He found a key he thought was the right one, but it wasn’t. He cursed and started over.
He tried another key. This one slid right in and we stepped into Mr. Samson’s inner office. There was a massive desk facing the door, a leather sofa along the wall beside it, and bookcases lining three sides of the room. The place was huge, about twice the size of Uncle Farrell’s apartment. Against the far wall, to the left of the desk, was another door.
“Okay,” Farrell said. “Where would it be?”
I thought about it. “Well, it’s a sword, and it must be pretty big. He can’t just hide it anywhere.”
“Maybe those bookcases open to a secret chamber or somethin’,” Uncle Farrell said. “Saw that on Scooby-Doo.”
“You watch Scooby-Doo?”
“When I was a kid. Al, that show’s been around forever.”
“If this was Scooby-Doo, you’d be the bad guy,” I said. “The bad guy was always the janitor or the night watchman.”
“What a relief it is, Al, that it’s not.”
The far wall was one big window, all glass, commanding a view of the downtown below. Just enough light came through that Uncle Farrell could switch off the flashlight and still see. He went to the other door and disappeared inside. I heard him gasp. “Jeez Louise!” He stepped back into the room.
“Bathroom. I think the faucet’s made of solid gold.”
I looked at my watch. “Nine minutes into the window. We got to hurry.”
I didn’t know where to look in the big, sparse office. All I could see were bookcases, filled mostly with knickknacks and pictures, a potted palm tree, a sofa, a coffee table, the desk and chair, and that was about it. I pulled on a drawer handle in the desk, but it was locked. Of course, he couldn’t fit a full-length sword into a desk drawer. Maybe Uncle Farrell was right, and we should look for a secret hiding place somewhere. Maybe a safe behind that big watercolor over the sofa. You saw that all the time in the movies. Uncle Farrell stood by the door leading to the reception area, his cool completely gone.
“Why are you just standing there?” Uncle Farrell snapped at me.
“I don’t know where to look,” I admitted. “Maybe Mr. Myers was wrong. Maybe it isn’t here.”
“It’s here,” he insisted.
“How do you know?”
“I don’t know. I just know.”
“You don’t know but you just know?”
“Shut up, Alfred. I’m trying to think.”
I sat down in Mr. Samson’s leather chair. I had never sat in a more comfortable chair in my whole life. It felt like the chair was hugging me. I wondered how much a chair like this cost.
“What are you doing now?”
“I’m thinking,” I said.
“Alfred, we don’t got that kinda time.”
Bernard Samson kept a clean desk. His blotter was bare. On one corner sat a framed photograph of a man with a big white dog that looked like a cross between a wolf and a Saint Bernard. I wondered if the man was Mr. Samson—maybe he got that kind of dog because his name was Bernard too. Other than the picture, there was a penholder and a nameplate, in case somebody forgot when they walked in who was sitting in the big fat hugging chair. I looked at the picture again. The man was broad-shouldered, with a large head and a mass of golden brown hair that he wore swept back from his high forehead, like a lion’s mane.
I lifted the blotter an inch or two, which isn’t an easy thing to do when you’re wearing Playtex rubber gloves; sometimes guys hid things under their blotters.
“Uncle Farrell, if you had a priceless sword, where would you hide it?”
“In my priceless patooty.” He peeked into the other office, as if he was waiting for the cops to storm in any second. Uncle Farrell had gone twitchy all over.
“Maybe it’s behind that picture over the sofa,” I said.
“ ‘Maybe it’s behind that picture over the sofa,’ ” he mocked me, but he kneeled on the center cushion and gingerly lifted the bottom of the frame. I knew the answer before he said it.
“Nothing.” He flopped onto the sofa and rubbed his forehead.
I pulled the chair closer to the desk and rested my elbows on the blotter.
“I don’t think it’s here,” I said.
“Shut up. I’m trying to think, Al.”
“Or maybe it was here and Mr. Samson moved it.”
“Why would he move it?”
“Maybe somebody told him what Mr. Myers was up to.”
