by F. C. Shaw
“Brilliant!” Wesley grinned. “Did your aunt give you this?”
Rollie nodded. “It’s how I found the secret passage at school.”
“Let me see this closer.” Eliot leaned down, his nose almost touching the pages.
“Later, Eliot.” Rollie gathered the pages into a neat stack again. “Let’s read this other page from the folder.”
“It doesn’t make any sense.” Wesley folded his arms.
Orwjc Yaxkunv rw yaxppanbb. NCJ: oren vxwcqb.
“Crikey, it’s in code!” Eliot laughed. “Finally! A code I can work on.”
“You think you can crack it?” Rollie raised his eyebrows.
“Codes are my specialty. It will take some time though. I’ll need to make a decoder ring. It looks like Zilch assigned letters to represent different letters.”
Wesley and Rollie stared blankly at him.
“For example, this word—if that’s what you can call it—oren must represent other letters. If we can figure out which letter Zilch assigned to be a, b, c, and so forth, then we can substitute his letters for the real alphabet and crack the code.”
Rollie patted Eliot’s back. “We’ll leave that to you, since codes are your specialty.”
“Thank you! I’ll get to work right away. Don’t bother me!” Eliot grabbed the coded message, his notepad, and his pencil, and he headed off to the library downstairs.
“Why did Zilch have a blueprint of the Academy?” asked Wesley.
“I’m sure we’ll know more when Eliot decodes that message. Maybe he was hoping to find the secret passage. That’s what he had you looking for, remember?”
Wesley nodded solemnly.
“You need to let that go.” Rollie cocked his head to one side. “How Zilch used you—let it go. It’s in the past.”
“I have a hard time letting the past go.”
Rollie thought for a moment. “You know who else has a hard time letting the past go? Herr Zilch. He must still be bitter at his nephew for betraying him. Perhaps that’s why he hates the Academy so much. He also has not let the past history of Holmes defeating Moriarty go. He still lives in fear of that. He’s let the past define who he is.”
“You’re right. Thanks, mate, for everything. For forgiving me, for letting me stay here, for being a great friend. I needed a good friend like you.”
“What are you talking about? You’re the most popular boy at school! You have lots of friends, don’t you?”
Wesley shrugged. “I know a lot of people, and a lot of people know me. But being popular doesn’t mean you have real friends. You’ve turned out to be a true friend.”
The boys worked on Independent Study homework until dinner. At dinner Rollie felt a little nervous sitting close to Euston; he wondered if Euston suspected what they had done. Eliot refused to join the family for dinner. He insisted on working to crack the code, pausing briefly to snack on a piece of bread and cold chicken. Mrs. Wilson fed Cecily soup upstairs.
After dinner, Rollie was waiting in the hall when his mother came out of the girls’ bedroom, an empty soup bowl in hand.
“She’s much better,” Mrs. Wilson assured him. “She wants to talk to you, but keep it brief. She needs to go back to sleep.”
Rollie slipped into the dim bedroom. The ballerina lamp on the white bedside table between his sisters’ canopy beds cast a cozy glow. Cecily lay in Daphne’s bed, her head propped up on a pillow and her body snug beneath the lavender bedspread.
“How are you feeling?” Rollie asked politely.
“Ugh! Being sick isn’t fud!” Cecily sniffed.
“You mean fun?” teased Rollie. “You’re nose is really stuffed up!”
Cecily glared at him. “I read by notes frob last subber on Zilch—when he was Crenshaw. I foud a code I copied frob hib.”
“A code? Eliot’s cracking a coded message from Zilch right now!” Rollie excitedly told her what they had been up to. “Maybe that code in your notes could help him.”
“I hope so!” Cecily held out her open notebook to him. “Give this to Eliot. I hope to be better id the bording.”
“In the morning?” Rollie clarified with a grin.
Cecily blew her nose on a tissue. “Don’t bake fud of be!”
