The House of Puzzles (20 page)

‘Wow,’ Gerald said. ‘Just, wow.’

He followed Alex into the room. The moment Gerald stepped over the threshold, the
door slammed shut behind them. He spun around and went to grab at the doorknob but
instead snatched at air. Polished wood panelling on the back of the door matched
the rest of the wall seamlessly. It was impossible to locate the opening.

‘Looks like we’re going to have to find another way out,’ Gerald said. ‘This is locked
tight.’

He crossed to the nearest workbench. Wood-handled screwdrivers and other antique
tools were laid out across the top. Gerald bent down to inspect a shiny silver sphere
about the size of a cricket ball in a squat display stand. The moment he picked it
up a tiny slot opened on the top and a brass flag sprang out. Engraved on the flag
in neat block letters were the words, PUT ME DOWN!

Gerald almost dropped the ball in surprise. He replaced it delicately in its cradle;
the flag popped back inside and the slot closed.

‘What is this place?’ Alex asked. He was at the other end of the room, looking up
at a collection of ancient keys that was hanging in a frame on the wall. There were
at least fifty keys, in all shapes and sizes.

Gerald looked at the tools and the boxes of screws, springs and rivets, spread across
each bench top. ‘It’s like an inventor’s playhouse,’ he said.

Alex crossed to the fireplace and tapped a fingernail against the glass of a mantel
clock, its hands set on the
twelve. They did not move. ‘This must be Diamond Jim
Kincaid’s workshop,’ he said.

‘What makes you think that?’ Gerald asked.

‘The enormous portrait of him above the fireplace,’ Alex replied.

A grey-haired man with an alarming handlebar moustache stared out from an ornate
frame with an expression that said the rest of mankind were, clearly, all idiots.
A narrow wooden plaque on the bottom of the frame identified the subject as ‘Diamond’
Jim Kincaid.

‘Looks like all that money didn’t make him very happy,’ Gerald said. His eyes dropped
to the signature at the bottom right corner of the canvas. His heart skipped in his
chest. Signed in blood red was:
Eug. Delacroix 1830
.

Gerald tried to keep his face blank.

Eugène Delacroix—the French artist whose
Liberty Leading the People
sat vandalised
in the Louvre, the section hacked from its canvas rolled in a cardboard tube in Gerald’s
backpack; the painter whose work was supposed to lead Gerald to the box that would
save Professor McElderry.

That
Eugène Delacroix.

Gerald swallowed his breathing and walked as calmly as he could across to a workbench.

If there’s a Delacroix painting here, the box can’t be far away
.

He had to remain calm. He had to think.

Gerald’s hand shook as he pulled a document from one of the wicker baskets and unrolled
it, trying to appear casual. The document was titled:
Design #35
. The paper was covered
in line drawings of a bizarre device packed with cogs, gears and springs. Gerald’s
brow wrinkled. He pulled out another document.
Design #26
. This one had a giant flywheel
with a hand crank. The drawings looked just like Sam’s attempt at a—Gerald’s eyes
grew wide—‘perpetual motion machine,’ he whispered to himself.

He glanced at Alex, who was across the room inspecting the contents of a display
case.
He hasn’t noticed
, Gerald thought.
He doesn’t realise what could be hidden
in this room…

Alex reached into the case to a metal box inside. But when his fingers were centimetres
away the lid popped up, a mechanical hand stretched out and smacked him hard on the
wrist, then zipped back inside. The lid banged shut.

‘Ow!’ Alex said, rubbing the back of his hand.

Gerald quickly rolled up the documents and stuffed them back into the basket. His
eyes darted from workbench to workbench, taking in the gizmos spread around the room.
But he could not see anything like the glossy black box that Mason Green wanted him
to find. His gaze stopped on a waist-high cabinet, standing to the right of the fireplace.
It took him a moment to realise that it was different from the other work surfaces
in the room. There were no tools or bent springs, no contraptions or
devices. There
was only a polished steel casket, about sixty centimetres square and twenty centimetres
high. Gerald edged over to get a closer look. On the front of the casket, two small
screws held a tiny brass plaque in place.

Engraved on the plaque was:
Cornelius Drebbel 1572–1633
.

Gerald swallowed hard.
The
Cornelius Drebbel. Advisor to Emperor Rudolph II of Prague,
friend of King James VI of Scotland and inventor of the perpetual motion machine.

