One False Note - 39 Clues 02 (2 page)

"It's better than you deserve," her husband added, rubbing his head gingerly. "We don't have it," Amy told them. "The Kabras took it."

"They took the
bottle,"

Madison corrected. "Don't worry, they'll pay soon enough. You've got the paper." "What paper?" Dan asked defiantly.

In reply, Eisenhower grasped Dan by the collar and lifted him as easily as he might have raised his arm to signal a waiter. "Listen, you little stinkbug. You think you're hot stuff because you two were Grace's favorites. But to me, the pair of you mean less than what gets cleaned out of the bottom of a birdcage!"

His massive paw closed on Dan's neck, squeezing like an industrial-strength vise. Dan gasped for breath and realized he had none. He was being strangled. His eyes sought his sister's, but he found no help there, only a mirror image of his own horror. It was easy to laugh at the Holts, with their bodybuilder physiques, their gung ho coaching jargon, and their matching warm-up suits. This was the chilling wake-up call. They were dangerous enemies. And with the stakes so high, they were capable of

Of what?

Amy wasn't willing to find out. "Stop it! We'll
give you anything you want!"

Madison was triumphant. "I told you they'd fold under the full-court press."

"Now, Madison," her mother admonished. "Amy did the smart thing. Not all Cahills have

what it takes."

Amy ran to help Dan, who had been dropped unceremoniously onto a lumpy mailbag. With relief, she noted that normal color was returning to his cheeks. He was upset. "You shouldn't have done that!"

"Grace wouldn't want us to get killed," she whispered. "We'll find another way." The Holts began marching them toward the back of the train. "Don't get any ideas," Eisenhower muttered as a porter sidled past them. Reluctantly, they approached their seats. Hamilton sat with Nellie, his bodybuilder bulk pressing her painfully against the train window.

But the au pair's discomfort was instantly forgotten at the sight of Amy and Dan. "Did

they hurt you?" she asked anxiously. "Are you all right?"

"We're fine," Amy said glumly. To Eisenhower, she added, "It's in the overhead."

The Holts very nearly trampled one another in their eagerness to get the luggage bin

open. With a yowl, Saladin dropped to the floor. In his wake fluttered a blizzard of

shredded paper -- all that remained of the original sheet music penned by Mozart

himself.

"Our clue!" Nellie wailed.

"Your
clue?" The roar that came from Eisenhower was barely human. He grabbed Saladin, held him upside down, and shook him.

With a feline gulp that sounded more like a hiccup, Saladin burped up a hairball liberally sprinkled with musical notes. There was nothing that could be salvaged. It was confetti. Eisenhower Holt's explosion of temper proved that his muscles extended all the way to his vocal cords. The outburst sent passengers scurrying for adjoining cars. A moment later, a uniformed conductor rushed up the aisle, picking his way through the agitated travelers.

"What is going on here?" demanded the man in a heavy French accent. "You will show me your ticket for this train."

"You call this a train?" roared Eisenhower. "If this was back in the States, I wouldn't let my gerbil ride this rattletrap!"

The conductor flushed red. "You will surrender your passport, monsieur!

At the next station, you will talk to the authorities!"

"Why wait?" Eisenhower thrust the cat into Amy's hands. "Take your rat. Holts -- fast break!"

All five members of the family raced out the connecting door and hurled themselves

from the moving train.

Amy and Dan stared out the window at the sight of their cousins rolling down the hillside in tight formation.

"Wow!" Nellie breathed. "That's something you don't see every day."

Amy was close to tears. "I hate them! Now we've lost our only lead!"

"It wasn't much of a lead, Amy," Dan said softly. "Just music. Even if it was by Mozart

-- big whoop."

"It
is
a big whoop," his sister lamented. "Just because we couldn't find what was hidden in the piece doesn't mean it wasn't there. At least I wanted to play the notes on a piano. Maybe it would have told us something."

Her brother looked surprised. "You want the notes? That's easy enough." He folded

down a tray table, opened a fresh napkin, and began to work.

Amy watched in amazement as he drew the five-line staff and began to place notes on

it.

"You can't write music!"

"Maybe not," he agreed without looking up. "But I've been staring at that sheet since Paris. This is it. I guarantee it."

Amy didn't argue. Her brother had a photographic memory. Their grandmother had commented on it many times. Had she known back then that his talent would be
of vital importance one day?

By the time the train rattled over the border into Germany, Dan had reproduced the sheet music, perfect in every detail. Saladin was not allowed anywhere near it.

As Amy, Dan, and Nellie walked out of Vienna's Westbahnhof railway station, they had no way of knowing that they were being spied on.

In the backseat of a sleek black limousine parked opposite the main entrance, Natalie

Kabra peered through high-powered binoculars, watching their every move.

"I see them," she said to her brother, Ian, seated beside her in the supple leather of

the car's interior. She made a face. "They always look like homeless people. And

where's their luggage? A duffel bag and backpacks. Are they really that poor?"

"Poor excuses for Cahills," Ian replied absently, contemplating a chess move on the limo's pull-down screen. Since Paris, he had been matching wits with a Russian supercomputer outside Vladivostok. "What a stupid move," he murmured to his opponent. "I thought computers were supposed to be smart."

Natalie was annoyed. "Ian, could you pay attention, please! Superior intelligence doesn't mean we can't still make a mess of this." Her brother was brilliant, but no one was as brilliant as Ian thought he was. Sometimes common sense was more valuable than IQ points. He had plenty of the latter. Natalie knew it was her job to add a touch of the former. She respected her brother's talents -- but he had to be watched.

Chortling, Ian sacrificed a bishop, expertly plotting toward checkmate seven moves away.

