The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp (Alfred Kropp 1)

I looked at my watch. “Nine minutes into the window. We got to hurry.”

I didn’t know where to look in the big, sparse office. All I could see were bookcases, filled mostly with knickknacks and pictures, a potted palm tree, a sofa, a coffee table, the desk and chair, and that was about it. I pulled on a drawer handle in the desk, but it was locked. Of course, he couldn’t fit a full-length sword into a desk drawer. Maybe Uncle Farrell was right, and we should look for a secret hiding place somewhere. Maybe a safe behind that big watercolor over the sofa. You saw that all the time in the movies. Uncle Farrell stood by the door leading to the reception area, his cool completely gone.

“Why are you just standing there?” Uncle Farrell snapped at me.

“I don’t know where to look,” I admitted. “Maybe Mr. Myers was wrong. Maybe it isn’t here.”

“It’s here,” he insisted.

“How do you know?”

“I don’t know. I just know.”

“You don’t know but you just know?”

“Shut up, Alfred. I’m trying to think.”

I sat down in Mr. Samson’s leather chair. I had never sat in a more comfortable chair in my whole life. It felt like the chair was hugging me. I wondered how much a chair like this cost.

“What are you doing now?”

“I’m thinking,” I said.

“Alfred, we don’t got that kinda time.”

Bernard Samson kept a clean desk. His blotter was bare. On one corner sat a framed photograph of a man with a big white dog that looked like a cross between a wolf and a Saint Bernard. I wondered if the man was Mr. Samson—maybe he got that kind of dog because his name was Bernard too. Other than the picture, there was a penholder and a nameplate, in case somebody forgot when they walked in who was sitting in the big fat hugging chair. I looked at the picture again. The man was broad-shouldered, with a large head and a mass of golden brown hair that he wore swept back from his high forehead, like a lion’s mane.

I lifted the blotter an inch or two, which isn’t an easy thing to do when you’re wearing Playtex rubber gloves; sometimes guys hid things under their blotters.

“Uncle Farrell, if you had a priceless sword, where would you hide it?”

“In my priceless patooty.” He peeked into the other office, as if he was waiting for the cops to storm in any second. Uncle Farrell had gone twitchy all over.

“Maybe it’s behind that picture over the sofa,” I said.

“ ‘Maybe it’s behind that picture over the sofa,’ ” he mocked me, but he kneeled on the center cushion and gingerly lifted the bottom of the frame. I knew the answer before he said it.

“Nothing.” He flopped onto the sofa and rubbed his forehead.

I pulled the chair closer to the desk and rested my elbows on the blotter.

“I don’t think it’s here,” I said.

“Shut up. I’m trying to think, Al.”

“Or maybe it was here and Mr. Samson moved it.”

“Why would he move it?”

“Maybe somebody told him what Mr. Myers was up to.”

“Maybe, maybe, maybe,” Uncle Farrell said. “If maybes were pickles we could have a picnic.”

“Maybe he’s too smart for us,” I said, meaning Mr. Samson.

“Smart?” Uncle Farrell raised his head and glared at me from across the room.

“What did I tell you about that?” he asked. “Being smart doesn’t matter as much as people think. You want to know what matters more than smarts? Stubbornness. Stubbornness and energy, Alfred. That’s what gets you ahead in this world.”