Bookweirder (19 page)

“Why?” Norman asked.

“Because if your mother loves you,” Dupin explained, “she would not send you to such a place.”

“But she didn’t send me,” Norman argued. “She told me not to come.”

“Which to a boy of your age is as good as sending you. She would have imagined, at the very least, that you might try. No, you must think about the clue once more. She told you that it was hiding in plain sight. Correct? She alluded to the minister’s ruse, which she has learned of somehow through the proverbial grapevine. No doubt the prefect has spoken incautiously,” he grumbled.

That wasn’t what Meg Jespers had said, but it was how Norman and the Intrepids and Todd had interpreted her cryptic use of the word “purloined”—a reference, they felt sure, to the Poe story “The Purloined Letter.” And the trick of this story was that the letter was hidden in plain sight.

“Well, our nemesis the minister here concealed his letter where you would expect to find a letter—in the letter box.” Dupin inclined his head towards the desk and the letter holder. “You have looked in that tube, and at the atlas, of course. This was well thought out. If your map was concealed somewhere within this room, then
those places are exactly where I should look. However, since we have concluded that it is not in this room, we ought to consider where you are most likely otherwise to find a map.”

Dupin removed a key from the breast pocket of his jacket and strode to the apartment door. He held his finger to his lips before turning the key in the lock. The lock clicked smoothly and Dupin pushed the door open. Norman’s eyes widened as he saw the sleeping figure of a servant on the chair outside the doorway. Norman stepped back and suppressed a shout of surprise. But Dupin did not hesitate, striding forward through the door and into the hallway. With a wave of his hand he beckoned Norman to follow.

Norman tiptoed nervously down the hall, holding his breath and hearing the rush of his own blood in his ears. He couldn’t keep his eyes off the sleeping guard as he tiptoed past. A hank of the sentry’s oily black hair hung across his face and floated up with each exhalation. It tickled Norman’s nose just to see it. How was it possible that it didn’t wake the man? How was it possible that Norman’s rummaging through the adjacent room hadn’t woken him?

A hand tugged at Norman’s sleeve. He leapt into the air, and his barely suppressed scream came out as a little yelp. Dupin, his hand on Norman’s shoulder, glared at him and motioned down the corridor. Norman needed no further encouragement. He scampered down the hall to the stairway at the end. Behind him Dupin re-locked the door, and then he joined Norman at the top of the stairs.

They were silent until they were outside on the street. They walked side by side, keeping close to the buildings, striding only through the outer edge of the gaslight circles. After a few blocks a thought occurred to Norman.

“In the story …” he began without thinking. He stopped and corrected himself. “I thought that only the police broke into the apartment at night. I thought that you visited the minister during the day, while he was there.”

“You are a very well-informed young man, aren’t you?” Dupin broke his stride for a moment and turned to give Norman an
evaluating once-over. What he concluded, Norman could only guess. He merely repeated the curious gesture of running his forefinger across his eyebrow and resumed his walk. “Very well. I shall confess. Perhaps I should not, but I find you a very compelling listener. You remind me of a friend of mine, a very receptive man. It is a delight to explain my inner thoughts and methods of ratiocination to him. If he should ever decide to write down the thoughts I so eagerly recount, I daresay he could reveal my entire method, and spawn a thousand imitators. I can only ask you to promise the same discretion, my young friend.”

Norman agreed immediately. It was an easy promise to make. Who was he going to tell?

“It is merely curiosity, a weakness, I admit. But I simply must know how the story ends.”

“So you were checking to see if he’d discovered the fake,” Norman concluded.

“Indeed,” the detective replied. “I confess that my curiosity gets the better of me. I return quite often to the minister’s apartment, every few nights or so. To be the author of a fine scheme and not see its conclusion is intolerable. Monsieur G. of the Paris prefecture would never tell me, and I simply must know.”

“And has he? Has the minister discovered the fake?” Norman asked. He was curious, too, to know how the story turned out.

“I believe I’ve told you enough, don’t you think?” They had arrived at a wide boulevard lined with horse-drawn carriages. “Would you like to tell me about your map over a cup of hot cocoa?”

Norman hesitated. “Not really.” He suddenly had an idea about how he could avoid wrecking this story. “In fact, I want to make a deal with you.”

“A deal?”

“Yes. I promise not to tell anybody about your visits to the minister’s apartment, but you have to promise not to tell anybody about me.”

“That seems eminently fair.”

“Not anybody. I won’t even tell my mother. You can’t even tell your
friend, the one who is the good listener.” Norman had a strong suspicion that Dupin’s friend was the narrator of “The Purloined Letter.” If Dupin could keep it to himself, the story would remain unchanged.

Dupin considered this clarification for a moment, as if he was reluctant to give up the pleasure of recounting his encounter with the strange boy, but finally assented with a nod of the head. They stood now in a dim circle of gaslight many blocks from the apartment they had separately broken into. Dupin raised a hand as if to shake Norman’s and bid him adieu, but Norman stopped him.

“I have one more favour to ask,” Norman said in a low, tentative voice.

“Ask away, young sir,” Dupin replied.

“I’d like to sleep on your couch tonight. I promise that I’ll be gone before you are awake. It’s just that—”

“I very much doubt that you’d be able to escape my lodgings without my noticing. They are extraordinarily well secured,” Dupin assured him with a chuckle.

“I’ll bet you I can,” Norman said with a sly smile. He raised his own hand now and took Dupin’s to shake on the deal.

N
orman nearly fell asleep in the carriage on the way back to Dupin’s apartment. Only the jolt of the wooden wheels along the cobbled street kept him awake until they had reached the quiet street where Dupin lived. Even after the detective had brought him a blanket, Norman had to fight to stay awake longer. It was a close thing, but he managed to stay awake long enough to nibble through half a page of
Intrepid Amongst the Gypsies
.

