The House of Puzzles (27 page)

‘You’ve clearly never seen my mother at the Boxing-Day sales,’ Gerald said. ‘What’s
that circular thing next to the riddle?’

Ruby looked to the left. ‘It’s a dial—like a combination lock but with letters instead
of numbers. There’s five concentric rings and a central hub, each with letters spaced
around the outside.’ She pushed her fingers against the outermost ring and twisted.
‘And they turn! I think we have to work out the riddle and dial the answer.’

‘What happens if we get it right?’ Sam asked.

‘If it’s anything like the last riddle Ruby and I saw, it could get us out of here,’
Gerald said.

‘And if we get the answer wrong?’ Felicity said.

Gerald tilted his head to the side. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

‘Whatever it does, the answer has six letters,’ Ruby said.

‘What are the letters around the outside ring?’ Felicity asked. ‘That will at least
give us a clue to the first letter in the answer.’

Ruby squinted again. ‘It looks like there’s every letter in the alphabet there,’
she said.

‘Terrific,’ Gerald said. ‘So what’s the solution to the riddle?’

‘
Who makes me does not need me
,’ Ruby read again. ‘That could be anything. People
make stuff to sell all the time that they don’t use themselves.’

‘How about the last line?’ Felicity said. ‘
Who uses me will never see me.
Who can’t
see things? Blind people?’

Sam shrugged. ‘Or dead people.’

Ruby turned on her brother. ‘Don’t be an idiot. We’re trying to solve a—’

‘The answer is ‘coffin’,’ Sam said. ‘It’s obvious.’

Ruby turned to read the riddle again.

‘Genius,’ she said. She dialled the outermost ring so ‘C’ was at the top, then soon
had COFFIN spelled out from top to the centre.

‘Done,’ Ruby said. She looked about expectantly but nothing stirred.

‘Maybe you need to press in the centre button for it to work,’ Gerald said.

Ruby pushed the hub. It shifted in about a centimetre with a sharp
click
.

Then a sheet of metal dropped from the back of the boiler, flat on top of Ruby’s
head.

She let out a howl and wrapped her hands over her crown, rolling onto her back.

Gerald leaned over Ruby and peered into the dark interior of the boiler. He reached
inside and pulled out an ornate gold key on a gold chain. He held it up and the key
spun slowly, glinting in the light. It was about five centimetres long with two cross
arms forming an X at the tip.

‘That’s the strangest-looking key I’ve ever seen,’ Sam said. ‘What do you think it
opens?’

Gerald cast his eyes around the cage, searching for a keyhole. ‘Hey Ruby, could you
keep the moaning down?’ he said. ‘I’m trying to concentrate.’

Ruby peeled open an eyeball and stared death at Gerald. She was about to give him
something to really concentrate on when a jangling ring filled the cellar.

Gerald poked his head out from behind the boiler to see a black telephone on a bench
by the far wall. The phone was one of the few survivors of Mason Green’s tantrum.

The telephone continued to ring.

Gerald ducked back and helped Ruby up from the
floor. ‘This will bring Green running,’
he said. ‘We better shift to the front of the cage so he can see us. The last thing
we need is him poking around back here.’

Seconds later the silver-haired billionaire walked into the cellar. He shot a quick
glance at the cage and, satisfied that its occupants were still in place, hurried
to the phone. He snatched the handset from the cradle and pressed it to his ear.

‘Yes?’ he said. He listened intently for a moment, his face darkening. ‘Empty,’ he
said. ‘If it was ever in the box, it is not there now.’

Sam elbowed Gerald in the ribs. ‘Who’s he talking to?’ he whispered.

Green’s voice strengthened. ‘I have told the professor to stop work on the potions.
The full translation of the manuscript is his top priority. Along with the coded
message from Jeremy Davey. It must hold the key to all of this.’ Green listened for
a moment, his head bobbing in agreement. ‘Of course. Do you take me for a fool? The
curiosity machine takes precedence. The final mechanism is still a mystery to us.’

Gerald cocked his head.
The curiosity machine?

Mason Green paused and turned to stare directly into the cage. ‘I agree,’ he said.
‘They serve no further purpose. I will—’

A sudden outburst down the phone line cut him off. Someone was giving Sir Mason Green
a royal roasting.

Green glanced towards the cage and, seeing four sets
of eyes observing everything
that was happening, turned his back to them.

