Book Scavenger (15 page)

Emily had said she'd help James research ciphers, but first she wanted to finish comparing the two editions of
The Gold-Bug.
She'd started last night after they got back from Bayside Press, and now it was almost the end of lunch period and she still wasn't done. Comparing texts word by word turned out to be quite the consuming task.

“I can't believe you keep finding them,” James said, looking up from
Mysterious Messages
.

“That makes seven total during this lunch period alone,” Emily said.

On her right was Garrison Griswold's
Gold-Bug
,
and on her left was the same story printed in the Poe collection from Hollister. Emily tapped her pencil back and forth from a word in one
Gold-Bug
to the same word in the other. She found another typo in Griswold's:
exsessively
—a misspelling she had missed all the previous times she'd pored over this story. She crossed out the first
s
and wrote
c
above the word.

“I'm almost at the end of the story, so I better have them all. This is tedious.” She compared the last few paragraphs and didn't find any additional typos. “Now what?” Emily muttered, more to herself than anything else.

“Have you tried writing all the letters on a separate page, in the order they show up in the book?” James asked. “It might be easier to make out the words if we're looking at just the found letters together on one page.”

That was a good idea. Emily started copying the letters onto her notebook. James stopped her after the fifth letter to say, “Look, we found
fort
before, but an
h
comes next. Maybe the word isn't
fort
but
forth
? As in ‘go forth, my son, and find my hidden message'?”

When Emily finished, the string of letters read:

forthemostwildyetmosthomelynarrativewhichIamabouttopenIneitherexpectnorsolicitbelief

James took a stab at reading it aloud, “‘Forth em'—no … ‘
For
the most wildy—wild yet home … homely narrative which I am about to open in either expect nor solicit belief…'”

“That doesn't make sense,” he said.

“You doubled an
o
,” Emily said. “See? It's not
to open
; it's
topen. To pen
.”

They tried the sentence again, reading together out loud: “‘For the most wild yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief.'”

“That's the craziest thing I've ever seen,” James said, flipping through the pages of
The Gold-Bug
. “Or I should say, ‘the most wild and homely' thing I've ever seen!”

“It sounds like there should be more, doesn't it?” Emily asked. “It's like he's saying, ‘Wait until you hear this wild and crazy story…' but then there's nothing else.”

“And the wording is funny,” James said. “Old-fashioned. I mean, who says they're going ‘to pen' something?”

“Maybe that's the way Mr. Griswold talks?” She threw it out as an idea, but she'd watched videos of him online before and she didn't remember him sounding like this.

James shook his head. “No. He gave a welcome speech at that book carnival. He talks like a regular grown-up. Maybe a little happier and more dramatic, but he didn't sound like he time-traveled from a hundred years ago or anything.”

“How is a hidden sentence a game?” Emily muttered out loud.

“It's too bad there isn't anyone we could ask for help,” James said.

“That's it!” Emily pointed to James.

He looked around himself to see what she was pointing at. “Me?” his voice squeaked.

“Help,” Emily said. “Someone who's willing to help—
Raven
.”

“You're right!”

They ran to the computer bank at the back of the library. James dropped into a chair and shook the mouse to wake up the computer. They pulled up the Book Scavenger site, Emily logged in, and fortunately for them, Raven was online.

“Here.” She slid her notebook next to the keyboard. “Type the sentence and see what Raven says.”

Emily read the sentence aloud as James typed.

RAVEN:
I can't help you with that.

“Nuts,” James muttered. “I forgot it has to be a question.”

SURLY WOMBAT:
Is “For the most wild yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief” a clue for Mr. Griswold's game?

RAVEN:
Congratulations! You have found the first clue in Garrison Griswold's literary scavenger hunt launched on November 10. If you made it this far, you have found one of the fifty copies of THE GOLD-BUG hidden across the city. You have also located my game assistant, Raven. Raven is willing to offer you a small measure of help on your journey, provided you ask the right questions.

Emily blinked at the screen. She had fantasized about this—moving to San Francisco and participating in one of Mr. Griswold's games. She'd done it. She'd found his next game. She reread the message again.

“There are supposed to be fifty hidden copies of
The Gold-Bug
,” James said. “How many do you think he hid before this one?”

“It's only the middle of October. He wasn't planning on the game officially starting for another three weeks. Maybe there aren't others out there yet.” At least Emily hoped that was the case. She liked thinking of
The Gold-Bug
as her own personal connection to Garrison Griswold.

“We only have five minutes left until the bell rings, and we still don't know what to do with the hidden sentence. Quick”—Emily nudged James—“ask Raven about that.”

SURLY WOMBAT:
What do we do with the first clue?

RAVEN:
One good story deserves another.

“‘One good story deserves another'—what does that even mean?” James asked.

Before Emily could answer, a message from a guest user popped on her screen.

GUEST:
I think you found my book.

Emily scrunched her nose. “Uh, hello? Who
are
you?”

“Why would you hide a book for Book Scavenger if you're not a registered player?” James added.

SURLY WOMBAT:
What book?

GUEST:
You said you found a Poe book in the BART station. That's my book. I need it back.

