The Secret of the Key Read online

  “Look,” Ruthie said, running over to a sign on the wall. “It says this is the Thomas Hart House in Ipswich, Massachusetts, from 1680.”

  Suddenly a surly man in a uniform charged into the room. “Have you seen any reenactors in here?” he growled.

  Ruthie’s eyes fell on the man’s ID pin. Printed below his name she saw The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

  “There were two people in costume in that room,” Jack answered truthfully.

  “I don’t know who people think they are these days …,” the man said, storming off.

  “Did you see his ID?” Ruthie said under her breath. “We’re in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City!”

  “How did we end up here? A2 was supposed to be New Hampshire.”

  “I have no idea, but we’d better find out. Come on!” Ruthie said, and headed out of the room.

  They walked down the hallway with the windows through which they’d seen people walking by. At least that made sense now.

  A map on the wall proved it: they were in the historic reproduction rooms in the Metropolitan Museum, one of the largest art museums in the world.

  “This is so cool—I’ve always wanted to come here,” Ruthie exclaimed. “My favorite book is set in the Met.”

  “Which one?”

  “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.”

  “Oh, right. That’s a good one,” Jack agreed.

  They studied another map along the way and found a route through the maze-like spaces to the lobby. First they passed through more period rooms (Ruthie wondering which room Claudia from The Mixed-Up Files might have slept in), and they had to remind themselves that they weren’t in miniature rooms any longer. Then gallery after gallery of paintings and sculptures, and people—New Yorkers!—ambling through. They saw Rembrandts and huge paintings that took up entire walls. Statues of men and women from Greek and Roman times gazed blankly into space with their white marble eyes.

  Finally they reached the grand front lobby, which was at least triple the size of the Art Institute’s. The arched ceiling soared high overhead, and the doors to the city stood in front of them, just past a row of tall fluted columns.

  “Ready to explore?”

  Thinking about the letter from Mrs. Thorne, Ruthie took a half second longer to answer than she might have otherwise. But the most exciting city in the world was just paces away. “Are you kidding?” Ruthie answered. “I’ve never been to New York City!”

  “SO THIS IS NEW YORK!” Ruthie exclaimed as they stood just outside the doors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, looking down on Fifth Avenue.

  The avenue was filled with people. So were the museum steps. Some seemed to be tourists, looking at maps, and even though it was a warm summer day almost everyone—certainly most of the men—wore hats.

  Across the street buildings rose high, maybe twenty stories or so. To the immediate right they saw the south wing of the museum and the stone wall that surrounded New York’s Central Park. Beyond that, they saw the tops of a few skyscrapers, including the distinctive spire of the Empire State Building.

  The cars that drove by were black—except for the taxicabs, which were multicolored, mostly yellow and white, green and white, or red and white, with black and white checkerboard strips along the sides.

  “Look at the cars! I feel like I’m in an old gangster movie,” Jack said.

  Ruthie pointed across the avenue. “There’s a newsstand over there. Let’s get a paper and find out what year it is.”

  They got a few funny looks from people. Ruthie was suddenly conscious of the fact that no one was wearing sneakers like she and Jack were—and that she seemed to be the only girl in sight wearing pants. They passed by a couple of apartment buildings with uniformed doormen posted under long awnings.

  “Excuse me,” Jack said to one of the doormen, “what time do you have?”

  “Coming up on two o’clock,” he replied after pulling a pocket watch from his breast pocket.

  A few paces on, Jack took his own watch from his pocket, and Ruthie inquired, “Why did you ask him?”

  “I’m still trying to figure out how time works outside the rooms. My watch says it’s five minutes after twelve.”

  “Remember what we figured—that the time is set by the diorama scene. Anyway, I’m glad you have a watch, so we won’t lose track of what time it is in our world.”

  Just down the street they arrived at the newsstand, which sold newspapers, maps and souvenirs for tourists, and a few magazines and comic books. Color splashed the covers of titles like Action Comics, Marvel Mystery Comics, and All American Comics. Superheroes heaved cars above their heads, while muscle-bound good guys socked villains off their feet. Bam and wham blared across the pictures in bold lettering.

