“Face pale, raise the tail,” Rayne instructed. She’d been a Girl Scout for exactly two weeks, long enough to earn exactly one merit badge. Luckily it was in first aid.
Felix grabbed a needlepoint pillow from a small footstool. Like everything in The Treasure Chest, that pillow was old. The fabric had faded from white to gray, and the crooked stitching on it was fraying. As Felix slid it beneath Great-Uncle Thorne’s head, he noted the date stitched there: 1776.
“Raise the tail,” Rayne said.
When Felix looked confused, she said, “His feet.”
Why she would call feet a tail, Felix didn’t know, but he obeyed.
Great-Uncle Thorne’s feet seemed to weigh a ton, two heavy deadweights in what he called his house slippers, black velvet things with three interlocked gold Ps on the tops.
James Ferocious refused to enter The Treasure Chest, but Maisie cautiously walked in. Great-Uncle Thorne might have a heartbeat, but he looked about as awful as a person could look.
Rayne, all serious, stuck two of her fingers beneath Great-Uncle Thorne’s nose.
“He’s breathing, all right,” she said. “I think the old bugger just fainted, that’s all.”
“Shouldn’t we do something?” Felix asked, not convinced that this wasn’t an emergency. “Get smelling salts or call nine-one-one or something?”
Everyone turned to Rayne for her opinion. She considered, then said, “Cold compresses.”
“Could you speak English, please?” Felix grumbled.
“Cold damp facecloths,” she said, sighing.
Felix jumped to his feet and ran out to get them, muttering, “Cold compresses,” as he did.
It wasn’t until Felix was gone and Maisie stood alone with the prone Great-Uncle Thorne and the Ziff twins that she realized that they—the Ziff twins—were back. And seemingly alive and well.
“Hadley!” she shrieked, and hugged her friend. “Rayne!”
Rayne shook her head. “No hugging during first aid,” she said.
“You’re both okay,” Maisie said, another rush of relief washing over her.
“No thanks to you,” Rayne said.
Maisie looked at her, surprised. “We were about to be eaten by lions!” she began.
But Rayne shook her head again. “Lions? I was kidnapped and almost scalped, chased by a herd of elephants—”
“Saved by the cold compresses,” Hadley said as Felix rushed back in with two jewel-toned, monogrammed facecloths dripping cold water.
“On the forehead,” Rayne ordered.
Felix slapped one on Great-Uncle Thorne’s furrowed forehead, causing the old man to practically leap to his feet.
“What in tarnation?” he shouted.
As soon as he sat up, however, he had to lie right back down.
“Dizzy,” he said.
“Stay put,” Rayne told him. “You fainted,” she added.
“I’ve never fainted in my life,” Great-Uncle Thorne protested weakly.
Water dripped down his face, making him look even more pathetic. But at least his cheeks now had two hot pink spots, one on each, which looked even pinker against the ghastly white.
“Well,” Hadley said, “there’s a first time for everything, then. Because you fainted as soon as I said—”
Rayne shushed her sister.
“Let the man recover,” she said.
Then she turned to Felix. “FYI, damp does not mean dripping wet.”
“What did you say?” Maisie asked Hadley.
Hadley leaned in close to Maisie and whispered, “We found her.”
“Her who?”
“Amy Pickworth.”
And even though they were whispering, Great-Uncle Thorne’s eyes grew wide and his face lost the pink spots. He lifted his head as if to speak, but instead, once again, his eyes rolled back in his head, and his head dropped with a thud to the floor. Just like that, he fainted for the second time in his life.
With two soggy facecloths on his forehead, Great-Uncle Thorne’s eyelids fluttered open.
“Where?” he asked. “What?”
Then his eyes closed again, and this time a strange release of air escaped from his lungs, like the bellows he used to stoke the fire in the Library fireplace.
From the doorway, James Ferocious began to bark and pace back and forth.
Hadley put her ear to Great-Uncle Thorne’s chest, and Rayne placed her fingers beneath his nose.
A clock somewhere in The Treasure Chest ticked noisily and then grew quiet.
“His heart,” Hadley said without lifting her head. “It’s . . . muffled.”
“I’m not sure he’s breathing,” Rayne said. “It might be time to start CPR.”
This last she said with a voice so panicked that James Ferocious barked louder and paced more frantically.
Felix took stock of what he was seeing: Maisie’s mouth opened in fear; Hadley’s ear pressed against what Great-Uncle Thorne called his dressing gown, a ridiculous moss-green silk thing; Rayne desperately searching for a puff of air from his nostrils; James Ferocious barking and pacing; and Great-Uncle Thorne as white as marble.