Alex had picked up a hand drill and was winding the crank, watching as the bit twisted
in the air.

Gerald turned to the metal box that bore Drebbel’s name. He shuffled around so his
back would shield any possible view Alex might have of what he was doing. Carefully,
silently,
desperately
, he opened the top of his backpack. If Drebbel’s perpetual
motion machine was inside the metal box, Gerald could have it out and into his pack
in seconds. Alex would not have a clue. Then all Gerald had to do was wait until
Jasper Mantle let them out in the morning, and Professor McElderry was as good as
saved.

Gerald took in a long, silent breath. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

He eased the lid up.

It swung smoothly from a hinge at the back. The only thing inside was a ball-shaped
indentation in the lush
silk lining, large enough to hold a good-sized eggplant.
Gerald stared into the empty casket. If it was meant to house Drebbel’s machine,
it was no longer there.

Gerald screwed his eyes shut with frustration. First the empty keystone in Scotland
and now this. Where was the perpetual motion machine? He was quickly pulled from
his thoughts by the sound of a panel sliding open. There was a movement at the front
of the cabinet and Gerald stumbled back as a mechanical man dressed like a pint-sized
butler rolled onto the floor. The figure was no taller than Gerald’s hips and it
moved like a drunken penguin, but there was no mistaking the dapper black jacket
and pinstriped trousers of a gentleman’s gentleman. It was as if Mr Fry had been
melted down and recast in stainless steel.

‘What is that thing?’ Alex peered around the side of the cabinet, his eyes growing
wider by the second.

Gerald stepped clear as the mechanical half-man surged forward on unseen wheels.
The robot’s head, which appeared to have been fashioned from an ancient colander,
spun in endless circles. Gerald was getting dizzy watching it.

‘I think it’s some kind of wind-up servant,’ Gerald said. The robot turned and, with
a buzz of clockwork gears, lurched back towards the cabinet.

‘Looks like a rubbish bin in a suit,’ Alex said, making sure to keep Gerald between
the robot and himself. ‘Do you think it’s dangerous?’

‘Only if you really hate being banged in the shins,’ Gerald said. He dodged as the
robot whirred past. It stopped, spun in place and rolled to Gerald’s feet. Gerald
jumped as the half-dome of the robot’s head flipped back. Underneath was a blue silk
pillow, upon which rested an envelope.

Gerald plucked up the note.

‘What’s it say?’ Alex asked, still keeping a safe distance.

A blob of red wax bearing the initials
JK
sealed the flap. Gerald turned the envelope
over. In copperplate handwriting on the front was:
To the interloper
.

He cracked the seal and pulled out a stiff ivory-coloured card. It read,

You have until the chimes count ten
To unlock the stairway
That leads to heaven
Or, for you there will be sleep.
Noxious to start,
but eternally deep.

‘What does that mean?’ Alex said. ‘A stairway to heaven?’

Before Gerald could respond, the robot’s head flipped back into place, and, with
a burst of spinning gears, trundled into the cabinet. The moment the wooden panel
closed behind the mechanical man, the clock on the
mantel chimed—a single hollow
toll. The hands, which had rested in place on the twelve, flicked into action; a
second hand started tracing around the clockface. The music box stopped playing,
and an eerie silence fell over the room.

‘What’s going on?’ Alex said.

‘I’m not sure.’ Gerald looked down at the card in his hand. ‘What happens when the
clock reaches ten?’

The fire in the grate, which had been burning so majestically, suddenly vanished—snuffed
out in an instant. Gerald and Alex stared at the empty fireplace. Then Gerald had
a sickening thought.

‘What’s that hissing sound?’ Alex asked.

Gerald started towards the grate. He was two metres away when he smelled it.

‘Gas,’ he said. He screwed up his face at the odour. ‘Eternal sleep—this place is
going to gas us!’

Alex stared at Gerald in disbelief. ‘Gas us? Who’s trying to gas us?’

‘We can worry about who and why later,’ Gerald said. He retreated from the fireplace
with his hand over his mouth. ‘We don’t want to be here when that clock strikes ten.’

Alex’s face registered the seriousness of the situation. He rushed to the panelled
wall where they had entered the room and hammered his fists against the wood, desperate
to find the hidden doorway. But it was impossible. The panels were unyielding, no
matter how
much battering Alex unleashed on them.

