Chapter 12: The Torn Page

Torben left before Conal reached the door.

He went down the steps at a half run and drove away without looking back.

"What did he want?" Conal asked.

"He wants me not to open something." I put down my coat. "I think it's the same thing your father didn't want opened."

We stood in the quiet hall for a moment.

"We have six days," Conal said. "My father hid everything. Fishing money, his mother's ring, a bottle of whiskey he swore he'd given up."

"Then he'd hide a page he couldn't throw away."

"Where?"

I thought about it the way I would about a missing invoice.

"Where would a keeper put something that he touched every night and nobody else ever did?"

Conal's head turned slowly toward the tower.

"The lamp."

We climbed the hundred and twelve steps, and then the ladder above them.

The lamp room was a ring of glass around a great lens as tall as a man.

The brass pedestal under it was dull with oil.

Conal ran his hand along the base, frowning.

"He cleaned this every night. He knew every plate on it."

I knelt and looked at the brass.

One small plate, no bigger than a playing card, sat a hair proud of the rest.

"This one's been polished more than the others."

Conal crouched beside me and pressed the corner with his thumbnail.

The plate came loose.

Behind it, wrapped in a scrap of oilcloth, was a folded leaf of yellowed paper.

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