The Puzzler's Mansion (12 page)

The last rebus he solved was the one that showed all of their names—Winston had thought that one would drive him crazy. The first part was a B note, then came the word ON, and then . . . NAMES? BONNAMES? That wasn't a word. He had stared at it, his mouth opening and closing around a thousand wrong answers, and then at last the lightbulb came on: Who were those people? Why, they were US! So the answer had to be B-ON-US. Bonus!

Now he had two letters from each answer. But what was he supposed to do with them? Could he rearrange them so that they spelled something? Maybe. But after writing and erasing the letters a million times, Winston had to admit he couldn't figure it out. He looked around the room and saw a couple of other guests sitting or standing with their own notepads. They too were stuck on this last step. Gerard Deburgh muttered to himself while he scribbled on his pad. He looked like somebody would take away all his restaurants if he didn't solve this puzzle. Candice Deburgh and Amanda were up on the second floor—they were working together, without Gerard, who perhaps was too intense a teammate.

Winston got up and started to pace. The answer wasn't coming to him here. Maybe it would come to him somewhere else.

He walked and thought, and occasionally stopped to jot down an idea on his notepad. The answer continued its little practical joke, staying inches out of reach. He stared at the pairs of letters and mentally begged them to form something sensible. The letters refused.

Mal had given up on the puzzle—he had found an interesting book and was standing there reading it. He looked up as Winston walked over, and made a face to show his frustration.

“How far did you get?” Winston asked.

“I found all the clues,” said Mal, “and I know they're all rebuses. I couldn't solve a couple of them.” He glanced at the paper in Winston's hand. “BONUS! So that's what that one is. Geez!”

Winston held his notes up to his chest. “Yell the answers a little louder, why don't you?”

“Sorry,” Mal said. “That one was making me nuts.”

Jake came up to them looking like he wanted to kick something.
“There are really eight clues in here somewhere? Did you guys find them all?”

“I did,” Mal said. “For all the good it did me.”

“I got them all, and I solved them,” said Winston, “but I don't know what to do next. Do you want to see?”

Both his friends did, so Winston showed them his list:

Mal's habit when presented with a bunch of letters that didn't spell anything was to pronounce them out loud anyway. “Reescaoutondinng!” he intoned, like a wizard reading from a spellbook.

“I think that's more than four letters,” Jake said.

“You have to rearrange all this to get the real answer,” said Winston, “but I'm not getting anywhere with it.”

The three of them frowned at the words for a bit.

“Are you sure?” said Mal after a while. “Maybe there's something else you have to do. Because I'm not seeing anything here.”

“I see the word TOES,” said Jake. “That's about it.”

Winston shook his head. “I don't know. Maybe Mal's right. Maybe there's another step to this.” He walked over to the nearest puzzle piece and stared at it again.

“I liked this one,” said Jake. “Probably because I got it real fast. Castanets! Easy.”

“This is the first one I found,” said Mal, “so then I thought all the answers were going to be musical instruments. Boy, that screwed me up for a while.”

Winston said thoughtfully, “They're not all instruments . . . but each of the puzzles does have a musical note.” He stared at the puzzle and then back at what he had written down.

Lightning struck his brain. The big
aha!
moment was never a slow, creeping thing—it always leapt out of nowhere like a surprise party. As usual, there was a moment where he lost his breath entirely. He'd been waiting for a breakthrough. Here it was.

He shouted something unintelligible but happy, and ran for a table so he could sit down, leaving Mal and Jake to stare at each other with amusement.

“I think he's got it,” said Mal.

“Not yet, not yet,” said Winston. “But look at this.” The boys went over and watched as he added a new column to his notes:

“The musical notes are all different. Is that important?” Jake said.

“Yep!” Winston said happily. “That's the final clue you need.”

(Continue reading to see the answer to this puzzle.)

Winston knew how to get the answer, but he still had to do the work. He leaned forward, writing quickly, rearranging the letters as instructed by the musical notes—starting with middle C and working his way up through the eight notes of the musical scale. When put in that order, a message appeared, clear as day: CAT OR ENGINE SOUND.

