The Maze of Bones (The 39 Clues #1)(13)

"Why would farmers care if stones are mossy or not?"

Amy was tempted to whack him with the book. Maybe that would loosen the stones in his head. But she kept her cool. "Dan, the point is he got very famous for this. And he made tons of money."

"Okay ..." Dan fished out the piece of paper with their first clue. He frowned at it.

"So we found Richard S___ . How does that help us find our treasure? And what's RESOLUTION mean?"

"Franklin used to write resolutions for himself," Amy said, "rules he wanted to follow to improve himself."

"Like New Year's resolutions?"

"Sort of, but he wrote them all year round. Not just on New Year's."

"So was that part of Poor Richard's Almanack?"

Amy knit her eyebrows. "No," she said uneasily. "His resolutions were from a different book. His autobiography, I think. Maybe the word RESOLUTION in the clue was just to help us think of Benjamin Franklin. I'm not sure...."

She turned a page in Poor Richard's Almanack.

Notes were scribbled in the margins in several different handwriting styles. She caught her breath. She recognized one line of elegant script, written in purple ink at the bottom of a page. She'd seen the same handwriting in old letters -- treasures that Grace would show her from time to time. The notation simply read

Follow Franklin, first clue. Maze of Bones.

"Mom wrote in here!" she cried. "She always used purple pen!"

"What?"

Dan said. "Lemme see!"

"May I?" Alistair asked.

Amy wanted to hold the book forever. She wanted to devour every word her mother had written in it. But reluctantly, she handed it to Alistair. "I want it right back," she insisted.

"No fair!" Dan said.

Alistair put on his glasses and examined a few pages. "Interesting. Several generations have held this book. These notes here are in Grace's hand. And here, my father's handwriting, Gordon Oh. And here -- James Cahill, Grace's father. They were brothers, you know, although Gordon's mother, my grandmother, was Korean."

"That's great," Dan said impatiently. "But why was our mom writing about Ben Franklin?"

Alistair arched his eyebrows. "Obviously, Benjamin Franklin was a Cahill. That does not surprise me. He was an inventor like me, after all. I would imagine most of the books in this library were written by members of our family, whether they knew their true bloodline or not."

Amy was stunned. All of these famous authors ... Cahills? Was it possible, whenever she'd sat in a library, lost in books, she'd actually been reading the words of her relatives? She couldn't believe the Cahills could be so powerful, but Mr. McIntyre had told them their family had shaped human civilization. For the first time, she began to understand what that might mean. She felt like an enormous canyon was opening up at her feet.

How had her mother known about the first clue, years before the contest began? Why had she chosen to write in this book? What did she mean by the Maze of Bones? There were too many questions.

Meanwhile, Dan was bouncing around in his usual annoying way. "I'm related to Benjamin Franklin? You're kidding!"

"Why don't you go fly a kite in a storm and see if you get electrocuted?" Amy suggested.

"Come now, children," Alistair said. "We have much work to do without bickering. We'll have to read through these notes and -- "

"Wait." Amy's whole body tensed. An acrid smell filled the air. "Is someone smoking?"

Uncle Alistair and Dan looked around in confusion.

Then Amy saw it. White smoke was thickening across the ceiling, drifting down in a deadly haze.

"Fire!" Dan yelled. "Get to the stairs!"

But Amy froze. She was mortally afraid of fire. It brought back bad memories. Very bad memories.

"Come on!" Dan tugged her hand. "Saladin -- we have to find him!"

That jolted Amy into action. She couldn't let anything happen to the cat.

"There's no time!" Uncle Alistair insisted. "We must get out!"

Amy's eyes stung. She could hardly breathe. She searched for Saladin, but he'd disappeared. Finally, Dan dragged her up the stairs and shoved his shoulder against the secret bookshelf door. It wouldn't budge.

"A lever." Dan coughed. "There's got to be a lever."

Dan was usually good at figuring out mechanical stuff, but they groped around for a switch or a lever and found nothing. The smoke was getting thicker. Amy pushed on the wall and yelped. "The surface is getting hotter! The fire's coming from the other side. We can't open it!"

"We have to!" Dan insisted, but it was Amy's turn to pull him along. She dragged him back down the stairs. The smoke was so bad now they could barely see each other.

"Get as low as you can!" Amy said. She and Dan crawled through the library, desperately looking for another exit. She had no idea where Uncle Alistair had disappeared. The bookshelves were combusting -- old dry paper, the perfect kindling.

Amy pulled herself up on a table and found the jewelry box.

Don't take valuables.

She knew that was one of the first rules for getting out of a fire alive. But she scooped up the box and kept going.