Scarpa’s triangle, in the upper part of the thigh, hides a vital artery.

—Galen’s Anatomy

Chapter 18

The shadow of Mr. Grimsby was about twelve feet away from them, where the ripple of the river met the droop of the path.

Mr. Grimsby was looking fair to drooping himself. His suit was crusted with mud and the nap of his trousers was ripped from thigh to calf. Somewhere in the proceedings, he also appeared to have lost his switch and his spectacles.

“Before you come a whiff closer, Mr. Grimsby,” said Jenny, “you should know that I’ve got Gentle Annie’s revolver with me and I’m not afraid to use it!”

“You haven’t got—”

“Quiet, Pandora,” warned Jenny through gritted teeth.

Mr. Grimsby put his hands up. “I come not to wage war, fair ladies, but to make peace.”

“What do you want?” demanded Jenny.

“I wish to speak,” replied the schoolmaster.

“You can speak with us from there!”

Mr. Grimsby bowed his head, bent his right knee, and extended his left leg in the age-old manner of a courtier. “I am here to beg a mercy.”

You’re likely to encounter a variety of big surprises in your life—babies and bad news being high on the list—but it’s not often you’ll get the chance to see your enemy humbled. Jenny was taken aback by her schoolmaster’s aspect. Even the veins in his forehead appeared contrite.

“What do you mean?”

“I know that you’ve been hunting the nugget of Mad Doc Magee.”

Jenny was less than surprised. From what she had heard and observed, Mr. Grimsby had visited every point in their treasure hunt barring the rosewood and the jail at Troy. Denial was fruitless.

“And what if we have?” challenged Jenny.

“You are somehow in the weeds, am I correct? The visit to the bank was a disappointment, was it not?”

“Yes. But you’re always in the weeds in a hunt.”

“I understand that the gold will be yours by rights,” acknowledged the schoolmaster, ignoring her reply, “but I would like to assist you in finding it.”

“Why?”

“I need a job. I have no prospects of employment, Miss Burns.” Mr. Grimsby’s voice acquired a wobble. “On Wednesday, I was sacked by the school board for incompetency—Miss Quinn’s speech about fathers and daughters was not to their taste. And you saw how Mr. Polk treated my appeal for clemency. I am broke.”

“So you’re willing to work with ‘degenerates’ now?” asked Jenny, eager to rub rock salt into Mr. Grimsby’s wounds.

“Please, Miss Burns,” yelled the schoolmaster, “I have been bruised and battered by the storms of fortune, and I am a foolish foundling of a man. All I wanted to do when I followed you through the Gorge was talk. Do not leave me here to die.”

“Stay right where you are,” bellowed Jenny. She turned to her best friend. “What do we do?”

“I don’t like that man at all,” said Pandora.

“I hate his guts,” replied Jenny. “But it’s not like we can force him to leave. And who knows? We may need his thinking to decipher these symbols. Unless you want to take them home and reason them out there.”

“No, that won’t work,” said Pandora. “If we go home, he’ll only follow us.”

“He’s got the letter from Dr. Galen, but he doesn’t have the skeleton map,” noted Jenny. “So he won’t know about parts of the body being parts of the mountains. We’ve got that on our side.”

“But it doesn’t matter,” insisted Pandora. “He’s not going to leave us alone.”

Truth may taste like sour lemons, but you’ll end up eating it just the same. Pandora was right. Now that he had the gist of the matter, the schoolmaster was going to dog them down the line.

“How in a dammed creek did he find us?” asked Jenny.

“He probably followed my straw hat over the side trail,” said Pandora, “before he realized Lok was the one wearing it. Once he was in the Longshank, he must have calculated we were heading for Troy.”

Jenny returned her scrutiny to the schoolmaster. His crooks and corners remained frozen in the shape of an apology.

“Right then, rotgut, if you’re serious, we need to talk terms.”

“What are you doing?” whispered Pandora.

“I’m testing him,” muttered Jenny. “Let’s see if he takes it.”

“What do you propose?” called Mr. Grimsby.

“First off, you’ve got to keep your swill of a cow’s backside at a distance from us for the entire expedition. You agree?”

“Agreed.”

“Second off, you’ll take the job I give you when we’ve found the nugget. I won’t be funding a tour of Shakespeare around the territory.”

“Agreed.”

“Third off, you’re not to tell a single soul what we’re doing unless I give you permission. You got that?”

“Agreed.”

“So we have a deal. And stand up straight,” ordered Jenny. “You look ridiculous.”

Mr. Grimsby stumbled to attention and offered a crisp salute. Then, reaching around to his back, he swung a bundle clear over his shoulder.

“What are you doing?” asked Jenny, alarmed. “Remember what I said about Gentle Annie’s revolver!”

“It’s a gift!” yelled Mr. Grimsby. “A show of good-will and alliance. I will deposit it here for Pandora to fetch.”

With the care of a beggar man laying out his best belongings, the schoolmaster rested the parcel on the ground and untied the cord. Off to the side he stepped again, the length of four men or more.

“Go see what it is,” said Jenny.

While Pandora walked over to the package, Jenny kept the silhouette of the schoolmaster fixed on the horizon.

“What is it?” asked Jenny. “Somebody’s head?”

Her best friend leaned over.

“No, it’s a ham. Tied up with string.”

“Why in the world are you carrying a ham?” asked Jenny.

“It was a farewell gift from the butcher,” said Mr. Grimsby. “He seemed anxious to be rid of me.”

“Well, that makes sense,” said Pandora, returning to Jenny.

The schoolmaster looked as if he might say something cutting, then appeared to think better of it. “How can I help you?”

Jenny took Pandora by the arm and backed them both toward the stamp mill.

