A Dastardly Plot

by Christopher Healy

  “Where are we going to get explosives, Mother?” Molly asked.

  “Why, they’re lying all over the Brooklyn Bridge.”

  16

  Goodbye, Pickle Shop

  THE NEXT MORNING, after some toast and coffee, the Peppers got dressed and packed their bags—special flat-bottomed carpetbags that Cassandra rigged with hidden shoulder straps for the inevitable moment in which one would need the use of two free hands. Cassandra filled hers with tools and a few of her more destructive inventions: the Double-Ended Hammer, the Self-Propelled Mop, and the Thimble Cannon.

  For her part, Molly packed sandwiches and reading material. She agonized for some time over which book to take—so many of them, upon rereading, would conjure her father’s voice back into her head. But in the end, she decided on Treasure Island, because Emmett had seemed so interested in it.

  “Oh, and Mr. Lee,” said Cassandra. “Stick your feet into these.” She held out a pair of clunky-looking brown shoes.

  “You made these?” Emmett asked, gawking at the shoes as if they were exotic birds. “I mean, thank you, but . . . you made these? Overnight?”

  “Measuring your feet while you slept wasn’t easy,” Cassandra said.

  Emmett slipped the shoes on and stood up, wobbling a bit. The thick soles made him almost a full inch taller. “They fit.”

  “That isn’t all they do,” Cassandra said. “Press down with your big toes. Don’t look so frightened—try it.”

  Emmett wobbled again as dozens of pointy tacks protruded from his soles. Molly put her cheek to the floor to peek under the feet.

  “Traction spikes,” she said enviously. “You’ll be able to climb walls so much easier with these!”

  “I’m going to be climbing walls?”

  Cassandra marched out onto the quiet, predawn streets, shouting, “Eastward ho, children! We need to be gone before any Jägermen arrive.”

  “Wait,” Emmett said, clicking his toes to retract his shoe spikes. “Let me carry your bags.”

  “Thank you, but that’s quite unnecessary,” said Cassandra.

  “There, um, aren’t a lot of Chinese people around here,” Emmett said. “It will attract less attention if people assume I’m working for you.”

  As much as Molly hated it, she knew Emmett was right. Flashing an apologetic smile, Molly handed over her bag. Cassandra did so as well, looking equally uncomfortable. “Here you are then, Mr. Lee,” she said. “But I hope you know I would never expect—”

  “And I would never have expected you to make me a pair of shoes,” Emmett said.

  As they walked away, Molly blew a goodbye kiss to Pepper’s Pickles—something she often did when leaving the store. This day, however, she wondered if she were doing so for the last time.

  The parade across the Brooklyn Bridge was a glorious event. It sounded like one, anyway.

  Molly could do no more than listen to the distant strains of “Hail to the Chief” from several blocks away. She understood why they couldn’t risk being seen, but it still seemed cruelly unfair that the unwitting fopdoodles whose lives she was about to save got to revel in the heavenly glow of President Arthur’s sideburns, while she had to spend her day on a slightly damp bench eating slightly soggy sandwiches in a slightly malodorous nook beneath the Broadway rail line.

  As afternoon turned to dusk, and the sounds of drums and tubas faded, Emmett began to fidget. Molly would have liked to assume he was just avoiding the cockroaches, but she knew it was more than that.

  “She’ll be back,” Molly said confidently, taking a bite of her supper sandwich (which was no different from her lunch sandwich).

  “She’s been gone for hours,” Emmett replied, his leg shaking anxiously. “The music stopped. That means the parade’s in Brooklyn already. It won’t be long before the fireworks start. We were supposed to be in Bell’s lab by then. What if she got caught?”

  “We’ve got plenty of time. They’ve still got to clear all the spectators off the bridge before they start lighting fuses. Hey, do you remember what my mother said today at lunch?”

  “That with the right teacher a monkey could learn to play the ukulele?”

  “Not that; the thing she said about you being with us.”

  “She said I don’t need to worry about anything because I’m with the Peppers now and Peppers never give up,” Emmett said. “But never giving up is different from never failing.”