  They checked out the pile of newspapers: the Herald, the New York Tribune, the Daily News. They chose a copy of the New York Times.

  “Three cents!” Jack exclaimed when he saw the price printed just under the bold Gothic letters.

  “You’re telling me, kid,” the man behind the counter said. “The price of everything’s going through the roof these days!”

  Jack fished three pennies from his pocket and was about to pay when he suddenly stopped, turning his back to the man. He held the coins in his palm for Ruthie to see.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “They feel warm.”

  And then they both saw it—the slightest little glimmer around the spot where the date on the penny was. Ruthie kept her eye on one of the pennies and saw it transform from a brown 1992 penny into a shiny new 1939 coin. Her mouth fell open.

  “I guess this makes sense,” Ruthie said under her breath. “We can’t leave things here that don’t exist yet. I bet that’s what year we’re in.”

  “That’s awesome!”

  Jack turned back around and handed the man the now shiny pennies.

  “ ‘June twenty-second,’ ” Ruthie read from the masthead.

  “That answers that question. But I can’t get over that it only cost three cents!” Jack said. Then he added, “I just thought of something.”

  “I know,” Ruthie put in, reading his mind. “Everything is going to be a lot cheaper now.” The possibilities of what could be purchased with the modest amount of money in her pocket danced in her mind.

  “Do you see the comic books at the back of the stand?” Jack asked.

  “What about them?”

  “The one that’s called Detective Comics—it’s got Batman on the cover. It’s the first one! I’m sure of it. Nineteen thirty-nine. And they’re only ten cents each! Now that we know how to get stuff across the portal, I could bring one home. It’d be worth hundreds of dollars!”

  Ruthie bit her lip. Something didn’t feel quite right, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. After all, she’d gotten to keep the toad from Freddy. Why shouldn’t Jack get a copy of a first-edition comic book? She couldn’t think of a reason. “True. You could even buy a few copies.”

  “You’re right.” He took a quarter and a nickel from his pocket and watched the faces of Washington and Jefferson lose their scuff marks and the dates change in his cupped hand. He plunked them on the counter. “Three Detective Comics books, please.”

  “Here you go, lad. These things are selling like hotcakes.”

  They crossed Fifth Avenue again and found an empty bench just inside an entrance to Central Park.

  Jack glanced at the cover of the Batman comic book, which read, Starting This Issue: The Amazing and Unique Adventures of Batman! “I’ll read this later. Let’s see what’s in the paper.”

  Looking over the front page, they saw lots of articles about how the Nazis were threatening other countries. It looked like China and Japan were at war. Jack filled Ruthie in on what he knew about this time in history.

  “World War Two started when Germany invaded Poland—September first, I think,” Jack told her. “But the United States didn’t get in till after Pearl Harbor.
”

  A rough-looking man came by walking a dog. He sat down next to them. “Nice weather. You two from out of town?” the man asked.

  “Chicago,” Jack answered. “How could you tell?”

  “Your clothes,” he said, his eyes landing on their shoes. “Where’d you get those?”

  “They’re the newest thing at home,” Ruthie replied.

  “You here for the World’s Fair?”

  Ruthie and Jack looked at each other, thinking the same thing: Another World’s Fair? Not long ago they had visited the 1937 Fair in Paris, outside of room E27.

  “Uh, sure,” Jack began.

  “ ‘The World of Tomorrow.’ They got everything there, even a talking robot,” he said. “But who needs a talking robot? Specially if we all kill each other in the war they say’s coming.”

  “We were just looking in the paper to see if there’s anything about the fair,” Ruthie explained.

  “Seems like all the news these days is bad news,” the man commented. “Even the sports pages.” He shook his head.

  “What do you mean?” Jack asked, flipping through the paper.

  “Didn’t you hear? The Iron Horse …,” the man started to say, but he choked up and couldn’t finish his sentence.

