The Forbidden Stone. Tony Abbott

Roald said, stepping up to a wide door set between a pair of waist-high planters with evergreen bushes in them. He pressed the bell. It rang faintly inside. No answer. He rang again. Again, no answer.

      “Now what?” asked Lily. “Should we wait for someone to go in and tag along?”

      “Or force our way in,” Darrell added. “Wade, you and me—”

      “You and me what?”

      “Hold your horses,” Roald said. He knelt down and reached behind the planter to the left of the door, slid his fingers up the side, and stopped halfway. When he drew back, he was holding a key ring with two keys.

      “Cool!” said Wade. “Hidden in plain sight. How did you know?”

      “Heinrich always left extra keys for late-arriving students.”

      “Like you?” asked Becca.

      “Oh yes. We used to talk long into the night. All of us.”

      Using one key for the outside door, they entered a deserted lobby barely illuminated by a small ceiling fixture.

      “European electricity,” Darrell breathed. “From the Dark Ages.”

      Lily chuckled. “As long as it charges our phones.”

      They climbed two flights of narrow stairs. The steps creaked, and it was nearly as cold in the stairwell as it was outside, but the building was otherwise quiet. They stopped at apartment 32. Roald raised his hand to knock on the door, then murmured that the apartment was empty. He unlocked it instead, and they entered.

      “Hello?” Wade said quietly. “Anyone?”

      No sound. The rooms were dark and without heat. Lily found the nearest light switch, and a table lamp came on. The living room looked neat and orderly, as if it had just been cleaned, except for one extremely dusty table by the street window. Becca picked up a silver pitch pipe from it. “Was Heinrich Vogel in a barbershop quartet?”

      “No. A modern music group,” Dr. Kaplan said. “But then, maybe I didn’t know him all that well—”

       Clack. Thump. Clack. Thump.

      Darrell’s heart flew into his throat. “Someone’s coming up the stairs!”

      Before they could move, the door swung open, and an elderly woman with thin gray hair leaned into the room. She scanned the space from wall to wall as if she didn’t see any of them.

       “Wer ist da?”