13 Hangmen (31 page)

Just in the nick of time. Ian Hagmann suddenly burst into the attic brandishing a pistol. “Give me that chest,” he said. “Or I'll happily blow your head off.”

“You Hagmanns are nothing but Tory spies!” Tobias said.

“Of course we're Tories!” Ian laughed. “It's perfectly obvious the Colonies should remain loyal to the Crown, with a proper British class system in place and a strict social order. Not everyone is equal, nor should they be. You have no idea how utterly humiliating it's been for me to work alongside the likes of
you
—an orphan from the gutter with no family lineage. Thank God my family is fleeing to Toronto, a Loyalist stronghold, for the remainder of the war. In fact, my father is picking me up in the family carriage in a matter of moments. So fetch me that chest and be quick about it. We Hagmanns will return to Boston once this uprising is quashed. My father will resume his position as royal magistrate. And he will indeed ring that bell, just as he planned, to sentence traitors like Revere to the noose!”

Tobias charged Ian before he could get a shot off. He wrenched the pistol out of Ian's hand and knocked him over the head with it. Ian crumpled to the floor in a dead faint. Tobias tore up strips of sheeting from the bed. He bound, blindfolded, and gagged him, then dragged him into the secret room. It
was only as he caught his breath at the slate mantel afterward that Tobias began to shake with fear. Of all the rotten luck. He should have known: Once a Jonah, always a Jonah. What should he do now? Seal Ian inside? Ian's father, Benedict, would be there any moment. And if Benedict managed to kill Tobias, how would Revere know where he had hidden the chest?

Tobias quickly composed a riddle on a piece of parchment—his own awkward attempt at the type Revere was fond of reciting—one that would lead him straight to the bell. But as he scratched out the last
9
of the date with his quill, he realized he was no longer alone in the attic.

ou mean Ian's
still
in there?” Tony said, pointing to the secret room.

Tobias nodded, ashen-faced.

Tony peeked inside. Sure enough, a boy their age now lay hog-tied and passed out on the floor, dressed in Colonial clothes similar to those Tobias had on. One by one, the others had a look while Tony conferred with Angelo. “I wonder why you guys can suddenly see Ian in there,” Angelo said.

“He turned thirteen today,” Tony said. “He's the exact same age as Tobias.”

“Yeah, but we didn't conjure
him
,” Angelo pointed out.

“Maybe we got a two-for-one with the riddle,” Tony said.

“But there's nothing that connects Ian to the riddle,” Angelo insisted. “Tobias wrote that
after
he knocked Ian out.”

Tobias interrupted them. “Someone is downstairs,” he said. “It must be Benedict Hagmann, wondering where Ian is.” He reached into a hidden niche in the bricks just behind the slate mantel. A pistol materialized in his hand—the very one he must have wrestled away from Ian. (One that must still be hidden there more than two hundred years later, because every single thirteen-year-old, including Tony, could see it plain as day.) Tobias strode with determination toward the bedroom door. “Are you lads with me?” he said. “There are enough of us to overpower him.”

“Right behind you,” Tony said. He pretended to follow Tobias. But Tobias vanished, of course, as soon as he left the room. “Quick,” Tony said, turning back. “We've only got a few minutes to find that bell!”

“But what about Tobias?” Solly said.

“Finding it might be the only way to save him—not to mention the rest of us—from the Hagmanns,” Tony said. He explained his thinking: If they solved the riddle and located the chest, they could open it with the key around Ian's neck. Tony could then show the bell to Health & Safety in his own time to prove No. 13 was a historical site worthy of rescue from the wrecking ball. Meanwhile, Benedict and Tobias would return to
the attic to find the chest empty. Tobias would no doubt tell the Hagmanns that four boys working for the Patriots had found it and taken it to Revere in Maine—leaving the Hagmanns with no good reason to harm Tobias now, or any future Hagmanns to menace the rest of them.

“Worth a try.” Angelo grinned.

“Don't just stand there,” Tony said, ducking through the hearth. “Help me drag Ian into the main room.”

The thirteen-year-olds all sprang into action. They grabbed Ian's inert body and half carried, half dragged him through the hearth to flop him onto the brass bed. Angelo, who could now see him, promised to stand guard and shout if Ian started to wake up. The rest of them returned to the secret room, where Tony recited the riddle aloud:

“When after his Midnight Ride
Paul's treasure I was taskt to hide
Pluckt I the 9th of 13 stars
From a 4th of heav'nly bars
To keep freedom yet ringing inside.”

The boys all turned to Tony, expectantly.

Tony shrugged. He was stumped. And tired. Really, really tired. He gazed around the room. Nothing but kegs. No point
in prying any more of them open with the poker. They were just full of moldy old tea.

“The first two lines and the last tell you that Tobias has hidden the handbell Revere used to rouse the Minutemen,” Solly prompted.

“The third and fourth lines must tell you where,” Finn said.

Tony shrugged again. He sat on the lid of the nearest keg. He yawned. He could barely think straight. He stared up at the rafters. What had those two guys from Health & Safety joked? That the roof was now so sketchy, you could probably see stars through the gaps in the rafters at night.

Stars
.

“Stars and stripes,” Tony said, suddenly. “That's what they called the first American flag in 1777. Mildred Pickles has one of the originals, hanging in her shop. Thirteen stars and thirteen stripes, one each for the first thirteen states.”

“So?” Solly said.