  On the first page of the sports section, Ruthie and Jack saw the headline:

  INFANTILE PARALYSIS TERMINATES GEHRIG’S PLAYING CAREER, FORCED TO QUIT BASEBALL

  “Oh, man,” Jack said.

  The dog tugged on the leash, and the man rose. “So sad. Bye now.”

  “Sad is right,” Jack sighed, returning to looking at the paper.

  “Looks like a lot happened in 1939,” Ruthie observed. “Anyway, what do you want to do?”

  “Whatever we can do in a few hours—my mom wants us home by five o’clock.”

  “Okay.”

  “How much money do you have?” Jack asked.

  “About fifteen dollars. How about you?”

  “Thirty bucks.”

  “You know, since everything is so cheap now, we could do lots,” Ruthie pointed out. “I say we take a cab to the fair. I’m sure we can afford one.”

  They headed back to the sidewalk facing Fifth Avenue and stood at the curb with their arms raised to wave down a taxicab. Several zoomed by, but in a few minutes they were climbing into the back of a yellow and white New York City cab.

  “These are roomy!” Jack said. “No seats belts, though.”

  “You kids got money?” the cabbie asked.

  “Yes,” they answered in unison.

  “Where to?”

  “The World’s Fair, please,” Ruthie answered.

  Ruthie gazed out the windows. Everything looked different: the clothes, the signs, the cars, even the street lamps. As the taxi stopped for a red light, Ruthie saw a food vendor at the corner with his cart. The cart had large wheels with wooden spokes, like the kind on covered wagons, and a big black umbrella on top. The sign on the cart read: Frankfurters, Sauerkraut and Onions, Soft Drinks, All Kinds of Pies, All Five Cents Each.

  “I recognize some of the buildings from when my mom took me here a couple of years ago at Christmas. Actually, it was many years from now! Everything sure looks newer!” Jack observed.

  They traveled all the way from Eightieth Street to the southern border of Central Park at Fifty-Ninth Street before the cab turned left. After a few blocks they reached the ramp to the Queensboro Bridge. The complicated metal span loomed in front of the cab, breaking the sunlight into little bits.

  “It reminds me of the Eiffel Tower, the way the metal looks like lace,” Ruthie said.

  “It took eight years to build,” Jack added.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Charlotte’s Web. Charlotte tells Wilbur that.”

  Through the beams and girders of the bridge, a view of the busy river appeared down below. It was filled with boats of all shapes and sizes, including tugboats spewing thick smoke.

  The bridge delivered them to the other side of the East River and they passed through a neighborhood with a very different look from Manhattan. The buildings were smaller and less grand, and trees lined many of the streets. Soon big banner-like signs for the fair appeared, with images of two pure white structures, a large sphere and a tall pointed spike-like tower.

  “Those are called the Trylon and Perisphere,” the cabbie said. “They built the longest escalator in the world inside. Don’t miss it!” The cabbie pulled over and stopped at the curb in front of the entrance. “That’ll be a dollar forty.”

  Jack counted out the amount—a dollar and four dimes—watching the tiny flares as the face of FDR changed to the god Mercury on the ten-cent coins. He placed the money in the driver’s open hand and added another dime for a tip.

  Ruthie and Jack hopped out and found themselves at the main entrance to the fair, a steady stream of people filing in. Everyone looked dressed up—just like at the Metropolitan Museum.

  “Look,” Jack said, pointing to the sign at the admission booth, “only twenty-five cents for kids!” The cashier handed them a guide booklet with their tickets.

  As soon as they passed through the entry gate the white spire and globe that they’d seen on the signs came into view over the tops of the other structures. Five-car trams and slow-moving tour buses shared the path with thousands of pedestrians. One pavilion was devoted to railroads and another to aviation. Ruthie read the names of American car companies boldly posted over the entrances of the first buildings they passed: Ford, Chrysler. The huge General Motors pavilion had a long line of people snaking out to the main path.

