The House of Puzzles (9 page)

Xers blu c axtb pxfbi pab cilbnixg hxracib jl snbeebg xis rjiocuibs cp pj pab sbkpao
eqp hy rjiorcbirb co cgg xp nbop c xh lclpy hcgbo ib jl rqgkbkkbn cogxis c sj ijp
fijv cl c sbobntb nborqb oj c nbgy ji pab dqsuhbip jl pab jib vaj lciso paco hbooxub
hxy yjqn ojqg eb nxcobs ji eqppbnlgy vciuo.

Midshipman Jeremy Davey, October 1835. May God have mercy on his humble servant’s
soul
.

Sam took in a long breath. ‘Well, that makes no sense at all.’ He pushed his chair
back. ‘Anyone fancy some dessert? They’ve got hot chocolate pudding and custard.’

Ruby did not look up from scribbling in a notebook. ‘Sam, is it possible for you
to forget about food for just five minutes? This is important.’ She tapped the end
of a pencil against her teeth and looked up to her brother. ‘Actually, that does
sound pretty good. I’ll have one.’

‘Me too,’ said Gerald.

Felicity said a polite, ‘No thank you,’ and Sam wandered off to the kitchen. Felicity
nodded at the coded message. ‘Where do we even start in trying to solve that?’

Ruby consulted her pad again. ‘Our mum and dad used to leave coded messages in our
school lunches,’ she said. ‘
Ruby, work hard and be the best you can be. Sam, don’t
be such a colossal arse your entire life
. That type of thing.’

Gerald grinned. ‘How did you go about solving them?’

Ruby held up her pad for Gerald and Felicity to see. On it she had drawn a rough
grid:

‘They were simple substitution ciphers,’ she said. ‘They had to be if Sam was ever
going to solve them. You just replace one letter for another. So A might become B,
B becomes C, C becomes D and so on.’

Gerald grunted. ‘So all we have to do is substitute the right letters using the grid
and it solves itself.’

‘That’s the theory,’ Ruby said. ‘But every combination I’ve tried has gone nowhere.’

Sam arrived back at the table with a tray of steaming pudding bowls. He glanced at
Ruby’s notepad as he handed around the plates. ‘That looks like the notes mum and
dad used to put in our lunches,’ he said. ‘
Sam,
today is the first day of the rest
of your life. Ruby, try not to be such an insufferable know-it-all
.’

Ruby ignored him. ‘Sometimes, to make it more challenging, mum would use a keyword.
Those ones were really tough.’

‘How did that work?’ Felicity asked.

Ruby scribbled into the grid in her pad. ‘Say the keyword was RUBY. You fill in the
first squares with those letters, then complete it in alphabetical order, so it looks
like this.’

‘Here—try to decode this.’ She wrote down:
Prj fp r yliq

Gerald took the pencil from Ruby and a few moments later declared, ‘Sam is a dolt.’

‘Hey!’ said Sam.

Ruby retrieved her pencil. ‘If you and the person you’re sending the note to are
the only people who know the keyword, then the code is almost impossible for anyone
else to crack. There are just too many combinations.’

‘Unless you can guess the key,’ Gerald said. His mind was spinning at a million miles
an hour. The odds were long, but at least it was a start. ‘I think we need to find
out a bit more about Jeremy Davey,’ he said. ‘He might give us a clue to finding
the keyword.’

Sam and Ruby nodded, but Felicity did not look convinced.

‘What’s the problem, Flicka?’ Gerald asked.

Felicity tucked her hands under her thighs and rocked gently on the bench seat. ‘I’ve
heard you talk about Sir Mason Green before,’ she said. ‘I knew he wasn’t a nice
person. But when I saw him for the first time last night…’ She grew quiet, tucking
her hands in deeper.

Ruby put an arm around Felicity’s shoulders. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘He is completely
vile.’

Felicity sniffed back a tear. ‘Would he really injure the professor? Would he actually
do that?’

Ruby squeezed her arm tight. ‘He would absolutely do that.’

