The kitchen, therefore, had seemed a promising place to find a hidden entrance to the chamber, and Nicholas, on lunchtime kitchen duty all week, had slyly and methodically searched for secret panels. He had even crawled into the cabinets near the floor, telling Mr. Griese he was in pursuit of a mouse. The only surprising thing he’d found was a mousetrap that snapped closed upon his probing fingers. (He had yelped like a puppy, too. But at least Buford hadn’t told anyone about it, and Nicholas counted himself lucky not to have been startled to sleep.)
Eventually it had occurred to him that the Rothschilds probably hosted few dinner parties, for Mrs. Rothschild was too shy to enjoy them. So perhaps “out of her way” referred to a place typically reserved for entertaining guests, such as this drawing room. That would explain why Mr. Collum had been searching it the other morning; he’d probably had the same idea. Nicholas had hoped to prove more observant or even just luckier than Mr. Collum had been, to no avail. The drawing room was out.
But if not the drawing room, then where? If the phrase “out of her way” actually did refer to some far-flung corner, as Mr. Collum had speculated in his notes, then which far-flung corner did it mean? The Manor contained scads of them. One could hardly know where to begin.
Only one other clue gave any hint about the treasure’s location. Elsewhere in the diary Mr. Rothschild had written, “Sometimes I wonder if the only thing that prevents Di from setting up residence in her beloved treasure chamber, like those dragons who live among their glittering hoards, is the discomfiting cold. She has never complained, but I have noticed that in chill weather she spends less time reveling in her riches and more time taking tea and meals with me. Thus, I am ashamed to say, I have no great incentive to remedy the problem. I am too selfish and enjoy her company too much.”
Discomfiting cold. These words had put Nicholas in mind of chilly subterranean vaults—of trapdoors that opened onto secret stairs. That was why he’d been paying such careful attention to the floorboards, searching for irregularities wherever he walked, not just in the drawing room but everywhere in the Manor.
He was not alone in this. Mr. Collum also suspected that the chamber was underground, for precisely the same reason. He had said as much in his margin notes, right beside the words “discomfiting cold.”
Nicholas had read those notes with a grimace. He had read all of Mr. Collum’s notes with a grimace, in fact, for they had very closely—much too closely—reflected his own thoughts. He did not like it one bit that he and Mr. Collum had drawn the same conclusions. He detested Mr. Collum and did not care to have anything in common with him. Worse, he hated to see the director making progress toward the mystery’s solution. This treasure hunt was a race, the most important race of his life, and Mr. Collum was his only opponent.
Unfortunately, Nicholas did not appear to be making much progress himself. Without an intelligent plan—and so far he’d been maddeningly unable to form one—the best he could do was to keep thinking about those diary entries and keep his eyes open for anything out of the ordinary. Yet even keeping his eyes open was a challenge lately—even more so than usual—for he felt increasingly bleary as a result of his late-night visits to the library.
He could not help creeping downstairs to read each night, though. The temptation was too strong, the books irresistible. He knew how risky it was. What if he fell asleep in the library and didn’t wake up before morning? Usually he woke up several times a night (often screaming, alas), but sometimes he slept five or six hours straight. He couldn’t afford for that to happen in the library. As a precaution, he’d fixed the broken alarm clock he’d found in his room. It had taken him no time at all. In the library he’d found an excellent book on clock repair, and in the basement he’d found the perfect tools for the job.
The basement itself had been a revelation. Even by candlelight it had dazzled Nicholas with its abundance. Like a curiosity shop, it was crammed full of discarded equipment, furniture, oddments, and artifacts, to say nothing of its marvelous store of tools. It looked as if a troupe of traveling tinkers had dumped their wagons down the stairs. The truth was less bizarre, though, and Nicholas had heard all about it from Mrs. Brindle: The scandalous previous director, Mr. Bottoms, had simply never troubled to have anything repaired. Whenever something broke, he’d had it carried down into the basement. If it was something important, he’d purchased a new item to replace it.
