Then Lyman’s reply crackled with urgency.
“Get to the east door—I’ve spotted units one and two!”
Ben held his breath and didn’t exhale until the boys’ room door had hissed shut. He heard Wally’s footsteps hurrying toward the office.
His legs were stiff as he climbed down off the toilet seat, and then came the pins and needles. Ignoring that as best he could, he pulled the door open a crack: no one in sight toward the office . . . and no one but two fourth graders coming from the other direction.
The next fifteen seconds ticked past perfectly. He slipped out of the boy’s room, took ten quick strides to the art room door—which wasn’t locked. He stepped inside without being seen, hurried to the back of the L, and walked into the supplies room—also unlocked. And then he promptly locked the door from the inside.
He hadn’t turned on the overhead lights in the room, which is why he was sitting in the dark when his cell phone buzzed.
He pulled the phone out—a call from Jill. No message.
• • •
Ben remembered just last week, how the two of them had stood side by side in the darkness underneath the south staircase, with Lyman’s dog sniffing and scratching inches away on the other side of a wall. And Jill had grabbed his hand, and then held on. For five minutes.
Ben felt a sudden twinge and wished she were with him now . . . not holding hands, he quickly told himself. Just helping out. In the dark.
Well, almost dark—a little light filtered in under the door.
He lit up his phone to check the time: already three fifteen, so the decorations party would be over any minute. Then he’d be able to do some real snooping. He had a fresh battery in his flashlight, so the moment the coast was clear, he was good to go.
He heard footsteps in the hall, and then the art room door opened—Ms. Wilton was back to lock up . . . .
“The little punks are gone.”
Ben almost dropped his phone—Wally’s voice.
“Language!” barked Lyman, and Ben could hear him moving around the art room, emptying trash barrels.
“Right,” came Wally’s sarcastic reply over the two-way radio. “Units one and two have left—is that better?”
“Nothing on unit three?”
Lyman made little grunts as he shoved the dust mop around.
“I think he left too.”
“Well, look sharp, and start sweeping the third floor.”
“Aye, aye, captain.”
“And cut the funny stuff!” Lyman snapped.
Wally didn’t reply.
The dust mop thumped against the supplies room door, and then Lyman jiggled the knob. Ben was ready to drop to the floor and roll for cover, but the door stayed shut.
And then Ms. Wilton’s voice.
“Hi Jerry—sorry for the extra mess in here. It’ll all be over soon, right? Any day now, and you can stop bothering to clean up at all, what with the demolition coming. Anyhow, thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” Lyman said. Ben could hear the wheels of the trash cart moving away—so Lyman was gone. A minute later, the art room lights clicked off, the hallway door closed, and he heard Ms. Wilton’s brisk footsteps as she walked along the causeway toward the faculty parking lot.
Ben pulled out his phone again. He had to send a text.
Hi mom. At school late—history project. Probly home after 5. Don’t worry, call if you need me. Love, ben
The school around him got quieter and quieter—not quite as still as it was at three in the morning, but close.
For a moment Ben felt like he was hiding deep inside the hold of an old ship, down below the waterline—a stowaway, looking for adventure on the high seas.
Except that wasn’t it at all. He was not a stowaway. He was on a secret mission, and Captain Oakes himself had given him very specific orders.
This was war, and there was work to do.
CHAPTER 13
Deep Cover
Ben used his flashlight to take a good look around the art supplies room, making a mental map as he did.
Except for the area on either side of the door, all the walls were lined with shelving units, some made of wood and others of metal. And the center of the room was also filled with metal shelving. Not surprisingly, most of the shelves in the room were empty. All kinds of supplies and equipment from Oakes School had been moved to other schools in the district and to storage locations, a steady stream for the past month or so, getting ready for the big teardown.
The entry door was on the west wall, which backed up against the art room. The east wall, about twenty-five feet away, backed up onto the janitor’s workroom—and Ben reminded himself that silence was critical.
