Book Scavenger Read online

  “There are supposed to be fifty hidden copies of The Gold-Bug,” James said. “How many do you think he hid before this one?”

  “It’s only the middle of October. He wasn’t planning on the game officially starting for another three weeks. Maybe there aren’t others out there yet.” At least Emily hoped that was the case. She liked thinking of The Gold-Bug as her own personal connection to Garrison Griswold.

  “We only have five minutes left until the bell rings, and we still don’t know what to do with the hidden sentence. Quick”—Emily nudged James—“ask Raven about that.”

  SURLY WOMBAT: What do we do with the first clue?

  RAVEN: One good story deserves another.

  “‘One good story deserves another’—what does that even mean?” James asked.

  Before Emily could answer, a message from a guest user popped on her screen.

  GUEST: I think you found my book.

  Emily scrunched her nose. “Uh, hello? Who are you?”

  “Why would you hide a book for Book Scavenger if you’re not a registered player?” James added.

  SURLY WOMBAT: What book?

  GUEST: You said you found a Poe book in the BART station. That’s my book. I need it back.

  Emily and James looked at each other. The Poe book belonged to somebody? That couldn’t be. It had the Bayside Press symbol with the raven, and they’d just uncovered the secret message. Raven had even confirmed it was part of the game. Emily was a hundred percent sure the book was Mr. Griswold’s. Which meant that either this mysterious person was Mr. Griswold, somehow managing to log in from the hospital even though yesterday Jack had said he was in very poor condition, or this guest user was mistaken. Or—a possibility that made her anxious to even consider—someone knew about the game and was trying to get the book for that reason.

  SURLY WOMBAT: I find a lot of books. Tell me about yours.

  GUEST: It’s by Poe.

  SURLY WOMBAT: Title?

  The cursor flashed over and over until finally another message popped up.

  GUEST: THE GOLD-BUG.

  Emily’s stomach tightened.

  James nudged her. “Hollister said it was unusual to see a book with only one of Poe’s stories. Maybe there’s another collection by that name. Maybe this is a coincidence,” he said.

  SURLY WOMBAT: How many stories?

  The cursor blinked endlessly. Emily held her breath.

  GUEST: Three.

  Emily exhaled.

  SURLY WOMBAT: Sorry. I don’t think I have your book.

  CHAPTER

  18

  BARRY SLAMMED a fist onto the computer station, making the librarian at the information desk look over.

  “Sorry,” Barry muttered, and ducked his head.

  “You shouldn’t have guessed three,” Clyde said. He sat back in the chair next to him, swiveling the seat from side to side.

  “You told me three,” Barry said through gritted teeth.

  Clyde shrugged. “What do I know?”

  After they’d found the Book Scavenger website on Monday, they’d switched gears from staking out the area around the BART station to spending the rest of the week staking out this website. Or at least staking it out as much as they could manage, seeing that Barry didn’t have a computer at home and worked at a liquor store in the evenings, and Clyde … Barry had no idea what Clyde did when they weren’t around each other.

  In any case, it had taken them five whole days of checking in on a computer either at the hotel where his friend worked or here at the main city library when his friend wasn’t working.

  The green light next to Surly Wombat’s name switched to gray and read “unavailable” instead of “online.”

  “Of course,” Barry said. “We scared her off.”

  Barry dropped his head into his hands. Man, was he screwed. It was bad enough he’d thrown that book away in the first place. But Barry had neglected to tell his boss about the kids. He’d led him to believe they had a better handle on the book situation than they actually did. Although their boss had already threatened to take matters into his own hands if they didn’t hurry up, so maybe Barry hadn’t done such a good job of convincing him he had a handle on things.

  Barry clicked on the name “Surly Wombat,” and the page jumped to the girl’s profile. At least he assumed this was that girl—she was the one Clyde had seen leaving the card in the first place. This profile gave very little personal information and no photo. Barry forced his eyes to scan the whole page this time instead of glazing over a couple of lines in. At the bottom of the page there was one important detail Barry had missed before.

