The Eye of Midnight Read Online Free Page A

wall.”
    “There’s something else,” he said, pressing his ear to the cabinet. “Have a look at the side table.”
    She glanced at the table beside the clock. An empty vase and a black telephone flanked an old Royal typewriter. In front of it, a silver letter opener stood fixed in a block of cork. Maxine wiggled the blade free and tested the point with her finger.
    “Is it Grandpa’s murder weapon, do you think?” she said, holding it delicately between her thumb and forefinger with a look of mock horror.
    “Very funny. I mean the typewriter. Why would he keep it in the front hallway? Shouldn’t it be in the study or something? And why is there a wire coming out of it?”
    Maxine bent and looked under the table. A cord snaked down the table leg from the back of the typewriter and disappeared into the wall beside the clock.
    “It’s weird, isn’t it?” said William. “Like maybe the typewriter can send out some kind of electrical signal.”
    Maxine frowned skeptically, but William stepped up to the typewriter and cracked his knuckles like a piano maestro.
    “O-P-E-N S-E-S-A-M-E,”
he muttered as the ebony keys clattered beneath his fingers. He stopped and stared at the grandfather clock expectantly, but nothing happened.
    “B-A-T-T-E-R-S-E-A,”
he said, trying again.
    The clock seemed indifferent to his advances, and William’s brow twisted in frustration, but he continued to peck away with admirable tenacity.
    “Knock yourself out,” said Maxine. “There’s nothing here. No revolving bookshelves or scandalous letters or bodies stuffed in the walls.” She turned away and had just made up her mind to wander back to the library when she froze in her tracks. Her gaze had landed on a familiar symbol engraved on the letter opener in her hand—the same strange symbol she had seen on the doorbell and the mantelpiece. Her eyes narrowed, and she turned back toward the clock.
    “Slide over,” she said with a nudge. William obliged, retreating to the blue mosaic fountain, where he sat down on the lip of the stone basin beneath his cousin’s hanging coat. Maxine squinted at the typewriter, shook her head, and pressed the number zero.
    From somewhere inside the walls, the cousins heard the faint squeal of metal on metal.
    The skin on Maxine’s arms prickled like a cucumber, and her eyes shot to the tall case beside the stairs, but the old clock’s even tick continued without pause.
    Then, from a spot just above William’s head, there came a mechanical clunk.
    He raised his eyes slowly and craned his neck backward until he was looking at the coat hooks directly above him. While he watched, the blue mosaic swung inward on unseen hinges.
    “A door,” he whispered.
    Indeed, a yawning portal now loomed inside the stone archway. Steep steps tumbled down into the darkness below. Maxine and William stared at each other in amazement.
    Suddenly, Battersea Manor seemed much less boring.

"We’re not going in there,” Maxine said, peering down the darkened staircase. “I mean, we should probably wait for Grandpa, don’t you think?”
    But the seductive voice of Adventure was already crooning softly in William’s ear, drowning out Maxine’s misgivings.
    “What do we need Grandpa for?” he replied. “Permission? If he were really all that worried about us getting into trouble, maybe he should have been here to keep us out of it.”
    Summoning his courage and taking his cousin firmly by the arm, William led the way through the secret door.
    The stairs creaked beneath them as they descended, their hands and feet groping blindly in the gloom. Maxine’s resolve grew weaker with each step downward, but she tried to reassure herself by glancing back to the top of the stairs and the thin shaft of light beyond the door.
    Presently the stairs ended, and the cousins perceived that they were in a sort of musty, narrow passageway. William shuffled on, but Maxine faltered at the thought of leaving behind the light at the