Greenglass House (18 page)

“Or there
was
a gate somewhere on the grounds,” Sirin pointed out. “If the house goes back to the War of 1812, that's more than two hundred years for a gate to have been here, and then been moved.”

Both he and Sirin looked up as Clem rounded the turn just above them. “How do you run so quietly?” Negret demanded. “Can you teach me how to do that?”

Clem paused, grinning and barely even breathing heavily as she jogged in place. “Long years of practice, my young apprentice. What are you up to? I saw you talking with Her Royal Highness downstairs. How'd you make your escape?”

“She's not so bad,” he said. “Besides, I feel bad for her. Her bag's missing, and it was sort of a family . . . what's the word?”

“Heirloom?” Clem suggested. “Yeah, that's rough. You don't think anyone really stole it, though?”

“You tell me,” Negret replied. “You're the cat burglar.”

He'd meant it jokingly, but Clem's feet stilled and her face took on a pensive expression. “I'm not sure,” she said perfectly seriously. “If it wasn't all three of them . . . Yes, I think if three things hadn't gone missing, I'd have said it was, definitely.”

“You think three things missing means it
isn't
a thief? I thought that's what made it seem more likely that it
was.
”

Clem's forehead wrinkled. “Maybe it's more to do with
who
was robbed than how many were. Frankly, it's mainly Georgie's notebook that makes me think maybe it isn't as simple as garden-variety theft.”

“Why? Because a watch and an antique bag make sense to steal, but not somebody's plain old notebook?”

Clem smiled vaguely. “No notebook of Georgie's is going to be a plain old anything,” she said. “But yes, that's exactly it.”

“You mean her notebook is valuable? But if it's valuable, then maybe it
would
be worth stealing!”

“Oh, I'm sure it was valuable, and definitely worth stealing to someone who knew what it was and how to make use of it. The problem is, the only person—other than Blue herself—who might possibly have any use for the notebook she lost . . . is
me.
”

Negret's jaw dropped. Clem looked at him and smiled even wider.

“Oh, I'm happy to admit that,” she said easily. “The problem is, I didn't take it. That's why it doesn't make sense that it's missing.” She nodded once and then she was off, disappearing around the next bend in the stairs.

 

seven

They stood under the third-floor window with its spectrum of soft and watery greens. The sole open door was at the end of the hall to the right: 3W, the only empty room on the floor. “Let's start there,” Negret suggested.

“But anybody can walk in and out of that room. It wouldn't be a very secure spot to hide anything.”

“Maybe the thief's counting on it not being a very likely hiding place,” Negret argued. “And keep your voice down.”

Just as he had the day before on the floor above, Negret examined the hallway with fresh eyes. Pressed-tin ceiling separated into sections by dark brown beams. Old wallpaper, although on this floor it was embossed with designs of swirling jade that matched the darkest pieces in the window. There were three sconces along the wall on each side, and at the far end, a little half-circle-shaped table with a potted white poinsettia on it.

Check for traps,
Negret remembered. Maybe there wouldn't be any actual traps, but there was always the possibility of someone spotting what they were up to and asking questions. He paused, listening. All the residents of this floor were still downstairs, but Clem was somewhere on her way back up. Best to get out of sight before she passed by in the stairwell again.

He headed down the hall with Sirin a pace behind him and his eyes skipping over the walls, the floors, the three closed doors. Details that would have been so familiar as to be invisible to Milo might turn out to be clues for the blackjack Negret. Mentally, he made a list of what he saw on his way to 3W: one of the sconces needed a new bulb, and just like on the other floors, the heavy old wallpaper here needed fresh gluing. Also just like on the other floors, there was an old, sealed-up dumbwaiter at the far end. A part of him wondered whether someone might've hidden something in there, but the painted-over door looked the same as it always had. Nobody had gotten into the dumbwaiter this way in a long, long time.

Below the dumbwaiter door was the table. Moving the leaves of the poinsettia gently out of the way, Negret saw that it had been freshly watered; Mrs. Pine must've made the rounds with her watering can this morning. He winced at the quick whiff of spicy-sweet odor that the blossoms sent up, then checked the underside of the tabletop in case the thief had taped the stolen things to it. No luck.

“I hear Clem,” Sirin whispered. Negret nodded, and they ducked into the empty room.

Just inside the doorway to the left was the luggage rack. There was a double bed with a folded blue and green striped blanket at the foot, a small desk and a chair, and a low dresser with six drawers. This room looked out on the wooded hill, and through the swirling snow—was it coming down even heavier now?—Negret could just make out the thickset shapes of some of the old outbuildings that lay scattered across the grounds.

“All shipshape?” Sirin asked.

“As far as I can see.” He peeked under the bed—nothing but a couple of dust bunnies—and patted down the sheets and the pillows and the folded blanket. Nothing there, either, or in the dresser or the desk. They dragged the dresser a little ways from the wall, then took all the drawers out and looked inside its hollow skeleton. Nothing. Negret even boosted Sirin up for a closer look at each of the lighting fixtures. Nothing.

The room's bathroom didn't appear to be holding any secrets, either. Negret was feeling a little discouraged as he tried to neatly refold the towels after searching them without any luck. There was really no place else to hide anything in there. The toilet didn't have a tank, the medicine cabinet was empty, and the only other objects in the room were the soap and shampoo that sat on the bathtub shelf.

“Now what?” Sirin asked, leaning against the sink with cloaked arms folded.