  Molly narrowed her eyes. “You, Emmett, are—” But she swallowed whatever harsh words were about to follow. Because Emmett had a point. Maybe they should rethink the family slogan. For now, though, she needed to stay positive. “—not an optimist,” she finished. “My mother is going to be back here any second with loads of exploding rockets, and we’re going to destroy Bell’s army of killer machines. I bet we finish blowing up those robots fast enough to come back and catch part two of the parade when they march back over to Manhattan after the fireworks. We might even get to see President Arthur.”

  “I can’t say I’m a fan,” Emmett said. “He is the one who signed the Exclusion Act.”

  “Oh . . . wow, I . . . I guess he was,” Molly said awkwardly. “I never really thought about that.”

  “I figured,” Emmett said. “That’s why I mentioned it.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” Molly said, nodding. She was afraid Emmett was upset with her, but when he nodded back, she saw in his eyes that he was commiserating. She and her mother weren’t the only ones who knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of unfair policies. “It’s important to remember stuff like that.”

  Cassandra finally appeared and hurried under the trestle to join them.

  “Success, Mother?”

  “I’ve never seen more people jammed into one place,” Cassandra said. “The entire populace of New York must be crammed around that bridge.”

  “So, no success?” Molly asked.

  “I’m a Pepper, Molls—we never give up.”

  Molly gave Emmett a sheepish look.

  “The fireworks are set up on the big lower roadway, where carriages and streetcars will normally go,” Cassandra explained. “But the paraders are on the pedestrian walkway above that, so while everyone was watching the trumpets and tubas, I was able to grab . . . this!”

  From behind her back, she produced a four-foot-long, candy-striped tube with a long dangling fuse at the other end.

  “Just the one?” Molly asked, trying not to sound too skeptical.

  “Chain reactions, Molls,” her mother replied. “One rocket is all we need to get it started. Based on what you told me, there should be plenty of flammable materials in that building. Now, where’s my dinner sandwich? I’m famished.” She sat down next to Emmett and rooted through Molly’s bag. “Mr. Lee, you haven’t taken a bite of yours. Eat up; you’re going to need energy this evening.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Pepper. I don’t have much of an appetite.”

  “Understandable,” she replied. “Should we relocate to someplace less . . . urine-y?”

  “It’s not that,” Emmett said. “I’m just . . . thinking about Mr. Bell.”

  “Bell is marching to Brooklyn as we speak,” Cassandra said. “You don’t need to worry about running into him.”

  “No,” Emmett said sadly. “It’s just that . . . I can’t believe I was so wrong about the man. He’s been good to me.”

  “You keep saying that,” said Molly. “But this is the man who pretty much killed your . . .” She clamped her lips shut.

  “It’s okay,” Emmett said. “I understand how you could see it that way. But for years, I’ve been thinking of Mr. Bell as the man who gave my father an incredible opportunity when no one else would, as a man who saw my father’s potential. I don’t hold him responsible for my father’s death any more than I do Ambrose Rector, the man who built the ship. Or Ezra Hopper, the man who charted their course to Antarctica. Or Silas Cotton, the cabin boy. They went down with the Frost Cleaver too. So did twenty-one other sailors—
twenty-one men who called my father captain before they died. I can name every one. It feels important to remember their names.”

  The tears running down Emmett’s cheeks dampened the ruffles of Cassandra’s dress as she pulled the boy in for a hug. “I am so sorry, Emmett.”

  Molly felt for him too, but couldn’t bring herself to say so. Lost fathers were not her favorite topic. And regardless of how Emmett felt, she blamed Bell for what happened to Captain Lee. She liked having someone to blame.

  Out on the sidewalk, a lamplighter fought his way against the flow of people still heading for the bridge. He used a candle on the end of a long pole to ignite the gas lamps along Broadway. As one particular lamp burst to life, it illuminated a tall, elegantly dressed woman, staring in Molly’s direction.

  “Someone’s watching us!” Molly blurted.

  “Where?” Cassandra spun to see. But as soon as Molly pointed, the woman by the lamp rushed off.

  “One of Gertha’s, no doubt,” Cassandra said. “They are working with Bell!”