‘That’s no use,’ Gerald called to him. ‘There has to be another way.’ He gagged at
the smell that rolled from the fireplace. The clock on the mantel ticked on—two chimes
rang out.

‘Minutes!’ Gerald said. ‘The clock is chiming minutes!’ Gerald looked at the card
again.
Unlock the stairway that leads to heaven
. What did that even mean? Death?
He looked to the banks of bookcases above them on the mezzanine and then to the wood-panelled
ceiling high above. He scanned the room—the workbenches, the cabinets, the portrait
of Diamond Jim Kincaid leering down at them as if enjoying their torment.

Alex ran to Gerald, panic in his eyes. ‘I know,’ he said, fumbling in a pocket. ‘I
know what to do.’ Baranov pulled out a cigarette lighter: a chunky silver zippo.
‘I can burn the gas away,’ he said.

He flipped the top of the lighter open and raised his thumb over the flint wheel.

Gerald’s eyes popped. He may not have been the best science student at St Cuthbert’s,
but he knew that one spark near that fireplace meant that being gassed would be the
least of their problems. Gerald lashed out with his right hand and smacked the lighter
from Alex’s grasp. The steel block arched into the air with the top still folded
back. If it landed the wrong way, he and Alex would be toast—and probably toasted.

He dived full stretch with his hand out, his eyes glued
to the falling lighter, and
landed on the floor with an
oomph
. The zippo fell safely into his palm. Gerald took
in a long breath of gas-tainted air, closed the top of the lighter and shoved it
into his pocket.

The clock chimed three times.

Alex stared down at Gerald, fury in his eyes. ‘What did you do that for?’ he said.

‘I’ll explain in seven minutes,’ Gerald said. ‘Until then, no flames. Okay?’

Gerald righted himself and he looked desperately for any sign of an escape route.
His eyes fell on the collection of keys on the far wall. ‘Unlock the stairway…’
he whispered to himself. He didn’t wait to explain to Alex and dashed across the
room.

The box frame housing the keys was about a metre across and almost two metres high.
Gerald dragged a stool from a nearby workbench and climbed onto it. He reached up
and grabbed the frame with both hands. It was heavier than he expected and as he
shoved it up, trying to free it from the hook, it slipped. The box fell through his
fingers and the base smashed onto the floor. Glass exploded across the boards. The
frame buckled and toppled forward like a felled oak, landing face down with a crash.

Gerald cringed at the sound, and then he looked up at the wall where the keys had
been hanging. A grid of fifty keyholes stared back at him.

Fifty keys for fifty keyholes.

Gerald jumped from the stool and dragged the remains of the box frame out of the
way.

‘Come and help,’ he called to Alex. Gerald looked down to the pattern of keys scattered
on the floor, then up at the keyholes. ‘I just hope they haven’t got out of order.’
He pointed at the furthest key. ‘Hand me one at a time,’ Gerald said to Alex. ‘Don’t
touch anything else.’ Gerald climbed back onto the stool and took the first key from
Alex. Stretching as high as he could, he inserted it into the top right keyhole.
It went in smoothly, and turned.

‘Hand them up in order,’ he said to Alex. ‘Quick.’ The clock on the mantle chimed
four times.

Gerald and Alex looked at each other. ‘Really quick,’ Gerald said.

One after the other, Gerald pushed the keys into place, turning and unlocking the
grid of keyholes. Gerald had no idea what it would achieve—it might only start the
barrel organ again—but it was the only option they had.

The stench of the gas was nauseating. Alex looked like he was about to vomit. ‘Hurry,’
he gasped at Gerald.

The clock chimed five times.

Gerald shoved in another key and turned. Only two keyholes left. He looked to Alex.
The expression on the boy’s face told Gerald that something was not right. Alex looked
distraught—he held up three keys.

‘Three?’ Gerald said. He didn’t have time to think
about the consequences. He fumbled
the first—a heavy iron piece that seemed hundreds of years old. It slid into place.
But it wouldn’t turn. Gerald grunted as he tried to force the head around, but it
refused to budge.

‘Try another one,’ Alex said.

Gerald pulled the key out and shoved it in the next hole. This time it turned smoothly.