The Treasure Hunters (4 page)

Ruby looked around seeing nothing
but cobwebs hiding a lot of junk. Mike tripped the electric break and as light
flooded through the building, Ruby’s heart sank. This was a place that was as
dead as the merchandise, a place to send an unwanted cousin in the name of
charity. Tears threatened to spill but she blinked them back. She knew she
should be more than grateful for a roof over her head and food in her belly. So
many people had less than that. But the place was truly depressing.

Overhead, a second floor lay up in
the rafters and she pointed. “What’s up there?”

“The
really
old junk,” Mike emphasized. Ruby blinked.
Older than the stuff down
here?
“Don’t worry about recording it right now, just focus on this
‘ere mess down ‘ere.”

Yes, a mess indeed.

And thus life began in merry old
England. Days of traveling back and forth to work through the cold and snow,
and making sure the heater stayed lit without burning the building down. Merridie
had been put to work in the townhouse and Ruby saw her grow more and more frustrated
every day at the situation. Eden had been attached to work in the kitchen,
which meant she was able to steal extra food. Still, the days blended together
almost painfully.

One evening, several weeks after
she’d begun working in the warehouse, moving boxes and crates, she’d sat back
to rest a moment behind some crates when she heard voices reverberating through
the cavernous space. Deciding to investigate, she moved closer to the office
door and recognized one voice as Mike.

“I told
ya
,
tonight…”

It was hard to make out exactly
what he was saying.

“My collection…rewards,” snarled
another voice, this one a bit deeper with an ugly rasp to it. Ruby tried to
peek through the cracked door, but she only caught a glimpse of a tall,
muscular man, dressed finely as any gentleman. His head was bald, smooth and
tanned from the sun. He was facing off in front of Mike and the next instant he
stormed out of the office. Ruby watched as he left the warehouse before heading
back to work.

Later that evening, she was in the
office finishing up a report, working by candlelight when she heard a clanging
at the front of the warehouse door. Ruby sat still for a moment longer, until
the noise came again followed by a low murmur of voices. She quickly blew out
her candle before walking quietly over to the window. She peeked around the
curtain and saw two figures making their way up the ladder to the second floor,
a lantern held by the first man. Eyes widening, she backed away from the
window.
Thieves.
Why? What could this building full of
old junk have that was worth stealing?

Jewelry perhaps?

Well, she couldn’t let them
succeed. Her eyes landed on an iron pry bar leaning in the corner, so she
quickly walked over to it and grabbed it.

Quietly opening the office door, she
eased into the shadows of the warehouse. She saw a coiled rope hanging on a
hook and cinder block around the stove and an idea formed. She hurried to set a
trap, knowing she would have to take out two men, and then hurried into her
hiding spot nearby.

The two thieves descended the
ladder. The second man gripped a bag in his hand. As the first one took a step
off the ladder, his feet got tangled up in the rope that Ruby had set up,
causing him to fall on his face.

“Hey!” the second thief called out.
“You okay?”

The first thief raised his head and
nodded. He sat up and grabbed the rope around his ankle.

“Wait a minute,” he muttered. “This
rope––”

Before he had a chance to finish
that statement, he pulled the rope again and this time it became taut. He
looked up and saw it was looped over a low beam. He pulled it again and
suddenly a large cinder block was flying through the air, attached to the rope
and coming right for his face. All
Ruby
heard was a
dull
thud
on impact, as it knocked
the thief out.

The second man started to look
around so she held herself very still and silent. He cautiously made his way
over to his fallen buddy and bent down and that’s when Ruby raised the pry bar
and struck him sharply across his back and head. He fell, out cold, a trickle
of blood rising in his hair. The bag flopped on the ground beside him at her
feet.

She might have killed them and she
probably should feel more remorse, but they were thieves. She had no tolerance
for their profession, even in these difficult times. Ruby bent down to grab the
bag and looked inside, wondering what on earth could be so important and
expecting to see necklaces or rings. Instead, she pulled out a rolled parchment.
The dim light made it difficult to read.