Felicity dropped her gaze to the tabletop.

‘The last time we saw Mason Green he was trying to find a way to control the future,’
Sam said, ‘like he was a god, or something. Whatever he does, he doesn’t do it by
halves.’

Felicity sniffed again. ‘Then what is he doing this time? What could be so desperately
important about this code that he would actually kill someone to solve it?’

Gerald chewed on the tough skin at the end of his thumb. ‘You can bet it’s more potent
than a few recipes from the Voynich manuscript,’ he said.

Gerald yelped in pain as a heavy hand clamped onto his right shoulder. He looked
up to find Alex Baranov beaming down at him. ‘If it isn’t Gerry Willy and his
happy
crew,’ Alex said, his eyes sparkling. ‘I hear you guys actually had a comfy time
of it last night. Half your luck. We were stuck in a leaky tent and had to dig our
way out of the snow this morning.’ He looked straight at Ruby. ‘I wouldn’t have minded
sharing an open fire and some marshmallows with you.’

Gerald glanced at Ruby. She was biting the end of her pencil and he was sure her
cheeks had turned pink.

He brushed Alex’s hand off his shoulder. ‘It was an interesting night,’ Gerald said.
‘Hot food, soft beds…all the comforts of home.’

Alex gave an indifferent shrug. ‘Who cares. At least we got this.’ He dropped a map
onto the table. There was a large red stamp in the middle, shaped like an egg with
a band of stippled dots running around it.

Felicity picked up the map. ‘Is this it? The symbol we’re meant to find?’

The twinkle returned to Alex Baranov’s eye. ‘That’s it,’ he said. He looked again
to Ruby. ‘That’s the first leg of the Triple Crown done. You should have joined the
winning team. It’s not too late, you know. After a night in a tent with Gretchen,
I’d be happy to dump her.’

‘You would do that?’ Ruby said.

Alex nodded. ‘You would not believe the snoring.’

Gerald plucked the map from Felicity’s fingers and shoved it back at Alex. ‘You’ll
just have to get used to the noise,’ he said. ‘Our team won’t be changing.’

The corners of Ruby’s mouth flickered upwards.
‘You seem very sure of that, Gerald,’
she said. ‘What makes you so confident?’

Gerald pursed his lips and frowned. ‘Because you chose to be on this team and I am
reliably informed that you are always right.’

A broad smile broke out on Ruby’s face. ‘Quite right. Sorry, Alex. It looks like
I’m stuck with this bunch.’

Alex tilted his head. ‘Ah, well. That is my loss. I suppose I’ll see you on the second
leg—that is, if you manage to finish the first one.’ He turned to go. But just as
Gerald was preparing to unleash his thoughts about Alex Baranov and his team, the
blond boy swivelled in his tracks. ‘Oh, Gerry Willy,’ he said, clamping his hand
on Gerald’s shoulder again. ‘I almost forgot. You and I have to go and see Rice Crispies.’

Gerald spun around and jumped to his feet, coming nose to nose with the other boy.
‘Stop calling me that,’ he said.

‘Oh, I don’t think so. It’s a bit like Gretchen’s snoring,’ Alex said, a snide smile
on his face. ‘You’re going to have to get used to it.’

Chapter 9

Gerald Wilkins and Alex Baranov sat outside the closed door of the headmaster’s
office, waiting. Alex spent the time regaling Gerald with tales of his summers in
the south of France. Gerald spent the time ignoring him.

A woman at a tidy desk on one side of the room typed at a computer. She looked up
from her work. ‘I’m sure Dr Crispin won’t be too much longer,’ she said.

‘That’s not a problem,’ Alex said. ‘Gerry and I can entertain ourselves.’

The woman returned to her typing.

Gerald shifted uncomfortably in his chair. ‘I’ve told you to stop calling me that,’
he said, trying not to let the woman overhear.

‘Not a chance, Gerry Willy,’ Alex said. ‘I’ve made it my mission to have everyone
in this camp calling you Gerry Willy by the end of our time here.’

