Book Scavenger
Page 22
“I hope you enjoyed my literary treasure hunt, despite Mr. Remora’s antics,” he said.
“We did,” Emily said, her voice a near whisper. She swallowed and repeated herself more loudly.
Mr. Griswold clasped his hands in his lap, studying the Poe bust as he talked. “Ever since I learned about my relation to Rufus Griswold and the role he played in Poe’s life, I have felt remorse for how my ancestor treated Poe after he died. You see, Rufus took advantage of his position as Poe’s literary executor. He altered some of Poe’s letters and writings and compiled them into a posthumous biography in an attempt to paint Poe in a very negative light.”
“Why would he do that?” James asked.
Mr. Griswold shook his head. “I’m not sure anyone knows. Rufus’s lies and fabrications weren’t fully revealed until long after his own death, so he never had to explain himself. He and Poe had a contentious relationship, to be sure. Toward the end of Poe’s life, there was a woman they were both friends with, and so some speculate there was a love triangle in play.” Mr. Griswold shook his head once again. “I don’t know the why, but to go out of your way to spread lies about someone after he has passed away, well, I can only imagine what a sad and bitter man my great-great-great-grandfather must have been.”
Mr. Griswold dragged a finger across the charms that dangled from the golden hare medallion.
“When I discovered the Poe manuscript, an idea clicked for me. I had long been a fan of Poe’s short story ‘The Gold-Bug’ and thought it would be fun to emulate the treasure hunt. Once I’d found the manuscript, I realized I not only had the perfect prize in hand, but I could make amends to the ghost of Poe at the same time.”
Something that had been bothering Emily for the last week was nudged free as she listened to Mr. Griswold speak.
“What about … what about Mr. Remora?”
Mr. Griswold sighed sadly. “Yes, Mr. Remora. I am so sorry about Leon. I had no idea he could be capable of … so much awfulness.” He grimaced, his mustache folding into the deep lines of his face. “He knows books and literary history incredibly well—I always forget that not all book people are good people.”
Emily tilted her head, surprised to hear that. Hollister had said nearly the same thing a couple of weeks ago.
Mr. Griswold continued. “I feel like I should have known or seen red flags, but when I have a game in the works, I can get…”
“Obsessed?” Jack offered.
Mr. Griswold smiled. “I was going to say hyperfocused. I get so intent on orchestrating my plans and keeping them a secret that I suppose I have a tendency to stop observing what’s really going on around me.”
“Like losing yourself in a good jam,” Matthew said.
“Exactly.” Mr. Griswold punctuated the word with a tap of his finger against the wheelchair arm.
Emily still wasn’t completely satisfied. “Mr. Remora said that he found the Poe manuscript. He said that he deserved to be partners with you, fifty-fifty.”
Mr. Griswold scoffed. “Technically, he did find the manuscript—I suppose that part is true. I hired him to sort through and archive my family’s papers and heirlooms, in addition to helping me with my book collection. I never expected to uncover a Poe manuscript, of course, but I knew there were some potentially valuable or historically interesting items. I even had Mr. Remora sign a nondisclosure statement to assert that he would not divulge information he learned or claim ownership of anything in my possession.
“Not to mention, I compensated him for his work. Compensated him very well, in fact. But I don’t think it was the money that ultimately mattered to him. I think it was the glory of discovering a lost Poe. And you and I would understand a bit of that, wouldn’t we, Emily? The thrill and satisfaction of a treasure hunt? It’s what Book Scavenger’s all about.”
“Not all about,” she said. “It’s about a community of book lovers, too. And sharing books and adventures with friends.” Her eyes flicked to James, and she felt shy all of a sudden, but he was smiling.
Matthew elbowed her. “And brothers.”
“I think Mr. Remora knew that with me involved,” Mr. Griswold continued, “he’d only be a footnote in the story. Without me, he could orchestrate a different scenario for him to ‘discover’ the work, thereby ensuring the spotlight would shine fully on himself.”