“Maybe, maybe, maybe,” Uncle Farrell said. “If maybes were pickles we could have a picnic.”
“Maybe he’s too smart for us,” I said, meaning Mr. Samson.
“Smart?” Uncle Farrell raised his head and glared at me from across the room.
“What did I tell you about that?” he asked. “Being smart doesn’t matter as much as people think. You want to know what matters more than smarts? Stubbornness. Stubbornness and energy, Alfred. That’s what gets you ahead in this world.”
He dropped to his knees and shone his flashlight under the sofa. I looked at my watch. The terminal window had passed.
“Uncle Farrell, we have to go.”
“I’m not going.”
“We’re going to get caught.”
“I’m not walking out on half a million dollars!”
I pushed myself up, and somehow my belt buckle caught under the edge of the desk. It got stuck there, so when I stood, it pulled up, and the top of the desk hitched about half an inch. My buckle slipped free and the desktop smacked back down.
From across the room, Uncle Farrell was still on his knees, staring at me. “Well, I’ll be jiggered,” he whispered.
6
“It’s heavy,” I told him. “Take that side.” I had cleared everything off, putting it all on the bookshelves behind me.
“Jeez Louise, I guess it is heavy.” He puffed out his cheeks as we lifted. “Quick now, Alfred. I got to get downstairs to meet the cops. You stay up here till they’re gone.”
That made me nervous. I didn’t want to be alone in the dark, but I couldn’t think of any way around it.
The desktop was hinged on the front side, like the lid to the biggest music box ever made. Uncle Farrell took a deep breath as we both leaned over to peer inside.
“Holy nut-buckets!” he breathed. “Wouldn’t you know?”
Inside the hidden cavity was a silver keyboard, like the pad of an ATM or calculator, built into the desk itself.
“There’s a code,” I said. “You punch in a code and that opens something.”
“What’s the code?” he asked. He looked like he was about to cry.
“I don’t know,” I answered.
“Well, of course you don’t know, Alfred! I wasn’t asking the question because I thought you knew!” He looked at his watch and chewed on his big bottom lip.
“Okay, Al, this is okay,” he said in that false-positive tone adults sometimes take with kids. “I’ll get on downstairs to meet the cops and you stay up here.”
“Stay up here and what?”
“Break the code.”
He gave me an encouraging pat on the back and headed for the door.
“Uncle Farrell!” I called after him, but he ignored me. I heard the elevator bell go ding, and then there was the loudest silence I had ever heard.
I stared at the pad. The PIN was probably Mr. Samson’s birthday, or the year he founded the company, or maybe just some random number that had nothing to do with anything. Since I didn’t know any of those numbers, I just started punching digits at random. Nothing happened, and it occurred to me I could punch numbers from now until doomsday and nothing might work.
I gave up, lowered myself back into the chair, and looked at my watch. What if the cops demanded to see the suite and he was leading them up here right now? Part of the plan should have included walkie-talkies.
Being nervous and bored at the same time is an odd combination; I couldn’t sit still, so I leaned forward and peered into
the interior of the secret compartment. A little voice inside my head whispered “telephone,” then whispered it again, “telephone,” and I wondered why my little voice was whispering “telephone” like that.
Then it hit me. “Letters,” I whispered.
Mr. Samson’s phone sat on the floor beside the desk. I picked it up and set it on my lap. Like most phones, each key had three letters that corresponded to each number, like ABC was the number 2.
So I started punching in some numbers.
7-2-6-7-6-6 = SAMSON. Nothing. 2-3-7-6-2-7-3 = BERNARD. Nothing. What was the name of the dog in the picture? I punched in 9-6-5-3 (WOLF) on a hunch.
Nothing happened.
I sighed and looked at my watch. Uncle Farrell had been gone for five minutes. He had said being smart didn’t matter so much, but right then it sure would have helped. More out of desperation than anything else, I punched in the first thing that popped into my head: 2-5-3-7-3-3.
From beneath my feet came a whining sound, like a motor revving up, and the floor began to shake. I pushed back from the desk with a little yelp as the desk itself began to rise, like an invisible magician was levitating it.
