The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp (Alfred Kropp 1)

He dropped to his knees and shone his flashlight under the sofa. I looked at my watch. The terminal window had passed.

“Uncle Farrell, we have to go.”

“I’m not going.”

“We’re going to get caught.”

“I’m not walking out on half a million dollars!”

I pushed myself up, and somehow my belt buckle caught under the edge of the desk. It got stuck there, so when I stood, it pulled up, and the top of the desk hitched about half an inch. My buckle slipped free and the desktop smacked back down.

From across the room, Uncle Farrell was still on his knees, staring at me. “Well, I’ll be jiggered,” he whispered.

6

“It’s heavy,” I told him. “Take that side.” I had cleared everything off, putting it all on the bookshelves behind me.

“Jeez Louise, I guess it is heavy.” He puffed out his cheeks as we lifted. “Quick now, Alfred. I got to get downstairs to meet the cops. You stay up here till they’re gone.”

That made me nervous. I didn’t want to be alone in the dark, but I couldn’t think of any way around it.

The desktop was hinged on the front side, like the lid to the biggest music box ever made. Uncle Farrell took a deep breath as we both leaned over to peer inside.

“Holy nut-buckets!” he breathed. “Wouldn’t you know?”

Inside the hidden cavity was a silver keyboard, like the pad of an ATM or calculator, built into the desk itself.

“There’s a code,” I said. “You punch in a code and that opens something.”

“What’s the code?” he asked. He looked like he was about to cry.

“I don’t know,” I answered.

“Well, of course you don’t know, Alfred! I wasn’t asking the question because I thought you knew!” He looked at his watch and chewed on his big bottom lip.

“Okay, Al, this is okay,” he said in that false-positive tone adults sometimes take with kids. “I’ll get on downstairs to meet the cops and you stay up here.”

“Stay up here and what?”

“Break the code.”

He gave me an encouraging pat on the back and headed for the door.

“Uncle Farrell!” I called after him, but he ignored me. I heard the elevator bell go ding, and then there was the loudest silence I had ever heard.

I stared at the pad. The PIN was probably Mr. Samson’s birthday, or the year he founded the company, or maybe just some random number that had nothing to do with anything. Since I didn’t know any of those numbers, I just started punching digits at random. Nothing happened, and it occurred to me I could punch numbers from now until doomsday and nothing might work.

I gave up, lowered myself back into the chair, and looked at my watch. What if the cops demanded to see the suite and he was leading them up here right now? Part of the plan should have included walkie-talkies.

Being nervous and bored at the same time is an odd combination; I couldn’t sit still, so I leaned forward and peered into

the interior of the secret compartment. A little voice inside my head whispered “telephone,” then whispered it again, “telephone,” and I wondered why my little voice was whispering “telephone” like that.

Then it hit me. “Letters,” I whispered.

Mr. Samson’s phone sat on the floor beside the desk. I picked it up and set it on my lap. Like most phones, each key had three letters that corresponded to each number, like ABC was the number 2.

So I started punching in some numbers.