Emily had told herself she didn’t believe Mr. Remora’s claims about Mr. Griswold, but it wasn’t until right now, hearing Mr. Griswold explain his side in person, that the weight of those negative words truly evaporated.
“There’s something I still haven’t figured out,” James said. “If you were really unconscious that whole time, then who was Raven? Was it Jack?”
Jack pointed to himself. “Me? I’ve never even heard of Raven!”
Mr. Griswold chuckled. “Raven is right here.” He wheeled himself toward a bookcase that opened to reveal a small room filled with computer equipment. “This is Raven. My virtual assistant. She’s a computer program designed to assist players in the scavenger hunt.”
“I knew it!” James made a triumphant fist. “I knew there was something weird about her. But why did you activate Raven if you weren’t planning to start the game right away?”
“The simple answer is, I wanted to cross it off my to-do list. Sounds silly, doesn’t it?” Mr. Griswold adjusted his glasses. “Raven was programmed to reply to user queries only if they used the trigger phrase ‘The Gold-Bug.’ Once you made that initial contact with Raven, she could respond to other questions, but she wouldn’t interact with you without the first Gold-Bug prompt. And so, because of that, and because nobody has ever posted about The Gold-Bug in the history of Book Scavenger, I activated Raven. I didn’t anticipate it being a possibility that Raven would be put to work, because I wasn’t planning to hide any copies of The Gold-Bug until right before the game began.”
“And so everything Raven told us was preprogrammed?”
“Yes,” Mr. Griswold said. “She was set up to give specific clues or bits of information if someone used the right prompts.”
“That’s why she kept saying the same thing over and over whenever we wrote ‘The Gold-Bug,’” James mused.
“So why didn’t she always reply?” Emily said, thinking about the times she’d seen Raven’s green online light but didn’t receive a response to her messages.
“I programmed Raven to answer eight inquiries from a user at a time. If you used up all eight, then Raven wouldn’t respond to you for another forty-eight hours. Just my attempt to be a little tricky.”
Mr. Griswold cleared his throat. “Now it’s time for us to get to the fun stuff. Your prizes.”
Mr. Griswold explained that while the original Poe manuscript would be lent to a university collection where it would be displayed in an exhibit and studied by scholars, Bayside Press would be publishing a copy of Poe’s posthumous novel. Emily, James, and Matthew would split 10 percent of the royalties earned from the sale of the book, to be deposited into a scholarship fund for each of them. In addition, they were each gifted a laptop and invited to be founding members of a teen advisory board for the Book Scavenger website.
“I have one more token of appreciation in mind, but for now I’d like to keep that a secret,” Mr. Griswold said.
“You know, there was someone else who helped us, too,” Emily spoke up, a little shyly. She wasn’t sure how Mr. Griswold would react to this, but she felt compelled to bring it up anyway. “I think he’s an old friend of yours—Hollister?”
The corner of Mr. Griswold’s mouth twitched as an unreadable emotion briefly waved across his face.
“Ah. Hollister,” Mr. Griswold said softly. “We haven’t spoken in ages, I’m afraid.”
“Well, it’s never too late to reach out to someone. That’s what he told me, actually.”
Mr. Griswold smiled. “Did he now? That’s sound advice. Very sound advice indeed.”
CHAPTER
42
EMILY
LAY on her bed, finishing a book James had lent her called Rhyme Schemer. They planned to hide it at Pier 39 that evening when they went with her family to the Lighted Boat Parade.
There was a knock on her door, and her dad opened it, letting in the sounds of the Flush holiday album Matthew had been making the family listen to on repeat since Thanksgiving.
“A package for you,” her dad said, raising a medium-sized cardboard box he balanced on one hand.
Emily jumped up and grabbed it. The Bayside Press logo was stamped on top.
“They’re here!” she squealed. Mr. Griswold had said he was sending her advance copies of the new Poe novel. His final prize to her, James, and Matthew would be inside the book.
