Back in his room at the top of the tower, Harleigh sat down on his bed and set to work going over some of the schemes he’d considered and then discarded the night before. They all seemed pretty hopeless. One very slim possibility was that tomorrow morning, as soon as Aunt Adelaide and Cousin Josephine left, he would be able to round up all the descendants he could locate and get them to come with him to the recital hall. The point being that Junior would find having so many witnesses to his crime more or less discouraging.
The weak points of this particular plan included the fact that most Weatherby descendants were rather stubborn and suspicious people, particularly where Harleigh Four was concerned. Realistically thinking, he had to admit, rounding up even two or three distant descendants would probably be next to impossible.
Another not very promising possibility involved locating Ralph and getting him to provide another dead bolt lock to take the place of the broken one on the recital hall’s doors. Then, tomorrow morning, as soon as Aunt Adelaide and Josephine left for town, Harleigh would rush to the recital hall and install the lock. The chief drawback of that scheme was the fact that dead bolts can be locked only when you are inside the room, which meant that although Junior would be locked out, Harleigh himself would be locked in.
He’d gotten only about that far in his review of possible strategies, when suddenly there was a loud, determined knock on his door.
Surprised and startled, Harleigh stared at the door for several seconds before he answered. During that time the visitor knocked again and then tried to open the door. But Harleigh, as always recently, had slid the dead bolt into place when he entered the room, so the door rattled loudly but stayed shut. But when he finally managed to call, “Who is it?” the answering voice was loud—and slightly familiar.
“Come on, kid. Open up,” a rather hoarse, breathless voice said, and it did sound a little like Cousin Josephine’s husband, Cousin Alden. But maybe not. Harleigh stayed where he was. But then the voice came again. “It’s Alden, kid. Open the door. I have to talk to you.”
Yes. It really was Cousin Alden. Sliding off his bed, Harleigh hurried to the door and slid open the bolt. Josephine’s scrawny little husband staggered into the room, huffing and puffing.
Cousin Alden wasn’t a big man. Not nearly as fat as Uncle Edgar, nor as old as Ralph, but since he spent most of his time sitting around writing unpublished books, he was not in very good shape. Puffing and wheezing, he said, “They sent me to get you. They’re in the library, and they want to talk to you right away.”
Harleigh didn’t ask who “they” was. When you got sent for in Weatherby House, you knew who was doing the sending. But after a moment, he did say, “Why?”
Cousin Alden’s shrug seemed to bring on another attack of wheezes, but in between huffs and puffs he managed to get out, “Don’t know exactly, kid. But I don’t think she’s delighted. Guess I’ve never seen Adelaide the Great in a great mood, but this one is something else again. You better get a move on.”
So Harleigh did. Leaving Cousin Alden to struggle down all the stairs by himself, Harleigh raced down as far as the third floor before he slowed enough to take his mind off his flying feet and try to put it on what was about to happen.
What could Great-Aunt Adelaide be upset about? She couldn’t possibly know that he’d been in her room. He hadn’t touched anything except the doorknob and the light switches on the stage, and he definitely hadn’t moved or broken anything. And nobody had seen him on his way there or going into the recital hall. He was sure of that. There just wasn’t any way anybody could know.
There were only three people in the library when Harleigh entered, a long-faced Cousin Josephine, a ruefully smiling Uncle Edgar, and a scowling Aunt Adelaide, whose wheelchair was pulled up facing the scowling picture of her famous ancestor, Harleigh the First.
As Harleigh Four approached, Aunt Adelaide said, “Come here, young man. No, over there. Stand right there where we can all see you.” As soon as Harleigh took the place she indicated, directly in front of the famous portrait, she went on, “So then, tell us. Why were you in my room again, young man?”
“In your room?” Harleigh swallowed and blinked hard, while silently asking himself, How could she know? How could she possibly know?
“That’s what I said. And don’t try to deny it.” Aunt Adelaide was almost shouting. “We have proof, don’t we, Josephine?”