She hurried back to the office and
relit the candle before rolling the parchment out. It was a map, and a very old
map by the looks of it. She saw Africa and some islands with the words in a
different language. She squinted, trying to read the script, tilting the candle
to get a little more light.

“Okay, this is French,” she said to
herself. “Let’s see: signed by Jean-Pierce…Jean-Pierce
Vouleigh
.”

Ruby raised her head and narrowed
her eyes as she tried to remember where she’d heard that name before. Where,
where, where––from her father, perhaps? And then it hit her. Her father’s
bedtime stories: the daring and dashing adventures of long-ago pirates. Jean-Pierce
Vouleigh
, the fiercest of them all.

“Oh god,” she gasped and looked
back at the map. Could this possibly be his treasure map? If it was, what could
she do with this? She certainly wasn’t going to let the two idiot thieves have
it. Rolling it up, she blew out the candle and hurried out, knowing she had to
get home.

It was little over an hour later
that she burst into the guesthouse she shared with Merridie and Eden. She could
hear
Merri
bitching from all the way outside.

“The she-witch had me polishing
silver,” she said angrily. “I hate silver. I hate England, I hate the
Talcotts
, and I hate being poor.
In that
order.”

Ruby rolled her eyes right before
she burst into the room, locking the door behind her. Merridie had her arms
crossed with a bottle of wine sitting in front of her.

“Finally, you’re home––”

“I found something,” Ruby
interrupted her.

“Found what?” Eden asked.

Ruby pulled the rolled up map from
under her arm and laid it on the table. Eden and Merridie gathered around her
to look at it.

“What is it?” Eden questioned.

“A map,” Ruby said.

“Of what?”

Merridie pointed to some writing. “It’s
slightly faded, but is this French?”

“Yes, and look at this name in the
lower right corner.”

“Jean-Pierce something,” Merridie
replied.

“Jean-Pierce
Vouleigh
.”

She said it as if they should know
who she was talking about, but they just gave her wide-eyed stares.

“He was a mariner who sailed the
Atlantic about a hundred years ago,” Ruby explained.
“More of
a pirate, really.
He flew the Jolly Roger whenever he came across important
cargo he wanted. Sailors still talk about his lost treasure.”

“Oh,” Eden said. “Neat.”

“Don’t you get it?” Ruby asked,
looking back and forth between them.

“Get what?” Merridie asked.

“His lost
treasure.”
Ruby tapped the map. “This map is a guide to that treasure.”

Eden nodded as if she understood, but
Ruby saw that it was just a placating gesture.

“No, listen. We use this map to
find the treasure and we can return to our old life.”

There was silence as her words sank
in.

“No more working menial labor at my
family’s home, no more trudging in the god-awful fog and snow every morning and
night. We could go back to New York.”

“Have you gone completely mad?”
Merridie demanded. “You’re suggesting we three girls head out on some treasure
hunt?”

Ruby calmly confronted Merridie. She
knew
Merri
would be the hardest to convince.

“Yes,” she said calmly.
“The three of us, finding whatever this map leads to.”

Eden looked confused at the map
while Merridie looked at Ruby like she had a screw loose.

“Absolutely not,” Merridie stated
flatly.

“
Why not
?”
Ruby demanded.

“We are not adventurers!” Merridie
cried. “We are not treasure hunters! And we certainly are not equipped to
traipse all over the Atlantic Ocean looking for fool’s gold!”

Ruby looked frustrated at her
friend. “So you like working at my cousin’s home? Because I could’ve sworn you
hated it not five minutes ago!”

“I’d go,” Eden said quietly.

However, it barely registered to
Ruby that Eden said anything at all as she glowered at the brunette.

“Don’t forget,” Merridie continued,
poking her in the chest with a finger. “
You
brought us here, Ruby. Is this another one of your grand schemes you’ve
concocted?”

“I said I’d go!” Eden yelled.

Her voice cut through the tension
between her and Merridie and they turned to look at her in surprise.

