Read Spiderweb for Two - A Melendy Maze for Free Online Page B

your person lately?” inquired Randy. The question sounded very peculiar even as she asked it, and she did not wonder that Willy burst out laughing.
    â€œNo, not just lately,” he said. “The only writing about my person that I know of is that tattoo-piece I got on my left arm, and that’s been there for thirty years, and all it says is Mabel.”
    â€œNo, we know about that one, of course,” said Oliver. “Well, thanks just the same, Willy. Sorry to trouble you.”
    He and Randy returned to the house, perplexed and curious.
    *   *   *
    About two weeks later, when all hope of finding the clue had been abandoned, or at least suspended, Randy decided to give Isaac a bath; the flea situation had reached its usual autumnal pitch, and she had bought a bar of soap that smelled as if it would kill anything. She ran water into the laundry tub, put on her raincoat and rolled up the sleeves, located Isaac cowering under the bottom shelf of the linen closet (he always seemed able to distinguish the sound of water being run for his bath from the sound of water being run for any other purpose) and carried him trembling and faintly growling down to the kitchen. She unfastened his collar and laid it on the drainboard (Cuffy was not there to stop her) and deposited Isaac in the warm water. All the time that she was scrubbing and he was groaning, she was aware of an idea in her mind that she was too busy to examine. She scrubbed and soaped and rinsed, and in his saturated state Isaac was revealed as a much smaller, less important-looking dog than when he was dry and fluffy. (Perhaps that was one of the reasons for his horror of baths.) The air positively pulsed with the odor of strong disinfectant as whole flea communities gave up the ghost and a large lake of spilled water widened on the floor. After the final rinsing Randy lifted her shuddering victim from the tub, wrapped him warmly in an old towel, and murmured words of praise and consolation. Holding him in her lap she started to dry him, and as she did so the idea which had lurked behind her thoughts sprang forward vividly. Isaac’s collar! There it lay on the drainboard, a loop of worn red leather with its small brass license plate and the dangling metal capsule that contained his name and address. Randy sprang to her feet, the towel fell to the floor and Isaac, released, flew from the kitchen, scattering showers, to dry himself in his own way, on the living-room rug. Randy’s fingers trembled as she unscrewed the capsule. Within it, as she had suddenly foreseen, was a tiny roll of blue paper.
    â€œOliver! Oliver!” she shouted, nobly refusing to read what was written on it until her brother could read it too.
    â€œWhat do you want?” shouted Oliver from the Office, two flights up. “I’m busy. I’m trying to make gold with my chemical set.”
    Since Cuffy was not at home Randy could shout the news at the top of her lungs.
    â€œThe clue! The clue! I found it. Hurry!”
    Oliver got down the first flight of stairs partly by falling, and down the second by way of the bannister, and was at her side almost before she had stopped shouting.
    â€œThe collar!” he exclaimed. “‘Call me and I will come’… Holy cow. We should have thought of Isaac first thing! Read it out, Randy, I can’t read script very good.”
    Randy read the clue aloud:
    â€œNamed for a jewel, named for a bird,
    Â Â Â Â  Asleep for threescore years and ten,
    Â Â Â Â  First find my resting place, and then,
    Stepping toward sunrise, find the third
    Â Â Â Â  Strange clue that marks the secret way
    Â Â Â Â  To rare reward and a fair summer day.”

CHAPTER III
    The Resting Place
    Named for a jewel, named for a bird,
    Â Â Â Â  Asleep for threescore years and ten,
    Â Â Â Â  First find my resting place, and then,
    Stepping toward sunrise, find the