It was a staggering display of wastefulness, the sight of which probably made Mr. Collum sick. But to Nicholas the basement had been a delight. He’d spent a long time examining old radio cabinets, phonographs, lamps and lanterns, stationary bicycles, automobile parts, and boxes and boxes of other things besides, before he remembered the reason he’d come down to the basement in the first place.
Since then Nicholas always carried his alarm clock with him at night, hidden in the blanket with the candle and matchbox. Every hour he set it for the hour ahead. If he went to sleep, the alarm would wake him (and, with luck, only him) in time to sneak back up to his room. So far he had managed to stay awake, and he kept close track of the time to make sure the alarm never went off.
And in the meantime Nicholas read.
Oh, how he read! He seemed to read faster with every book, and he was reading books by the dozens. He had long since finished the encyclopedia and moved on to books about physics and mathematics, engines and mechanics, chemistry and biology. The sciences compelled him most, but everything interested him, and he followed his whims from shelf to shelf. Last night, for instance, he had read a book of nonsense poetry (which tickled his fancy) as well as a history of scientific exploration (which inspired him) before diving into a three-volume atlas of the world. When at last he’d ordered himself to bed, his mind was so aglow with new ideas and new knowledge, he almost expected beams of light to shine from his eyes.
So why can’t you solve this mystery? Nicholas asked himself now, as he put the final touches on his false section of wall. What are you missing? The only good thing about this whole awful place was the library. But the one thing that would get him out of this awful place was that treasure.
Stepping back from the table to see what his project looked like from a distance, Nicholas bumped into a girl working at the table behind him. “Pardon me, Gertrude,” he said without turning around, and several of the children gasped and began whispering.
Nicholas smiled inwardly. He never missed an opportunity to strengthen his reputation for “seeing things.” It worked best with the younger children, who were easy to shock and quick to spread the rumors of his gifts. In this case, it helped that Gertrude McGillicuddy liked to sneak perfume from Mrs. Brindle’s bottle—he had smelled it on her before, though she always applied so little of it she must have thought no one could smell it but herself. Nicholas had much too keen a nose to miss the fragrance, though, or to mistake where she’d gotten it.
The children were still whispering about this latest display of clairvoyance, when a distant tapping sound caught Nicholas’s ear. Growing louder by the moment, it sounded as if it was coming from the passage outside the drawing room. He turned his eyes to the open doorway, and sure enough, Mr. Collum appeared in it, leaning heavily on a cane.
“Miss Candace,” the director called in a breathless voice. “A word with you, please.” He limped into the room, wielding his cane with peculiar violence. Each time it struck the floor, everyone in the drawing room flinched.
Miss Candace happened to be in the middle of a long yawn when she noticed Mr. Collum’s cane and attempted to cry out with concern. The result was that she sounded as though she’d been pushed from a height. “Oh, my!” she exclaimed when she’d finished this peculiar bellowing. “Whatever happened? Shall I take a look?”
For someone with such a pronounced limp, Mr. Collum stepped back with surprising nimbleness. “No, no, Miss Candace. I’m fine, I assure you. Merely a twisted ankle. I’ll recover soon enough.”
“But I’m a nurse!” Miss Candace protested
, stooping in an attempt to snatch at Mr. Collum’s ankle. “What if you’ve broken it?”
Again the director retreated quickly. “I’m certain that I haven’t,” he insisted. “Now, please, Miss Candace—”
Miss Candace yawned again. Mr. Collum waited until she’d finished. He started to speak, and then had to wait again as another ferocious yawn overtook her. Nicholas realized that she must have been the chaperone in the ballroom the night before.
The ballroom, he’d learned, was a terrible place to sleep. The girls’ exhaustion was not the result of a single bad night, as he had first thought—they never slept well. Mrs. Brindle and Miss Candace suffered, too, though only half as much, for they took turns as the girls’ nighttime chaperones. The trouble was noise, and evidently the scoundrel Mr. Bottoms was to blame again. He had directed a mile-long swath of trees to be cut so that electrical power lines might be strung to the Manor, and this empty corridor through the woods now funneled all manner of sounds directly toward the ballroom windows. The bells and whistles of distant trains and riverboats, the howling of wind (the fierce nightly wind was also a result of that corridor), and the rattling of windowpanes all conspired to keep the girls awake. But no other room was large enough to accommodate all of their cots, and the girls suffered their sleepiness with no hope of relief.
