by Nydam, Anne
“Come on, Chen,” Polly called impatiently, “Here it is!” She had already unlocked Plate XXXVIII of the Ornate Book, and as she lifted the page she said again, “Come on! Grab Uber, and hold the door open while I go in and get Raphael.”
With one last, nervous glance in the direction of Mr Blank’s disappearance, Chen scooped up the cat and followed Polly to the thick steel door. He leaned against it while she stepped through.
XX. The Shell Game
The only light was what shone in from the bright room of many doors behind them, and for a moment Chen could see nothing in the dark vault. Then a shape lurched upward from the shadows in the corner of the small room and Polly had thrown herself forward to meet it.
“Polly? What are you doing here? Did he get you, too? We’ve got to get you out of here somehow!”
“No, Raphael, we’re here to get you out. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, babe.” The man who emerged back into the light with Polly looked haggard and bruised and dusty. He rubbed his forehead and squinted at his watch. “Only about three and a half hours? Seemed like forever. Man, what a headache. Did that monster do this to you?” He gestured to Polly’s bruises in horror.
“Yeah, but I’m fine, Raphael. Honestly. We just need to get you home.”
“Thank God you’re all right, babe. I thought that maniac must have caught you, too.” He looked around curiously. “But if that man, that thief, didn’t put you here, how’d you find me? Where is he? What’s Uber doing here?”
“It’s a long story. But we got the Book back. It’s right there.” Polly pointed to the antique Books stacked on the floor.
“What book? You mean the one he was using to jump through space, or whatever was going on?” Mr Green rubbed his head again, looking dazed.
“Yeah. He stole it from the Franklin collection.”
“Oh. The Franklin auction’s coming up soon, so it’s good to get everything back. Where’d the thief go, anyway?”
“Ammon Blank? He fell through one of the doors. He could be anywhere, I guess.”
Polly seemed utterly unconcerned about Blank, but Chen’s stomach felt squirmy as he started remembering again all his fears about what could happen to someone charging through an unknown portal. If Blank hadn’t been able to come back, what awful fate might he have met behind the page with the stark stone doorway?
As much to convince himself as anything, he said, “He probably just ended up in some fancy building in Europe somewhere. It seems like that’s where most of the doors go.” He added uncomfortably, “I hope.”
Raphael looked at Chen curiously, and Polly chirped brightly, “Raphael, this is Chen Connelly. Chen, this is my friend Mr Raphael Green.”
They shook hands under Polly’s expectant gaze, but then Raphael turned back to Polly. “So you don’t know where the thief is?”
Polly shrugged. “What difference does it make? We have all the Books, so he can’t get back. Come on, Raphael, let’s get you out of here and get you something to drink.”
“Yeah, water’d be nice. And we should let your mom know everything’s all right.”
“Was she worried about the Book?”
“We walked in on the thief – Ammon Blank, is that what you said his name was? – when we got back from that estate we were looking at. He was in the back office rummaging through the Franklin stuff. I ran into the office and grabbed him, and suddenly started… popping all over the place… I don’t understand what happened, except that I ended up in that cell in the dark for three and a half hours. I have no idea what your mom must have thought when we disappeared like magic, or whether she’s even realized that he stole one of the Franklin books.”
Chen wasn’t paying much attention to Raphael’s conversation. He was too busy imagining worst case scenarios again. What if Ammon Blank had fallen through a doorway right into the crossfire of a gunfight in the wild west, or a back-room assassination of crime-lords in Russia? What if he’d stumbled out of the door that once led to the top floor of a seven story tower that was now long fallen down? Or what if he’d tumbled through the page into a room that had flooded - would he be drowned already? What if he’d come out in a jail cell? Or another safe, and he had only three days to live… if he had enough oxygen? Chen knew he’d have nightmares for the rest of his life if he had to keep imagining all the horrible things that might have happened.
He blurted, “I think we should just check and make sure he isn’t about to die in agony!”