“I have to tell James!” She put the box down and raced to her window. A colorful strand of holiday bulbs dangled around her window, reflecting off the rain-flecked glass. She moved the antlers, The Gold-Bug, and the raven box from the windowsill to the floor before sliding the window up and reaching for the pulley rope, now slick with rain.
Her dad chuckled and left, letting the door close behind him. Once the bucket was at her level, she grabbed her notebook and scratched out a message:
HXXOS TPU KUPU! EXNU XAUP!
(Books are here! Come over!)
The next fifteen minutes seemed like the longest minutes ever as she waited for James to come down. She finished Rhyme Schemer and then paced her room until he poked his head in.
“Finally!” Emily clapped her hands.
James held up a thin paper bag with a logo on it for sourdough bread. “I thought of a good bookstume,” he said. “The clue can be something about lost bread, or a book that wants to be edible.” He snapped his fingers, an idea occurring to him. “We’ll make up the clue using altered poetry, like the character does in Rhyme Schemer!”
Emily grinned. “Yes, yes, yes. Brilliant. But first—Look!”
She dragged a ballpoint pen across the tape sealing the Bayside Press box. The flaps popped open to reveal paperback books of The Cathedral Murders: A Posthumous Novel by Edgar Allan Poe. They weren’t the final, final books, but Jack had said these advance copies would be like a dress rehearsal before the official performance.
Emily removed a copy and squeezed it between her hands, breathing in the paper smell. She flipped through the pages, wondering if the last prize would be another hidden puzzle. But it wasn’t. It was a special mention in the introduction of the book:
One fall day Emily Crane and James Lee, two San Francisco middle school students, found what they thought was an innocuous copy of an Edgar Allan Poe book abandoned in a BART station. Little did they know that this book, a reprinting of Poe’s short story “The Gold-Bug,” would lead them on a wild scavenger hunt across San Francisco, culminating in the discovery of the manuscript for the very novel you now hold in your hands.
The introduction went on to tell the story of Mr. Griswold’s plans for his game and how Emily and James unraveled all the clues.
“I can’t believe it. We’re in a book!” Emily exclaimed.
“We’re famous book hunters!” James said.
They spent a few quiet minutes looking through their copies of the new Poe book until Matthew poked his head in. His lopsided Mohawk had been shaved away, leaving short and stubbly hair everywhere except for his long bangs. “Dad said the books are here?”
Emily held one out to him. “Page five,” she said.
After skimming the introduction, Matthew said, “There’s nothing in here about my awesome kung fu moves to stop Mr. Remora!”
“That’s because that only happened in your dreams,” Emily said.
“Oh, right.” Matthew flicked his bangs out of his eye and smiled.
“But you get a mention for the Maltese Falcon clue and, of course, Portsmouth Square.”
Matthew pointed to the bread bag on the floor.
“What’s the bread for?” he asked.
James slid Rhyme Schemer inside the bag. “It’s a bookstume.”
Matthew made a face and shook his head. “No, no, no. If you’re going to dress a book up like a sourdough loaf, you need to make it look more convincing than that. Hold on.”
Matthew left the room, and James turned the wrapped book this way and that. “I guess it does just look like a book in a paper bag.”
When Matthew came back, he carried a roll of toilet paper and sheets of newspaper. He crumpled a sheet of newspaper with one hand and gestured for the book. “You put the paper on top to add bulk, like a real sourdough loaf. Now”—he nodded to the roll of toilet paper—“mummify them together so they stay in place.”
James wound toilet paper around the book as Matthew held it and the balled-up paper in place. Emily opened the sourdough bag to check for size.
“Squash it down more so it will fit,” she said.
Emily smiled at the heads of her brother and James, bent together in concentration. When they finished stuffing the bread bag, Emily held up the concealed book, twisting it to view from all angles.
