The Initiation (7 page)

I sat there in rapt attention, in awe of the boy I faced, yet desperate to appear only vaguely impressed. He had laid out the options like stones in a footpath, so easily followed. His was a mind capable of much faster processing than mine. I found it seductive; I wanted to hear more, I wanted to be around such brilliance in spite of the boy's poor manners.

“A friend or close associate. But one willing to put James at risk of expulsion, should he be caught in the act. An interesting dichotomy, that. I suppose we must consider persons or a person who perceives James as a rival; but how has he gained a rival so quickly? We've only just arrived! So no! More likely a student, short-tempered or quick to judgment. Ah!” Sherlock went silent, staring into space as if able to see through walls. “Or . . .” He allowed the word to hang in the air, a day-old helium balloon unable to rise or fall. “Let's consider the possibility of an adult behind these clues. Yes.” He was talking to himself, thinking aloud; I was no longer in the room. “But how, if at all, might the clues connect to the missing Bible? Perplexing, that.” He spun his chair to face me with such lightning speed that I tipped back and would have gone over had he not reached out to catch my
hand—again, with a quickness more reserved for a striking snake. He righted me, returning me to balance. “As improbably and slightly foolish as it may sound,” he giggled girlishly, not at all becoming, “and with no possible motive I can discern at this exact moment, I do believe I may have hit upon it. Let's say, for argument's sake, an adult stole the Bible, wanting James, and James alone, to discover its contents. Thus, the clues are here to lead him to it! So I ask you this, Moria: What information is contained in this family Bible of yours?”

“I . . . ah . . . have never heard of it before.” I hated to sound so stupid and, more than that, did not want to appear ignorant, especially of things having to do with my own family. “Dr. Curmudgeon said family records and stuff like that.”

“Clever nickname. Yes, typically, lineage,” Sherlock said. “Birth dates. Who begot whom. A family tree of sorts if not literally. Perhaps cause of death?” he inquired to himself. “Hmm. Intriguing. It has a role here at Baskerville since its very presence here must be of some significance.”

“What is it?” I could perceive a veil of discouragement.

“Plainly, not enough, Moria. Sorely lacking, we might say. Hmm? There's something there.” He
shot his arm out in front of himself, fully extended, and rubbed his fingers together as if feeling grit in the air. Only a frost of mist remained, wafting like dissipating smoke. “Yet . . . nothing. As ephemeral as a ghost. There, but not there.” His dark eyes darted about. “More data points are needed. Perhaps the Bible and the clues are related, perhaps not. The timing would suggest the former, but one can be fooled by coincidence. You and I require two things, Moria. They are . . . ?”

He'd put me on the spot. I wanted so badly to prove myself his equal. “For one, what it is that's been left for James. This note he got.”

“Brava!”

I bit back a grin of satisfaction. “Let's see . . .”

“Get on with it! Haven't got all day!”

“Shh! I'm thinking!” I felt hurried, disrupted, unsettled. I resented his interruption. “I've lost it,” I conceded. “You shouldn't have hurried me, Lock. That wasn't fair.”

“Whosoever it is who must yet venture into the prescribed location in order to leave said clue for James to find.”

It was so obvious, I felt the idiot and tried to talk my way out of my mistake.
The person behind it in the first place.
“Unless it was put there last night, or the night before,” I said.

Sherlock slapped the desk. This time, I did go over backward, right onto my head.

“Of course!” He jumped over the fallen chair and straddled me from above, feet on either side of me. He looked about nine feet tall from where I lay on the floor. “Moria,” he declared loudly, “you're brilliant!”

T
HANKFULLY,
I
RECEIVED A POSTCARD FROM
Father that afternoon, putting to rest my concern over his silence and resetting the waiting period before my anxiety would begin to creep back in. The image on the front of the card was the Capitol Building in Washington, DC, but the postmark carried the zip code of Atlantic City, New Jersey, a contradiction I found curious if not intriguing. I congratulated myself on the fact that not everyone would have bothered to study the postmark; I am frightfully smart.

Nearing the end of mandatory study hall in
the school library, I saw James react when he felt a hole burning in his back pocket. The red envelope wasn't there! He stabbed his hand into the pocket for a second time to the same result, an overwhelming sense of panic and loss taking hold. He would never admit it to Sherlock Holmes, but he'd spent some of the study hall looking over the same brochure containing the campus map. He'd used the library—a first for him—to read up on the design of the school buildings, along with Baskerville's vast art collection, trying to make sense of the reference to ribs in the note. For him, it all came back to the note:

Aloft in the . . .
center? no
. . . middle of the seven ribs . . .
he? no
. . . you will find it, but only by night.

