Jacob stared at Melissa. “No—that can’t be true!” He couldn’t believe that his ancestor had been the monster he had read about. Just hearing about the awful things Levi Boone Helm had done had made Jacob feel sick. Did he really have that DNA in him? Could it be true?
“Why did you think your father was obsessed with this treasure?” Melissa asked. “I came to him and told him about the puzzle box. He went looking for it, and found it in an old family heirloom. But when I offered to buy it from him, he wanted to work together.” Melissa’s lip curled and she spat on the ground. “He thought that I should split the fortune with him. That since it had been Helm’s he was owed. As if Lucy Helm hadn’t murdered Frances! As if he didn’t owe me for everything that was taken from my family! Idiot. I didn’t want to kill him, but he left me no choice. He wouldn’t sell the puzzle box.”
“Pourquoi crois-tu que ton père était obsédé par ce trésor?” demanda Mélissa. “Je suis allée le voir et lui ai parlé du coffre à énigme. Il est allé le rechercher, et l’a trouvé dans un vieil héritage de famille. Mais quand je lui ai proposé de le lui acheter, il a voulu qu’on travaille ensemble.” La bouche de Mélissa se tordit et elle cracha par terre. “Il pensait que je devais partager le trésor avec lui. Comme c’était le trésor de Helm, il lui revenait de droit. Comme si Lucy Helm n’avait pas assassiné Frances! Comme s’il ne me devait rien après tout ce qui avait été pris à ma famille! Idiot. Je ne voulais pas le tuer, mais il ne m’a pas laissé le choix. Il n’aurait pas vendu le coffre à énigme.”
“He was going to split it?” Emma asked. There were tears in her eyes. “And you still killed him?”
“It’s my treasure,” the woman snarled. She sounded deranged, and Jacob took a step back from her. “Now you have the same choice! Tell me where the clue is—or you die.” She lifted the gun up.
Jacob held his hands out. “Okay, okay. Let me think. Just…let me think.”
He looked around. Melissa said she had already searched the area. Was there anything she might have missed? She had been looking at man-made things. The caboose, the monument, the gift shop. But none of that had been there when Frances Galt left his hidden message.
Frances Galt…
No.
Wait. It wasn’t Frances Galt at all.
“Do you have the letter?” he asked Melissa. “The one from Levi to Lucy?”
« As-tu la lettre ? » demanda-t-il à Melissa. « Celle de Levi à Lucy ? »
Melissa looked at him, suspicious, but then nodded. Keeping back, and with her gun still out, she took off her backpack and pulled out the unlocked puzzle box. She took out the first letter, laid it on the ground, and then backed away. With the gun, she motioned for Jacob to take the letter.
Mélissa le regarda, suspicieuse, mais elle acquiesça. En retrait, et toujours avec son pistolet, elle ôta son sac à dos et en sortit le coffre fermé. Elle enleva la première lettre, la posa par terre, puis recula. Avec le pistolet, elle indiqua à Jacob de prendre la lettre.
He picked it up and read it over. “In the letter, Levi says that Galt is leaving three clues. The leaves at the Library of Parliament are one. The stones in the Citadel in Halifax are the second…”
Il la ramassa et la lut. “Dans la lettre, Lévi disait que Galt avait laissé trois indices. Les feuilles à la Bibliothèque du Parlement en sont un. Les pierres dans la Citadelle d’Halifax un second…”
“And the third is here, at the railway,” Melissa said.
“Et le troisième est ici, à la voir ferrée,” dit Mélissa.
Jacob nodded. “And the only thing that was here when Galt was here, was…the railway itself. That’s where the clue is. Carved into the railway itself.”
They all turned to look.
The railway was just beyond a chain-link fence. There was a bend not too far away, and grass was growing up between the tracks.
“Let me go,” Jacob insisted. “I can find the clue, and I promise that I’ll tell you what it actually says.”
“Are you insane?” Emma asked. “It’s way too dangerous! That’s an active train line.”
“I can do it. You have to let me do it,” Jacob said. He started to move toward the fence.
“No way!” Melissa brought her gun up. “You’re way too determined to go yourself. What’s your plan, huh? Lie to me about the clue you find? Send me on a wild goose chase so that you have time to find the real clue?”
“Pas moyen!” Mélissa releva son pistolet. “Tu es beaucoup trop déterminé pour y aller tout seul. Quel est ton plan, hein? Me mentir à propos de l’indice que tu as trouvé? M’envoyer à la chasse aux oeufs afin que tu aies le temps de trouver le vrai indice?”