The south wall of the room was brick, the outer wall of the school. It had four wide windows just like the ones in the art room, except these windows had been nailed shut, and the glass had been painted over with the same thick brown paint that covered the walls.
The north wall was the important one, the one that backed up against the hallway. Three of the hallway posts—the foot-hooks—were right there, just above the wooden shelves.
Ben had already figured out that the middle post was the fourth one from the corner out in the hall, the one that sounded like brass. Looking carefully with his light, the part of the center post visible above the wooden shelf unit looked no different from the other two posts.
Immediately, Ben saw something different about the shelves that ran along the north wall, the shelves that covered the lower six feet of each post. Unlike the shelves elsewhere in the room, these wooden shelves were old—very similar to the heavy oak bookcases that lined the outer walls of the library, bookcases that dated back to the 1780s. The long wall of shelving was divided up into five sections—four wide ones, and one narrow one.
He felt like he was getting to know John Vining, the ship’s carpenter who had done the actual work of concealing the captain’s safeguards. There was no real reason to have one narrow shelf unit with wider ones on either side. John Vining had put the thinner one there on purpose, right in front of that particular post!
Ben began clearing the center shelf unit. It held mostly drawing and construction paper, and he stacked the packages gently on the metal shelves behind him. The unit was about eighteen inches wide, and about that deep as well, and when it was cleared, he got his light up close to the back of the unit. There was nothing much to see. All the joints back there looked tight, and when he tapped the back of the unit gently, it sounded solid, with no give at all.
But when he focused the bright beam on the outer edges of the unit, Ben smiled. There were face boards along the top and bottom of the shelf units running from wall to wall, boards that should have run without a break from the west wall to the east wall. But they didn’t. There were two joints in the boards, top and bottom, one on each side of the center shelves. It meant that the narrow unit in the center was a completely separate object, and that meant that it could move!
Digging into his book bag, Ben found his stainless-steel ruler. He worked the thin edge of it into the crack between the center unit and the shelves on the left. Using it like a putty knife, he gently removed dust and dirt, dried paint, and hardened varnish. When the left-hand crack was clear, he did the same thing on the right-hand side.
The top! he thought, and using the front of the shelves like a ladder, he stepped up twice, and reaching back, he cleared the crack where the wall and the wooden post met the wood of the shelf unit. The top of the shelf was covered with thick dust and grime, but the seams were easy to clear out. Then, on both the right and left of the top of the unit, he cleaned out the cracks running from the wall out toward the front of the shelves.
He climbed down, got to his hands and knees, and began to work on the bottom of the unit where it met the floor. This was much harder, and he found himself using the ruler more like a saw than a putty knife. It was the old floor varnish that made it so tough, and it was especially difficult because he had to move so slowly,
working as quietly as possible.
When he finished, he was panting, and sweat from his forehead dripped down onto the floorboards.
His hands were filthy. But this was a supplies room . . . yes! A big roll of brown paper towels. He tore off a length, wiped his face to get it damp, and then scrubbed most of the dirt off his hands and arms.
And now the dangerous part. He felt sure that this narrow shelf unit was supposed to move, to pull straight out, away from the wall. And from the front of that post.
First, Ben made himself stand still. He had to get his breathing back to normal and stop his heart from beating so fast.
When he felt calm enough, he walked carefully to the east wall, the one facing the janitor’s workroom. He slipped into a space between two metal shelf units and laid his right ear flat against the painted plaster wall. He held his breath and listened. And listened. And listened.
Nothing—no voices, no sounds at all except a slight hum, sort of the kind a refrigerator makes.
Moving back to the narrow shelf unit, he laid his flashlight on the floor, braced his arms against the front of the top edge, and then flexed his legs upward as gently as he could . . . and it moved! Not much, but enough so he could tell that it wasn’t nailed or screwed to the larger units on either side.
