“So what do we do?” Brandy asked after amoment.

Albert held up the key. “I guess we openit,” he replied. “We’re both here. We have it. What can it hurt toopen it and look inside? Maybe we’ll figure out what it allmeans.”

Brandy held onto the box, still not sure.She looked at the key for a moment, then looked up at Albert andsaid in a voice that was nearly a whisper, “What if it’s a bomb orsomething?”

Albert hadn’t considered a bomb. He stareddown at the box, his thoughts whirling. Why would it be a bomb? Butwhy not? Why crash airplanes into the World Trade Center? There wasno end to the number of horrors that could be hidden in a box likethis. He could almost imagine turning the key and watching it flyopen as some hellish creature burst from within, its vicious jawstearing the flesh from his body before he knew what was uponhim.

He shook these thoughts away and metBrandy’s eyes. “If it is,” he decided at last, “we probably won’tfeel it.”

Brandy’s face paled at the thought of suchan abrupt and brutal end. “I guess that’s true,” she said after amoment.

“With or without you,” Albert said. “I thinkI have to open it. I have to know what’s going on.”

Brandy gazed back at him. “Why?”

“It’s just who I am. I’ve always loved agood mystery. I read mysteries, I watch them, I can almost alwaysfigure out who did it.” He looked down at the box. “This is thefirst real mystery I’ve ever come across. I guess I feellike, even if it’s dangerous—stupid even—to open it, I want to.” Heshrugged and lowered his eyes. He felt foolish. “I feel like, aboveall else, I want this to be something real, you know?”

Brandy stared at him, surprised. “Yeah. Iguess I do.”

“I’m not saying we should. I don’t know.Probably we shouldn’t. I’m just saying I want to.”

She nodded. “Okay.” She moved the box closerto him, resting it on her knees, and then turned it so that thekeyhole faced him. “I guess I do too.”

He looked up at her, relieved that sheunderstood him. He wanted to ask her if she was sure, but he didn’tdare tempt her to reconsider. “Ready?”

Again, she nodded.

Slowly, Albert slid the key into the lockand began to turn it. For a moment he could feel the key searchingfor the slot—he still did not know which end was up—and then itfell into place and he felt the lock begin to turn. It movedsluggishly, as though stiff with age. When he had turned it acomplete ninety degrees, a firm click announced that the lock wassprung and the key stopped in his fingers.

The two of them sat there for a moment,staring at the box. It was unlocked now, or at least they couldonly assume that it was, but they still didn’t know how it wassupposed to open.

“Now what?” Brandy asked, looking atAlbert.

He did not know.

“I heard it unlock.”

“So did I.”

“So how does it open?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I couldn’tfigure that out before when I was looking at it.” He began to pullthe key from the keyhole and after a moment of fumbling, the boxbegan to open. It was now that it finally made sense to him. Thebox appeared seamless when he first examined it, except of coursefor those seams that one would expect to find in a wooden box,those where the wood was glued together. There were no hingesbecause the box did not have the kind of lid he’d been looking for.Instead, it consisted of two separate pieces, one inside the other.As he pulled the key out, the entire front side slid outward fromthe rest of the box.

“I see,” Albert said. “It’s like a drawer.”It quickly became obvious that the box was lying on its side and hepicked it up and turned it. Brandy’s name was carved on the top ofthe box while part of the map made up the bottom.

“How’d you know to pull on the key likethat?”

Albert glanced up at her. “I didn’t. I wasjust trying to take it out.”

She did not respond and Albert felt an oddsense of guilt. He could almost read her thoughts as she wonderedif perhaps he’d been aware of how the box worked all along. “It’s areally good fit,” he observed, trying to keep her attention on thebox itself. “You couldn’t tell that the wood wasn’t glued there,but it wasn’t stuck closed, either.” This was true. More true, infact, than he cared to elaborate on. He pushed the box closed againfor a moment and examined the seams. The fit was so perfect thatthere was not even the slightest movement when they were together,especially when the lock was turned. As he pulled it open again, hesaw that there were small but formidable bolts on all four sides ofthe keyhole side of the inner box, and four no-doubt perfectlysized holes to receive the bolts in the outer box, like thedeadbolt on a door, but four times as secure.

Still Brandy said nothing. Her silence feltlike an accusation of some heinous crime for which he did not havean alibi.

Albert opened the box and peered inside. Itwould do no good to try and talk his way out of any suspicion. Ifshe intended to blame him, there was nothing he could do to changeher mind. The more he tried, the guiltier he would beperceived.

Besides, he knew he was innocent.

He hoped that opening the box would lead himto some answers, but as he gazed in at the contents, he quicklyrealized that there were only more questions within.

Random junk was all he found. There was aflat piece of rusted metal, a small stone, a dull metal object thathe realized after a moment’s consideration was a brass button, adirty black feather and a silver pocket watch that might have beenan antique, but was corroded far beyond any real value.

“What is all that?” Brandy asked, leaningforward until their foreheads were almost touching. “Does it meananything?”

Albert shook his head. He did not know. Hereached in and removed the watch. Its lid was loose, but stillintact. Carved into the front was an elegant letter G. It wasdirty, as were all the objects in the box, as though they had beendropped in mud at some point, and he used his thumb to clean thedirt from the design. Did the “G” indicate the owner of the watch,he wondered, or the company that manufactured it? Maybe he wouldlook it up on the Internet sometime. He opened the cover and wassurprised to find that the glass was still intact. Except for itsapparent age, it was in surprisingly good condition. He found thestem and tried to wind it, half expecting it to start workingagain, but the insides had apparently not aged as well as the rest.The hands would not turn.

“Is it broken?”

Albert nodded. “Yeah.” He handed it to herso that she could see it and then removed the feather. There wasnothing very special about it. It wasn’t from a very large bird. Itwas dirty and rather ratty-looking, like it was simply plucked fromthe gutter somewhere and dropped into the box.

Brandy placed the watch back into the boxand removed the button. There were no distinguishing markings onit. It appeared to be a simple, old-fashioned brass button.

Albert dropped the feather back into the boxand withdrew the stone. It was dark gray in color, about an inch inlength, semi-cylindrical, with a strange texture. There were smallcreases along the sides. He rubbed away the dirt with his thumb andforefinger and saw that both ends were rough, as though it had beenbroken from a larger object.

Brandy dropped the button back into the box.“Does this stuff make any sense to you?”

“Not a bit.” Albert dropped the stone backinto the box and removed the final object. After turning it over inhis fingers several times he concluded that it was the broken tipfrom some sort of knife. It was large enough to be from a dagger ora sword and, looking at the condition it was in, it certainlywasn’t stainless steel. The original blade could have been justabout anything.

“It’s just junk.”

“I know.” Albert dropped the blade pieceback into the box and fished out the button. As he examined it,four more people entered the room and sat down at the card table bythe window. He recognized them immediately as the residents of thesuite down the hall from his own. One of them was already shufflinga deck of cards and soon they would be immersed in a game. Albertsaw them here often. Hearts seemed to be their game of choice, buthe had already seen them play everything from Spades to Poker.