The Mystery of the Tiger's Eye

  “Duplicates,” Edward said. “I don’t need more than one of each, so I’m delighted to give these away.”

  Iona, Melanie, and Dorsey had similar presents.

  When Edward went into the kitchen, Iona said, “Edward has too much stuff. His collections rule his life.”

  “I heard that,” Edward said, returning with a fragrant-smelling platter of Maryland fried chicken. “Iona thinks I should sell Cliffwalk Manor.”

  “Well, you should!” she said emphatically. “This place is too big for one person. And you spend too much time fooling with that junk.”

  Edward put bowls of mashed potatoes and gravy on the table. “That ‘junk,’ as you call it, is worth a great deal of money,” he said.

  Dorsey, who had been greedily reaching for the chicken, stopped. “It is?”

  “Yes,” said his great-uncle. “Think about how long ago the Chicago World’s Fair was. Over a hundred years! Many of my things are fragile and hard to find, like souvenir books and tickets.”

  Dorsey sniffed. “Those things look like grubby pieces of paper to me.”

  “They may not look like much, but they represent pieces of history,” Edward said. “Scholars have asked to study my collections. That’s why I’m having this young student get them in order.”

  “What is your major in college?” James Alden asked Melanie.

  She tugged nervously on her long braid. “Uh — I’m just taking some drama classes.”

  “Do you want to be an actress?” asked Henry.

  Melanie’s fork clattered to the floor. “Sorry. I guess I’ll be an entertainer of some sort.”

  Iona went into the kitchen to get Melanie a clean fork.

  “Excuse me,” Melanie said, rising from the swan chariot. “I think I’ll skip dinner and go home. I’ll see you all early tomorrow.”

  “She’ll miss dessert — that’s the best part!” Benny said, amazed anyone would leave a meal before the end.

  “I want some more iced tea,” Dorsey said. He got up, too, and took his glass into the kitchen.

  Jessie was surprised. Dorsey didn’t seem like the type to fetch for himself.

  Iona came back in with a new fork for Melanie and another plate of chicken. “Melanie’s gone? That’s funny. She usually loves fried chicken.”

  “More for the rest of us,” said Edward, patting his round stomach.

  Half spilling his too-full glass of tea, Dorsey slid into the swan chariot he had been sharing with Melanie.

  “Me first,” he demanded, watching Iona serve the chicken.

  “Guests first,” Edward gently admonished.

  The corners of Dorsey’s mouth turned down and he rapped the table impatiently with his fork.

  Before Edward could correct his great-nephew’s behavior, a wheezing sound started up behind the beaded curtain.

  The mechanical fortune-teller was moving! Cackling, she nodded and waved her gnarled fingers over the crystal ball.

  Edward frowned. “Who dropped a token in Madame ZaZa?”

  “Not me,” Dorsey said quickly.

  “Well, it wasn’t any of us,” said Edward. “We’ve been sitting here the whole time. Only you, Iona, and Melanie got up from the table. And Melanie has gone for the day.”

  “Maybe somebody accidentally bumped Madame ZaZa,” Iona said smoothly. “It’s a mechanical device, Edward. And a very old one at that.”

  “She only works if you drop in a token,” Edward insisted. “Someone made her start up.”

  Someone, thought Violet. Or something.

  “This is the kind of thing I’m talking about,” Edward said to Grandfather. “Somebody is making these things happen. But I don’t know who. Or why.”

  “Look.” Benny drew a yellowed card from the fortune-teller’s brass tray. “Here’s the little card. What does it say, Violet?” He was still learning to read.

  Violet squinted at the faded printing. “It says, ‘You are in for a big change.’ ”

  “Who?” Benny wanted to know. “Who is in for a big change?”

  “Maybe Edward is,” Iona said with a coy smile.

  “What kind of change?” Benny pressed.

  Grandfather stood. “It’s getting late, kids. We all need to get to bed.”

  The children went upstairs to their rooms. Dorsey went with them.

  His room was across the hall from the bedroom Jessie and Violet were sharing. A large trunk stood outside the door.

