The Cathedral of Fear by Irene Adler

Author:Irene Adler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sherlock Holmes; Arsene Lupin; Irene Adler; mysteries; detectives; Paris; Evreux ;middle-grade; adventure; Sherlock; Lupin; and Me; 9781623702571; 9781496504913; 9781496523488; 9781623705732; 9781496504906
Publisher: Capstone Young Readers
Published: 2015-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

THE DUMAS ARCHIVES

When I remember our adventure, even today, I am astonished that in the end, three children like us — who had just arrived in Paris without even having an address to look for — were able to convince a man to take us to his home and tell us about his family’s secrets. The fact is that my friend, Sherlock Holmes, was convincing. Having consumed his pig’s feet, Alexandre Dumas fils put on his coat and made his way to the rue Coquillière, where we could still smell a neighborhood market, continuing onward to the intersection with the rue Croix des Petits Champs, where we curved toward rue Saint-Honoré.

“Not everything my father wrote was true,” Dumas confided, as we walked through the city, ticking along with his walking stick. “And believing his words would be like betting on a blindfolded horse. But I think the Grand Master was something entirely different for once. Papa was a genuine fan of mysterious things and people. Of what you children call the ‘supernatural.’”

We followed Alexandre Dumas fils up to a doorway, where he pulled out his keys and opened the door on the third try. “My father had a strong point,” he said. “Before writing about something, he gathered information on it. And he kept everything he’d found, cataloging it and filing it away.”

We went up a flight of stairs and then a second one. Alexandre Dumas fils spoke without pausing; not even Arsène could stem the flow. When we reached a door, he stopped to look at us in the dark. For a moment, I was afraid we’d been too naïve by following him there.

“What I know about my father’s final, terrible, unfinished book is that it’s based on a true story that he collected information about. Apparently, despite being protected by the deepest secrecy, the Grand Master holds the fate of the city in his hands — and, without exaggerating, the fate of all of France. They call him the Grand Master of the Order of St. Michael, and he is said to meet with his followers in the tunnels under Paris in order to carry out secret rites and horrific rituals … intended to restore the old regime of France!”

Saying this, Alexandre Dumas fils flung open the door to an apartment. It was almost completely empty, except for two rows of writing tables on which a few menacing wood and metal machines were lined up. They attracted our attention right away.

“Welcome to what the family, if one can speak of family, calls the haunted chamber. These are six Ravizza writing keyboards, originally from Italy,” he explained, showing the first models of what — over the course of years I would learn to call a “typewriter,” which ended up having such significance in my life.

He touched them lightly with his fingertips, passing across them. “My father loved inventions and spending money in the most eccentric ways.”

“It’s like being in a newsroom,” Sherlock observed.

“Here’s where he created some of his most famous works — he and his assistants, the ghosts who worked with him.

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