Chapter 3

Outside, the dreary day had surrendered feebly to night, and the windows in the library turned to dark mirrors. William had prowled off in hopes of finding some clue to Grandpa's whereabouts and maybe something to eat as well, leaving Maxine to potter listlessly about the empty room.

Her eye landed on the spine of a thick, leather~bound book lying on the mantel above the fireplace, and she mounted the hearth for a closer look at the gilt cover----a beautiful maiden kneeling on a silk cushion before the throne of a brooding sultan----but the pages inside were covered in strange, swooping characters, and she could make no sense of them. She closed the book in disappointment and was just stepping down from the hearth when she noticed a curious symbol carved on the front of the stone mantelpiece: a solitary zero inscribed within an embellished medallion----the identical twin of the emblem she had seen above the doorbell.

"Wadja lookigat?" said an unintelligible voice by her ear.

Maxine jumped. Behind her, William's greasy lips and bulging cheeks hovered over her shoulder. "I found something to eat," he said with a hard swallow, raising a half~gnawed turkey leg.

"So I see," said Maxine with a look of thinly veiled disgust. "Do you want to make yourself sick? That's probably spoiled, you know."

"The ice in the icebox hasn't all melted, so it can't be over three or four days old."

"Three or four days? How long has Grandpa been gone, anyhow?" fretted Maxine. "I mean, honestly, Will, there must be some mistake. Maybe he forgot we were coming."

"Aw, you worry to much," he said. "Have a bite of turkey."

Maxine frowned and pushed his hand away.

"Do you think he even wants us here?" she asked.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, when our parents asked Grandpa if he would take us for the summer, well, he really couldn't say no, could he? Not with my mom being so sick and all . . ."

William wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. "I thought it was Grandpa who suggested the whole thing."

"Really?" She said. "Why would he? He's never shown any interest in us before."

"No, I guess he hasn't," said William.

"So what are we supposed to do now? Clean out his icebox, sit in his easy chair, go upstairs and find a bed? It's like 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears.' "

     William snorted, but his attention had drifted to something else.

     "Hold this," he said, holding her his turkey leg.

     "What are you doing?" asked Maxine. She watched as he tugged on one of the blackened andirons in the fireplace.

     "Looking for the hidden lever," he said, scanning the room. "The entrance to the secret room is almost always in the library. All you have to do is find the lever." He braced himself against a section of the bookshelves and put his back into it, but the shelves refused to budge.

     "You've been spending too much time at the movies," said Maxine. "This is just a disagreeable old house. We're more likely to die of boredom this summer than anything else."

     "Says you. Old places like this always have a trapdoor or an underground passageway----someplace where Grandpa keeps his pirate treasure and dead bodies."

     He pulled hard on a brass candleholder attached to the wall, and it came off in his hands with a shower of crumbling plaster.

     "Will! What on earth? Are you trying to get us in trouble our first night here?"

     William shrugged and tucked the candleholder behind the drapes. "Maybe it's not in the library after all. Let's go check the rest of the house."

     He rattled out of the library and down the main hall, tapping on every knot hole and peering behind every picture frame along the way. Maxine signed and followed along halfheartedly. They paused at the old grandfather clock, but just as William began to open the glass case, the doorbell rang.

     The cousins both turned sharply and stared at the front door.

     "Maybe it's Grandpa," whispered Maxine.

     "Why would he have to ring his own doorbell?" replied William, and without giving his cousin a chance to reply, he trotted to the door and opened it wide.

     A dark, rawboned man stood on the front step. He wore plus fours and high boots, and his beard was long and matted. His eyes darted furtively as he scanned the moonlit drive, and then he turned to face the open door. Seeing the children, he frowned with dismay.

      "I was expecting Colonel Battersea," he said.

      "Can we help you, mister?" asked William.

     The man made a circle with his thumb and forefinger and held it to his chest, watching the children for a response. Maxine and William stared back blankly.

     The stranger's brow knit with concern, and he glanced  back over both his shoulders. "I have a telegram," he said, his voice low. "It's vital that this reach him." He handed them a sealed envelope. "You'll make sure he gets it?"

     "Of course," said Maxine. "May I tell him whom it's from?" She blinked at him expectantly, but the man turned without a word and hurried down the steps.

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"Well, that was odd," said Maxine. She closed the door and glanced at the envelope, then leaned it against Caesar's bust on the pedestal beside the staircase. "He seemed awful jumpy about something, didn't he?"

     "Say what?" mumbled William, looking the old clock upand down again, as if he had forgotten the strange visitor entirely.

     Maxine groaned. "You're still thinking about your secret door, aren't you?" she said.

     "Notice anything unusual?" he asked, rapping on the sides of the case.

     "Besides the fact that it's the biggest clock I've ever seen? No."

     The clock really was gigantic. It was taller than a grown man and as wide as a cart horse.

     "Look behind it," he said.

     "I can't," she replied as she walked around it. "There's no gap. It's sort of . . . attached to the wall."

     "There's something else," he said, pressing his ear to the cabinet. "Have a look at the side table."

     She glanced at the table beside the clock. An empty vase and a black telephone flanked an old Royal typewriter. In front of it, a silver letter opener stood fixed in a block of cork. Maxine wiggled the blade free and tested the point with her finger.

     "Is it Grandpa's murder weapon, do you think?" she said, holding it delicately between her thumb and forefinger with a look of mock horror.

     "Very funny. I mean the typewriter. Why would he keep it in the front hallway? Shouldn't it be in the study or something? And why is there a wire coming out of it?"

     Maxine bent and looked under the table. A cord snaked down the table leg from the back of the typewriter and disappeared into the wall beside the clock.

     "It's weird, isn't it?" said William. "Like maybe the typewriter can send out some kind of electrical signal."

     Maxine frowned skeptically, but William stepped up to the typewriter and cracked his knuckles like a piano maestro.

     "O~P~E~N S~E~S~A~M~E," he muttered as the ebony keys clattered beneath his fingers. He stopped and stared at the grandfather clock expectantly, but nothing happed.

     B~A~T~T~E~R~S~E~A,"he said, trying again.

     The clock seemed indifferent to his advances, and William's brow twisted in frustration, but he continued to peck away with admirable tenacity.

     "Knock yourself out," said Maxine. "There's nothing here. No revolving bookshelves or scandalous letters or bodies stuffed in the walls." She turned away and had just made up her mind to wander back to the library when she froze in her tracks. Her gaze had landed on a familiar symbol engraved on the letter opener in her han----the same strange symbol she had seen on the doorbell and the mantelpiece. Her eyes narrowed, and she turned back toward the clock.

     "Slide over," she said with a nudge. William obliged, retreating to the blue mosaic fountain, where he sat down on the lip of the stone basin beneath his cousin's hanging coat. Maxine squinted at the typewriter, shook her head, and pressed the number zero.

     From somewhere inside the walls, the cousins heard the faint squeal of metal on metal.

     The skin on Maxine's arms prickled like a cucumber, and her eyes shot to the tall case beside the stairs, but the old clock's even tick continued without pause.

     Then, from a spot just above William's head, there came a mechanical clunk.

     He raised his eyes slowly and craned his neck backward until he was looking at the coat hooks directly above him. While he watched, the blue mosaic swung inward on unseen hinges.

     "A door," he whispered.

     Indeed, a yawning portal now loomed inside the stone archway. Steep steps tumbled down into the darkness below. Maxine and William stared at each other in amazement.

     Suddenly, Battersea Manor seemed much less boring.