Rollie closed the bedroom door behind him and skipped downstairs to the library. There he found Eliot sprawled on his stomach on the carpet, papers and his open code textbook surrounding him.
“Cecily found some old codes she had copied down from Zilch last summer,” Rollie said as he dropped the open notebook in front of his friend. “Maybe these can help.”
“Crikey! This looks like the same code. This is helpful.” Eliot scratched his head of shaggy raven hair. “Go on to bed. I’m going to work well into the night if I have to.”
“Good luck, chum.”
Rollie took the first shift to watch for Zilch’s secretary to return next door. He sat at his desk and wondered if she dared to now that they had seen her and now that Euston was guarding the area.
He thought about Herr Zilch. While he had learned a great deal about the criminal over the past week, he still did not understand Zilch’s past. What did Auntie Ei have to do with Herr Zilch being fired from Scotland Yard? Did this have something to do with the reason Zilch hated the Academy and had become leader of Moriarty’s Underground Society?
Why did Zilch have a photograph of Euston? Was he targeting the bodyguard? Euston was Yardsly’s agent, so he was obviously a threat to MUS. Maybe Zilch was hunting the quiet man down. Maybe it had something to do with Euston being a part of this mysterious Holmes Brigade. Euston seemed capable of taking care of himself, so Rollie did not worry too much for his safety.
But he did worry for the safety of his family, his friends, and himself. Zilch had once threatened to harm Rollie’s loved ones if he did not stay out of Zilch’s way. Zilch had already attacked Wesley. Now he knew that Rollie and his friends knew about the secretary. Rollie shuddered.
And what about that secretary? Why had she returned to paint the study walls? It was inexplicable! Since it was the only room that she was painting, Rollie knew there had to be a good reason for it. Was there a secret in the walls?
Rollie gasped.
“Is she back?” Wesley’s hoarse voice sounded from the floor.
“No, I just thought of something.”
Rollie was about to share his revelation with Wesley when suddenly the light next door blared on. Instinctively, he ducked below his desk.
Wesley eased up to peek through the window. “It’s her! She’s not painting. She just taped an envelope on the windowpane. She’s looking up at your window. I think it’s for us! She’s gone.”
The light turned off, and Rollie popped up. Through the pale moonlight, he could faintly see a white square against the window in Zilch’s study.
As Rollie scooted into bed, he said, “It’s from Herr Zilch, I’m sure.”
“I’m dying to read it!” Wesley whispered. “Should we go get it?”
Rollie shook his head. “It’s way too risky. Euston’s sleeping in the entry hall, so we can’t get our coats, and the secretary could still be prowling around.”
“You’re right. We’ll get it first thing in the morning.”
“What does Herr Zilch want?”
A Threat, a Puzzle, and a Solution
“Eliot? Eliot!”
Rollie knelt on the library floor and shook the sleeping boy.
Eliot jolted and sat upright. His shaggy hair stuck up, and the carpet texture was imprinted on his cheek. He rubbed his tired eyes, and glanced around at the pool of papers drowning him.
“It’s morning,” said Rollie.
Eliot yawned. “I’m close to cracking the code.”
After catching Eliot up on the secretary’s return, Rollie and Wesley decided to retr
ieve the letter before Euston found it. They scrambled into their winter outerwear while Eliot stumbled to the dining room for some breakfast. They were a little alarmed when they couldn’t find Euston. Hoping he was not next door, the two sleuths raced through the snow to the cellar window.
Encountering no one, they arrived in the study upstairs to find the envelope still taped on the windowpane. Wesley snatched it and turned to leave, but Rollie lingered to stare at one of the unpainted walls.
“What’s the matter, Rollie?”
“I thought of something last night. These walls must have some sort of secret if the secretary is going to all that trouble to paint over them. That secret could be the MUS list!”
Wesley stared at the wall with Rollie. “I can’t see anything.”
