Spell of the Sorcerer's Skull Page 8

  Johnny and Fergie followed Father Higgins out of the cabin, and they all climbed back into the big black Olds. With a shuddering, grinding sound the ferryboat eased itself into its berth between two rows of pilings. Ropes were passed around posts, and then the iron tailgate came clattering down. Father Higgins's car rolled onto the dock and down the winding two-lane road that led into the village of Vinalhaven. They drove down the main street of the picturesque little fishing town, took a sharp right onto a narrow dirt road, and before long they were pulling into the driveway of a small clapboard house that was next to a canal. The side porch of the house was built over the canal and stood on slime-coated pilings. A weathered signboard on the roof of the front porch said Lobster Pot Inn. In front of the sign, on the weathered shingles, lay a real lobster pot, which is a humped cage made of slats with a fishnet lining inside.

  Johnny, Fergie, and Father Higgins lugged their suitcases inside, and the owner showed them to their rooms. After they had gotten washed up, they all sat down to a late supper of lobster rolls and cole slaw. The boys had cream soda to drink, and Father Higgins had a Budweiser. Johnny ate silently. His thoughts were on the scarecrow—or whatever it was—that he had seen and on the tiny skull that he had pitched overboard. He had seen the scarecrow right after he got rid of the skull—had he seen the scarecrow because he threw the skull away? Oh well, he thought wearily, at least I got rid of the disgusting thing! If it's evil, it can go on being evil down on the bottom of the ocean. It won't bother me anymore.

  The next morning, at breakfast, Father Higgins talked with the boys about the second part of the Saint Anthony clue and his reasons for wanting to get inside Mr. Finnick's clock museum.

  "As I told John here," Father Higgins said between sips of coffee, "the quotation 'a great reckoning in a little room' comes from Shakespeare's As You Like It. A 'reckoning,' in Shakespeare's time, meant a bill, like a restaurant bill, and the whole quote refers to a murder case that must've been the talk of London back in those days. The playwright Christopher Marlowe got stabbed to death in a drunken argument about a bill in a little bitty back room in a tavern. And now you're going to ask, 'What does this have to do with the professor's disappearance?' I don't know—not yet, anyway. But the 'little room' just has to be the little dollhouse room in that weird clock the professor's father made. The reckoning might be a miniature bill, and maybe on the back of it there's a map that'll lead us to where the professor's being held prisoner. All I know is, we've got to take our leads where we find them, so when you fellas finish stuffing your faces, we'll be off. Okay?"

  Soon the three travelers had finished eating, so they hiked on over to Mr. Herman Finnick's clock museum. The museum turned out to be a large purple Victorian house covered with lacy iron trimmings and fancy wooden doodads. The house had just been freshly painted, and the lawn was carefully trimmed. A neat border of whitewashed rocks followed the sidewalk up to the ornate front door. Father Higgins stepped forward and pushed the door bell. After a short pause the heavy door rattled open, and there stood Mr. Fennick—short, sixtyish, and prissy-looking, with a pencil-thin gray mustache and a disapproving frown on his face. He was wearing a blue denim apron, and in one hand he held a small can of all-purpose machine oil.

  Mr. Finnick glanced at the boys and Father Higgins. He seemed a bit frightened, as if he expected them to leap at him and start pummeling him with their fists.

  "Yes? What is it?" he snapped nervously.

  Father Higgins stepped forward. "Hem! We've come to tour your clock museum, Mr. Finnick. We're especially interested in seeing... "

  Mr. Finnick gave Father Higgins his sourest grimace. "Museum's not open till Memorial Day," he snapped. "Come back then, and I'll give you the complete tour." And he started to close the door.

  But Father Higgins was not going to be shut out that easily. He put his large meaty hand on the door to keep it from closing. "I'm afraid there's been a misunderstanding," he said with a threatening hint in his voice and a glower on his face. "I'm the Father Thomas Higgins who wrote you from Duston Heights, Massachusetts, and asked if you'd give us a special tour. You said it'd be okay, don't you remember?"

  A light dawned in Mr. Finnick's eyes, and a wintry thin smile creased his face. "Ah, yes. I remember now. You weren't wearing your clericals, so naturally I didn't—hrumph!—well, you understand. Please come this way. The tour fee is fifty cents apiece, by the way, payable in advance."

