The Treasures of Weatherby Read online

  “I know,” she said. “Where are we going now?”

  “I don’t know. But maybe . . . Wait here.” He started away, and then came back. “Wait right here. Don’t go anywhere. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she agreed quickly. Quickly, as if she meant it, but on second thought he changed his mind. He wasn’t going to be ditched again. Grabbing her wrist, he said, “No. You come too.” At the door to the entry hall he whispered, “Shh” and put his ear to the door.

  At first he could still hear the wheelchair, fainter now and farther away, and then a door slammed and there was no sound at all. Aunt Adelaide had gone either by way of the dining room or else down the service hall on her way to the kitchen.

  “Now,” Harleigh said to Allegra. “Now’s our chance. Follow me.”

  Now that he knew where Aunt Adelaide was, Harleigh felt sure the safest route would be through the drawing room, since no one else was allowed to go there. Checking to be sure that Allegra was close behind him, he led the way—under the grand arch and on into the huge drawing room, under clusters of sparkling chandeliers, and below enormous oil paintings in elaborate gilded frames. He walked quickly and quietly, and at first Allegra stayed beside him. But when he stopped to listen for footsteps or the sound of the wheelchair, he found that she was once again wandering off.

  Moving lightly and quickly, she was halfway across the room before he caught up with her. “What do you think you’re doing?” he hissed, but when she turned to face him, she was smiling.

  “I’m listening. Can’t we stay here just a little while?”

  “Are you crazy?” He once again grabbed her wrist, and this time he didn’t turn it loose. When he reached the door to the west corridor he peered out.

  No one was in sight. The wide corridor that led to the one-time recital hall was empty and quiet. He silently congratulated himself for choosing the right escape route. With Allegra still in tow, they had passed the double doors that led into Aunt Adelaide’s recital hall bedroom when Allegra came to an abrupt stop.

  “Listen,” she whispered. “I hear something.”

  “Where?”

  “In there.” She was pointing to the small door they had just passed, a door that had been locked for years, but that had once been used by performers on their way to the recital hall’s stage.

  “There’s nothing in there except some stairs that go up onto the stage,” Harleigh said. “Nobody’s there. Nobody’s been up there for years and years.”

  Harleigh was still talking, shaking his head and talking, when he suddenly thought he was hearing something too. Or perhaps only imagining a faint beeping sound that seemed to be coming from behind the door. He ran, pulling Allegra behind him.

  After making the turn into one of the west wing ells, and continuing on into a small entry vestibule, they reached their destination. Harleigh slid to a stop. Directly in front of them was the exit he’d been headed for. He tried the door and it was unlocked. No one was in sight.

  He’d done it. He’d gotten Allegra out of Weatherby House, and he was pretty sure no one had seen her. He was pushing her toward the door when she suddenly dodged away from him and came to a stop. “It was that same man,” she whispered urgently. “The one with the metal detector.”

  Harleigh was confused. “What man are you talking about? Where?”

  “Behind that stage door. I heard him. I heard his detector thing.”

  “What? Who?” Harleigh was still stammering when she spun away and, running so fast he knew he could never catch her, disappeared into the Weatherby jungle.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Harleigh was really angry. Every time he thought about what Allegra had done, he got angrier. He kept reminding himself how she had started the whole dangerous mess by squeezing in the door when he was trying to push it shut. But what made him even more teeth-grindingly furious was how she had run off and hid when he’d told her to stay right there by the solarium door and wait for him to come back. And then, when the whole scary mess was almost over and they’d finally made it to a west wing exit, she’d made up a fantastic lie for no reason at all. He had no idea why she’d said what she did, except maybe to be sure he’d come looking for her as soon as he could, to find out what on Earth she’d been talking about. So he wasn’t going to do it. Even on Wednesday morning, he decided, he was just going to stay home where, when people lied to him, at least he knew why.