  He leaned close to the screen and blinked his eyes to make sure he was seeing straight.

  “There we go.” He stabbed the words. “‘School: Booker Middle.’ We can go there.”

  “Field trip,” Clyde said.

  CHAPTER

  19

  EVEN THOUGH the guest user hadn’t known the right details about her book, Emily still felt uneasy.

  “You okay?” James asked.

  “Yeah, just…” The person had specifically said they were looking for a book with three stories, and Mr. Griswold’s had only one. Still, it rattled her to have someone else insist The Gold-Bug was his or hers.

  “That was just weird,” she said.

  James nodded his agreement. “But we did find out the first clue.”

  “We did!” Emily said brightly. “‘One good story deserves another,’” she repeated. “What could that mean?”

  The bell rang. James walked his cipher book back to the library cart, reading it until the very last second. Emily had left her binder, The Gold-Bug, and the Poe short story collection on the table when they went to chat with Raven, so now she closed those. She stacked them with the Poe collection of stories on top.

  Story. One good story—The Gold-Bug—deserves another … story?

  Emily reopened the collection of stories and flipped through it.

  “Ready?” James asked, hoisting his backpack onto his shoulders.

  Emily continued to flip pages, stopping every third page or so. About halfway through the book Emily turned to a short story called “The Black Cat.”

  “James!” she said and pressed the book to the tabletop. James leaned forward and read out loud: “‘For the most wild yet most homely narrative—’” He looked at Emily, his mouth hanging open.

  “‘One good story deserves another,’” Emily said with an incredulous laugh. “The clue is the first line of another Poe story.”

  * * *

  Emily walked on air throughout the weekend. Even though she didn’t yet know what to do with the next clue, the fact that she’d come this far was satisfying enough. For now.

  James was in high spirits after school on Monday as well. The first week of Mr. Quisling’s challenge was a wash, since everyone’s submitted ciphers had been broken. Already about half the class seemed to have lost enthusiasm for the challenge once they realized how tricky it would be to come up with something unbreakable. Emily didn’t even submit one herself. She had been too wrapped up in homework, reading “The Black Cat” in hopes of figuring out what she was supposed to do next in Mr. Griswold’s game, and her family’s adventures. But James and Maddie were both as committed to their bet as they had been the week before. They each submitted ciphers, and James felt great about his chances this week.

  “Her Royal Fungus is going down!” James crowed as they trudged up the sidewalk after school. He held Maddie’s cipher sheet in front of him as they walked:

  “I’ll be able to crack this in no time,” James said.

  A canopy of trees provided momentary relief from the October sun blasting on high. The fog had burned off from the morning, and Emily’s sweatshirt looped uselessly around her waist. If she were back in Albuquerque or Denver, there would be a crisp bite of fall accompanying the warm sunshine.

  “Did you know,” James said as they stepped around a woman exiting an apa
rtment building with a stroller, “that a long time ago, if a ruler had a secret message he wanted to send, he shaved the head of his servant, wrote the message on the servant’s scalp, waited for the servant’s hair to grow back, and then the servant traveled to the message recipient and had his head shaved again so the guy could read it?”

  “If you have to shave off Steve, you could try that out,” Emily said.

  James threw his hands up to either side of his cowlick as if he were covering Steve’s ears.

  “As if I’ll lose! Have some confidence.”

  Emily patted Steve on his pointy tips. “My deepest apologies, Steve! Of course you won’t lose.”

  “Those guys might have spent their whole life going back and forth with messages on their heads, like a living piece of notebook paper,” James said.

  They approached Hollister’s bookstore. His window display homage to Bayside Press was still in place. Emily stopped and peered inside through a gap between two books.

  “Hollister’s in there, talking to someone. Do you think he might help us with the Black Cat clue?”

  “It can’t hurt to ask. He knew a lot about Poe last week.”

