The Tell-Tale Start by Gordon McAlpine

Author:Gordon McAlpine
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781101621332
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-01-09T22:00:00+00:00

“We’d like to read it again,” they said.

But there was more to it than that.

Fifteen minutes later, Edgar and Allan sat cross-legged in their motel room on one of the two beds. The other bed was already a shambles, its covers and blankets tossed and scattered and the mattress crushed in the middle as a result of the boys using it like a trampoline, testing the elasticity of the memory foam and the torque of the box springs. The ceiling above the bed had been cracked by Edgar’s head—no damage done, as Edgar’s head was quite hard.

Now the boys held the book between them. It was heavy in their hands.

“This clearly contains a special message for us,” Allan said.

“Yes, but if you consider all the writing in it, there are thousands of messages,” Edgar observed.

“So how do we figure it out?”

Whoever had left it behind had used a tourist brochure, like those in the motel office, as a bookmark. The volume opened to a story called “The Purloined Letter.” It began with a short quote in Latin:

Nil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio.

Of course they knew the translation: “Nothing is more hateful to wisdom than excessive cleverness.”

They looked at each other.

“That can’t have anything to do with us,” Allan said.

Edgar agreed. “We’re clever, but not excessively clever.”

“Actually, we’re just clever enough.”

They kept reading.

“The Purloined Letter” was one of their great-great-great-great granduncle’s most famous stories. In it, a detective is challenged to locate a valuable stolen letter that has been hidden in a particular room. Experts have already searched the room, tearing it apart but finding nothing. The detective immediately realizes that the letter must be hidden in plain sight. And he is right—there it is, in a rack full of visiting cards below the mantelpiece, not hidden at all. Simple! And yet only a genius would think to look in the open for a “hidden” object.

Just as only a genius would look in the open for a “hidden” message.

The twins looked around the room for whatever wasn’t hidden.

The problem was that everything they saw wasn’t hidden.

“It’s not so easy when you don’t know what you’re looking for,” Edgar said to his brother.

Nil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio, they thought.

“Yes, maybe we are being ‘too clever,’” Allan said.

“OK, so what’s the most obvious thing in this room that the message of ‘The Purloined Letter’ is pointing us to?” Edgar asked.

They looked again at the open book.

Why had it opened to that particular story?

The bookmark!

Might the tourist brochure be more than just a bookmark? Might it be the actual object they were supposed to notice? Might it be the “purloined letter,” the message? They set the book down and picked up the brochure:

THE AUTHENTIC

DOROTHY GALE FARM & OZITORIUM

Coincidence? No way.

The boys recalled the grainy, black-and-white fax from Professor Marvel that their aunt Judith now had in her purse. This glossy, full-color brochure had a different headline: THIS YEAR CELEBRATING THE CENTENNIAL OF L. FRANK BAUM’S CLASSIC, THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ! Edgar and Allan knew

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