Encouraged, he pushed upward with a little more force, and again, there was give, and a pretty loud sound, sort of like a stick scratching on the sidewalk.
He froze, listening . . . listening . . . . Nothing.
Letting go of the top of the unit, he hooked the fingers of both hands under the front lip of the center shelf, which was about waist high.
Ben leaned back—didn’t really pull, just leaned back. With only a slight scratching sound, and almost as smoothly as opening the drawer of a file cabinet, the whole narrow shelf unit rolled toward him—the ship’s carpenter must have devised some sort of wheels under the shelf! Astonished, he kept pulling, and it came forward until it stood completely free of the shelf units on either side, a full twelve inches beyond their fronts.
His mouth felt completely dry. This was like a scene from a horror movie—the haunted mansion where someone touches something and a secret doorway glides open!
He grabbed his flashlight, stepping to his right so he could aim the beam back into the space where the shelves had been. He needed to see the lower portion of the post, the hidden part.
That post was not made of brass—he saw that right away.
But set within the oak, completely surrounded by the dark wood, there was a panel that lay flush with the chiseled surface. And letting the small circle of light play across its surface, he knew that the panel was made of brass. Definitely.
The panel was about two feet high, and, at its widest, almost a foot wide. And staring at it, Ben shivered—he couldn’t help it.
The panel was shaped like a coffin.
CHAPTER 14
Inside
While the coffin-shaped panel didn’t look much like brass, Ben had been in enough salvage yards and antique shops to know that dark brownish color—it looked like the metal binding around the edges of old sea chests, or like heavy deck cleats that had seen too much weather and too little polishing.
Stepping closer, Ben tapped the panel lightly with the side of his thumb—it made a faint bong, the same tone he’d heard when he had struck the other side of the post out in the hallway. Definitely brass.
He made himself take a deep breath, slow down. He had to be careful, methodical. First, he got out his phone and used the camera to take pictures, a lot of them. He even remembered to take a shot holding his ruler up against the post to establish the scale. He wished he had that new camera Robert had used this morning, but really all he needed to do was document the discovery, and for that his phone worked just fine.
He zoomed in as close as the tiny lens would let him and took a series of shots of the outer edge of the panel. There was some kind of black goo smeared all the way around the rim.
Ben leaned in close and sniffed—it smelled familiar . . . like pinecones. And then he knew! It was pine pitch, which was used by early shipbuilders for waterproofing. John Vining had used the sticky stuff to seal this container!
Up at the top corner of the coffin shape, Ben saw two pieces of metal wire, maybe copper, and the ends had been twisted into a loop. Moving his flashlight beam closer, he traced the two strands of wire right down into the pitch—they were actually buried in the stuff. Almost instinctively, Ben hooked his right index finger into the wire loop and pulled. There was a quick hissing sound, and Ben froze—the hair on his arms stood up.
But instantly he realized what had happened. It was like he’d just twisted the cap off a bottle of juice—this container had been vacuum sealed.
He kept pulling on the wire, and it tracked right around the edge of the brass panel, breaking the seam of pitch. Little bits of it popped loose and fell to the floor. And when the whole length of wire came free, so did the panel, leaning suddenly outward!
Almost in a panic, Ben slapped his left palm onto the panel to hold it in place, and not just to keep it from falling and making a huge noise. No, this was fear, and he pressed on the brass panel with all his strength.
Because what if this thing really was . . . a coffin? And there was something dead in there. He knew that people sometimes made tiny coffins for babies . . . he couldn’t deal with that. Or . . . what if Captain Oakes had left one of his hands in there, cut off and holding some new message? This thing could contain almost anything—even a whole human head!
It was odd, but his little phone camera came to the rescue—it gave him a way to get some distance, to be one step removed from the scene in front of him. Still holding the panel in place, he dropped the freed wire, got out his cell phone, and clicked on the movie function. Holding his flashlight in his mouth, he aimed, pressed record, and the small LED light came on. Then, keeping his eyes only on that tiny screen, he moved his left hand up to the top of the brass panel, got a good grip on it, and slowly lowered it to the floor—it was heavy.