“What?” Merridie sputtered.

“Well, if this is a democratic choice,
then I vote we go,” Eden said.

“We’re lovely British servants
now,” Merridie snapped. “Remember? We’ve followed Ruby this far and it didn’t
turn out to be the best thing for us, now, did it? Family love and all that shit!”

But Eden stared solemnly at
Merridie, who glared at Ruby.

“Merrie,” Eden said, grabbing her
attention. “You already said you hated it here and you hated being poor. So do
I
. It’s not the money so much as the freedom we used to
have. I saw a woman on the docks in New York, right before we boarded the ship.
She was dressed how we used to dress, looked how we used to look. And then we
came here and we’re all miserable and we’re fighting. I vote to go,
Merri
. What have we got to lose?”

Merridie crossed her arms and
pursed her lips as she turned away.

“Our lives” she muttered.

“We won’t go without you,” Ruby
stated.

Merridie was silent and Ruby gave
her the space she needed. She knew she was thinking things over, weighing
everything. It was a new position for her to be in. It was a new position for
all of them.

When she finally turned back, her
eyes were narrowed.
 

“Do you have a plan?” she asked.
“A sensible plan?”

Ruby nodded. “But we have to leave right
now.”

“Why?” Eden asked.

“Two men tried to steal this map
tonight. Only I stole it from them. When they discover it gone it’s not going
to be hard to figure out who was there. They’ll come after it…after me.”

“Let me see the map,” Merridie
said. Ruby moved aside so Merridie could get closer. “It seems to be written in
a code of some type. I’ll have to study it more.”

“These are the Sweeny Islands off
of Africa,” Ruby said, pointing.

“We need a boat,” Eden stated.

“Start packing now. We leave in an
hour.”

Chapter Five

They dressed in black, deciding to
go with trousers to free up their movements. It hadn’t been hard to procure the
clothing. Eden had simply snuck into the laundry room and taken the uniforms of
the male servants. Even in the dead of night, hackneys still ran, so they
hailed one. Time crawled at a snail’s pace, and Ruby kept glancing behind her,
expecting to see the men from the warehouse following them. Only when they
finally stood in front of the ship registry office did she breathe a sigh of
relief they’d not been caught.
Yet.

“Didn’t I say a sensible plan?”
Merridie whispered angrily.

“
Shh
!”
Ruby said, holding a finger up to her lips.

Eden knelt by the door and in a few
seconds it swung open.

“One day you will tell me how to do
that,” Merridie said, slightly in awe.

Eden simply smiled angelically. It
was hard to believe such an innocent face knew how to pick pockets and break
into locked offices.

Ruby lit a lantern and headed right
to the log books. Merridie kept watch from the door and Eden wandered around,
looking at the all the nautical stuff strewn about. Ruby searched each book
until she found what she was looking for and flipped it open.

“Here, I found one,” she said. “The
Paradise
, located in berth number eleven.”

A sound from outside had Ruby
hastily blowing out the candle and the three of them waited, poised in fright
as footsteps could clearly be heard coming closer. If they were discovered now,
all was lost. They’d be arrested. The map would be confiscated. And more than
likely, Katherine would throw them out
. Oh
god, no
. Ruby held her breath and prayed, even though she didn’t really
consider herself a religious person. Her father had raised her to question
doctrine, to view the world as a scientist saw it, but right now she put
everything she had into praying that they weren’t caught. In the next second,
the footsteps abruptly turned and began to fade and Ruby wondered if perhaps
her father wasn’t looking out for her now. Relief poured through her and before
anything else could arise, she grabbed Merridie’s hand, and she in turn grabbed
Eden’s, and they made their way out the door.

Sticking to the shadows, Ruby
thanked the heavy fog that helped obscure them as they hurried to berth number
eleven. A beautiful forty-foot schooner was anchored, made of mahogany planking
that no doubt lay over a steel frame. The ship appeared polished and clean, her
ropes new.
 
Ruby saw the love and care in
the small details and knew that the owner took great care of his boat.