  “Stupid trunk,” he said gloomily. “All I ever do is pack and unpack my stuff.”

  Benny tapped the hollow trunk. “If you stayed here, you wouldn’t have to pack.”

  Dorsey stared at him. “Are you nuts? Stay in this weird house?” Without another word, he went into his room and shut the door.

  Before the door closed completely, Violet caught a glimpse of something on the floor of his room. It looked like a metal box with wires coming out of it.

  What is that? she wondered. Some kind of an invention?

  Before she could mention it, Benny said, “I wonder what’s wrong with Dorsey. I like this house!”

  “Maybe he’s homesick,” Jessie suggested.

  Henry nodded. “He might miss his parents.”

  Jessie and Violet said good night, then went into their own room. It was very nice, with rose-covered wallpaper and two canopy beds.

  Violet was almost asleep when she heard something overhead.

  Thump, thump. Scrape, thump.

  She sat up. “What was that?”

  “I don’t know.” Jessie had heard it, too. “Sounded like somebody moving furniture.”

  “Who’d be moving furniture this time of night?” Violet threw back the covers and slipped into her bathrobe. “I think we’d better check it out.”

  Dorsey Pindar was standing in the hall.

  “Did you hear the noises, too?” Jessie asked him.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Sounds like somebody is in the attic.”

  “We’re going to see,” Violet told him.

  “I’ll show you the attic door.” Dorsey went ahead of them.

  Down the hall, they met Benny and Henry coming out of their room.

  “We heard something,” Benny reported.

  “So did we. We’re going up into the attic to see what it is,” Jessie said.

  Dorsey opened a white-painted door at the end of the hall. He yanked a string that turned on a dim lightbulb. Stairs led steeply upward, cloaked in shadows.

  Jessie went first. Her bare feet made no sound on the wooden steps.

  On the landing, she stopped, then gasped. She was not alone!

  A face with huge, dark eyes stared back at her.

  Chapter 3

  The Magician Returns

  Jessie stepped back, startled. Then she realized she was looking at her own reflection!

  “It’s a mirror!” she exclaimed.

  But not an ordinary mirror. The tall, wood-framed mirror had curved glass. The uneven surface made her eyes seem large and her face look ghostly.

  Dorsey moved in front of Jessie. His reflection wavered like a ghost, too.

  “It’s a fun-house mirror,” he said. “But it doesn’t belong here. The mirror is supposed to be at the end of the landing.”

  “Somebody moved it,” Violet said. “That must be what we heard.”

  “Who would shove a heavy mirror in the middle of the night?” Henry wondered aloud.

  “I’m not sticking around to find out!” said Dorsey. “This house is just too weird!”

  He almost ran back down the stairs.

  “Do you think it’s a ghost?” Benny asked. The attic landing was creepy in the dim light. Shadows seemed to leap out at them.

  “Let’s investigate in the morning,” Jessie decided. She wasn’t exactly afraid, but something about the attic made her nervous.

  “Good idea,” Henry agreed. “Let’s go back to bed, everybody.”

  Snuggled under the covers once more, Jessie realized why she had f
elt uneasy on the attic steps. It wasn’t just who moved the fun-house mirror, but why?

  Was someone trying to scare the Aldens off from solving this mystery?

  Sunshine poured through the wide windows in a golden stream, waking Jessie. The notion of ghosts in the attic seemed silly on such a cheerful autumn day.

  Violet was already up and dressed. “Better hurry for breakfast, sleepyhead.”

  Jessie quickly pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt. The girls met their brothers in the hall.

  “I’m starving!” Benny declared.

  “When aren’t you starving?” Violet said with a laugh.

  Downstairs, breakfast was set out on the sideboard in the dining room.

  Edward and Grandfather were drinking coffee on the deck.

  “Please help yourselves,” Edward said to the children. “Breakfast is very informal here.”

  The Aldens piled their plates with homemade granola, fruit, Maryland ham, and scrambled eggs.

  “Where’s Dorsey?” Benny wanted to know.

  “Maybe sleeping late,” Henry said, pouring his brother a glass of milk. “What should we do first?”

