The House of Puzzles (23 page)

‘I spotted that as well,’ Alex said coolly, following Gerald’s gaze. ‘Strange that
one is missing, don’t you think? I expect that’s the one Sir Mason had in his possession
before he went on the run. So, which one has Drebbel’s machine in it, do you think?’

Gerald closed his eyes in despair.

‘Honestly, Wilkins. Who do you think told my father about the machine in the first
place: the tooth fairy?’ Alex said. ‘Green wasn’t asked to be my godfather for his
moral guidance. This was a partnership, until he went and got himself in trouble
with the law, the old fool.’

Gerald shook his head. ‘He speaks highly of you as well,’ he said. ‘Something about
a bleached weasel.’

Alex grunted and pulled one of the caskets from the case. He turned it in his hands,
inspecting it from all angles. ‘It’s locked,’ he said, pointing to a small gold key
plate on the front. He slid the box back into its place. ‘Mason Green and my father
were business partners for years, long before you inherited your pile. Don’t think
for a second that you have any advantage over me in this venture. Drebbel’s machine
is in one of these boxes. We’ve just got to figure out which one.’

Gerald gave Alex a sideways look. ‘So it’s ‘we’ now is it?’ Gerald said.

‘Don’t get above yourself, Gerry. Only one of us is walking out of here with the
right box. Care to wager who that might be?’ Alex crossed to a shabby desk and rifled
through the drawers. ‘There must be a key here somewhere.’

‘How are we going to know which is the right box?’ Gerald asked.

‘By opening all of them, you idiot. Instead of asking stupid questions, how about
looking for the key.’

Gerald scuffed across to a table next to the display cabinet. It was pushed up against
the wall and scattered with the artist’s tools: tubes of paint, thumbtacks, a palette,
mixing knives, a bulbous glass decanter stuffed with brushes. Gerald picked through
the odds and ends on the table with no real hope of finding anything of use. He gathered
up the paint-stained brushes from the flask, like taking flowers from a vase. He
peered down the neck.

‘Holy crud!’

Alex looked up from where he was searching the desk. ‘What is it?’

Gerald raised his head and blinked. ‘I think there’s a key in this thing.’

Alex almost knocked Gerald to the floor as he shouldered him out of the way. He
wrapped two hands around the decanter and peered down its neck. At the bottom was
a tiny golden key attached to a brown fob the size of a pea. ‘It is! Wilkins, you’ve
done well.’ The opening
to the decanter was too narrow to reach in so Alex went to
pick up the flask to tip it over.

It wouldn’t budge.

‘Blast it!’ he said. He tried to shake the base of the decanter. ‘It’s cemented to
the table.’ He tried again with frustration. ‘It won’t move. Why would anyone glue
it down?’

Gerald picked up a brush and elbowed Alex aside. ‘Let me have a try,’ he said. He
poked the handle down the narrow neck. ‘Maybe I can hook it with this.’ Gerald prodded
the handle through a fine chain that looped the key to the fob. But when he tried
to slide it up the side of the decanter, the key slid off and tumbled back to the
bottom. ‘The neck is too narrow,’ he said. ‘I can’t get enough of an angle.’

Alex snatched the brush from him. But he had no more success than Gerald. Every time
he managed to hook the keychain, the brush choked in the slender neck and the key
slid free.

Alex threw the brush hard against the wall. ‘Damn it! I’m just going to have to break
it.’ He looked about for a suitable object but couldn’t find anything. In desperation,
he seized the largest paintbrush he could find and clubbed it against the side of
the decanter.

The thick glass emitted a low-pitched
dong
, but stood firm.

Alex cried out in frustration. Gerald was worried he would blow a valve.

Alex cursed and swept an arm across the table top, sending paint tubes and other
bits and pieces scattering over the floor. He grabbed the lip of the table and went
to toss it into the air. But the table wouldn’t budge.

‘The stupid thing is bolted to the floor!’ Alex clamped both hands around a table
leg and strained. His neck muscles coiled like restless pythons in a sack.

The table did not move a millimetre.

Alex threw his hands in the air and fell back from the source of his torment.

Gerald looked at the table and the decanter, anchored in place. ‘Interesting,’ he
said.

‘It’s not bloody interesting,’ Alex fumed through clenched teeth. ‘It’s bloody infuriating.
Why would anyone do something like this?’

Gerald peered down the neck of the decanter at the golden key. ‘Maybe there is a
way.’