He thought that was right. He would have exactly fifteen minutes between the end of evening study hall and the first room check by his hall master, Mr. Cantell. That gave James only a few minutes to check out the chapel. He'd read that it had a Hammerbeam roof with exposed trusses. He'd also found a very old black-and-white photo of the chapel being reconstructed, below which the caption quoted the architect saying “the bones of the superstructure will last a millennia.” Bones, as in ribs, he thought. Trouble was, the chapel wasn't
in the direction of the Bricks. To be seen in the vicinity would invite questions. The only students walking near to the chapel were other middles like me, some of whom lived across the street near the faculty housing. James, a good head taller, would need to blend in if he were to have any kind of chance to avoid being spotted and cited for not going directly to his dorm.

I need you to make a distraction,
he wrote in a note, sliding it stealthily across the table to Clay Richmond.

Why would I help you?
Richmond wrote back on the same note.

James had to think long and hard on that one.
So study hall can end.

You know where the Bible is?

I think maybe. Do you?

I wish. OK. But you owe me.

As study hall dismissed, Clay Richmond wiped out on his skateboard and cried painfully for help. Seemingly everyone turned at once in his direction. All but one person.

Thus began James's life of conspiracy. If I'm honest, which I most often am, he and I occasionally collaborated as brother and sister to deceive Father or Lois, Ralph or our cook. We told fibs. We embellished upon the truth where necessary to
protect one or the other, or the both of us. I consider such behavior “expected” for siblings, though the only sibling I have is James, so I lack a proper reference point. But here, in the hallowed halls of Baskerville Academy, James Moriarty reached out to a known ne'er-do-well for assistance in an act that violated school rules and therefore made each boy beholden to the other in that they were now accomplices. James had discovered strength in numbers; he'd discovered others would do things for him when he had something to offer in return; he'd discovered that with the proper cover a person could accomplish things previously believed impossible.

He reached the chapel—the “bones” and ribs—without a hitch.

Late at night, the empty chapel morphed into a cavernous, echoey place that announced and reverberated James's every movement. The sounds sloshed around like pool water after a cannonball. The tap of a heel or sole striking the marble floor pinged off the stone walls and dark stained-glass windows, repeating itself in slowly fading reflections until covered by the next errant noise. The squeak of a door, a sniffle, the pop of a knee joint. The century-old, inward-facing pews were crafted from wood so dark they looked almost
ebony, a wide marble aisle separating them. The aisle reached a marble statue of a kneeling knight with sword and shield, whose back was carved as a lectern. Past the knight, a single step led up to the inward-facing choir pew opposite a grand pipe organ, all of which terminated in a semicircular apse that hosted a long linen-covered harvest table holding a matched pair of candelabras, their silver tentacles reaching for the ceiling forty feet overhead.

The ceiling was supported by seven carved beams.
Seven ribs . . .
James counted them twice just to make sure. The back row of the center-facing pews was fixed to the chapel's stone walls beneath the towering stained-glass windows. He thought he could probably climb from the back-row seats to the stone windowsills. From there to the beams would be far trickier and more dangerous. His eye traveled back toward the balcony, above the chapel entrance on the opposite end of the building from the apse. There, the final truss was nearly at head height. Equally intriguing, on either side was a narrow stone ledge upon which the trusses rested. If he climbed up on the last of the trusses he could reach the ledge and tightrope-walk his way to the center of the chapel. Problem was, if he fell he'd probably crack his head open.

He heard the clock tower above the Main House toll the first of its ten strokes. Curfew! He'd spent a substantial bit more time in the chapel than could be explained. The diversion of Clay and his faked fall was long past; there would be no more distraction. James knew he would have to move carefully to go unseen on his return to Bricks 3. He turned toward the impressively large main door. Leaving by that entrance would make him much too easily seen. He sprinted to the far end, turned left at the pipe organ, ran through what was a choir room—an upright piano, some choir robes—and left through a side door. He cut around the back of the chapel beneath towering trees and moved building to building in order to reach the Main House without crossing open lawn. The last of the bells rang. He was now officially past curfew.

Slipping around the front of the Main House, he ducked into a darkened staircase that led to the back playing fields and the lowest level of the Bricks. If he could just manage to sneak into the first of the lower dorms, and use the bathroom, he could invent an excuse of stomach problems and buy himself a pass to his own dorm. He was two steps from a door when a hand jutted out from shadow and grabbed him by the upper arm. James
gasped, but managed not to scream.

“Mr. Moriarty,” came a man's voice. It was far too dark beneath the breezeway for James to make out a face. “Technically, you are past curfew.”

“Yes . . . sir.”

“What are you doing prowling around the grounds instead of obeying curfew?” The authority in the man's voice and his knowledge of school rules identified him as one of the many proctors who took turns handing out demerits in the evening hours.

“I wasn't prowling. I . . . dinner didn't exactly agree with me. I was stuck in the library bathroom after study hall. I had to throw out my underwear. Do you want to check?” He had no idea when, where, or how the proctor had spotted him. He couldn't see the man's face, didn't recognize his gravely voice. Didn't know what he'd do if the proctor took him up on his offer to check for his underwear. “It's embarrassing, sir. So is being late to my dorm and having to explain it in front of my roommate.”

