The House of Puzzles (18 page)

Gerald shrugged again. ‘Lots of convicts got sent to Australia back then. What’s
so special about this lot.’

Felicity pointed to one name on the list. ‘Kobe thought this name looked interesting.’

Gerald peered at the list. ‘Ralph Davey?’ he said. He thought for a moment. ‘Do you
think it’s a relative of Jeremy’s?’

Felicity nodded eagerly. ‘Kobe and I think he might be Jeremy’s father. The date
would fit.’

‘So, his dad was transported to Sydney for stealing a loaf of bread. Does that get
us any closer to the keyword?’

‘What did I say to you about physical pain? Ralph Davey was not sent to Australia
for stealing. Kobe also
found this article, about Davey’s trial. He was a Luddite.’
Felicity made the statement as if it answered everything.

Gerald looked at her blankly. ‘And a Luddite is what, exactly?’

Felicity flicked her hair behind her shoulders in the way she always did just before
showing off some piece of superior knowledge. ‘We learned about them in history class
at St Hilda’s last year,’ she said. ‘The Luddites were a group of craftsmen and textile
workers who tried to hold back the industrial revolution in the early 1800s. They
smashed up the machines that were replacing them. There were riots in the north of
England. The protest leaders were hanged, or transported to Australia.’

Gerald’s face remained blank. ‘So Jeremy Davey’s father was one of the Luddites sent
to Australia because he burnt down a widget factory. How does this help us?’

Felicity flicked her hair again. ‘Have you thought that his father’s name could be
the keyword? Or Luddite, maybe?’

Gerald’s eyes widened and he opened his notepad to his many scribblings trying to
crack the code. He tried
Ralph
and
Ralphdvey
and
ludite
in the grid. ‘You have to
drop any letters that appear twice,’ he explained as he beavered away with a pencil,
‘otherwise you end up with more than twenty-six letters which is, you know, not going
to work.’

As it turned out, none of Gerald’s guesses worked either. He tossed down his pencil
in frustration. ‘Well
that got us absolutely nowhere,’ he said. ‘Did you and Kobe
make any other grand discoveries?’

‘Don’t be like that,’ Felicity said. ‘We all want to rescue Professor McElderry.
You’re not the only one worried about him.’

Gerald felt a flush of shame. As his departure for New York drew closer, he was becoming
increasingly irritable. There had been no further contact from Sir Mason Green and,
if anything, the silence had been worse than the ordeal of sitting opposite the insane
old man on a remote highland track sipping a cup of tea. Gerald’s nerves were on
edge.

‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘I’m just—’

Felicity put her hand on Gerald’s arm. ‘We did find one other thing,’ she said. ‘Most
of the diary is Davey complaining about how hard it is to provide for his mother
and younger brothers. It sounds like he was having to put food on the table for the
whole family from quite a young age.’

Gerald drummed his fingers against his cheek, thinking. ‘That fits with his father
being transported, I guess,’ he said.

‘And then there’s this,’ Felicity said. ‘It’s another clipping. This one is about
a voyage around the world being planned for 1831, for a ship called HMS
Beagle
. Davey
has circled it. It says the ship was due to leave England and chart the west coast
of South America before crossing the Pacific to visit—’

‘Australia!’ Gerald got in first. ‘You think that’s the ship Davey was on?’

‘To go to find his father. That is exactly what Kobe and I think,’ Felicity said.
‘And then, around October 1835, the young midshipman Jeremy Davey got into some sort
of trouble and tossed a coded message into the sea.’

Gerald looked down at his notebook and ran his fingers across the jumble of random
letters that he had copied from Davey’s note. If Felicity and Kobe were right that
Jeremy Davey had written the message while trying to find his father, it somehow
made Gerald’s task that bit more noble. He had a sudden urge to know Jeremy Davey’s
fate.

