“The house was built straight back into the hill, so we’re underground right now,” Jeff explained as they passed through a kitchen and dining area. The rough walls curved around them. It was like being in a cave, except there was a stove, a refrigerator, a dining table, and a rug on the floor.
They followed Jeff farther into the house, where he led them to a living room lit with lamps. They’d expected to find themselves in some kind of a bunker, but instead they were in a regular room, with a brown couch, a coffee table, a shelf of books, and a TV. It took you a minute to realize the weird part — there were no windows. But after the blasting heat outside, the inside felt cool and comfortable.
An old man sat on the couch, reading a newspaper. He was tanned to the color of a walnut and completely bald. He, too, wore khaki shorts and a T-shirt that read DON’T ASK. He looked over his half glasses at them. “G’day, cobbers. I can see you bunch of galans made it to my shack okay, so pull up a pew and I’ll fire up the barbie.”
“Stuff the lingo, Kenny,” Jeff said. “They’re here for a bit of history of Coober Pedy, not your Aussie act.”
“You say this is your posse?” the man asked with a chortle. “Knew you’d turn out to be no good.” He slapped his knee.
“Aussie act,” Jeff shouted. “Oh, never mind. These folks need some information.” He raised his voice. “Did you ever hear of a bloke called Bob Troppo?”
“We think he might have lived here in the 1930s,” Amy said in a loud voice. “He could have been a miner, but we’re not sure about that. We’re not sure of his name, but it could have been Bob. His face was scarred on one side and he didn’t speak.”
“Go on.”
“We think he knew someone here … someone who sold a ring to Amelia Earhart.”
“Blimey,” Ken said. “I thought that was just old Ron taking the mick.”
“You’ve heard the story?”
“My own dad told it! Right before the war, he took a trip up to Darwin with some loose opals and some jewelry. He told me the story about how Earhart bought a ring off him. Typical of my dad—he’d tell you some whopping tall tale, and you couldn’t prove it didn’t happen.”
“Well, it did,” Dan said. “We know that for sure.”
“Too bad he’s not around to rub it in.” The old man laughed.
“What about the scarred man?” Amy asked.
“Sounds like Fossie,” Ken said. “My dad called him that because he got lucky fossicking.”
Amy and Dan looked blank.
“Same as noodling,” Jeff explained. “Searching for opals on the heaps of sand that get dug out for a mine. It takes some patience, let me tell you.”
“Fossie made more money fossicking than mining. He was a strange one. Didn’t talk, just stared right past you. A few kangaroos loose in the top paddock, for certain.”
“Has anyone else besides us ever asked about him?” Dan asked. He was hoping for news of their parents.
“Eh?”
Dan repeated the question, louder this time. “Not a one,” Ken said. “Not many left in Coober Pedy who remember him, and we keep things to ourselves. Besides, Fossie didn’t socialize at the pub. He died before Coober Pedy really took off.”
Nellie’s face changed, and Amy knew she was trying not to smile at the notion that dusty Coober Pedy had taken off. She looked as if she’d just inhaled pepper and was trying not to sneeze.
“Did you ever meet him?” Dan asked.
“Once. He didn’t welcome visitors, I’ll tell you that. But when he was dying, he called my dad over, and I went with him. I was just a lad then. He left my dad his mine. Nothing much to it, we never did get a stone out of it. After that, he went on a walkabout and never came back. Died out there, alone, just as he wanted.”
“Do you know where he lived?”
“Too right I do! Lived right in the mine. Dug a room next to it. Many did in those days. He was the first to figure out a ventilation system, get the whole system working right.”
Amy and Dan exchanged a glance. Ekat.
“Can we see it?”
“Sure, it’s just down the hall.”
“Wait a second,” Amy said. “Are you telling us that Bob — I mean, Fossie — lived here?”
“Well, not here here,” Ken said, gesturing around the room. “My dad dug out more of the hill and made the house. Fossie just carved out a tunnel and mined straight back into the hill. He dug out a room for himself.”
“Is the room still here?” Amy asked.
