80 Days or Die, Page 5

  Notes on club history, 1916, Clive Stoughton.............Row 3, Box 9

  Volume, bawdy poetry, Festus McFadden.............Incinerated

  Oil painting, Smythe family paddock, Devonshire............. Sold at auction

  “There’s an index in the back.” Wooster took the book, flipped to the end, and said, “Ah, here we go . . .”

  He set the book down, open to a page in the middle. Max didn’t need to ask where the information about the manuscript was. His eyes went right to it.

  Manuscript attributed to Gaston Verne..........................Incinerated

  “My deep regrets, old chap,” Wooster said. “Looks like your manuscript has gone up in smoke.”

  8

  “WE’LL flip a hook in the whale, and hoist it up o’er the rail!” The men in the large room upstairs were singing loudly and out of tune, as Wooster led Alex, Max, and Bitsy up from the basement.

  “Good Lord, lunch is served and the lads are in the parlor singing sea chanteys?” Wooster said with a laugh and a shake of his head.

  Max was barely hearing any of it. As he followed the others up into the meeting room, all he could think about was Evelyn, slumped over. A moment ago, he had been full of hope, but now he smelled cat pee. Which always happened when he was really, really angry.

  Behind him, Alex murmured, “Cheer up, Max. We can keep looking.”

  “Where?” Max asked. “Incinerated means burned.”

  They walked through the dark meeting room into the parlor, where three club members had gathered around Queasly. The old man was leaning forward over a glass table. The men were trying to lift him to his feet, but he was batting them away, his hands trembling as he reached for a pencil.

  “What on earth are you chaps doing?” Wooster called out.

  “Haw! The question is, what’s Queasly doing?” one of the men bellowed. “We’re just trying to get him to lunch so he doesn’t wither away!”

  But Queasly was now writing something on a napkin, his hands shaking. The men seemed to be finding this incredibly funny, shouting at the same time:

  “Struck by inspiration, is he?”

  “Writing a love poem to his dear, departed Dolores?”

  “A novel, I think!”

  “Good God, if that’s the case we’ll be here until we’re all as old as he is!”

  With a bemused smile, Wooster turned to Max, Alex, and Bitsy. “Well, you have a flavor of our jolly life here. All in good fun. So sorry we weren’t able to get you what you need.”

  But Bitsy was heading straight into the parlor, her brow tightly furrowed. “Oh honestly, you call yourselves gentlemen? Stop teasing that man like he’s some sort of trained monkey!”

  The men backed away uncomfortably. Queasly looked up at Bitsy, his gray eyes magnified by thick glasses. Lifting the note from the table, he held it out toward her. The men chimed in once more:

  “He always had an eye for a pretty lass, the old dog!”

  “A proposal of marriage, I’ll wager!”

  “Lucky girl!”

  As they all burst out laughing again, Bitsy took the note from the old man. She gave it a quick look, then bowed slightly. “Thank you for this, Mr. Queasly. I am sorry you are not respected by these men who claim to be your friends. And thank you, Mr. Wooster, for your help.”

  It looked like Queasly was nodding, but it was hard to tell.

  Max let out a deep exhalation as they exited to the sidewalk. The clouds were beginning to lift, revealing weak columns of light from the midday sun. As they trudged wearily to the corner, where the car was parked, Alex looked over her shoulder at the stately brick club building. “You were awesome, Bitsy,” she murmured.

  “What a curious place,” Bitsy remarked. “They burn their important documents, and they are unpleasant to their elders. Do you suppose they would be that way if the club admitted women?”

  “No way,” Alex said.

  “What’s the note say?” Max asked.

  “Nothing,” Bitsy said, opening up the napkin. “Appears to be artwork. Like a child. That dear, dear old man. He can barely move his fingers.”

  “Is that supposed to be a portrait of you?” Alex asked.

  “It looks like a scarecrow with indigestion,” Max remarked.

  “Lovely.” Bitsy crumpled up the napkin and threw it into a trash basket on the street corner. “So then, I assume you’ll be going back to the States?”

