The House of Puzzles (13 page)

‘See?’ Felicity said. ‘She likes you.’

Marjory let out another lip-flapping burst of hay breath right in Gerald’s face.
He raised his eyes to Felicity. ‘Best friends forever,’ he said.

Gerald slotted a boot into a stirrup and threw his other leg over Marjory’s back.
He settled tentatively into the saddle. ‘Sore,’ he said. ‘Sore. Sore. Sore.’

Felicity gave Belle a nudge in the flanks and led the way back along a narrow path
towards the valley. Gerald trotted up next to her, wincing at each thump of his backside
against the saddle. ‘So let’s see it then,’ he said.

Felicity pulled the map from her jacket and tossed it to Gerald. He caught it on
his chest. In the middle of the map was a large red stamp. It was shaped like an
egg with a stippled band of dots around its perimeter.

‘What’s it supposed to be?’ he asked.

Felicity retrieved the map and tucked it back into her pocket. ‘I’m not sure it’s
meant to be anything,’ she said. ‘But it does mean we’ve completed the first leg
of the Triple Crown, which is something.’

‘It’s a pretty distinctive shape,’ Gerald said. ‘I wonder why we need it for the
next stage.’

The sound of an approaching vehicle cut through the still winter air. The rough country
path was no place for a car. Gerald looked up just as a Land Rover painted
camouflage
green came over the hill and thundered towards them. He tightened his grip on the
reins. He was determined not to take a return journey on the Marjory express.

The chunky four-wheel drive rocked to a stop about ten metres in front of them, blocking
the path.

The driver’s door popped open.

Out climbed Sir Mason Green.

‘Hello there,’ he called. ‘Fancy bumping into you two all the way out here.’

Chapter 13

A shrill whistle erupted from the kettle on the camp stove. Sir Mason Green looked
up from his stool
and nodded towards a teapot on a foldaway picnic table. ‘Professor?’ he said, ‘Be
a good chap and do the honours, will you?’

Professor Knox McElderry shuffled across to the stove and lifted the kettle from
the gas burner. Fingers of steam curled from the spout as he filled the teapot.

Gerald and Felicity sat in a glowering funk on a fallen log while the professor readied
the afternoon refreshments. The horses were tied up a dozen metres away, their ears
upright and alert.

‘Are you sure you won’t have a cup, Gerald? Miss Upham?’ Green asked as the professor
handed him a
steaming mug. ‘He makes a very good brew, for a Scot.’

Gerald’s hatred for the silver-haired billionaire had never been so intense. ‘Don’t
treat him like that,’ he said, his eyes like daggers. ‘He’s not your slave.’

‘Says the thirteen-year-old with his own butler,’ Green said, blowing gently on his
tea. ‘Such hypocrisy.’

‘Mr Fry is an employee,’ Gerald said. ‘That’s not even close to being the same thing.’

‘It’s only a question of degree,’ Green said. ‘Now, have you solved that code yet?’

Gerald looked down at the ground. ‘We’re getting close,’ he lied.

Green stared at him, then slid his blade an inch from its scabbard. ‘You’ll need
to do better than “close”,’ he said.

Gerald’s pulse raced.

He had to give Green something.

Anything.

‘We think it’s a keyword cipher,’ he said. ‘Ruby is trying to find out more about
Jeremy Davey today.’

Green pushed the sword back into place. ‘Good thinking.’ He looked at the professor,
who stood staring into a stand of trees. ‘I need hardly remind you of what is at
stake.’ He placed his mug on the ground and reached into a leather satchel by his
feet. He pulled out a cardboard tube and tossed it to Gerald.

‘You recall we were rudely interrupted in our last conversation,’ Green said. ‘I
was about to ask you a favour.’

‘A favour?’ Gerald said. ‘Since when do you ask for favours?’

‘Favour. Order. Whichever makes you feel more comfortable,’ Green said. ‘You are
going to New York in a few weeks to the Billionaires’ Club, I believe?’

Gerald screwed his eyes shut. ‘How could you possibly know about that?’

A thin smile creased Green’s face. ‘As I have told you, I have eyes and ears everywhere.’

Gerald felt a great weight press down on his shoulders. ‘What do you want?’

‘I assume that old fluff Jasper Mantle has told you about the club’s founder, James
Kincaid? About his acquisitive habits and strange collections? He was a latter-day
Rudolph II with his cabinet of curiosities. You remember Rudolph, I’m sure.’

Gerald said nothing.