The other half of the page was still in his hand when he woke up on the couch in Kelmsworth Lodge. Norman would never get used to falling asleep in one place and waking up somewhere else, but it helped that it was still dark outside. He let himself wake up slowly. When he finally sat up there was just a smudge of daylight on the horizon behind Kelmsworth Wood.

Should he wake George and Malcolm? he wondered. It probably wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t as though he had anything worth telling. Perhaps Malcolm was still out in the woods anyway, stalking the poacher who had once captured him. In the dim light, Norman looked around cautiously. Everything appeared much the same here. There was no evidence that the poacher had dared to try to break in.

He got up and walked about. There was no use trying to sleep.
It was a little brighter in the kitchen. The sun would be up in half an hour. That was one thing he could count on in the Intrepids’ England—at least the sun shone here. Norman was eyeing the kettle, wondering whether he should make tea for George, when he saw movement at the edge of his vision, something outside, just a hint of motion blurred by the thick, uneven glass of the leaded windows. Norman leaned closer to the window and peered out through the clearest of the diamond-shaped panes. The figure of a man carrying a long pole on his shoulder moved across the woods. The figure became clearer. It was the poacher.

“George! Malcolm! Wake up! He’s here!” Norman yelled. His eyes followed the poacher’s progress towards Kelmsworth Hall until the angle became impossible. Norman rushed over to the other side of the house, to the sitting room, and leapt onto the couch. He pulled aside the thick curtains of the window behind it.

The poacher lumbered across the lawn, bent beneath the weight on his back. From this angle Norman could see that the poacher was carrying not a pole but a ladder. In his other hand he dragged a long, rectangular piece of corrugated tin.

“George! It’s him, the poacher! He’s going to try something!”

Where were they? Malcolm might have been the sleep-in type on most days, but he would usually snap awake at the first sign of alarm. George was always an early riser. Norman closed the curtains hastily and jumped from the couch. He took the stairs up to George’s bedroom two at a time.

“George, you have to get up! He’s heading to the hall!” Norman banged on the door and twisted the knob as he shouted. The door burst open to an empty bedroom. The room was tidy and the bed was made, and there was no sign of its occupant. Norman stood stunned for just a moment as he tried to imagine where George might be.

Norman risked a quick peek out the bedroom window. Sure enough, the poacher was still making his way towards the house. He walked brazenly upright, not bothering to duck behind the garden walls or dash between clumps of shrubbery and trees.

What was he doing? Where was he going with that ladder and sheet of tin? Norman scanned the second-storey windows of Kelmsworth Hall. None appeared open. He checked the poacher’s progress across the lawn. Something caught his eye, a flash of yellow in the green of garden and the grey of stone wall. There, at the top of the folly. He didn’t need George’s telescope. He knew what it was—the same sleeping bag he had used the night of the stakeout. George had retreated to the folly.

Norman smiled to himself, admiring George’s resourcefulness. The folly might be just a scaled-down replica of a castle tower, but for one boy and a stoat it would do the job of a castle. There were no windows to smash, no easy access from below.

Norman stopped there. That’s what the ladder and tin sheet were for. George and his folly were under siege!

He pelted down the stairs and into the kitchen. He was at the door before he had a second thought. He had to warn George at the folly. He couldn’t let the poacher sneak up on him like this.

Norman was no expert at battle strategy, but he had been in more medieval battles than the average modern twelve-year-old. Back in Undergrowth he had helped take Lochwarren Castle back from the wolves. At Scalded Rock he had helped to break hundreds of stoats out of the prison camp, even if his only real job had been to provide the distraction to allow the stoats to sneak in.

Norman cast his eye around the kitchen, hoping something would leap out, some sort of weapon, or at least a way to warn George in the tower. His eyes lit upon the copper pots hanging from hooks over the stove. It had worked at Scalded Rock …

Norman snatched the two handiest pots and dashed out the door. He bounded across the lawn, a copper pot in each hand. At the greenhouse he stopped to catch his breath. The big poacher was already far ahead of him, swinging the ladder and corrugated tin beside him as though they were the lightest of loads.

Norman let his heart rate settle for another moment. If the poacher came after him, he’d need every bit of energy to escape. He took one more peek around the corner of the greenhouse. The poacher had
nearly reached the Rook, and there was still no sign of alarm in the tower. Suddenly a movement in the woods caught his eye, a flash of white. Norman ducked instinctively, but there was nowhere to run. Frozen between the woods and the poacher, his mind raced. Had the poacher recruited an ally? Who was out there in the forest?

His senses were sharpened by fear. He could hear the wind through the trees now, but no sound of footsteps. Whoever was out there wasn’t moving. Then he heard it, a sort of quiet whimpering, like a wounded animal.

Malcolm!
he thought. The image of his friend flashed through his mind. He imagined him lying there wounded and vulnerable—just as he had been at the battle with the ravens, when Norman had first rescued him. And just as he had that first time, Norman suddenly forgot all fear and dashed towards the woods.

He hardly looked where he was going, just crashed through the brush, gripping his only weapons, the copper pots and pans, in his fists. He nearly tripped onto the path, but just managed to stay on his feet, pulling himself up into something like a fighting stance and wielding his copper pots like short ninja swords.

He was alone on the path, except for the whimpering animal. It was too big to be Malcolm, its white and sable hair much longer. When it saw Norman, it stopped struggling against the ropes that tied it to a nearby tree and looked up.

“Nelson!” Norman whispered. “What happened to you, boy?” He bent down and began to loosen the ropes. “Are you on watch? Were you supposed to sound the alarm?”