The Sign of the Sinister Sorcerer

The first disaster could have been Uncle Jonathan’s losing his cane. The second had been his disappearance. So—what was the third one to be? Death?

All day Friday Lewis fretted and agonized. Now he was sure his uncle was under the Curse of Three. He didn’t want to think that his uncle had vanished for good—but what if he had? What would happen to Lewis?

He remembered all too well the terrible night when a policeman had come to his house in Wisconsin and had spoken with his babysitter. That was back when he was much younger. His babysitter, a high school girl named Gloria, had screamed, “No!” and had fainted. And then the policeman had told Lewis that a car had crossed the center line and had run head-on into the automobile that his father was driving. Everyone, his father and mother and the other driver, who had fallen asleep at the wheel, had been instantly killed.

Lewis had felt as though his heart had been ripped out. He had only a hazy recollection of the funeral and the next few days, which he spent in a foster home. His aunt Mattie and aunt Helen came to visit him, arguing about his coming to live with them. Neither of them wanted him, and he had not wanted to go with either one, because he didn’t like them. Especially his mean aunt Mattie, who made fun of him for being fat. She had once told him that he looked like a balloon ascension.

And then his uncle down in New Zebedee, Michigan, had agreed to take him in. Lewis had been only a toddler the last time he had seen his uncle Jonathan and didn’t remember him at all, but he had rather go live with him than either of his aunts. Lewis remembered the long bus ride into Michigan and how desolate he had felt.

Now he felt the same exact way again. Aunt Mattie had since passed away herself, but he hated the very thought of going to live with Aunt Helen and Uncle Jimmy. Aunt Helen had all the personality of a leaky inner tube, and since she had become a staunch Baptist after marrying Uncle Jimmy, she moaned and groaned over her brother Jonathan and nephew Lewis because they were still Catholics. Short visits to their home in the town of Ossee Five Hills were bad enough. Lewis didn’t think he could stand living with them, not every single day.

But Mrs. Zimmermann had at least a temporary solution. “If anyone asks,” she said briskly once they had returned to her house, “we’ll tell them that Jonathan is out of town for a while on business. That’ll keep everyone quiet, because no one really knows what his business is!”

Mrs. Zimmermann nodded. “Oh, of course I know,” she said. “Yes, Jonathan inherited money from his grandfather, and he has invested carefully and has a tidy income from his stocks and bonds. But no one else in town, with the possible exception of Mr. Deitz at the bank or Mr. Conwell, Jonathan’s lawyer, knows just how he earns his bread and butter. So our official position is that Jonathan is out taking care of some big business deal and that while he’s gone, you’re staying temporarily with me. That cover story will do, at least for a while.”

Mrs. Zimmermann looked suddenly fierce. “We,” she announced, “are going to get to the bottom of this mystery! We are going to find my friend and neighbor, and if he has been harmed in any way, those who did it will regret hurting him! Chin up, Lewis. As John Paul Jones once said, ‘I have not yet begun to fight!’ But,” she added, “I am just about to start!”

Lewis called Rose Rita right away with the bad news, and she too tried to cheer him up: “If Mrs. Zimmermann’s on the case, you don’t have anything to worry about,” she said. “I’ll round up Hal, and we’ll come over and see if there’s any way we can help.”

It took a while—Rose Rita complained that Hal’s family didn’t have a telephone, and she had no idea where he lived, but luckily, he had stopped by her house to ask about the search for the cane. They both looked serious at the news of Uncle Jonathan’s disappearance, and a gloomy Lewis quickly filled them in. He left out all mention of magic, leading Hal to think that maybe an international gang of kidnappers had made off with his uncle, but clearly Rose Rita got the message. “What’s Mrs. Zimmermann going to do?” she asked.

“She’s got her own way of investigating, she says,” Lewis answered carefully. “We agree that the first thing to do is to try to find out what Uncle Jonathan learned in Lansing about Dr. Marville, so she’s gone up there for the day.”

“Not that kind of doctor,” explained Rose Rita. “A doctor of philosophy, a college teacher that Lewis’s uncle had classes with at Michigan Agricultural College.”

Lewis realized it was time for lunch. “We don’t have to go into town,” he told Hal. “Mrs. Zimmermann said I could help myself to anything in her pantry. She’s got plenty of sandwich things.”

They made sandwiches, munched them, and then spent a long couple of hours talking round and round Uncle Jonathan’s disappearance. Hal thought that whoever stole the cane might have come back for Uncle Jonathan. Rose Rita confessed she didn’t know what was going on, but she was itching to do something. The afternoon crawled by until four o’clock. They were sitting on the steps of Mrs. Zimmermann’s house. In her absence, Lewis felt even more nervous than he had. “There might be a clue in your house,” Hal suggested at long last.

“But we could check,” argued Rose Rita. “There might be something you’ve overlooked. I have to do something, I tell you! I can’t stand just sitting around.”

Lewis couldn’t hold out against the two of them. They crossed the lawn, he unlocked the door, and he went inside. Hal and Rose Rita hovered on the porch until Lewis remembered that he had to specifically invite them in because of Mrs. Zimmermann’s spells. He hastily said, “Come in, come in!”

Hal grinned sheepishly as he and Rose Rita stepped over the threshold. “Thanks. I just felt kind of funny, for some reason,” he apologized. Hal quietly closed the front door.