  They pushed open the door just in time to hear the customer say, “You said the Welty would be in! I came all the way across the city.”

  Sparse strands of ginger hair gripped the irate customer’s balding head like a claw. James stopped short, Emily right behind. This was the same man who had been in Mr. Griswold’s office last week.

  “What is he doing here?” James whispered to Emily.

  “No, no, now,” Hollister was saying. “I said I’d found the Welty we discussed. I wish you had called first, Leon. I don’t know what else to tell you.” Hollister looked over and saw Emily and James standing just inside the front door. His shoulders dropped from his ears, and a smile split his face. “Ah, James and Emily-Who-Just-Moved-Here. Just finishing up with my friend, Mr. Remora. In fact, he’s the one I mentioned to you earlier. The rare-book specialist who works with Mr. Griswold.” To Mr. Remora Hollister said, “These two are fans of Gary and Book Scavenger.”

  Gary? It sounded funny to hear Mr. Griswold referred to as a Gary.

  Mr. Remora barely glanced in their direction. If he recognized Emily and James, he didn’t show it. “This is unacceptable!” He hammered his index finger into the counter, like he was pounding a miniature gavel. “I told my client I’d deliver the book to her this week.”

  “Well, I’ll check on the status as soon as possible. And I tell you what, Leon. I will personally hand deliver it to you so you don’t have to trek back to my shop.”

  One strand dipped in front of Mr. Remora’s eyes, and he blew at it repeatedly, only to have it flop back down. Finally, he pushed the strand of hair back on his head. “Fine.”

  Emily and James leaned against the counter, waiting for their turn to talk to Hollister. A tray filled with magnetic poetry sat beside a rack of bookmarks. Emily and James pushed around words while they waited. Ferocious. Fish. Eyeball. It reminded Emily of first discovering Mr. Griswold’s hidden words in The Gold-Bug.

  Hollister pulled a pen from the mug by his register. “Now what’s your address?”

  “1717 Fillmore Street—”

  “Ah, you live by the Fillmore?” Hollister said, jotting it down.

  “Yes. Lucky me. Traffic and noise, hoo-rah.”

  Hollister clamped his mouth shut and focused on writing the address, drawing a long inhale of breath through his nose. When he finished, he tucked the notepad with the address onto a shelf under the counter and turned to Emily and James. “So what brings you kids in today? More book scavenging?”

  “Oh, um.” Emily glanced at Mr. Remora. He was sorting through a pile of books on Hollister’s counter.

  “We wanted to ask you about ‘The Black Cat.’”

  “The Black Cat!” Hollister hooted. “Haven’t thought about that place in years. That’s where I met Ferlinghetti.”

  “No,” James interjected. “It’s not a place. We’re talking about…”

  His voice trailed off as he and Emily looked at each other. There was a place called the Black Cat? Maybe that was what the clue was telling them to do. Go to the Black Cat.

  Mr. Remora slapped his hand on the counter three times. “Hollister. We’re not done here. I’d like these rung up.” He waved to the small stack of books he’d sorted from the original pile. “And what about that Carver you had last month? Is that still here?”

  “I believe so. Let me go check the stacks.” Hollister gave the kids an apologetic smile. “I can answer your questions in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

  Emily nudged James. “We can look it up online,” she said.

  James called after Hollister’s retreating figure. “Don’t worry, Hollister! We’ll google it!”

  CHAPTER

  20

  EMILY AND JAMES sat side by side in the accordion section of an extra-long city bus on their way to the Black Cat restaurant. On one side of the bendy part was a woman with a crate on wheels packed tightly with plastic grocery bags, and on the other was a man painted head-to-toe in silver, reading a newspaper. Whenever he turned a page, robotic sounds mysteriously accompanied his movement. Emily tried not to stare, but she swore his mouth wasn’t moving to make the noise.

