On Sunday morning, I met Zach in the main foyer of the library.
“Hey Zach,” I telepathed, “where do we go?”
“Greetings an’ a good day t’you too Marcus,” Zach answered.
“Sorry. Top of the morning to you Mister Fontaine. Now can you tell me where to go?”
Zach laughed. “There y’go. We can dispense with the formalities, but still, you best settle down. We’ll need a plan of action here. That storeroom’s locked up, y’know, and it’s not as if you can just float on through the door.”
Zach’s words let the air right out of me. Locked! Of course the storeroom would be locked. I was so excited about magically salvaging Dad’s career, I hadn’t even considered it.
Duh!
“So how are we supposed to get in? I walk all the way down here and now you tell me we’re locked out! I wasted all this time and energy…”
Mind you, this conversation taking place is the telepathic equivalent of screaming at the top of my lungs in the foyer of the Gierman Library.
Not a good thing.
No doubt I looked pretty strange, staring at nothing with an expression of bug-eyed rage on my face.
“Now hold on there,” Zach answered calmly. “I didn’t say you couldn’t get into the storeroom. I just said it was locked. Not t’worry though; I’ve concocted a plan that should get us both in handily.”
He pointed to a study table. “Set yourself down and pretend t’read somethin’. You standin’ there starin’ and all…well folks are startin’ t’look at you funny.”
I looked around the room and caught a couple of people hastily looking away from me and back to their books.
I took Zach’s advice and sat down, then, fishing a book out of my backpack, I opened it and pretended to read.
“There y’go,” Zach grinned. “Now listen up and prepare t’be impressed.”
I prepared myself to be impressed.
He continued. “You see Miss Carroll over there by the reference desk?”
I turned my head and spotted a thin, bird-like woman with silver-blue hair. She had a pair of reading glasses hanging around her neck on a gold chain.
“Yeah, I see her.”
Zach nodded his head. “Good. She’s a nice enough woman, that Miss Carroll, but she’s a might addle pated about leavin’ her keys around. I reckon she spends half her shift lookin’ for books people request and the other half huntin’ up where she set her keys.”
I was starting to get the idea. “Okay, you figure to get her keys. And just how do we pull that off?”
He leaned forward conspiratorially. “You see how her keys are settin’ right there on the counter by that computer contraption?”
I did.
“Well, I’ll keep a look-out. When nobody’s lookin’, you ask her for a Latin-English dictionary. They’re way in the back of the reference stacks. While she’s back there searchin’ for your book, you snatch the keys.”
Crap. I was afraid of that.
I’m not a sneaky guy. I can’t lie for beans without looking totally guilty. And stealing? My palms were already starting to sweat. I’d already rejected a life of crime as a career option a long time ago.
“I don’t know about this,” I said. “Stealing keys…”
Zach looked indignant. “ We aren’t stealin’. We fully intend t’return ‘em once we’ve completed our mission. That ain't stealing; it's borrowing’.”
“Without asking.”
“You got a better plan?”
He had me there. In fact, I had to admit (reluctantly), that his idea was actually pretty good.
Except for the me-having-anything-to-do-with-it part.
“Besides,” Zach said practically, “I’ll be on the look-out. We won’t make a move unless I give the all-clear. What could go wrong?”
At that moment I’d compiled quite a list of things that could go wrong. But on the other hand, I didn’t have any better ideas.
“Okay,” I sighed, “let’s do it.”
Thankfully, Zach’s plan went off without a hitch.
I thought that the librarian gave me a funny look when I asked for a Latin dictionary. Then again, since my voice barely squeaked out the request, she was probably just trying to hear what I said.
As she disappeared between the stacks, Zach gave me the all-clear and I snatched up her keys. It was a big ring, full of not only keys, but nail clippers, a tiny flashlight, and what seemed like a hundred souvenir key rings. They jangled like a fire bell when I slipped them in my pocket. No one seemed to notice though.
The librarian returned with three large dictionaries. I selected one, thanked her nervously, and hustled off to find Zach.