  “Let’s go explore the rest of the house,” suggested Benny.

  “Okay, but then we should go back to the attic,” Jessie said. “We need to check it out.”

  Violet nodded. “Maybe we’ll find some clues.”

  “What are we looking for?” Benny asked.

  Jessie shrugged. “I hope we’ll know when we see it.”

  The children were finishing their juice when Dorsey came in, yawning. Instead of speaking, he spooned sliced bananas and granola into a bowl. Then he went out on the deck.

  “Would you like to show the Aldens around the house?” Edward asked Dorsey.

  “Not really.” The boy stared glumly at the bay.

  Edward and Grandfather came inside. Violet could see the disappointment in Mr. Singleton’s eyes. She wondered why Dorsey was so rude to his great-uncle.

  “Can we see your stuff now?” Benny asked eagerly.

  “Guided tour, this way!” said Edward.

  They went upstairs to the second floor, where Edward showed them his bedroom, a sitting room, a library, and the room where Melanie was cataloging his collections. That door was closed, but they could hear the peck-peck of a typewriter.

  Back on the first floor, they looked into Edward’s office, the parlor across from it, and several rooms displaying his collections.

  They viewed cases of prizes won at early carnivals, models of Ferris wheels and merry-go-rounds, a real Wheel of Fortune game, a Guess-Your-Weight machine, and a band organ. Edward turned a crank. The nickel-plated pipes began to tootle “Dixie.”

  “This was a popular tune around the turn of the century,” Edward said as the music tinkled away.

  Most of the collections were small items, displayed in glass-fronted cabinets. Jessie bent down to study one case. She lost count of the vases, pennants, tops, dolls, tin mugs, advertising buttons, darning eggs, matchboxes, shoehorns, and harmonicas arranged on a single jam-packed shelf.

  “Now you see why I need Melanie to catalog my things,” Edward said, smiling.

  They had arrived in the first-floor entryway. A huge carved cabinet stood opposite the stained-glass window over the front door. The cabinet was so big, it covered the entire wall.

  Benny noticed a large carved tiger statue on top. The tiger bared its fangs in a silent roar.

  “I didn’t see that before,” he said.

  “The tiger and the cabinet have always been in that spot,” Edward told him. “My father said the captain bought these pieces, but he didn’t know from where.”

  Benny couldn’t take his eyes off the tiger. Triangles of red and blue light from the window made the tiger look mysterious. The animal’s glass eyes seemed to follow him.

  Weird, he thought. Maybe Dorsey was right. Cliffwalk Manor was a strange house.

  The tour over, the Aldens were free to explore the attic.

  This time the fun-house mirror made them laugh as they passed it on the fourth-floor landing.

  The attic was vast, with rooms and cubbyholes filled with cast-off furnishings and boxes.

  “Let’s go into this room first,” said Henry, turning into a doorway.

  Inside, a figure was hunched over a box. Suddenly the figure jumped up, dropping the contents of the box.

  “Oh! It’s you,” cried Melanie Preston. “You scared me.”

  “Sorry,” Jessie apologized. “We didn’t know anyone was up here. We thought we heard you typing in your office.”

  “I was, but … then I came up here.”

  “We’ll pick these up,” Henry offered. Kneeling, he began scooping old postcards into a pile. “These look interesting.”

  “I’m working on the last of Mr. Singleton’s collections,” Melanie said. “He must have thousands of postcards. These are all from the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904.”

  With everyone helping, the scattered cards were soon back in the cardboard box. Melanie immediately took the box downstairs to her workroom on the second floor.

  “She’s sure in a hurry,” Benny observed.

  “Maybe she has to finish by a certain time,” Violet said, looking around. She saw something white under the leg of a table. “Oops. Looks like we missed one.”

  But it wasn’t a postcard. It was a photograph of a man with wavy hair, wearing an old-fashioned suit. The man held a fanned-out deck of cards in his hands.

  “What strange eyes,” Jessie murmured.

  Benny thought so, too. The man’s eyes reminded him of something, but he couldn’t think what.

  “Maybe his name is on the back.” Henry flipped the photograph over.