  Max looked at Alex. His mood was crashing hard. He was surprised at how heartbroken he felt. As much of a long shot as it was, he felt like he was letting Evelyn down. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “If you don’t need to leave in a hurry,” Bitsy said, “won’t you take lunch with Mummy and me? She is diabetic so she must eat soon.”

  “Max?” Alex said.

  But Max was staring at the little note in the trash can. He couldn’t get Queasly out of his mind. The guy was trying so hard. Why?

  “Don’t you think it’s weird that we’ve been in London for one day, and two old guys randomly slipped us messages?” he asked.

  Alex shrugged. “Weird is the new normal for our lives.”

  Bitsy’s phone chimed, and she glanced down at the screen. “It’s Mummy,” she said. “Wondering where I went with the car. I can tell she’s cross. Come. I insist you stay for lunch, or perhaps tea. Or both! If only to blunt the impact of Mummy’s wrath.”

  Max slid into the back seat. Once again, Alex was in front. He stared out the window as the car wound its way through streets lined with neat brick buildings. Soon they’d be eating lunch and then boarding the plane back to the States.

  Max took out his phone and sent a text to his dad and mom.

  Max

  london is cool how is evelyn doing?

  In a moment his dad texted back:

  Dad

  Still in the hospital. Holding steady.

  Max

  what does steady mean? what do drs say?

  Dad

  Well. It’s not good news, Max.

  Max

  i can take it.

  Dad

  They’re giving her 11 to 12 weeks.

  Max

  to live???????

  Max didn’t wait for the answer. He snapped the phone off.

  “What happened?” Alex asked, turning from the front seat.

  “Evelyn is worse. The doctors say she only has eleven to twelve weeks to live,” Max said.

  “What?”

  Max swallowed. He was smelling skunk and fish and cat pee and ham, and the sadness, fear, anger, and confusion felt like it was going to smother him, so he smelled sweaty feet too.

  Eleven to twelve weeks.

  Which was, more or less, eighty days.

  9

  MAX felt numb as Bitsy’s car wound its way through the London streets. “Maybe it’s a sign,” he said.

  “That it’s eighty days?” Alex said gently, turning around. “I thought you believed in facts, Max. Not omens.”

  Max nodded. “Yeah.”

  “I mean, if we had a lead, somewhere to start, a reason to keep looking, we could stay,” Alex pointed out. “But . . .”

  Her voice trailed off, and Max looked through the car window. They passed a shabby older man sitting on a park bench. He was feeding a flock of pigeons with crumbs from a thick plastic bag marked ST. DUNSTAN HOUSE OF WELCOME. For a moment Max thought it might be the old guy with the droopy eye, Nigel. But the clothes were much more threadbare, the face thinner and more rugged.

  The thought of Nigel reminded him of the strange note. He fished it out and gave it another look.

  “That thing again?” Alex said, looking over her shoulder. “Max, it’s just silliness.”

  “If it’s a code, I want to solve it,” Max said. “I thought you liked codes.”

  “You just had some sad news,” Bitsy reminded Alex. “This could take your mind off it.”

  “Yeah, guess so.” Alex sighed and unbuckled her belt. She swung her leg i
nto the space between the front seats, and then squeezed into the back next to Max and glanced at the message for a few moments. “Well, there’s an apostrophe followed by an R. Lots of words end in apostrophe-s, like ‘That’s cool.’ So maybe we should substitute S for R.”

  Max nodded. “S is one letter after R in the alphabet. That’s got to be it. We substitute the next letter over, for all of them!”

  “So how would you solve Z?” Alex asked.

  “There is no Z in the message,” Max said. “But if there was, it would become an A. You’d go to the beginning.”

  He carefully wrote out the top line with all the substituted letters:

  GJSTZN’S LVST LVUPS

  “That’s even worse,” Alex groaned.

  “You know, words end in apostrophe-t also,” Bitsy piped up, “like ‘I can’t stand asparagus.’ Also apostrophe-d—‘Where’d you get that coat?’”

  “OK . . . if apostrophe-R becomes apostrophe-T, that’s two letters over,” Max said, counting in his head, “and if it becomes apostrophe-D, that’s . . . fourteen letters back.”

