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 apartment 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!”