“Exactly,” said the magician. “When Geert-Jan has the treasure, he’ll be free, because the count will no longer be interested in him, and he won’t want to keep him prisoner anymore.”
“Precisely,” said Frans. “The treasure has to be found, and as soon as possible. But where will Geert-Jan find it, and how?”
“I do wish,” muttered Aunt Wilhelmina, “that Gregorius the Mad had been a little more specific in his Sealed Parchment.”
“It’s clear enough,” said the magician, taking another look at the key.
“Then explain it to me!” said Frans angrily. “The steps will show you where to go – if we have to search every staircase and ladder, it’ll take us years! And where are we going to find someone with green hair? Do they have to travel your Seven Ways too?”
“That is not your problem,” said the magician calmly.
“Your way leads to the House of Stairs,” said Roberto.
“That’s right,” said Jan Tooreloor, “whether you like it or not.”
“Just imagine,” continued the magician, casting a sidelong glance at Frans, “that there was a set of traffic lights on the road to the House of Stairs. What would you do if they were red?”
“I’d stop and wait,” said Frans. “But…”
“Exactly,” said the magician. “And when they turned green, you’d drive on, wouldn’t you? Well, your job is just as simple as waiting when the light’s red and driving on when it’s green. And that’s all I can say.” He put the key in the box and closed the lid.
Now Miss Rosemary finally spoke. “That’s because there is no more to say,” she said. “We have appointed Frans the Red as our Secret Agent. Let him complete his mission as he sees fit; he won’t disappoint our faith in him.” She took the leather box and handed it to Frans. “We’re all behind you,” she said.
Frans felt very honoured. His worries and irritation vanished as if by magic. “Thank you,” he said.
But Jan Tooreloor grumbled, “So we’re all behind him, are we? I still haven’t worked out why I’m even part of this conspiracy! No one ever listens to me and I…”
Miss Rosemary told him to be quiet. “And with that,” she said, “I conclude this meeting.”
He gets ready for a birthday party
THIS IS FOUR
TO MR VAN DER STEG’S CLASS, Geert-Jan had written, followed by the names of all the children.
Thank you very much for your letters, I’m writing back to all of you in one letter, and Frans the Red will secretly take the letter and deliver it to you. He’ll also tell you what’s in the Sealed Parchment, which is top secret and confidentual and you’re not allowed to tell anyone else about it, but maybe you can tell me what you think. Then Frans the Red will report back to me and tell me what you have to say and maybe I’ll write to you again. I was really pleased to receive your letters. It’s midnight now and everyone’s gone to bed except for Ivan. Tomorrow we’re going to look for mushrooms but I think that’s just a trick. Ask Frans the Red!
With best wishes from,
GEERT-JAN GRISENSTEIN
P.S. Arie, would you tell him to take your pistol? The Fiendish Foe already hates him.
P.P.S. I didn’t know Jan the Coachman’s real name was Tooreloor either, but he really, truly is a nice man.
P. P. P. S. Marian, the secret passageway has been sealed up, but I’ll go and look in the cellars anyway.
P. P. P. P. S. I didn’t know you’d been to Aunt Rosemary’s. He didn’t tell me about that.
P. P. P. P. P. S. What’s all this about the Biker Boy?
P. P. P. P. P. P. S. You’ve worked out who Greensleeves is by now, haven’t you?
P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S…
Frans gave this letter to his students on Monday morning, after they’d finished their sums. Marian read it out, but when she reached the seventh P.S. she stopped and blushed.
“Is that the end of the letter?” asked Frans.
“Yes, no, sir,” replied Marian. She wasn’t very good at fibbing. “But this… this is confidentual…”
“You mean ‘confidential’,” Frans corrected her, and he didn’t ask again. But he wasn’t entirely happy about it. I don’t see why, he thought, they’re being all secretive again. And just when I’m about to tell them everything… even about Greensleeves and Greeneyes and Greenhair.
In the afternoon he did exactly that – he even showed the children the golden key.