He grabbed up his backpack from the floor and pulled out his water bottle. Alex put
out his hand to take a drink, but Gerald batted it away. ‘Not for you,’ he said.
‘For this.’

He took the lid off the bottle and poured the contents into the flask.

‘What is that going to achieve,’ Alex said, ‘apart from a wet key?’

Gerald kept pouring. ‘Watch,’ he said.

The pea-sized fob on the keychain began to bob with the rising water level.

‘It’s floating!’ Alex stared as the fob rose from the bottom of the flask and dragged
the key up with it. ‘That’s genius.’

Gerald smiled to himself. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes it is.’ He poked a finger through
the mouth of the flask and hooked the chain.

‘Cork,’ he said, nodding at the fob. ‘Clever, yes?’

Alex went to snatch it but Gerald whipped his hand clear. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I think
I’ve earned the right to open the first one.’

As Gerald took a step towards the cabinet of boxes something caught his eye. He stopped
and stared at the wall behind the table.

‘What’s the problem?’ Alex said. ‘Pick a box and get on with it.’

Gerald tried to process what he was seeing. Something that, for some reason, looked
familiar. On the wall behind the decanter was what appeared to be an inky stain.
Perhaps the remnants of where a painter had wiped dry his almost-clean brushes. But
on closer inspection the pattern morphed into something quite recognisable.

‘It’s the boxes in the cabinet!’ Gerald said.

‘What are you talking about?’ Alex asked.

Gerald pointed to the smudged drawing on the wall. ‘Squint your eyes. It’s the same
pattern as the grid of boxes.’

Alex lowered his head to be level with the image. ‘You’re right. Hey! There’s an
‘x’ in one of them.’

Gerald nudged Alex aside. ‘It’s marking the empty space. The one with the missing
box.’ He jerked his head up towards the display cabinet. ‘You don’t suppose that
this is a map showing which box contains the machine, do you?’

Alex didn’t move. His eyes were fixed on the glass decanter. It was Gerald’s turn
to ask, ‘What’s the problem?’

A smile spread on Alex’s face. ‘It is definitely a map showing which box to choose.
But not the one that’s gone missing.’

‘What do you mean?’

Alex grabbed Gerald by the collar and shoved his head in front of the decanter.

‘Hey!’

‘Stop complaining,’ Alex said. ‘And look.’

Gerald stared straight ahead. His eyes widened. Looking at the wall through the water-filled
decanter, the image transformed from a smudged ink stain into a sharp and very clear
likeness of the cabinet of boxes. But the ‘x’ was in a different square—the cubicle
three down and four from the right.

‘The water must bend the light,’ Alex said. ‘No wonder the stupid bottle and table
are bolted into place. The only way to see the picture properly is for everything
to be lined up in the right spot and then only if the jug is full of water.’ He slapped
Gerald hard on the shoulder. ‘Nice work again, Gerry. Looks like there’s more than
one key to this puzzle. That’s why Mason Green had the
wrong box. Whoever took it
in the first place used the picture on the wall. They didn’t work out the water part.’

Alex lashed out and grabbed Gerald’s right wrist. He squeezed hard until Gerald’s
hand popped open.

‘Ouch!’

Alex grabbed the key. ‘I’ll be taking that,’ he said and crossed to the cabinet.
He counted three down and four in from the right, slid out the glossy black box,
inserted the key and turned it.

The lid popped open and Alex stifled a gasp. Nestled in a bed of coarse black silk
was a silver oblong the size of a large eggplant. A band of tiny rivets ran along
its length.

‘It’s the symbol from the Triple Crown,’ Alex said. ‘It’s identical to the shape
that was carved into the keystone in the castle cellar in Scotland. The symbol that
represents—’

‘The perpetual motion machine,’ Gerald said. ‘That’s it?’

Alex lifted the silver egg from the case and cradled it in his hands. ‘Heavy,’ he
said. ‘Does it open? Should I just twist it?’

Gerald stared at the glittering object in Alex’s hands—the prize that would win Professor
McElderry’s freedom. If he did not act now, his friend’s life was as good as gone.

‘I’ll buy it off you,’ Gerald said.

Alex’s eyes moved from the egg-shaped machine to
Gerald. He took a moment to study
Gerald’s expression. ‘How much?’ he asked.

‘Anything,’ Gerald said. ‘Name your price.’