  The thing was, he didn’t believe any part of what Allegra had said. It just wasn’t possible that Junior Weatherby could have been in Aunt Adelaide’s recital hall with a metal detector, and even if he had been there, there was no way Allegra could have known about it. She certainly hadn’t seen Junior, and as for hearing something . . . Harleigh was sure now that he hadn’t heard anything, and that meant she hadn’t either.

  So when Wednesday morning arrived, Harleigh didn’t even think about going to the tree house and then, as usual, to work on the maze. For one thing, it was a dark and gloomy day. The clouds that drifted over Weatherby House hung so low that all the towers were wrapped in a drifting gray veil that formed and reformed in strangely threatening shapes, shapes that resembled dragons or huge hands with clutching fingers. The clouds were definitely threatening—rain or perhaps something even worse.

  He was still brooding about what Allegra had done on his way down to breakfast. He was going over every part of it and getting even angrier when, slamming through the kitchen door, he ran into someone carrying a cup of coffee. The person wiping spilled coffee off his jacket was Harleigh J. Weatherby the Third, Harleigh Four’s father, whom he hadn’t seen for almost six months. After he got a towel and wiped himself off, Harleigh the Third put his hand on Harleigh Four’s shoulder and said, “Hello, son.”

  Harleigh said hello, and then, “Here, I can do that.” While he went to get another towel to mop up the floor, his father went back to telling Aunt Adelaide and Uncle Edgar and Cousin Josephine about how bad the weather had been in New York and how the airline had lost his luggage in Chicago.

  Breakfast was over before his father looked at Harleigh and said, “So, I hear you’ve moved into the central tower and that you’ve been making very good progress in your studies.” Then he put both hands on Harleigh’s shoulders and stared at him as he said, “Well done, son.” And then, after a moment, he went on, “And you have been growing. Haven’t you?”

  Harleigh Four knew what his father meant when he stressed the word “have.” What “You have been growing, haven’t you?” meant was that his father had been right in urging Harleigh to have that last operation. The one that not only his father, but a lot of doctors, too, had insisted would solve the problem with his heart so that, when he recovered from the operation, he would finally start to grow. Only Harleigh Four had been sure they were lying to him again, and he’d been right. The last time he’d measured himself, which hadn’t been all that long ago, he’d been about the same as ever.

  So when his father said he’d been growing, Harleigh’s only answer was, “Oh, you think so?” in a tone of voice that said he didn’t believe it for a minute. Or would have, if anyone had been listening.

  It wasn’t until after Harleigh the Third had gone off with Uncle Edgar that anyone else had anything to say to Harleigh Four. This time it was Aunt Adelaide. He had just taken his dirty dishes to Matilda and was heading for the door when he heard his great-aunt’s creaky voice calling his name. Turning back, he asked, “Did you call me?”

  “Yes, I did.” She rolled her chair a little bit closer, and her steely eyes got even more metallic. “I just wanted to ask if you’ve been in my room lately.”

  “Lately?” He tried to think back. “Well, the last time must have been when I came in to ask about . . .” He’d gotten that far when a shocking idea occurred to him. Did she mean had he been there when she wasn’t there? And if she did, what made her think he, or at least someone, had been there? After a speechless moment, he went on, “I mean, the last time must have been whe
n I came to ask you if I could have more days off for summer vacation.” But by then he was sure there was more to it than that. Looking right into her knife-sharp gray eyes, he asked, “Did you mean when you weren’t there?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. Have you?”

  Without blinking, Harleigh said, “No, I haven’t. Why did you ask me that?”

  Great-Aunt Adelaide’s famous Weatherby stare went on for a long time while Harleigh forced himself to stare back, until at last she nodded slowly. “I am asking you because the recital hall has recently had an uninvited visitor who rummaged around in my personal possessions and caused some serious damage. And it occurred to me and your Cousin Josephine as well that it must have been you.”

  “No. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t,” Harleigh said, but Aunt Adelaide only turned her chair away and called to Cousin Josephine, who had been talking to Matilda.