Gerald’s face flushed red. ‘If you keep calling me that then your time here might
not be very long.’

Alex sat back in mock horror. ‘Gerry! Is that a threat? Because now I’m scared.’
The snide smile returned. ‘Willy, willy scared.’

Gerald clenched his jaw. He knew he couldn’t get into a dust-up outside the headmaster’s
office so instead he launched headfirst into his suspicions. ‘You’d know all about
threats, wouldn’t you?’ he said. ‘You attacked me the first night here. Maybe I should
mention that to Dr Crispin.’

Alex picked up a copy of
Field & Slaughter
magazine from a coffee table and leafed
through the pages. ‘I have not the slightest idea what you are talking about,’ he
said, and, as if to add a point, ‘Gerry.’

Gerald was about to fire a barrage of abuse when the door to the office popped open.
With it came something quite unexpected from any headmaster’s office: the sound of
laughter.

Dr Crispin stood in the doorway with a look of almost manic delight on his face.
‘Ah, here are the two young scamps. Come in, lads. There are some people here you
might like to see.’

Gerald gave an uncertain glance to Alex, then another one to the headmaster. He’d
had a few experiences of
being called to the principal’s office at his school in
Sydney. One of them involved his old school buddy Ox, a dozen eggs and a blender
in the home economics room. It had not ended well. Since then, Gerald had made a
point of having as little as possible to do with headmasters and their offices.

Gerald followed Alex through the door and had a tentative look inside. To his astonishment,
he found his mother seated on a couch with the self-assurance of a queen on her throne.

‘Gerald!’ Vi Wilkins trilled with delight when she saw him. She rolled out of her
seat and wrapped him in her arms. ‘My little man!’

Through a curtain of silk blouse Gerald caught a mooshed-up vision of Alex Baranov
looking at them with undisguised glee.

Gerald struggled to extract himself from the embrace. ‘Mum! Please!’ he said, muffled
in the stranglehold. Then, in a lower voice, ‘You’re embarrassing me.’

‘Embarrassing you!’ Vi said in a not-at-all low voice. ‘How strange you are, darling.
As if I could possibly embarrass you. Come, let me see you.’ She released her hold
and clamped her hands over Gerald’s cheeks. ‘But you’re wasting away, dear boy.’
She turned to Dr Crispin. ‘Headmaster, I do hope that little contribution I just
made to the school’s building fund might include some extra tuck for my little boy.’

Gerald’s eyes swivelled across to Dr Crispin. The
headmaster had taken a seat behind
his large wooden desk. What looked like two cheques lay on a blotter in front of
him. The headmaster reached out and tucked the slips of paper into his breast pocket.
‘I think we might be able to arrange seconds for Gerald and Alex, given the circumstances,’
he said in velvet tones.

It was only at that moment that Gerald realised there were other people in the room
as well. Standing beside Alex was a man who could only have been his father. He was
a taller, broader and, if possible, blonder version of his son.

‘I thought we weren’t meant to see our parents at all during this term,’ Gerald said.

Dr Crispin patted his top pocket. ‘I am nothing if not flexible,’ he said, his moustache
bristling.

Alex thrust his chin towards Gerald. ‘Father, this is the boy I was telling you about,’
he said.

The man looked at Gerald as a thoroughbred might regard a mule. He stepped forward
and took Gerald in a crushing handshake.

‘Sergei Baranov,’ the man said in a mild east-European accent. ‘You are Gerry?’

Gerald had known Sergei Baranov for all of five seconds and already he hated him
with a white-hot intensity. ‘Actually,’ Gerald said, ‘my name is Gerald. Your son,
Lexie, has a tremendous sense of humour. Everyone at camp laughs at him.’

Sergei Baranov stared at Gerald with eyes of blue ice.
The handshake continued for
another awkward moment before Gerald’s mother came to the rescue. ‘Imagine anyone
calling you Gerry,’ Vi said with a birdlike laugh. ‘How terribly amusing. And of
course, you remember Jasper Mantle from the Billionaires’ Club.’