“Yes, I’m afraid we do.” Josephine got up from where she’d been sitting next to Uncle Edgar.
“Proof?” Harleigh’s voice had gone high and quavery.
“Tell him,” Aunt Adelaide said. Nodding at Uncle Edgar, she went on. “Tell both of them.”
“Yes, I will,” Josephine said, looking at Uncle Edgar. “Ever since the last time, when he rummaged through Aunt Adelaide’s desk as well as the octagonal cabinet, and managed to break one of the most valuable crystal ornaments, we’ve been taking precautions. I once again urged Aunt Adelaide to get the lock on the doors repaired right away, but she felt it would be a shame to set modern locking mechanisms into that beautiful wood. So she decided that for the time being we would only set a trap every time we left the room. A trap that would let us know if anyone had entered while we were away.”
“A trap?” Uncle Edgar, whose smile up until that moment had seemed to say that he wasn’t taking any of this too seriously, looked astonished.
The dime, Harleigh thought suddenly. Something about the dime. Shocked and suddenly frightened, Harleigh stepped backward sharply, whacking his head against the portrait’s gilded frame. It really hurt. He was rubbing the painful spot as he heard Uncle Edgar asking, “What kind of a trap are we talking about?”
Cousin Josephine nodded smugly. “Each time we went out, I would simply reach up”—standing on her toes and stretching one long arm upward, she demonstrated—“I would reach up and balance a small coin on top of each of the doors. And then, when—”
“Yes, yes. I get the picture,” Uncle Edgar said. Turning to Harleigh, he asked, “And was it you? Are you the one who opened the recital hall doors this morning?”
Possible answers flitted through Harleigh’s throbbing head. He shook it again to shake off the pain and tried to think. He could tell Aunt Adelaide it hadn’t been him. That someone else must have opened the door. He could make it a believable story. He was about to start when his eyes met Uncle Edgar’s steady, unbending gaze.
And suddenly Harleigh found himself saying, “Yes. I opened the door, and I went in, too, and I could tell you why but you wouldn’t believe me.” Then he turned his back on all of them and ran out of the room.
Back in the tower, Harleigh stretched out across his bed and let his mind spin. He went over all of it. Over how it had been Allegra who had told him about seeing Junior looking for something with a metal detector. And then how they, the two of them, had heard him looking for, and probably finding out, where the long-lost treasure must be. But now . . .
But now it was Harleigh, Harleigh alone, who was going to suffer the consequences. It was he, Harleigh J. Weatherby the Fourth, who would surely be sent away to Hardacre Military Academy, where kids were whipped and yelled at, and those who weren’t big, and good at sports, were teased and tormented.
Burying his face in his arms, he pictured how it would be. Pictured it all too clearly. He could almost see and feel the clenched fists and hear the taunting voices saying some of the things that had been said to him at Riverbend Elementary School. “What is it with you, anyway, kid, are you a midget? You sure you belong in this room? Come on, kiddy. We’ll show you the way back to the kindergarten.” He was still hearing the voices when he fell asleep, and then went on hearing them in his dreams.
When he woke up it was almost dark. He had slept right through dinnertime. Not that it mattered. They probably would have sent him to bed without his supper anyway. He got up and went to one of the windows. This time the sight of the endless expanse of Weatherby House stretching away to the east and west failed to comfort or even interest him. But because there was nothing else to do he stayed there, staring out into the gathering darkness. Eventually he found himself thinking of Allegra’s story about someone who had spent many hours staring out of the same window. But now, instead of shrugging, Harleigh shuddered.
He went back to sit on his bed with his face buried in his hands. Life was unfair, his head still hurt where he’d bumped it, and he was, he suddenly realized, very hungry. After listening to his growling stomach for several minutes, he stood up and growled back. “Why not? I can’t be in any more trouble than I’m in already,” and headed for the kitchen.