The Puzzler's Mansion (24 page)

What was bothering Winston was that he couldn't recall Norma coming through the front door this morning. She must have, though, right? The question pricked at his brain. He had spent almost the entire morning in the reading room, right off the front hall. If Norma had come in her usual way, she would have walked right past him. Winston tried to picture the moment—the sound of Norma's keys in the lock, the door swinging open. It had been raining, so Norma would have had an umbrella. Right? Winston tried to see her stepping through the front entrance, shaking her umbrella, frowning as usual. . . . He couldn't summon up the memory.

Mal and Jake had moved to a shelf full of books about paintings, and they were each flipping through something, looking at the pictures. Winston looked at them and said, “Do you remember her coming through the front door today?”

“Who, Norma?” Mal said. “I try to stay out of her way.”

Jake looked up. “Of course she came through the front door.”

“You saw her do it?” Winston asked.

“Well . . . no.” He thought about it. “I don't think so. But like we said. There are other ways in here.”

“Yeah,” said Mal. “If she didn't come in the front, maybe she came in the back. Why are we talking about this?”

Winston didn't think she came in a back door. He thought of the first time he had seen her today. She had come up the stairs from the basement, looking surprised that everybody was awake.

There was something snowballing in Winston's mind. First it was a pebble. Soon it would be an avalanche. Norma had come up the stairs! From where? There was no way into the house down here—they were completely underground. “It was pouring outside,” he said out loud. “But she wasn't wet when we saw her. And I don't remember seeing any wet umbrellas anywhere, do you?”

“What?” Mal said. “Umbrellas? No, I guess I didn't see any umbrellas. But . . .”

And now an idea struck Winston—a lovely, amazing idea. It explained everything. Well, it
might
explain everything . . . maybe. Winston didn't have all the details yet. But there was one thing he was growing sure of.

He ran out of the library and down the hall. The door to the entertainment room was closed. Winston opened it without knocking. Amanda and Zook were in there, and they jumped straight to the ceiling, as if Winston had caught them kissing. This wasn't the case—they'd been sitting on opposite ends of the sofa. But still, they were not happy to be interrupted.

“Hey!” Zook yelled. “We're in here!”

Winston looked around, eyes wide, trying to figure things out.
Jake and Mal stood in the doorway, wondering what Winston was doing. They looked rather agape.

“Hello!” said Zook. “Did you hear me?”

Winston ignored this. He said to Amanda, “I know what you've been looking for.”

She reared back in confusion. “What?”

“Behind the curtains in the movie theater . . . upstairs in the library. We thought you were hiding, or maybe looking for the stolen stuff. But you weren't. You were looking for something else. Right?”

“So what if I was?” She was defensive again.

“This house has a secret passage,” Winston said. “Right?”

Jake and Mal looked at each other again. Their jaws could hardly be open wider.

Amanda got to her feet, also looking amazed. “How do you know about that?”

“I'll tell you in a second,” Winston said. “But how do
you
know about it?”

Still surprised, Amanda shook her head. “My father told me about it. Years ago, when I was a child. He probably doesn't even remember telling me. I wanted to find it, that's all.”

Winston said, “I know where it is.”

Jake and Mal said, “You what?”

Zook was trying to be surly, but wonder crept into his voice. “What are you talking about? A secret passage? Come on.”

Winston opened the closet. There were five shelves, used to hold sheets and blankets and pillows. It was a little emptier than usual, with so many guests in the house, but there was still some bedding left. Winston pushed it aside and knocked on the rear wall. It sounded pretty solid.

“You think that wall is a door?” Jake said.

“I don't know,” Winston said. “It's got to be here somewhere.”

“Why?” said Amanda. “Why does it have to be in there?”

“Because whoever stole the Elgar program came through here.” Winston looked at Zook. “
You
didn't steal it, right?”

“I didn't steal anything,” Zook said sullenly. “Nobody believes that, though.”

Winston thought people would believe it soon enough. He'd never been so sure of anything. But that didn't mean the passage would be easy to find. He talked while he felt around. Norma didn't come in this morning through the front door. The first anybody had seen her today was when she had come up the stairs from this lower level. But there was no way into the house from here. Well, no
obvious
way.

He tried moving the shelves back and forth on their braces. They barely moved. He felt all around the closet door frame, looking for a trigger or a switch. There was nothing. “It has to be here,” he said.

“If there's a secret passage,” said Jake, “then it must connect the guesthouse to this house.”

“Exactly,” said Winston. “Norma must use it when it rains.”

“So?” Mal said. “Does that make Norma the thief?”

All the attitude had been knocked out of Zook, replaced by wonder. “It has to be. She snuck in here through that door and took the Elgar program while I was sleeping! Why would she do that?”

Winston told them Larry's theory—that after twenty-five years of service, Norma saw these things as rightfully hers. She was furious that Richard was giving them away.

“So she makes me look like the thief?” Zook said. The anger was welling up again. “I'm going to go talk to my dad right now!” He started out of the room.

“No!” yelled the rest of them, and Winston said, “If we can't find the door, we can't prove anything.”

“We don't even know yet that there
is
a secret door,” said Jake.

“So then find it!” Zook barked at him.

Winston blew out a breath of frustration. The closet was so plain, so ordinary. It didn't look like it harbored any dark secrets. He felt around the walls again and felt only painted plaster, simple and smooth. He took a step back and stared.

It had to be here. It
had
to be.

An idea occurred to him. “Does somebody have a flashlight?” he asked.