  In a fancy script was written, Harry Houdini.

  Violet gasped. “Harry Houdini! That’s the magician who was in this house years ago! He said strange things would happen here.”

  “Just because we found his photograph doesn’t mean he’s connected to the things happening lately,” Henry said reasonably.

  “Mr. Singleton has a big library,” Jessie remembered from their tour. “He said we could use the books in there. Let’s see if we can find anything about Harry Houdini.”

  The library was on the second floor next to Melanie’s workroom. Her door was closed again, but the library was open.

  As the Aldens scanned the bookshelves, Dorsey Pindar wandered in.

  “What are you doing in my great-uncle’s library?” he demanded.

  “We found a picture of Harry Houdini in the attic,” Violet replied. “We’re trying to find a book about him.”

  “Here’s one!” Jessie pulled a thick volume from the shelf. She opened the book on the library table as everyone gathered around. Then she began to read.

  They learned that at the beginning of his career, Harry Houdini and various partners played in small places with other entertainment acts, like a strong man. Harry worked for “throw money,” passing around a hat after his performance.

  By 1893, Harry Houdini had started calling himself the Handcuff King and Escape Artist. One of his tricks involved Houdini being tied in a flannel sack and padlocked in a trunk. The trunk was put into a cabinet by Houdini’s assistant, who would step inside, too.

  Then a curtain was drawn across the cabinet. Almost instantly the curtain would open again, revealing not the assistant standing there, but Houdini himself. He would unlock the trunk, which now held his assistant inside!

  “Wow!” said Benny, when Jessie finished reading. “What a neat guy. I want to be a magician!”

  “He does sound cool,” Dorsey agreed. Violet had noticed that Dorsey had listened intently as Jessie read about Harry Houdini. He was obviously interested.

  “Let’s take the photograph and this book to our rooms,” said Violet. “We can read more about Harry Houdini later.”

  Dorsey followed the Aldens upstairs to the third floor. He stopped when he saw a man in a blue uniform lifting his tr
unk onto a dolly.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded.

  “I’m with Express Service,” said the man. “I’m supposed to deliver this trunk to Green Acres School in Virginia.”

  “Oh.” Dorsey stood aside and let the man wheel his trunk away. His expression became sullen again.

  Jessie held up the book. “Do you want to come learn more about Harry Houdini?”

  “No,” Dorsey said flatly. “I don’t care about some old magician. I can’t wait to get out of this weird house.”

  “This house isn’t weird,” Henry argued. “It’s really pretty neat. Why don’t you want to stay here?”

  For an answer, Dorsey gave them a glowering look, then went into his room and slammed the door.

  Chapter 4

  The Surprise in the Bread Basket

  The next morning was sunny but cool. Edward cooked a pot of hot oatmeal and set out an array of toppings — fresh fruit, brown sugar, honey, raisins, and walnuts.

  Benny held up his heaping bowl. “I made an oatmeal sundae!”

  “Only you could turn breakfast into dessert,” said Henry.

  Everyone joined in the laughter, except Dorsey. He slouched at the table, morosely stirring honey into his cereal. While everyone else chattered, he ate in gloomy silence.

  “It’s such a nice day,” Edward said brightly. “Let’s go into town. You haven’t seen Heron’s Bay yet.”

  “Sounds like fun,” Grandfather said. “Let’s wash up the dishes and we’ll be on our way.”

  When they were ready, the Aldens climbed into Grandfather’s minivan.

  “Where’s Dorsey?” Violet asked. “Isn’t he coming?”

  In the front seat, Edward fastened his seat belt. “He said he’d rather stay home. Melanie is there, so he won’t be alone.”

  Violet exchanged a glance with Jessie, who was sitting next to her. They only had a few days to solve the mystery. But even if they solved it, would Dorsey want to live with his great-uncle? It didn’t seem likely.

  Grandfather steered the minivan down the steep driveway and onto the road that led to Heron’s Bay. They drove into the village, which was spread along the Chesapeake. Neat cottages and white-painted churches sparkled in the bright sunshine. Grandfather parked by the harbor.