“Maybe the list is hidden in the walls, and the secretary is painting over them to cover up some clue about how to open the paneling.”
“That sounds like Zilch. He likes hiding things in secret places. We need some tools if we’re going to pry open this paneling.”
Rollie ran his hand along the wall, hoping for something to give way. He reached the end and continued along the second unpainted wall. No panels were loose, nothing budged. He noted that funny smell again though.
“Should we get to work on these walls?” asked Wesley.
“I don’t know. The other hiding places—the one in the fireplace and the one under the floorboards—were easy to open and pretty accessible. I would think if there was a secret hiding place behind the paneling, it would be the same way. There must be something else we’re not thinking of.”
“Zilch’s journal was hidden in the bedroom fireplace—maybe this fireplace has a secret.” Wesley poked around the small fireplace. “Nothing here.” He stuffed the envelope into his coat pocket and led Rollie back through the drafty old house.
As they tramped down the hall, they collided into Euston.
“Hello, Mr. Hood,” Wesley greeted, his voice a little high with surprise.
“Mr. Livingston, Mr. Wilson.” Euston studied them. “It is my duty to protect you. I cannot do that when I don’t know where you are. You must stay home. I do not want to find you here again. You’re trespassing, and it’s dangerous. Do I make myself clear?”
The boys gulped and nodded.
“How did you know we were here?” asked Rollie.
“Your tracks in the snow. I suspected you were sneaking over here but could not catch you at it. Then I saw your trail this morning. I’ll escort you home.” Placing a gloved hand on each boy’s shoulder, Euston accompanied them out through the front doors. He did not bother removing his grip on them to lock up the doors behind them. He did not say another word as he escorted them back to the Wilson manor and watched them enter the house.
“That’s great!” Rollie groaned. “Just when we’re onto an important clue with those study walls, we get grounded. Well, we’re not going to let him get in the way of solving this case—it’s too important for the sake of our school!”
They found Eliot back in the library, looking much refreshed and working hard on the code.
“I’ve almost got it!”
Rollie and Wesley joined him on the floor. Wesley tore open the envelope.
“I see you’ve been busy detectives!” a new voice sounded at the door.
Cecily entered the library. She was dressed in a green cardigan and her brother’s old trousers, the hems cuffed. Her usually healthy glow had returned to her freckled cheeks. Besides her voice sounding a bit nasally, she appeared to be back in good health.
Rollie smiled. “Cecily! We have a message from Zilch. Open it, Wesley.”
Wesley slipped out a single sheet of paper from the envelope. He read it aloud:
Sleuths,
It seems I underestimated you. My secretary has important business to attend to in my old residence. It would be wise of you to stay out of her way. Consider this a warning to leave my property alone. If you fail to heed my warning, I will have no choice but to accompany her and thus ensure you do not get in our way again. You will not thwart me this time!
—Herr Zilch
“Now I’m nervous,” Wesley admitted.
“I’ve cracked the code!” Eliot whooped triumphantly.
“Were my notes helpful?” asked Cecily.
Eliot nodded emphatically. “Absolutely helpful! Once I figured out Zilch had started his alphabet with j for a, and k for b, and l for c, and—”
“We get it, Eliot! What’s it say?” Rollie asked breathlessly.
“It’s still somewhat of a riddle. It says, ‘Final Problem in progress. ETA: five months.’” Eliot blinked at them.
Wesley asked the obvious. “What’s the Final Problem?”
“Whatever it is, it’s going to happen in five months,” Rollie muttered. “Five months from when?”
“It sounds ominous for sure,” Cecily noted. “A little doomsday-ish.”
“The Final Problem is the title of the case in which Holmes and Moriarty fought,” said Rollie. “Moriarty was defeated . . . ”
“Maybe this Final Problem is some elaborate plan to ultimately defeat Sherlock Academy,” Cecily suggested. “That’s always been Zilch’s end goal, right?”
“And this message was attached to that blueprint of school,” said Wesley.
