Free The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn by John Bellairs Page B

treasure. But even with the Tweedys gone, how will you be able to do it? There’s Mrs. Speece, old Eagle Eye, the lady who lives next door. She’s still there. And there are the people who walk by the house all the time. And the house will be locked up tighter than a drum. What do you know about jimmying a window? Can you use a glass cutter? No way at all.”
    Anthony sat sullenly listening as Miss Eells spoke. Finally he finished his Coke and went back out front to mind the circulation desk. Half an hour later Miss Eells came out and told him that she had a splitting headache —the goose egg on her head was throbbing like anything—and that she had decided to go home and lie down. She had called Miss Pratt, the woman from the branch library, who had promised to come right over. Miss Pratt showed up fifteen minutes later, and Miss Eells went home. Anthony told Miss Pratt that he was going down to the storage room to straighten up the piles of magazines. This was a fib. He was going downstairs so he could climb upstairs to the secret room—in the tower.
     
     

 
    CHAPTER 9
     
     
    The four-story tower that stood at the northwest corner of the library had fascinated Anthony ever since he had started working there. It was mysterious. In fact, it was like one of Alpheus Winterborn’s riddles. Although it was built onto the corner of the building, you couldn’t get into it from any of the rooms, upstairs or down, that were in the part of the library that touched the tower. There were no doors on the outside of the tower, either. At first, Anthony thought that the whole silly thing was sealed off from the outside world, like a tomb. But when he asked Miss Eells if there was any way to get into the tower, she merely smiled mysteriously and said, “Keep looking. You’ll find a way.”
    Finally, about two weeks after he had started his job, he found a way to get in. In the furnace room, behind the furnace, he had found a door with a cardboard sign tacked on it. The sign said broom closet. But he thought this was a funny place for a broom closet, so on a hunch he took down the sign, and underneath he saw peeling gilt letters that simply said stairs. Nearby, on a rusty nail, hung a key. It fit the lock on the door. Behind the door was a flight of stone steps that corkscrewed up four stories to a small, round room at the top. Ever since that day, the tower room had become one of Anthony’s favorite places. He went there a lot when business in the library was slow or when he just wanted to sit and think.
    Right now, Anthony definitely wanted someplace where he could just sit and think. A lot of things had happened to him in a very short space of time, and his head was in a whirl. The Tweedys were moving. Miss Eells’s house had been broken into, and the mirror had been stolen. Anthony climbed the steps to the top of the tower like somebody lost in a dream. When he got to the top, he opened a low, pointed door and went into the tower room. He sat down cross-legged on the floor and looked around.
    There was no furniture in the room. Dust and the tiny bodies of dead insects covered the floor. Over in one corner, near a window, lay a pile of old magazines.
    The tower room, when you came to think of it, was pretty useless. There wasn’t even an electric light in it, or an outlet where you could plug one in. In the middle of the ceiling was a trap door. Anthony had never opened it, but he figured it led up to the roof of the tower. When the wind blew hard, he could hear the weather vane rattling overhead. The room had nine oval windows. Today, the gray light of an overcast October day filtered in through the grimy panes. Anthony sat there, motionless, looking out. Away on the western horizon ran a long line of bluffs. Below him he could see the tops of bare trees, the walks and benches of Levee Park, and the leaden gray waters of the river flowing past. Even on a dull day like this, Anthony enjoyed being up here. He felt like