A huge silver metal pole rose slowly from the carpeting, until the top of the desk was about two inches from the ceiling.
The pole had an opening on the side facing me, and inside the hollow space, hung on two silver spikes, blade facing down, was the sword.
I had brought the picture, just to make sure I got the right sword, but I didn’t need the picture to know this was the one. In the bluish glow from the city lights outside the window, it seemed to shimmer, like the surface of a lake on a cloudy day.
I took a deep breath and grasped the sword handle. It practically flew out of the column; I didn’t expect it to feel so light. I thought it would weigh a ton, but it felt no heavier than a ballpoint pen. It sounds funny, but right away it felt like a part of me, a five-foot extension of my right arm. Grinning like a kid playing pirate, I swung it around a few times. It hissed as it cut the empty air. I held it up to the streetlights, turning it so the ambient light glittered off the edges.
I ran my left thumb along the blade. Immediately, a thin line of blood began to seep out of the wound. I hadn’t even felt it. The blood brought me to my senses, though. I stuffed the sword into the duffel bag. Then I stuck my thumb in my mouth: I didn’t want to drip my DNA all over Mr. Samson’s office during my getaway.
I trotted to the door and stopped—what if the cops demanded to see Mr. Samson’s office for some reason? Should I hide somewhere till Uncle Farrell came back up? I hesitated in the doorway, hugging the duffel against my chest while I sucked nervously on my thumb, the taste of blood in my mouth. I didn’t know how to lower the desk, so I left it and stepped out into the hallway.
I closed the door, checked the lock, and headed straight for the elevator to wait for Uncle Farrell.
I leaned against the wall, my heart still pounding hard, sweat trickling down the middle of my back and my chest. The duffel bag felt very heavy all of a sudden. I pulled my thumb out of my mouth. The bleeding had stopped, but my thumb tingled, like it had fallen asleep. I panicked for a second, thinking maybe the blade was poisoned and I would die in this semidark hallway.
Then I heard the elevator coming. It must have taken a long time for Uncle Farrell to get rid of the cops, I thought as I pushed myself away from the wall. I still felt a little dizzy, but the duffel didn’t feel as heavy.
The doors slid open and I was saying, “What took so long, Uncle Farrell?” when two big brown shapes stepped out. I backed down the hall, toward the emergency exit door that opened onto the stairwell. Two big men dressed in flowing brown robes, like monks, stepped out of the elevator, their hoods pulled low to cover their faces.
One stepped ahead of the other and said softly, so softly, I could barely hear him, “We don’t want to hurt you. We just want the sword.” He held out his hand.
His tone was so nice and reasonable, I almost handed him the sword. I might have too, but at that moment, the one behind him made a snarling sound and rushed me, his right hand coming out of the folds of his robe, and in that hand was a long saber, thin as a pool cue, black and double-bladed.
The first monk made a move to hold him back, but he was too late. Before I even had a chance to think, I jammed my hand into the duffel bag and whipped out the sword. My attacker hesitated, but only for a split second. He was nearly on top of me when I felt the sword in my hand whistle over my head—I don’t even remember lifting my arm—and then I watched as my arm brought it down, aimed right at the guy’s forehead.
He cried out and brought his sword up at the last second. The sound of the swords smashing into each other reverberated like thunder in the tiny hallway. He fell back a little, stunned by the blow.
The tingling in my thumb had spread to my arm, and I brought the sword around again as the first monk gave up trying to negotiate and rushed me.
His partner fell back, gripping the wrist of his blade hand. I fell back too. This taller monk moved more slowly than his buddy, but it was a thoughtful kind of slowness. I backpedaled until I bumped the stairwell door.
“Surrender the sword,” came the voice beneath the brown hood. A pale hand reached for me as another raised the black tapered blade.
