The Ghost and the Dead Man's Library

Brainert laid the letter flat and stooped over it. He squinted in concentration as he deciphered the handwriting.

“These…These aren’t letters,” he said.

“Let me guess.” Seymour laughed. “It’s a laundry list.”

Brainert ignored the quip. “Eugene Phelps is mentioned here. He’s the fellow who published the Phelps editions and—Hello!”

Brainert suddenly fell silent, his lips moving as he continued to read.

“Come on, Brainiac, spill!” Seymour pressed. “It’s a map to a hidden treasure, right?”

Brainert straightened his posture, his expression a combination of shock, surprise, and delight. He glanced at Seymour, then the rest of us. “It seems even a broken clock is right twice a day.”

Seymour squinted. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you were correct, my low-level, federal government-employee friend,” Brainert replied. “This is a treasure map.”

“What!” (We all cried that.)

“It is, yes, indeed,” Brainert said. “According to these old papers, dated 1936 and written by someone named Miles Milton Chesley, the Phelps editions of Poe’s works have three codes, or riddles, hidden inside of them. These riddles, when solved, will reveal the location of a secret treasure!”

“Yeah, right,” Seymour said, “like where the Crusaders hid the Holy Grail? How about the Count of Monte Cristo’s chest of gold coins?”

“Mr. Chesley doesn’t specify what the treasure is,” Brainert said. “Only that it exists.”

Seymour snorted. “In your mind.”

Sadie shook her head. “Oh, dear. Perhaps I sold that book to Mr. Montour too quickly—”

“Ha!” Garfield cried.

We all jumped, startled by his joyous outburst.

“Ha, ha, ha! And my mom told me I’d hate working in a bookstore because books are so deadly dull!”

“Dull indeed,” Brainert sniffed, ever the scholar. “There are no greater treasures than those found in books.”

Seymour poked his scrawny finger into Brainert’s chest. “Whoa, there, Indiana Jones. You’re not crazy enough to think this is a treasure map?”

“That’s what it says, Tarnish. And kindly put that finger away.”

Seymour folded his arms, his expression smug. “So who’s to say the treasure hasn’t already been found?”

“I’ll, of course, have to study all of these papers to learn what Miles Milton Chesley figured out on his own,” Brainert said. “But it doesn’t appear he solved all the riddles.”

“Or maybe he figured out it was all just a hoax,” Seymour countered.

Sadie touched the other envelopes. “He certainly did a lot of work. These pages are proof of that.”

Brainert scanned the pages again and frowned. “I see there is bad news, and it is very bad indeed.”

“Spit it out, Indiana,” Seymour ordered.

“It seems Mr. Miles Milton Chesley was convinced that a person had to possess all thirteen volumes to have a fighting chance of decoding the riddles.”

“And volume twelve just went down Cranberry Street,” Sadie said in a tone of regret.

Seymour threw up his hands. “Come on, guys! This is reality—not reality television. You can’t buy into crappy crap like this. It’s just…crap, like that wacky Leonardo code. Just a lot of hype.”

“I beg to differ,” Brainert replied. “Whatever is going on here, it’s hardly hype. I never heard of this theory of a Poe Code before, and American literature is my field of expertise.” He tapped the letter with his index finger. “For all I know, the whole thing may have been concocted by Miles Milton Chesley himself.”

“So you’re saying I’m right? That this is a lot of bunk?”

Brainert shook his head. “You don’t understand. Bunk or not, from the viewpoint of literary history, the very idea of a Poe Code is intriguing, to say the least.”

Sadie shrugged. “Mysteries always are.”

“Hidden clues in unlikely places, information and misinformation, conspiracies…” Brainert was on a roll.

“I see your point,” Seymour conceded. “Like those clues about Paul McCartney being dead.”

Garfield gaped at Seymour. “No, he’s not, Mr. Tarnish. Paul McCartney played Boston this summer. The old guy’s career might be on the skids—I mean, I’d never heard of him until recently—but the dude’s not dead.”

Seymour smirked. “That’s not what I was talking about. Back in the sixties the Beatles were really huge. By the way, junior—the Beatles were a band. The Fab Four and all that. And I’m talking nineteen sixties here. You went to public school here in Quindicott, so you might not be aware that we haven’t had the two thousand sixties yet.”

Garfield rolled his eyes.

“Anyway, back when the Beatles were on top of the world, Paul McCartney was injured in a car wreck —”

“Oh! Yes! I remember reading about that,” Brainert cut in. “A few years later some publicity mad DJ came up with the dubious notion that the real McCartney died in the crash and was replaced by an imposter.”

“What do you mean by ‘dubious notion,’” Seymour demanded.

Brainert blinked. “Seymour, don’t tell me you actually believe Paul McCartney was replaced by an imposter?”

Seymour gave Brainert a look full of pity. “Hey, it took me years to accept the truth. But all you have to do is listen to the solo albums by this so-called ‘Paul McCartney’”—Seymour made quote marks with his fingers—“and you know the no-talent phony from Wings just cannot hold a candle to the guy who was in the Beatles. I mean, come on! ‘Band on the Run’? ‘Ebony and Ivory’? Puh-leaze!”

Sadie cleared her throat, a call to get back to the subject at hand. “Maybe there is something to this Poe Code. But how can we find out what’s true from wild conjecture?”

Brainert grinned, touched his head with his index finger. “We have all we need right here, Sadie. But if my skills at ratiocination are not sufficient, I do have a colleague in the literary department who knows a great deal about Edgar Poe. He’s quite the expert.”

“Let me guess?” Seymour scoffed. “Paige Turner, Literary Detective.”

“His name is Nelson Spinner,” Brainert replied with an exasperated sigh, “and he may be able to shed some light on our situation. I’m going to talk to him immediately. Meanwhile, hold on to the rest of these books. We may need to examine them further.”

I swallowed hard. There was no way I would share my suspicions with Sadie—not yet, anyway—not until Brainert could help us confirm there really was something to this so-called Poe Code. But if there was some hidden treasure map buried inside these volumes, could that have been the reason Peter Chesley ended up dead?

Bingo, baby, Jack echoed in my head. Bingo, jackpot, royal flush.

CHAPTER 9

School Daze

It gives me…as much of pleasure as I can now in any manner experience, to dwell upon minute recollections of the school and its concerns.

—Edgar Allan Poe, “William Wilson,” 1839

BY LATE AFTERNOON, the selling day had settled back into normalcy. I’d been checking out a customer when the phone rang.