Mystery of the Golden Card

  She could feel Hector’s hand shaking where he held her. Not only was he drenched, he looked and sounded as if he’d run a marathon. His glasses were askew on his nose. He pushed them back up as he hustled the children closer to the castle, bringing his eyes back into focus.

  ‘It’s not that simple, Jaide,’ he said. ‘The Evil already senses your grandmother’s weakness. That’s why it’s here, now, acting so openly against the wards. If she finds out that Rodeo Dave is an enemy agent, it could weaken her even further, and not even Custer could keep The Evil out then. What have you told her Companions?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Jack. ‘We only just found out.’

  ‘Then we’d better keep it that way. Act as though nothing has happened, and let me and the other Wardens keep The Evil at bay. We’ll do our job while you do yours. Okay?’

  ‘Yes, Dad,’ said Jaide, even though it warred with her instincts. First Rodeo Dave was a traitor, then The Evil was actively looking for the card, too, and now they were keeping secrets from Grandma X and her Warden Companions. But it wasn’t their fault, she supposed. It was The Evil’s, for putting them in this situation.

  ‘I’m sorry we came out to see you,’ said Jack. ‘We should’ve waited for you to call.’

  Hector shook his head.

  ‘Never mind, what’s done is done. It’ll all be over soon, once the Card of Translocation is in our hands.’

  ++Come back to us!++

  Hector pushed the twins the last few feet, and they fell sprawling again. This time there was no tug from their wristbands. They were inside the boundary of the wards.

  But their father did not follow.

  ++Come back to us now!++

  ‘Go! Find the card, quickly!’ Hector Shield shouted to them.

  With that, he flung himself back into the rain. Back towards the wolf and the chimpanzee. Back towards The Evil.

  ‘Dad!’ cried Jack and Jaide together, but he was gone.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Lady in Yellow

  JACK STARTED TO GET UP to run after his father. Jaide grabbed him around the waist and pulled him back into the mud.

  ‘Don’t, Jack!’

  ‘This is not for troubletwisters,’ agreed the professor’s muffled voice between them. ‘Live to fight another day – thus we keep The Evil at bay. But could you get my face out of the mud first?’

  ‘What if he loses?’ Jack said, but he did stop trying to get up and instead took his bag off and began carefully scraping mud from the death mask. ‘What if The Evil beats him?’

  ‘It won’t,’ said Jaide, although she was worried about that, too. ‘It can’t.’

  ‘Jack! Jaide!’

  The twins heard their names and looked around. It didn’t sound like Rodeo Dave.

  It was Ari, running across the lawn with dripping, rain-flattened fur.

  Jack flipped the professor around so that he could look the death mask in the eye.

  ‘Don’t say anything about what you just heard,’ he whispered. ‘We have to keep this a secret!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Dad says so!’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Maybe we’ll just put you back in the backpack for now,’ said Jaide, taking him from Jack and zipping the pack up tightly so the sound of his muffled protests was inaudible over the rain.

  ‘What are you doing out here?’ asked Ari as he came within earshot. ‘Custer sent me to bring you inside while he braced the wards. The Evil is about. It hasn’t breached the wards, so there’s no reason to panic, but you’re dangerously close to the boundary.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ said Jaide innocently, glancing anxiously over her shoulder. Behind them, in the thick of the squall, there was no sign of either their father or The Evil. ‘I guess we got lost in the rain.’

  ‘How did you get past me?’ asked Ari. ‘I’ve been watching the front door all day.’

  ‘We came out the back way,’ she said.

  ‘Oh. But what are you doing out here in the first place? Why aren’t you sensibly inside the castle, where it’s dry and you’re supposed to be anyway?’

  Jack said the first thing that came into his head.

  ‘We, uh, came to shut the car’s roof to keep the rain off. And then we got lost.’

  ‘All you had to do was follow the castle wall around. Even a mouse couldn’t get that wrong.’

  ‘All right,’ said Jaide, throwing up her hands in mock surrender. ‘We were exploring.’

  ‘In the rain? I will never understand humans.’ Ari lifted his nose to sniff the air. ‘Hey, that smells like wolf. Wasn’t the vet looking for one of those earlier?’

