The Name of This Book Is Secret (7 page)

For about a second and a half, Cass stood frozen. Then she ran.

When she reached the bathroom, the door was opening and a scrawny old cat darted out. (It was the cat, Cass realized with relief, who was the source of that second scream.)

Max-Ernest was standing by the toilet, panting and pointing. Next to him, the wall had opened up, revealing a large hidden room.

“It just...happened when I flushed,” he said. “There was some kind of hidden door.”

Determined not to let herself be scared by another cat or any other pet, Cass boldly stepped into the opening. Max-Ernest followed cautiously.

The hidden room was dominated by a big wooden desk and was crammed top to bottom with the magician’s things.

“His workroom!” said Cass, who was instantly reminded of her grandfathers’ antiques store and therefore felt very comfortable. “I guess Gloria doesn’t know about it—that’s why there’s still so much stuff. There’s got to be something for us in here.”

Max-Ernest, who was still not recovered from the shock, pointed to the empty bowl of cat food and not-so-empty litter box. “You think that cat’s been in here since the magician died?”

Cass nodded. “Okay, you start at one end. I’ll start at the other.”

“So, then, you have to admit, I was right, there
was
a secret room. How about that?”

Cass didn’t answer. She just started combing through boxes.

“It stinks,” Max-Ernest grumbled. But he started looking around all the same.

They were half amazed and half disappointed by what they found. There were none of the objects you usually see in a magician’s workroom: no magic wands, no boxes for sawing women in half, no top hats for hiding rabbits, no bits of trickery or fakery of any kind.

Instead, there were the kinds of things you see more often in the study of a mad professor: there was a broken brass scale and an enormous magnifying glass covered with dust; there was a microscope holding an empty slide, a telescope pointed at a spot in the ceiling, and even a stethoscope draped over the desk chair; there was a taxidermy ferret, a collection of rocks and crystals, all of which had some kind of incandescent, luminescent, or opalescent quality, and hundreds of butterflies pinned to cardboard with their wings frozen in a last attempt at flight; and there were books and papers everywhere.

But there was nothing magical. Or sulfurous. Or in any way lethal.

Sebastian, meanwhile, was sniffing around a drawer underneath the magician’s desk. Following his lead, Cass opened the drawer and pulled out a large, leather-bound notebook.

“What’s that?” asked Max-Ernest.

Cass put her finger to her lips. Sebastian had moved away from the desk toward the outside wall and was twitching nervously—a sure sign of danger.

The sound of the elevator moving echoed through the house.

Max-Ernest opened his mouth to say something but Cass immediately clamped her hand over his mouth and held tight. He looked furious but he couldn’t remove her hand no matter how hard he tried; she was too strong.

Then they heard the elevator door open and a voice—unmistakably Gloria’s—ring out from it. She was so loud and shrill they could hear every word.

“Newlyweds, you say? How wonderful! You make such a striking couple! You know, I do have some aboveground homes to show that might be more to your taste....Oh, you’ve always wanted an underground house? Marvelous!”

Cass pointed with her free hand to a small grate that looked out into the corner of the library where Sebastian had been growling earlier. (It must have been the cat that made him growl.) She and Max-Ernest watched through the grate as Gloria stepped out of the elevator and walked toward them.

Thankfully, Sebastian remained quiet. It was as though he knew they didn’t want to be found.

“You know I had a feeling about this house,” Gloria continued, “that the right couple would just fall in love with it. So romantic, isn’t it, Dr....?”

“Dr. L,” said a deep voice with one of those elusive accents you can’t quite identify no matter how hard you try.

“Oh, L what?” asked Gloria.

“Just L,” he responded in the smug tone of someone who’s just won an argument.

“I see,” said Gloria, who clearly did not see at all. “And that makes you Mrs....”

“It’s
Ms.
Mauvais,” answered a woman, evidently Ms. Mauvais, her voice tinkling in a way that should have sounded light and musical but instead sounded icy and unpleasant.