  James didn’t give the silver man or plastic-bag lady a second glance. Emily wasn’t sure how much of that was due to him having lived in San Francisco his whole life and being immune to these kinds of sightings, and how much was due to his absorption in cracking Maddie’s cipher. How he could be focused on anything other than Griswold’s game right now was a mystery to her. Emily practically bounced in her seat, she was so excited, straining to read every street sign the bus approached in hopes that they would reach their stop already.

  Finally, they approached the intersection for the Black Cat restaurant, and James stood up to pull the bell wire. They exited through the back door and jumped to the sidewalk, and the bus whirred away.

  “It should be up here at the next corner,” James said.

  They crossed the intersection of a busy, four-lane street and soon found themselves standing under a neon sign that jutted over the sidewalk.

  Jazz music tumbled out when they pushed the front door open. Emily’s eyes adjusted to the dim interior. The hostess stand was unmanned, so Emily peered into the bar area where a heavyset man with a bald, shining head wiped down a table.

  “We don’t seat until five o’clock,” the man said in a deep baritone voice without looking up.

  “We’re not here to eat,” Emily said. She sounded like a mouse compared with him.

  “Then what exactly are you here for, babies?” he said, not unkindly, his rag hovering over the tabletop.

  “We left something,” James said.

  “Last night,” Emily added. “We need to get it back.”

  “You two were here last night?” the man said.

  “With our families,” James jumped in. “It was a large group.”

  “Well, not that large,” Emily added. What if there hadn’t been any large groups last night? “But large.”

  “A large but not large group, huh?” The man considered this with a skeptical pout. “All right, I’ll bite. What did you leave?”

  “A, um, book,” Emily said.

  James poked her in the back. Okay, so maybe a book wasn’t the best imaginary thing to leave at a restaurant. But she didn’t know how Mr. Griswold’s scavenger hunt was supposed to work—did this man know about it and he had a clue waiting for them? Or did they have to find it hidden somewhere? Maybe if she mentioned a book, he’d ask which one, then she’d say The Gold-Bug, and he’d offer her the next clue.

  But the restaurant manager didn’t ask any questions, and if he thought it was ridiculous to have left a book in a restaurant, he didn’t show it. He crossed to the hostess podium and picked through items that lay behind it.

  “I’ve got a cell phone, sunglasses, and an
umbrella. No book.”

  “Could we look around for it? We won’t take long,” James said.

  “We won’t mess anything up,” Emily added.

  “Fine, fine.” The man waved them into the back dining room.

  “So what are we looking for exactly?” James whispered. Emily lifted a tablecloth and peered under a table.

  “I have no idea,” she said. “I’m hoping we’ll know it when we see it. Keep an eye out for anything that looks out of place. A note taped under a table or something like that.”

  They worked their way through the dining area, lifting tablecloths and peering under chairs, scrutinizing wall hangings and the small clusters of carnations on every table.

  When they met in the middle, James asked, “Have you read ‘The Black Cat’ yet? Maybe there’s something in the story that’s a hint for what we should be looking for.”

  “Well, it’s about a guy who drinks too much, kills his cat in a drunken rage, and then thinks the cat comes back from the dead. Then the guy goes even crazier and kills his wife and buries her in their basement, but he accidentally buries the zombie cat with her and gets himself caught. So I hope the story has nothing to do with what we should be looking for because I’d rather not dig up dead bodies or zombie cats.”

  “Geez. Hollister wasn’t kidding. Poe really did have a twisted imagination, didn’t he?”

  Emily placed her hands on her hips and surveyed the restaurant. They had looked over every inch with no luck. “Maybe we should say something to the manager about the game? Maybe he’s supposed to give us our next clue.”

  It was the best idea they had to work with, so they went back to the bar where the manager shuffled papers behind the counter.

  “You find your book?” he asked without looking up.

  “Um, no,” Emily said. She wasn’t sure what to say next, but she didn’t have to worry, because James took the lead.

  “Did you know there’s a story called ‘The Black Cat’?” James asked, climbing onto a bar stool. Emily hesitantly climbed onto the one next to him. “Is that what this place is named after?”