“Now, that’s a bookstume,” Matthew said.
From the hallway, Emily’s mom called, “Time to head out, everybody!”
“Let’s go hide it,” James said. “You ready, Em?”
“I’m ready.”
And she was. She was ready to lean into their next adventure.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Although this story is entirely fictional, there are many factual bits woven throughout. Here is some background.
RUFUS GRISWOLD
Rufus Wilmot Griswold is indeed a historical figure and contemporary of Edgar Allan Poe. Outside of his relationship with Poe, Griswold is best known for publishing the anthology The Poets and Poetry of America in 1842. The animosity between Poe and Griswold might have begun in earnest when Poe wrote a review of this anthology in which he criticized the selection of poets (even though Poe’s own poems appeared in it). To further complicate the situation, it was actually Griswold himself who’d paid Poe to write this review, presumably expecting Poe to say only favorable things. Things went downhill from there between the two men until Poe died unexpectedly (and mysteriously) in 1849. Griswold published the infamous obituary Emily and James quoted from: “Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it.” Griswold signed “Ludwig” to the obituary instead of his own name, perhaps afraid of public reaction, but his identity was soon revealed.
It seems unbelievable that someone who would write an obituary with this much malice toward Poe could also be named the literary executor for Poe’s works, but that is in fact what happened. Some sources say Poe named him as his literary executor before he died, but others suggest Griswold manipulated himself into the position after Poe’s death through arrangements made with Poe’s mother-in-law. Griswold went on to publish a posthumous collection that included a slanderous and partially fabricated biography of Poe. Griswold embellished Poe’s letters and writing to portray him as an egotistical, mentally unstable alcoholic and drug addict prone to bitter jealousy. Although the biography was contested by Poe’s friends and supporters, it remained the primary resource about Poe for twenty-five years. Today, Griswold’s characterization of Poe often endures, even though biographers—such as Arthur Hobson Quinn in his 1941 Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography—have documented the fabrications that Griswold made.
At the time of his death, Poe left behind an unfinished story about a lighthouse keeper, but as far as I know, there is no unpublished novel-length manuscript. Finding an unpublished novel would be especially rare, as Poe is known primarily for his short stories and poems and published only one novel. If such an item were discovered today, it would be worth a considerable amount of money. A first edition of Poe’s first published work, “Tamerlane and Other Poems”—widely considered as the rarest book in American literature, with only twelve known copies—recently sold for over $600,000.
“THE GOLD-BUG”
Poe is credited with originating the detective-mystery genre with his character Le Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin, who appeared in three short stories: “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Mystery of Marie Roget,” and “The Purloined Letter.” Some classify “The Gold-Bug” as one of Poe’s detective stories because the narrator and protagonist work like detectives to unravel the mystery of the gold-bug and decipher the encrypted message. But a true detective story is supposed to present all the clues for the readers so they can attempt to solve the mystery alongside the detective, and “The Gold-Bug” withholds information until the end.
CIPHER CHALLENGE
Poe was a fan of ciphers and cryptography. He not only incorporated a cipher into “The Gold-Bug,” but he also wrote essays about the subject. While writing for Alexander’s Weekly Messenger, he issued a challenge to readers to submit cryptograms for him to crack. He received numerous submissions, which he claimed to have solved himself. It was this that inspired Mr. Quisling’s cipher challenge in Book Scavenger.
MASQUERADE
Masquerade is a picture book written and illustrated by Kit Williams, an English artist, who collaborated with his publisher to launch a treasure hunt in which the clues were hidden within the book’s illustrations, ultimately leading to buried treasure. Masquerade was published in 1979 and launched a phenomenon that had millions of people searching for the treasure—a golden hare medallion on a chain that Williams had crafted himself—until it was found in 1982. Masquerade initiated a literary genre called “armchair treasure hunts.” Quest for the Golden Hare by Bamber Gascoigne is an excellent recounting of what happened both before and after Masquerade was published.