Walls within Walls (10 page)

“Such a ridiculous place to put shelving,” muttered Eloise, as she bent low to examine the space from which Patrick had vanished. “Well, children, he's bound to come out in one of the apartments on top. Don't worry yourselves. He's fine.”

“Really?” said Brid incredulously. “Because I've never seen a dumbwaiter opening in our apartment.”

“Remember, I said this is a book dumbwaiter, not a kitchen dumbwaiter. It runs up the south side of the building to the front of the library between that English family's apartment and the nasty man who lives below them,” Eloise said.

“This is too dangerous,” said CJ. “I need to go look for him.”

“Trust me, it's nothing to worry about. Clearly he just got out of the dumbwaiter and went into someone's apartment. There's no way he could have gotten lost.”

“I don't know, Miss Post. I think I should call my dad,” Brid said.

Eloise stared at Brid. “It's interesting that you have chosen to address me by my name, when I never gave it to you.” Brid and CJ looked at each other wide-eyed. They were busted. Eloise continued, “Children, if you want your parents to begin fretting, then by all means, give them a call. If you simply want your brother to come back, either go upstairs and look for him, or wait for him to come back here.”

CJ and Brid didn't know what to say.

“Now, as for these ridiculous items,” Eloise continued, turning toward the piles of boxes, “feel free to toss them all. I don't wish to be encumbered by them. I had assumed those English people had pitched all of it long ago.”

“Well, technically the Williamsons are American,” Brid said indignantly. “They just go to boarding school in England. And it's weird that you don't care about your family's stuff. Look how cute this is.” She reached into a box and pulled out a carved wooden Santa face with a chipped nose.

Eloise laughed. “Ray told me you wanted me to help you sort through this, but, really, it's garbage. My family
left it to be tossed long ago.” With that, Eloise turned on her heel. “Nice to see you again, and if your brother comes through my wall, I'll be certain to send him down to you.”

At that moment, they were interrupted by the sound of running feet.

“Hey! You're not gonna believe what I—ah!” Patrick stopped in his tracks, frozen.

“Pat!” Relief filled the room as CJ and Brid high-fived and pretended to punch him. “You're back!” said Brid.

“It's so cool!” he said. “I want to go up again.”

For someone who hadn't been worried, Eloise looked very relieved. “That's quite enough for one day, young man. That dumbwaiter is older than I am, and I don't trust either one of us to work much longer.” She turned to leave again.

CJ realized the opportunity to ask questions was slipping away, and he was desperate to hear what she knew of the lost Post treasure. “I think we need to talk,” he said.

“Listen young man, I'm too old to start saving the planet. You can argue that my generation wrecked things around here, but please be advised we didn't know what we were doing, and now we are too old to fix it. You are on your own with that. Separating garbage? Please. Greenhouse gases, my foot,” Eloise said.

“No, that's not what I want to discuss,” said CJ. “I want to talk about your father and your family.”

“Oh, is that what this is about?” Eloise sighed. “Another history assignment run amok? I get those every so often.”

“No, it's more interesting than that. We've found some things, some clues.”

She looked at him and pursed her lips. “You seem like a nice child. Let's be cordial neighbors. My father was an interesting man, but everything one could say about him has already been written and published. Any clues about his belongings have already been sought out. I'm certain you can get all the information you need from the library.”

CJ tried a different approach. “You see, I really love poetry, and I'm so interested in why your family lived with poems all over the walls.”

“Oh, really?” Eloise said. “Young people today don't usually take the time to know a poem. Tell me some of your favorite poets.”

CJ didn't know too many poets off the top of his head. He thought of some poems he had read at his old school. “Like Longfellow and, ah, Frost.”

Brid turned back a few pages in her notebook, where she had listed the poets from Mr. Post's book. “We also like Langston Hughes and Tennyson, Millay, and um, Ulysses Grant.” CJ rolled his eyes at her.

“Grant the general? Don't know of any poems he wrote, but Hughes, Millay, Tennyson—that's a coincidence. They were some of my father's favorites. What exactly is your question?”

“We think there is a connection between those poets and some places in New York City. We think it has something to do with your lost inheritance.”

“I don't understand.”

“We think they are related. We just need to show you something.”

Eloise held her fingers to her lips, almost as if she thought a ghost might be listening. “So we will meet,” she said. “We will meet at the New York Public Library to study some old poetry books. It's not a lending library anymore, so we cannot take them out. I will see you there tomorrow between the hours of three thirty and five
PM
. I am willing to talk, but briefly. I'm an old woman with little patience left for this topic.”