“I'm not sure.” Negret sat on the edge of the tub and neatened a crease in the paisley-patterned paper that wrapped the soap cake. “Next floor? There are three empty rooms up—” He stopped speaking abruptly and looked at the little soap he'd been fiddling with. It was unused. The fancy paper wrapper should've been glued shut—he had helped put soaps and shampoos in rooms enough times to know that this brand came with the wrappers sealed—but it wasn't.

He picked it up and immediately he knew he was onto something. The weight of it was wrong. He turned it over and carefully unwrapped it. The soap cake fell into his hands, and his heart started beating faster. A little line ran around the edge of it. A seam.

Fumbling in his pocket, Negret pulled out the set of keys.
Remember,
he heard his imagined father, the venerable old black-jack, saying,
it isn't only locked doors that hide treasures.

The flat hammered disc that hung alongside the keys was just thin enough to wedge into the seam. A gentle push, and the cake of soap fell open into two halves in his palm.

The center of the soap had been hollowed out, and in the cavity sat a gold pocket watch.

“Wow,” Sirin breathed. “Wow, you're good.”

The Moonlighter's Knack,
he thought triumphantly:
you can steal any object protected by anything that opens with a key or combination, and also anything protected by hotel toiletries.

“Wow,” Negret echoed. The thief was lucky Mrs. Pine splurged on full-sized soaps rather than the tiny ones most hotels stocked, because the watch wasn't small. It was about the size of his palm, with a chain that ended in a straight bar. He pushed the knob at the top and it popped open. On the inside, opposite the face, was an engraved inscription.

 

To D.C.V., with high esteem
and thanks for a job well done,
from D. & M.

 

“D.C.V. must stand for De Cary Vinge,” he said. “Well, there's no question about it. This is Mr. Vinge's watch for sure.”

They stared at it for a moment. “So . . . what do we do?” Sirin asked. “Should we give it back?”

Negret's mind was whirling. “Eventually, yeah. But not yet. If the thief knows we found one of the stolen things, he might move the others.”

“Do you want to leave it here? So he or she doesn't suspect anything?”

“No, 'cause he could move it again at any time.” Negret took the soap to the sink, turned on the tap just a tiny bit, wetted the edges of the halves, and stuck them back together again. Then he rewrapped the hollow soap cake neatly and put it back where he'd found it.

“He'll know we're onto him if he even picks it up,” Sirin observed.

“Yeah, but I bet he won't. Not for a while, anyway. He might peek in and check that it's still exactly where he left it, but he won't want to be seen poking around in rooms that aren't his. That might make people suspicious.”

“What are we going to do with it, then? We can't get caught with it. They'll think we took it.”

“My parents would never think that,” he scoffed. Still, Sirin had a point. His parents might not think it, but the other guests would. They had to hide it somewhere safe until they could figure out when and how to give it back.

“I know!” Sirin snapped her fingers. “Let's take it to the Emporium! Here.” She held out her hand. “I'll carry it. In case we're caught.”

Negret grinned. “Why, because you're invisible?”

“Obviously,” she replied, tucking the watch into the pocket of the Cloak of Golden Indiscernibility.

They crept back through the empty guest room and paused just inside the door to listen. Silence. Negret peeked out and found the hallway empty. “Let's go.”

The two adventurers made it to the attic without any surprises or encounters. Negret unlocked the door, paused to check for traps, and stopped dead in his tracks.

“Another spider web?” Sirin inquired, peering over his shoulder. Then she saw it. “Oh, man. You think that means what I think it does?”

The big, elaborate web that he had almost walked through the day before hung in dusty tatters that swung gently in the cold air.

“Yeah, I think so,” he answered darkly. “Someone else has been in the Emporium.” Then he stepped back fast. “What if they're still in there?”

Sirin made a huffing noise. “If they are, they already know
we're
here, and they're going to be pretty embarrassed when they get caught.” She leaned through the door. “You hear that, you sneak? You better start thinking up your excuses now.”

There was, of course, no answer.

“Well?” Sirin asked. “Are we going in or not?”

Negret swallowed. “Yeah, we're going in.” He stepped cautiously over the threshold and felt for the pull-string. The light popped to life. The next one seemed farther away this time.

Sirin pushed him. “I'm right behind you.”

“Okay, okay.” He took a deep breath and made himself walk to the next pull-string, and then the next. Miraculously, nobody leaped out of the dark. “Maybe it was Mom or Dad,” he said as he pulled on the last light. “That would be the easiest explanation.”

“No, it wouldn't,” Sirin scoffed. “Your mom and dad have been dealing with the guests with the missing stuff all morning. There's no way either of them had time for some random attic trip.”

“Well, they're gone now, whoever they were.”

Sirin took the watch from her pocket. “How about I find a temporary home for this bit of treasure, and you look around and see if you can figure out what's been disturbed?”

“Like I'm going to be able to tell,” Negret grumbled.

“We were just here,” Sirin replied. “We went over the place pretty good. Maybe you'll get lucky and it'll be something obvious.”

“I guess.” He turned in a circle and tried to decide where to start looking for whatever it was Sirin thought he might notice. Then he remembered the map he'd made the last time they were here and dug it out of the rucksack. There were the garment racks full of clothes and the crates of old toys, the box of wrapped bottles, and the huge pile of dusty canvas he and Sirin had sat on to go through their haul, all where he had drawn them on the graph paper. There was the old door leaning against the wall, and the boxes of Gems of Ultimate Puissance half hidden behind the dumbwaiter mechanism—

Negret stopped, turned on one heel, and returned to the pool of light from the fourth lightbulb. Something . . .

Sirin popped up at his side. “What?”