“We don’t have time to worry about some murderous nondescript magician-thief. We have to take care of Raphael.”
“Polly, you’ve been talking like this all day, and you sound just like Ammon Blank: We deserve this. He’s in our way. Let’s get rid of him. Let’s turn him into a newt. Well, just because you’re turning into Ammon Blank doesn’t mean I want to. If you get to tell me No lies, then I get to tell you No standing around letting people die horrible deaths. I don’t want to leave this place wondering if he’s suffering a hideous tortured death right on the other side of some paper-thin door.”
Polly let out an outraged squawk. “What? I am not like Ammon Blank. I’m not like him at all! I’m just trying to make sure Raphael’s okay!”
“Well, Ammon Blank’s just trying to do whatever it is he thinks his brother needs, right? Anyway, you think what you’re doing is okay, and he thinks what he does is okay, but it’s not. It wasn’t okay for him to leave Mr Green suffocating in a safe, and it isn’t okay for us to leave him in some unknown deathtrap who knows where.”
Raphael looked back and forth between the two children, who were now facing off against each other furiously. He said mildly, “If you think that man’s really in trouble, then we can’t leave him.”
“He’s probably absolutely fine!” Polly argued. “We’ve been through tons of doors and they’ve all been perfectly safe. Anyway, Raphael, what do you care if he’s dying? He tried to kill you!”
Raphael shook his head. “Never make enemies if you can help it, babe.”
“He’s already your enemy!”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t mean I have to be his. Didn’t I tell you how folks were getting into all kinds of bad stuff in my neighborhood when I was a kid? If I’d tried to avenge every wrong anyone ever did me, I wouldn’t be alive today. You’ve got to let stuff go, babe. Your friend Chen is right; I wouldn’t want to see anyone die if I could help them. Which door is it he went through?”
“I don’t have the slightest idea,” Polly muttered stubbornly.
The room thrummed, and Chen stared at the ring of pages spinning slowly around and around. When Polly had opened the safe, he’d lost track of the door the thief had fallen through, and now he stared at the hundreds and thousands of black-and-white woodcuts desperately hoping he’d glimpse it again. The pages riffled past like the shifting mirrors of a kaleidoscope, and for a moment it all felt like too much. How could he examine every detail of every one of these enormous pictures? His focus faded and the pages fluttered around him in a blur.
He pictured in his mind the monumental stone blocks of the door frame, and the rough, iron-studded wooden door through which Ammon Blank had fallen. Wasn’t it really most likely, as Polly said, that Blank was perfectly fine? In fact, wherever he was, he was probably happily pocketing more treasures right this minute as Chen stood here worrying about him. But as Chen pictured the door in his imagination, he realized that he was staring straight at its page.
“There!” he exclaimed, and jumped forward to grab it before it could move again.
Mr Green came to stand beside him, one hand on the thick paper of the page. “Polly and Chen, I want you to keep behind the door when you open it, and I’ll look through and just check that everything’s okay.”
Grudgingly Polly picked up Uber and came to stand beside Chen.
“Ready?” Chen said, and when Polly and Raphael nodded, he pulled. The door looked so heavy that he gave it a good, hard wrench, and the page flew
smoothly open faster than he expected. He and Polly stumbled back, but Raphael poked his head cautiously into the doorway as a gust of chilly wind pressed his shirt against his chest.
Chen and Polly peered around the corner of the door and found themselves staring out into a swirling white mist. After a moment Chen made out mountain peaks away below him in the distance, and realized that the cold mist was clouds. The doorway’s stone threshold extended into a narrow, broken ledge along a timeworn wall of imposing ruins, but beyond that was nothing but a steep cliff plummeting into the nothingness of the clouds below.
Chen’s stomach plummeted, too, as the picture of Ammon Blank’s panicked last moments flashed into his imagination. But he barely had time to wonder how long you’d spend in terror before you were smashed into pulp, when Raphael’s voice startled him.
“Take my hand. I’ll pull you in!”