When he went to the House of Stairs on Wednesday, he took another envelope full of letters with him. His class had also given him plenty of good wishes and words of wisdom. Arie had offered to lend him his pistol again, but Frans had said no. “I have to fight the count with cunning,” he’d said, “not with violence.”
“So what are you planning to do, sir?” the boy had asked.
Frans had had no answer for him. He had just one plan for the time being: he was going to ask the count if Geert-Jan could invite a few children for his birthday…
On Thursday morning, his class bombarded him with questions. Had he had a nice afternoon at the House of Stairs? How was Geert-Jan? And what about the treasure?
“You seem to think that it’s fun searching for something that no one’s been able to find for centuries,” said the teacher, raising his eyebrows. “Well, I sincerely hope that this treasure will soon be found, and then at least all the wandering around abandoned rooms and sneaking down narrow corridors will be over… not to mention all that climbing up and down! And then maybe Geert-Jan will finally be able to learn something…”
“Had he done his homework, sir?” asked Maarten. The expression on his face said that he expected the answer to be no.
“Yes, he had, Maarten,” replied Frans. “All of it!” He didn’t mention what a mess Geert-Jan had made of it, except for the essay about fungi. But he did add, “And he also found time to check out the other fire escapes with Ivan. He sends you all his best wishes, and he gave me another letter too – sealed with real wax, just like the Sealed Parchment, and apparently just as top secret and confidentual.”
“Confidential,” Maarten corrected him. “May I open it, sir?”
“No, not now,” said Frans. “Now it’s time for work. We’re not in the House of Stairs now!”
*
At twenty-five past three, as usual, he told them more: “So Manus took me in the coach to the House of Stairs. He drives much more carefully than Jan Tooreloor, but I didn’t feel very safe with him either… I saw Berend walking through the woods with a gun – no, Arie, I don’t know if it was loaded. Selina answered the door and Count Grisenstein said hello to me when I saw him in the Small Banqueting Hall. At half past two, I stepped into the library. Geert-Jan was not sitting at or under the table, and he wasn’t in or on a cupboard. He’d left his homework out on the table for me. He seemed to think I could check it just as easily without him there. But, of course, I didn’t agree, so I went to look for him…”
Frans gave a sigh. “I know one thing for sure, chaps,” he said. “When I’ve completed my mission, I never want to play hide-and-seek again!” He nodded at Marian and continued, “It was thanks to you, Marian, that I finally found him. I remembered that Geert-Jan had written to you that he’d go and search in the cellars, so I went to take a look. And yes, down there in the basement, I finally found my student, with a candle in his hand, cheerfully chatting away about promising alcoves and dead ends. Ivan was with him, but he was hunting for mice and nastier creatures, and he didn’t seem at all bothered about the treasure.”
“Wasn’t Geert-Jan scared?” asked Marian.
“No,” replied Frans slowly. “Of course, that doesn’t mean that he’s completely fearless. It’s just that damp cellars and dark corridors are the most ordinary things in the world to him.”
And he went on with his story: “Mr Van der Steg the tutor gave his student a good telling-off, but Frans the Red couldn’t bring himself to take him straight to the library. There was a ladder in that cellar, you see, a worn-out r
ope ladder, half nibbled away by the mice. Frans the Red stamped on the ground, and knocked on the wall, and tapped on the ceiling… but all that happened was that some plaster came falling down; there was no chest of jewels hidden away in there. Then he led Geert-Jan, or Geert-Jan led him, through lots of arched vaults, lit only by the flickering candle, accompanied by the black Ivan and by shadows that were even blacker… until they came to a staircase that would lead them back up again. There were many, many stairs; they climbed them slowly and then suddenly both stopped at the same time.
“Right in front of them they saw a pair of legs, long legs, in a grey pair of trousers with sharp creases… They went on climbing. At the top of the stairs, Count Grisenstein stood waiting for them, as still as a statue, his face rigid with anger…”
Frans paused for a moment. “But maybe we just imagined that,” he said, almost apologetically. “When we reached the count, he grabbed me by the arm and said in a low, threatening voice, ‘Whatever possessed you to go wandering around down there? These cellars are highly dangerous. Some parts are ready to collapse.’
