She would not be apt to see them on the third floor and wonder what they were up to, but
‘Daddy Lew’ was a different kettle of fish altogether. With his study just down the hall from the strange crack, they could count on avoiding his notice — and his curiosity — only if they conducted their investigations while he was away, and that was what Trent’s pointed glance at the clock had meant.
The family had returned to the States a full ten days before Lew was scheduled to begin teaching classes again, but he could no more stay away from the University once he was back within ten miles of it than a fish could live out of water. He had left shortly after noon, with a briefcase crammed full of papers he had collected at various spots of historical interest in England. He said he was going up to file these papers away. Trent thought that meant he’d cram them into one of his desk drawers, then lock his office and go down to the History Department’s Faculty Lounge. There he would drink coffee and gossip with his buddies . . . except, Trent had discovered, when you were a college teacher, people thought you were dumb if you had buddies.
You were supposed to say they were your colleagues. So he was away, and that was good, but he might be back at any time between now and five, and that was bad. Still, they had some time, and Trent was determined they weren’t going to spend it squabbling about who swore what to who.
‘Listen to me, you guys,’ he said, and was gratified to see that they actually were listening, their differences and recriminations forgotten in the excitement of an investigation. They had also been caught by Trent’s inability to explain what Lissa had found. All three of them shared, at least to some extent, Brian’s simple faith in Trent — if Trent was puzzled by something, if Trent thought that something was strange and just possibly amazing, they all thought so.
Laurie spoke for all of them when she said: ‘Just tell us what to do, Trent — we’ll do it.’
‘Okay,’ Trent said. ‘We’ll need some things.’ He took a deep breath and began explaining what they were.
Once they were convened around the crack at the end of the third-floor hallway, Trent held Lissa up so she could shine the beam of a small flashlight — it was the one their mother used to inspect their ears, eyes, and noses when they weren’t feeling well – into the crack. They could all see the metal; it wasn’t shiny enough to throw back a clear reflection of the beam, but it shone silkily just the same. Steel, was Trent’s opinion — steel, or some sort of. alloy.
‘What’s an alloy, Trent?’ Brian asked.
Trent shook his head. He didn’t know exactly. He turned to Laurie and asked her to give him the drill.
Brian and Lissa exchanged an uneasy glance as Laurie passed it over. It had come from the basement workshop, and the basement was the one remaining place in the house, which was their real father’s. Daddy Lew hadn’t been down there a dozen times since he had married Catherine Bradbury. The smaller children knew that as well as Trent and Laurie. They weren’t afraid Daddy Lew would notice someone had been using the drill; it was the holes in the wall outside his study they were worried about. Neither one of them said this out loud, but Trent read it on their troubled faces.
‘Look,’ Trent said, holding the drill out so they could get a good look. ‘This is what they call a needle-point drill bit. See how tiny it is? And since we’re only going to drill behind the pictures, I don’t think we have to worry.’
There were about a dozen framed prints along the third-floor hallway, half of them beyond the study door, on the way to the closet at the end where the suitcases were stored. Most of these were very old (and mostly uninteresting) views of Titusville, where the Bradburys lived.
‘He doesn’t even look at them, let alone behind them,’ Laurie agreed.
Brian touched the tip of the drill with one finger, and then nodded. Lissa watched, then copied both the touch and the nod. If Laurie said something was okay, it probably was; if Trent said so, it almost certainly was; if they both said so, there could be no question.
Laurie took down the picture, which hung closest to the small crack in the plaster and gave it to Brian. Trent drilled. They stood watching him in a tight little circle of three, like infielders encouraging their pitcher at a particularly tense moment of the game.
The drill bit went easily into the wall, and the hole it made was every bit as tiny as promised.
The darker square of wallpaper, which had been revealed when Laurie took the print off its hook, was also encouraging. It suggested that no one had bothered taking the dark line engraving of the Titusville Public Library off its hook for a very long time.
After a dozen turns of the drill’s handle, Trent stopped and reversed, pulling the bit free.
‘Why’d you quit?’ Brian asked.
‘Hit something hard.’
‘More metal?” Lissa asked.
‘I think so. Sure wasn’t wood. Let’s see.’ He shone the light in and cocked his head this way and that before shaking it decisively. ‘My head’s too big. Let’s boost Lissa.’
Laurie and Trent lifted her up and Brian handed her the Pen Lite. Lissa squinted for a time, then said, ‘Just like in the crack I found.’
‘Okay,’ Trent said. ‘Next picture.’
The drill hit metal behind the second, and the third, as well. Behind the fourth — by this time they were quite close to the door of Lew’s study — it went all the way in before Trent pulled it out. This time when she was boosted up, Lissa told them she saw ‘the pink stuff.’
‘Yeah, the insulation I told you about,’ Trent said to Laurie. ‘Let’s try the other side of the hall.’
They had to drill behind four pictures on the east side of the corridor before they struck first wood-lath and then insulation behind the plaster . . . and as they were re-hanging the last picture, they heard the out-of-tune snarl of Lew’s elderly Porsche turning into the driveway.
Brian, who had been in charge of hanging this picture — he could just reach the hook on tiptoe — dropped it. Laurie reached out and grabbed it by the frame on the way down. A moment later she found herself shaking so badly she had to hand the picture to Trent, or she would have dropped it herself.
‘You hang it,’ she said, turning a stricken face to her older brother. ‘I would have dropped it if I’d been thinking about what I was doing. I really would.’
Trent hung the picture, which showed horse-drawn carriages clopping through City Park, and saw it was hanging slightly askew. He reached out to adjust it, then pulled back just before his fingers touched the frame. His sisters and his brother thought he was something like a god; Trent himself was smart enough to know he was only a kid. But even a kid — assuming he was a kid with half a brain — knew that when things like this started to go bad, you ought to leave them alone. If he messed with it anymore, this picture would fall for sure, spraying the floor with broken glass, and somehow Trent knew it.
‘Go!’ he whispered. ‘Downstairs! TV room!’
The back door slammed downstairs as Lew came in.
‘But it’s not straight!’ Lissa protested. ‘Trent, it’s not — ‘
‘Never mind!’ Laurie said. ‘Do what Trent says!’
Trent and Laurie looked at each other, wide-eyed. If Lew went into the kitchen to fix himself a bite to tide himself over until supper, all still might be well. If he didn’t, he would meet Lissa and Brian on the stairs. One look at them and he’d know something was going on. The two younger Bradbury children were old enough to close their mouths, but not their faces.
Brian and Lissa went fast.
Trent and Laurie came behind, more slowly, listening. There was a moment of almost unbearable suspense when the only sounds were the little kids’ footsteps on the stairs, and then Lew bawled up at them from the kitchen: ‘KEEP IT DOWN, CAN’T YOU? YOUR MOTHER’S
TAKING A NAP!’
And if that doesn’t wake her up, Laurie thought, nothing will.
Late that night, as Trent was drowsing off to sleep, Laurie opened the door of his room, came in, and sat down beside him on the bed.
‘You don’t like him, but that’s not all,’ she said.
‘Who-wha?’ Trent asked, peeling a cautious eyelid.
‘Lew,’ she said quietly. ‘You know who I mean, Trent.’