The Mansion in the Mist by John Bellairs Read Free Book Online

a wrinkled piece of cardboard. Without a word he handed it to Emerson, who adjusted his glasses and squinted at the neat square printing.
    "Auro est locus in quo conflatur," he muttered. "Gold, gathered together somewhere. A nugget? A gold statuette? A necklace? And how would such a thing help us find the Logos Cube? I can't imagine how. Then there's this thing about the great clue being in the Temple of the Winds. But I didn't see anything that looked like a miniature temple when we were at the mansion. Of course, there may be more to that ghoulish estate than what we've seen. There's that mass of trees, and who knows what may lie beyond it? At any rate, I intend to go back and explore, and I will not listen to anyone who tells me not to go!" Emerson folded his arms and looked as stubborn as he possibly could.
    Miss Eells was near despair. "Well, if you want to kill yourself, I suppose it's your own business," she said bitterly.
    "Oh, I don't know," said Emerson, who was turning back into his usual optimistic self. "I got the two of us back safe and sound, didn't I?"
    Miss Eells said nothing for several minutes. Then she pulled herself to her feet and yawned. "I don't know about you two, but I'm going to bed. And if I were you, Emerson Eells, I'd think long and hard before I went back to that dark and dangerous place. You may think you're saving the world, but you'll end up breaking your neck!"
    Emerson sniffed disdainfully. Then he got up and walked off to the foot of the stairs to get a candle to light his way to bed. The other two followed him.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    For the next several days Miss Eells and Anthony tried to go on with their vacation life of fishing and boating, which was a bit hard to do at this point. Emerson went with them sometimes, but it was clear that his mind was someplace else. Many times during the day he would go up to the room where the chest appeared, and he would stand in the doorway chewing his lip impatiently and drumming his fingers on the woodwork. "There has got to be a reason why the chest shows up when it does," Emerson would mutter from time to time. "It can't just be chance." He examined every inch of the barren, dusty little room, but he found only one odd thing: The window was divided into nine small panes, and the one in the upper right-hand corner had turned purple. This usually happens only in very old houses with glass that is 200 years old or more. Impurities in the glass mix with sunlight to cause this change, but—as Emerson said to himself—this cottage was only about ninety years old. Which meant that somebody had deliberately put that purple pane up there. But why?
    One evening as the three vacationers were enjoying a delicious fish dinner in the kitchen, Emerson announced that he had figured it all out. He had a very irritating know-it-all way of telling people about his discoveries, but Anthony and Miss Eells were used to him by now.
    "The chest appears when some star or other shines through that purple pane," he said, as he munched a piece of fish. "That has got to be the explanation." Fussily, Emerson plucked a bone out of his fish fillet and laid it on the edge of his plate.
    Miss Eells eyed her brother skeptically. "Then why doesn't the stupid chest appear every night? The summer constellations are in the sky now, and they'll be there for quite a while. If some star controls that chest, it would have been shining in the window at the same time every night for at least several weeks."
    "Not if the sky was overcast," said Emerson smugly. "Personally, I think the star must be Arcturus. It is in the southern sky at present, and that window faces south."
    "But wouldn't the chest disappear when the star moved past the window, or when clouds came to cover the stars?" put in Anthony timidly. He never felt good about challenging Emerson's theories, but in this case he felt he had to.
    Emerson rubbed his chin and looked thoughtful. "Good comment," he muttered. "Very good. As I