Chapter 19

New York City! Gerald had seen a lot of the world in his eight months as a billionaire.
London, New Delhi, Paris, Rome, Athens, Prague and quite a few points in between.
And now, once again, his senses were dazzled, this time by the mad scramble of downtown
Manhattan in evening rush hour. Lights blazed in shopfronts, casting a rainbow of
colours onto the fresh blanket of late winter snow on the footpaths. Harried locals
did battle with gawping tourists along the bustling boulevards, all with someplace
to go and scant time to get there. Streams of people in overcoats and woollen hats
swirled around the hotdog vendors and pretzel carts. Hawkers in sandwich boards stood
on corners, trying to convince shoppers to venture down side streets for
the latest
fashion wear at sale prices. A jangling chorus of car horns echoed along the canyons
of office towers and apartment buildings, like an orchestra tuning up in never-ending
disarray, waiting for a conductor who would never appear. Police on point duty tried
to keep the yellow cabs and the cars and the courier vans and the limousines and
the buses and the delivery trucks and the postal carts and the tourist coaches moving
smoothly in a stop-start crawl that was barely faster than walking pace.

In the middle of all the chaos, Gerald’s limousine edged along Fifth Avenue. Gerald,
Ruby, Felicity and Sam pressed their noses against the windows and gazed at the frenetic
activity of the night outside.

‘It’s just like the movies,’ Sam said in awe, ‘only there’s more of it.’

‘Look at all those boutiques,’ Felicity said, her eyes widening. ‘I could do some
serious shopping here.’

‘Once we get the professor free from Mason Green, maybe we can spend a little time
in the shops,’ Ruby said. ‘Right, Gerald?’

Gerald tapped on the glass partition behind the driver’s seat. ‘Once we rescue Professor
McElderry, you can swing by the ankles from the top of the Statue of Liberty if you
want,’ he said. The partition slid down, revealing the back of Mr Fry’s head. ‘How
far to go, St John?’ Gerald asked.

The butler’s jaw tightened at the use of his first name. ‘Sir will arrive at the
Billionaires’ Club in a matter of
minutes. I will then take your companions to the
Royal Suite at the Plaza, where they are free to order room service until they split
at the seams. I shall retire to the hotel bar, on high alert for unsavoury characters
and a mere telephone call away should anyone require my assistance or the world suddenly
come to an end, whichever occurs last.’

‘Sounds great,
Sinjin
,’ Sam said from the back seat. ‘Do you think they’ll have cheese
burgers on the room service menu?’

Mr Fry sniffed. ‘I should be astonished if they have anything else.’

The limousine pulled to the kerb outside a freestanding building that overlooked
a small park, blanketed in snow. Gerald peered through the window at the red-brick
structure and counted up twelve storeys. An iron fire-escape zigzagged down a side
wall that faced a narrow laneway. A dozen dormer windows in the roof looked down
over the bustling street below. Black wrought-iron flower boxes, empty for the winter,
sat beneath the tall, narrow windows along the street frontage, every one of which
appeared to be bricked over. The entire building exuded a cold indifference to the
world.

Gerald climbed out of the limo and ducked his head back inside. ‘Wish me luck,’ he
said. Sam gave him a thumbs up and Felicity blew him a kiss. Gerald turned to Ruby.
She gave him a stern look.

‘Do you have the note from Davey?’ she asked. ‘And the piece of Delacroix painting?’

Gerald patted his backpack and nodded. He was about to say goodbye when Ruby jumped
forward and threw her arms around his neck. She squeezed warm and hard, then kissed
him on the cheek. ‘Be careful in there,’ she breathed in his ear.

Gerald stumbled backwards into the night and watched as Mr Fry steered the limo back
into the flow of traffic. He raised a hand to his cheek and, staring after the red
tail-lights of the limousine, whispered, ‘Scooby dooby doo…bee.’

The evening crowd hurried along the footpath of one of the world’s most famous boulevards.
Through the flicker of faces flashing past, Gerald spotted Jasper Mantle. He was
wrapped in an overcoat and standing in the building’s main doorway. Gerald swung
his pack onto his shoulder and picked his way through the snow to greet him. As he
got closer he saw that Alex Baranov was also there.

Gerald stood and stared at Alex. He was dressed entirely in black commando gear.
His trousers were tucked into a pair of combat boots and his jacket seemed to have
more pockets than a billiard table. The outfit was topped off with a black woollen
beanie. The only things missing were camouflage paint and an assault rifle.

Gerald nodded at Jasper Mantle and hitched his pack tighter onto his shoulder. ‘Did
I miss the invasion?’ he
asked, ‘or do I have time to get a gas mask and rations?’

Alex glared at Gerald but said nothing.

Mantle clapped his gloved hands together. ‘Let’s get inside and out of this chill.’

