Free Emerald Green by Kerstin Gier Page B

feel drowsy too. In fact the Guardians seemed to be much less strict than I’d have expected in 1956. No one thought it odd for Lucas to be working late or for his cousin Hazel from the country to be keeping him company.Not that there were many people left in the building at this time of the evening. Young Mr. George had obviously gone home, which was a pity. I’d have liked to see him again.
    “A book—well, maybe,” said Lucas, thoughtfully munching a biscuit. He had been about to light a cigarette three times, but I’d taken it out of his hand. I didn’t want to be smelling of cigarette smoke again when I traveledback. “The code and the coordinates make sense, I like that bit, and it sounds like me. I’ve always had a weakness for codes. Only how did Lucy and Paul know it was in the thingy … in the Yellow Horse book?”
    “ Green Rider , Grandpa,” I said patiently. “The book was in your library, and the piece of paper with the code was between its pages. Maybe Lucy and Paul left it there.”
    “But that’s not logical.If they disappear into the past in 1994, then why do I leave a chest walled up in my own house so many years later?” He stopped prowling and bent over the books. “This is driving me crazy! Do you know what it’s like to feel the solution is within reach? I wish travel into the future by chronograph were possible. Then you could interview me in person.”
    Suddenly I had an idea, and it was such agood one that I was tempted to pat myself spontaneously on the back. I thought of what Grandpa had told me last time we met. According to him, Lucy and Paul, getting bored with the time they spent elapsing here, had traveled farther back in the past and seen exciting things, like a performance of Hamlet in 1602, in Shakespeare’s own lifetime.
    “I know!” I cried, doing a little dance for joy.
    My grandfather frowned. “You know what exactly?” he asked, intrigued.
    “Suppose you send me farther back into the past with your chronograph?” I said excitedly. “Then I could meet Lucy and Paul and simply ask them.”
    Lucas raised his head. “And when would you meet them? We don’t know what time they’re hiding in.”
    “But we do know when they visited you here. If I joined them then, we could all discussit together—”
    My grandfather interrupted me. “But at the time of their visits here in 1948 and 1949, when they arrived from the years 1992 and 1993”—at the mention of each date, he tapped our notes and ran his forefinger along several lines with arrows pointing to them—“at those times, Lucy and Paul didn’t know enough either, and they told me everything that they did know then. No, if you meetthem at all it would have to be after they ran away with the chronograph.” Once again he tapped our notes. “That would make sense. Anything else would just add to the confusion.”
    “Then … then I’ll travel to the year 1912, when I met them once before, at Lady Tilney’s house in Eaton Place.”
    “That would be a possibility, but it doesn’t work out in terms of time.” Lucas looked gloomily at the clockon the wall. “You weren’t even sure of the exact date, let alone the time of day. Not forgetting that we’d have to read your blood into the chronograph first, otherwise you couldn’t use it for time travel.” He ruffled his hair up again. “And finally you’d have to get from here to Belgravia on your own, and that’s probably not so simple in 1912 … oh, and we’d need a costume … no, with the bestwill in the world, it can’t be done in such a short time span. We’ll have to think of something else. The solution’s on the tip of my tongue. I just need more time to think it over, and maybe a cigarette.…”
    I shook my head. I wasn’t giving up so easily. I knew it was a good idea. “We could take the chronograph to just outside Lady Tilney’s house in this time, and then I’d travel straight backto 1912—that would save a lot of time,