  That galvanised the twins into action.

  ‘If it is a wolf,’ said Jack, heading towards the castle at a brisk pace, ‘we don’t want to get any closer to it.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ said Ari, trotting close by his heels and looking nervously over his shoulder.

  The three of them hurried back to the castle, the rain slowly petering out behind them. By the time they reached Rodeo Dave’s car – the roof of which was closed – there was little more than a drizzle. The damage had been done, though. The twins were soaked through, covered in mud, and felt exactly like Ari looked. Thomas Solomon waved from where he’d taken shelter in his golf buggy, wrapped up in a raincoat, but didn’t offer them a lift.

  They stopped in the courtyard to try to clean and wring out their clothes. They managed to get most of the mud evenly distributed, if not actually off, and their clothes improved from sodden to no longer dripping. They particularly didn’t want to drip everywhere on the way to the library, or get any water on the books. Ari shook himself like a dog and sent a fine spray into the air around him.

  When they were merely damp, they retraced their steps through the castle, past the chests, tapestries and suits of armour – which now seemed perfectly ordinary to them after the discovery of the secret cellar, or the dungeon, as Jaide had begun to call it to herself – back to where they had started that morning.

  Rodeo Dave was waiting for them there. The twins had been nervous all the way back to the castle, knowing that they would have to face him again, the sleeper agent who had put Grandma X in the hospital. They braced themselves for what might come if he suspected they were seeking the card as well, but he seemed merely concerned, not angry. In fact, Jaide thought, she had never seen Rodeo Dave angry, or overly excited, or anything. It was almost as if he was never entirely in the moment – a watcher rather than a participant. He had obviously learned to keep his true self deeply concealed.

  ‘I’ve been looking for you,’ he said. ‘Where did you get to?’

  ‘We heard the rain,’ said Jaide. ‘We were worried about your car.’

  ‘You left the roof open,’ added Jack, reviving the excuse he had attempted with Ari earlier. ‘It could’ve been ruined.’

  Rodeo Dave put a hand on each of their shoulders. They held their breath. Did he know that they had in fact been out of the library for hours and that they had seen him in the dungeon?

  ‘That’s kind of you to think of Zebediah,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry you got wet doing it. At least it washed off the dust, eh?’

  ‘I think it turned the dust to mud,’ said Jaide, thankful for one less thing they would have to explain away on their own. Her elbows and knees were brown from where she had fallen onto the ground outside.

  ‘I’d better take you home. You must need a warm shower and a change of clothes.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ said Jack, not yet ready to give up the chance to look for the Card of Translocation, impossible though that task seemed now. ‘We’d rather stay and help you.’

  Rodeo Dave frowned and looked at them, then back at the library. Clearly he was torn between what he wanted to do, what he thought he ought to do, and what The Evil had told him to do.

  ‘I see you’ve made a dent in the work . . . I guess we could have lunch first and then see how you’re both feeling?’

  ??
?An excellent idea,’ said Ari to Jack. ‘I’ve had a small appetiser of mice, but I am still hungry. I don’t suppose you’d consider sharing what’s in your lunch box?’

  They sat on some upturned tea chests and opened the lunch boxes Susan had given them. Jack fished out the ham in his sandwich and gave it to Ari, who swallowed it in two gulps.

  ‘So he followed us here, eh?’ Rodeo Dave tossed Ari a pickle, which he sniffed warily, then ignored. ‘Curiosity and cats. Imagine what he could find, digging around in here.’

  The twins stared at Ari, struck by the same thought at exactly the same time. He could look for them, in all the places they couldn’t get to, while they were stuck in the library.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Jaide, putting down the last skerrick of her sandwich. ‘I need to go to the bathroom.’

  ‘You remember where it is?’ asked Rodeo Dave. There were toilets just up the hall that must have seemed modern when the castle was renovated but now looked hulking and antiquated to the twins. Though at least they were better than the medieval garderobe.

  ‘Yes. I won’t get lost this time, I promise. Come on, Ari. Let’s see if we can find some mice on the way.’

