The 39 Clues Book 7: The Viper's Nest - Library Edition by Peter Lerangis

Author:Peter Lerangis
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Juvenile Fiction, Other, Action & Adventure, Historical, General
ISBN: 9780545090650
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2010-02-15T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

Dan's patented I'm just a cute, curious kid expression always got him results. "Can we just see that Churchill document?" he asked Mrs. Thembeka, with Oscar-winning innocence. "It would be, like, so cool to touch something that Churchill personally wrote."

He turned to Amy for support, but she was barely paying attention. Her nose was in a biography of Winston Churchill that she had found.

Mrs. Thembeka's phone started beeping, and she turned to pick it up. "I'm dreadfully sorry, dear, but our private holdings have very strict access. Excuse me."

"Nice try," Nellie muttered.

Dan's eyes wandered over to the file cabinets in the library office directly behind Mrs. Thembeka. The papers had to be in there. He looked around frantically for anything that he could use to help distract the librarian. But his eyes locked on a bronze plaque hanging directly over the file cabinet:

95

The Constitution Hill Library

Is Grateful for the Support

Of Our Generous Patrons to the

Literacy Campaign

* * *

Ruth Aluwani

Oliver Bheka

Piet Broeksma

Grace Cahill

"Amy, look!" Dan blurted out. "Grace! She's all over this place."

Mrs. Thembeka glanced up at Dan. She murmured something into the phone, hung up abruptly, and came out from behind her desk. "Did you know Grace Cahill?" she said. As she looked from Dan to Amy to Nellie and back, her eyes misted. "Oh, my goodness, I should have known. You look just like her."

"I do?" Dan said. He adored his grandmother, but she did have silver hair and wrinkles.

"The eyes are the same. And you..." Mrs. Thembeka took Amy's hand. "You must be the beloved granddaughter of whom she so often spoke. Please, sit." She gestured toward a chair and a small sofa and went to shut the office door. "I was so sorry to hear of your grandmother's passing. We were good friends, you know. How did you find this place? Was it Robert?"

Dan looked at Amy. "Uh, we don't know any Robert."

96

Mrs. Thembeka reached inside her desk, pulled out a stack of old photos, and held one toward them. "You see? This was, oh, ten years ago."

In the photo, Mrs. Thembeka and Grace stood arm in arm under a theater marquee, on which could only be seen the words by Athol Fugard. Grace's skin was quite tan. In fact, her skin color was nearly identical to Mrs. Thembeka's. "You look like sisters," Amy said.

Mrs. Thembeka laughed. "Perhaps we were. In our souls we were very much the same."

Dan flipped the photo and saw a faded inscription:

Lemur by day ... Aloes by night ...

Fine adventures, dear friends!

He held it toward Amy, who looked as if she were about to cry. "Lemur ..." she said. "That must be The Flying Lemur, Grace's private plane."

"We'd had a full day of flying that afternoon --oh, did she love that airplane! Swaziland, Banhine National Park in Mozambique, refueling ..."

"What's 'Aloes'?" Dan said.

Mrs. Thembeka smiled. "A reference to the play we saw, A Lesson from Aloes. The aloe plant thrives under the worst imaginable deprivation--harsh sun, no water for months. It is a symbol of the South African people, surviving despite apartheid.

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