That’s an N. And the last one’s an E, I think.”
Colby finally looked up from her notebook. Her weary eyes were starting to sting from exhaustion. Noodle, too, raised his long arms above his head and stretched. He’d been hunched over his laptop for each one of the seventy-six Sub Rosa film viewings that it had taken to decipher Ford’s blinking, and now his neck and back felt like an eighty-year-old arthritic’s.
Like a drone, Tom rewound the film and replayed the movie for the seventy-seventh time that afternoon.
“Yep. Definitely an E,” said Colby.
“So what’ve we got?” Tom asked.
She held her notebook to her face, squinting to read her hastily drawn letters. “M-L-E-9-E-N-L-A-C-I-K-A-W-N-A-A-L-N-I.”
“Great. More Sub Rosa gibberish.” Noodle let out a frustrated sigh as he tilted dangerously far back on his crate seat. “Why can’t he just say, ‘All the gold’s buried under the pet shop’s porch? Bring a couple suitcases.’ ”
Colby remained silent, shaking her head every so often as she continued to stare at her notebook. “There’s some pattern here, I know it. I’m just not seeing it.”
Tom knew that if there was some kind of hidden mathematical formula, Colby was their only shot at finding it, and the best way to help her was by keeping quiet and staying out of her way.
“Noodle, you ready for the next piece?” said Tom, carefully removing the record from its paper casing. Using only the edges of his hands to hold it, he dropped the antique record onto the mounted pizza tray, then gave the whole delicate contraption a whirl. As the record spun, Tom lowered the phonograph’s bent-sewing-needle arm onto the waxy grooves of the spinning record.
Within seconds, the tinny, scratchy sound of an orchestra filled the basement. Then, wafting high above the horn section, they heard a man’s lilting tenor.
“Ugh, sounds like the music Nana plays when it’s bridge night at my house.” Colby glanced up from her notebook long enough to wrinkle her nose.
“Shh.” Noodle put his finger to his lips as the man on the record continued to sing. “My whisper takes you to the place, I’m right below your feet. So hop on board the railway cart to find our secret suite—”
Suddenly the record lurched, momentarily cutting off the music, before skipping backward.
“My whisper takes you to the place … My whisper takes you to the place …,” the man sang over and over and over again.
Noodle lifted the needle off the record. “Three-quarter time. Heavy string section. Classic, no-frills waltz.”
“Fascinating,” said Tom. “Who cares?”
“You should!” Noodle gave his friend a good, hard whack on the arm. “Because those two in the movie? They’re also dancing a waltz.”
“So it’s a coincidence?”
“What would you two do without me?” Noodle closed his eyes as if he were trying to explain calculus to a toddler, savoring the moment. It was one of the rare times when he had the answer to a puzzle, and Tom and Colby didn’t. “You both are really lucky, you know that? That I’ve decided to take time out of my busy schedule to help guide you—”
“Noodle, O great genius of the Sub Rosa, please just tell me why the song’s important before I kill you.”
“It’s easy. The music’s the soundtrack for the movie!”
“Oh. Right.” Tom looked a little bit let-down. “I would’ve figured that out eventually.”
“We’ll never know, will we?”
Together, the two of them cued up the phonograph and projector.
“I knew you two’d manage on your own,” said Colby from across the room.
“How’s it coming over there?” Tom looked over, but Colby’s face was again burrowed in her notebook.
“Just trial and error at this point. I’ll either get it in ten minutes or ten weeks.”
“The first one would be preferable.”
“Ready, T? All together now, and a-one, and a-two …” Like a maestro at Carnegie Hall, Noodle gave the cue to synchronize the image and sound, then stood back and watched as the orchestral music on the record lined up perfectly with the dancing.
And just like before, the record skipped again as Ford pivoted to the camera and started to blink. Seconds later, the film cut to black while the music quietly repeated over and over.
“Probably ninety years too late to get our money-back guarantee,” said Noodle as he blew some dust off the record, then lifted it close to his nose to inspect for any unseen scratches.
“Unless it’s skipping on purpose,” said Tom. “It seems like the skip begins right as Henry starts to blink. But what that’s all about, I have no idea.…” His sigh echoed the others’ frustration. “And I have no idea what the secret suite, or whisper or any of it means.”
“I cracked the code!” Colby shot a triumphant fist into the air, scribbling letters as fast as she could. “It was a simple cipher, actually. Following the equation, n equals n plus four divided by n. Each letter in the alphabet of course corresponds with a number. A is one. B is—”
“Colb!” Noodle yelled. “Once again. Stop geeking out. Just tell us what it says.”
“What’s that?” said Tom. “Like a railroad line?”
Colby shrugged her shoulders as Noodle hopped back to his laptop and began typing away. Within a couple of moments, he had an answer.
“Bingo! The Lackawanna Line was an old rail line that used to run out of Union Square into Jersey. Till the nineteen fifties, when the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad went bankrupt, and then it became the PATH train.”
“How far away is it?”
“Well, basically it just follows the Newark PATH line, but I don’t know where mile nine would be. Somewhere in Jersey, I guess.”
“When’s the last train to Newark tonight?”
“Whoa, Tom—slow your roll,” Colby interrupted. “We all wanna find the Sub Rosa treasure, but what about our parents and—”
“We’ll make up excuses or wait till they go to bed. Or I’ll go by myself.” Tom’s voice had pitched louder without his even realizing it. “I’m not too chicken to check out a train track after hours.”
“No one said you were.” Noodle put up his hands. “We’re not the enemy, remember? And we still got a couple more days of spring break left to figure this out.”
“We can’t wait another day,” said Tom. “Solving this thing’s our only chance to stay together.”
“But none of that will matter if we get busted for sneaking out,” said Colby.
“Then you guys can bail if you want!”
Tom could feel himself getting emotional and angry at his friends for no reason, but the truth was, he was terrified to go to New Jersey without Noodle and Colby. He needed them. Who would sweet-talk a police officer if they got busted? Or crack whatever math equation or lock combination was awaiting them at the next hiding spot?
Scared as he was, Tom’s mind was made up. Nothing was going to keep him from saving the family’s name and fulfilling his destiny.
“Wherever this Lackawanna Line is, I’m going there. Tonight,” he heard himself say, pretending to have a lot more confidence than he felt. “Are you guys with me or not?”
He looked to Noodle, then Colby. The wait was painful, as neither of them said a word.
“Because I don’t think I can do this on my own,” Tom finally admitted.