“Are you sending us on a mission?” she asked, her blue eyes shining.
“You see,” Great-Uncle said, looking dreamily at some distant point, “my sister and I would plan. We’d come back from a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art where we’d fallen in love with a painting and we’d say, ‘Van Gogh. Let’s find Van Gogh.’ That was the fun of it, you see? To enter The Treasure Chest and, almost like a scavenger hunt or a puzzle, have to find just the right object to reach that person. That’s the way Phinneas wanted it. He loved games and puzzles, you know,” Great-Uncle Thorne added.
“So we’ve heard,” Maisie muttered.
“It was exciting,” Great-Uncle Thorne said sadly. “It was a challenge.”
Rayne had gone back to chipping the purple nail polish off her fingernails. But Hadley seemed thoughtful.
“You want us to go—” she began.
“To the Congo!” Felix blurted. “Where there’s malaria and cannibals and dangerous natives!”
Once more, Rayne grew excited. “Now that’s an adventure. What do we need to do?”
“He thinks Amy Pickworth is there,” Maisie said.
“I know she’s there,” Great-Uncle Thorne said, pointing a finger at Maisie.
“You want us to find her?” Rayne asked at the very same time that Hadley said, “And do what with her?”
Great-Uncle Thorne leveled his gaze on each of them, one at a time. A chill ran up Felix’s spine when that gaze lingered on him.
“Bring her home,” Great-Uncle Thorne said matter-of-factly.
“But even if we find her, which seems pretty much impossible, she can’t come back with us,” Felix said nervously. “You need your twin with you.”
Great-Uncle Thorne nodded slowly.
Felix held up his hands. “Well then,” he said.
“All I know for certain,” Great-Uncle Thorne said thoughtfully, “is that you need your twin to get there.”
Again, he stared off at some distant place.
Then he looked at them again and his voice grew firm.
“I came back without my twin, didn’t I?” he asked.
Maisie knew that it was a rhetorical question, but she still said, “That’s right, you did.”
“Came back from where?” Hadley asked, trying to keep up.
“New York,” Felix explained. “We all went there, Maisie and me and Great-Uncle Thorne and—”
“And my bullheaded sister,” Great-Uncle Thorne interrupted. “For decades she carried a torch for that nincompoop Harry Houdini—”
“Your sister had a crush on Harry Houdini?” Rayne asked, interested again.
Great-Uncle Thorne banged his walking stick on the floor.
“Irrelevant!” he proclaimed. “All that you need to know is that Amy Pickworth can come back without her twin, just like I returned without that obdurate sister of mine.”
“Obdurate?” Rayne said, losing interest again.
“Oh! Look it up!” Great-Uncle Thorne said dismissively. “We have more to do here than improve your vocabulary.”
While Great-Uncle Thorne shouted, Rayne stepped forward, her palm facing outward as if she was ready at any moment to press that spot on the wall and go up those stairs.
“I’m coming upstairs with you,” Great-Uncle Thorne said quickly. “We’ll survey the objects and find the one that will get you to the Congo.”
“But surely that object is gone,” Felix said. “Phinneas and Amy took it with them to get there in the first place.”
Great-Uncle Thorne shook his head. “They hadn’t given the object to Dr. Livingstone when Amy disappeared,” he said.
“You’re wrong!” Felix said, his head swimming with too much information.
“I’m certain of this.”
Maisie’s face had that deep-in-thought look she got when she was thinking hard.
“Impossible,” she finally said. “Phinneas could not get back if they hadn’t given the object and received a lesson.”
Great-Uncle Thorne’s face twisted with anger.
“You are an idiot!” he said. “That’s why you have lame demon!”
“I thought it was—”
Great-Uncle Thorne pressed the wall, hard. As soon as it opened to reveal the staircase, he marched forward to the stairs, his ebony walking stick tap-tapping as he moved.
At the foot of the stairs he paused to face them.
“We will find the object that Phinneas brought back from that fateful trip to the Congo. You will choose a secondary object to bring along. And if and when things become . . . complicated . . . you will say lame demon three times with your hand on that secondary object and continue your travels elsewhere.”
“Complicated?” Felix asked. “You mean cannibals catching us or—”
“I’m not sure I want to do this,” Hadley said.
“Exactly!” Felix agreed.
“I’m in,” Maisie said quietly.
“Maisie,” Felix pleaded, “let’s discuss this calmly and rationally.”
“I’m in,” she said again, louder this time.
“Maisie,” Felix said, and even though he put on the look that usually softened her, this time she shook her head.