A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children #4) - Ransom Riggs Page 0,31

would you demonstrate?”

Olive started at the wall and stomped across the room. When she reached the very center of the floor, the sound her lead shoes made changed from a solid thwump to something more hollow—and slightly metallic.

“There’s something under there,” I said.

“A void. A concavity,” said Millard.

I heard Millard’s knee connect with the floor, and then a letter opener floated over the floor, point down. It was thrust between two boards, and with a grunt Millard pried up a section of floor about three feet square. It swung back on a hinge, revealing a metal door that looked just large enough for a grown man to fit through.

“Holy shit.”

Olive looked aghast. I rarely swore in front of them, but this was just . . . well, holy shit.

“It’s a door,” I said.

“More of a hatch, really,” said Bronwyn.

“I hate to say I told you so,” said Millard. “But—I told you so.”

The metal door was made of dull gray steel. It had a recessed handle and a number pad. I knelt down and rapped the metal with my knuckle. It sounded thick and strong. Then I tried the handle, but it wouldn’t budge.

“It’s locked,” said Olive. “We already tried to open it.”

“What’s the combination?” Bronwyn asked me.

“How should I know?”

“Told you he wouldn’t,” said Enoch. “You don’t know much, do you?”

I sighed. “Let me think for a second.”

“Could the code be someone’s birthday?” asked Olive.

I tried a few—mine, Abe’s, my dad’s, my grandmother’s, even Emma’s—but none worked.

“It’s not a birthday,” said Millard. “Abe would never have made the combination something so obvious.”

“We don’t even know how many numbers are in the combination,” said Emma.

Bronwyn squeezed my shoulder. “Come on, Jacob. Think.”

I tried to focus, but I was letting hurt feelings distract me. I had always thought of myself as closer to Abe than anybody. So how was it that he never mentioned the secret door in the floor of his study? He lived more than half his life in the shadows, and never made a real attempt to share it with me. Sure, he told me stories that sounded like fairy tales and shared a few old photos, but he never showed me anything. I never would have doubted his stories if he’d made more of an effort to prove them—like showing me the secret door to his secret room.

Unlike my father, I wanted to believe.

Had he really been so injured by my skepticism that it made him abandon some plan to tell me everything? I couldn’t believe that anymore. If he had told me the truth plainly, I would’ve guarded his secrets with my life. I think, in the end, he just didn’t want me to know because he didn’t trust me. And now here I was trying to guess the combination to a door he had never told me about, behind which were secrets he had never meant for me to uncover.

So why was I bothering?

“I’m out of ideas,” I said, and stood up.

“You’re giving up?” said Emma.

“Who knows,” I said. “Maybe it’s just a root cellar.”

“You know it’s not.”

I shrugged. “My grandmother took fruit preservation very seriously.”

Enoch let out a frustrated sigh. “Maybe you’re holding out on us.”

“What?” I said, turning toward him.

“I think you know the code but you want to keep Abe’s secrets for yourself. Even though we found the door.”

I took an angry step toward him. Bronwyn put herself between us.

“Jacob, settle down! Enoch, shut up. You’re not helping.”

I gave him the finger.

“Ahh, who cares what’s in Abe’s dusty old hole in the ground,” said Enoch, and then he laughed. “It’s probably just a thousand old love letters from Emma.”

Now Emma gave him the finger, too.

“Or maybe a shrine with a big photo of her and candles all around . . .” He clapped his hands gleefully. “Oh, that would be so awkward for you two!”

“Come here so I can burn your eyebrows off,” said Emma.

“Ignore him,” I said.

She and I retreated to the doorway with our hands in our pockets. He’d gotten to both of us.

“I’m not hiding anything,” I said quietly. “I really don’t know what the code is.”

“I know,” she said, and touched my arm. “I was thinking. Maybe it’s not a number.”

“But it’s a number pad.”

“Maybe it’s a word. Look, the keys have letters and numbers.”

I went over to the door and looked. She was right: Every number key had three letters below it, like the buttons on a telephone.

“Was there a word that would have meant something to the