“Oh, so then you didn’t take your husband’s name, or rather, I mean his initial?”

“Apparently not,” said Ms. Mauvais, as she and Dr. L finally came into view towering above the short real estate agent.

Cass pressed her face against the grate to get a better look at these newlywed house-hunters.

Gloria was not exaggerating when she said they made a “striking couple.”

Dr. L was tall and tan and had the whitest teeth Cass had ever seen. He wore a gray suit with a silver tie, and he had silver hair that looked like it had been blowing in a wind; and yet his hair never moved. Despite the color of his hair, he didn’t have any wrinkles on his face. He was so handsome that he seemed far away even when he was close.

If anything, Ms. Mauvais was even more dazzling, and not just because she was dripping with gold jewelry. She was almost as tall as Dr. L and she had a teeny-tiny waist—like a Barbie doll brought to life. She had blond Barbie hair that swooped up from her forehead forming a perfect golden helmet, not a strand out of place. She had blue Barbie eyes that were big and round and sparkling and never seemed to blink. Her skin, too, was smooth and flawless like a doll’s. No part of her face ever moved, even when she spoke.

It was as if she and Dr. L had taken photographs of themselves at just the perfect moments when they looked their absolute best, and then they had cast a spell so that they would look like their photographs forever.

One other thing was strange about them: they both wore gloves on their hands. Even though the day was really warm.

They were terrifying. At least to Cass.

Max-Ernest, on the other hand, was transfixed. “That’s the prettiest woman I’ve ever seen,” he whispered when Cass finally released her hand.

“Are you crazy?” Cass whispered back. “She looks like a zombie. They both do.”

Ms. Mauvais was looking toward them, something like a quizzical expression on her face. For a second, they thought she’d heard them, but perhaps this was how she always looked. Then she turned back toward Gloria.

“I see you’ve cleared out all of the previous occupant’s belongings,” said Ms. Mauvais. “A magician, did you say he was?”

“Yes, well, no, I don’t think I mentioned it. Or rather I must have!” Gloria laughed. “How else would you know?”

“How else, indeed,” said Ms. Mauvais, while surreptitiously eyeing Dr. L. “He must have had many interesting things. Could you tell much about the magician from his belongings?”

“Oh, no,” said Gloria. “It was just a lot of junk....Wouldn’t you like to see the other rooms?”

“So where is this ‘junk’ now?” Ms. Mauvais persisted, ignoring Gloria’s suggestion.

“Oh, I gave it all away.”

“I see. And whom did you give it to?” continued Ms. Mauvais, as casually as if she were asking about the weather.

When she heard this last question, Cass found herself shaking her head “no,” silently willing Gloria not to answer. For some reason—maybe it was the way Sebastian was reacting to them, or was it just the sound of their voices?—she didn’t think Dr. L and Ms. Mauvais were really house-hunting. She wasn’t even sure they were newlyweds at all. What she was sure of was that she didn’t want them ever to go anywhere near her grandfathers’ antiques store.

“Oh, I can’t remember. I think I threw it all away,” said Gloria, perhaps thinking the same thing.

Cass breathed a sigh of relief.

Dr. L took a step toward Gloria. “So this magician of yours, he didn’t leave any papers or files that would tell us something about him?”

Gloria shook her head nervously and took a step backward. “No, nothing like that.”

Dr. L looked piercingly at her, like a prosecutor interrogating a witness. “A leather notebook perhaps? Think hard.”

When Max-Ernest heard this, he coughed and flung back his head, knocking over a pile of boxes.

It’s hard to say what happened in the commotion that followed. This much Cass would remember later: when she and Max-Ernest and Sebastian exited the bathroom, she looked directly at Dr. L and Ms Mauvais and she said, “I think the notebook you’re looking for is in there.”

As the two stunned grown-ups scrambled into the bathroom, Cass shut the door on them and headed toward the elevator. Gloria stared at them in surprise.

“What are you kids doing here?!” she asked sharply. “You’re trespassing. This is private prop-erty....Hey, I know you,” she added, looking at Cass. “You’re that pesky little girl from Larry and Wayne’s.”