  “Not necessarily,” Molly said. “Maybe she—”

  “—was just a fancy rich lady glaring at us because we’d taken her favorite bench by the rats?” Cassandra shook her head. “Come, we need to go anyway. Boom time.”

  The three grabbed their things, left the shelter of the trestle, and headed to Bell’s secret lab, checking over their shoulders the entire way.

  17

  Playing with Fire

  THE SUN HAD nearly dipped behind the rooftops when the trio reached the deceptively bland-looking warehouse that held Bell’s hidden laboratory.

  “You think Corned Beef Man’s still in there?” Emmett asked.

  “Corned Beef Man.” Cassandra chuckled. “That’s a silly name.”

  Molly shushed her mother and led them down the dark alley that ran alongside the building. No light came from within. “Looks deserted,” she whispered. “Convert to espionage mode.”

  Molly and Emmett reached under the flat bottoms of the carpetbags, pulled free the hidden shoulder straps, and them slung the bags onto their backs like mountaineers.

  Cassandra looked on admiringly. “Even more dashing than I’d hoped.”

  “Should we go back in that way?” Emmett pointed to the garbage chute by the big, wheeled trash bin.

  Molly figured he was still hoping to find his lost shoe, but she shook her head. “Too risky to enter by a room we can’t peek into first.” She moved to the rear yard. “Lucky break! That back window’s still open.” She climbed inside.

  “Um, isn’t that a little too convenient?” Emmett said. “Is it luck or a trap?”

  Holding her skirt in one hand, Cassandra shimmied awkwardly over the sill to join her daughter. “If it’s a trap,” she said, “at least we’ll know Bell is onto us. One mystery solved!”

  Reluctantly, Emmett followed.

  They had only the faintest glow of moonlight to see by, and the rumble of the far-off crowd gave the feeling of a storm closing in. But Molly was undaunted; her mother was with her.

  Cassandra unclasped the bag on Molly’s back and retrieved one of her Illuma-Sticks, a foot-long metal tube with a glass sphere at one end. With her thumb, she flicked a switch, and a thin flame ignited within the bulb. The light was faint, but enough to ensure that they could make it through the dark room without tripping. Cassandra passed the flickering device to her daughter and said, “Lead the way.”

  Molly beamed.

  She guided the others down to the gleaming vault door, turned the handle, and heard the hiss of escaping air.

  “You two go ahead,” Emmett said, heading to the room with the garbage hatch. “I’m gonna check for my shoe.”

  “Do what you must, Mr. Lee,” Cassandra said. “But before you go, if you could kindly give us the incendiary device?” Emmett retrieved the long rocket that had been jammed into his bag. “Thank you,” Cassandra said, taking the firework. “You’ll also find a second Illuma-Stick in the bag if it’s too dark in there.”

  Emmett took out the light and flicked it on. “Um, since this thing makes fire,” he said hesitantly, “should I have been carrying it in the same bag as an explosive rocket?”

  “Excellent observation, Mr. Lee,” Cassandra replied. “I knew you were a clever one.”

  Shivering, Emmett stepped into the workroom, while Molly tugged her mother into the vault. The Peppers stood face-to-steely-face with Bell’s metallic army.

  “So these are robots.” Cassandra said the word as if it were magic. She and Molly were about to step up for a closer look when they heard Emmett scream.

  “He’s here!” Emmett burst into the vault.

  “Who?” Cassandra asked.

  “Corned Beef Man,” Emmett said. Molly turned to run, but Emmett grabbed her arm. “No. My . . . my shoe’s not there. But Corned Beef Man is. I think he’s dead.”

  “Are you sure?” Cassandra asked. “Did you get a close look?”

  “No, I did not get a close look,” Emmett said, flustered. “What is it with you Peppers and getting a close look every time there might be a corpse?”

  “I’ll check on this Beef fellow,” Cassandra said. “You two gather as many lanterns as you can from the corridor. Spread them among these metal chaps. That will be our chain reaction. We can’t get too distracted from our mission.” She traded the rocket for Molly’s Illuma-Stick and rushed to the workshop.

  Molly had so many questions for Emmett: Was there blood? A murder weapon? Why did Bell kill one of his own men? Something didn’t add up. But they had to focus on getting their job done quickly.

