The Wizard Of Dark Street Part 12

Oona considered this. "All right. Thank you, Adler." She adjusted the hat on her head, feeling strangely giddy. "It was my mother's."

Oona placed her mother's hat on the seat beside her and stared out the carriage window, her hand resting on the hatbox with her uncle safely inside. She felt lost. Everything she had learned from Adler served only to complicate matters in her head, and she hoped that a visit to the museum would prove helpful in clearing some of the confusion.

She watched the fortresslike structure roll into view. The carriage clattered heavily over several potholes as Samuligan pulled to the side of the road in front of the museum.

Oona threw the compartment door open before Samuligan had a chance to open it. She thrust the hatbox into his hands and said: "Keep an eye on that."

"Why are we here?" Deacon asked.

"I wish to ask the security guard some questions," she replied. "Perhaps we will discover something the inspector did not."

But the first thing Oona discovered was that the giant sculpture in the shape of a top hat was standing right in her way. The sculpture was nearly seven feet tall and perhaps five feet in diameter.

"What is this, anyway?" Oona asked.

"Petrified colossus clothing," Samuligan said. "Giant clothing so old that it has turned to stone."

Oona knew from her history lessons with Deacon that colossi-men and women who were reported to have been over seventy feet tall, and who had lived thousands of years before even the Great Faerie War-had at one time used the ancient Faerie road to travel back and forth between worlds.

"You mean to tell me that those ancient giants wore top hats?" Oona said, disbelieving.

Samuligan grinned. "They were quite ahead of their time ... fas.h.i.+onably speaking."

"Well, it's not a very good place for an installation. It takes up half the sidewalk." Oona shook her head as she ventured around the giant hat and made her way up the stone steps to the front door. Regardless of being nearly five inches thick and at least eight feet wide, the wood door opened easily at her touch, swinging inward on its big iron hinges, and Oona stepped through the threshold into the museum.

The entryway consisted of a vast circular room, with high-beamed ceilings that vaulted upward in weblike patterns. A ring of ma.s.sive monolithic stones stood in the center of the room, and Oona knew from her many visits to the museum with her uncle that this mysterious stone circle was one half of a set, the other half of which stood in the countryside somewhere in England. Though Oona had not seen the sister version of the enormous structure, she did know that it was called Stonehenge by those residing in the World of Man, and that it had not been kept nearly as nice as the one standing in the entryway to the Museum of Magical History. Both rings of stones had been gifts from faeries to magicians thousands of years ago when humans and fairies had traveled back and forth between the worlds in harmony. What their purposes were had long been forgotten.

But it was not the mysterious magical circle that Oona had entered the museum to find. A uniformed guard was posted just inside the front door, a thickset man with arms like mountains and no neck at all. Oona turned to him now and saw that he was staring at her, as if surprised to see someone walk through the museum doors.

"May I help you, miss?" he asked.

"I hope you can," Oona said. "I was wondering if you were on duty here at the front entrance yesterday."

The guard's caterpillar-like eyebrows rose ever so slightly. "I was."

Oona nodded. "Very good. I was also wondering if you remember seeing a certain man enter the museum. He would have been tall, about your height, with greasy black hair and a bullhorn mustache. Also, he would have been blind, his eyes white like snow."

"Oh, you mean the actor, Hector Grimsbee," said the guard.

Oona's heart gave a heavy thump. "Yes, yes. He was indeed an actor with the Dark Street Theater. That's him. You saw Mr. Grimsbee enter the museum yesterday?"

The museum guard frowned. "No."

"No?" said Oona.

"No. Otherwise he would have signed his name in this register book here." The guard pointed to the thick book sitting on a wooden pedestal beside him. "I'd have made sure of it. By the way, if you wouldn't mind, you'll need to sign in as well."

He handed her a pen, and she signed her name at the top of a blank page. Curious, she flipped the page back one day, and saw that the inspector had been correct: the only two names on the registry for the previous day were Adler and Isadora Iree.

Oona handed the pen back to the guard. "You know who Hector Grimsbee is? You would recognize him on sight?"

"Oh, to be sure," said the guard. "I would have remembered seeing him come in here. My wife and I are really big fans of the theater, you know. He was in a lot of plays up until about a year ago. Why do you ask? Do you know him?"

"We are acquainted," Oona said, unable to keep the disappointment from her voice.

"Oh," said the guard excitedly. His face went slightly red. "Do you think you could get me an autograph? Not for me, mind you, but for my wife. She would be so pleased."

"Sorry," Oona said, "but I don't think ..." She trailed off as a short man no taller than Oona herself came striding through the circle of stones toward the front door. His beard was well trimmed, and his nose was quite pointy. His most recognizable feature, however, was an enormous overbite, which gave him a rather horsey appearance, and Oona recognized him from being at some of her uncle's social gatherings. He was Mr. Glump, the museum curator.

"Mr. Glump," Oona called. "May I ask you a few questions?"

Mr. Glump stopped abruptly, looking distastefully from Oona to Deacon on her shoulder, then back to Oona again. "There are no pets allowed in the museum."

