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G EORGE H ARRISON—WHO, DESPITE HIS name, had no musical gifts whatsoever—closed the servants' entrance to the Rockefeller "cottage," helped Joe remove his coat, and then took off his own. He hung them on pegs while Joe ran ahead into the kitchen. Every day, Mrs. Cookson had raisin porridge waiting on the stove for Joe when he got home from school. This morning, however, they'd made the journey to the schoolhouse only to learn that one of the teachers was ill, and that class would not resume until tomorrow—Saturday. Which meant, Mrs. Cookson said, that Joe would get his porridge early… once he'd completed his studies.

Joe was fitting in well at the two-room schoolhouse. On the first day, his accent had attracted the attention of an older bully, but after Joe had used his fists to place the fellow into a recumbent position, the other students quickly came to respect him. The teacher had initially planned on a remedial syllabus for the boy but, on discovering his reading and writing skills were unexpectedly strong, found a place for him in the upper schoolroom. It was, D'Agosta supposed, one of the benefits of a tiny school, where such labels as fifth or sixth grade had little meaning. He was pleased by the way Joe, even though still keeping much to himself, had begun to make progress in his studies and was getting along with his classmates. The only thing the least unusual was the six-day school week: because fathers needed extra hands to help work during the season, there were sixteen weeks off during summer instead of the usual twelve.

D'Agosta moved through the warm kitchen and proceeded on to the back parlor, where a fire was burning and a copy of the Portland newspaper, a week old, was waiting. He picked it up and began leafing through it. He found these 1880s papers pretty thin: six or eight columns of print set off by ornamented headlines. The most interesting stories were buried inside, lurid descriptions of criminal goings-on, reports of strange marvels from "the uttermost corners of the Orient," or the like. The stories on the front page were more or less incomprehensible to someone who had no background in the politics or controversies of the day.

He put the paper aside and sighed. Life on the island, he had to admit, was dull. He dutifully made uneventful, daily rounds of the common rooms of the freezing mansion. Mrs. Cookson was friendly and eager to minister to their needs, but her conversation was limited and her worldview cramped. He missed his wife, Laura, terribly and felt broken up that they had parted in anger. She had to be freaked out by his sudden disappearance.

Mr. Cookson turned out to be a surprise. He had initially remained taciturn and indisposed to small talk, but that changed when D'Agosta offered to help paint the ten small bedrooms in the servants' wing. The man made a feeble attempt to rebuff the offer, but it was clear he was no fan of standing on ladders and slopping paint on ceilings. As they worked together, D'Agosta began to like the wizened, mustachioed man, who only spoke when he had something worthwhile to say, and often with a wit so dry it took a moment to realize that it was wit at all.

The island seemed safe enough. Strangers were rare and immediately noted. A few artists and writers arrived from time to time to spend a week or two in the offseason, wandering around the shores and cliffs. D'Agosta himself had decided the less time he spent out of the mansion, the better: he'd been accepted as one of Mr. Rockefeller's "people" and was happy to leave it at that. His outside excursions mostly consisted of walking Joe to and from school, and he used the opportunity to look for anything out of place. Nothing raised his suspicions. And Joe, thank God, knew how to keep his mouth shut.

Now the boy himself stepped into the back parlor to join D'Agosta. One hand gripped the leather strap that bound his schoolbooks together, the other his prized possession: a metal dip pen. This pen, though it was used like the others in school and even looked rather common, was in fact very special.

Two packages had arrived from Pendergast since they reached the island: both addressed from Mr. Rockefeller to Mrs. Cookson, but holding inside smaller packages with George Harrison's name on them. The first contained necessaries, including money and instructions he had burnt after reading. The second package contained a present for Joe. Pendergast, who knew Joe had been developing an interest in astronomy before being rushed out of the Fifth Avenue mansion, had given him a dip pen with a metal shaft. D'Agosta, reading from Pendergast's note, explained to Joe that the pen was exceedingly rare, having been machined from a piece of the Bendegó meteorite, which had impacted in Brazil almost a hundred years before. In the package Pendergast had also included a pamphlet on meteors and meteorites, along with some photographs. It turned out to be the perfect gift. Joe treasured it above all things and kept its origin as secret as if his life depended on it. D'Agosta smiled as he watched the boy unfasten the strap around his schoolbooks. No doubt half the fun of the gift was being the only one to know just how valuable the ordinary-looking item was.

A thump sounded from downstairs. Immediately, Joe's eyes met D'Agosta's. A minute later, the basement door opened and Mr. Cookson could be heard emerging, preparing to do the morning chores, speaking briefly to his wife before shuffling away again. D'Agosta could see Joe's shoulders sag, his eyes wandering. The boy was easily bored—and no wonder, being stuck on a frozen island.

The combination clock–barometer–temperature gauge on the mantel told him it was nine thirty—an entire day ahead, unexpectedly without school.

"You know what?" D'Agosta asked. "I think it's high time we went looking for that old ghost. You can do your studying afterward. What do you say?"

Joe's eyes lit up.

D'Agosta leaned forward conspiratorially. "We'll just have a quick look… for now. If we find anything suspicious, we'll make preparations and investigate more thoroughly tomorrow. But we'd better put on our winter coats—those closed parts of the house are as cold as Siberia."

" Jiminy! " Joe half slid, half jumped out of his chair, then followed D'Agosta into the back kitchen to collect their coats and a kerosene lantern.

Almost an hour later, a freezing D'Agosta sat on the top step of the attic staircase, wrapping his scarf more tightly around his neck. He hadn't considered just what an ordeal a "quick look" through a mansion entailed. While he'd regularly made a circuit of the primary rooms of the house as part of his cover, he'd never penetrated its recesses. He was shocked at the sheer number of storerooms, larders, closets, and shut-up bedrooms the mansion contained, all of which Joe had insisted on exploring. They were now both covered in dust and cobwebs.

When he'd made the suggestion, it had seemed like a way to make good on his promise to entertain Joe, and in the process give the structure a really thorough going-over. And now, he estimated that, in the last sixty minutes, he had walked up and down at least two dozen flights of stairs. They had ended up here in the freezing, sprawling attic, filled with dust and mothballs and rat traps, many already accommodating frozen rats not yet disposed of. Brick chimneys stood here and there like sentinels, rising through the gloom to pierce the gables overhead.

So far their explorations had not revealed any sign of ghosts, and no rattle of chains had greeted their passing. Joe, however, was having a marvelous time. D'Agosta was exhausted.

"Well, if there were any ghosts," he said, "we scared 'em off for sure. Time to call it a morning."

"What about back there?" Joe asked, still eager, pointing to the darkest ends of the attic, where the eaves sloped down into a series of crawl spaces.

"No ghosts in there," D'Agosta said.

"How do you know?"

"Too cold."

"Ghosts can't feel cold," Joe said authoritatively.

D'Agosta shrugged. " I'm cold."

Joe accepted this explanation. "What about the carriage house?"

"We'll look there tomorrow," D'Agosta replied. "Come on: careful with these stairs—they're steep." And, rising, he led the way down to the third floor. Joe followed, closing first the attic door, then the door at the bottom of the stairs.

For several minutes, silence returned to the attic. Then, with a brief, almost indetectable scraping noise, a packing crate shifted in the darkness beneath a far gable. A shape emerged. Edwin Humblecut rose and moved to the front of the crate, on which he took a seat, wiping dust from his heavy clothes and setting his homburg beside him. And then—idly fingering his handlebar mustache—he settled down to wait.