“Run!” shouted Cass, pushing Sebastian toward the open elevator.

“Come back here right now!” shouted Gloria. “And what’s that in your hand?!”

“Um, up!” Cass said, as soon as they were inside the elevator.

Nothing happened.

“I mean, please!” The elevator started to move.

“Stop! Thief!” shouted Gloria, waddling up to the elevator, but she was too late.

As for Dr. L and Ms. Mauvais, they managed to get out of the magician’s study just in time to see the elevator closing on Cass and Max-Ernest.

And to see Cass clutching the magician’s notebook tight in her hand.

I’ve also decided not to repeat the terrible threats that Dr. L and Ms. Mauvais screamed when they realized that Cass was holding the magician’s notebook because it would only give you nightmares. Neither will I describe how that creepy couple searched the neighborhood for over an hour while Cass and Max-Ernest hid terrified in the bushes—although I will tell you there was an especially scary moment when Dr. L and Ms. Mauvais were standing only inches from Cass and Max-Ernest.

Sebastian almost gave them away by growling at the magician’s cat, who happened to be skulking nearby. But then the cat bolted. Which caused Ms. Mauvais to jump back in fright. Which caused Dr. L to laugh at her. (His laugh was as strangely accented as his voice.) Which caused Ms. Mauvais to call him nasty names. Which caused them both to turn away from the bushes.

In the end, suffice it to say, our heroes acted very bravely, or at least very patiently, and they outwaited their pursuers. I am also happy to report that neither Cass nor Max-Ernest ever considered giving up the notebook—although neither could have said exactly why if you’d asked them.

When they reached Max-Ernest’s house, his parents were naturally distressed to see their son’s clothes torn and soiled, not to mention the scratches all over his arms and legs. But they were so unused to the situation that they didn’t know how to react.

“Is this how kids always look after they go out?” asked his mother.

“Kids will be kids, er, won’t they, kids?” asked his father.

“Yes, Mom. That’s right, Dad,” said Max-Ernest, making sure to answer each parent separately.

Cass left Sebastian with his two bowls of water, then followed Max-Ernest upstairs. As soon as Max-Ernest closed his bedroom door—his room was carefully positioned so that it was divided equally between each parent’s half of the house—Cass sat down on the floor and pulled the notebook out of her backpack. “What do you think could be in here that they want so badly?”

“Paper? That’s what’s usually in a notebook,” Max-Ernest pointed out.

Cass rolled her eyes. “Um, I think it’s probably something the magician wrote. Duh.”

She opened the notebook on the floor and flipped through the pages so they both could see what was inside.

“That’s all?” said Max-Ernest.

Cass shrugged. She had to agree it was a bit of a letdown. All the pages were blank, except the first.

Cass read the lines scrawled across it:

Please be SILENT and LISTEN.

I am the SCHOOLMASTER

and you are in THE CLASSROOM.

Just like ELEVEN PLUS TWO equals

TWELVE PLUS ONE,

And even a FUNERAL can be REAL FUN,

You will find my DICTIONARY

is quite INDICATORY.

If you want to read my story, just look...

THEN UNREAD.

Cass scrunched up her face. “How do you ‘unread’ a story?”

“Uh, I think...I don’t know,” Max-Ernest admitted. “I guess it means ‘not read’? Or maybe ‘forget what you read’?”

“The book is blank. We can’t read it anyway.”

“How do you know? Maybe it’s just hidden somewhere. Or maybe it’s in invisible ink. Or maybe the poem is really another secret code, and if we crack it, it will tell us where the story is.”

Cass thought about this for a second. “Well, I don’t think it’s a very good poem, if it’s even a poem. But maybe you’re right about the code part. With all that school stuff and the numbers, do you think maybe we’re supposed to do math?”

“Too easy,” Max-Ernest said confidently. “Everyone knows eleven plus two equals twelve plus one. The whole point of a secret code is that it’s hard to figure out.”