Deacon puffed up his feathers, as if getting ready to explain the difference between a pet bird and a living reference library, but Oona spoke first.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Glump," Oona said. "I will remember that the next time I visit. You might remember me, I'm-"

"Miss Crate. Yes, I know," said the curator. "I remember you from one of those Pendulum House parties. I read the paper this morning, and I'm very sorry to hear about what happened to your uncle, but if you have come here to blame me, I can a.s.sure you that the reason the daggers were stolen was not my fault."

"Yes, I know," Oona said. "Inspector White mentioned that you were out of the office."

Mr. Glump nodded. "I received a note via flame yesterday that an anonymous guest at the Nightshade Hotel had come across a mysterious black box with all sorts of magical symbols carved into it. They wanted to meet me at the hotel at one o'clock to discuss a possible donation of the artifact to the museum. Well, as everyone knows, Oswald's wand-the one that some say he stole from Faerie, and which then in turn was stolen from him-was supposedly kept in just such a box. I was immensely interested, so I sent a reply, agreeing to meet the anonymous person in the hotel lobby at one o'clock, as they had suggested. The Nightshade is on the north end of the street, so I left my office around twelve fifteen, locking the door behind me, as I always do. But the whole thing turned out to be some rude joke. The person with the box never showed, and when I returned, around four o'clock, I found my office door hanging wide open, and the daggers where gone."

Oona tilted her head thoughtfully to one side. "That's over three and a half hours, from the time you left. If the person never showed, then why did it take you so long to return to the museum? Surely, even the slowest of carriages wouldn't have taken several hours to make the trip."

Mr. Glump looked slightly uncomfortable. "I ... um. Well, I waited in the hotel lobby for nearly a half hour after the agreed-upon time, and then two gentlemen from the hotel security approached me. I thought they were going to ask me to leave, but instead, after I explained why I was there, the two of them seemed to feel so sorry for me that they gave me several brandies on the house, and a handful of betting chips to pa.s.s the time while I waited. It seems that the time got away from me. Lost a bit of my own money when the free chips ran out. But anyway, that's neither here nor there. The fact remains that I was not here in the museum when the daggers were stolen."

Oona scratched at the back of her neck, considering this new information. It sounded suspiciously to her as if someone had lured the curator out of his office on purpose.

"Are you the only one with a key to your office?" Oona asked.

Mr. Glump nodded. "Yes, but of course even the most sophisticated locks can be picked ... and that is why we have security guards."

"And you're sure you locked the door to your office when you left?" Oona asked.

The curator's nostrils flared, and he looked all at once peeved at being questioned by a twelve-year-old girl. "I always lock the door! Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a headache, and I'm going home early." He raised one mocking eyebrow at her before adding in a rather sarcastic tone: "That is, if you are done with your questions, Miss Crate."

"Oh yes," Oona said. "Quite finished."

The curator pressed his hand to his head and headed out the front door. Oona was about to make her own exit when the guard called after her.

"You sure you couldn't get Grimsbee's autograph for me? I mean, for my wife, that is."

Oona paused for a moment, long enough to look back at the guard, but her head was too full of thoughts to answer his ridiculous request. She pulled the door open and walked through, letting it fall shut behind her.

"No need to be rude!" the guard called after her. "All you had to do was say no!"

Oona ignored the guard's shouts as they fell silent behind the thick wooden door and walked to the edge of the first step.

"Grimsbee didn't go in, Deacon," she said, sounding baffled. "I don't understand. First off, if Grimsbee truly was alone when we saw him, and not arguing with some invisible person, then how did he injure his head? Certainly not shaving his forehead. And why did he disappear?"

Oona began looking around for other possible places where Grimsbee could have disappeared to, but after several minutes she said: "There is nowhere else he could have gone."

Deacon s.h.i.+fted his weight on her shoulder. "He must have entered the museum."

"But why did the guard not see him?" Oona asked. "He clearly would have recognized him."

From her elevated position she could see the street stretching out in both directions. The giant top hat hid part of the carriage from view, but she could see Samuligan waiting patiently for her near the horse, the hatbox in his hands. The sun was high overhead by now, and a cool breeze ruffled at the skirt of her dress.

Across the street stood Witch Hill, looking both barren and unremarkable, save for the single, dead tree at its peak. Next door to the hill, the Dark Street Theater rose several stories tall, with the joke-telling clock out in front on the sidewalk. A sign hung over the ticket booth: THIS FRIDAY ONLY OPEN-CALL AUDITIONS FOR OSWALD DESCENDS.

Oona took one more look around and sighed. "I just can't understand how Grimsbee could have done it."

She felt immensely let down for having discovered nothing to prove Grimsbee's guilt, and, seeing nothing more she could do, Oona began to descend the steps one by one. Overly preoccupied in her disappointment, and paying very little attention to what she was doing, she failed to notice how the old stone steps had broken away in several places at her feet. She stepped down, felt herself about to fall, then briefly caught her balance, only to lose it again half a second later as the stone crumbled beneath her, and she landed hard on her side.

