"And iron kettles?" asked Mrs. Kettle.
"Naturally," said Dagbert.
Not one student attempted to go back to Bloor's Academy on Monday. Word had spread that it was not a good place to be right now.
On Monday afternoon, Lyell Bone and Uncle Paton came home to Filbert Street.
Cook took Grandma Bone's room temporarily. There was much to do, for Lyell and Amy wanted to move into their old house, Diamond Corner, as soon as possible. But before this happened, there was one more mystery to clear up.
Maybelle's box.
The next evening, Lyell took Charlie and his uncle up to the cathedral, where Lyell was still the official organist. They walked along the wide aisle and around the choir stalls to the great organ, its long pipes reaching right up to the vaulted dome. And Charlie wondered where his father could possibly have hidden the pearl-inlaid box. Lyell gave a mischievous smile and lifted the cushioned top of the organist's seat. In a neat compartment just beneath sat the box.
"Well, I never," Uncle Paton exclaimed. "What a hiding place. Who would have guessed?" He lifted it out. "But without a key, how is it to be opened?"
"We could force the lock," Lyell suggested, "but the pattern would be destroyed in the process."
Charlie took the box from his uncle. He turned it over and studied the intricate patterns: tiny mother-of-pearl stars, birds, leaves, and flowers adorned the lid and the sides. He stared at the stars and found himself traveling very slowly, very gently into a candlelit room where a craftsman was pressing tiny pieces of mother-of-pearl into the back of the box.
The man turned and looked at Charlie, holding up his finger. And Charlie gasped, for it was his old friend Skarpo the sorcerer and on his finger sat a small pearl cat.
"Charlie!" His father was shaking his arm. "What is it? Where are you?"
Charlie blinked. Skarpo had gone. "His finger," Charlie gasped. "His finger."
Uncle Paton and his father stared at Charlie in concern.
"It was a cat!" Charlie looked at the back of the box. He saw leaves and flowers, birds and stars, but no cat. He brought the box up close to his face. And then he saw it. There was a cat. Its ears poked from behind a star, its tail ran beneath a flower. Charlie gently pressed the slim tail. And the lid of the box clicked open.
"Charlie! How extraordinary!" said Uncle Paton.
"How clever!" said Lyell.
Charlie kept his secret traveling to himself.
Inside the box was not one will but many, beginning with Septimus Bloor's.
He had left everything to Maybelle. There was also a will made by Maybelle when she feared her life was in danger. She had left her entire estate to her son, Daniel Raven. And then there was Daniel's will, leaving all he possessed to...
"His daughter, Ita?" said Lyell. "Who on earth was she? I thought Daniel left everything to his son, Hugh, who gave the box to Billy's father to prove that he would inherit the Bloor estate if Septimus's true will could be found."
"Which it has been," Paton agreed. "I want you both to come and look at something." He led them down to the front pew and they sat either side of him while he drew a folded paper from his pocket. "This is what I have discovered during my weeks of research," he said, flattening the paper on his knee.
Charlie and his father bent their heads over the paper. There was nothing to see but a vertical line of names, beginning with Daniel Raven's eldest child, Ita. Who, in 1899, had married a Simon Bone.
"Bone!" said Charlie and his father.
And there, beneath Ita and Simon, was the name of their son, Eamon, who had married a Clara Lyell. And beneath Clara and Eamon was the name of their son, Montague Bone, who had married Grizelda Yewbeam in 1961 and died the following year.
"My father," said Lyell slowly.
"Who left everything he owned to you," said Paton.
They sat a while longer in the quiet cathedral, trying to take in this momentous news.
"So Bloor's Academy belongs to you, Dad," said Charlie at last.
His father frowned. "I suppose it does. But how do we prove it?"
"Quite easily, I hope," said Uncle Paton. "I've made an appointment to see Judge Sage tomorrow morning."
The following day, Lyell Bone and Paton Yewbeam took the box of papers to Lysander's father, Judge Sage.
He was known as one of the wisest and most open-minded members of the judiciary, and it didn't take him long to declare that Lyell Bone was the indisputable heir to Septimus Bloor's fortune. He would have to take the matter to court, of course, but the judge thought Lyell stood an excellent chance of winning his case.
"We'll have to warn the present owners of Bloor's Academy," Uncle Paton wryly remarked.
Charlie wanted to accompany his father and uncle on their visit to the Bloors, but Lyell was reluctant to let him. "All the recent woes of this city have come from that family," Lyell said, laying a hand on his son's shoulder.
"It's the seat of evil, Charlie, and there's no knowing what they will do when they discover that Septimus's will has been found."
"Please!" begged Charlie. "I want to be there. After all, I was the one who opened the box."
Lyell laughed. "So you were. All right. You've won me over, Charlie, but please do everything I say."
Charlie made a solemn promise and in the late afternoon, before the streetlights had come on, Uncle Paton, Charlie, and his father made their way up to the academy. They were approaching the square when a black car drove out. It stopped a moment before turning onto High Street, and Charlie saw Weedon at the wheel. Beside him sat his wife, and in the back was the unmistakable figure of Norton Cross in his elephant jacket. Beside him was a hunched figure veiled in black. Charlie didn't see the fourth passenger until the car was driving away from them. A small white face looked out of the back window and then hastily bobbed out of sight.
"Joshua," muttered Charlie.
"And his mother, most likely," said Paton. "They're all leaving."
"Rats and a sinking ship come to mind," said Lyell drily.
Weedon hadn't even bothered to close the academy doors behind him. The three visitors stepped into the shadowy hall without bothering to knock.
And for the last time in his life, Charlie shivered in the cold wickedness that seemed to pervade the building. It was truly a seat of evil, and the prime cause of all that evil was sitting in his wheelchair, staring down at them from the landing at the top of the staircase. It was almost as if he had been waiting for them.
"I suppose you've come to gloat," he shouted. "But you haven't won yet.
You've finished off Count Harken, but I'm still here and I'm not budging."
"We have the will, Ezekiel," said Lyell. "The true will. It's all over for you."
"Never!" screeched the old man.
"I'm afraid, Ezekiel," said Uncle Paton, "you'll have to spend your last days in a nice home for the elderly."
"NO! I won't. I'm staying put!" Ezekiel began to giggle uncontrollably.
"Manfred's going to make sure of that. If you make another move, he's going to burn the place down, and you wouldn't want that, would you, now?"
At these words Manfred walked out of the shadow behind the stairs. He held his hands in the air, every finger blazing like a torch. "Don't come any closer," he warned. The awful power of his ancestor Borlath, the Red King's eldest son, had at last materialized in Manfred.
Lyell took a brave step toward Manfred.
"Dad, no!" cried Charlie, staring at the flames leaping from Manfred's fingers.
"Woooo!" shrilled Manfred, and the flames leaped higher. "Scaredy-cats!"
What happened next was so astounding, Charlie could hardly believe his eyes.
For old Ezekiel came flying down the stairs. The wheels of his chair hit the treads once, twice, and then he was in the air. Too shocked to move, Manfred could only stare at the airborne thing in horror. When it landed on him, he emitted a single high-pitched scream that would echo in Charlie's head for years to come.