She pulled a silk scarf from her pocket over her head and tied it under her chin, as if she were going outside. She walked back toward the staircase, leaving piles of her past life behind her.

“She's a little cuckoo,” said Patrick.

“I like her,” said Brid.

“Me, too,” said CJ.

“Well, I thought she was too strange to share my news with,” said Patrick.

“Too strange to share your what?” Brid asked.

“My news,” Patrick said. “About the words I found behind the walls.”

“Pat, you found words again?”

Patrick went through an elaborate description of his journey on the dumbwaiter, how he couldn't really tell which floor he was on, how he peeked into the empty Williamson apartment through the air vents. It seemed the dumbwaiter ran in a line up the south side of the building, just as Eloise had described. He could peek out through the air ducts into all of the apartments. In one he had seen someone drinking tea in the kitchen. He had climbed out through the grille in Lily Williamson's bedroom and summoned Ray to take him from the empty Williamson apartment. “I could see the other eye in the Williamsons' apartment. And there is writing in that eye, too,” he finished.

“I knew it! What did the words say?” CJ asked.

“Duh. It's probably in skip writing. You know Pat has trouble with regular reading, and you expect him to read something in skip-seven writing?” Brid said.

“You're right!” Pat said proudly, even though Brid's words sounded insulting. “That's why if you give me paper, I'll write them down for you.”

“How can you write them?”

“From my arm,” Pat said as he uncurled his arm. Brid and CJ saw that smeared ink marks ran up the whole length of his arm. “It's getting hard to read the letters 'cause I'm sweating,” Pat said. “It was lucky I had a pen in my pocket!”

Brid opened her notebook. “Just say the letters, Pat,” she said. “I'll do the writing.”

“Okay.” Pat took a deep breath and moved his index finger along the letters as he read: “WBZOAOLZFTISPUAOLPVYKLYAVNLAAOLMSVDVMNVSKLUDHALY.”

CJ was already leaning over Brid's shoulder, trying to untangle the jumble.

“Oh, and also remember,” said Patrick, “that I sometimes call
D
s
B
s, and
B
s
D
s—or even
P
s.”

“Right,” said CJ. About ten minutes later, they had it:

Brid opened CJ's clue notebook to review the message from under the other eye:

Brid and CJ looked at each other without any idea what the poem meant, while Patrick wiped the sweaty ink from his arm.

“Hard to believe these little animals got someone to write stories about them,” said Brid as she, CJ, and Eloise stared at the Winnie-the-Pooh stuffed toys on the ground floor of the library. It was four o'clock on the following afternoon, and Brid and CJ had convinced Maricel that they both had homework that could only be done at the library.

“A. A. Milne wrote the Pooh stories for his son. Look how loved those animals were,” Eloise said.

“Remember how Dad used to tell us stories?” Brid said to CJ. “When he wasn't so busy.”

Eloise smiled. “Children, people get busy in their lives. It's just a fact, and we must try not to resent it.” She turned toward the glass case holding the animals.
“They are really something, these toys. To think that they brought out someone's most creative work.” Her voice sounded dreamy and wistful. “Do you know the mayor of New York City fought to keep these little creatures here? The English government wanted them back.”

“But wasn't Milne English?” CJ asked.

“Yes, but he had given these toys to his American friend, and that friend donated them to this library. Inheriting things is a tricky business,” Eloise said, while CJ and Brid looked knowingly at each other.

“We have something to ask you that has to do with inheritance,” said CJ, getting to the point.

Eloise looked disappointed. “I told you, I'm done talking about my father. He was a very interesting man, but there is nothing else to be said. I thought we wanted to talk about poets.”

“Well, we do. It's related to poetry and New York buildings, and to those clues to your inheritance, the treasure your father left you.” CJ looked at her face for some sort of response, but it wasn't the reaction he expected.

“My boy, you were not alive when my father planted my inheritance in the most peculiar way possible. And you cannot have uncovered anything that isn't already known. You see, it was all over the newspapers at the time he passed away. The professional detectives my mother hired couldn't find a thing, so I don't think you will uncover anything.” Eloise sighed.

“Well, those detectives never lived in the apartment, and we do,” said Brid. “We're on the case all the time, and we have some theories.”

“Everyone had a theory about what happened to my family's inheritance. Over the years, people came from everywhere with their ideas and their metal detectors and their infrared lights, but in the end, there was nothing there. You are being very naive if you think something will turn up in that apartment.”

“But what do you think happened to the fortune? It didn't just evaporate,” CJ said.