He nodded. “Sure. We just slapped up a wall to block the mine. But Fossie’s room is still there. Shazzer made it up as one of the guest rooms. She was my third wife.”
“Your fourth, I think,” Jeff said. “And my mum, if you’ll recall. You were my stepdad for about two years.”
“That’s right!” Ken laughed. “How are you, sonny? Sure, have a look,” he said to Amy and Dan. “It’s been fifty years at least, so I don’t think you’ll find a thing. But you’re welcome to try.”
CHAPTER 16
A short while later, Amy sat back on her heels. “Ken’s right. There’s nothing here. It was all too long ago.”
They’d searched the simply furnished room thoroughly, including the small closet. Nothing remained from the home that Bob Troppo had made there.
“I hate dead ends,” Dan muttered. “I thought for sure we’d lucked out.”
They got up wearily and went back out into the crazily patterned hallway. Amy turned back for a last look and stopped dead. She pointed to the wall on top of the doorway. “Dan, look!”
Amid old postcards from all over the world, crazy drawings, and loopy scrawled messages there was a silly drawing.
“Mom drew this,” Amy said breathlessly, pointing to the heart. “I know it. It’s drawn with a purple pen! And look, the eyes are red and the smile is blue. She used to make us heart-shaped waffles with strawberries for eyes and a blueberry smile.”
“Everybody’s mom does that,” Dan said.
“But do they do zucchini curls for hair? Look! Green!”
Dan gave her a pained look.
“I liked to dip the zucchini in syrup.”
“HA,” Dan said.
“Okay, I know it’s gross, but—”
“No, HA. It could stand for Hope and Arthur. They were here!” Dan shivered with a sudden chill, as though the ghosts of their parents were right there underground with them.
“Do you think they knew we’d come here?” Amy whispered.
Dan shook his head. “They’d never think we’d be going on the clue hunt. Did Grace know about the waffle zucchini thing?”
Amy nodded. “Sure. She made them for me, too.”
“It must be a message for Grace, then,” Dan said. “They were telling her where to go.”
“Where?”
Dan pointed to the last word. “The old mine.”
It was late afternoon, but it was still brutally hot. The heat shimmered and bounced. Dan had to squint to see the map that Ken had made for them. They stood on the hill behind Ken’s house. Or, Dan corrected in his mind, on top of Ken’s house.
“It’s an old minefield back there, see,” Ken had said, “so watch out for mine shafts — they’re not all marked. The old ventilation shaft for Fossie’s room is still there — you’ll see it near the circle of orange flags. Take the first mine shaft past the flags and head down. Then head back the way you came. Easy as pie, not that pie is easy to make, heh!”
They left their bags and Saladin with Ken, who had rooms to rent for the night. Jeff had to get back to work, meeting a busload of tourists, but Shep, Nellie, Amy, and Dan carefully made their way through the field. They saw the orange warning flags, brilliant against the blue sky. “There’s the ventilation shaft right there,” Shep said, pointing. “So we take the next mine shaft over.”
“This isn’t exactly what I had in mind when I agreed to bring you here,” Shep added, avoiding a mine shaft. “A little sightseeing, a l
ittle relaxation, sure. But climbing into an old mine isn’t my idea of recreation.”
“You don’t have to come,” Dan said. “You can wait for us at the pub.”
“I’m not letting you go down alone,” Shep said. “I haven’t been there for you in the past, but I can do it now.” He grinned. “I’m here to protect you against the ghost of Amelia Earhart. Or the principal without a face.”
“Assistant principal,” Dan corrected.
“Here we are,” Nellie said. She stopped at a shaft. An iron ladder led straight down to a bottom they couldn’t see.
“Well, let’s get to it,” Shep said. “If we don’t come up in an hour, Jeff will come looking for us. Unless he forgets.”
Shep balanced carefully and started to climb down. Dan went after him. His fingers slipped on the metal, and he gripped it harder, his heart pounding. Why did they always end up underground? Caves, train tunnels, catacombs … Were the Cahills vampires? Did they hate the sun?
