Free Shadow of the War Machine (The Secret Order) by Kristin Bailey Page B

for?”
    “Rathford left a letter for me to find here on this table. It was from my grandfather and it said something about Rathford being the only one who knew my grandfather was alive. There must have been more correspondence between the two of them. Perhaps another letter has a clue to where my grandfather might have gone.” I knew it was foolish, but I continued to search around the spying machine in the hopes that the letter was still near it, even though logically I knew it was no use to search there. Rathford would have collected it and placed it back where it belonged.
    Peter nodded thoughtfully, then used a candle to light another lamp before fixing the candle in a holder and turning toward the shelves. “Our task is simple enough, then.I’ll search through these papers here. Meg, you have a very discerning mechanical eye. Why don’t you look for hidden compartments where Rathford might have tucked something away, and, Will, you can take the bookshelves.”
    While Peter and Will both jumped immediately to their tasks, I needed a moment to think. From what I knew of Rathford, he was the kind of man who’d kept everything locked away. Yes, this workshop was hidden, but nearly all the Amusementists had secret workshops that weren’t really secret at all.
    Rathford didn’t trust easily. If I were him, where would I hide things?
    I inspected the partition we had come through into the main room of the workshop. I hadn’t even noticed it the first time I’d been in this room. It created the illusion of a solid wall.
    The backs of my ears tingled. That was it.
    I leaned through the partition and gazed into the room beyond, then back into the main workshop. The two rooms together were at a right angle to one another, forming a sharp corner. We were beneath the carriage house. One would expect the rooms below to follow the footprint of the building above, which was a stout rectangle.
    There had to be a third hidden room.
    “Boys,” I said, taking several quick steps over to the wall and pressing my bare hand to it. “Look at this. There’s another secret room here.” The wall had been covered with wood paneling in a pattern of squares carved with intricate molding. I leaned my weight against the table, pushing it back from the wall.
    The others joined me and helped to clear away the cobwebs and pieces of machinery leaning up against the wall.
    “Do you see anything that could mark a covering for one of the locks?” Will asked.
    I scanned the wall, but there wasn’t a single round thing in it. The surface almost looked like a woven basket. This was quite a puzzle.
    The answer came to me slowly even as my eyes settled on one thin sliver of molding missing from the edge of a panel low on the wall and to the right.
    “It’s a puzzle.” I stepped toward that small missing sliver. If I hadn’t been staring so intently, I never would have noticed the slight hitch in the pattern. I ran my fingers over it, inspecting the square panel. Acting on a hunch, I placed my fingers on the edge of the part of the molding that was like all the rest and pulled it toward the nearly imperceptible gap.
    It slid and clicked into place, revealing a new gap in the panel with a groove carved into the wood.
    “Look here! It’s like one of those Russian puzzle boxes.” I looked up at Peter, who crouched down next to me and began to feel the wall. “If we find the right method of sliding the panels, it should unlock.”
    “Now, that is brilliant.” Peter slid a piece of the molding from the square above down into the new gap.
    This was it. Whatever Rathford was hiding, we would find it here.
    Together we worked, testing each piece of wood, finding the places with give and trying new combinations as larger and larger gaps opened up. On three different occasions Will saved us from folly by noticing the pattern of grooves and stopping us from moving a piece of molding or a panel too far, which would have prevented us from moving the