The Treasure *Phantom of the Opera* (sequel to The Quest)

Chapter 40

Chapter XL

The Key and the Snare

xXx

... there is one thing the world with all its rottenness cannot take from us, and that is the deep and abiding joy and consolation perpetuate in great music. Here the spirit may find home and relief when all else fails.

~Eric Fenby

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Jean-Claude appeared at the entrance to the bedchamber, holding a music box. On it sat a toy monkey wearing faded Persian clothes and playing the cymbals.

"Look what I found!"

"Where did you get that?" Mère snapped.

"Beneath the organ bench, shoved up by the pedals – but doesn't look the least bit damaged." In his excitement he took no notice of their anxiety. With each gentle clink of cymbals that softly touched while the Masquerade's haunting melody drifted through the room, Meg felt a suffocating heaviness seem to close in all around her.

"Mère," she breathed, ending on a slight wail.

Her mother sharply glanced her way. "What is wrong, Marguerite?"

"I don't know, but something is. Very wrong."

Meg couldn't take her eyes off the smoky glass eyes of the monkey sitting atop the lacquered ebony box. All at once inside her mind, dreadful images flashed. Sensations of a cloying, pervasive darkness whirled within – and inside that dark cloud – images of Christine and her husband fighting desperately to keep the evil at bay – all the while the quiet, tinkling melody rang within the cave walls and echoed throughout the silent bedchamber.

"He – He's – in danger –the king ... and Christine. Both – are in grave danger." She worked to catch her breath, feeling the weight of the same evil she'd seen images of press heavily upon her soul.

"You are certain of this?"

"Yes. And it's happening – whatever this danger is, whatever this evil – tonight. Even now."

Their eyes met in grim understanding.

"There's a lock on the box," Jean-Claude said curiously, not having heard a word they'd quietly uttered between themselves. "Wonder what it's there for?"

Her mother swung her attention to the boy, her expression intent on him. "Let me see that box," she said, swiftly closing the distance and reaching for it. Once in her hands she turned it around and looked at the back. "There is a lock. Yet I see no crevice. Nothing that makes it appear there are two halves with a compartment that lies hidden within. And the device to wind it up is beneath." Even as she spoke, the tune slowly wound down.

"Why would he lock anything of worth inside a music box?" Meg wondered aloud, chills shivering through her spine from the horrible images she'd seen. "Still, if there is a treasure inside, something he values, it must be very important for him to feel a need to lock it away in something so unique and simple as a small box with a toy monkey that plays music ... where no one would ever dream of looking ..." She whispered the last, at the same time her eyes opened wider in sudden understanding. "Music."

"Himself," Mère finished what Meg thought. "He trapped his secrets he did not wish others to find inside his box. A box he crafted with a toy monkey he once treasured as a child, using his own music, his kingdom song – those things dear to him. And he did so before he left the lair and the mob could reach him that night. Christine told me he was holding the box when she returned to give him her ring."