They searched the basement and through all the rooms on the first floor, though Lewis was convinced there was nothing to find. When he was sure Hal was nowhere close, Lewis even looked into the secret passage that led from the kitchen to the study, but it was empty and dusty. After two weary hours, he and Rose Rita ran out of places to pry into, and the two of them found Hal seated at Uncle Jonathan’s desk in the study. He had a pile of books open all around him. “I’ve been reading,” he said unnecessarily. “You know, we could try to use some magic. These books all seem to say that magic works, anyhow.”

Lewis grimaced. He had not thought about Hal’s discovering the books of magic in his uncle’s collection. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Lewis’s heart was thumping hard. He had never even told Rose Rita all the details, but the time he had tried casting a spell from one of these books, an evil ghost had risen from the dead and had almost ended the world with the help of a magical clock hidden in the walls of the Barnavelt house! “I don’t think we should,” he said, his voice thin with worry.

Hal held up a book. “We might have a chance. This book says that three is a very powerful magical number. There are three of us. It has a spell for finding lost things. Let’s try it, just to do something.”

Hal shrugged. “The book says magic is real. This is a simple spell that any student of magic can easily do. But if you don’t want to find your uncle—”

And so somehow or other, he found himself drawing another magical sign on the study floor, this time an equilateral triangle with one point to the east, one to the north, and one to the south. He finished, checked his Boy Scout compass to make sure it was properly oriented, and said, “Now what?”

“Now,” said Hal, holding the big book at chest level, “I stand on the eastern point. Rose Rita, you stand on the southern one, and Lewis, you’re on the north one. Just stand there quietly and think thoughts about Jonathan Barnavelt while I read this incantation.”

With surprising fluency, Hal began to read a long, repetitive incantation in Latin. Lewis was good at Latin, but he didn’t know all the words that Hal read aloud. He recognized many of them, even though Hal was reading at a furious pace: invocatio, a calling, an invocation; sceptrum, rules; and a sentence that sounded something like “I ask great powers for a turning back.”

They obliterated the triangle and then replaced the throw rug. In the hallway, Rose Rita stared at the mirror so hard that Hal asked, “What are you looking for?”

“Thought I might have chalk dust on my nose,” replied Rose Rita. “I’d better call my folks. I’ll see if Mrs. Zimmermann is back and tell her what we’re doing too, so she won’t be upset if she sees lights in the house.”

Rose Rita walked over to Mrs. Zimmermann’s house. The front door was unlocked, and Rose Rita went straight in, calling, “Hey, Mrs. Zimmermann?”

No one replied, and Rose Rita began to feel a little creeped out. When the phone suddenly rang, she jumped in surprise. But she picked up the receiver. “Hello,” she said. “Zimmermann residence.”

“I’m still up in Lansing,” she said. “I’ve found someone who knows both Jonathan and Dr. Marville. And I’ve learned a thing or three from her! She’s, well, of our kind, Rose Rita.”

Rose Rita knew that Mrs. Zimmermann was telling her that her informant was a witch, or maga, as she preferred. She also understood that Mrs. Zimmermann didn’t want to say too much over the phone. “What did you find out?”

“Get a piece of paper and a pencil,” said Mrs. Zimmermann. “You have to tell Lewis all this as soon as possible. I’m leaving for home as soon as I get off the phone. What time is it? Half past six. I should be there no later than nine.”

Rose Rita knew where Mrs. Zimmermann kept a notepad, the paper lined in light purple, and a pencil (also purple). She got these and said, “Shoot.”

“Tell Lewis that his uncle’s old schoolmate is indeed back in town. Furthermore, I think I know what—Mr. S. is looking for. That project that Jonathan mentioned is the key. I don’t know what it is, but it’s probably hidden in the house next door to mine. You know the one. It is vitally important that Lewis not let anyone get into the house. My you-know-what will keep anyone with evil on his mind from coming in under his own power, but if he’s invited inside by someone who lives there, that’s a different kettle of squid. Got that?”

“And let Lewis know that Mr. S. had a special study and was very good at it—the arts of confusion and concealment. He might be in some elaborate disguise. Of course, there are rules to ma—to the art, I mean, and the rules say he would have to play fair and at least give someone a chance at seeing through his surface appearance.” Mrs. Zimmermann snorted. “Jonathan should never have had anything to do with that man! And Dr. Marville must have been pretty slow on the uptake not to realize that he was a bad lot! Why, just look at his name, for heaven’s sake! It means ‘Evil Heart’ in German! Anyway, Rose Rita, warn Lewis. I’ll be back as soon as Bessie can get me there.”

“Okay,” said Rose Rita, taking down what Mrs. Zimmermann had said about Dr. Marville and Schlectesherz. Bessie was the name that Mrs. Zimmermann had given her purple car. She said that, viewed from the front, it had a face like a sleepy cow named Bessie that she had once known.

Mrs. Zimmermann hung up, and Rose Rita was just finishing her note when her hand froze. She had written: “Mrs. Z says Schlectesherz=evil heart in German.”

She had spelled out “evil heart” on the page. Rose Rita was great at crossword puzzles and codes—that was why she still remembered the mind-reading code she and Lewis had once used in a magic act—and those nine letters tugged at her in an odd way. E, V, I, L, H, E, A, R, T. What was it? With her pencil she began to rearrange them. H-A-L E-V-E-R-I-T.

“Oh, my gosh!” She flew across the lawn to the Barnavelt house, reached for the doorknob, and tugged. The door seemed to be nailed shut. “Lewis!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. “Lewis, let me in!”

A bolt of sizzling green light leaped from the doorknob and struck her in the stomach. The next thing Rose Rita knew, she was tumbling through the air like a rag doll. And then the lawn slammed into her back, hard, and she lost her breath. Everything went black.