“‘But Uncle Gradus,’ said Geert-Jan, ‘you’ve been down there plenty of times yourself – and you even took me with you, just after we moved in.’
“‘I know my way around,’ the count said abruptly. ‘It’s quite unacceptable that your tutor had to go down there looking for you.’ He turned to me and twisted his mouth into a smile. ‘I’m afraid,’ he added, ‘that my nephew has not responded well to your discipline as yet.’
“I promised him that I’d start Geert-Jan’s lessons immediately. In the meantime Geert-Jan ran on up into the room where the stairs came out – which, as it happened, was the Great Banqueting Hall, where I’d never been before. It was a huge room, but it also looked like it was about to come tumbling down.
“It seemed that they were planning to do something about it though, as there were planks, hammers and saws all over the place, and pots of paint, bags of plaster and sacks of cement. There were a couple of ladders too, which, of course, was what Geert-Jan was most interested in. But I grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him to the library. We spent the rest of the afternoon studying, and there’s not much to say about that…”
“What about the count?” asked Marian.
“Count Grisenstein was as pleasant as he could be,” replied Frans.
“The big fat sneaky liar!” exclaimed Maarten and Arie.
Frans agreed with them, although he didn’t think it was wise to say so out loud. Later, after dinner, he’d cautiously asked the count if Geert-Jan could invite a few children to visit on his birthday. The count had firmly refused though, and he hadn’t been at all pleasant about it.
If he only knew, thought Frans, that his nephew is exchanging letters with twenty-five children. All the Children must be your Friends… Friendships can develop at a distance too.
When the bell went, he gave his class Geert-Jan’s letter.
“If there’s anything important in there,” he said, “I hope you’ll let me know.”
But apparently there was nothing important in the letter – or it was all very “confidentual”, because none of the children told Frans anything about it. He also received a letter from Geert-Jan, but in the usual way, by post, with a P.S. from Count Grisenstein. Nephew and uncle invited him to spend the weekend at the House of Stairs, to celebrate Geert-Jan’s eleventh birthday.
On Friday afternoon, Frans asked if anyone in the class wanted to bring in a little something for Geert-Jan, as it was his birthday – a letter or a small present. The children thought that was a great idea, but he almost regretted telling them, as they started to behave really badly. They whispered, nudged one another, giggled, and whispered some more. Unfortunately, he couldn’t make them stay behind after school, as he had something to do at half past three. He wanted to take a present for Geert-Jan himself, of course, and he knew he wouldn’t find what he wanted in the village.
So he cycled into town to buy a wide-brimmed straw hat, the same kind that Roberto had. It took him quite a while to find the right hat, and then he decided to stay in town. It was Friday, after all, so he could finally go back to his evening class.
When he set off for home that evening, he was not in the best of moods. He hadn’t made a very good impression on his teachers – which was understandable, as he hadn’t looked at his books for three weeks. He hadn’t even got his books back yet!
“And I’m worried I’m not going to get them back for a while,” he said to himself. “Mr Thomtidom has probably spirited them away somewhere.”
As he approached a junction with traffic lights, he remembered what the magician had said. Self-important piffle! he thought grumpily, and he braked as the green light turned amber and then red.
A second later, a motor scooter pulled up beside him.
“Hey,” the Biker Boy said. “I know you!”
Frans looked at his mocking smile and calmly replied, “Good evening. I see your scooter’s working again.”
“This is that bloke who believes in ghosts,” said the Biker Boy to the long-haired lad who was sitting behind him, with a guitar under each arm. “You remember?” he said to Frans. “You were meeting your date in that abandoned pub…”
“I remember it very well,” said Frans. “And you and I have met since then too. In another pub, the Thirsty Deer.”
“I never go to the Thirsty Deer,” said the Biker Boy with another sneer. “They don’t even have a jukebox there.”