Deacon shot into the air, landing beside her on the cold stone step.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

A fierce pain seared through Oona's hip, and she could feel it instantly begin to bruise. She clenched her teeth together, biting back the pain.

"Just my hip," she said, sucking air through her teeth before giving Deacon a roguish smile. "At least it's not broken," she added. "I hear there's no worse pain."

Deacon scoffed.

It was then, as she stifled a laugh, that she saw something on one of the lower steps. The sight of it so surprised her that the pain quickly dulled.

"Look, Deacon. Do you see it?"

"See what?" he asked.

Oona pointed. "Blood."

She pushed herself up on wobbly knees, wincing slightly at the ache in her hip, but shoved the discomfort aside as she descended several steps to examine the splattered stain on the step. Oona pulled her father's magnifying gla.s.s from her dress pocket and used it to study the blotch.

It was dried blood all right. Taking a further look around, Oona spied another splatter of dried blood a few steps down, and another after that. By the time she reached the sidewalk, she saw that the trail of splatters came to a stop behind the giant top hat.

The hat loomed several feet over her head. She circled it twice, yet found nothing new. The trail of blood simply stopped there on the sidewalk.

Or started there, Oona considered.

She came to a stop beside the carriage.

"Is everything all right?" Deacon asked.

Oona did not answer him. She was afraid that if she did, then she might begin shouting that, no, everything was not all right. Her uncle was a toad, her home was going to be destroyed, and there was a possibility that the entire street might just spin off into the Drift, disconnecting them from New York and their only supply of foods and goods. The other possible scenario, where Dark Street became a giant tourist attraction for the benefit of Red Martin's new casino, was perhaps better, but the fact that this exposed the World of Man to faerie attack made it simply unacceptable. Oona's own father had been trying to bring down Red Martin's criminal empire for years, and Oona would love to finish the job. But first she would need to find out which of the applicants was in cahoots with the master criminal. Which one had a connection?

She stared thoughtfully across the street, toward the Dark Street Theater, and the sign out front: THIS FRIDAY ONLY OPEN-CALL AUDITIONS FOR OSWALD DESCENDS.

Something clicked in her head. She walked partway around the hat once again, looked down at the blood, and then back up toward the sign over the theater. It came to her in a flash.

Oswald! she thought. Of course. But it only makes sense.

"Deacon!" she called as she moved hastily toward the carriage.

"Yes?" Deacon replied.

"Tell me. What building do you know of that has a large stairway leading up to its front entrance?" she asked.

"Well, there is the museum, of course," Deacon said, gesturing with a wing.

Oona nodded. "Yes. Yes. We know that. Any other such steps that you can think of? Something comparable in size to those leading up to the museum?"

Deacon considered this for a moment, then said: "The only steps I can think of would have to be the ones leading up to the Nightshade Hotel."

"Very good, Deacon," Oona said. She snapped her fingers. "And it is my guess that that is precisely where we will find him."

"Find whom?" Deacon asked.

Oona climbed back into the carriage. "Grimsbee!"

They found Hector Grimsbee precisely where Oona had thought he would be. He stood halfway up the marble steps that led to the Nightshade Hotel. The hotel guests circled wide around Grimsbee as they made their way up and down the steps. Oona could understand why. Grimsbee looked quite angry, gesturing grandly with his arms and arguing with what appeared to be no one at all. The bandage around his head looked as if it had not been changed since the previous night, and it was drenched in sweat.

By far the most luxurious and opulent-looking building on the street, every window frame, handrail, and door handle of the hotel glistened with gold-flecked paint. At a mere four stories tall, the building was not the largest structure on Dark Street, but then again, Dark Street did not get many visitors. And besides, it was not so much the hotel that kept Red Martin in business, but the gambling and the other seedy activities that took place behind its golden doors.

With the box containing her uncle once again under Samuligan's watchful care at the curb, Oona cautiously ascended the steps, Deacon at the ready on her shoulder.

"Mr. Grimsbee!" she shouted in order to be heard over the blind man's babble.

Grimsbee stopped his gesticulating and turned to look at them ... or appeared to look at them. His solid white eyes gleamed as he sniffed the air. "Ah. If it isn't Miss Crate, and her smelly birdie wordy. Or should I say, wordy birdie?"

"What are you doing up here on these steps?" Oona asked.

"I am rehearsing," Grimsbee replied. "There are open-call auditions this Friday at the Dark Street Theater, you know. I shall be in top form."

"I see," said Oona.

"I don't," Grimsbee replied, and then burst into laughter, as if this were the funniest joke he had ever heard.

"What will you be performing?" Oona asked.

Grimsbee gave his mustache a twist. "I shall be enacting the final conflict of the play, where Oswald heroically battles the Queen of Faerie, throwing spells and repelling fire, all of which takes place upon the fabled steps to Faerie."

Grimsbee pressed his fist to his heart and bowed his head dramatically.

"Yes," Oona said, quite unimpressed. "I thought so."

Grimsbee continued: "Unfortunately, I could not remember where I put my umbrella. I was using it to represent Oswald's wand. I think I might have left it at Pendulum House last night, by mistake."