‘Who’s giving him a bollocking?’ Sam said. Then, after a moment’s thought, ‘Does
he have a boss?’

The idea that Sir Mason Green might take orders from someone else struck Gerald with
such force that it took him a moment to realise Felicity was tugging on his jacket
sleeve, as if trying to tear it off at the seams. With her other hand she was pointing
to something on the side of the boiler. Gerald leaned closer to see. It was a neat
cross-shaped hole in the sheet metal. Felicity grabbed Gerald’s hand—the golden key
still dangled from his fingers.

Mason Green still had his back to them and the phone to his ear.

Gerald put the key into the hole and turned it.

A jagged crack appeared in the bricks at the rear of the cage, and a section of the
wall popped ajar. Gerald shoved the key into his pocket and ushered Sam, Felicity
and Ruby through the opening. He glanced over his shoulder at Green, who was still
occupied on the phone, and ducked through. As soon as he was on the other side, he
pushed the brick portal closed and turned, beaming, to find Sam, Felicity and Ruby
frowning back at him, arms crossed and brows furrowed.

‘What’s the matter?’ Gerald whispered. ‘I got us out of the cage.’

Ruby’s eyes narrowed. ‘Oh yes, we’re free at last,’ she said.

Gerald looked about him. They had escaped into a space the size of a broom closet.
A single gas lamp flickered beside a yellowed sheet of paper fixed to the back wall.
Gerald pushed past Sam to get a closer look. ‘This is just like the mechanical drawings
that Kincaid had in his workshop upstairs,’ he said. ‘But this is much bigger than
the perpetual motion machine.’ He ran his fingertips over the title, written in neat
block letters at the top of the sheet.

THE CURIOSITY MACHINE.

‘This must be what Green is looking for,’ Gerald whispered.

The diagram showed a complex schematic of gears and widgets, handles and dials, cranks
and pistons. Gerald unpinned the page from the wall and held it under the lamp to
get a better look. ‘This is amazing,’ he said. ‘What do you think a curiosity machine
does?’

‘Generate pointless questions?’ Ruby said. ‘Do you really think that’s important
just now?’

Gerald ran his eyes across the tangle of ruled lines and technical writing. ‘I don’t
know,’ he said. ‘Maybe this house of puzzles has a few more secrets to reveal.’

Gerald turned at a sharp jab to his ribs. Ruby had her eye to a peephole in the bricks
that looked back into the storage cage. ‘Shush. Mason Green has just got off the
phone.’

Gerald glanced back at the plans, folded them into a neat square and zipped them
into his jacket pocket.
‘What’s he doing?’ he asked.

‘He’s looking this way. Ruby whispered.

‘Do you think he’ll notice we’re gone?’ Sam said.

The scream that pierced the bricks and the shrill cry of
I’ll kill them!
was all
the answer they needed.

Chapter 28

Ruby pressed her face to the bricks. Her voice dropped to the merest hint of a whisper.
‘He’s coming this way.’

‘What are we going to do?’ Felicity whispered back.

Gerald looked to Felicity. She held the fingers of one hand across her mouth, as
if trying to plug a leak. Sam was crouched on one knee, his head slumped forward.
Ruby was motionless at the peephole, both hands spread flat to the bricks on either
side of her face.

Gerald stood by the rear wall. His knees were shaking; he was like a little boy standing
before the schoolyard bully. If Mason Green found them, there would be no escape
this time. The sound of boxes crashing to the floor came through from the other side
of the wall. Shouts.
More crashing. A single gunshot. Yet more crashing.

The wobbling in Gerald’s knees intensified.

After an age, the sound of Green’s fury abated, and Ruby turned slowly around, her
face grim.

‘He’s gone,’ she said. ‘But who knows for how long.’

‘What was he doing out there?’ Sam asked.

‘He unlocked the cage and turned the place upside down,’ Ruby said. ‘He found the
open panel at the back of the boiler. He almost exploded with that little discovery.
That’s when he fired the gun. He’s gone now, probably to check on the professor.’

‘Terrific,’ Sam said. ‘Now we’ve gone and made the madman with a gun even madder.’

‘There is some good news though,’ Ruby said, the hint of a grin on her lips. ‘He
left the cage door open. We’re free.’

Some stability returned to Gerald’s knees. ‘It’s time we got out of here and told
the police about Green’s hiding place,’ he said.

Ruby looked at him with surprise. ‘That’s a remarkably sensible suggestion,’ she
said, ‘coming from you.’