  While Emmett gathered lanterns, Molly approached the robots, brandishing the rocket like a peppermint-striped club. She squinted at the figure nearest her. Funny . . . last time, she could have sworn these things had sharpened fangs, not handlebar mustaches. And the hands looked less clawlike than she’d remembered. She scanned the thing’s oil-drum chest. “Hey,” she called out. “This one doesn’t say ‘robot.’ It says . . . ‘char’?” She envisioned flames spewing from beneath the metal demon’s mustache. “Or is that ‘chase’?”

  “Are you sure you don’t need spectacles?” Emmett said, carrying in an armful of lanterns.

  “I don’t need spectacles!” Molly grumbled. “It’s dark. Give me the Illuma-Stick.” She attempted to pull the handheld torch from Emmett’s overburdened arms. But just as she got hold of it—BOOM! The children yelped and dropped everything. As glass shattered and oil splattered, Molly and Emmett fled the vault and ran smack into Cassandra in the hall. More explosions sounded. They were distant, blocks away.

  “No cause for alarm,” Cassandra said. “Just fireworks at the bridge, so . . . ooh, I take it back—that’s cause for alarm.”

  She pointed to the rocket, which now lay on the floor of the vault, in a flaming puddle of lamp oil. They barely had time to absorb the danger of that situation before they heard the warehouse door slam.

  “And that’s even more cause.” Cassandra pulled both children back into the workroom with her, careful to lead them around the facedown figure slumped on the floor.

  “Is he—?” Molly asked.

  “Very much so,” her mother answered. “Is that the trash chute?”

  Cassandra held open the hatch for the children, then quickly dove through after them. The trash cart shifted slightly on its wheels as the trio landed painfully among discarded scrap metal.

  “Well, that could have gone better,” Cassandra said.

  “From where I stand,” said a man in a strange mask, “it went perfectly.”

  18

  Masks!

  “THANK YOU FOR doing exactly what I expected,” the stranger said. He wore a black suit and a grotesque, crooked-faced mask. Though his expression could not be seen, Molly could tell the man was smiling. His voice had a sinister tone, but also an element of glee, as if he enjoyed sounding scary.

  A second masked man—thickset with long, simian arms—arrived from the front end o
f the alley. “Did it work?”

  “Yes, Mr. C,” said the first stranger. “As I anticipated, the slamming door did indeed flush them out. We’ve got them, Mr. T! You can abandon the window.” A third masked man, built like a tall scarecrow, ran to join them.

  Molly recognized the masks on the two newcomers. They were theatrical masks—one happy, one sad. Comedy and Tragedy. But the mask worn by the leader was unfamiliar—a half-melted face with angry arched brows, crooked nose, and a mouth contorted into a permanent scream.

  “Something tells me you fellows are not police,” Cassandra said, huddling the children behind her in the bin.

  “No, Mrs. Pepper, we most certainly are not,” the leader said. “Though I suppose—”

  “Let the children go,” Cassandra said. Fireworks continued to rumble like distant thunder.

  “Yeah, let us go,” Molly joined in. She hacked out a fake cough. “We’re sick. I think it’s contag—”

  “Oh, Molly, you offend me,” the leader said. “Trying a trick that didn’t even work on that Jäger Society goon?”

  Molly gripped the side of the bin. How did he know about that? What else did he know about them?

  “I’d hate to think I’ve overestimated you,” the villain continued. “But like the man who loses his left hand to a crocodile, then tries to retrieve it by reaching into the beast’s maw with his right, you, dear Molly, do not learn from your mistakes.”

  “Okay, Ugly, three things!” Molly squeezed in front of her mother and held three defiant fingers in the man’s face. “One: my trick did work on the Jägerman. He just happened to be a bit more spry than I thought. Two: Who’s this guy with the crocodile? ’Cause he sounds like a dolt. And three: next time you see your boss, Alexander Graham Bell, tell him he’s not the only one capable of spying on his enemies.”

  The masked man applauded. “Oh, I’ll be sure to pass your message on to him.” His voice was softer now, with a slight Scottish lilt.