The red light turned green, and he roared away.
Frans set off on his bike, with the scooter getting farther and farther ahead and finally disappearing from sight.
This Biker Boy business is starting to get on my nerves, he thought. You’d better watch out, Rob or Roberto, or soon you’ll forget which one of the two you are…
The next morning he told his class that he’d had a really bad dream. He couldn’t remember exactly what had happened, but he knew the Biker Boy had crashed into the count’s carriage and so the count had taken Roberto prisoner and locked him up in the cellar beneath the Great Banqueting Hall. He also told them that in his dream Geert-Jan had found the treasure, but it was just a jukebox playing awful music.
Frans was a little disappointed by the children. They hadn’t brought in anything for Geert-Jan except for a thin envelope, which Maarten handed over to him.
“Is that all?” asked Frans.
Maarten replied that yes, that was all, but Kai said in a loud whisper that there was more to come, and Marian almost jumped up out of her seat and told him to be quiet.
Frans looked rather suspiciously at the unruly bunch of children and said he hoped they weren’t planning on getting up to any silly tricks.
“Oh, no, sir,” said Marian. “Miss Rosemary said we mustn’t.”
And I’m sure they’ll obey Miss Rosemary, thought Frans, even though they don’t always listen to me.
Then Arie put his hand up to ask if Frans had a pistol yet.
“No!” said Frans impatiently. “No one at the House of Stairs has a pistol.” Then he banged his fist on the table and started the lesson.
Aunt Wilhelmina also had a present for Geert-Jan, not a thin envelope, but a parcel with a ribbon around it. And just after lunch Jan Tooreloor turned up. He’d brought a large suitcase, which he put down at Frans’s feet.
“For the lad at the House of Stairs,” he said. “A present.”
“My goodness!” said Frans. “What on earth’s in there?”
“It’s a surprise,” replied Tooreloor. “He mustn’t open it until tomorrow. You’ll take it, won’t you?”
“Of course,” said Frans.
“And there’s this too,” said Tooreloor, taking a small white parcel from his pocket. “From Mr Thomtidom. With the message that Geert-Jan must open it today, as soon as he’s alone in his room.”
“Why today?” asked Frans, taking the parcel.
“Because this has to be the
very last present that he receives in his tenth year,” replied Tooreloor. “Look, that’s what Mr Thomtidom’s written on the package.”
“Jan Thomtidom always comes up with something special,” said Aunt Wilhelmina. “No parcel from Rosemary?”
Jan Tooreloor slowly shook his head.
“Oh, I’m sure Rosemary won’t forget the boy,” said Aunt Wilhelmina. “I think she’ll probably go to visit him herself.”
“Will the count let her see him?” asked Frans.
“Of course not,” said Jan Tooreloor. “But she has her ways.”
“How?” asked Frans.
“Don’t look at me,” said Tooreloor. “All I know is she never forgets the child. And she’s certainly not afraid of the count.” He suddenly frowned. “What’s that I hear?” he said. “It’s not my coach, is it?”
“Count Grisenstein’s coach,” Frans corrected him. “It’s coming to fetch me.”
“With that Manus driving it?” Tooreloor said in a menacing growl. “I won’t do it now, because you’ve got so many parcels, but someday soon I’m going to wring Manus’s neck and throw him off the front of the coach, where I should be sitting! You mark my words, because I mean it.”
“Fine,” said Aunt Wilhelmina. “But for now why don’t you help Frans to load his parcels into the coach?”
“No need,” said Frans. “It’s better if Manus doesn’t see that we’re on good terms with each other.”
“That we’re on good terms?” repeated Jan Tooreloor. “It’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
“I mean we’re part of the same conspiracy,” said Frans.
“You wish we were,” said Jan Tooreloor. “I’m part of an entirely different plot… Don’t forget my suitcase,” he added, with a meaningful look on his face.
It took Frans a while to get everything loaded in and sorted out, but finally he was sitting inside the coach with his luggage. Manus cracked the reins. “Giddy up!” he called in a shaky voice.