Gerald shrugged. ‘When all else fails, try being rational.’

‘What about Professor McElderry?’ Felicity asked.

‘If we see him between here and the exit feel free to invite him along, but if he’s
under some magic spell he might take some convincing,’ Gerald said.

Ruby found a metal lever by the wall and wrapped
her hand around it. ‘We need to
do this quickly,’ she said. She pulled and the brick section opened. They poured
through, vaulted the wreckage left from Green’s fury and ran out of the cage. Gerald
swooped on his backpack that Green had dumped by a workbench and hoisted it to his
shoulder.

Four sets of boots scuttled along the stone floor of the corridor.

Gerald was last in line as they weaved their way through the cellar maze. They passed
over the ash cross on the floor where they had first parted ways, and Gerald felt
a glimmer of hope that freedom was close by.

Ruby darted around a corner to the left, then stopped. Sam almost ran into her. ‘What
is it?’ he asked. ‘Why are you stopping?’

Ruby glanced back the way they had come, then turned to look further down the corridor.
‘This doesn’t look right,’ she said. ‘I must have taken a wrong turn.’

‘Which turn was wrong?’ Sam asked. ‘There have been a lot of them.’

Ruby’s face flushed. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said.

Gerald stepped in before Sam could say anything to aggravate the situation. ‘Let’s
just retrace our steps until something looks familiar,’ he said. ‘We can’t have gone
too far off track.’

They turned to go back when Felicity called out to them from halfway down the passage.
‘Look at this.’

She pointed to a pair of bas-relief sculptures in the
wall: one of a devil’s face,
the other of an angel. Beneath each sculpture was a brass handle set into the bricks,
with an arrow indicating a clockwise turn. Under all of this was a wooden door, less
than a metre high.

‘It’s another puzzle,’ Ruby said, inspecting first the devil, then the angel.

‘What are you supposed to do?’ Sam asked. ‘Pick the one you like the most?’

‘Or the one that the puzzle maker thinks you’ll pick?’ Gerald said. ‘Whatever it
is, it doesn’t matter. We know a way out. We’ve just got to find it and quick. I
don’t want to see Mason Green again today. Or ever.’

He turned to head back up the passage. Staring at him from the end of the corridor
was a tall, silver-haired man with a pistol in his hand.

‘Steady, Gerald,’ Sir Mason said in a cool voice. ‘Anyone would think that you didn’t
like me.’

Gerald spun around and, for a crazy second, thought about running. But then Professor
McElderry stepped into the opposite end of the corridor.

They were trapped.

There was a moment of tense silence, then Ruby spoke up, staring straight at the
professor. ‘You remember us,’ she said. ‘Try to think. Try to see through the haze
of drugs that you’ve taken.’

McElderry took an unsteady pace forwards.

Ruby’s voice rose. ‘Try to remember. Please.’

The professor stopped and swayed on the balls of his
feet, as if he had entered the
room and forgotten why. His eyebrows knitted together. After a moment they relaxed
and Professor Knox McElderry took a determined step down the corridor. ‘It’s all
right, Sir Mason,’ he said in a clear voice. ‘They won’t get past me.’

Ruby’s shoulders dropped.

Gerald turned to see Mason Green advancing on them. He shrank back as the professor
and Green herded the four friends into a cluster in the middle of the corridor.

Felicity grabbed the handle under the angel. ‘Should I give it a try?’ she asked.

Mason Green aimed the handgun at Felicity’s head. ‘That is enough, Miss Upham,’ he
said. ‘This house has sprung enough surprises on me for two lifetimes. Take your
hand away from the switch, thank you.’

Felicity did not move. She turned her eyes to Ruby. ‘What should I do?’

A brick an inch above Felicity’s head exploded as Mason Green fired two quick shots
into the wall. The sound reverberated in the confined space. Felicity screamed and
dropped to her knees, her hands covering her head. Ruby and Sam rushed to her.

Gerald stared at Green, who was wreathed in a swirling cloud of gun smoke. ‘I am
through with kidding around,’ Green said. ‘You will all come with me.’

Gerald held up his hands, as if surrendering. He knew what he was about to do was
a massive risk, but he had no choice. ‘I’ve got the plans for the curiosity
machine,’
he said as boldly as he could. Gerald had no idea what the machine did or why Green
wanted it, but the effect of his announcement was electric. Sir Mason’s face flushed
red; the gun dropped to his side.