Emily and James looked at each other. The Poe book belonged to somebody? That couldn't be. It had the Bayside Press symbol with the raven, and they'd just uncovered the secret message. Raven had even confirmed it was part of the game. Emily was a hundred percent sure the book was Mr. Griswold's. Which meant that either this mysterious person was Mr. Griswold, somehow managing to log in from the hospital even though yesterday Jack had said he was in very poor condition, or this guest user was mistaken. Or—a possibility that made her anxious to even consider—someone knew about the game and was trying to get the book for that reason.

SURLY WOMBAT:
I find a lot of books. Tell me about yours.

GUEST:
It's by Poe.

SURLY WOMBAT:
Title?

The cursor flashed over and over until finally another message popped up.

GUEST:
THE GOLD-BUG.

Emily's stomach tightened.

James nudged her. “Hollister said it was unusual to see a book with only one of Poe's stories. Maybe there's another collection by that name. Maybe this is a coincidence,” he said.

SURLY WOMBAT:
How many stories?

The cursor blinked endlessly. Emily held her breath.

GUEST:
Three.

Emily exhaled.

SURLY WOMBAT:
Sorry. I don't think I have your book.

 

CHAPTER

18

BARRY SLAMMED
a fist onto the computer station, making the librarian at the information desk look over.

“Sorry,” Barry muttered, and ducked his head.

“You shouldn't have guessed three,” Clyde said. He sat back in the chair next to him, swiveling the seat from side to side.

“You
told
me three,” Barry said through gritted teeth.

Clyde shrugged. “What do I know?”

After they'd found the Book Scavenger website on Monday, they'd switched gears from staking out the area around the BART station to spending the rest of the week staking out this website. Or at least staking it out as much as they could manage, seeing that Barry didn't have a computer at home and worked at a liquor store in the evenings, and Clyde … Barry had no idea what Clyde did when they weren't around each other.

In any case, it had taken them five whole days of checking in on a computer either at the hotel where his friend worked or here at the main city library when his friend wasn't working.

The green light next to Surly Wombat's name switched to gray and read “unavailable” instead of “online.”

“Of course,” Barry said. “We scared her off.”

Barry dropped his head into his hands. Man, was he screwed. It was bad enough he'd thrown that book away in the first place. But Barry had neglected to tell his boss about the kids. He'd led him to believe they had a better handle on the book situation than they actually did. Although their boss had already threatened to take matters into his own hands if they didn't hurry up, so maybe Barry hadn't done such a good job of convincing him he had a handle on things.

Barry clicked on the name “Surly Wombat,” and the page jumped to the girl's profile. At least he assumed this was that girl—she was the one Clyde had seen leaving the card in the first place. This profile gave very little personal information and no photo. Barry forced his eyes to scan the whole page this time instead of glazing over a couple of lines in. At the bottom of the page there was one important detail Barry had missed before.

He leaned close to the screen and blinked his eyes to make sure he was seeing straight.

“There we go.” He stabbed the words. “‘School: Booker Middle.' We can go there.”

“Field trip,” Clyde said.

 

CHAPTER

19

EVEN THOUGH
the guest user hadn't known the right details about her book, Emily still felt uneasy.

“You okay?” James asked.

“Yeah, just…” The person had specifically said they were looking for a book with three stories, and Mr. Griswold's had only one. Still, it rattled her to have someone else insist
The Gold-Bug
was his or hers.

“That was just weird,” she said.

James nodded his agreement. “But we
did
find out the first clue.”

“We did!” Emily said brightly. “‘One good story deserves another,'”
she repeated. “What could that mean?”

The bell rang. James walked his cipher book back to the library cart, reading it until the very last second. Emily had left her binder,
The Gold-Bug
, and the Poe short story collection on the table when they went to chat with Raven, so now she closed those. She stacked them with the Poe collection of stories on top.

Story.
One good story—
The Gold-Bug—
deserves another …
story
?

Emily reopened the collection of stories and flipped through it.

“Ready?” James asked, hoisting his backpack onto his shoulders.

Emily continued to flip pages, stopping every third page or so. About halfway through the book Emily turned to a short story called “The Black Cat.”

“James!” she said and pressed the book to the tabletop. James leaned forward and read out loud: “‘For the most wild yet most homely narrative—'” He looked at Emily, his mouth hanging open.

“‘One good story deserves another,'” Emily said with an incredulous laugh. “The clue is the first line of another Poe story.”

*   *   *

Emily walked on air throughout the weekend. Even though she didn't yet know what to do
with the next clue, the fact that she'd come this far was satisfying enough. For now.

James was in high spirits after school on Monday as well. The first week of Mr. Quisling's challenge was a wash, since everyone's submitted ciphers had been broken. Already about half the class seemed to have lost enthusiasm for the challenge once they realized how tricky it would be to come up with something unbreakable. Emily didn't even submit one herself. She had been too wrapped up in homework, reading “The Black Cat” in hopes of figuring out what she was supposed to do next in Mr. Griswold's game, and her family's adventures. But James and Maddie were both as committed to their bet as they had been the week before. They each submitted ciphers, and James felt great about his chances this week.

“Her Royal Fungus is going down!” James crowed as they trudged up the sidewalk after school. He held Maddie's cipher sheet in front of him as they walked: