“Okay, here’s the good news.” Shep scanned the floor rapidly. “I think I only see two.”
“You think?” Nellie asked, leaping away from one hairy specimen.
The funnel-web spider had scurried in front of the exit. It sat there for a moment, raising its hairy legs and tentatively exploring its new surroundings. The other funnel-web walked along the wall, and they backed away from it.
“Okay,” Shep said, scanning the spiders as he kept his eyes on the funnel-webs. “Looks like there are only two funnel-webs, but there are a few red-backs. Not deadly, but they can give a nasty bite. We’re going to have to get out of here. But no worries. We’ll just—”
With a soft thump, another creature landed in the dust. The snake curled around and raised its head.
They heard Isabel’s laugh come down through the shaft. “Yoo-hoo!” she said. “Thought you might be lonesome down there. We sent you some pets!”
Dan swallowed. “Please don’t tell me that’s what I think it is….”
“Taipan,” Shep breathed. “The most …”
“… poisonous snake in the world,” Dan finished.
CHAPTER 17
The snake slithered across the small room. Dan didn’t think it looked happy about falling forty feet onto the floor.
“Don’t panic. Just let it go about its business,” Shep said in a whisper.
“I wouldn’t dream of interfering,” Nellie said, backing away.
“In its venom is a neurotoxin that can cause paralysis,” Dan said. “But it also contains a myotoxin. Which means it can break down your muscle tissue …”
“We really don’t need the details,” Nellie said. “Can’t we condense it to — don’t let it bite ya?”
The orange-brown snake made its way slowly toward the exit to the main tunnel. Its tongue flicked out and in. It must have been seven feet long. They held their breath as its head rose. But it just curled up and rested on the mine floor. They’d have to step over it in order to get out.
Shep reached out and picked up a hammer. “It’ll move eventually. We can wait.”
Dan felt the familiar squeezing in his chest. His breath came out in a wheeze. He coughed, and Amy shot him a concerned look. “You okay?”
“Okay.” He could barely get the word out.
“Dan! Your inhaler!” Nellie’s voice was urgent. “It’s in your pocket.”
He reached into his pocket. Stuffed in there was the packaging from a candy bar, a cool rock he’d found in Shep’s garden, and a chunk of granola bar he was saving for later. He tugged, and the inhaler popped out, flew in the air, and landed on the mine floor. It rolled toward the snake.
Everyone’s heart seemed to stop. The only sound was Dan’s labored breath.
The inhaler stopped rolling just inches from the taipan.
Dan’s wheezing got worse, and his hands flew to his chest.
“I’ll get it,” Nellie said.
“No.” Shep’s voice was quiet but rang with authority, and he was already moving. He kept the hammer cocked into position in case the snake struck. Shep walked closer. The snake’s tongue flickered. Swiftly, Shep kicked the inhaler back toward Nellie. Then he jumped back as the snake moved. It slithered another inch or two, then stopped. Amy let out a shaky breath.
Nellie knocked a spider off the inhaler with her shoe. Quickly, she handed it to Dan.
He felt his lungs open. The rattling breathing eased. But his chest still felt tight. He still struggled. This was a bad one. There was so much dust in the air, and it wasn’t helping his nerves to be in a cave full of poisonous creatures. He leaned over as black spots swarmed in his vision. Panic makes it worse, he told himself.
“Just keep breathing, nice and slow, Dan-o,” Nellie said. She turned to Shep.
“We’ve got to get Dan out of here. He needs medical attention.”
Dan was scared that he didn’t have the breath to say I’m okay.
A spider crawled up Amy’s sneaker, and she yelped and jumped away.
“It’s all right, it’s not poisonous,” Shep told her. He called over to Nellie. “Get the toolbox. Careful, make sure there’s nothing crawling in there.”
Gingerly, Nellie picked up the toolbox. She handed it to Shep.
“Let’s pay Ken a surprise visit,” Shep said. “We just have to make a new door. Hang in there, Dan.” He swung at the wall with the hammer. A chunk fell off onto the floor.
“Hand me a hammer,” Nellie said. “I’ll help.”
“You two, keep your eyes on the taipan and the spiders,” Shep said. “If they move this way, tell me.”
He bashed on the wall and it splintered into chunks. Nellie swung with powerful strokes. Within a few minutes, they had cleared a hole in the wall big enough to step through. Dan went first, and then one by one, they climbed into Ken’s closet.
Dan sat on the floor, struggling to breathe.
“He needs a doctor,” Nellie said anxiously.
“Call Jeff and tell him it’s an emergency,” Shep said. “And then tell him to call the police.”
By the time they reached the doctor, Dan was already feeling better. He was given a checkup and a warning to stay out of the opal mines. Dan agreed immediately.
“That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say ‘yes, sir’ to an authority figure and mean it,” Nellie said with a grin as they got back into Ken’s car. She slung an arm around his shoulders and even kissed the top of his head, but Dan didn’t mind. “Don’t scare me like that again, dude,” she said. “Or else.”
“Yeah,” Amy added. “Maybe we should leave mines off our itinerary for awhile.” She said the words lightly, but she still felt shaky from seeing her brother look so pale and sick.
Ken wasn’t happy when he took a peek in his spare room and found out he’d lost a wall in the closet. Not to mention that a number of deadly creatures lay on the other side. With the help of some experts in Coober Pedy, the snake and the spiders were trapped and taken away. The police asked questions, but Dan and Amy had no answers. Shep couldn’t seem to lose his worried frown. Finally, Jeff and Shep volunteered to take Ken down to the pub in order to calm him down.
It had been one long day. But Amy was itching to research the initials they’d found on the leather envelope. After a quick dinner, she fired up Dan’s laptop.
“Okay,” she said, her fingers poised over the keys. “What do we search for? Plugging in the letters RCH is going to get us exactly nowhere.”
“I think we should figure that the C maybe stands for Cahill?” Dan suggested.
Amy nodded. “I was thinking the same thing. And if we can place him in Sydney in 1896, let’s say he was at least in his twenties? So that means he was born somewhere around …”
“The 1870s,” Dan said.
Amy opened a search engine. “Okay. Let’s start with Robert Cahill something … just in case Bob was his real name. I’ll try … Robert Cahill with Sydney and 1890.” Amy groaned as a long list of hits popped up. “Nothing looks promising,” she murmured.
“Try ‘Darwin,’ ” Dan suggested. “It’s a smaller city.”
“Especially back then,” Amy agreed.
Amy plugged in “Robert Cahill,” “1890s,” and “Darwin.” Another stream of information came up. She read down the list. “This isn’t working, I’m getting all these references to Charles Darwin … wait a second …” Suddenly, Amy sat up straight. “This has got to be it! I have his name! It’s—”
CHAPTER 18
“Robert Cahill Henderson,” Isabel repeated into the cell phone. “Got it.”
She turned around to talk to the others in the backseat. They’d left Coober Pedy at high speed, but she’d pulled off the road in order to take the call she’d been waiting for.
“It’s about time somebody did something right. The Lucian stronghold used their mother computer to analyze all known Ekaterinas from 1840 to 1900. The computer had a match for Coober Pedy and Cahill. Apparently, even mute crazy
fools have to use their real name on a mining claim. Robert Cahill Henderson is our man.”
“So where do we go next?” Natalie asked, flipping her long silky hair over her shoulder. “I hope it’s someplace with good shopping. Dubai?” she asked hopefully.
“Jakarta,” her mother said.
“Where is that?” Natalie said, crashing back against the seat. “It doesn’t sound glamorous.”
“Why am I paying for your education?” Isabel asked. “Jakarta is on Java. Henderson took passage from there on a ship called the Lady Anne to Sydney in 1883.” Isabel eyed Irina. “What’s your problemski, comrade? Are you worried about little Dan and Amy? They seem to have nine lives. They survived. A little scare will keep them on their toes.”
Irina said nothing. At her feet was the empty jar and box that the Fixer had delivered to Isabel. Isabel had whistled as she’d carried it herself to the private plane she’d hired to take them to Coober Pedy. She’d also arranged for a Hummer to be driven up from Adelaide.
Irina hadn’t known what was in the box until Isabel had opened it. Isabel had smiled as she shook out the jar of deadly spiders. She’d planned on releasing them into the Cahills’ hotel room, but this was better still. Right down the shaft onto their heads! Isabel had also handled the snake easily. Not a drop of perspiration on her brow as she flipped the latch and grabbed him from behind, wearing the heavy gloves. She had enjoyed it. Enjoyed being close to so much deadly terror.
“I want you to keep track of the Cahill brats while I take Ian and Natalie with me. Report in on their movements. If by some slim chance they’re on their way to Java, delay them. I’m tired of them in my hair.”
“And then?” Irina asked.
“And then what?” Isabel asked irritably. She was checking her lipstick in the rearview mirror, and she tilted it to look at Irina.
“They aren’t going away for long,” Irina said. “We have seen their tenacity. What are your ultimate plans for them?”
Isabel shrugged. “I haven’t thought that far ahead. I’m concentrating on this clue. We could even find all thirty-nine clues — can you imagine that, children? — because we’re almost one hundred percent sure that Robert Cahill Henderson had most, if not all, of them. Amy and Dan will be immaterial. They’ll be dust. Not worth dealing with.” Isabel played with the gold charms on her bracelet, then turned her attention to her fingernails.
Irina watched Isabel’s careless indifference, as though her manicure was the most important thing in the world. She knew Isabel too well and for too long. It was true she cared deeply about nail polish. But she also cared deeply about getting rid of dust.
Isabel had used some of her best tricks to scare them away. Soon she would unleash her rage. Irina could feel it building.
This has been a long road, she thought. Now, I can finally see the end.
CHAPTER 19
“Robert Cahill Henderson was a brilliant chemist,” Amy said, reading rapidly. “He was also engaged to a cousin of Queen Victoria. He was a champion of Darwin’s theories. That’s why the search engine came up with so many hits. This is fascinating….”
“Yeah. Wake me up when it’s over,” Dan said. He lay stretched out on one of the twin beds in Ken’s spare room. He glanced over at the closet. “Are we sure they caught the snake?”
“We’re sure. Anyway, one day he suddenly broke his engagement — which was a huge deal in those days — and took off for the South Seas. He said he was going to do further study on Darwin’s theories. But he wasn’t a naturalist, he was a chemist,” Amy added thoughtfully. “So that’s strange.”
“Whatevs,” Dan said with a yawn. “When does the fascinating part come?”
“He made his way around the islands of Indonesia until settling on one to conduct experiments. He was believed to have perished in the eruption of Krakatau in 1883.”
“Krak-a-wa?”
“Krakatau,” Amy said. “It was a huge volcanic explosion. Actually, a series of explosions. The mountain basically imploded, and then came these huge tsunamis that killed about thirty-six thousand people. They heard the noise of the final explosion all the way in Australia. The dust cloud that came afterward gave spectacular sunsets even in the United States.”
“Now you’re getting to the cool part.”
“That’s it! The upside-down ice cream cone!” Amy said excitedly. “It was a volcano! He was drawing Krakatau. But why did he suddenly leave his fiancée and go to Indonesia? There has to be a reason.”
“Sure,” Dan said. “He was one smart dude. Get married or go lie on a beach. No contest. Even with the volcano, the dude was ahead.”
“So he must have been in the vicinity of Krakatau when it blew. He barely escaped with his life,” Amy said. “He got to Sydney somehow. And Cahills and Madrigals have been looking for him ever since. Why?”
If you found something, it belongs to all of us. If you keep it, you are thieves. Simple as that.
It was the strangest thing. Dan’s face was in front of her, but she had been gone, for just a moment. Standing in her nightgown, listening to the grown-ups.
“Earth to Amy,” Dan said.
She didn’t fall asleep until the people left. She heard the front door shut. She looked out to make sure they were really gone. But they stood in a little knot right under her window. She raised it slightly so she could look at them again. All she could see was the top of their heads.
“Get some nerve,” the beautiful lady said. “We have our answer. They traced him to Australia. This has to be taken care of tonight.”
Her fault.
Her fault.
“Amy? You’re wigging.” Dan peered at her. “Seriously, are you okay?”
She looked at her brother. At his pale face, the way he was worried about her but trying not to be. The asthma attack had taken so much out of him, but he was pretending it hadn’t. She could see the exhaustion in the dark circles under his eyes.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“So, what’s next, space shot?” Dan asked. “Back to Sydney?”
She cleared her throat. Her voice sounded rusty to her ears. “Darwin. We have to keep following their footsteps.”
On the plane the next morning, Amy settled back into the seat and opened the biography of Amelia Earhart she’d borrowed from Shep. She didn’t know what she was looking for, so she leafed through the book, reading various passages, while Nellie zoned out with her earbuds and Dan made his way through a package of chicken-flavored potato crisps. A good night’s sleep had restored him to his usual ravenous self.
“Dan, listen to this,” she called. “In 1935, when Amelia was in Hawaii, she consulted with a noted volcanologist!”
“Fascinating!” Dan said, ripping open a Violet Crumble.
“Don’t you see? She could have been gathering information about Krakatau, even then,” Amy said.
Dan closed his eyes and gave a huge pretend snore. Amy sighed and took out the pages she’d downloaded from the Internet and printed out on Ken’s printer. She read through accounts of the original explosion. Occasionally, she’d read out an interesting fact to Dan, even though he had taken all his wrappers, balled them up, and was pretending to shoot baskets with them. Then she read a story that made her sit up. She read it slowly again. “Dan!”
“Swish! Another three-pointer!”
Amy threw a pillow at him. “DAN! Listen to this. During the day of the eruption, a ship heading for Batavia — that was the name for Jakarta then — got into trouble. They ran into this huge cloud of ash, and then all this pumice — volcanic rock — started to rain on the deck. So the captain pulled into a harbor miles away. They never made it to port, they had to turn around. But get this — the cargo was wolfram.”
Dan sat up straight. “Wolfram? That’s tungsten, one of the clues.”
“Not only that, the captain mentions that they had all these myrrh plants on deck. And the pumice and ash was raining down, so he had to order the crew to take it al
l below. What are the odds of a ship carrying both tungsten and myrrh?”
“They were bringing clues. Probably to Henderson, right?”
“It must have been! He was assembling clues!” Amy cried. “That’s it! He was a scientist, so he was working on some kind of formula. Maybe that’s why trying to find him is so crucial — why all the branches are looking. He set up some sort of lab….” Amy smacked her chair. “On Krakatau! That’s it! He had to order stuff to be delivered. And then when Krakatau blew … the lab was destroyed. He must have gotten caught in the tsunami … but he survived.”
“So the only thing left … was in his head,” Dan said. “And he was nuts.”
Amy nodded, remembering the crazy obsessive writing in the mine. “I bet we’re right that he was an Ekat. He attacked Mark Twain, so he can’t be a Janus. And Isabel doesn’t seem to know much about him, so he can’t be a Lucian. He sure didn’t look like a Tomas.”
Dan frowned. “We know that a Lucian — Constantine of Russia — had found most of the clues early in the nineteenth century. It seems like two of the branches were getting pretty close back then.”
Amy tapped the papers. “You know what else is in here? The island of Java is part of this whole area of volcanoes in the Pacific called the Ring of Fire. RCH wasn’t talking about opals. He was talking about Java. That’s where we have to go next!”
Nellie took over the piloting and Shep came back to stretch out in one of the seats. He blinked when Amy and Dan mentioned Jakarta.
“I said I’d do anything for you, and I will, but my plane doesn’t have the range,” he said. “I’d guess it’s about sixteen or seventeen hundred miles. You’ll be better with a commercial flight. Plenty of those from Darwin. I’ve got a satellite phone — I can set you up right from here.” Shep hesitated. “I trust Nellie to take care of you. But is there any chance you can pass on Java? Danger seems to be tailing you guys — that, or some incredible bad luck. You could hang out with me for awhile. Not that I’m a father figure or anything … just a surfing bum. Can’t you not do … whatever it is that you won’t tell me you’re doing?”