“Now that went pretty slick, didn’t it?” he said. “Nothin’ t’worry about was there?”
“Okay, okay, it was slick,” I admitted, but I hadn’t yet given up on the worrying part.
“Now what?” I asked. “Maybe a bank job?”
Zach laughed. “Jesse James, you ain’t. Come on, gather your stuff up and follow me.”
I re-packed my backpack and followed him through the stacks to a study carrel back by the stairway.
“Just set out your books and whatnot as though you’re in the midst of workin’ on somethin’ and you’re aimin’ t’come back in a minute,” he said. “Then we’ll head upstairs.”
I did as Zach ordered, opened the door to the stairway and followed him as he led the way.
There was a sign on the second landing that said, “Library Staff Only Beyond This Point”. Zach said, “Wait here whilst I scout up ahead. No one comes up this way as a rule, but a body can’t be too careful.”
Being the only actual body involved in this operation, I agreed whole-heartedly.
Zach returned a few seconds later.
“All clear,” he said. “Come on up.”
I made my way up the stairs as silently as I could. Even so, the empty stairwell amplified the sound of every step way too much for my comfort. There was a door at the top of the stairs. Locked. “Dang!” I muttered.
“Ssh!” Zach hissed. Had I said it out loud? “You got the key there; go ahead.”
Problem was I had a lot of keys there. I tried them one after another, getting more and more anxious with each failure.
The lock opened on the seventh key.
I slipped through the door and entered a long hallway.
“Some of these are offices, but this bein’ Sunday, they’re all empty,” Zach said.
He made his way down to a door at the end of the hall. I read the number on the door: 318. “There it is,” he said. “Open her up!” Then, “What’s that?”
I didn’t hear anything, but suddenly, Zach spun his head around and looked down the hall.
“Footsteps!” he hissed. “On the stairway! You get that door open, I’ll go take a look-see.”
He glided back down the hall while I desperately fumbled with the keys.
Seconds later he was back. “Someone’s comin’ up here,” he said. “You’d best get that door open.”
I tried to fight down my rising panic. My fingers felt huge and clumsy as I fought with that stupid tangle of keys. I was terrified that I’d drop them as I struggled to fit each key into the lock; one at a time.
Now I could hear the footsteps! They were followed by the sound of a key in the door down the hall. Then another. Apparently, somebody else was having trouble sorting through his keys.
Just as I heard the sound of a doorknob turning, the fifth key slid neatly into the lock.
“Hurry!” Zach urged, not that I needed any encouragement. I opened the door and stepped inside.
There was a small window, but the blinds on it were down and it was pretty dark inside. I didn’t dare turn on a light.
“Hang on,” Zach said. “I’m going to look in the hall.”
Why did I agree to this? I was asking myself, even though I knew the answer.
Zach came floating through the door. “It’s the janitor. He’s coming this way! I think he may have heard something. Hide!”
There was a pile of cardboard boxes that reached nearly to the ceiling in the far corner of the room. I could see a narrow space between the boxes and the wall, so I raced over that way.
I managed to get there in the dark without tripping over anything and I squeezed into my hiding place just as I heard a key slide into the lock.
The space was narrow and my shoulder was scrunched, as I tried to shrink as small as possible and willed myself to become invisible.
I didn’t think it would work.
The lights clicked on.
“Pull your foot it. I can see it stickin’ out!” Zach said.
I pulled in my foot.
“He’s lookin’ around suspicious-like,” Zach said. “I reckon he heard somethin’ and means to check it out. Don’t move.”
I didn’t even breathe.
I started to think about how glad I was to have Zach keeping an eye out. If you ever decide to become a burglar, be sure to bring along a ghost.
Better yet, don’t become a burglar. Too stressful.
I heard the squeak of a chair and what sounded like the click of a lighter. A few seconds later, I smelled cigarette smoke.
Zach appeared in front of my hiding place. “Look, it’s just old Ed Boggus, one of the janitors. He shouldn’t be too long. He likes t’sneak up here now an’ then and have him a smoke.”
