A soft glow emitted from between each of the bands.
I gasped loudly, wanting to cheer, but holding back as I glanced across at the clock on the door.
The bulb below the clock remained stubbornly red. We hadn’t solved the puzzle. This was just the first step.
Two minutes gone. Ten minutes left.
“That didn’t do the trick,” I said, panting now.
“Hold on,” said Saul. “After you get the code right, you sometimes have to do something else.” Tongue between his teeth, he examined the box all over. “Bingo!” He flipped up a lid on top of the box.
At the opening of the box, Richard and Cormack came running.
Inside was just a shallow shelf with six round depressions in it, each depicting an animal—an eagle, an owl, a dolphin, an octopus and others.
I checked the clock again.
Nine minutes left.
“What’s this all about, then?” Cormack studied the images, his eyebrows puckering as they drew together.
“I know what they are.” Richard pointed towards the aquarium, where Kara was still loitering, despite her urging us earlier about making a start. “There are coins at the bottom of every section. My father—the miserly old bastard—has coin collections coming out his razoo. These are old Greek coins. See this one of the bee? It’s from the city of Ephesus. You can tell because it’s got the symbols for epsilon and phi on either side of the bee. I spotted that exact coin in the tank.”
“Not just a pretty face, are ya?” Cormack blew out a tight breath. “But how’s that gonna help us?”
Louelle gestured towards the door. “I think this might be the answer.”
“You mean we just leave and forfeit the challenge?” Richard shook his head angrily.
“No,” she answered. “Don’t you understand? The floor is damp.”
“What?” Richard demanded.
She looked at him askance. “It’s damp, which means someone’s been in the tank. We need to get in there, too, and fetch those coins.”
“But there’s no way in.” I wanted to be Duncan and scream at everyone to think. It wouldn’t help, but I couldn’t figure this out.
“Unless we can sprout wings,” said Saul. “But then, wings wouldn’t be any use in the water. I—” He broke off as if embarrassed by what he’d said.
Something clicked in my mind. A pattern—on the back of the door. Louelle had just pointed to it, but I hadn’t realised what I was seeing the first time. I turned back to study the door again. On either side of the clock were two sets of vertical parallel lines, with horizontal lines in between.
Ladders.
They were made of the same metal as the door and had just seemed like decorative patterns before.
I shot Louelle a broad smile. “You did it.”
Richard realised at the same time as me, racing to the door alongside me. We lifted the ladders down.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got ladders,” announced Richard, as if he were announcing a sale in a department store. He didn’t give Louelle any credit for her discovery.
I glanced back at the clock on the door.
Eight minutes left.
I watched the fish streaming past in the aquarium, trying to calculate how long it would take us to complete this task. “Okay, three of us to each ladder. Go!”
Cormack shrugged his shirt off. Louelle, Kara and I began stepping out of our clothing.
Saul backed away a step. “I’m not a good swimmer.”
“Well, you have to get in there, Saul.” Richard groaned under his breath. “Because I can’t. Someone needs to be out here, directing the others to the coins. Do you lot have any idea how cloudy the view is going to be under there? You won’t see shit.”
“Trust you to make sure you don’t get wet, mate,” quipped Cormack.
That left only five of us. “Quick! We have to hurry,” I breathed, turning to look at the tank. The water looked cold.
Louelle, Saul and I shared one ladder, and Cormack and Kara shared the other. Chill water rushed along my body as I jumped in.
Now, I had to get all the way to the bottom.
It was harder than I imagined to swim straight down. Despite kicking hard, I kept turning sideways. Determinedly grabbing onto the chains inside the tank, I ploughed downward.
On the outside, Richard raced from tank to tank, guiding people.
He was right. I couldn’t see clearly through the water. I had to make several grabs at the coins before Richard finally gave me a nod. Relieved, I nodded back. My lungs were burning, and a sense of terror at being submerged this far down was beginning to gnaw at me.