> You're on holiday at your mysterious great aunt Lady Silventine
> Covington's country estate. She has been called away suddenly without
> explanation and you have secretly snuck in to her study. Her walking
> staff is leaning against the wall and the collection case is
> overflowing with curiosities from Africa, Afganistan, Arizona. The
> scent of old tobacco and fresh peppermint linger on the quiet air and
> you spot her cluttered desk. There is an old volume, her regiment
> patch from the Great War, a globe. You ease the door shut with a
> click and tiptoe over to the book, lift its cover...
>
> and just that moment a you hear a knock on the door. Your heart
> thumping you return to the door and to your supprise your distant
> cousin Major Nathaniel Peabody(USA, ret)is standing in front of you.
> The Major is on a holiday and looking for adventure. He was passing
> by Lady Silventine Covington's estate when he observed lights on.
> The Major has in his possession a map he secured from an obscure
> shop in Havanna. He asks you to join his quest.........
>
> But 'ere you depart upon your treasure quest, you first must seek a
> skeleton key that unlocks the drawer containing the code which
> holdeth the true location of the treasure. Unfortunately, that
> skeleton key was sent along its merry way with John Jacob Astor as
> he returned from England to his beautiful home in the Pacific
> Northwest. Needless to say, the key now lies buried either beneath
> the waters of the frigid Atlantic or somewhere in Mr. Astor's
> sprawling estate high atop the bluffs overlooking the mouth of the
> Columbia River (or was that Maryhill???) My dear great aunt, Molly
> M.C. Brown (may she forever rest in peace), always seemed to jumble
> things up a bit. Now we'll never know the truth for it was upon her
> death bed whence she painstakingly gasped out this last kernel of
> knowledge... I wonder if that's the key to the drawer in Havana?
>
> "Never know the truth?" you think, "Bugger this, my curiosity is
> piqued. If the key is lost or unattainable - much like Aunt Molly and
> myself, (respectively), good sir - there is more than one way to open
> a lock."
>
> You reach for the heavy, metal, military-issue knife that your
> eclectic great aunt uses as letter opener. She leaves it sticking
> upright in the wood of the desk - "Always keep your knife at hand"
> Auntie said, "just in case....well, you know, for letters."
>
> "With my brains and your brawn, Mr. Peabody?" You say, handing him
> the knife and gesturing to the locked drawer.
>
>
> Mr. Peabody looked at the knife for just a second. He pointed it
> back at me. Startled, I jumped back. Just in time too, as he
> brandished a pistol with the other hand.
> "What's this?" I exclamed.
> Mr. Peabody was always full of surprises. But this! This was very
> unexpected.
>
> "I must know whether your intentions are for good or ill," Mr. Peabody
> rasped.
> "Why, my intentions are the same as yours, surely you know that, my dear
> cousin. We haven't seen each other in years, but certainly you remember me
> better than this," I squeaked, inching my way to the bookshelves behind me.

>As I backed warily away from the brandished weapons, I stumbled over
>my aunt's rheumy-eyed bloodhound. He squealed in pain, rose slowly from
>the warm spot he'd claimed on the threadbare Bokhara carpet. As a deep
>rumble sounded from his throat, my left hip brushed against a protruding
>volume, The CompleteWorks of Milton. With a groan and a creak, the entire
>bookshelf swung inward, exposing a lightless corridor.

>Grabbing a bottle of sherry, for who knows how long this adventure might
>take, I entered the dank corridor that lay ahead, armed with the sherry,
>a lantern and my wits. While proceeding down the corridor, I noticed
>that the walls were imprinted with the most oddly shaped characters
>- almost a pictogram. As I held my lantern to the closest wall . . .

The symbols produced the most odd sensation. Somewhere deep in my mind, remnants.. tattered memories.. familiar yet foreign, otherworldly almost ancient... "How could that be?" I whispered. "I knew nothing of this place before..." Footsteps! It must be Peabody... "I must get away..."




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