The Sultan's Tigers Read Online Free Page A

leaving me with Grandpa. He talked to me, telling me some stuff about his life and giving me several pieces of advice, which I’m sure were very useful, although unfortunately I can’t remember a single thing he said. But one thing did lodge in my mind. He had shown me something that he called his treasure box.
    Shelves filled the niches on either side of the fireplace. Most of them were crammed with all kinds of junk—old magazines, tangled wires, jam jars filled with nails, a stack of crappy DVDs—but two of the shelves were filled with books. I scanned the spines, running my eyes over the titles and the names of the authors. None of them meant anything to me. None of the books looked familiar. Had it gone? Had he moved it? Or was it there and I just couldn’t remember what it was called?
    Then I saw what I was looking for. A thick hardback, the creased leather spine embossed with faded gold letters:
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Cornish Highways and Byways; a Description of Some Rambles Around Penzance, Land’s End and Zennor, Incorporating Illustrations of Local Personalities and Wildlife by Edward Charles Trelawney
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    I pulled the book from its shelf and opened the front cover. The pages had been cut away, leaving a gap, a space, a place to keep valuables.
    The day that I was last here, my grandfather had pointed it out on the shelf. He said, “Do you want to see a book written by one of your ancestors?”
    When I pulled it down and opened it up, he started laughing. “You didn’t really think a Trelawney had written a book, did you? Most of us can’t even read.”
    This was his secret hiding place. Then it had contained a wad of twenty-pound notes and a chunky gold necklace.
    Now it was full of letters.
    Two thousand euros’ worth of old letters scrawled in faded ink on crinkly paper.
    Was Marko really going to be watching me?
    He said he would and there was no reason to doubt him. He might be parked across the street. I just had to walk out of the front door holding the letters. He couldn’t steal them from me in broad daylight. He’d have to make a deal.
Give me the money. Give me the two thousand you agreed on with Grandpa
.
    I didn’t want to hand them over right away. I wanted to know what they really were, and why they were worth so much to Marko.
    I opened the door. I could hear voices from the kitchen and the clatter of cutlery and dishes. The rest of my family had gotten to work. They were tidying the house. We had to make it respectable before the real estate agents arrived on Monday morning, the day after tomorrow.
    Hoping no one would hear me and tell me to come and help, I snuck upstairs to Grandpa’s bedroom. His bed was saggy and damp—the sheets probably hadn’t been changed all year—but it was comfy enough, so I sat with my back against the headboard, picked the first letter from the top of the pile, and started reading.
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7 June 1795, Southampton, Hants.
Dear Miss Pickering,
I much enjoyed our conversation at last night’s ball and hope I may have the pleasure of conversing with you again at your soonest convenience. Our departure has been delayed once more, so with your permission, and that of your mama, would you care to visit the fair with me this coming Saturday? There is supposedly a man with two heads, and a rhinocepede from deepest Africa. If you would agree to accompany me, I should be the happiest man in England.
Your devoted servant,
Horatio Trelawney
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    That made sense. Now I knew why the letters were here. Horatio Trelawney must have been one of us. The letters were a family heirloom. Had they been passed down from generation to generation until they reached Grandpa? Why didn’t anyone else know about them? And why did Marko? I didn’t understand why a bunch of old letters would be worth anything to a guy like him. There must some information in them. Unless Grandpa had conned him, of course. I’d already seen