Despite the thrill of actually finding the next big clue, Ben felt a little disappointed. No mummified head stared out at him, no petrified hand with ruby rings on its skeleton fingers reached for his throat.
There was nothing inside the little brass coffin but a very ordinary looking parcel, as if Captain Oakes had bundled up a shirt or two and wrapped them in coarse sailcloth to send to the laundry. The package lay at an angle, propped up in the lower half of the coffin.
Ben turned off the camera and put the phone back in his pocket. He picked up the parcel. It wasn’t even that heavy . . . but it certainly wasn’t just shirts. He could feel something with sharp angles inside—maybe wood or metal. Looking at it up close, it was clear that someone had taken a great deal of care with the packing. The outer edges of the thick canvas were sewn together tightly, and where the wrapping overlapped, there was a large blob of red sealing wax.
As carefully as possible, he slid the parcel into his book bag. The largest pocket was just deep enough, and he zipped it shut and set the bag against the wall by the door to the art room.
There was a sudden loud thump—he felt it through the floorboards. Then came a low rumble of voices, two men talking—Wally and Lyman. They were in the janitor’s room, just the other side of the east wall, not twenty feet away. He couldn’t make out any of their words.
Quickly and silently, Ben began to cover his tracks. He began by picking up the long copper wire. He bent it into a small coil and set it in the empty coffin space within the post. Using two sheets of poster board for a dustpan and brush, he swept up all the bits of scattered pitch he could see and dumped them in on top of the folded wire.
The brass lid of the coffin was a problem—without the pitch, it wouldn’t remain where it had been—but he couldn’t leave it resting on the floor behind the shelf, or it would keep the narrow shelf unit from rolling all the way back into place.
The wire!
Ben used his flashlight and looked on the other shelves until he found just what he needed—some metal pushpins.
He stuck two pins deep into the left side of the post with about a foot between them, and then pushed two matching pins deep into the wood on the right side of the post.
After straightening the wire, he wound one end of it around the push pin on the upper right. Lifting the brass lid and holding it in place, he stretched the wire across toward the bottom push pin on the left and wound it tightly around, then ran it across the lid to the second pin on the right, and finally back up to the top left pin. The crisscrossed wire held the heavy lid in place!
He could still hear muffled talking from next door, and the safest thing would have been to sit still and wait for the enemy to move out. But he was too wound up to do that . . . and he felt sure he could work quietly. And really, all he had to do was slide the narrow shelf unit back into its slot.
He swept the floor behind it once more, making sure no little bits of pitch were in the way. Then, getting into position, he pushed the shelf unit toward the wall—very gently. Like a canoe gliding on a pond, the shelves rolled slowly across the floor, slipped almost noiselessly between the neighboring units, and settled into place.
Ben quickly restacked all the paper onto the shelves, exactly as they’d been before. Looking at the seams he had cleared out with his ruler, he gathered up some dust and grit in one hand, then spit in it and mixed up a grimy paste, which he then pushed into the open cracks with his thumb—gross but effective. He used the paper towel from earlier to clean his hands, and then wiped each of the seams before making a final inspection with his flashlight. It would have taken a Sherlock Holmes to discover what he’d been doing in here!
The tone of the voices in the next room changed—it sounded like an argument. Again Ben pressed an ear against the east wall, but still couldn’t make out what was being said in the janitor’s room.
He remembered a trick he’d read about, and decided to give it a try. Taking out his phone, he found the voice memo app—it was just a simple recording application, and it used the small microphone on the bottom of the phone. Ben tapped the record button, then pressed the microphone against the wall and held it very still. Later at home, he could transfer the recording to his computer and make it much louder, maybe hear the voices more clearly, pick up some useful information.
In Harm's Way Page 6