Alex raised an eyebrow. ‘You have an interesting approach to negotiation.’ He paused,
his eyes laser-like on Gerald. ‘All right. If it’s that important to you, you can
have it.’

Gerald let out a slow breath. The weight of anguish that had bound up his being for
the last months started to fall away.

Alex placed the egg back in the box and locked the lid. ‘Fifty billion dollars,’
he said.

The sounds of Fifth Avenue filtered up from twelve storeys below: car horns, traffic,
a shout.

Gerald wasn’t sure he had heard right. ‘How much?’

‘Fifty. Billion. Dollars. No—make it a hundred billion, if you want it that much.’

‘But I don’t have that much money. No one does.’

The smile returned to Alex’s face. He slid the golden key into one of his pockets
and zipped it shut. ‘Then I get to keep it.’ He tucked the box under his arm. ‘Like
I said, Gerry: everything is a competition. And a Baranov never loses.’ He turned
to the line of dormer windows. ‘I expect there’s a way to the fire escape from here.
I have a car and driver waiting downstairs. I’d offer you a lift to the airport,’—he
raised his nose in the air—‘but I don’t want to.’ Then he went to the closest window
and unlocked the latch.

Gerald’s vision turned red. He couldn’t let this happen. The professor’s fate could
not be decided this way. He launched himself across the floor at Alex, catching him
around the ribs and knocking the box from his grasp. It flew free and clattered onto
the floor, chipping its gloss exterior. Alex lurched to the side, stunned. Gerald
twisted, desperate to take Alex to the ground. The two boys hit the rug, slamming
into a side table. They rolled in a clinch, legs thrashing. Gerald winced at a knee
to his ribs and a punch to his gut.

The wrestling match was over in seconds.

Alex stood on Gerald, pinning him down with a combat boot to the throat. Every time
Gerald moved, he pressed a little harder. Gerald struggled to breathe and finally
he gave up, like a fish too long out of water.

‘You really are an annoying little tick,’ Alex sneered down at Gerald. He emphasised
his words by pushing on Gerald’s neck as if it was an accelerator pedal. ‘Are you
familiar with the carotid arteries, Gerry? They run up either side of the neck and
take blood to the brain. Funny thing is, if you restrict them your brain doesn’t
get the oxygen it needs to function.’

Gerald could feel Alex’s boot pressing harder against his neck. Numbness spread across
his face.

The last words Gerald heard were, ‘And then you pass out.’

Chapter 24

Gerald woke to a blast of icy wind in his face. He lay on his side on the rug and
blinked away the mist that shrouded his eyes. Thin curtains at the windows fluttered
inwards like washing on the line. It took him a moment to realise that Alex was gone.
Gone, along with the glossy black box and the perpetual motion machine.

Drebbel’s machine.

The last hope for Professor McElderry.

And Gerald had let it slip through his fingers.

With a weary breath, he sat up and held a hand to his neck. The skin was scuffed
raw from the sole of Alex Baranov’s combat boot. Gerald muttered an oath. What was
he to do?

Call the police?

And tell them what? Two boys were fighting over something that neither of them was
entitled to? Gerald laughed to himself. He could hardly see the New York Police Department
rushing to investigate that.

A sudden tiredness washed over him. He looked at his watch. Three o’clock in the
morning. Five hours before Jasper Mantle would arrive to let him out. And five hours
before he could expect some contact from Sir Mason Green. What would Gerald tell
him? That the perpetual motion machine was on its way back to England in someone
else’s bag?

Gerald got slowly to his feet. His head was still foggy as he limped across to his
pack. He knelt to scoop its contents back into place when his hand fell upon the
square of canvas from the Delacroix painting.

He paused, laid the canvas flat on the floor and studied the detail of the messenger
bag. ‘Fat lot of good this has been,’ Gerald thought. ‘Supposed to help me find the
black box.’ He flipped the canvas over, and looked at the smudged pattern on the
reverse side. ‘Now the professor is good as dead.’

And then he saw it.

The rush of blood to his brain almost knocked him sidewards, as effectively as any
blow from Alex Baranov’s boots.

The smudged pattern on the back of the canvas square.

The inky stain on the wall behind the decanter.

They were almost identical.

Gerald snatched up the piece of painting and stumbled to the table. He picked up
two thumbtacks from the assortment of junk that Alex had scattered across the floor.
His hands were shaking as he pinned the canvas square over the pattern on the wall.