“Yeah,” said Zook. He reached into his pocket and took out a key ring. He unclipped a pocketknife, and from this he extended a stubby little flashlight. “It's not much,” he said.

“Doesn't need to be. Thanks.” Winston took it and walked into the closet, shutting the door behind him. He thought maybe the secret passage would open only if the closet itself was closed. He waved the flashlight around, trying to figure it out. The shelves still didn't want to move, and no magic button labeled
PRESS HERE
emerged on the wall. Winston was starting to think he was wrong about all of this, and he was not looking forward to admitting it to his friends.

The flashlight beam settled on something around the inside door frame. There was some kind of design—three decorative stripes raised off the wall, surrounding the door in a kind of arch. Was this “molding”? Is that what it was called? Winston thought that might be right. But why would you put decorative molding on the
inside
of the closet, where nobody could see it?

With growing excitement, he began to slide his fingers along the edge of the molding. Halfway up, he felt a small, thin break. He dug in and tried to grab this section like it was a handle. The small section of molding shifted a tiny bit—less than an inch. Winston could hear a distinct
chunk
sound. A lock unlocking. Unaware that he was
holding his breath, Winston aimed the flashlight beam at the spot the sound had come from.

The side wall of the closet had opened up—just a notch, like a refrigerator that hasn't been closed all the way. Winston pushed on the wall and it opened heavily on its secret hinge. Beyond it was darkness.

Winston opened up the closet door. “I found it,” he said.

“I'M GOING IN THERE,”
said Zook.

“Maybe we should tell the others we found it first,” Mal said, sounding a bit dry in the throat. He was staring wide-eyed down that dark tunnel like he had seen it before in a nightmare. “We found it. Norma's the thief. The end.”

“I want to see where it goes,” Zook insisted. “We can't say Norma's the thief until we see that this goes to her house.”

That sort of made sense, actually. But Winston said, “It
has
to go to the guesthouse, doesn't it?”

Zook shook his head. “We don't know for sure. Come on.” He took a first step into the tunnel. “Are you coming?”

“I am,” said Amanda. She grabbed Zook's hand. “I can't believe I'm finally looking at this. I want to see where it goes.”

Winston and his friends looked at one another. Were they going to let these two go in there by themselves? How many times in his life would Winston have a chance to explore a secret passage? “We can go in a
little,
” he said.

“All right,” said Jake. “Just to see.”

“Oh, man,” said Mal. He sounded very unhappy.

So the five of them walked into the secret passage. Zook had his flashlight back, and he swung it slowly back and forth. There were also little lights strung against the walls, like white Christmas tree lights . . . but these made only a dent in the darkness. From what Winston could see, there was a single long hallway, curving gently before them. The floor and walls were cement, cracked and water-stained here and there. The smell was wet and dank.

“Maybe Mal is right,” Amanda said. “We should go back.” She was still holding Zook's hand and didn't look like she planned to let go under any circumstances.

“It can't go
that
far,” Zook said as he walked forward. “Come on.”

They walked along slowly and carefully. Winston's eyes were starting to get used to the dark now. The way the passage curved, it was impossible to tell how far they would have to walk. But surely Zook was right—this passage couldn't be
that
long. They would reach the end, turn around, and head back. Winston found he was looking forward to that. Secret underground passages lose a lot of their appeal once you're actually in one.

And then, amazingly, they came to a little intersection. The passage continued its gentle, curving arc . . . but also headed off to the left. The Christmas lights against the walls did not continue in this new direction.

“What the . . . ?” Winston said.

“I guess it goes to more than one place,” Jake said.

Zook shone his flashlight down this new hallway. There were things piled up along the walls, but nobody could tell what they were. “Come on,” he said, and turned down the new passage.

“Wait, where are you going?” Jake said. “You don't know which hall we want!”

Zook snorted. “What are we going to do, get lost? As soon as we get to the end of one of these hallways, we'll turn around and go back!”

“They're probably about to serve lunch up there,” Mal said.

“You can go back if you want to,” Zook said dismissively. He looked at Amanda, and Winston realized he was doing all this to impress her. Zook began walking down the new hallway.

“It's not even lit,” Amanda said in a tiny voice. “Maybe we should stick to the other passageway.”

“Come on” was all Zook said.

Winston and the others followed, but Winston started to think they were making a huge mistake. Mal thought so, too—had thought so from the very beginning—and he said, “Oh, man . . .” again. But he kept going.

“I'm not going much farther,” Jake said. He had a hand out against the wall and was using it to keep himself oriented. All they had for light was Zook's pocket flashlight. Winston was trying to figure it out: If that first passage—the
main
passage—finished up at the guesthouse, then where would this one go? Winston couldn't imagine. Was there another building on the property? Someplace they hadn't seen?

The hall continued and looked like it might continue forever. The darkness seemed to press in from all sides.

Winston was about to say he was done. There was nothing down here he wanted to see. They could go back and tell the adults what they had found and let them deal with what it all meant. Maybe Norma was the thief, or maybe it was somebody else. Until he got out of this crazy little dungeon, Winston no longer cared about any of it.

Just as he opened his mouth to say something along these lines, the hallway filled with yellow light. It came from behind them.
Winston's first insane thought was that a car was coming. He whirled around and was immediately struck blind, but not before he saw somebody standing there. A large man, holding a lantern. Winston threw his arms up in front of his face, and his mind short-circuited on what was suddenly the most urgent question ever asked: Who was this man? Who could this be?