Join the club, thought Nicholas, not for the first time. Unlike the girls, he had adjusted to being sleepy. It caused him plenty of problems, but he had learned to disguise it. Except when he was actually asleep, of course. There was no disguising that.
Disguise. Nicholas pursed his lips. Why had that word suddenly struck him so oddly?
“I’m simply concerned about the waste, Miss Candace,” Mr. Collum was saying. “Projects are fine, but—”
“Oh, don’t worry, Mr. Collum!” Miss Candace interjected. “There were hundreds of old newspapers in the basement, and plenty of wire mesh and wallpaper paste, and gallons and gallons of paint. None of it was being used, you see—” Here she was interrupted by a yawn.
“Yes, yes,” Mr. Collum said. “I’m quite aware of all that, Miss Candace. You’ll recall that I approved the activity in the first place. My point is not that you wasted money but that you’ve wasted energy. Could not the children have made something useful out of the papier-mâché?”
“Useful?”
Mr. Collum gestured impatiently toward the tables. “I see a great variety of false and oversized fruit, Miss Candace. I see what appear to be masks of some kind. I see rather unrealistic-looking barnyard animals—”
Nicholas casually stepped sideways to block Mr. Collum’s view of his project.
“—but I see nothing useful,” the director said again. “Next time, please consider this point. Surely papier-mâché could be put to better use, could it not?”
“I’m sure it could, Mr. Collum,” said Miss Candace, though she looked extremely doubtful. “I shall certainly consider it. Now, won’t you please let me examine your ankle?”
“Absolutely not,” Mr. Collum replied, and turned to go. He limped from the room, again striking the floorboards smartly with his cane and pausing every few steps, as if to rest.
Disguise, Nicholas thought again, and now he knew why. Mr. Collum had not twisted his ankle at all. He was using that cane to sound the floors. His supposed injury was just an excuse to carry the cane around the Manor, rapping floorboards.
He has no more idea where to look than I do, Nicholas thought with relief. Which means that for the moment, anyway, we’re even.
And so he thought until late that very night, when a brand-new clue fell into his lap.
Nicholas had already stayed in the library longer than he should have. It was quite late. He had been reading intriguing books about electricity and other forms of energy, about light waves and sound waves and radio signals and many other deeply fascinating things, and he had gotten carried away. His mind was so awhirl with ideas that he found himself picturing the Milky Way inside his own head, a spiral galaxy of thoughts tucked inside his cranium. He smiled at the notion as he put away the last book, willing himself to go to bed. But then thinking about galaxies ensnared him, and he decided to allow himself one more book.
He had long ago spied a section of books on astronomy, and selecting the thickest of these, Nicholas settled on the floor. He paged through the book, slowing once or twice to appreciate a particularly lovely illustration, until he came to the final chapter, which explained the process of building an observatory. Construction instructions, he was thinking with poetic satisfaction, when to his surprise he came upon a handwritten note in one of the margins. Instantly he recognized the elegant script as Mr. Rothschild’s.
Nicholas felt his heart speeding up. He fanned the pages. There were several more handwritten notes, each of which he read with mounting excitement. They were all about amateur observatories—questions about intricacies of construction, placement, maintenance, different kinds of telescopes, and so on. The last one read, “Consult the Butler.”
The butler? Why would Mr. Rothschild need to consult his butler about building an amateur observatory?
Nicholas put the book back on the shelf, fixated now on that last note. He scratched his head. The butler, the butler, the butler. He froze mid-scratch. He rolled his eyes at himself. Fatigue must be making him dopey. Taking the book from the shelf again, he turned to the final chapter and began flipping pages. He found what he was looking for near the end: a footnote referring to a different book—The Complete Guide to Amateur Observatories, written by Brian T. Butler.
