Transcript of this chapter:

bspeak: ....And I don't appreciate you making fun of my sleep-walking problem. It's not like you don't have your flaws too...
barlow: Whoa! Elkwood's in my room!
crystal: Another brilliant deduction, I don't know HOW you do it. Hmmm... looks like the blood's gone, though.
barlow: You mean you knew he was here?
crystal: Yeah, we noticed him loitering around here earlier.
barlow: How did he get here?!
crystal: I have no idea. Really. Maybe he came up here to visit you, to warn you that the gondola must be thrown back into the woods.
barlow: This doesn't prove anything! This is just another prank to scare us off the gondola project.
barlow: Uh... right?
barlow: If it moves, kill it!
crystal: No way. Who's the demon-hunter around here? Oh, yeah, it's YOU.
crystal: If he moves, it's going to be you who decides what to do about it... Because frankly I have no idea how he got up here, and in a way that's even creepier than if he WAS the walking dead.
barlow: Well, he doesn't seem to alive.. or undead...
ananbelle: Oh, he's certainly not undead. I'd know if he was.
crystal: It seems that someone propped him up against a chair, but I have no idea who would do it. We found him just like this, and then we went to find you.
barlow: Hey, why were you in my room?
crystal: Well... we were looking for you...
barlow: In the middle of the night? What was so important?
crystal: We, uh... I don't know. It was important at the time. Something... really scary.
annabelle: Elkwood was in your room.
crystal: Right! We came in here to tell you that Elkwood was... no, never mind...
barlow: So you had no good reason to be here... Am I supposed to guess? Is this some sort of riddle?
barlow: Well, he can't stay here.
crystal: I'm sure Annabelle would love to escort Mr. Sprawling back to his gondola.
barlow: I just hope he doesn't make a habit of hanging around in my bedroom. Just having him here once is enough of a riddle.
barlow: What's the point in leaving him here? Is it supposed to scare us?
crystal: Admit it... It does sort of creep you out, doesn't it?
barlow: I'm more mystified, now. I don't know how it fits into the bigger puzzle. It's like a riddle in itself.
crystal: Riddle... hmmm.
crystal: Barlow, we have a sort of... riddle, and we're wondering if could help us with it.
barlow: Great. You know how I am with riddles.
crystal: Right, but we'll share it with you, regardless. We're looking for... some sort of fiery door.
barlow: A fiery door....
crystal: And I think it's opened with in instrument of the turning tide... something like that.
barlow: Is that door a gateway into the underworld? You know, it being a fiery door and all.
crystal: I doubt it. Most doors to the underworld look like subway entrances, very clearly marked.
crystal: A fiery door isn't meant to be used very often... too uncomfortable and impractical.
barlow: A fiery door... Could that be an oven door? Do I need to look in the oven?
barlow: Or maybe it's a furnace door. I think this house has a furnace, somewhere.
annabelle: I know where it is, but I don't think it's been used in ages. You warm people mostly just use the fireplaces.
barlow: The tides are governed by the moon.
crystal: Okay, then what would be an instrument of the moon?
barlow: I don't know... maybe a flute or a drum. It could be a musical instrument, or it might be a tool of some sort.
barlow: This is connected to that fireplace code! I'm sure of it!
crystal: Really?
barlow: Yeah. It seems so obvious to me now.
barlow: Okay, I've got to go find something. Annabelle will take the late Mr. Sprawling back to his gondola, and we'll all meet up in front of the fireplace in a few minutes.
crystal: Okay, Barlow... We're waiting for you to make sense of all this.
barlow: Here it is. I bet you're both wondering why I've got this fireplace poker, don't you?
barlow: I think this poker originally went with this particular fireplace. You see the moon in the handle? It's just like the moon on the one side of the fireplace.
barlow: This goes back to that riddle in that code. "Lest Bean you be, keep light and dark at a respectful distance" or something like that.
barlow: There's something special about this poker... the moon is actually a powerful magnet. I suspect that it can be used to trigger a secret mechanism built into this fireplace... somewhere near this sun design...
barlow: See?! It's working! There's a secret passage behind this fireplace!
crystal: I have to admit, sometimes you get lucky.
barlow: I'm sure this is going to lead to the answer to our...
barlow: How did HE get here?!
crystal: Whoa, Elkwood really gets around, doesn't he?
annabelle: Heh. Sorry, I just couldn't help myself. I set him up there as a joke.
barlow: That wasn't funny! And this room is supposed to be a secret!
