"I can not thank you kids enough for what you did here. Now that the "sea monster" is gone, my fishing business can flourish once again!"

"Happy to help. After all, we are the Cluefinders; it's what we do!"

"Awesome. Hey, is there any place we can find some fish pizza for lunch? I'm starving!"

Meanwhile, as the Cluefinder crew celebrated their latest case solved, a mysterious man and woman watched them from the second floor of the inn nearby.

"You see what I mean?" the woman asked the man.

"Yes," he answered. "They are quite an intriguing young bunch. I believe they would be perfect for the case."

"When do you think we can get them to Italy?"

"Patience, my dear friend. We must wait until the time is right; then everything can fall into place."

"Of course. But how will we get their interest, once they are in the right place?"

"Oh, believe me. They will find it on their own accord. After all, I am sure that a mystery like this will be simply irresistible for youngsters as curious as they."

5 years later…

"Leslie, take a look at this landscape!"

"Yes, it truly is an exquisite piece. Look here, it is dated 1508; it might be the oldest in this gallery."

We were at the private gallery of a certain noblewoman, Ms. Felicia. With me looking at one of the landscape paintings was Mary, a friend from school. We were here on a summer field trip with the National Honor Society, stopping here in Italy while on a tour of Europe. With us were some friends from the trip, Derek and Grace.

"Well, I don't know what you guys see in that painting. It's just a bunch of mountains. Now this one of the BuckinghamPalace – that's impressive. Look at the detail!" Derek pointed out a painting of London.

"You always go for the city-related ones!" Mary commented.

"What can I say? I'm a New Yorker!"

"Yeah, well, which ones do you like, Grace?"

"So much dust…so much bacteria! This place is a minefield!"

"Come on, it's not that bad."

"Hey, studies show that houses over 200 years old have more bacteria colonies than younger ones, and this house is almost 500! Besides, weren't you the one that suggested we not come at all because 'there wouldn't be enough security in a private place'?"

"Yeah, I wasn't exactly expecting coming here, but now I'm sure it's fine. The gallery is in a complete separate wing from the rest of the house...and there are security cameras…of course. Hey Leslie! What's that you're looking at? I thought you didn't like abstract art."

"No, look at this one. It appears that the yellow markings in the painting form characters resembling Egyptian hieroglyphics."

"Really? Let me look at that…well, now that you mention it, they do sort of look like hieroglyphics…"

"Hmmm…turn the head of the eagle's eye."

"…which apparently you can read."

"It seems to make a distinct message. I wonder why it is made out like that."

"I don't know. Guess the artist just decided to say something weird in this one. But…since when could you read hieroglyphics?"

"About five years ago after going on a vacation to Egypt. I became curious as to the language, so I bought some books and learned it. Hey, I wonder if the eagle mentioned in the message is the same one as that sculpture over there. The term 'head' could indicate the top of something, which in this case is the eye of the eagle. The message could be, therefore, an instruction."

"But why should they have a correlation? This is a gallery; it is supposed to have a bunch of random stuff."

"However, it is probable that the placing of the pieces could have been deliberate."

"Hey, we're pretty far behind from the rest of the tour group; we should probably go catch up. Don't you guys agree?"

"Actually, I think the message thing is pretty cool. It's like a big mystery thing. We can catch up later," Derek determined.

"You're not actually going to touch it, are you?" Grace looked warily at the statue of the eagle.

"It wouldn't hurt to try." At this point, my curiosity was most certainly aroused. I turned the upper eyelid of the eagle, finding it to indeed be a moveable part, and to our surprise, a hidden door was suddenly opened in the wall.

"Whoa," Mary stood there in shock. "What just happened?"

"It appears to be that the eagle must have been anchored to the ground, and the eyelid triggered a mechanism to open the door."

"Man, this is awesome!" Derek elated.

"Uh, maybe we should be getting back…" Mary seemed quite nervous.

However, I was already inside. "It appears to be some sort of study," I reasoned, gazing at the bookshelves and the solitary desk with a lamp. "That's conspicuous; the lamp is still on…"

"Yeah…odd…" Mary gave suspicious glances around the room.

"Now you see, this is what I call a feat of engineering. Talk about a private study! No one gets in here. Hey Grace, come in and check this out!"

"Oh no. I'm not taking one step into that dust-mite filled room of bacterial death!"

"Hey, it's perfectly safe!" Derek leaned onto a bookshelf of questionable stability, thereby causing it to fall over, revealing yet another door behind it. "I didn't do it!" he yelped.

"No, look! You seem to have revealed another hidden door. I wonder if it leads to another room…" I reached towards the door.

"Wait, Leslie! Please wait. I really don't think you should go any further. This place isn't…right. Let's just find our group." Mary appeared to be truly scared by this time. I hesitated at the door, unsure as to whether or not I should go. I was not worried myself, but I do not believe I had ever seen Mary this upset before. I did not wish to scare her, but my insatiable curiousity urged me to go further.

"It's alright, Mary. There's nothing to worry about," I tried to reassure her. As I opened the door, though, we were startled to see that there was a man in the room, which seemed to be a library, hastily grabbing papers and cramming them into his satchel. At the sight of us at the door, he ran out of the room and down a hallway.

"Hey!" I yelled, running after him instinctively, as he seemed to be a thief. I soon found out that there was an entire maze of winding, underground hallways in this manor, and this man seemed to know his way down all of them. I started to gain distance to him, but he subsequently spun around and swung his satchel at my head, knocking me to the ground. Before I could regain my senses, he was a long ways gone. Massaging my aching cranial muscles, I looked at the stone floor to see a couple of papers that must have fallen out of the man's satchel upon the impact. They were mostly covered with calculations that appeared to be banking records, but on one there seemed to be a message inscribed. I picked it up and, interestingly enough, found it to be a sort of riddle.

The lightest bird in the hardest ice,

Finds its lover of purest white,

Clothed in what is now,

And no longer was,

To be the last of the first,

And the first of the last,

In a sea of crimson sand,

The bluest Beryl of the

Land to stand.

I must have pondered the riddle all night. It must have been some sort of a clue, but to what destination? Do the words have a figurative or literal meaning? Did the lady of the house, Ms. Felicia, create the riddle, or was it some former resident of the house? Who was the man who tried to take it, and what did he want with it? I felt the need for further information. However, with the group for the trip leaving this morning, I was willing to abstain from the mystery for the time being…until I received the morning news. In a stunning turn of events, Ms. Felicia had gone missing without a trace the previous night, and I felt that the contents of the passage might have a connection with the event. Therefore, I decided to stay. My grandpa just so happened to be near the town at the time, so I could ask him to come for the time being, and perhaps I could ask the others as well. On my way down to the lobby of the hotel to make the call, I ran into Mary, who was looking for me.

"Leslie!" she called. "We need to get going! The bus is about to leave."

"It's okay. I actually have decided to stay here for now."

"What?"

"I could meet up with the group later. My grandpa's ship has stopped in Milan, and since he was going to stay for two weeks anyways I was going to ask if he could come here."

"Okay, Leslie. What's your reason?"

"It's what happened yesterday afternoon, and the fact that Ms. Felicia is missing. Mary, it seems to me that something seriously wrong. Between that man and the riddle… Look, I apologize for what happened. You were right about there being danger, but…"

"I know, I know. You've done this a gazillion times before. I guess mysteries and danger follow you, huh? Just...be careful, okay?"

"Thanks, I will. But first, I got to make a long distance phone call…"