  Mr. Finnick held out his thin, well-washed hand, and Father Higgins put a dollar and fifty cents into it. Then the three travelers followed the museum's owner into a vast entry hall that smelled of varnish, Roman Cleanser, and Murphy Oil Soap. The place was immaculate. The woodwork glistened, and the rugs had been freshly shampooed. Everywhere, on shelves and tables and hanging on the walls, were clocks. Tall ones, short ones, spring wound or weight driven. Seth Thomases and Waterbury eight-days and clocks made by all three of the Willard Brothers of Grafton, Massachusetts. Four grandfather clocks stood in a row by the foot of the main staircase—they looked like an overdignified and gloomy welcoming committee. The air was filled with a loud, chaotic storm of ticking, and as he ambled along through the rooms, Johnny couldn't help wondering if Mr. Finnick was annoyed by the fact that the clocks didn't all go tick and then tock at the same time. This thought made Johnny laugh suddenly, and Mr. Finnick turned and glanced at him unpleasantly.

  "What's so funny, young man?" he rasped.

  Johnny blushed. "It's, uh... it's nothing, sir. I... I just thought of a joke."

  "Did you indeed?" said Mr. Finnick coldly. "Tell us, and then we all can laugh."

  Father Higgins glowered down at Mr. Finnick. He was getting to like this fussy little man less and less. "Uh, Mr. Finnick?" he rumbled. "I wonder if we might see the Childermass clock. That's what we came here to see, after all. We're not especially, uh, clock fanciers, but my young friend John here has a friend who's a member of the Childermass family, and so this particular clock has sort of a... a sentimental meaning for him. You know what I mean?"

  Mr. Finnick clasped his hands in front of him and cocked his head to one side. "Ah! A sentimental meaning!" he said in a nasty, mocking tone. "How nice! Well, now! The Childermass clock is a recent acquisition of mine, and I must say it is intriguing. Fine workmanship, and a real one-of-a-kind item. Very well. If you're bored with the rest of my clocks, I'll take you to see it without further delay. Please follow me."

  Johnny, Fergie, and Father Higgins followed Mr. Finnick up a narrow back staircase. They came out on the second floor and walked down a long hall to the door of a room that had probably once been a bedroom. Inside were two large mahogany dining-room tables. One held a display case full of buttons, buttonhooks, pipe tampers, and glass paperweights. The other held the Childermass clock. It looked pretty much the way it had when Johnny saw it at the Fitzwilliam Inn, except that the woodwork was polished to a blinding luster, and the glass door over the face was spotlessly clean. Also, Mr. Finnick had set up a moveable glass-and-wood screen in front of the dollhouse-room part of the clock. Behind the screen the room's furniture was arranged as it had been when Johnny first saw the clock. But, amazingly, the oil lamp on the little oval table was lit! A pinpoint of flame flickered in the delicate glass chimney, and the lamp's yellowish light cast odd shadows over the rug, the bookshelves, and the tastefully papered walls. Quickly Johnny glanced at the row of shelves to the left of the fireplace. There, next to a bowl of tiny apples, was a gap—the space where the skull had been. There was even a tiny glue blob to mark the spot.

  Mr. Finnick launched into a long, dull lecture that he must have memorized. Fergie and Father Higgins stood patiently listening with their arms folded, but Johnny kept darting suspicious glances at the little man. Just why had Mr. Finnick bought the clock, anyway? Was he mixed up in Professor Childermass's disappearance? Father Higgins thought that he was—at least, that was what he had said. But now that he had seen Mr. Finnick, Johnny found it hard to believe that th
is persnickety, irritable man had spirited the professor away by magic. Mr. Finnick did not look much like a wizard. On the other hand, the man might be concealing his true nature behind a mask. All right then, what if he had spirited the professor away? Why had he done it?

  On droned Mr. Finnick. He was talking about double-foliot escapements and brass balance wheels. Suddenly Father Higgins tapped him on the shoulder—he had a request to make.

  "Mr. Finnick? If you don't mind terribly, we'd like to see the inside of this little room up close. I wonder if you could move the screen and give us a little, you know, guided tour."