“We’re stuck on some sort of code written on the rocks at the bottom of the tailrace,” said Jenny. “We think it’s to do with the placement of the nugget, but we’re not sure.”

“May I approach the tailrace?” he asked.

“Go ahead.”

Hobbling a little on his left side, Mr. Grimsby limped around to the opposite bank of the water, dropped his knees to the ground, and squinted at the stone. In the family tree of nearsighted salamanders, I’m guessing the schoolmaster was a close relation.

“How can you see anything without your glasses?” asked Jenny.

“I am not entirely myopic,” answered Mr. Grimsby testily. “There is a triangle with an area removed, no?”

“Yes,” said Jenny.

Calm as can be, the schoolmaster edged his way along the border, squinting at every one of the seven rocks. Pandora and Jenny mirrored him on the other side. When he got to the foundation stone at the top, he let off a long, low whistle.

“Whewww. How very intriguing. But soft, they who sprint often stumble.”

For a while he sat in a puddle of sun, hypnotized by the slap and tickle of the moving wheel. Just when Jenny was beginning to think he might have cracked his skull and drained his brains on that wild night of the storm, he rose and bowed.

“I believe I have your answer,” said Mr. Grimsby.

Jenny was far too suspicious of the schoolmaster to be bouncing for joy. But a small part of her soul was secretly wishing for him to be right. “What is it?” she demanded.

“We will work it out together. Here”—the schoolmaster pointed to the foundation stone—“where we begin our scene.” Whereas you’re free to loathe him for other reasons, you’ll have to forgive Mr. Grimsby for his iambic pentameter. It’s a common disease among stage players. “Now then, ladies, do you notice anything distinctive about the shapes in this square and the triangles down the tailrace?”

“No,” said Jenny. Pandora shook her head.

“Every one is a right triangle,” said the schoolmaster.

“What’s a right triangle?” asked Jenny.

“Miss Burns, this is the direct result of your truancy. Industry and application to your studies—”

“Mr. Grimsby, you’re fixing to be trimming dags if you start this way.”

Though I’m guessing the schoolmaster had never once lopped off the matted end of a sheep’s bottom, he appeared to know what Jenny was driving at.

“I am sorry; I do apologize,” said Mr. Grimsby.

“Go on.”

“The two legs—the shorter sides—of the triangle form a right angle: the corner of a square, if you will. The longest side is the hypotenuse.”

“Then it’s a mathematical code,” said Jenny.

“Not quite,” said the schoolmaster. “You observe that the foundation stone is four right triangles put together?” He gestured to the piece of schist with the X on it.

“Yes,” said Pandora.

“So we must marry the alphabet to geometry.”

“Mr. Grimsby,” griped Jenny, “only the juice of a stewed prune could understand what you’re saying.”

The schoolmaster tugged on his ear in bewilderment. “A stewed prune, Miss Burns?”

“Just explain it better!” cried Jenny.

Mr. Grimsby nodded and laid a dirty fingernail above the top left corner of the foundation stone. “Imagine an a above this.”

“Okay,” said Jenny.

He moved his fingernail along the line to the middle. “And a b here.”

“Okay,” said Jenny.

On went the finger toward the top right corner. “And a c above this.”

“Oh!” cried Pandora.

“Very good, Miss Quinn. And the rest of the letters would be arranged in . . . ?”

“A circle.”

“A spiral, to be precise,” said Mr. Grimsby. “Round and round until we reach y and z in the middle.”

As it may be a mite tricky for you to picture the schoolmaster’s motion without the benefit of being there, I’ll give you an idea of what Pandora and Jenny were seeing in their mind’s eyes:

“That means the parts cut out of the triangles . . . ,” said Pandora to herself.

“Correspond to letters on the square,” finished the schoolmaster.

But Jenny was already racing down the line.

“Then this one’s a g!” She stopped. “Or an s.”

“It can’t be an s,” said Pandora, “because an s would be cut out of the right leg going up toward the middle.”

“The next is a,’” noted Mr. Grimsby, tottering to the stone in front of them. He paused. “But this surely cannot be true. For that would imply that the fifth and sixth letters are also both a.”

“G,” repeated Jenny. “A.”

“M,” called Pandora.

Though the schoolmaster and her best friend were barreling toward the end, Jenny stayed where she was. Thanks to a talent for talking and a habit of wandering, she knew exactly what the rest of the stones read.

GAM SAAN.

You’d be surprised at the number of feelings your body can hold in a moment. Jenny was ruffled and raring and frightened and fierce. She was going to see Kam again. This ought to have made her happy.

The thing was, she was going to see Kam again.

“Why would a nugget be buried in the Chinese settlement?” asked the schoolmaster.

Jenny could have told him about the name of Gold Mountain, and her theory of Doc Magee making medical visits to the Longshank valley, and the fact that she’d once heard King Louis refer to Gentle Annie’s legs as “great-looking gams.” But she wasn’t feeling the urge to enlighten anyone.

“Dunno,” said Jenny.

“It’s going to rain again,” said Pandora, cricking her neck to look at an onrush of clouds. “Probably a lot.”

“There will be huts at Gam Saan,” said Jenny. “And we’ve got ham for lunch.” It was up to her, she had decided, to see this dangerous trip through. Great leaders answer when the call is given. “We should be moving. Mr. Grimsby, you’re going to walk ahead of us. I don’t want any more surprises.”

“Very well,” said the schoolmaster.

“You even think of running and you know what will happen,” said Jenny, sticking her hand in her coat and pointing her finger.

“I do indeed,” replied Mr. Grimsby.

“Right then, time to get your blood flowing.”

The schoolmaster nodded and turned on his heel. Quiet and steady, he began his patrol. Jenny waited for a minute before she grabbed Pandora by the elbow, caught up the ham by its string, and started the journey down the Longshank.