The front door was nothing grand: plain red and thick with street grime. Jasper Mantle
pulled a key from his pocket, opened the door and led the boys into a dimly lit foyer.
He bolted the door behind them, blocking out the buzz of the city.

Gerald sneezed hard. Twice. He rubbed his nose. ‘It’s very dusty,’ he said. Another
sneeze sprayed across Alex’s back. Gerald did not bother to wipe it off.

Jasper Mantle flicked on more lights. They did little to improve the visibility,
only serving to illuminate more dust. At the far end of the foyer was a single lift
with an art deco semi-circular floor indicator with an arrow. It was the only thing
in the room that could pass for decoration. There was not a stick of furniture, the
walls were naked, and a small mound of junk mail on the floor inside the door suggested
the Billionaires’ Club was not the heart of New York’s social scene.

Gerald looked at the dingy surrounds. ‘It’s not quite what I expected,’ he said.
‘You know, considering the neighbourhood we’re in.’ He had the prickly sensation
of insects crawling over his skin and down his neck.

Jasper Mantle fished inside his overcoat pocket and pulled out a stubby brass key.
‘Don’t let the decor fool you,’ he said. ‘We keep the location of the club
secret.
You can imagine what a target we would be if we advertised. The lobby is maintained
like this to deter any thieves who might make it inside the front door.’

Alex looked around with distaste. ‘I would hope so. I have no intention of spending
the night in a fleapit like this.’

Mr Mantle inserted the key into a lock by the lift doors and pressed the button.
Far above them, cogs and wheels moved into action.

With a
clunk
the doors juddered two-thirds of the way open. The lift had stopped
thirty centimetres short of floor level. Mr Mantle wedged his shoulder against one
door and his hands against the other and shoved them fully apart.

‘You’ll have to excuse some of the facilities,’ he said. ‘It’s a very old building.
We haven’t had cause to use it much lately.’

‘Since 1830, apparently,’ Gerald muttered. He went to climb in but Alex shoved him
aside. He surveyed the interior of the lift and his top lip curled. ‘What a dump,’
he said.

It was going to be a long night.

‘In you go, Gerald,’ Mr Mantle said, following after him. ‘Adventure awaits.’

The doors stuttered closed, and the lift shunted upwards. After a short journey it
ground to a halt. The doors pulled back halfway: they were a good metre below the
floor level. Alex pushed the doors fully open and
climbed out. He reached down and
helped Mr Mantle up and through the opening. Gerald held out his hand, but Alex looked
down through the gap and laughed. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said.

‘You are a dipstick of epic proportions,’ Gerald grumbled under his breath. He tossed
his backpack between the doors and clambered out.

As he emerged into the light, it took him a moment to absorb his surroundings. ‘Now,’
he thought, ‘this is more like a Billionaires’ Club.’

The reception salon was straight from an eighteenth century French palace. Crimson
silk lined the walls, resplendent with enormous oil paintings. Antique card tables
surrounded by high-backed chairs were set around the room, laid out for games of
chess and bridge. There were no windows, but eight oak doors were evenly spaced around
the walls. A fire blazed in a grate beneath a grand mantelpiece, infusing the room
with a snug cosiness that had Gerald hankering for his slippers and a corner of one
of the plush lounges on the hand-woven oriental carpet.

He unzipped his jacket and let it fall in a heap to the floor behind him.

‘Wow,’ he said. It seemed the most appropriate thing to say.

Mr Mantle removed his gloves and tossed them into the bowl of his up-turned hat.
He laid his overcoat along a leather banquette and gazed around with satisfaction.
‘It has been a while since I’ve been here,’ he said. ‘The
old place hasn’t changed
a bit.’

Alex’s eyes widened, drinking in the scene. ‘If you haven’t been here for a while,’
he said, ‘then who lit the fire?’

Jasper Mantle eased himself onto a lounge and propped his feet on an ottoman. ‘That
is one of the many tricks of the house,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit like the light inside
the refrigerator. The fire goes on when the doors open—in this case, the elevator
doors. We get a bill once a quarter from the gas company and leave it at that. The
fire goes out when the last person leaves. It’s the same with the chandeliers and
lamps. Quite ingenious.’

Gerald pulled out a chair from a card table. ‘So we just sit here all night?’ he
asked. ‘Seems a bit pointless. Comfy, but pointless.’