I pen these few words in my little maple-timbered cabin on the SS Timbuktu. It is a fine new steamer, which is taking us across the oceans, back to Father, Oxford and afternoon tea with hot buttered scones.
Home: green meadows, the call of larks and the spires of Oxford rising in the early-morning drizzle. How I long for it. It will refresh my spirits, after an adventure which has felt like a waking nightmare. Already, as I leave America behind, I feel uncomplicatedly happy. I am able to talk of gowns with Rachel, discussing whether the lilac crêpe or the maroon organza suits her better. With Waldo I debate the best ways to get rich quick. I can, if my head is particularly strong, even talk about stolen treasure with Aunt Hilda or cathode rays with Isaac—not that Isaac will expect me to do more than look interested and smile.
So here we are—healthy and happy—sailing back home, the place where we know we belong. All except Waldo, that is. America has made a huge impression on him. Its energy and size draw him. He says the next century will belong to America. While I am not sure he is right—everyone knows Great Britain’s empire is the most important in the world—I admire him for seeking new challenges. Anyway, he plans to return. He has asked me, in a roundabout way, if I could see myself living in California or New York.
To tell the truth, I am feeling a little dizzy, for Waldo has just left my cabin. He held my hand—and for a moment I thought he meant to … Well, it doesn’t matter, for every time I am with Waldo now I feel guilty. You see, when I was possessed by the skinwalker, when I struck Waldo across the face, I broke his nose. The doctors have reset it. Sadly it remains slightly twisted out of shape. My friend is still the handsomest boy I know. However, it cannot be denied that his nose does look a little odd.
(Is it very, very wrong of me to think that we now make a less ill-matched pair? Yes, it is. I never had such an ungracious thought.)
Luckily Waldo has forgiven me for breaking his nose. I am not sure how long this mood will last. It is in Waldo’s nature to be strong, even arrogant, and in mine to argue. I also don’t know about living in America. After all, I am only thirteen. I will have plenty of time to decide these things after I return to my father and Downside Towers. Yes, Father is determined to send me to boarding school. For the present, I have had quite enough of adventure and have decided not to fight his plans. Rachel, hopefully, will join me at the school. I will see my other friends in the long holidays.
Now I come to the saddest part of my tale: Cecil Baker. As I had understood in the Grand Canyon, his spirit was broken, his wits well and truly gone. The awful things he had done to his own mind had left him little more than a vegetable. He eats, sleeps and talks like a small child. He is as helpless as a babe. We found a hospital in a little town called Oakglade, in the sunny hills of California. We left Cecil there with his own nurse, under the care of a doctor in horn-rimmed spectacles, but far from anyone who loved him, if such a person still exists after the death of his brother.
When we returned from the Grand Canyon to San Francisco, we had our first glad tidings. The only truly good news to come from all our adventures. It turned out that Cyril Baker had made a will. He left the whole of his vast fortune to … us!
This confused me at first, because I believed he’d given most of his money away. Not so, it seemed; there was still a fortune he’d been unwilling to part with. Before you become too excited, imagining us millionaires, breakfasting on ices and bathing in powdered pearls, the money has been left in trust. This means solicitors are to manage the fortune till Rachel and I turn twenty-one. It isn’t, however, for us. When we come of age, we will only be trustees, able to give the money to worthy charities.
Yes, that’s right. Your friends, Kit Salter and Rachel Ani, will take charge of this whole immense fortune. Waldo, Isaac and Aunt Hilda have not been mentioned in the will. We will be enormously powerful, able to give thousands of pounds to people who need our help. Rachel is already researching where she will spend the money. I know she intends to campaign for an end to all forms of slavery—thus righting some of the Baker brothers’ wrongs.
I can see why Cyril Baker entrusted the care of his fortune to Rachel: she is honest to the core and will not try to steal or squander it. I was surprised, at first, that he chose to include me. Then I was handed a note by his lawyers in San Francisco.
Dear Kit,
By the time you read this I will be dead. I do not complain—I deserve my fate. I hope you return from the Grand Canyon with your spirit intact. I am praying for you, even from beyond the funeral pyre.
I leave you my fortune because I believe you will have the generosity of spirit to do with great wealth what I could not. By this I mean thinking of others before yourself. I have faith in you, Kit, to do what you can to make some amends for the wounds I have left behind in this world. Because I know you to be kind and a fighter, but not an absolute angel, I have added Rachel Ani to the trustees of my fortune. It is not that I don’t have faith in you, but her clear head will curb your wildest schemes.
My blessings from the beyond,
Cyril Baker
Kind and a fighter but not an absolute angel… As I read these lines my eyes welled up with tears. It seems Cyril knew me better than I’d supposed.