Yo, Theo thought, as the ferry docked on Liberty Island. Yo, as they powered past tourists to get to the statue. Yo, as he craned his neck to take the whole of Liberty in.
“Okay, the puzzle,” Jaime said. “I remember this one from that video about the Morningstarrs we had to watch in third grade. You apply the sequence of numbers that was printed in the New York Sun—”
Theo recited, “42, 1, 2; 42, 20, 7; 42, 1, 10—”
“You just can’t help yourself, can you?” Tess said.
“Right, and you apply those numbers to that Poe story,” Jaime continued as if Theo hadn’t interrupted, “and get ‘It begins, as everything does, with a lady. Her book holds your keys.’ I checked the magazine back at your grandfather’s apartment, and it worked, so at least that part of the Cipher seems right.”
Tess said, “And the chance of any other text giving a coherent riddle using that same sequence of numbers is . . . well, I don’t know what it is but it’s really low.”
Theo said, “I know what—”
“Shut up,” said Tess.
“Okay. So, the real question is whether the ‘lady’ in question is this lady?” Jaime pointed at Liberty.
“I think so,” said Tess. “Not only is she a lady—the lady—with a book commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence, but it was the Morningstarrs who secured this island for the statue.”
Jaime was still staring up at Liberty. “‘July IV MDCCLXXI,’” he read. “July 4, 1776.” He wrote the date into his sketchbook. If Theo had to guess, Jaime wasn’t humoring Tess. He seemed to be taking this seriously. And of course Tess was.
Is it the destination or the journey, Theo?
Theo cleared his throat. “At first people thought the word keys meant literal keys.”
“Yeah,” said Jaime. “I remember there were people who insisted that a set of keys must be hidden inside the book.”
“Someone even sued the city for the right to open the book with a blowtorch,” Tess said. “But the word keys obviously meant ‘keys to a puzzle.’”
“It’s only obvious after the fact,” said Theo, who, again, couldn’t help himself.
A voice called: “You kids trying to solve the Cipher or something?”
They all turned, even Nine. A sallow guy trailing behind a large tour group smirked at them.
Theo tugged at his lip, let go. Why adults felt comfortable interrupting the conversations of people they didn’t know was the most annoying sort of mystery.
“A regular bunch of Nancy Drews,” the man said. He held a brown bottle, swirled the liquid inside it. Root beer? Regular beer? “That’s cute.” He chuckled to himself and took a sip.
Nine growled but Tess smiled sweetly the way she did when she was angry enough to bite. “Just a bunch of Nancy Drews, that’s us all right.”
The man chuckled again. Or maybe it was a chortle. Who could tell the difference?
Jaime had his sketchbook out and he was sketching a two-panel comic. In the first panel, the man was doubled over with the words HEH HEH HEH HEH all around him. In the second, he laughed so hard he dropped his bottle on his foot. YEEOUCH!
“Guys, let’s go inside,” Tess said. “If we’re cute out here, I’m sure we’ll be super adorable in there.”
They left Guffaw Man still chortling and walked around to the other side of the statue, where glass doors led into a dark, damp gallery. Because it was so nice out, the gallery was completely empty but for them. All around were photos and plaques and posters about the history of the United States and about the making of the Liberty Statue. Tess and Jaime kept talking about the Cipher, how everyone figured that the date on Liberty’s book was the key to another book cipher, so applied the number 741776 to the Declaration of Independence. When that didn’t work, they applied it to the Bill of Rights, and then to all the plaques and displays in this gallery. And when that didn’t work, people started thinking about women with books, writers like Harriet Beecher Stowe or Phillis Wheatley.
“It wasn’t the date that was important,” Jaime said. “It was the fact that it was talking about the Declaration of Independence.”
“And George Washington first read the Declaration in front of a crowd at city hall in 1776. And that’s where they found the next clue, in the cornerstone of the city hall built in 1811.”
Theo sat on the nearest stone bench and tuned them out. In front of him, the original design of the statue was preserved behind glass. He didn’t have to read the description to know that the Liberty Statue was erected in 1851 at a time of increasing turmoil. He could hear his grandpa telling him: “The Lady was meant to represent the hopes and dreams of a struggling nation. The hope that everyone in America could be free.”
Free, sure. Free to have your home ripped out from under you. Free to be laughed at by jerkface tourists. Free to—
“Hey!”
Nine had some kind of white paper in her mouth and was hopping around like she’d caught herself a whole tuna and wasn’t about to give it back.
“She grabbed it right out of my pocket,” said Jaime.
Tess bent down and held Nine’s harness to keep her still. “Isn’t that my grandpa’s letter?”
“It is?” Jaime said. “Oh, sorry. I found it in the hallway outside your apartment, then forgot I had it.”
“Nine must have dropped it when Slant’s minions came,” Tess said. “She doesn’t want to drop it now, though.”
Jaime bent down next to Tess. He scratched Nine between her ears and under the chin until the cat purred like an Underway train. The letter fell to the ground.
“How did you do that?” said Tess. “I can never make her let go of anything!”
“I have a way with monster cats,” Jaime said. He held the letter up to the light. TRUST NO ONE TRUST NO ONE TRUST NO ONE was written all over it. He held it out to Tess. “You probably want to open it.”
“It’s probably from some goofball. My grandpa still gets loads of letters like that. And all of them say ‘trust no one’ or ‘top secret’ or ‘for your eyes only’ or ‘the FBI is watching’ or whatever.”
“This one looks kind of old, though,” said Jaime. He held it out to Theo. Theo shook his head. He didn’t need to read a letter likely written by a guy who lived in his mom’s basement and dressed entirely in duct tape.
“You can open it if you want, Jaime,” Tess said. She stood and yawned. “I’m getting hungry. Maybe we should find some lunch before we go to city hall. A pretzel at least.”
Theo should have figured that once they started, Tess would not stop until she’d reinvestigated every known clue. This was going to take forever, and it was still point—
“Guys?” Jaime said.
He had opened the envelope and was holding a worn and yellowed piece of paper, burned around the bottom edge. “So, the name of that Edgar Allan Poe story was ‘The Purloined Letter.’”
“‘Right,’” said Theo. “So?”
“Purloined. As in stolen.”
“Yeah,” said Theo. “And?”
“You also said that the Morningstarrs wouldn’t do anything random, right?”