“We have to find that MUS list.” Rollie rubbed his eyes.
“There are no new clues about where it might be?” Cecily asked.
Wesley sighed. “We thought the message could be hidden behind the study walls. We haven’t removed the paneling yet because we thought there should be an opening or something.”
“And there’s nothing written on the walls?” Cecily narrowed her eyes.
“No, nothing, but there has to be some reason the secretary is painting the walls.”
Everyone sat quietly, feeling a little disheartened by Zilch’s threat, by the mystery at hand, and by the dead end they seemed to be at.
Rollie tried to ignore the presence of his friends and engage his brain in some good, hard thinking. He was not used to working on a case with so many others; he was having a hard time focusing his brain long enough to make any deductions. He remembered Holmes always needed solitude to think through the clues. Holmes once joked he wanted to lock himself in a box to be alone with his thoughts. That appealed to Rollie right then. Since it would take too long to scrounge up a box big enough for him and it would most likely alarm his friends, he closed his eyes and clapped his hands over his ears.
Rollie knew he was overlooking something, some detail. Holmes always said to pay attention to the tiniest details, for therein could lie the answer to any mystery.
So what were the details? The walls held a secret. The secretary was painting over them to hide the secret. The secret could be the MUS list. Rollie discarded his original idea that the list was hidden behind the walls. If it were, the secretary could just open the paneling and remove the list.
No, the list had to be irremovable. It had to be preserved in such a way that only painting over the walls could hide it—assuming the list was the secret she was covering. Well, no matter the secret, if it was worth covering up, it was worth finding.
There was no writing on the walls, no drawings, no symbols, nothing. Just plain paneled walls.
It was as if the secret was invisible . . . unless one knew where to look.
Rollie snapped to attention. An idea shot through his brain. It was just a guess, but it was the best he had come up with so far.
“I’ve got it!” he shouted, causing his friends to jump. “I know where the list is!”
“Zilch just threatened us to abandon this case,” Cecily said quietly. “I think we had better do just that.”
Rollie shook his head. “We need to check something first! We’re very close; I can sense it. We need to try
one last thing on those walls.”
“Euston just grounded us,” Wesley reminded him. “There’s too much at risk here.”
Rollie stood up. “There’s always risk when you’re a detective. The safety of Sherlock Academy is always worth the risk.” He took off running upstairs.
His friends chased after him. In his room, he dove under the bed and slid out his hollow Shakespeare book. He opened the cover and rummaged around inside.
“What are you looking for?” Eliot demanded.
“The solution to invisible ink!”
Mycroft’s Mercantile
“The MUS list is invisible!” Rollie explained.
Rollie’s friends gaped at him.
“You mean the list is written in invisible ink on the walls?” asked Wesley.
“Like my PS?” questioned Eliot.
“Exactly!” Rollie held up his pipe. “And we have the solution.”
“That makes sense!” Cecily agreed excitedly. “That’s why the secretary has to paint over the list instead of taking it with her. And she has to paint over all the walls because she’s not quite sure where the list is written—”
Rollie grinned. “Because it’s totally invisible!”
“How are we going to reveal the list?” Eliot asked doubtfully. “Those walls are spacious. We can’t just sprinkle the solution all over them. This won’t work.”
“A minor detail.” Rollie glanced out his window at the vacant house. “We can figure this out.”
“I know how we can do it.” Wesley brightened. “We can use a paintbrush like the secretary does. We’ll dip the paintbrush in the solution and wipe the walls down with it.”
“Brilliant!” Cecily praised.
“Elementary!” Rollie smiled back.
“There’s not enough solution for that.” Eliot shook his head. “The pipe holds only about three tablespoons. We need to get more somehow. Does anyone know how to make the solution?”
Cecily turned to Wesley. “Have you taken a chemistry class?”
“Not yet. I signed up to take Sherlockian Chemistry this next semester.”