  Jack checked the guide. “Futurama—the World of 1960! Ha!”

  Most of the buildings looked sleek and modern. Dozens of colorful flags blew in the gentle breeze. The fair was so large and there was so much to look at that several times Ruthie and Jack bumped into people who were also not watching where they were going.

  They arrived at the two huge white structures. Jack read, “ ‘The spire is taller than the Washington Monument and the Perisphere is a hundred and eighty-five feet in diameter.’ ” The giant sphere sat in the middle of a moat, sunlight glinting from the water and reflecting off the stark white surface. A long ramp—the guidebook said it was called the Helicline—wrapped around the sphere from the middle down to the ground. Fair visitors disappeared into a small door at the base of the spire. The line for this wasn’t long, so they went in.

  “Didn’t the cab driver tell us this was the biggest escalator in the world?” Ruthie asked once they were inside and looking up at the moving stair.

  “That’s right,” a man in front of them said. “A real feat of engineering, it is!” He gave a whistle.

  It was tall, Ruthie thought, but she’d seen some just as big. “What’s at the top?”

  “An exhibit called Democracity,” the man answered. “I’m going for my second time. It shows how the world is going to look in the year 2039.”

  The escalator whisked them up inside the Perisphere.

  “Wow,” Jack said. Ruthie nodded.

  At about the widest point around the perimeter ran two balconies, one on top of the other. It was as though you were in an enormous dome-shaped movie theater looking at the main floor from the balcony seats, only spread out below was what the man had referred to: a giant diorama called Democracity. The balconies slowly rotated to allow a good look at the whole scene.

  “It’s like a huge setup for model trains,” Jack said.

  The diorama consisted of countryside, small towns, and a big, glistening city in the center. There were roads and rivers, hills and forests—all to scale and laid out neatly.

  From loudspeakers hidden throughout the sphere they heard a man’s somber voice: “The city of man and the world of tomorrow. Here are grass and trees and stone and steal. Not a dream city but a symbol of life as lived by the man of tomorrow …”

  The audience listened in silence while the balconies steadily revolved.

  “The good
life of the well-planned city … Here, brain and brawn, faith and courage are linked in high endeavor as men march on toward unity and peace.”

  “Sheesh! Only men?” Ruthie whispered, perturbed.

  “Yeah. Unity and peace? I guess whoever dreamed this up didn’t figure on World War Two coming.” Jack pointed to the teardrop-shaped vehicles on the lightly trafficked city streets. “I’d drive one of those.”

  “I wonder … We’re in 1939. This miniature was made at about the same time Mrs. Thorne was working on hers. Do you think she’s seen … she saw this one?”

  “She probably knew about it, at least.” Jack looked at his watch. “We should go if we want to see anything else.”

  They wended their way around the balcony to the exit and back out into the sunshine. At the bottom of the winding ramp a vendor sold souvenir buttons. One read I Have Seen the Future.

  “If he only knew …,” Ruthie said under her breath.

  Jack checked the map. “Elektro the Robot. How about it?”

  “Sure.”

  They walked down a promenade called the Court of Power and turned right at the Plaza of Light.

  The building they arrived at looked as though it had been made for an old science fiction movie. In front of it stood a tower consisting of a tall center pole surrounded by five rings. A sign explained that a time capsule was buried under the base, to be opened in five thousand years.

  “Five thousand years?” Ruthie asked, astonished.

  “That’d be like us finding something from before the time of the pyramids,” Jack calculated.

  “See Elektro, the amazing thinking robot!” an announcement blared out of a loudspeaker. “Starting now!”

  “Perfect timing,” Ruthie said, and they scooted in to get a good view.

  The room was buzzing with excitement. A boy near them said to his sister, “They say he can walk backward too!”

  Everything inside was glass and metal and shiny—the ultimate in modern style for 1939, but Ruthie couldn’t help but think how old-fashioned it all looked. Her impression was confirmed when she and Jack looked up. On a balcony in front of them a man in a suit and tie spoke with dramatic flourish into a microphone.