  Mr. Finnick looked genuinely terrified. He seemed to be imagining the awful things that Fergie and Johnny might do with their big clumsy hands if he were to move the screen aside. But then he calmed down. He loved to lecture, and if the three visitors were willing to listen a bit more, he might make the supreme sacrifice.

  "If you folks will just move back a teensy bit," said Mr. Finnick, waving them away with his hand. "Ah! Very good! Now, then!"

  Johnny, Fergie, and Father Higgins stepped back a few paces. Then, carefully, Mr. Finnick set the screen aside. Taking a long, thin, spindly pair of tweezers from a pocket in his apron, he reached into the miniature room. Daintily he twisted a knob on the gas bracket on the wall. He showed how the drawer in the oval table could be made to slide out and in. He pulled a book out of the bookcase and laid it on the floor of the room. With the tweezer tips, he flipped a page or two to show that this was a real printed book. Mr. Finnick was a mine of information about furniture styles and fabrics and what ormolu really was. But as he rattled on, Johnny got more and more disappointed. He had hoped that a tiny replica of a bill would appear, stuck into a book. Or maybe it would be in the drawer of the oval table, or on the sideboard, or framed on the wall like a painting. But there wasn't anything that looked remotely like a bill. As Mr. Finnick lifted tiny umbrellas from the thimble-size umbrella stand and tweaked the frames of postage-stamp paintings with his tweezers, Johnny felt frustration and anger welling up inside him. They really were not finding out a thing.

  Father Higgins scowled. He threw Johnny a sidelong glance, as if to say, Looks like we lose, eh? Johnny gave a little shrug. Father Higgins appeared to be fumbling about in his mind for some way to say good-bye. Finally, in the middle of one of Mr. Finnick's long sentences, the priest coughed loudly.

  "Mr. Finnick," he said, glancing at his watch, "I am afraid we are going to have to be running along. We've got some other things that we have to do."

  Mr. Finnick appeared to be deeply offended. He pulled the tweezers back, turned, and glared icily at the priest. "Am I to understand that you've had enough of my lecture?"

  "I didn't say that," Father Higgins replied, with a smile. "I merely said that we'd have to be running along. Now do you suppose that you could show us the way out?"

  Without another word, Mr. Finnick slid the glass screen back into place. Curtly, he motioned for the three visitors to follow him, and he led the way to the front door. In silence the glum little procession moved on down the hall and finally out to the front door. When they got there, Mr. Finnick jerked the door inward and stood stiffly at attention, like a dwarfish sentry.

  "Good day to you all!" he mumbled, his lips barely moving. "Thank you for visiting the Finnick Clock Museum. Hmph. Hmph."

  Father Higgins grinned and made a mock-courteous bow. At this, Mr. Finnick stepped back and slammed the door violently, making the glass pane rattle. Father Higgins shrugged and turned away. Then he and the two boys trotted on down the long walk and out onto a dirt road that wound past a weed-grown granite quarry. For a long while no one said anything. They just trudged along, eyes down. They had used one of the few leads that they had, and it had run them up against a blank wall. A wild idea went flitting through Johnny's head: Maybe they should break into the museum and really go over the dollhouse room, turn it inside out, and find the miniature bill or "reckoning" that the message had spoken of. And then Johnny wondered—not for the first time—if Mr. Finnick had been holding out on them. Had he been hiding the "great reckoning" on purpose? He sure didn't act like it. He had been stuffy, finicky, boring, and rude, but he hadn't acted secretive—not really. So where did that leave them all?

  Father Higgins sighed loudly and discontentedly. He stooped, picked up a rock, and heaved it into the wilderness of granite blocks off to their right. "Well, boys!" he said. "We are not doing very well in the detection racket, are we?"

  "Nope," said Fergie gloomily.

  "I guess not," said Johnny, shoving his hands into his pockets. "What're we s'posed to do now? We're never gonna find the professor." Johnny's voice began to crack. He was fighting back the tears now. He had not felt so hopeless since this crazy business began.

  Father Higgins stopped in the middle of the road. A few paces away, lying in a ditch, was a rough-hewn pillar of stone. It was covered with moss and lichens, but its top was flat, and so the priest walked over and sat down on it. Johnny and Fergie plumped themselves on the pillar too, and there was total silence for about three minutes.