‘Yes, I thought that might be the case,’ Green continued. ‘When you have your night
in the Billionaires’ Club, you must find something that is hidden there and bring
it to me. The coded note should provide the information you need, along with the
contents of the cylinder in your hand.’

Gerald’s eyes fell to the cardboard container in his fingers. ‘What is it I’m meant
to be looking for?’ he asked.

‘You remember my room at the Rattigan Club?’ Green said.

Gerald’s mind shot back to the musty old clubrooms in London, where he first learned
of Mason Green’s obsession with his family. ‘What about it?’ he asked.

‘On my desk there was a wooden box. It was painted a gloss black. Do you recall it?’

Gerald’s stomach turned. He knew the box only too well. ‘There was a human skull
inside it,’ Gerald said flatly.

‘That’s the chap,’ Green said. ‘Somewhere in the Billionaires’ Club in New York there
is an identical box. I want you to find it and deliver it to me.’

‘What’s in it?’ Gerald asked. ‘It’s not another skull, is it?’

‘You do not need to know the contents,’ Green said. ‘Just bring the box to me, and
then your friend the professor walks free. We will be in New York waiting for you.’

Felicity stared hard at Green. ‘Aren’t you meant to be on the run?’ she said. ‘How
are you going to get to New York?’

Green flashed her an oily smile. ‘You underestimate my genius, young lady.’

Gerald turned the tube in his hands. ‘What’s in here?’ he asked.

‘A little something with an interesting history,’ Green said. ‘Open it up.’

Gerald slid a thumbnail under the red plastic cap at one end and was about to flick
it off when the sound of
singing floated through the air. Green turned his head to
look down the path. ‘We have company,’ he muttered. ‘Some of your fellow hikers,
I expect.’ Green snapped his fingers at the professor. ‘Come, McElderry. Into the
vehicle.’ He pulled the car keys from his pocket and spun around to face Gerald.
‘You know what will happen if you don’t find me that box.’

Green climbed into the Land Rover and the four-wheel drive roared off the path and
over a hill. A moment later, Kobe Abraham, Charlie Blagden and two girls Gerald recognised
as Cailyn and Emma rounded the bend. The four of them pulled up short at the sight
of Gerald and Felicity sitting at a fold-up picnic table in the middle of the path,
sharing a pot of tea.

Gerald held up a mug. ‘Cup for you, Kobe?’ he asked.

Chapter 14

The cardboard tube sat in the middle of the table with the unassuming presence of
a stick of dynamite.

The other students had filed out of the dining hall for after-dinner activities,
leaving four disconsolate figures seated around the latest offering from Sir Mason
Green.

‘I suppose you should open it,’ Ruby said. She gave the tube a prod. It rolled across
and stopped in front of Gerald.

Gerald blinked at it. ‘I suppose I should,’ he said. He made no move to pick it up.

‘What’s stopping you?’ Ruby asked.

Gerald reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the red marble that he found
on the trail where Marjory had spooked. ‘Someone is doing all they can to stop me
from doing the Triple Crown,’ he said. ‘First the Hello Kitty mugging on our first
day here; then this morning someone tried to knock me off a horse by firing this
into its rump.’

Ruby looked at the red ball curiously. ‘What happened?’

‘Let’s just say I got to see a bit more of the Scottish highlands than I’d planned,’
Gerald said.

Sam reached out, took the marble from Gerald’s palm then popped it in his mouth.

Ruby wrinkled her nose in disgust. ‘What are you doing?’

Sam tilted his head and smiled at her. ‘Peppermint,’ he said. ‘My favourite.’

‘It’s a sweet?’ Felicity said.

‘Sure,’ Sam said, chewing. ‘Red Bombs. I love ’em.’

‘Someone tried to knock you off a horse with a peppermint?’ Ruby said. ‘Who would
do that?’

‘Someone who wants me to quit the Triple Crown,’ Gerald said. ‘And we can rule out
Mason Green as a suspect in that mystery.’

Ruby clicked her tongue. ‘I’m sick of mysteries.’ She picked up the tube, flicked
off the end cap and tipped it up. A rolled bundle fastened with brown string slid
out. She untied the knot and a square of rough canvas, about thirty centimetres across,
unfurled on the table.

‘What is it?’ Felicity asked. She shuffled closer to Ruby to get a better look. ‘Is
that…paint?’

Ruby ran her fingertips across the surface of the material: an expanse of dull blue
with a gold crest in the centre.

‘See?’ Felicity said. ‘That looks like brushstrokes.’

Ruby suddenly snatched her hand back.

‘What’s the matter?’ Sam asked.