  He tried it both ways:

  go over 2 letters for each —

  HKTUAO’T MWTU MWVQT

  go back 14 letters for each —

  RUDEKY’D WGDE WGFAD

  “Like I thought,” Alex said. “The guy is a nut job.”

  But Max was staring at the rest of the message. “There’s stuff below the letters. It says ‘V minus 2 (why yes),’ then ‘C plus 1.’”

  “Plus and minus . . .” Alex said. “That sounds like what we’ve just been doing. But it turned out wrong.”

  “So maybe you substitute only the Vs and Cs?” Bitsy guessed. “Backward two with each V and forward one with each C?”

  “Look at that top line,” Max said. “It has no V or C in it. I’m thinking V and C might stand for something.”

  “‘Very’ and ‘Crazy,’” Alex replied.

  “Or something to do with words?” Bitsy said. “V could mean ‘Verb.’ And C . . . um . . .”

  “‘Cadjectives?’” Alex said.

  Max shook his head. “Or letters. V could be ‘Vowels,’ C ‘Consonants.’”

  “So . . . V minus two would mean ‘go two vowels back in the alphabet,’” Alex said.

  “It says ‘why yes’!” Max blurted. “That’s another clue. Get it?”

  “Actually, no.”

  “It’s not ‘why’—it’s the letter Y!” Max said. “Y can be considered a vowel or a consonant. So why, yes means ‘yes, Y is a vowel’!”

  “Brilliant!” Bitsy exclaimed, braking hard for a red light.

  “We need to stay alive for this,” Alex said.

  “OK, so V minus two . . . take each vowel and go two vowels to the left,” Max said softly. “And we have AEIOUY to work with. So, like, O would be E . . .”

  “And C plus one means for each consonant we go forward one,” Alex said. “Ucchhh! I think we need to write out a substitution key.”

  She quickly wrote out what each letter would be:

  vowels:

  a e i o u y =

  u y a e i o

  consonants:

  b c d f g h j k l m n p q r s t v w x z =

  c d f g h j k l m n p q r s t v w x z b

  Carefully Max substituted each letter in Nigel’s note:

  FIRSYM’R KURS KUTOR

  GASTON’S LIST LIVES

  Alex let out a scream.

  Bitsy slammed on the brakes, nearly colliding with a parked car. “Good God, what is it?”

  Max could barely sit. He was bouncing on the seat. “The list—the one they burned—it exists!”

  “Really?” Bitsy turned. “We have to find that fellow then—Nigel.”

  “No,” Max said, a thought churning up in his head. “Not yet. We have to get back to the Reform Club.”

  “What?” Alex said.

  “Just drive!” Max commanded. “Now!”

  Bitsy’s car squealed to a stop in front of the club, causing a poodle on a leash to nearly leap a foot in the air.

  “Sorry,” Max said as he pushed open the car door.

  He ran to the trash can and reached in, as the poodle sped off down the block with its owner close behind.

  “Dear boy, will you explain yourself?” Bitsy asked.

  Max pulled out a fistful of papers, orange rinds, and candy wrappers. Shaking loose the debris, he held up a wilted, stained napkin. “The note Queasly gave us.”

  “Ew, Max,” Alex said. “Just ew.”

  “Think about the facts,” Max said, pacing. “Fact: this guy Nigel knew we were going to be at the funeral. He’s related to us—well, OK, we don’t know if that’s a fact. Anyway, somehow he has this information about Gaston’s book—”

  “So maybe Gaston is his ancestor,” Alex said, “the way Jules Verne is ours!”

  Max nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking. So fact: he gives us the note, but we don’t know what it means. Another fact: we go to the actual place where Jules Verne made the deal to produce two books, his novel and Gaston’s nonfiction book about the secret, real cure. To keep that book secure, the two Vernes keep it away from the club but tease them with a list—which has info about the ingredients for this formula. Fact: because no one can read it, the club guys get angry and throw it into their files—and years later, old Queasly burns it. But wait—the note from Nigel says the list still exists. Which means someone rescued it . . .” Max grinned. “And there’s only one person that someone could be.”

  If Max had had popcorn, Alex’s and Bitsy’s open mouths would have been perfect targets.

  “Queasly . . .” Bitsy said.