Nellie swung down, and Amy brought up the rear. It was a long way to the bottom. Darkness crept over them, but there was enough light from the top to barely make out the rungs. Finally, Dan heard Shep’s voice. “I’m there. It’s about forty feet, I’m guessing.” A light switched on.
When his feet finally hit the ground, Dan let out a shaky breath of relief. Not that he’d tell anyone how he felt. But he was creeped out by being so far below, down a little hole.
They had all bought powerful lights in town, and Dan turned his on. The glow illuminated the shaft. A forgotten lantern lay caked with dust in a corner. The walls themselves looked as though they’d been hacked and gouged out by hand.
“All right. If we follow the main tunnel and turn left, we should find Bob’s mine,” Shep said.
Dan felt his lungs begin to constrict. With every step they disturbed more dust, and he felt the familiar tightness in his chest. “Are you okay?” Amy whispered.
“Fine,” he answered. He never liked to admit when he had trouble with his breathing.
Nellie slipped the inhaler into his hand and he took a quick hit. He shot her a grateful look. The tunnel grew narrower. Every few feet they came to another spot that had been worked by a miner. Dan had expected the walls to glitter in many colors like opals, but they were a dull, chalky beige.
The tunnel narrowed further and then twisted sharply right. A pile of rubble lay in front of an opening.
“I think this is it,” Shep said. He knelt down and peered over the rubble. Dan looked over his shoulder. Inside the opening was a small cavelike room. The floor was smooth and even. An old stained mattress on an iron bedstead was pushed into a corner. “He must have lived in the mine, as well as that room in Ken’s house,” Shep said.
Amy and Dan climbed in first. It was a bit brighter in here due to the ventilation shaft that spilled out dim light from a corner.
Amy bent down and picked up a newspaper. She shined her light on it. “It’s from Adelaide. The date is 1951. This must be it,” she said. “Ken said that Fossie left here in the early fifties. If he was a young man when he assaulted Mark Twain, he must have been close to ninety years old.”
Shep stepped inside. “Did you just say assaulted Mark Twain?” He held up his hands. “Never mind. Don’t tell me.”
Dan swept his flashlight over the wall. “Amy, check this out,” he said. “He wrote all over the walls.” He’d thought it was a design at first, but he realized that it was the words ring of fire written in small, cramped handwriting.
The words didn’t stop. Tiny, faded in places, in other places covered with dust, the words ran around the entire room, over and over and over, like crazy wallpaper covering every inch of the cavern. Dan and Amy flashed their lights around.
“How long do you think it took?” Amy asked in a hushed voice.
“Years,” Shep said, looking around. “You’d have to be pretty crazy to do this,” he said with a low whistle.
“Ring of fire,” Dan said. “What does that mean?”
“An opal ring?” Amy asked. “They have glints of red and yellow all through them.”
Shep went to the far wall and knocked on it. “This isn’t solid. This must be the common wall with Ken’s house.” He stepped closer and accidentally kicked an old toolbox caked with dust. He rapped his knuckles against the wall. “Yeah, this is just drywall. Funny …”
“Amy!” Dan shouted. “I found something. A date! It’s carved into the rock.”
“And an M next to it!” Amy exclaimed.
“It might mean that Amelia Earhart was a Madrigal,” Dan said. “He knew she was looking for him. It was the year the Madrigal came.”
“We don’t know she was a Madrigal for sure,” Amy argued. She couldn’t accept that about her childhood hero. “She could have been here trying to protect him from Madrigals.”
“Our parents must have seen this place,” Dan said. “But how did they get in? And out?”
“Maybe Mom and Dad stayed in that room and broke through the wall overnight,” Amy said. “Then they repaired it.”
“They could have left just a few nails and a hammer out,” Shep said, “then pushed the toolbox through the opening. This toolbox doesn’t look that old.”
“It’s not like he would have heard them,” Dan said. “Ken can’t hear, period.”
“Dad was a pretty good carpenter. So was Mom,” Amy said. “They did a bunch of renovation work on our old house.”
“Hey, maybe we’re Ekats!” Dan whispered.
