It was on a Monday morning in mid-July that Harleigh arrived at the black walnut a little earlier than usual, but Allegra was already waiting in the tree house. Lately he’d been making the climb on his first try, but for some reason on that particular day he slipped and had to start over twice. By the time he finally scooted up onto the floor of the tree house, he’d banged an elbow and a shin and was not in a very good mood.
Allegra, sitting cross-legged with the tatters of the weird ragged dress smoothed down over her legs, looked relaxed and unruffled.
“Do you always wear that same dress?” Harleigh growled.
Allegra nodded. “Oh, yes. When I come here I do. It’s my forest dress.” She ran her hands down over the tatters, smoothing them out. “I had another one, but it wore out.”
Harleigh couldn’t help grinning, wondering what a worn-out dress would look like if this wasn’t one.
When the tattered pieces were carefully arranged, Allegra said, “I have a surprise. Look what I brought.” She reached in among the rags and pulled out a little bag that had been hanging from a string around her neck. “See this?” she asked.
“Yes, I see it. What is it?”
“It’s like a purse or a pocket. I use it when I want to bring something, so my hands will be free for climbing. This time I brought this candy and—and . . .” She fished around in her little bag again and brought out a wrinkled piece of paper. “And this,” she said.
The candy was a chocolate bar. Harleigh really liked candy, but he didn’t get it very often because Aunt Adelaide thought chocolate was habit-forming. Allegra broke the bar in two and let him pick which piece he wanted. At first that only added to his frustration, because it was broken so evenly it was hard to decide which one was biggest. And after he’d finally chosen, he was sure he’d made a mistake and picked the small one.
But the chocolate did cheer him up a little, and while they were eating she showed him the piece of paper. It was a photograph that looked like it had been cut from a magazine, and it seemed to be a picture of the front of a very old building. A building that had a grand entrance with large double doors that were decorated by elaborately carved panels.
“And that picture,” he said. “What’s that?”
“It’s some famous doors on a famous building,” Allegra said. “But I brought it because it looks so much like the front doors on your House. On Weatherby House. Don’t you think so?”
He didn’t think so. Not really. A little bit maybe, but not much. But Allegra was sure they were almost exactly alike. They argued about it for a while and then, suddenly, they were on their way to look at the front doors of Weatherby House and see who was right. Afterward Harleigh didn’t really remember agreeing to do it, but somehow there they were, on their way.
Harleigh said, “I don’t think we can get to where we can see the doors without anybody seeing us.” But Allegra was sure they could.
“Oh, I can,” she insisted. “I’ve done it before. Lots of times. First you have to go through the dead garden where all those beautiful statues are . . .”
“The Italian garden,” Harleigh said.
“Oh, is that what it is? Italian, I mean,” she said. “Good. So you go through the Italian garden, and then past some other dead flower beds and around behind that other long building at the end of the driveway.”
Harleigh nodded. “The carriage house,” he said.
“The carriage house?” She looked delighted. “That building was a carriage house? Then they kept horses there? I thought so. Where are the horses?”
He laughed. “Long gone. Now there’s just Aunt Adelaide’s old Buick, and down at the end there are some rooms where the grooms used to live. But old Ralph is the only one who lives there now.”
“Oh,” she said. “The old man with a beard? I’ve seen him. So that’s Ralph? Why does he live out there?”
“He’s a gardener, but he’s too old to do much gardening, except in the solarium. He works in the solarium every morning, and when Aunt Adelaide wants to go to town he drives the Buick.”
She nodded. “And then you can either go under the arch where the driveway comes through to the carriage house, or else all the way around that other part. The dead part of the House.”
“Dead?”
“Empty,” she said. “No one lives there. Did anyone ever live there?”
“No. Not really. You’re right about that. The east wing was just offices and things like that. It’s empty now. Most of it is closed off.”
Allegra nodded again. “Dead,” she agreed with herself. “It’s faster to go through the arch, but it’s more dangerous. That’s when you have to start being very careful.”
“Careful?” Harleigh asked. “About what?”
“About the windows. It’s dangerous to be where you can see a window, because if you can see one, someone looking out of the window might be able to see you.”
Harleigh didn’t think it would be possible to reach the house without being in sight of any windows, and he said so, but Allegra just kept on walking and talking and he did too, planning to go just a little farther before he turned and went back. They had passed the remains of the Italian garden and the English one, too, when Allegra came to a sudden stop at the edge of the long sweep of open land: a dry, barren field that had once been a green lawn where Weatherbys and their guests ate picnics and played croquet. A lawn that, according to Aunt Adelaide, was once as lush and green as any three-hundred-year-old lawn in England.
Allegra was pointing out toward the middle of the open field. “Look,” she said. “That’s where I saw the big man looking for treasure. Right out there.”
Harleigh couldn’t believe it. “That’s where you saw Junior using a metal detector? Right out there where anyone could see him?”
She shook her head. “Not very well,” she said. “It was after dark.”
Harleigh was startled. “You don’t mean you come here after dark?”
“Not very often. But once I did when the moon was pretty full. That’s when I saw him. I saw this enormous man walking around and around out there swinging that metal thing.”
It was an uncomfortable thing to imagine—hiding in the bushes after dark and watching sinister old Junior prowling around with a metal detector only a few yards away from your hiding place. Junior, whose creepy stare and curled lip could make a person’s skin crawl even in broad daylight . . .
Frozen momentarily while he dealt with the thought of running into Junior outdoors after dark, it took Harleigh a few seconds to notice that Allegra had moved on. He hurried to catch up, to follow her as she crept along behind a hedge, and from there right through the arch that spanned the drive and connected the central part of the house with the east wing.
Once through the archway, Allegra ducked under the hanging branches of a short, bushy tree. When they crawled out from under the tree they were right against a wall, a wall in which there were no windows.
Looking up, Harleigh realized where they were—just outside the library, the windowless library. And just beyond the library was the curved bulge that was formed by the first floor of his tall central tower. Still on his hands and knees, Harleigh reached out and tapped the only part of Allegra that he could reach—the heel of her bare foot.
“Hey,” he whispered when she looked back. “See that tower? That’s where my room is. Way up on the top of that tower.”
Allegra turned and crawled back. “You mean you live at the top of that tower?” She craned her neck to stare up—way up. When she turned back, her eyes—more than her eyes, her whole face—seemed to be glowing.
He couldn’t help being pleased that she was so impressed. “Sure, that’s my room. Up on the top floor. The bottom floor right here is an alcove in the library, and on the second floor it’s part of an upstairs sitting room. On the third floor it’s just a storeroom. But then, way up two more circular flights of stairs, there’s this room with a lot of windows that used to be called the Aerie. Nobody lived there. People only went up for the view. But now it’s mine. I sleep there.”
“That is so exciting.” Allegra was still glowing. “You’re so lucky. Everyone should have a tower to sleep in. I wish I had one.”
She sighed again before she turned away and crawled to where she could stick her head out between two branches and look up at the turreted tower silhouetted against the sky. She stared for a long time before she suddenly looked back and whispered, “Come on. We’re almost there.”
They rounded the base of the library alcove, and there, not far away, was the entrance to Weatherby House, the grand entrance with its elaborately carved and paneled door, a door that was similar but not really the same as the one in Allegra’s picture.
“See. They’re not the same,” Harleigh whispered.
But Allegra whispered back, “Yes, they are. Come on, I’ll show you.” Ignoring Harleigh’s objections, she went on crawling around and under bushes on her way to the front doors.