“Oh, we just call their leader the tall man, don’t we, Alex?” Alex’s grandfather said distractedly. “Two problems you said. The other?”

“Yes. Well.” Kingdom winced. “It gets more complicated yet, I’m afraid. It seems our forerunners in the club were an extremely devious bunch. There have always been eleven paintings, yes, eleven paintings that hold the secret. But they’ve not always been the same eleven.”

“What?” The old man stared at her.

“The original list was drawn up in the 1600s. But a few pictures were replaced over the years. This, for example.” She nodded to the painting on the wall. “It dates from 1760, so it can’t have been one of the original eleven. But the titles of the originals that were removed from the list were not passed on to us. We don’t know why now. We can only assume the . . . code changed, too. But perhaps not—so we must also assume that there’s a danger those unknown original paintings could still somehow be used to make up the eleven. If this . . . tall man of yours knows enough about the secret to have already gathered nine, he may know about the originals. He may know more than we do.”

“Wouldn’t be hard,” Alex’s grandfather mused. He stood to scrutinize the painting, then suddenly spun and pointed to Kingdom.

“Shadow Gate.”

She stiffened. Metz looked from her to the old man and back. “What?” he said. “What is this now?”

“Where did you hear that?” Kingdom asked, visibly shaken.

“You said we had to earn your trust,” Alex’s grandfather said. “So I’m giving you what we know. The great secret you’re sworn to keep hidden. It’s the Shadow Gate, isn’t it? This castle ruin at Bad Boll, it’s where the legend took place.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Kingdom said. She sat grinding her jaw over some internal argument. “But . . . yes. I know the phrase. At least, the German equivalent: Schattentor.”

“What is this?” Metz demanded.

“Each time the Fishing Club took a new president, the successor was also selected,” Kingdom said. “As a precaution. When Ralf became president, he selected me—and he passed on that phrase. Schattentor. A password, secretly handed down from one president to the next, over decades. You see, we don’t know what the eleventh painting is. It was decided a century ago to keep its identity hidden even from the club. Another insurance measure: if members don’t know what the painting is, they can’t reveal it. A letter containing that information, the title of the painting and its location, has been locked away in the vault of an old law firm in Stuttgart for decades. But if needs be, the president can be told it, by contacting the lawyers and speaking that phrase. But how did you know it? I’d thought it was just a made-up word.”