“My father was a complicated man, a man who enjoyed a good riddle, and he didn't mind making people work hard for their answers. We all knew that when the apartment was built, it included clues to a treasure hunt that he must have planned for many years. But…” Eloise's voice trailed off.

“But what?” Brid asked.

Eloise's eyes softened. “But he wasn't a cruel man, and he wouldn't have sent his daughter on a wild goose chase. I've come to terms with the fact that someone found everything. It hasn't been sold yet, because I would have heard about it, unless the transactions were handled in secret. For many years now, I've been trying to just forget about it. I have enough to live on.”

“But how can you forget about it?” Brid asked.

“Because it's too hard to live, thinking I'm just about
to find it, and then to be continually disappointed.”

“But, Eloise, we know some other things,” Brid said, “things you probably don't know.”

“Listen to me,” she said. “I'm happy to hear your thoughts, but when you talk, please keep your voices low.”

Brid and CJ had no idea why Eloise wanted their discussion to be so secret. CJ said quietly, “There's an eye behind the wall in my bedroom that is written in skip-seven writing.”

“Yes, yes, I know about that. ‘Seven clues on seven structures get water from above to rupture.' That was discovered years ago. The other eye reads, ‘Push the symbols in their order to get the flow of golden water.' But nobody could figure out what those riddles meant.” Eloise sighed.

Brid felt a little deflated. “Well, what are your theories about the clues?” she asked.

“My theory is that my father died before he could finish organizing this treasure hunt, and we are all wasting our time.”

“Patrick found a book,” CJ blurted out.

“Who's Patrick?” Eloise said.

“Patrick, our brother! The one who went up in the dumbwaiter yesterday.”

“Oh yes, the cheeky one. Go on. What book?”

“And then we found some messages in the fireplaces,
and they have a code that reads ‘Servants Dumbwaiter' and something else that's probably a name.”

“Children, I'm rather confused at this point,” said Eloise. “What name? Please start at the beginning.”

“It spells
Guastavino
,” Brid said. “And from our research, it's a popular last name in both Italy and Spain.”

CJ felt better. The decision to tell Eloise more had been made for him—and by his little sister. The interest he saw cross Eloise's face proved to him that the treasure hunt had moved forward, that they really had found something Eloise had not.

“Who was Guastavino?” CJ asked.

“Guastavino and his son were tile makers and builders. They designed fireproof buildings at a time when New Yorkers were worried about fires. Back then, we had no sprinkler systems or firefighters with modern equipment. Once a building caught fire, it usually burned to the ground, along with all the buildings near it. After the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, New York was seeking more fireproof buildings, and the Guastavinos seemed to be the only men able to deliver them. In the 1920s and 1930s, they built many magnificent buildings with rounded ceilings and no wooden support beams to catch fire. Nobody else of that time could build in that manner—vaulted ceilings and no seams.”

“So maybe the treasure is in a Guastavino building?” CJ asked.

“Maybe it
was
.” Eloise seemed lost in thought. “But the water part throws me. I have no idea what that means, unless Guastavino built some structure that holds water.”

“Like a dam? Or the reservoir in Central Park?” Brid suggested. “We need to visit some of his buildings.”

“That could take a while,” said Eloise, smiling. “He probably has two hundred buildings here in New York. Listen, children, you must promise not to breathe another word of this to anyone. Can I count on you?”

They both nodded their heads solemnly. CJ said, “We have more to tell you. It's about a book we returned to this library. When we did that, we were given another book, a book of poems, poems that your father liked.”

“Stop,” said Eloise. “This is not the place to talk freely, nor is our apartment building. It's just not safe from prying ears. Can you meet me tomorrow, same time?”

“Sure,” said CJ, wondering how they would get away from Maricel for two days in a row.

“I will meet you at Belvedere Castle, at the southern side of the Great Lawn in Central Park. Do you know where that is?”

“We'll find it,” said CJ.

“It's behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art, southwest. Go as high up as you can in the castle. We can speak privately there. Now, I will take my leave at once. To be continued,” Eloise said.

“Okay,” CJ said.

“Really, children, it's not safe to be seen with me. Be very careful, and don't share this information with anyone else.”

“Okay,” Brid said, watching Eloise scurry away, tying her scarf over her hair.

CJ looked at Brid. “That was weird.”

“Yeah, I thought she would be happy.”

“Well, she wasn't unhappy.”

“No, just nervous.”

“If she's nervous, should we be nervous?”

“Not sure.”

“CJ?”

“Yeah?”

“I don't want you going down in the servants' quarters again without me.”