In Harm's Way by Andrew Clements

Author:Andrew Clements
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers

The entry door was on the west wall, which backed up against the art room. The east wall, about twenty-five feet away, backed up onto the janitor’s workroom—and Ben reminded himself that silence was critical.

The south wall of the room was brick, the outer wall of the school. It had four wide windows just like the ones in the art room, except these windows had been nailed shut, and the glass had been painted over with the same thick brown paint that covered the walls.

The north wall was the important one, the one that backed up against the hallway. Three of the hallway posts—the foot-hooks—were right there, just above the wooden shelves.

Ben had already figured out that the middle post was the fourth one from the corner out in the hall, the one that sounded like brass. Looking carefully with his light, the part of the center post visible above the wooden shelf unit looked no different from the other two posts.

Immediately, Ben saw something different about the shelves that ran along the north wall, the shelves that covered the lower six feet of each post. Unlike the shelves elsewhere in the room, these wooden shelves were old—very similar to the heavy oak bookcases that lined the outer walls of the library, bookcases that dated back to the 1780s. The long wall of shelving was divided up into five sections—four wide ones, and one narrow one.

He felt like he was getting to know John Vining, the ship’s carpenter who had done the actual work of concealing the captain’s safeguards. There was no real reason to have one narrow shelf unit with wider ones on either side. John Vining had put the thinner one there on purpose, right in front of that particular post!

Ben began clearing the center shelf unit. It held mostly drawing and construction paper, and he stacked the packages gently on the metal shelves behind him. The unit was about eighteen inches wide, and about that deep as well, and when it was cleared, he got his light up close to the back of the unit. There was nothing much to see. All the joints back there looked tight, and when he tapped the back of the unit gently, it sounded solid, with no give at all.

But when he focused the bright beam on the outer edges of the unit, Ben smiled. There were face boards along the top and bottom of the shelf units running from wall to wall, boards that should have run without a break from the west wall to the east wall. But they didn’t. There were two joints in the boards, top and bottom, one on each side of the center shelves. It meant that the narrow unit in the center was a completely separate object, and that meant that it could move!

Digging into his book bag, Ben found his stainless-steel ruler. He worked the thin edge of it into the crack between the center unit and the shelves on the left. Using it like a putty knife, he gently removed dust and dirt, dried paint, and hardened varnish.

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