Nicholas’s eyes darted to the books in the astronomy section. There it was.
He grabbed the other book and sat down with it. When he fanned its pages in search of more notes, three folded slips of paper fell out and fluttered into his lap. They were yellow and brittle with age. Nicholas unfolded them carefully. The first two, which resembled receipts, appeared to be different companies’ estimates for the materials and labor required to construct an amateur observatory. The company names were illegible, far too faded to read, but Nicholas could make out enough to understand what he was looking at. Again he recognized Mr. Rothschild’s characteristic hand, with which some figures had been lined through and question marks drawn next to others, and in the margins Mr. Rothschild had scrawled various questions about details and quibbles about cost. And well he might quibble, for the costs were enormous.
The third sheet of paper was a list of telescopes, their features, their manufacturers, the addresses of European companies from which they could be ordered—and their prices, which seemed impossible to believe. With the money necessary to purchase even the least expensive of them, Nicholas could have lived comfortably for years. Had Mr. Rothschild actually bought one? That sort of wealth seemed as brilliant, distant, and unreachable as the stars themselves.
Or no, not unreachable. Not unreachable at all.
Mr. Rothschild had been a very rich man. The question was not whether he had actually bought one of those telescopes. The evidence in Nicholas’s hands suggested that he had. No, the question—the extremely important question—was where he had put the telescope.
If Mr. Rothschild had purchased a telescope, then he had built an observatory to house it. For the first time, it occurred to Nicholas that the treasure might not be inside the Manor. What if it was hidden inside the observatory? If so, where was the observatory? How large was the estate of Rothschild’s End?
Nicholas considered. Out of her way. Chill weather. Yes, the observatory could very well be somewhere on the property, somewhere within walking distance, somewhere Diana Rothschild would visit less often in the winter. It would be somewhere high up, somewhere with an unobstructed view of the night sky. Abruptly, Nicholas stood and put the books away. He had just seen, in his mind’s eye, the wooded hill at the rear of the park, the one he and John had come to on their walk. What if, at the top of that hill—?
He did not complete this thought, for just at that moment his exha
ustion overcame him. It fell on him like a hammer. His eyelids grew heavy, and a cloud drifted over his thoughts. Vaguely it occurred to him that he had put off returning to his room for too long, that he was in danger of losing control of his senses. His eyes briefly widened. Danger? Yes, danger! He felt a surge of panic, which helped—it coursed through him like electricity, charging his efforts to gather his things and stagger out of the library. But then it was spent, and he was left foggy, fading, failing….
Halfway up the stairs, Nicholas couldn’t remember if he had closed the library door. Too late now. He would be lucky if he reached the top of the stairs without falling backward and breaking his neck. And then somehow he found himself in his cot, with no memory of stumbling into it or even of entering his room. He could not remember whether he had locked his door—or, if he had, whether he had removed his key. None of it could be helped. Nicholas was sliding away, no longer in control of his fate. From somewhere in the darkness, a voice—was it his own?—tried to assure him that any mistakes could be corrected in the morning.
And then the voice changed, and the horrors began.
An hour or so before dawn, Nicholas awoke clearheaded enough to search his pockets. Yes, he had his key. He felt his way to the door. It was locked. Good enough, he thought, and tumbled back into his cot. He fell asleep again at once. He couldn’t help it, but later he would regret it, for he spent the next hour fleeing one frightening vision after another. They were all so real that when Mrs. Brindle at last unlocked the door and entered the room with her lamp, Nicholas could not believe her bravery. Why did she not scream and run away?
But of course Mrs. Brindle saw nothing to fear, nothing more than a trembling young boy, a boy squeezing himself tightly about the chest as if freezing… and then, after a moment, transforming into something else entirely. A happy boy, polite and cheerful. A strange boy who greeted her with a courtly bow and a wink. An altogether strange boy, Mrs. Brindle thought—though certainly not a moper, which she appreciated. Mrs. Brindle disliked mopers.