  ‘If wishes were fishes the sea would be full,’ he said, ‘and I would be down at the beach.’ But he trotted after her anyway.

  ‘How many Wardens have you met, Ari?’ asked Jaide when the library door was safely shut behind them.

  ‘Quite a few.’

  ‘Do they all have collections of gold cards?’

  ‘You mean like Custer and your grandmother? I don’t know. All of them collect something, though. They’re like magpies.’

  ‘Jack and I want to collect gold cards, but we don’t know where to start looking.’

  ‘You’ll need somewhere the other Wardens haven’t already picked over, somewhere full of old stuff and – hey, like this castle!’

  Ari scampered ahead of her and jumped onto the nearest chest. He did a quick turn, as though chasing his tail, then looked down the back.

  ‘Nothing behind here. Want to have a look inside?’

  The twins had already checked that chest.

  ‘I don’t have time, Ari, or a key,’ she said. ‘I have to get back to the books. But why don’t you have a look around for us, now you’re inside the castle? You’ll probably find more mice to eat as well.’

  ‘If I didn’t know you better, I’d suspect you’re up to something.’ Ari looked at her suspiciously. ‘In fact, because I do know you, I’m sure of it. Do you really you think there are cards here or are you just trying to get me out of the way?’

  ‘Grandma thought there were,’ she said. ‘She was on her way here when the accident happened.’

  ‘Was she? I don’t know anything about that.’

  Jaide tried her best to look innocent.

  ‘Well . . . I just thought . . . you know, collecting stuff, it’s a Warden thing, and I want to be a Warden, so I should start now . . .’

  Her voice trailed off as Ari’s eyes got narrower and narrower.

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘if it’ll stop you from going exploring again. Custer’s instructions were quite explicit.’

  ‘Done,’ said Jaide, kneeling down and hugging him. ‘Ari, you are a prince among cats.’

  ‘Of course,’ sniffed Ari, and expertly wound his way out of her embrace. ‘Don’t go home without me. It’s a long walk.’

  ‘We won’t,’ called Jaide, as Ari disappeared around the corner.

  Returning to the library, Jaide found Rodeo Dave high up a ladder, passing books down to Jack, who put them in piles up against one wall. They were mainly histories and biographies of people she had never heard of, some of them running to many volumes. Jaide helped, and between the three of them, they emptied one of the long bookcases that lined the enormous space. There were many more to go, and the twins stared around them with heavy hearts. While their father was out in the storm fighting The Evil with the other Wardens, they were stuck with Portland’s traitor, helping him catalogue books.

  Jaide consoled herself by remembering what their father had said. While they were watching him, Rodeo Dave couldn’t be getting up to any more mischief – and he wouldn’t hurt them unless they revealed what they knew about him. The key was to act normal until the card was found and Grandma X was better. Then, she supposed, the Wardens would pounce.

  The woman in the painting above the fireplace played on as they worked, eternally picking up the same card, over and over again. It was the two of hearts, something Jack wondered about as he worked. Had the number been significant to someone? Had the suit? Could she have been the painter’s wife, perhaps? Or could she have been the wife of one of the Rourkes?

  Sometimes she seemed to be looking at him out of the corner of her eye, not as creepily as the bust of Mister Rourke, but twice as enigmatically.

  ‘You two are very quiet,’ said Rodeo Dave as he moved the ladder over to the next long bookcase.

  ‘I was just, um, wondering about the painting,’ Jack said, saying the first thing that came to his mind. ‘Do you know who she was?’

  ‘The Lady in Yellow?’ Rodeo Dave’s forehead wrinkled, as if he was trying to recall some distant memory. ‘I’m afraid I have no idea. She’s been there for as long as I can remember. It’s my favourite painting in the whole place. And just look how dusty she is . . .’

  Rodeo Dave tut-tutted and turned his end of the ladder, guiding Jack across the room so they stood below the painting.

  ‘Here, give me a hand getting her down.’

  Together they awkwardly lifted the painting off the wall and put it on the floor, where it stood almost as high as the top of Rodeo Dave’s head. The rectangle of wallpaper exposed by its removal looked as good as new, not faded at all. Producing a huge spotted handkerchief from his pocket, Rodeo Dave lightly brushed dust off the paint and wiped down the gilded frame.

