr Blank entering the room and crossing to his bed.

  The bed squeaked slightly as the magician sat down. He was saying, “Well, Mom wouldn’t nag you so much if you’d at least pretend to be looking for a job. It’s all about appearances, remember? That’s the first rule of illusion. People can’t look at two things at once. Make them see what you want them to see, and they’ll never notice whatever else you’re doing. Listen, Zenon, you may be my little brother, but you can’t expect me to take care of everything for you. What? No, but once I get the money we can talk about it. I’ve got all kinds of plans for that money…”

  Chen opened his Book in the dark, felt for the keyhole, and turned the key.

  A crack of light shone into the dark wardrobe from the edge of the opening page. Polly clutched Uber tightly, and, as quietly as they possibly could, she and Chen crept through the portal.

  The moment Chen shut the cover of the book behind them, there was a loud zap and the light grew suddenly brighter and greener. Lines of sparking fire shot upwards from floor to ceiling all around them, making a sort of glowing yellowy-green cage of lightning. Uber yowled angrily and her tri-colored tail fluffed out in alarm.

  In the same instant another voice yelled out in equal alarm.

  “Uncle Tobal!” the voice hollered, “Uncle Tobal, the trap activated!” A tall boy leapt up from a squashy leather armchair and dashed to the flight of steps visible beyond the humming bars of light. He ran up the stairs two at a time, still shouting, “The trap! You caught someone!”

  Chen could feel Polly shivering beside him, although when she spoke her voice seemed, as usual, much calmer than he felt. “A trap, eh? And a magical one, clearly. What door did you send us through, anyway?”

  “Who cares what door this was,” Chen retorted, hearing his voice wobble unsteadily, “As long as I pick a different one to get us out of here!” He opened his Book again, this time to the second-to-last page, but when he tried to slip his key into the keyhole, there was a faint buzz, a glow of yellowy-green light, and a force that seemed to push back against the key.

  “I can’t get it in,” he muttered, still struggling to push the key toward the page. “It’s like a magnetic force or something, only backwards. Like when you try to put the two positive ends together.”

  “Stands to reason,” Polly said, “After all, anyone who can make a magic trap to catch someone with a magic Book would know better than to let them use the Book to magically escape. Now let’s see the door that brought us here.”

  “Fine,” Chen snapped, “Don’t bother trying to get out of here! Don’t bother worrying about a thing! No, let’s just look at the pretty woodcuts while we wait here for some evil wizard to show up and turn us all into newts!” He flung his Book open to the last illustration and shoved it at Polly.

  She raised her eyebrows. “I thought knowing where we were might help us escape,” she said mildly. “This doorway doesn’t look particularly evil, actually, but I guess you never know. It’s not like Villains are really going to use blood and skulls in all of their decorating.”

  Chen glanced over and then, in spite of himself, looked more closely. The woodcut doorway did not, in fact, look evil. To be honest, it looked quite harmless, like a front door he might see on one of the comfortable old houses in his new neighborhood, with some sort of pretty flowering vine climbing up a wooden column and over the porch roof. There was even a cat snoozing comfortably on the front step.

  But Chen did not have long to examine the picture or to consider how the cat might be a wizard’s demon and the flowering vine might be poisonous, because someone was coming back down the stairs. It was a lanky man with a narrow face and a beak-like nose. He strode across the floor to the magical cage, while several steps behind him came the boy they had seen first. The man stared at Chen and Polly fiercely for a moment, his brown eyes flashing beneath heavy eyebrows.

  “So, you thought you’d come back for more, is that it?” he demanded.

  Chen stared at the man, speechless.

  “Come back?” Polly repeated, “No, sir, we’ve definitely never been through this door before. Where are we, anyway?” Polly was peering through the cage curiously, as if s
he were on a field trip to a fascinating museum.

  Chen muttered, “I wonder whether newts care about interesting décor.”

  The man raised one dark eyebrow and began to walk around the cage, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. Chen, turning to watch him, saw that the room behind him was, actually, a rather unusual sort of living room. Despite his annoyance with Polly’s curiosity, Chen couldn’t help being curious himself. There was the armchair and a couch, a coffee table and a large flat-screen television, but the walls were completely lined with bookcases filled with odd and fascinating things. There were rows of old leather-bound books, interspersed with fossils of strange creatures, complicated brass instruments that glinted in the afternoon sunshine coming through the windows, chunks of faceted crystal, and all sorts of intriguing things Chen couldn’t make out through the bright yellowy-green haze of the cage. He was pretty sure something was moving in the shadows at the top of one of the bookcases. Its talons clicked on the wood. On the other hand, he didn’t see any chains, handcuffs, or obvious torture devices.

  But now the tall man halted again and said sternly, “Do you deny that you stole my Book?”

  “We would never steal anything,” Polly retorted primly.

  Chen said, “Your Book? Who are you?” Then a sudden memory struck him and he lifted the front cover of The Extraordinary Book of Doors to look at the names listed on the endpaper.

  At this, the man outside the cage grinned fiercely. “I am Tobal Salceda, and yes, you’ll find my name there. In my Book. My Book which was stolen three weeks ago, although not, according to the young lady, by you.”

  “Oh,” Polly said excitedly, “If the Dragon Book was stolen from you, we must be in Cleveland now, right? Chen, we must be in Cleveland! You can get home now!”

  “Yeah, maybe I could get home if we didn’t happen to be imprisoned in a sinister magical trap and about to be turned into newts,” Chen retorted, but Polly didn’t pay any attention to his pessimism.