FOOL’S GOLD: FOURTEEN

  

I shut the computer and looked for my phone to call the police with what I’d found out. After a few seconds of searching through my messenger bag, I remembered the police had my phone.

“Let me use your phone,” I said to Sanjay.

“Why?”

“I’m calling the police.”

“With your theory that Clayton isn’t crazy and is a criminal mastermind?”

“Yes,” I said. “But with less dramatic language. Now let me use your phone.”

Sanjay punched in some numbers on his phone. I held out my hand, but he refused to hand it to me. A few moments later, he was put through to the detective in charge. I listened as he gave a brief summary of my research—with the key difference being that he said eccentric Clayton Barnes was hoarding gold. When he was done speaking, he listened in silence for almost a minute.

“Oh,” he said, frowning. “Yes. Mmm hmm. Yes, of course.”

He hung up.

“What is it?”

“It seems,” Sanjay said, “that the police have suspected Clayton for quite some time. They put two and two together, just like you did. But they’ve never been able to prove it. Apparently they’re out at his castle right now with a search warrant. Clayton is at the police station and said they were welcome to search his home. That doesn’t sound like the reaction of someone who’s guilty.”

I swore. Why had I thought I could figure out something like this that the police couldn’t solve?

“Don’t beat yourself up,” Sanjay said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “It was a good idea. Too bad both you and the police were wrong.”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“But didn’t you just hear? He’s given them permission to search—”

“He’s guilty, all right,” I said. “But the gold isn’t hidden at his mansion where the police can find it.”

I stood up.

“Where are you going?” Sanjay asked.

“I’m going to do what I do best. Historical research. I was stupid and arrogant to think I could identify a suspect, when that’s what the police do best. But this is what I do best. I know how to find the set and save Daniella’s show, clear Izzy from suspicion, and save Feisal’s business and his home.”

“How?”

“Clayton said he bought his castle because it was once owned by an alchemist. What do you want to bet there are hidden areas of that house the police will never be able to find, even with their thorough search?”

“You’ve just discovered the police aren’t stupid, Jaya. I’m sure they have the blueprints to the house.”

“That’s where I know more than the police. Historical buildings with something to hide often made fake blueprints. I’m not looking for blueprints, I’m looking for history books about alchemy that mention this historic castle.”

Sanjay glanced at his phone. “Five hours until Daniella’s show,” he said.

“Then we’d better get going.”

  

I knew what I was after, so I was able to find what I was after within hours. The cab we caught at the Edinburgh University library dropped us off around the bend from the castle. We went on foot from there.

Three hours until show time.

The fountain stood where the historical description said it would. Water cascaded down the worn stone, pouring through the waterspout mouths of four gargoyles that faced outward around the circle.

“It’s a working fountain,” Sanjay said, circling the structure. “I wasn’t expecting that. How is that a good entrance to a secret lair?”

“It wouldn’t be a very good hiding place if it wasn’t working.”

“If you tell me I’d have to swim to the bottom of that algae-filled fountain to reach this alchemy lab, I’m going to go get the police. I know that means they’ll hang onto the chess pieces as evidence for too long for Daniella and Feisal to use in the show as the draw. But I draw the line somewhere. And that line is slimy algae.”

“I’m sure there’s a way in that wouldn’t leave the alchemists sopping wet when they reach their lab.”

“Those historical documents you found didn’t say?”

“It wasn’t a how-to guide.”

Without stepping inside, Sanjay leaned over the edge of the fountain and pressed the nose of the gargoyle in front of him. He leaned back and waited a moment. When nothing happened, he walked around the fountain to the second of two gargoyles and did the same.

If I’d been an alchemist—a real believer—during a time of persecution, I’d have wanted the safest hiding place I could think of for my alchemical lab. Putting it outside the main house, and under a fountain, was a great idea. What else would I do?

I sat down on the stone bench a few feet from the fountain. The bench faced both the fountain and the rose garden that lay beyond it on the way to the mansion. Beauty filled the grounds. Compared to the rest of the ornamentation, the stone bench was rather plain. A stone slab without any flourishes, but it looked like the same centuries-old stone. The flat slab itself was solid, but one of the cobblestones in front of it was loose. I stepped on it and it shifted a little. I knelt down and pressed on it. It moved a little, but didn’t give.

“Sanjay,” I said. He stood at the last of the gargoyles, scowling at the little monster. “Come over here and put your trap-door skills to use.”

“It wouldn’t be on the ground,” he said. “Too easy for a gardener to accidentally step on. But here…”

He reached his hand under the bench. He ran his fingers along the base for a few moments. When his hand emerged, a faint sound of scraping stone echoed underground. But we didn’t see anything.

“Oh, that’s ingenious,” he said.

“I don’t see it.”

“It’s a two-part mechanism,” Sanjay said. “Clayton Barnes hasn’t kept up greasing his door very well. We shouldn’t have heard that sound. We’re supposed to think pushing the button didn’t do anything.”

“But it didn’t.”

“Oh yes it did,” Sanjay said. “It unlocked the secret passageway.”

I stepped aside as Sanjay pushed at the slab of the stone bench. The first side he tried didn’t budge. He moved to the other side. The stone swung wide, revealing a narrow set of stone stairs leading down.