  ‘There,’ he said, standing back to get a better look. ‘Considerably improved, don’t you think?’

  Jaide had been half expecting to see a secret door behind the painting. They hadn’t thought to check there before.

  ‘She looks a bit like Grandma,’ Jaide said.

  ‘Do you think?’ Rodeo Dave cupped his chin in one hand. ‘Yes, I suppose she does, as she was as a young woman. You must have seen her in photos.’

  ‘Er, yes, that’s right,’ said Jack. He couldn’t let on that they had seen Grandma X’s younger self when she appeared in spectral form. ‘Did you know her then?’

  ‘We met in our teens, when we were a few years older than you are now.’ His eyes took on a slightly glazed look. ‘She was a firecracker back then, let me tell you—’

  Jack cut him off in some alarm. ‘But it couldn’t be her, could it?’

  ‘What? Oh, no. I’m sure your grandmother would have had nothing to do with the Rourkes back then. They were bad seeds, through and through – but not George. It always amazed me that such a rotten old branch could still grow true at the end. It’s a shame he never settled down. Besides, this painting is much older than your grandmother, or the Rourkes. It looks like early eighteenth century to me . . .’

  His eyes drifted back to the painting.

  ‘There is something about the Lady in Yellow, though, isn’t there? Just can’t put my finger on it.’

  They left the painting where it was and moved on to a series of shelves that contained hundreds of novels all bound in the same stiff leather with gold letters pressed into the spines. Some of them looked as though they had never been opened. In the middle of a shelf at eye level, not placed with any particular prominence, were three narrow, grey books whose gold letters spelled out The Whale by Herman Melville.

  ‘Didn’t Melville write Moby Dick?’ asked Jaide.

  ‘That is Moby Dick,’ said Rodeo Dave, delicately removing the three volumes and placing them in a special pile of their own. ‘The first British edition had the simpler title, and is extremely rare. Mister Rourke was an excellent colle
ctor, if not much of a reader. His son, George, was quite the opposite, and the happier for it.’

  ‘So why did Mister Rourke have all these books?’ asked Jack.

  ‘To impress people. How does that line go? “Of all tools used in the shadow of the moon, men are most apt to get out of order.” Never a truer word spoken, by Mr Melville or anyone else.’

  Rodeo Dave glanced at his watch.

  ‘It’s getting late in the day,’ he said. ‘You’ve worked long enough, and I thank you for your help, but now I’d better be getting you home. I promised your mother I’d have you back before dark.’

  ‘What about you?’ asked Jaide. ‘Will you be coming back?’

  ‘Not today.’ He sighed and rubbed his back. ‘I’m afraid this old boy needs some rest. And a bit of a read, too. Looking at all these books has definitely put me in the mood.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Jack said, thinking that if Rodeo Dave really was going to stay in and read, there was nothing he could do to help The Evil. He wiped his hands on his pants but feared it would take a good wash to get the dusty smell off them. ‘We’ll come back with you tomorrow.’

  ‘No need, no need.’ Rodeo Dave avoided their eyes as he cleaned up the remains of their lunches. ‘You’ve been a big help, but there’s your schooling to consider. I’ve been lucky to have you this long.’

  They tried to change his mind all the way back to the moat, but he was adamant. It bothered Jack to the very core: Rodeo Dave seemed perfectly normal, his usual friendly self, but it was clear he didn’t want them in the castle any longer. The only reason Jack could think of was so Rodeo Dave could keep searching for the Card of Translocation himself.

  But how could Rodeo Dave possibly be a good enough liar to fool both of them and Grandma X, whom he had known most of his life?

  Jaide looked around outside for any sign of either The Evil or their father and the other Wardens, but the woods were empty and the rain had blown away. There was no movement along the fringe of trees. Maybe The Evil had been driven off, for now.

  As Thomas Solomon drove up in his golf buggy to see them off, Jaide remembered Ari. She called his name into the entrance of the castle, and seconds later he came loping out to join them.