The Eye of Midnight Read Online Free

wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “I thought it was Grandpa who suggested the whole thing.”
    “Really?” she said. “Why would he? He’s never shown any interest in us before.”
    “No, I guess he hasn’t,” said William.
    “So what are we supposed to do now? Clean out his icebox, sit in his easy chair, go upstairs and find a bed? It’s like ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears.’ ”
    William snorted, but his attention had drifted to something else.
    “Hold this,” he said, handing her his turkey leg.
    “What are you doing?” asked Maxine. She watched as he tugged on one of the blackened andirons in the fireplace.
    “Looking for the hidden lever,” he said, scanning the room. “The entrance to the secret room is almost always in the library. All you have to do is find the lever.” He braced himself against a section of the bookshelves and put his back into it, but the shelves refused to budge.
    “You’ve been spending too much time at the movies,” said Maxine. “This is just a disagreeable old house. We’re more likely to die of boredom this summer than anything else.”
    “Says you. Old places like this always have a trapdoor or an underground passageway—someplace where Grandpa keeps his pirate treasure and dead bodies.”
    He pulled hard on a brass candleholder attached to the wall, and it came off in his hands with a shower of crumbling plaster.
    “Will! What on earth? Are you trying to get us in trouble our first night here?”
    William shrugged and tucked the candleholder behind the drapes. “Maybe it’s not in the library after all. Let’s go check the rest of the house.”
    He rattled out of the library and down the main hall, tapping on every knothole and peering behind every picture frame along the way. Maxine sighed and followed along halfheartedly. They paused at the old grandfather clock, but just as William began to open the glass case, the doorbell rang.
    The cousins both turned sharply and stared at the front door.
    “Maybe it’s Grandpa,” whispered Maxine.
    “Why would he have to ring his own doorbell?” replied William, and without giving his cousin a chance to reply, he trotted to the door and opened it wide.
    A dark, rawboned man stood on the front step. He wore plus fours and high boots, and his beard was long and matted. His eyes darted furtively as he scanned the moonlit drive, and then he turned to face the open door. Seeing the children, he frowned with dismay.
    “I was expecting Colonel Battersea,” he said.
    “Can we help you, mister?” asked William.
    The man made a circle with his thumb and forefinger and held it to his chest, watching the children for a response. Maxine and William stared back blankly.
    The stranger’s brow knit with concern, and he glanced back over both his shoulders. “I have a telegram,” he said, his voice low. “It’s vital that this reach him.” He handed them a sealed envelope. “You’ll make sure he gets it?”
    “Of course,” said Maxine. “May I tell him whom it’s from?” She blinked at him expectantly, but the man turned without a word and hurried down the steps.

    “Well, that was odd,” said Maxine. She closed the door and glanced at the envelope, then leaned it against Caesar’s bust on the pedestal beside the staircase. “He seemed awful jumpy about something, didn’t he?”
    “Say what?” mumbled William, looking the old clock up and down again, as if he had forgotten the strange visitor entirely.
    Maxine groaned. “You’re still thinking about your secret door, aren’t you?” she said.
    “Notice anything unusual?” he asked, rapping on the sides of the case.
    “Besides the fact that it’s the biggest clock I’ve ever seen? No.”
    The clock really was gigantic. It was taller than a grown man and as wide as a cart horse.
    “Look behind it,” he said.
    “I can’t,” she replied as she walked around it. “There’s no gap. It’s sort of…attached to the