“Look at the slope of the roof. Thirteen wide planks, just like the flag. The planks are knotty pine, and most of the knots are in the upper left-hand corner—where the stars of a flag would be.”

Tony was right! Not only that, but there were exactly thirteen of them.

“Sarah Pickles told me the ninth star is Massachusetts,”
Tony continued. “And the ninth pine knot up there is definitely in the fourth roof plank.”

“Which has been cut crosswise in two places,” Finn pointed out.

He and Solly rolled a cask over. Tony climbed onto its lid for a closer look at the sawn plank. The patch at the ninth knot pulled out fairly easily. Tucked up in the eaves beneath the roof shingling was a small metal chest. Tony handed it down to the others. “Bring it out to the main room,” he said.

They all ducked back through the hearth passage. “You found it!” Angelo cried.

“Grab the key from around Ian's neck,” Tony said.

Angelo reached into Ian's shirt. He pulled out the chain. No key. Just that odd triple spiral that some Hagmann ancestor or other brought over from England. Ian must have gotten it just today. The rest of the boys pounced on the spy. They searched every single pocket and seam of his clothes. They pulled his shoes off and checked inside.

“He didn't bring it with him,” Angelo sighed.

“Why risk having Tobias end up with both the key and the chest?” Solly said. “The Hagmanns may be evil, but they're not stupid.”

“Ideas?” Angelo asked Tony.

Tony broke into a huge grin. He retrieved his wallet from
the fireplace mantel. Out of the credit-card slot he pulled the little key. He explained how it had fallen off Benedict Hagmann's chain while he was supposedly looking after Zio Angelo. Tony had found it in the parlor before Zio Angelo's brass bed had been moved back up to the attic. No wonder Hagmann was so desperate to get it back. It had been handed down from Hagmann to Hagmann—along with the secret of the chest it opened—for generations.

“Wait—where did Ian go?” Finn said, alarmed.

All the boys looked over to the bed. It was empty. Ian had vanished.

“Stay calm—I bet he's still there,” Tony said. He took the key back to the mantel and placed it on the spiral. Ian reappeared. “The key obviously has nine-ish energy,” Tony said. “I must have conjured Ian with it while it was still in my wallet.” He held it up.

The little loop in its handle
did
make it look like a nine.

“So it really
was
a two-for-one,” Angelo said.

Tony took the key off the spiral, causing Ian to vanish again. He ambled over to the chest and inserted it into the lock. It was a perfect fit. He raised the lid. He pulled out a silk handkerchief. He unwrapped it.

They all marveled at America's
first
liberty bell, the bell that had rung in a new era of freedom from British tyranny.

“Three cheers for Tony!” Angelo cried.

“Not so fast,” said Tobias, standing in the doorway. He was pointing Ian's pistol directly at Tony's head. “It wasn't Benedict Hagmann at the door after all,” he said. “It was my cousin Abigail. Revere is sending her to Aunt Polly in Martha's Vineyard while he's away in Maine. She came back to the house to pack up a few things. She wanted to give me the flag she designed, to use as a bed quilt. She said she just needed to mend it first. I told her about Ian. She promised to tell Benedict Hagmann, as soon as he gets here, that Ian ran straight home to Garden Court Street with a small chest.”

“Tony found the treasure!” Angelo crowed. Obviously.

“You're not with Revere, are you?” Tobias said. “You really are from the future.”

They all nodded.

Tobias cocked the trigger of the pistol.

“But Tony solved the riddle, fair and square,” Angelo said.

“That only proves it was a bad riddle,” Tobias said. “I can't let you take Revere's bell to the future any more than I can let Ian have it. So I'll need Tony to put it back in the chest, please. Now.”

Tony tried to reason with Tobias. Technically speaking, Tobias wasn't breaking his promise in the time anomaly. He
owned
this house—they all did—and everything in it. Plus Revere would obviously give the bell to Tobias outright at some
point. Because in 1839, Tobias would tell Jack it was still hidden in the house. In fact, Tobias would virtually give Jack permission to try and find it.

“That may well be the case in 1839,” Tobias said. “But for me, it's still 1779 and the bell is still Revere's. I promised Revere I would protect the nation's first liberty bell with my life. And that's what I aim to do.”

“I totally understand,” Tony said—to everyone's surprise. “That's what I would do too, if I were in your shoes.”

“No!” Angelo said. “Tony is going to take the bell downstairs and hand it over to his parents so they can hire a builder to stop the back wall from collapsing on top of the back porch that already did collapse, not to mention keep the bookcase in the library, and whatever else, from crashing down around their ears. Tobias is going to show Ian the empty chest when he wakes up, then turn him in as a Tory spy. The Patriots will hang both Ian and his father as dirty double-crossing traitors to the Revolution—an excellent tweak of history if ever there was one—and the rest of us will head back to our own times, happy as clams.”

“Except Ian, of course,” Tobias said.

“So?” Angelo said. “He deserves it.”

Tobias disagreed. As much as he disliked Ian personally, and as much as he hated the Loyalists, he was not sure anyone deserved to go to the gallows merely because their beliefs were
different from his own. Ian actually believed he was doing the
right
thing by stealing the bell back for the Crown. That was just war. When you really thought about it, the Colonists were fighting a Revolution so
everyone
would have the right to believe what they wanted and grow up to be what they wanted. Which was why Tony was going to put the bell back in the chest, why they were all going to disappear, and why Tobias was going to rehide the chest in the secret room, then set Ian free—without returning his pistol, of course—as soon as he came to.