“No!” Jacob said. “I just…uh… I wanted to…”
Melissa snorted. “I thought so. Stay right where you are. I’m going over. And don’t think about making a run for it—I’ve got great aim and there’s nowhere to hide.”
Mélissa renifla. C’est ce que je pensais, reste là où tu es. J’y vais. Et ne pense pas à courir—j’ai un objectif majeur et il n’y a nulle part où se cacher.”
“You can’t—there’s a train on the way!” Emma gasped.
Melissa snorted. “I’m not falling for that.” She walked over to the fence, checked to make sure that no one was coming, and started to climb. Every few feet she waved the gun at the kids, to make sure they stayed where they were.
Jacob put an arm around Emma and held her close. “When the train comes,” he whispered, “she’ll be distracted coming back over, and we can make a run for it.”
Emma nodded, relieved. “What about the clue?” she whispered back. “She’ll go back for it as soon as the train passes.”
Jacob tried to hide his smile, in case Melissa was watching. “I don’t think the clue is there at all,” he whispered back.
Melissa dropped to the other side of the fence. She turned again, to make sure the kids were still standing still. She looked around, then crossed over the tracks so that she could look at them and keep the kids in her sight-line at the same time.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea!” Emma called out. “You should stay on this side so you can get out faster!”
“And turn my back on you? I wasn’t born yesterday,” Melissa called back. She kept her gun pointed at them, and turned her attention to the tracks.
Jacob nervously looked down the tracks. Because of the bend, he couldn’t see if a train was on the way. Pete had said it would be here any minute…but what if it didn’t come in time? What if Melissa got angry that she couldn’t find a clue, and decided to start shooting?
“Jacob,” Emma whispered. “is that—?” She held a hand up, like she was listening.
Jacob stopped breathing. He thought, in the distance, he might hear something like the rumble of a train. But with the highway so close by, it was hard to tell what was just traffic and what might be a train.
Jacob cessa de respirer. Il pensait, au loin, entendre quelque chose comme le grondement d’un train. Mais avec l’autoroute pas loin, il était difficile de determiner ce qui était juste de la circulation et ce qui pouvait être un train.
“Melissa!” he yelled. “I think that’s a train! You need to cross back over!”
“Shut up!” She yelled back. “I think I see some marks on this tie, but it might just be worn. I can’t tell!” She crouched down to get a better look.
“La ferme!” cria-t-elle en retour. “Je pense voir des marques sur cette traverse, mais il est possible que ce soit juste l’usure. Je ne saurais dire.” Elle s’accroupit pour mieux voir.
“Melissa!” Emma screamed. “It’s the train! It’s the train!”
Melissa stood up, so that she was standing directly in the centre of the tracks. “Do you think I’m an idiot?” she yelled. “I’m descended from Frances Galt! He was a genius who hid puzzles in plain sight for centuries! You think I’m going to be tricked by a bunch of stupid—”
The train whistle was deafening. As it came around the corner, Melissa turned halfway toward it. Emma grabbed Max and turned him away, and just in time. The train was moving so fast it almost seemed to appear out of thin air. One second there was Melissa, and then there was a blur…and the long, long line of the train, and blood on the tracks.
Le sifflement du train était assourdissant. Alors qu’il était en train d’arriver, Mélissa se retourna vers lui. Emma attrapa Max et le retourna, juste à temps. Le train allait si vite qu’il semblait presque être sorti de nulle part. Avant il y avait Mélissa, et maintenant un flou…et la longue, longue ligne du train, et du sang sur les rails.
The screech of the train’s brakes filled the air. Jacob grabbed Emma’s arm, and the two of them hurried Max away. Emma and Max were both crying, and Jacob couldn’t stop his hands from shaking.
“She wouldn’t listen,” Emma said. “I told her, I told her…”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Jacob assured her. “I told her that’s where the clue was. I lied…”
“You thought she would run when the train came,” Emma said. “I did, too. We told her. There was time!”
Jacob hugged her, and Max too, and they all took a moment to catch their breath. The train was still trying to brake, and the long line of its boxes was starting to slow down. They all avoided looking at the track and what was left of Melissa’s body.
“What did you mean—you lied about where the clue was?” Max asked, sniffling and wiping his nose on his sleeve.
“The third puzzle wasn’t the train tracks,” Jacob explained. “It was the puzzle box. It was curling, so we know that Galt made it, not Levi.”
“But that means…” Emma said. “That means Levi left the clue here, no Galt?”