‘Oh my gosh,’ Ruby said, her eyes widening. ‘It’s from that painting.’

‘What painting?’

‘The one from the Louvre,’ Ruby said. She reached out a finger and prodded at the
canvas as if to make sure it was dead. ‘The one that was vandalised.’

Sam looked at his sister as if she had recently arrived from Mars. ‘What are you
talking about?’

‘Don’t you ever read the newspapers?’ Ruby asked.

‘Nothing past the sports pages.’

Ruby gave him an exasperated look. ‘It was in the news just before we left for Scotland.
A man sliced a piece from a famous painting at the Louvre in Paris.’ She prodded
the canvas square again. ‘This piece.’

‘What painting was it?’ Felicity asked. She stared at the canvas square in wonder.

Ruby closed her eyes and a wrinkle crawled across her forehead. ‘Oh, what was it?’
she muttered. She turned to Felicity. ‘You know the one: a woman is holding the French
flag during the Revolution.’

Sam blinked at his sister. ‘Do you mean
Liberty Leading the People
by Eugène Delacroix?’
he asked.

Gerald, Ruby and Felicity looked at Sam as if a baboon had sauntered up to the table
and asked for directions to the public library.

‘What?’ Sam said. ‘Gerald might doze his way through history lessons, but I find
all that stuff interesting. Weren’t you listening to Mr Bassingthwaighte in the
first week of term? The second uprising of the French people against the monarchy?
That’s what that painting is all about—there’s a picture of it in our textbook.’

‘There is?’ Gerald said. ‘I really have to stop sleeping in class.’

‘Who’s Mr Bassingthwaighte?’ Ruby asked.

‘Our history teacher back at St Custard’s,’ Sam said. ‘He was banging on and on about
the three glorious days of July 1830 and the people revolting against the crown.’

Gerald nodded as he remembered the lesson. ‘It was a pretty miserable story, actually,’
he said.

Felicity stared at the canvas square and tightened her jaw. ‘Shouldn’t we tell someone
that we’ve got this?’ she said. ‘I mean, doesn’t this count as being in possession
of stolen goods, or something?’

Gerald picked up the hank of canvas and inspected it. ‘If we’re not going to bother
contacting the police when a crazed billionaire threatens to kill Professor McElderry,
then I hardly think being on the receiving end of a bit of high-end vandalism is
too much to worry about.’

Felicity did not look convinced. ‘We have a piece of one of the most famous paintings
in the world and we’re
about to do a favour for the man who probably ordered it to
be sliced up like a Christmas turkey. What happens to us if someone finds it?’

‘I think it’s a safe bet that the French police are not going to raid a school camp
in the back blocks of Scotland as part of their investigation,’ Gerald said. ‘Don’t
worry so much. I’ve got it under control.’ He flipped the painting over and found
the back was covered in a mottled pattern of black ink. He grunted. ‘It looks like
somebody used this to mop up an oil spill. How is this supposed to help us find that
black box for Green?’

‘Maybe the coded message will give you a clue,’ Felicity said. She stared at the
piece of the Delacroix painting like it was a ticking time bomb. She turned to Ruby.
‘Did you find out anything about Jeremy Davey?’

Sam barely managed to control a grin. ‘Yeah? How was your very first detention?’

Ruby glanced at Sam the same way she might inspect the sole of her shoe if she had
stepped in something revolting. ‘Time spent in a library is never wasted,’ she sniffed.

‘You mean you actually found something about Jeremy Davey?’ Gerald asked.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. Of course not,’ Ruby said. ‘It’s a library at an outdoor education
camp in the wilds of Scotland, not the Bodleian. The only books they’ve got here
are about tying knots, shooting deer and salmon fishing.’

‘So how was it not a waste of time?’ Sam asked.

‘Because, beetle brain, the one useful thing they do have is an old encyclopaedia.’

‘What? Made from paper?’ Sam said.

‘A real paper set of books,’ Ruby said, shaking her head in wonder. ‘There was so
much dust in them I almost popped a lung from the sneezing. So while Miss Whitaker
sat there planning her lessons for next week, I flicked through the volumes and came
across a history timeline. Do you know what was happening around the world in 1835
when our friend Jeremy was throwing his bottle into the ocean?’

Felicity, Sam and Gerald waited in anticipation.

‘Not a whole lot, actually,’ Ruby continued. ‘It was a pretty dull year. Someone
tried to shoot the American President, Charles Darwin sailed to the Galapagos Islands
and the city of Melbourne was founded in Australia.’