  And that was the end of it, except it wasn’t, really. Not the end of it for Harleigh, who knew he hadn’t been the one, and so was left to wonder who might have been in Aunt Adelaide’s room, and what that person had been doing there. And most of all, whether or not this new mystery had anything to do with what Allegra said she’d heard. That was the most important question—whether it meant that Allegra might have been telling the truth after all, and really had heard someone on the stage of the recital hall while Aunt Adelaide had been somewhere else in the house.

  A little later, back in his tower room with the blinds pulled to shut out the damp gray ooze of fog, Harleigh tried to get his mind on the book he’d been reading and off the subject of who might have been in Aunt Adelaide’s room. He didn’t realize that he had worked himself up into a jumpy frame of mind, but when there was a sudden loud knock on his door, he jumped so hard he dropped his book.

  After he’d gulped and gulped again and finally managed to ask who it was, the door opened. It turned out it to be only his father, who came in, mumbled hello, and looked around for quite a while before he said, “But there isn’t a closet.”

  “I know,” Harleigh said. “I don’t mind.”

  “But you should have a closet,” Harleigh the Third said. “I’ll see to it.”

  “Those cabinets hold most of my stuff, and there are lots of big armoires on the third floor,” Harleigh Four said. “It would be a lot easier to move one of them up here.”

  His father shook his head. “No, a real closet, I think.” He walked around the room, stepping over some piles of books and pushing other things out of his way. He stopped once or twice to squint his eyes and sight over his thumb before he said, “Yes, a closet is possible. I’ll draw up some plans.”

  Harleigh Four was sure that he would. His father was very good at drawing up plans. But that probably was as far as it would go. Harleigh didn’t mind. He was used to being without a closet.

  After his father left, Harleigh went back to trying to keep his mind on his book, but before long he gave up on reading and began instead to make plans of his own. Only his weren’t about things that might or might not get built. What he was planning was how he might find out who had been in Aunt Adelaide’s room, and what that person had done while he was there.

  The first step might have to be a talk with Cousin Josephine, who apparently had told Aunt Adelaide that she thought he, Harleigh Four, might have done it—whatever it was.

  Finding a way to talk to Cousin Josephine when she was alone might not be easy, but that definitely had to come first. It might be difficult because Cousin Josephine was almost always with Aunt Adelaide, either pushing her wheelchair or taking care of her in other ways. However, Cousin Josephine actually lived in a suite of rooms on the second floor with her husband, Cousin Alden, so she must go up there sometimes. If Harleigh could figure out when she went there, and what route she took, he might have a chance to talk to her when she was alone.

  Using a Sherlock Holmes–type process of elimination, Harleigh began to rule out certain times of day, the times when Cousin Josephine was always with Aunt Adelaide—getting her up in the morning and taking her to meals. And after that there was putting her to bed at night. That left a few hours in the afternoon, which might offer a possibility. But an even better one might be in the evening after she’d put Aunt Adelaide to bed. Harleigh had heard Aunt Adelaide say that she was always in bed by nine o’clock. So that, he decided, was the best bet.

  Now the time was decided on, and the place would have to be somewhere along the shortest route between Aunt Adelaide’s recital hall bedroom and Cousin Josephine’s suite.

  It wasn’t difficult to pick out a likely spot. So it was that same evening around nine o’clock that Harleigh Four, book in hand, settled down on an ornate Chinese chest near the top of the first flight of the grand staircase to wait for Cousin Josephine to pass by.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sitting cross-legged on the Chinese chest, Harleigh opened Great Expectations to his favorite part—where Pip visits Miss Havisham’s disgusting, rat-infested mansion—and settled himself to read and wait. But the only light, which came from widely spaced crystal chandeliers in which only a few ancient bulbs were still burning, was very dim. He squinted his eyes and tried, but the printed words soon faded away to meaningless blurs. Closing the book, he leaned his head back against the wall.

  It was later, maybe only a few minutes, or perhaps quite a while, when he suddenly sat upright. Shaking his head and blinking his eyes, he stared toward an unexpected sound—footsteps, which seemed to come, not up from the first floor where Josephine should be arriving, but from somewhere far down the poorly lit second-floor hallway.