Jacob nodded. “And Levi was here in 1862. That was before they drove in the Last Spike—four years before. Galt must have used the Last Spike as his clue in the Halifax puzzle because it had been finished by the time he was done hiding clues. That means the clue isn’t tied to the railway at all. It’s something simple. Levi wasn’t a genius. He was just a murderer.”
“He would have hidden it somewhere obvious. Somewhere natural,” Emma said.
They all looked around. There was a little area around the gift shop with rocks and lawn, but just past that there was forest. And right at the edge of the forest…
“Is that a cave?” Jacob asked.
People from the gift shop were starting to come outside to see why the train had stopped. It wouldn’t be long before they noticed Melissa’s body. Jacob ran over to the cave, and Emma and Max followed right behind.
It was barely a cave, just a little area where the rock had been worn away over time. No one would ever think twice about it.
And in the cave, carved into the rock wall by the edge of a knife, were a few simple words.
“My words have the answer,” Max read. “Then he’s written 4, 6, 2.”
“My words?” Emma asked.
“It can’t be…can it?” Jacob reached into his pocket and took out the letter that Melissa had given him to reread. “Could the location of the treasure have been hidden in the note all along?”
He spread the paper out on the ground, and the trio crowded around. The letter read:
Il étala le papier sur le sol, et le trio se regroupa au dessus. La lettre disait:
Lucy, you were five when I left you, and you are so grown up now.
We have so much in common, two of us with each other. You may not know
what for was the reason I left you, but life is hard to understand. I’ve found
a fortune in five and thirty gold nuggets, and left it with other treasures I’ve
collected in my travels. In three days or three years, the police will come for
me. Nȯne of them will catch me. But if they do, and they hang me,
Galt will go north and hide clues that will point you to the treasure. When
you are ready to be one who is rich, he will bring you the first clue. Only
you two working together will be able to solve the clues. Work with him
together, for you alone will not find the answers. Lucy, I am sorry that I was
not a better father, us two together were good, but I could not find no
love, theree in my heart for your mother. You know she is not a kind
woman, she went for me because I was fun but then the fun
ran out and she wanted nȯne more of what I had to give.
No, nȯne of her love was left for me. So I gave all of mine to you.
Find the treasure west of here, Lucy, and know that I love you.
And use it when you find it to make your life better.
Give the kind of life to yourself I never could give to you, do not
work like a dog, for people who love you not, no, instead
build a fire from the wood of their expectations and thrive.
Dad.
“What were the numbers on the wall?” Jacob asked.
“4, 6, 2,” Max read out. Emma handed Jacob a pen, and he carefully circled the fourth word in the first line, the sixth word in the second line, and the second word in the third line. He kept up that pattern for the whole paper, until the letter read:
Lucy, you were five when I left you, and you are so grown up now.
We have so much in common, two of us with each other. You may not know
what for was the reason I left you, but life is hard to understand. I’ve found
a fortune in five and thirty gold nuggets, and left it with other treasures I’ve
collected in my travels. In three days or three years, the police will come for
me. Nȯne of them will catch me. But if they do, and they hang me,
Galt will go north and hide clues that will point you to the treasure. When
you are ready to be one who is rich, he will bring you the first clue. Only
you two working together will be able to solve the clues. Work with him
together, for you alone will not find the answers. Lucy, I am sorry that I was
not a better father, us two together were good, but I could not find no
love, theree in my heart for your mother. You know she is not a kind
woman, she went for me because I was fun but then the fun
ran out and she wanted nȯne more of what I had to give.
No, nȯne of her love was left for me. So I gave all of mine to you.
Find the treasure west of here, Lucy, and know that I love you.
And use it when you find it to make your life better.
Give the kind of life to yourself I never could give to you, do not
work like a dog, for people who love you not, no, instead
build a fire from the wood of their expectations and thrive.
Dad.
“It’s a bunch of numbers!” Emma said, excitedly copying down the words. “I Think that’s why ‘there’ is misspelt as ‘theree.’ It stands for 3. That gives us 245302, then north, then 12123400, then west.”
“And then it says find the dogwood!” Max said.
“I think those zeros might be nines,” Jacob said. “See the weird little dots above the O? Nine is a hard word to sneak into a letter, and he uses none in weird ways.”
“Let me check.” Emma divided the numbers up into longitude and latitude with nines and with zeros: 52°45’39.2″N 121°23’49.9″W and 52°45’30.2″N 121°23’40.0″W. She put them both into Google Maps and checked to see where they were. They were both in BC, but with 0s, the number landed in the middle of a lake. With the 9s, it was near where Levi Boone Helm had been captured. “This is it!” Emma said, excited. “This is where the treasure is!”