Ammon Blank was standing pressed against the massive blocks of the stone wall with his back to the abyss. Somehow he had managed not to lurch over the edge when he stumbled through the doorway, and now he clung precariously to the ancient ashlar wall.
“Don’t touch me!” he panted, the chilly wind grabbing his words. “If you try to push me, I swear I’ll pull you down with me!”
“I’m not going to push you, man. I’m trying to help you.”
“Against my better judgment,” Polly muttered from Chen’s side.
Chen retorted, “No standing around letting people die horrible deaths, Polly. Wasn’t I right that the doorway could be dangerous?”
“Yeah, okay. You were right,” she replied sullenly.
Raphael, meanwhile, was still leaning out into the cold mountain wind, reaching toward the magician. Tentatively Ammon Blank shuffled his feet along the ledge until Raphael could grab him by the arm. There was an instant when both men teetered in the doorway, and then Blank was around the edge of the door and into the bright white room with the others.
“There,” Raphael said, “You okay now?” Ammon Blank’s hair and suit were beaded with water and his teeth were chattering.
Raphael gave him a bracing slap on the back and turned to Polly and Chen. “All right, kids. Next job, we’ve got to get you two back home.”
“Stop him!” yelped Polly, pointing, and Chen whirled back toward Ammon Blank in time to see him scoop up the stack of magical Books they had left beside the door.
“Too late, as usual!” Blank crowed, but Polly had darted around between the thief and the nearest door pages, and now that Raphael and Chen advanced on him, he had no clear route of escape. He flipped his stack of Books spines upward, but all their keys were off. With one hand he began patting his pockets, looking for the Ornate Book’s key, but he didn’t find it. It had fallen out of his pocket when he tripped over Uber.
Raphael held up his hands, his deep voice slow and soothing. “Listen, Mr Blank, you can see we don’t want to hurt you, but there are three of us and you’re not going anywhere. Put down the Books and you can be on your way without any more trouble.”
Ammon Blank looked calculatingly at the three of them. “You may not want to hurt me, but I’ve got no problem hurting you. If I have to go right through someone, I will. How do you think you’re going to stop me?”
Raphael’s kindly voice grew suddenly menacing. “Do you really want me to show you how, Mr Blank?”
There was a tense moment as the two men stared at each other.
Polly hissed furiously, “So you think I’m just like that evil, double-crossing, two-faced, nondescript ingrate? Wasn’t I right that we shouldn’t have helped him?”
“I never said you were just like him; I just said you were starting to sound like him. And I don’t want to help him. But if you really think we should have left him out there on that ledge to die, then maybe you’re more like him than I realized!”
“I never said I wanted him to die!”
“No, but you sure acted like you didn’t care!”
“Hey! Kids!” Raphael interrupted, “This is not the time! Mr Blank, you can see that we’re all losing our patience. I’m not going to wait much longer. Give back what you stole, and then get out of here.”
In reply, Ammon Blank’s face suddenly brightened and he smiled charmingly. “I think I’ve got a compromise. Have you ever heard of the shell game? It goes like this. I lay out the four books in front of me, so - one, two, three, and four - and cover them so we can’t see them.” Kneeling down behind the row of leather-bound Books on the floor, Mr Blank pulled a folded white silk handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit and shook it out. With a flourish, he passed his right hand down its length and from its end pulled a blue silk scarf. He laid this over the Ornate Book. A second pass and a yellow scarf appeared, and was laid over the Dragon Book. With another flourish he pulled a green scarf into the air and spread it over the Wreath Book, and then finally he clapped his hands. The white scarf turned red, and he draped it over the decoy Dragon Book. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he purred, “Let the shell game begin.”
Polly put Uber on her lap and held her, while Chen and Raphael crouched beside her, across the Books from Mr Blank. They all watched curiously as the magician began to slide the four silk-covered shapes around on the smooth white floor. Back and forth he shuffled the Books so that they switched places almost faster than the others could follow. And then abruptly he stopped and spread his hands in invitation.