The grip relaxed and released him. “Go.”

James opened the door to Bricks Lower 1. With it came a flood of hallway light and James turned to see who'd apprehended him. The space was empty. James hadn't heard the man depart, and for
a moment he wondered if it was his own sense of guilt and imagination that had invented the incident. He pulled the door shut quietly behind him and headed straight for the nearest bathroom, now trusting his excuse more than ever.

“Has the room check happened?” James asked anxiously upon entering.

“Five minutes ago,” Sherlock answered. “The hall master did not ask after you, which I found most curious. I was about to tell him to check the bathroom when he informed me he'd received a call that you'd be along shortly. And here you are.”

James stood there. “A call?” The man who'd grabbed him? he wondered.

“Judging by your reaction, I will assume that comes as a surprise.”

“Dinner didn't agree with me.”

“Indeed. The food here wouldn't agree with a goat. So that was your excuse? And it was accepted?”

James's eyes roamed to the acoustic tile ceiling, dotted with black holes from pencils being stuck there in previous decades. “I got trapped in the bathroom.”

“Of course you did. And what did you find?” Sherlock asked.

“What are you talking about?”

“I'm talking about the red envelope. The clue to the missing Bible. What did you find?”

“I . . . ah . . . I told you: dinner made me sick to my stomach. I was on the toilet this whole time.”

“You were either in the gymnasium or the chapel, both of which have seven roof trusses. They are the only two buildings that qualify for that unique distinction.” Sherlock pointed to James's bed and the red envelope lying there. “You dropped it on your way out. Not the best spy. You want to learn to hold on to your clues.”

“You stole it!”

“I didn't. Ask Moria. We found it on the floor. But never mind that, was it the gym or the chapel?”

James didn't say a thing. He snatched up the envelope and stuffed it into his back pocket. “You stole it,” he said.

“The problem is this,” Sherlock said. “The gym beams are approximately eight inches wide, whereas the chapel's are closer to twelve. I've researched the Bible in question and it is oversized, more like an unabridged dictionary in relation to a standard dictionary. The chapel makes much more sense as a hiding place, both for the wider beams and because that was the building from which it was taken. If it is simply relocated in the same building, it's a much easier prank, a much easier task. To remove
it, transport it to the gym, and place it there is a far more ambitious undertaking.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“Then you're a fool, and neither of us believes that, James, now do we? Has it occurred to you why I like you?”

“Am I supposed to care?”

“We all care why people like and dislike us, James. It's part of what makes us human. You're clever, that's why. I've watched you do your assignments. Your math comprehension is impressive. You clearly have a quick mind, as do I. When you read, you read carefully and, judging by the deliberateness with which you approach your English papers, you choose your words carefully—another sign of high intelligence. I like people who at least come close to my own level of deduction and analysis.”

“You are so full of . . . yourself.”

“It's true, I'm impressed with myself, almost daily. If I don't impress myself then how am I ever to feel accomplished?”

“Who cares if you impress others?”

“Indeed. Others' opinions hardly matter, but one's own sense of accomplishment is paramount, is it not? The point being, you said I have no idea what you're talking about, which is simply not the case. I know exactly what's going on, James. And
I promise you, you are going about things entirely wrong.”

“Is that right?”

“It is. Let us assume you just visited the chapel and not the gym.” Sherlock raised a finger. “Uh-uh! Deduced from your dry shoes. They water the upper playing fields each night at eight. We were in study hall until nine forty-five. Your shoes would be wet, even if you went on the paths between here and the gym, and they are not wet. So it was the chapel. You determined there are seven spans, as the note suggests. Did you happen to visit the balcony? I should think you did because you have dust showing on the right sleeve of your sport coat. I collected the same; they need to clean that staircase better.” He pointed to the arm of his sport coat that was hung on the back of his desk chair. “So, during your visit, did you happen to actually
look
at the center beam? Hmm? Did you see anything approximating the size of a family Bible? No, you did not. Nor would you have had you visited the gym. Not there, either.”

“I suppose you've already checked?”

“Of course I've checked. How else could I speak so definitely?”

“You never speak anything
but
definitely.”

“Because I happen to know what I'm talking
about before I open my maw, a rare if not nonexistent quality in these hallways.” He sized up James, which James didn't care for in the least. “I further suspect you were attempting to come up with a solution as to how to reach that center beam, an act that I daresay involved some degree of climbing and balance. Am I correct?” He didn't wait for James's answer. “This, I imagine, is part of the challenge—oh, yes, challenge, for had you bothered to get a good look at the center beam you would have not seen a family Bible. You might not have seen anything at all.” He indicated a set of binoculars on his desk. “For bird-watching, but most informative in this case. What you would have seen is yet another envelope. This one also red. You are being led on a scavenger hunt, and therefore: a challenge. You are being tested or hazed, my dear friend—”