annabelle: There's nothing interesting in there.
crystal: There's gotta be something important in there, or else the clues wouldn't have pulled us in this direction. We've got to check it out.
barlow: Well, this room doesn't look very inviting.
annabelle: I think your aunt Vedalia used this room when she was young. It was her secret personal space, at least that's what all the girly stuff suggests.
barlow: Who knew about this room?
crystal: Annabelle knew about it, right? I knew it was here, but I never had time to investigate it.
barlow: I've lived in this house for most of my life, and I never knew about it!
crystal: Really? So Alex never told you about it?
annabelle: Turnip knows about it. The sheriff, too... and Rebecca.
barlow: Great, so everyone except for me and Eliza.
crystal: Eliza knows about it too, right?
annabelle: I'm fairly certain.
barlow: And nobody ever thought of telling ME about it?
barlow: There's some old newspaper clippings tucked in here...
crystal: It looks like an engagement notice...
barlow: It is! It's announcing the Bean-Elkwood engagement. It looks like my aunt Vedalia and Elkwood were sweethearts.
crystal: And now she hates his guts.
crystal: Aw, look how cute the two of them looked. They must've been about your age.
barlow: It's seems so strange. I never knew my aunt as anything other than a cranky old maid. She didn't seem capable of love. I wonder what happened.
barlow: Somebody didn't like that mirror.
barlow: There's something written here, presumably in blood... "Hatchet-paws did it!..."
crystal: Well, case closed.
barlow: Well, in a sense it is. No kid in Spider Cliff can grow up without hearing stories about Hatchet-paws, a vicious killer who roamed the streets about fifty years ago.
crystal: Which is about the time of the gondola disaster.
barlow: I know Hatchet-paws was a real historical figure, a murderer who showed no remorse to man, woman, or child... but it's hard to separate the truth from the myth.
crystal: I don't want to argue here, but this... clue... seems overly obvious. Ostentatious.
barlow: Hey, stop stealing MY words.
barlow: I thought Elkwood's last name was Sprawling...
barlow: Here in these clippings, He's mentioned as Thomas Elkwood. Why would he take his wife's surname?
crystal: It seems natural to me. I'd never go by a name like "Bean".
barlow: Ha! Like you'd ever get that chance!
barlow: Look at this second news clipping...
barlow: It's announcing the marriage of Elkwood and Katherine Ivy Sprawling... and it's dated TWO DAYS after the engagement notice.
crystal: So he gets engaged to Vedalia and then two days later married this other girl? Talk about jilted!
barlow: I guess she never got over this whole incident. It doesn't really help us with our current case, but it does solve the mystery of why my aunt was such a mean old hag.
crystal: I don't know... I think this might be more important than it seems...
barlow: I think the Hatchet-paws clue is more important here. I gives me a good idea of who might be leaving those messages and trying to sabotage our plans with the gondola...
crystal: I'll let you worry about that. What I find interesting is that Elkwood changed his mind and got MARRIED in quite a hurry... and that doesn't seem natural.
crystal: You know what I think? I think we should see if this Katherine Ivy Sprawling left behind a diary... because I suspect she knows a few things about making potions with mandrake.
annabelle: Oh, I get it.
barlow: Would you two please forget that love potion stuff? I don't think you realize how much danger we're facing here...
barlow: Someone is trying to continue the work of Hatchet-paws, if indeed he was the one who destroyed the gondola in the first place.
barlow: In the history of Spider Cliff's criminals, Hatchet-paws was the worst of the worst... and anyone doing work in his accursed name will eventually resort to murder.
crystal: I know you think this all has a reasonable explanation, but someone following in the footsteps on an old-time axe murderer is a bit far-fetched. And if someone is planning on becoming the next Hatchet-paws, how are we supposed to identify him? Look for someone hoarding hatchets?
barlow: No, the prime suspect is easy to identify... Hatchet-paws was a paper mammal!
barlow: This hatchet might've been here for a LONG time. By the looks of things, Vedalia sealed this up and never came back.
barlow: You said you've been in this room before?
annabelle: Oh, yeah. You instructed me to clean the house, so I dust everything in here once a week.
barlow: So, how long do you think this hatchet has been here?
annabelle: Um... about ten minutes.
barlow: What?!
annabelle: It's really strange. I peeked in here when I was moving Elkwood around, only a few minutes before you opened the secret door. I can say for certain that if the hatchet was here then, I would've noticed it. But it wasn't.
barlow: This... just doesn't make any sense!