"We
have the bottle from Paris," he reminded his sister. "None of the other teams stand a chance. Especially not those Cahill charity cases. The contest is ours to win."

"Or lose, if we get overconfident," his sister reminded him. "Wait -- they're getting into a taxi." She tapped on the glass partition. "Driver -- follow that car."

CHAPTER 3

When it came to hotels, bigger didn't always mean better -- but their room at the Franz Josef was barely a closet. On the other hand, it was affordable, and Nellie pronounced it clean.

"I still say we should have stayed at the Hotel Wiener," Dan complained.

"It's pronounced Vee-ner"

Nellie corrected. "And it means anyone who lives in Vienna -- like Bostonians are from Boston."

"It's still funny," Dan insisted. "I'm going to go over there and see if I can get one of their signs for my collection."

"We don't have time for that," Amy barked, setting Saladin down. The cat immediately began exploring the room, as if he thought there might be fresh snapper hidden somewhere. "We made it to Vienna, but we still have no idea what to do." Dan unzipped Nellie's duffel and removed his laptop computer. "You can stare at musical notes until your
eyes bug out," he said, plugging in the 220 adapter and powering up. "If the answer's anywhere, it's online."

Amy was disgusted. "You think you can Google the solution to all the world's problems."

"No, but I can Google Mozart." His eyes widened. "Wow thirty-six million hits! Look at this one --Mozart, the most famous Wiener of all time.

I'll bet the Oscar Mayer people would give them an argument about that."

"I'm pretty sure it's my job to tell you to grow up," Nellie said absently, gazing out the window. "You know, Vienna is a really beautiful city. Look at the architecture -- I'll bet some of those buildings date back to the thirteenth century!" Amy pointed. "I think that's the tower of St. Stephen's cathedral. It must be as tall as an office building back in the US!"

Everywhere, gargoyles and elaborate carvings decorated stone facades, and gold leaf accents gleamed in the sunlight. Beyond the nearest rooftops, a wide boulevard, the Ringstrasse, carried traffic and pedestrians to and fro.

Dan noticed none of this, entirely focused on his web surfing. "Look, Amy. I copied all that dumb music over for nothing. The whole thing's on the Internet. What was that piece called again?"

Amy rushed to his side and peered over his shoulder. "KV 617 it was one of the last things Mozart wrote bef
ore he died ... there it is!"

Dan scanned the sheet music, his brow furrowing. "Yeah, this is it -- sort of. It's the same until here -- " He pointed. "But then -- "

Amy took out the napkin from the train and held it next to the screen. "It's different?" "Not really," Dan mused. "See? It starts up again over here. But these three lines are missing from the Internet version. Weird, huh? It's almost like the website left something out."

"Or," breathed Amy, eyes dancing, "Mozart added three lines to the music he sent Ben Franklin in Paris! Dan -- we could be looking at a secret message between two of the most famous people in history! These extra lines
are
the clue!"

Dan was unimpressed. "What difference does that make? We still don't know what it's supposed to mean."

Amy sighed anxiously. Her brother was immature and annoying. But perhaps his most unpleasant feature was the fact that he was usually right.

Mozarthaus, at Domgasse 5, was a museum/library dedicated to the famous composer. Located in Mozart's only preserved Vienna home, it was a popular tourist attraction. Even at nine o'clock in the morning, visitors were queued up halfway down the block, waiting to get in.

Dan was dismayed. "It's Mozart, not Disneyland! What are
all these people doing here?"

His sister rolled her eyes. "This is the actual apartment Mozart lived in. Maybe even the bed where he slept. The chair he sat in. The inkwell he used to write some of the greatest music ever composed."

Dan made a face. "I'm standing in line to see a house full of old furniture?"

"Yes, you are," she said firmly. "Until we understand the meaning of that clue, our job is to learn as much about Mozart as we possibly can. Who knows when we'll see something that might tell us what we're looking for?" "In a chair?" Dan said dubiously.

"Maybe. Look -- we know the Holts are on our trail, and I'll bet the rest of the competition can't be too far behind them. They're older than us, smarter than us, and richer than us. We can't let up for a second."

It took forty minutes before they actually made it inside the door. Dan hadn't appreciated the wait, but now he was ready to admit that it had been the most interesting part of the tour.

Shoulder to shoulder with obnoxious sightseers and fawning music lovers, they shuffled through the great composer's apartment, following a trail of velvet ropes. One Australian tourist became so emotional in the presence of the Maestro that he actually wept.

"Don't cry, buddy. It'll be over soon," Dan murmured under his breath. Now if he could only make himself believe it.

The Cahill kids were told not to touch anything in at least six different languages. Every security guard
in the building took one look at Dan and immediately knew he was capable of trashing the place.

With every ooh and aah
from the Mozart-loving crowd, Dan's shoulders sagged a little lower. Amy was just as miserable, but for a different reason. Not knowing what you were looking for made a search all but impossible. She examined every expanse of white wall for coded markings until her head pounded and her eyes threatened to pop out of their sockets. But it soon became apparent that Mozarthaus was exactly what it seemed -- a two-hundred-plus-year-old apartment that had been turned into a museum.

What did we expect to find? she reflected glumly. A neon sign

-- Attention Cahills: Clue behind mirror? Nothing in life came that easily. As they headed for the exit, Dan emitted a loud exhalation of relief. "Thank God that's
over. At least Ben Franklin had some cool inventions. This guy sat around all day writing music. Let's get out of here. I need to breathe some nonboring air." Amy nodded reluctantly. There was nothing to be gained in this place. "I guess we should go back to the hotel. I wonder if Nellie managed to get Saladin to eat anything." Dan looked concerned. "I think we might have to sell some of Grace's jewelry so we can afford snapper again."

All at once, Amy let out a little gasp an
d grabbed his arm.