  "Well, gentlemen," said Father Higgins wearily, "it looks as if we have run up against a nice big solid stone wall. We didn't find out anything, did we? Not one single solitary useful fact or clue. However, we shouldn't despair, because—"

  At this point Fergie interrupted him. "Whyn't we wait till dark an' then break in an' then turn that crazy clock upside down till we find some clues? I bet there's somethin' there—there has to be!"

  Father Higgins shook his head. "I thought about breaking in, but it may be easier said than done. Finnick probably has the whole place wired with burglar alarms and electric eyes. But I do think we need to find out a bit more about our friend Finnick. Why don't we pay a trip to the Vinalhaven Public Library?"

  Johnny was puzzled by this suggestion. "The library? How come?"

  Father Higgins glanced at Johnny skeptically. "Oh, come on, John! For a scholarly kid you can be a bit thick sometimes! Finnick runs a museum, and so there will be articles about him in tourist guides and in books about the state of Maine and in back issues of newspapers. There may even be entries about him in reference books like Who's Who in the East. What we need to do is find something, anything, that will tie him in with magic or sorcery or Professor Childermass. After that we can decide whether or not it would be a good idea to do something drastic, like burglarizing his museum. So, off your duffs, me hearties! First we're going to go back to the inn so I can change into my clerical outfit—it may give me more authority, if I have to try to pry favors out of some nice sweet librarian. Then we're off to the library. As I recall, it's not terribly far from the Main Street section of town. So, let's go! Time's a-wastin'!"

  Fergie and Johnny did not think much of Father Higgins's plan, but they did not have a better one to offer, so they got up and followed him to the Lobster Pot Inn. When they got there, the boys waited around on the lawn outside while Father Higgins went to his room to change. In a short time he came back, and this time he was all done up in his black coat, black pants, glossy black shirtfront, and stiff white Roman collar. Down the road they hiked, till they came to the little cluster of shops and stores that was the business district of the island. At one end of the tiny Main Street was a stone watering trough, and a rutty cart track wound away from it up to the top of a grassy knoll. There, sitting all by itself, was a boxy gray one-story stone building.

  "That's the library, boys," said Father Higgins, pointing. "It's probably not much, but it may have the answers we're looking for. Come on!"

  Along the cart track they marched, single file, like a tiny army advancing against the enemy. On the steps of the library they halted, while Father Higgins brushed lint off his coat—he wanted to make himself as presentable as possible. Then, with Father Higgins in the lead, they trotted up the steps. Just inside the front door the little group stopped again. A few yards away, planted between two varnished golden oak pillars, was a desk. And
behind it sat a small, elderly gray-haired woman. Her hair was done up into a bun, and a pencil was stuck into it. She had been reading a book, but now she looked up.

  "Yes? What can I do for you?"

  Father Higgins stepped forward with his hands folded in front of him. He said that he was writing a book about the Maine seacoast, and he would be grateful if the librarian could supply him with pamphlets and guidebooks on the subject, and paper and pencil to take notes with.

  The librarian led Father Higgins and the boys to the tiny reference room, which was not much more than a closet with bookshelves and a window. At a scarred wooden table the three of them sat down, and soon the librarian came in with a stack of books and pamphlets. All the rest of the morning they worked. They leafed busily through the material on the table. Every now and then someone would find a reference to Mr. Finnick's clock museum, and they would all stop and examine it. But they never found anything that seemed to be helpful.

  At noon the weary researchers took a break for lunch, but an hour later they were back at their posts. As they ploughed through book after book, Johnny's spirits sank lower and lower. This was a crazy search. So far they had turned up absolutely nothing. Fergie was optimistic by nature, but even he was getting gloomy. Nevertheless, Father Higgins struggled grimly on, his pipe clenched tightly in his teeth. All through the long afternoon they worked, taking occasional brief rest breaks to go outside and stretch their legs. The librarian popped in now and then to bring more books and to ask if she could help in any way.

  Soon it was late afternoon. The sun was setting, and its long red slanting rays colored a patch on the wall behind Johnny's head. He was really going stir-crazy. He wanted to find the professor, but... well, he didn't care if he never saw another book as long as he lived.

  "Father?" he said, breaking the busy silence. "Father? Can... can Fergie 'n' me go out for a little bit? I can't see straight anymore!"