“You each have one chance to choose a book. Three genuine Books, and three of you. If you all choose correctly, you regain them all. If not, I keep whichever books you fail to find. Easy, yes? So, who will go first? Miss Goggin, your task is to select your book. The Franklin book from your mother’s shop.”
Polly looked at the four silk scarves. “Can I consult with the others?” she asked cautiously.
“Why not? You see how reasonable I am.”
“The Wreath Book is the one under the green handkerchief, right?” Polly asked Chen, who nodded. “That’s what I thought, but you can never be sure. Okay, then, that one.”
“Is that your final choice?” asked the magician, indicating the green-covered rectangle. “Very well. But you can never be sure, indeed.” He took the corner of the scarf and whipped it off to reveal the decoy book, which he pushed toward her. “Too bad, Miss Goggin. It seems you’re not as smart as you thought. But perhaps your friends will have better luck.”
As he spoke he began shuffling the remaining three Books, back and forth, in and out, right, left, and center. When he stopped he turned to Raphael.
“Your turn, Mr Green. Can you find the Book from the Christopher Wren Museum in London?”
Raphael rubbed his forehead wearily. “I know this is some kind of trick, Mr Blank. And I haven’t agreed to any of this.”
“Come, come, Mr Green. Play the game and no one gets hurt. Refuse, and who knows how this may end. I think you’ll agree that your chance of picking one book out of three is higher than the chance that no one will get hurt in a free-for-all. And I’m afraid the children are especially likely to be involved in an accident if things should turn rough.”
Raphael’s lips were a tight line, but he turned to the children. “I don’t even know what I’m looking for here. You’ll have to tell me.”
Chen said anxiously, “The Book from London is the Ornate Book, right? And that was under the blue scarf, the first one he laid down.”
“Yeah,” Polly said, “But the scarf color didn’t help us with the Wreath Book. Maybe the Books stay in the same places and he only moves the handkerchiefs.”
“In which case the Ornate Book was the first one on our right.”
“Is this your choice, then?” Ammon Blank asked, his hand on the Book to his left, which was now under the red scarf.
The other three looked at each other and shrugged. Raphael nodded.
Ammon Blank flicked the red scarf away and this time revealed… nothing. Whatever Book had been there was gone.
“No fair!” exclaimed Polly angr
ily, “Give it back!”
“Do I have it?” Ammon Blank protested innocently. “Did you see me take it away? Is there anything up my sleeves? If you chose an empty spot you have no one to blame but yourself. This is the shell game, my friends. Is your eye sharp enough to follow the Books? But it’s your turn now, boy. You’ll be searching for the Book you took from me in Cleveland all those weeks ago.”
“After you stole it from Mr Salceda,” Chen retorted.
Blank didn’t answer, but simply shuffled the two remaining Books around and around in front of him. Finally he stopped and spread his hands. “Make your choice!”
Chen looked at the two silk-covered rectangles, yellow on the left and blue on the right. There were Books there, under those scarves, he was sure of it. Something was holding the silk up in the form of a book, and the fabric wasn’t stiff enough to hold the shape by itself. But what was the use of choosing when the magician was sure to make it disappear somehow as soon as he picked one? His only hope, he thought, was to catch the thief in the act of slipping the Book away.
“Blue,” he said, not letting his eyes move from the silk-draped shape.
“Are you sure? This is the one you want? Last opportunity to keep one of the magical Books for yourself. Fifty-fifty chance.”
“Blue,” Chen repeated, staring so hard his eyes were beginning to sting.
“Blue it is,” Ammon Blank replied, whisking the scarf away. The Dragon Book was not there. Neither was any other Book. The space was empty once again.
“Well, my friends,” Mr Blank said briskly, scooping up the yellow-covered Book and getting to his feet, “This concludes our little game, and it’s time for me to go. As per our agreement, I’ll be exiting through one of these many fine doorways, and I trust no one will get hurt in a foolish attempt to stop me.” He smiled suavely and sidled toward the huge pages behind him.