Aha! Winston thought, and stood up to find Richard.

But before he could take a single step, Richard said, “My friends, we have a winner!” Winston looked around with dumb surprise:
How did Richard know I solved the puzzle? I haven't even gotten
to him yet.
But, no. It was the theater director, Derek Bibb, who had reached Richard first with the answer. Richard was patting Derek on the shoulder in congratulations, and there was a polite round of applause. Derek bowed humbly, looking pleased.

Jake saw the stunned expression on Winston's face. “Sorry, Win,” he said.

Richard was still talking. He explained to the others how to find the answer phrase, and there was laughter and some smacking of foreheads from the other guests. “And what is a four-letter word meaning ‘cat or engine sound'?” Richard asked.

“Purr!” shouted most everybody.

“That's absolutely right,” said Richard. “And, Derek, because you were the first to arrive at the answer, you get the prize. Norma?”

Norma came forward holding a framed painting, covered with a black cloth. Richard eased it away from her and placed it on the table, angling it so that everybody could see.

He said, “You all know how I admire the paintings of Sutton Hammill, who enjoys puzzles almost as much as I do. I have a few of his original works, and Derek, I am giving this one to you.”

Derek looked shocked. “Richard . . . thank you. Are you sure?”

“Of course I am sure,” Richard said, and he flipped over the black cloth, revealing the painting. Winston leaned in and squinted, because he couldn't tell what he was looking at.

Neither could anybody else, apparently. “What . . . what is it?” asked Chase.

Richard smiled. “It's a cat.”

“It is?”

“But the pieces are out of order. It's up to you to put it back together again with your eyes.”

(Answer,
page 245
.)

*   *   *

Winston, grumpier than ever, was sitting upstairs in the reading room. This time he made no attempt to hide his irritation: He sat with his arms crossed, frowning at the floor. Fine, the breakfast puzzle had been stolen away at the last second. Things like that happen. But now he'd come an inch short on a
second
puzzle, and that one would have earned him a far cooler prize.

If his sister were acting like this, he'd call her a sore loser. He knew that, but he couldn't help it. Two puzzles in a row!

Mal came over, looked in the direction Winston was staring, and saw nothing. He asked, “Is there an invisible puzzle over there that you're trying to solve?”

Winston grunted annoyance, and Mal decided maybe this wasn't a good time for jokes. He sat down and gazed out the window at the wide, lush lawn. Jake came in from the direction of the kitchen, eating an apple. “This place has everything,” he said, “except potato chips.”

“I think I heard Norma say they were ordering in lunch,” Mal said.

“Can't we just eat last night's dinner again?”

“I know, really!” said Mal. “When I get rich, the first thing I'm gonna do is hire a cook.”

Jake noticed Winston and said, “He okay?”

Mal said, “He's tired of puzzles. He's vowing to never solve them again.”

Winston said mopily, “Maybe I should.”

His friends looked at him with blank surprise. Mal leaned in and said, “Winston? Is that you?”

“He's kidding,” Jake said. He considered Winston for a moment and added, “Right?”

Winston shrugged. He didn't think he could walk away from
puzzles—not really—but right at the moment, it didn't seem like a terrible idea.

Mal looked around the room like someone in a fog. “I must be dreaming. This can't be a real conversation. When I said you were giving up puzzles, that was a
joke.
”

“Is this because of the puzzles we've had so far?” Jake asked. He wasn't goofing around like Mal, but he too looked like he thought Winston might have been replaced by an alien. “You got burned twice,” he said, “but you have to get right back in there. That's what my coaches would tell me.”

“It's not because of the puzzles today,” Winston said, though it probably was, at least in part. He told them about the trouble he'd gotten into at school, and about the puzzle event from a few weeks back, the one where he'd sat in his room all day, and how when it was over he'd felt like a trick-or-treater who has eaten too much Halloween candy. And then, on top of that, he'd missed out on seeing Adventureland with them.