I reached for the handle of the door with my left hand, shoved it down, then kicked at it with my foot. At the same time, my sword was whistling toward his left ear. He blocked the swing with the black-bladed sword. I grabbed his left wrist and yanked hard, stepping to my right at the same instant, and that sent him flying past me into the stairwell. I heard him cry out in pain as he tumbled down the stairs.
The smaller monk had recovered and now he rushed me, swinging his weapon so fast, it was just a dark blur in front of my eyes—but my sword was blocking every thrust, parrying every blow, like it had a mind of its own. I didn’t know how I was fighting this guy, who obviously knew what he was doing when it came to swordplay.
The sword in my hand seemed to weigh nothing at all, and everything started to slow down to a dreamlike dance: I could see his sword coming from a mile away.
He made one more desperate lunge at me. I turned his blade easily and brought my left fist down hard against the side of his head. He sank to his knees.
“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t want to hurt anybody. I’m just trying to help my uncle so he won’t send me to a foster home. Who are you?”
Before he could answer, a hand grabbed me from behind and yanked me into the stairwell. It was the bigger man, the one who had first spoken. He swung me around and slammed his body hard into mine, forcing me back against the wall. He clutched my right wrist and held it against the concrete; the blade of my sword clinked against it. He took the tip of that black-bladed sword and pressed it against my Adam’s apple.
“Drop the sword if you want to live,” he whispered.
“Okay.”
I dropped the sword. For a second neither one of us moved; I think we were both surprised I dropped it. Then, without even thinking about it, I brought my knee up as hard as I could into his crotch. He fell straight down and didn’t move.
I hopped over his body, grabbed the sword, and met the other one coming through the door. He saw his fallen companion and gave a little cry. I grabbed him by the front of the robe and flung him behind me.
“Stop him!” the leader choked out from the floor.
I sprinted down the hall, the tip of the sword tapping against the carpeting as I ran. I punched the down button at the elevator. If no one had hit the call button since my attackers came out, it should be waiting for me.
The doors slid open, and Uncle Farrell was standing inside with a third monk in a brown robe, also holding a black-bladed sword, which was pressed across Uncle Farrell’s neck.
7
“Alfred!” Uncle Farrell squeaked at me.
“Throw down the sword,” the new monk said. “Throw it down or he dies.”
; “Uh, Alfred,” Uncle Farrell gasped. “I think you better do what he says.”
I heard the stairway door open behind me. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the first two monks coming toward me, the taller one—the one I had kneed—limping a few steps behind his partner.
“There is no escape,” the tall monk said. “If you give us the sword now, you still may live.”
“If you kill my uncle,” I said to the monk in the elevator, “I’ll kill all of you.” I sounded a lot braver than I felt. There was no way I could kill anyone, but these monks didn’t know that.
“We don’t want to hurt anyone,” the tall monk said. “We want only the sword.”
“So give it to them, Al,” Farrell said. “Stop screwin’ around!”
Right then the smaller monk behind me lost patience, I guess, because he leaped forward with a cry, bringing his black blade over his head. The tall monk cried, “No!” as he came for me. I blocked his downward thrust with an uppercut (if that’s the word for it; I don’t know fencing talk) of my bigger sword. I heard a loud screech of metal hitting metal. It sounded just like a car wreck.
His smaller blade shattered on impact. I grabbed his wrist and swung him into the elevator, pieces of glittering black metal raining down on us.
He fell into Uncle Farrell and the third monk, knocking both off balance. I reached into the elevator, grabbed Uncle Farrell by the hand, and pulled him out. I dragged him a couple of steps toward the stairs, but there was still the tall monk standing between us and the exit.
“Upon my honor,” he said. “All we want is the sword. Please. You know not what you are doing.”
He held out his hand. “Give me the sword and you will not be harmed. You have my word.”
I walked toward him, dragging Uncle Farrell with me, the tip of the sword pointed at the tall monk’s stomach. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was doing it pretty well up to this point.
“Step out of the way,” I told him. “We’re leaving.”
“You will not get far,” he promised.
From beneath the hood, I swear I could see his eyes glowing, not red, like a demon or something, but a gentle bluish light, like the glow of a night-light.