  “Right,” Alex said. “He knew we were curious about Verne. He saw us go to the basement with Wooster. And he saw us coming back up all disappointed. So he must have figured that Wooster told us about the incineration.”

  “And he got all agitated,” Bitsy said. “But not because I was so incredibly beautiful. Because he had something to tell us!”

  “Bingo,” Max said, holding up the napkin. “So he wrote this note.”

  “Bingo,” Bitsy said with a nod.

  “That’s Alex’s word,” Max said. “Meaning ‘voilà.’”

  They gathered around to look at the note.

  “Everything you said makes sense,” Bitsy said. “But I don’t understand what this mess could possibly mean.”

  “It’s got to mean something,” Max said. “Maybe . . . ‘the Gaston manuscript is hidden inside a scarecrow’?”

  “He’s old,” Alex said. “Like, old old. You saw the way his hands shook. Maybe this isn’t a drawing. Maybe he was trying to write something . . . .”

  She turned the napkin sideways and then upside down.

  “Wait,” Max said. “That looks like letters and numbers.”

  “He needs to take handwriting lessons from Uncle Nigel,” Bitsy said.

  “I’m thinking that top line is a word,” Max offered. “The swoop looked like a C, then an L . . . A . . .”

  “Looks like an X tucked underneath, then an O . . . N . . .” Alex said.

  “Claxon?” Bitsy piped up. “That’s the name of a street.”

  “And those squiggles underneath it,” Alex said. “They look like numbers—two, three, nine, seven. And a group in the middle—three, six, one.”

  “And then way at the bottom, two, four, zero, one, three,” Max added.

  Alex smiled. “He signed it at the bottom, with the letter Q. That’s cute.”

  “I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but I would say the address is either 361 or 2397 or 24013 Claxon . . .” Bitsy said, shaking her head. “But no one in the Reform Club would be caught dead in the neighborhood of Claxon Street. Mummy would kill me if she knew I even thought of going there.”

  But Max was already checking his GPS. “The address 2397 Claxon is the only one that exists, and it’s a little over a mile away,” he said. “I can walk.”

  Bitsy grabbed his arm. “I will not be respo
nsible for your early demise. Let me text Mummy we’ll be late.”

  As she took out her phone, Alex ran to the car and slipped into the front passenger seat. That meant Max had to ride in back, but this time he didn’t mind. “Woo-hoo!” he screamed, punching his fist into the air.

  “Mummy, it’s very important,” Bitsy was saying softly into the phone. “I know you prefer voice to text, so I thought I’d . . . yes, it has to do with an important matter . . . I will tell you later . . . I think you will be pleased . . .”

  Max stuck the napkin into his pocket. But as he ran around the back of the Volvo, he stopped short.

  The sun, struggling to appear among the clouds, cast a weak beam of light against an ornament on the trunk of the car. Its gold-and-black logo glinted dully at him.

  It was a sleekly designed NE.

  Niemand Enterprises.

  10

  MAX had worked hard his whole life to express himself in words, but expressing himself in grunts and eye rolls and whistles and shoulder taps was much harder.

  “Max, what are you trying to tell me?” Alex said, turning from the front seat to look at him.

  He angled his body, darting his eyes toward the trunk. All he could think about were Alex’s words: Basile worked for you-know-who. That puts the Benthams one degree of separation from him . . . . Let’s keep our eyes and ears open . . . .

  All he needed was his eyes. The last time Max had seen the Niemand Enterprises symbol was on the side of a submarine—right before Niemand had kidnapped them.

  Alex had been right not to trust Bitsy. “Hmmm . . .” he mumbled. “N . . . E . . .”

  “Any what?”

  “Hmm hmmm . . . logo . . . logo . . . trunk . . .”

  “What’s he saying?” Bitsy asked.

  “Nnnnn . . . eeeeeee!” Max said.

  “Please excuse my cousin,” Alex said. “He has unique ways of showing his excitement.”

  This was hopeless. Max turned to Bitsy and blurted, “Where are you taking us?”

  “You already know where I’m taking you,” Bitsy said with a confused laugh, as she squinted through the windshield. “To 2397 Claxon. And we’re almost there . . . .”