  He saw someone then, an indefinite shape moving swiftly toward him through the shadows. It was a woman, all right, but not, he soon realized, long-legged, broad-shouldered Cousin Josephine. The person gliding toward him was slim and slight, and her hair, instead of being knotted sensibly behind her head, floated out around her face in a cloudy gray halo.

  Harleigh swallowed hard once, and then once more, before he realized that the strange apparition was only—Cousin Sheila. No, not Cousin Sheila, at least not to most of the Weatherbys, because of their doubts about the way in which she had descended. Just plain old Sad Sheila, the weird woman whose weeping and wailing had become a kind of family joke. Harleigh was disappointed. He didn’t even bother to slide down off the chest, but when she was very near he did stifle a yawn and say hello.

  Sheila—who until that moment apparently hadn’t noticed his presence on the Chinese chest—came to an abrupt stop, her hands flying up to stifle a frightened gasp. There didn’t seem to be any tears on her cheeks, and he hadn’t heard any weeping or wailing, but there was something about the slope of her eyebrows that suddenly reminded Harleigh of what Allegra had said about Sheila’s sad story. How Allegra had seemed so surprised and disappointed when he said he’d never even tried to find out more about it.

  Uncrossing his legs, Harleigh slid down off the chest and said, “Hello. You’re Sheila, aren’t you? I’m Harleigh.”

  Sheila’s expression changed from shock, to surprise, to a quiver that was almost a smile. “Yes,” she said. “I know who you are, but I don’t think we’ve really been introduced. You’re the fourth Harleigh, aren’t you?” She put out her hand. “I’m glad to meet you, Harleigh the Fourth.”

  “Me too.” Harleigh nodded. He looked up briefly into her sad eyes, down at his shoes, and then up again. “I’m waiting for someone else right now,” he said. “But I’d like to talk to you someday. Okay?”

  “Yes.” Sheila’s sorrow-slanted eyes again widened in surprise. “Yes,” she said, definitely smiling now. “I’d like that too.” Then she drifted on, stopping once to look back, before she disappeared down the stairs. Watching her go, Harleigh remembered Aunt Adelaide’s comment about how Sad Sheila’s face resembled the mask of tragedy that you sometimes saw on the walls of auditoriums. Which wasn’t quite true. At least not all the time.

  Seated again on the chest, Harleigh went on wai
ting for Cousin Josephine, and while he waited he wondered if he would see Sheila again soon, and if he did, if he might be able to hear her sad story. No particular reason, except that having actually met her seemed to have aroused his curiosity.

  A few minutes later Cousin Josephine came tromping up the stairs. She was moving fast as she passed Harleigh without seeming to notice him. Jumping down off the chest, he was almost running before he caught up with her.

  “Cousin Josephine,” he called. “Wait a minute. Wait for me.” She stopped then, looked back, and continued down the hall. It wasn’t until Harleigh passed her and turned to face her that her pace slowed.

  She frowned down at him as she demanded, “What do you want, Harleigh?”

  He was puzzled. Cousin Josephine had never been a particular friend, but he couldn’t remember her being quite so obviously unfriendly. “I just want to ask you a question,” he said quickly as she tried to get around him. “Just one question.”

  Finally she stopped, still eyeing him suspiciously. “And what question would that be?”

  “It’s about something Aunt Adelaide told me. She said that you thought I was in her room when she wasn’t there, and I did something I shouldn’t have. She didn’t say exactly what.”

  Josephine’s head was cocked and her eyes were hard as she said, “And you’re saying you weren’t? You didn’t come into her room when no one was there and get into things like the crystal cabinet? And paw through some of the drawers in her desk?” Cousin Josephine shook her head and sighed. “None of this would have happened if only she’d listened to me when I urged her to get that lock repaired, but no, she was so sure that no Weatherby would think of intruding on her privacy.” Her eyes narrowed angrily as she stared down at Harleigh. “And especially not a child she had such high hopes for.”

  “But it wasn’t me.” Harleigh insisted. Harleigh paused, gulped, and then went on. “But I think I know who might have done it.”