Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10 Dan peeked into a cradle. It held a doll, meant to represent the infant William Shakespeare. Maybe the next clue is hidden on that doll somehow, Dan thought. Under its clothes? In its stuffing? Dan reached toward the doll— And felt his whole body jerked backward. Someone had grabbed him by his collar. "Young man!" It was the guide, a woman who had looked deceptively friendly when he, Amy, and Nellie had first walked into the room that was supposedly where Shakespeare had been born. Now she glared down at him. "No touching the artifacts!" she said sternly. "But you just said none of the furniture was original, so—" "It's still hundreds of years old!" the guide said.

Would it be pushing his luck if Dan said, "Not the doll. The doll looks plastic"? Before Dan had a chance to decide, the guide shoved him toward the next room. "Out!" she commanded. Amy and Nellie hung back, pretending they didn't know him. Maybe they'd find a lead without him. But when they rejoined him in the garden behind the Shakespeare Birthplace, Amy shook her head glumly. "That guide was a rising bollard!" Dan complained. "Is that another one of the Shakespeare insults?" Nellie asked. "No— it's just something I saw on a road sign a few blocks back," Dan admitted. "'Beware rising bollards'— it must mean speed bumps or something like that. But it sounds like a great insult, doesn't it?" Amy shrugged off her backpack and let it drop to the ground. She'd been carrying around about a dozen Shakespeare books, "just in case." She

seemed to be aiming the backpack at Dan's toes, but he dodged it. "Really, Dan," Amy said. "Did you think you could just grab whatever you wanted with the guide right there? Use your brain!" "I was using my brain," Dan insisted. "I thought that the guide wasn't looking. And that the doll would be the best place to hide a lead. And that we don't have much time. What if somebody else gets the next clue before us?" Amy put her hands on her hips. "Do you see any of the other teams lurking around?" Amy demanded. "No, but—" Dan stopped because Amy was no longer listening. She was glancing around the deserted garden, a baffled look on her face. She walked over to the fence and peered up and down the street. "What are you looking for?" Dan asked. Amy came back, grimacing. "Cahills," she said. "Isn't it weird that none of

the others are here?" It was surprising, Dan realized. The other teams had had eighteen hours to catch up with Amy and Dan and Nellie. The Shakespeare Birthplace was already closed when they arrived in Stratford last night— and the house had been locked up tight, with serious-looking bars on every window. So the three of them had had to check into a hotel and wait for morning. "I bet nobody else got as much of the poem back at the Globe as I did," Dan said proudly. "They couldn't figure it out." "Yeah, but coming to Stratford-upon-Avon is pretty obvious if you're looking for something about Shakespeare," Amy argued. "And all of them know about Shakespeare, or they wouldn't have been at the Globe. Maybe we missed something. Maybe the others are at one of the other Shakespeare houses." "Wait— how many Shakespeare birthplaces are there?" Dan asked. He tried not to sound panicked. "The dude was only born once. And that was here. Right?"

Amy laughed. "Right, as far as anyone knows. But there are four other Shakespeare houses around Stratford," she said. She pulled a book out of her backpack and began leafing through it. "The houses where his wife grew up, where his mother grew up, where his daughter and son-in- law lived, where his granddaughter lived…" "Jeez, why didn't they just save every house the man ever stepped in?" Dan muttered. "Oh, I wish they had!" Amy said wistfully. "Joking, Amy," Dan said. "Big-time joking." "Well, I think we should go to all the other Shakespeare houses, just to be sure," Amy said, looking through the book. "We could start with—" "Oh, no," Dan said, shaking his head. "Remember the poem?" He dug into his pocket and pulled out the scraps they'd brought back from the Globe. They'd carefully taped everything together last night at their hotel. "See this line?" He stabbed his finger at the paper. "'For this great man we sing was bo-orn here.' You said that word had to be 'born.' We wrote it in! So that's where

we have to look. Just where Shakespeare was born. Just. This. One. Old. House." "Where he was bo-orn," Nellie mocked. "Well, I had to say it that way," Dan said. "It's like the words forced me." Nellie started to laugh. Then she stopped and gaped at him. "Give me that," she said, snatching the paper from Dan. She seemed to be reading it to herself. Her lips moved. Her head bounced up and down, just like it did when she was listening to her iPod. "Iambic pentameter," she muttered. "It's supposed to be iambic pentameter, isn't it?" She bent over and began digging through Amy's backpack. "Got any books analyzing Shakespeare's sonnets?" she asked. "No," Amy said apologetically. "I couldn't buy everything. I only had so much room in my backpack." Nellie sprang up. She looked toward the gift shop, shook her head, and then dashed back into the Shakespeare Birthplace. Amy and Dan exchanged glances and ran after