Great.
How long does it take to smoke a cigarette?
It felt like an hour.
I’d developed a painful cramp in my butt and was fighting a losing battle with the urge to sneeze, when I heard the chair creak again. There was a muffled cough, the sound of footsteps, a doorknob turned, and the lights went out.
At last, the door clicked shut.
Whew!
But just before the light went out I thought I’d caught sight of something just on the edge of my vision, right next to my squished arm.
A handle? Leather?
After the door closed I fished into my pockets for Miss Carroll’s keys and turned on her little flashlight.
Yes! It was a handle to an old trunk. Then the tiny beam of light hit on something else. It was a sticker pasted on the side of the trunk. On it was a picture of a gleaming ocean liner with writing above it that read, “Cunard Line Ocean Cruise, Alexandria, Egypt”.
A few minutes later Zach floated up. “Old Boggus is gone. There’s no one on this floor but us now.”
I’d been doing some thinking while I was crammed in with all those boxes.
So we’d found the trunk, now what? It seemed like I had a whole new set of problems to solve.
For one, it was buried under what looked like a hundred cardboard boxes. I opened one near the front of the heap. It was full of books. I pulled one out: “Gierman College 1972”.
Yearbooks! Would I have to dig through eighty years of unsold yearbooks just to get to the trunk? How long would that take? And if I got to the trunk, then what?
I couldn’t exactly sneak out of the library dragging an old steamer trunk behind me. Sure I had Zach but he not going to be much help at lifting one end of that trunk.
We were going to need Dad. But that presented a whole new set of problems. Just how, exactly, was I going to bring him in on this caper?
I tried imagining various conversations, but they all ended up something like: “Say, Dad, my good buddy Zach, who’s the ghost of a Civil War drummer boy, told me about this manuscript…”
Or: “Wow, Dad, I had the most amazing dream. See, there was this trunk up in the library…”
Not very convincing.
As I paced nervously around the room, I explained the problem to Zach.
He lifted his cap and scratched his head. “It’s a puzzle all right,” he muttered, “I reckon I haven’t thought that far ahead on this caper. Still there ought t’be a way…”
“Yeah, but what?” I sat down in the creaky old office chair the janitor had used for his illicit smoke break. The chair was set up next to an old roll-top desk.
Cool! I opened the desk and started exploring. I suppose I wanted to be distracted from the frustration over how our plan had suddenly hit a dead end.
The desk had all these little niches stuffed with ancient office supplies, paper clips, pencils, and the like, even some old stamps.
An antique Underwood typewriter was perched on top of the desk. In it was a sheet of paper. It was mostly covered with randomly typed letters and punctuation marks, although further down the page there were a few choice swear words. Apparently Ed Boggus got his jollies by playing with the typewriter on his smoke breaks.
I pulled open one of the drawers. Paper. There was even some ancient Gierman College letterhead.
Hel-lo!
The whole plan had just popped into my brain fully formed. A letter! Perfect! I explained my brilliant scheme to Zach, (who added some nifty touches of his own), and then I started typing.
An hour later I was done.
I stood up and stretched.
My hands were killing me! Look, I can find my way around a keyboard as well as the next guy, but I’d never used a real typewriter before. Anybody can type on a computer keyboard with just a light touch of the fingers, but that old Underwood took muscles! I came away with a whole new respect for the people who used to make their living pounding on those things all day.
They must have had fingers of steel.
Zach looked over my work. “That ought t’do it. Now you’d best hang on here while I scout the way back.”
In less than a minute he’d returned. “All clear. Let’s go. Don’t forget them letters.”
We returned the keys the same way we got them; only in reverse.
I handed Miss Carroll the Latin dictionary and while she was in the back of the stacks, I dropped her keys over the side of the counter. They made an unholy racket, but there didn’t seem to be anyone around to hear it. As I was almost to the exit, I heard her voice behind me. “Oh, there those keys are! Now how did they get down there?”
How indeed.