He moved closer to the ventilation shaft and gazed at the wall. “There’s a drawing here and some kind of quote.”
Partially hidden within the streams of repeating words, they saw:
“That’s kind of sad,” Amy said.
“Sounds like a Cahill philosophy to me,” Dan murmured. “Just tell lies all the time.”
“Look at the drawing. It looks like an upside-down ice cream cone. With arrows.”
“I prefer sprinkles myself,” Dan said.
“I think this is a drawing of this room,” Amy said. “I guess this gap here is where the door used to be.”
“I hope he didn’t quit his day job,” Dan said. “He wasn’t much of an artist.”
“ ‘To be direct and honest is not safe,’ ” Amy said. “I wonder why he wrote that.”
“He didn’t,” Nellie said. “Shakespeare did. In Othello. I played Desdemona in my senior year. We set the play in the future and we all wore aluminum foil costumes. It was a blast.”
“Wait a second,” Dan said. He got down on his knees and started to search along the wall.
“What are you looking for?” Amy asked.
“It’s weird that he wrote the word safe right where he did. Maybe he wasn’t talking about being safe. Maybe he was talking about a safe.”
Amy got down on the floor with Dan. They ran their hands along the wall in the corner.
“I found a seam,” Amy said excitedly. “We need something for leverage.”
Nellie fished in the toolbox and came back with a chisel. Amy slowly worked at the seam. She felt the rock beginning to give. Suddenly, it popped out into her hand.
Dan peered in. “There’s an opening carved out.” He stuck his hand in. “I’ve got something!” His fingers closed around something smooth and cool. He withdrew a small metal box. He opened it. Inside was a leather envelope with a leather cord that wound around it.
Slowly, Dan unwound the cord. He opened the envelope. It was empty. “NOT FAIR!” he yelled.
Amy slumped back in disappointment. “Somebody else got here first!”
“Like our own parents!” Dan tossed the leather envelope aside in frustration.
“Wait.” Amy picked up the envelope. She could just make out some faded gold letters on it. “It’s a monogram! R C H!”
She looked up at Dan. “Amelia was searching for H, remember? This must be Bob Troppo’s real name!”
“But how can we find out who he is?” Dan asked. “We don’t
know where he was born or where he came from….”
“It’s a place to start, anyway.” Amy scrambled to her feet. “We need the laptop.”
Nellie suddenly put a finger to her lips. “I hear something,” she whispered. “Something above …”
Dan moved closer to the ventilation shaft. He stood underneath it and looked up. He could hear the sound of voices, but he couldn’t see anyone, just a faint circle of blue sky. “This is it,” someone said. He saw a shadow and quickly jumped back.
“Eww,” someone said, a high-pitched whine. “Don’t put them near me.”
“That sounds like Natalie Kabra,” he whispered.
“I am surrounded by fools,” a woman’s voice said impatiently. “Hand me the jar.”
“That’s Isabel,” Amy whispered.
Suddenly, something fell through the ventilation shaft. It was black and the size of a salad plate. Dan felt it brush his arm. He looked down and saw the biggest, hairiest spider he’d ever seen. It started to crawl up his arm toward his face. He screamed and backed up to the wall. He was too paralyzed to touch it.
Shep sprang over. “It’s all right,” he said. He brushed off the spider and it scurried away on the floor. “It’s not poisonous.”
“I-I think we should move away from the shaft,” Amy said.
They all looked at her for a second. Then they quickly sprang back as a shower of spiders began dropping down onto the floor. Soon there was a carpet of scurrying, hairy arachnids waving thick spider legs. Amy screamed.
“Get back!” Shep ordered. He swallowed and pointed to a hairy spider on the ground. “That’s a funnel-web. And there’s another one …”
Dan gulped. He was still shaking from his encounter with the plate-sized spider. “The most venomous spider in the world?”
“It’s all right, it’s not aggressive,” Shep said. “Just … don’t … alarm it.”
“H-how do you alarm a spider?” Amy squeaked.
“Should we reason with it?” Nellie asked shakily.