He sat back and tried to imagine how much a bell ten or twelve feet tall and eight feet wide might weigh. He couldn't do the math, but the mere thought of it hanging on rotted timbers above his and the other kids' heads over the past years made the flesh on his neck go cold. Surely it couldn't still be there.

For the next few hours, Duane pored through the Historical Society books and spent a dusty hour in the "archives"-a long, narrow room off the room where Mrs. Frazier and the other library employees ate their lunch-going through the tall books holding old copies of the Oak Hill Sentinel Times-Call, the local paper that Duane's Old Man invariably referred to as the Sentimental Times-Crawl.

Newspaper articles from the summer of 1876 were the most informative, going on in their overwrought, hyperbolic Victorian style about the "Borgia Bell" and its place in history. Evidently Mr. and Mrs. Ashley had discovered the artifact in a warehouse on the outskirts of Rome during their honeymoon-cum-Grand Tour of the Continent, verified its authenticity via local and imported historians, and then purchased the thing for six hundred dollars to be the piece de resistance for the school the Ashley family had been so instrumental in building.

Duane scribbled quickly, filling one notebook and going into his spare. The story of the Borgia Bell's shipment from Rome to Elm Haven took up at least five newspaper articles and several pages of Dr. Priestmann's book: the bell seemed-at least in the lurid prose of the Victorian correspondents-to bring bad luck to everyone and everything associated with it. After the Ashleys purchased the bell and set sail for the States, the warehouse the thing had been stored in burned to the ground, killing three local people who apparently had been living in the old structure. Most of the unnamed and uncatalogued artifacts in the warehouse were destroyed, but the Borgia Bell had been found sooty but intact. The freighter carrying the bell to New York-a British ship, the H.M.S. Erebus-almost foundered during an offseason storm near the Canary Islands: the damaged freighter was towed to harbor and its cargo transferred, but not before five crewmen drowned, another was killed during a sudden shifting of cargo in the hold, and the captain was disgraced.

No disasters seemed to accompany the bell's month-long storage in New York, but some confusion in labeling almost left the thing lost there. Some of the Ashley family's New York lawyers tracked down the missing piece of history, had a major reception for the bell at New York's Natural History Museum, where attendees included Mark Twain, P. T. Bar-num, and the original John D. Rockefeller, and then loaded it aboard a freight train bound for Peoria. There the spell of bad luck seemed to reassert itself: the train derailed near Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and its replacement was involved in a trestle collapse just outside of Richmond, Indiana. The press accounts were unclear, but apparently no one was killed in either accident.

The bell finally arrived in Elm Haven on July 14, 1876, and was ensconced in its reinforced belfry several weeks later-that summer's Old Settlers' Fair used the bell as its centerpiece and there were numerous dedications, including one which involved bringing in Peoria- and Chicago-based historians and grandees on specially laid-on railroad cars.

Evidently the thing was in the belfry in time for the beginning of school on the third of September that year, for a news tintype of the opening day of Creve Coeur County schools showed an Old Central in a town strangely devoid of trees, under the caption: Historic Bell Rings Local School Children to New Era of Learning.

Duane sat back in the archives room, mopped sweat from his face with the tail of his flannel shirt, closed the stiff-boarded newspaper volume, and wished that the excuse he had given Mrs. Frazier for his work in here had been true-that he had been planning to do a paper on Old Central and its bell.

But no one seemed to remember that the bell was there. After another hour and a half's research, Duane had come up with only three other references to the bell-and none of them referred to it any longer as the Borgia Bell. Dr. Priestmann's book reprinted early captions calling the thing the Borgia Bell, but nowhere did the local historian himself refer to it as such. The closest reference Duane could find was a paragraph mentioning-"the massive bell, reported to date from the Fifteenth Century and quite possibly being that old, which Mr. Charles Catton Ashley and his wife purchased for the county during their tour of Europe in the winter of 1875."

It was only after reading through four volumes of the Historical Society's books that Duane realized that there was a volume missing. The 1875-1885 volume was intact, but it was mostly photographs and highlights. Dr. Priestmann had written a more detailed and scholarly account of the other years of the decade under the general heading Monographs, Documentation, and Primary Sources, with the dates indicated in brackets: 1876 simply was not there.

Duane went downstairs to talk to Mrs. Frazier. "Excuse me, ma'am, but could you tell me where the Historical Society keeps its other papers these days?"

The librarian smiled and lowered her glasses on their beaded chain. "Yes, dear. You must know that Dr. Priestmann passed away ..."

Duane nodded and looked attentive.

"Well, since neither Mrs. Cadberry nor Mrs. Esterhazy . . . our ladies who were responsible for the fund-raisers to support the Society . . . since neither of them wished or were able to continue Dr. Priestmann's research, they donated his papers and other volumes."

Duane nodded again. "To Bradley?" It made sense that the old scholar's papers would go to the university from which he had graduated and at which he had spent so many years teaching.

Mrs. Frazier looked surprised. "Why no, dear. The papers went to the family who had really supported Dr. Priestmann's research for all those years. I believe it had been arranged previously."

"The family ..." began Duane.

"The Ashley-Montague family," said Mrs. Frazier. "Certainly being from Elm Haven ... or living near there . . . certainly you've heard of the Ashley-Montagues."

Duane nodded, thanked her, made sure all of the books were reshelved properly and that his notebooks were in his pockets, went outside to retrieve his Thermos, and was shocked at how late it had grown. Evening shadows stretched from the trees and lay across the courthouse grounds and the main street. A few cars moved down the highway, their tires hissing on the cooling concrete and making galloping sounds on the tarpatched joints in the pavement, but the downtown itself was emptying out toward evening.

Duane considered going back to the hospital to talk to Jim again, but it was around dinnertime and he guessed that Harlen's mother would be there. Besides, it was still a two-to three-hour walk home the long way, and the Old Man might worry if Duane were out after dark.

Whistling, thinking about the Borgia Bell hanging dark as a forgotten secret in the boarded-up belfry of Old Central, Duane headed for the railroad tracks and home.

Mike gave up. He'd tried hard on Monday afternoon and again all day Tuesday to find Karl Van Syke in order to follow him around, but the man wasn't to be found. Mike tried hanging around Old Central, saw Dr. Roon show up shortly after eight-thirty on Tuesday morning, and watched until a bunch of workmen with a cherry picker-but no Van Syke-showed up an hour later to start putting boards over the second- and third-floor windows. Mike continued to hang around the door of the school until Roon chased him away in midmorning.

Mike checked the places one might usually see Van Syke. Carl's Tavern downtown had three or four of the usual drunks hanging around-including Duane McBride's dad, Mike was sorry to see-but no Van Syke. Mike used the phone in the A&P to call the Black Tree Tavern, but the bartender said that he hadn't seen Van Syke in weeks and who was this calling? Mike hung up fast. He walked up to Depot Street, checked out J. P. Congden's house because he knew Van Syke and the fat justice of the peace hung out together a lot, but the black Chevy wasn't there and the house looked empty.