A Dastardly Plot

by Christopher Healy

  “Can somebody please tell me who this person is?” The president’s eye began twitching.

  “Cassandra Pepper,” she proudly replied. “Inventor, pickle heiress, and lifesaving heroine.”

  “Um, Agent Clark?” the president nudged.

  “Yes, Mr. President!” The officer shoved Cassandra into the hands of two local policemen. “Take her away!”

  “But—” Cassandra was swallowed by the crowd.

  Molly began to pull herself back up over the railing, but Emmett stopped her.

  “Have you apprehended the rest of her gang?” Agent Clark asked of the remaining police. Any other day, Molly would have been flattered to have someone think she was part of a gang.

  “We lost track of the girl and the Chinese one,” an officer replied. “But a few of the guys think they saw one of those masked fellas down toward the Brooklyn end. They’re after him now.”

  People gasped as Cassandra suddenly reappeared on the scene. “Those masked men are not part of my gang,” Cassandra said. “They are the real criminals. We are trying to stop them.”

  “She’s back,” said President Arthur. “Cleveland, why is she back?”

  Governor Grover Cleveland, nervously tugging at his push-broom mustache, simply shrugged.

  “Are there two of her?” President Arthur asked.

  Grover Cleveland shrugged.

  “You mean to say that in running through barricades, climbing into restricted areas, and leaping on the president, you were trying to save his life?” asked Agent Clark.

  Cassandra nodded. “Yes, but not today. We were trying to save his life next Friday.”

  The president rubbed his eyes. “Am I imagining this, Cleveland?” he said. “I knew I shouldn’t have eaten so many of those fried dough puffs during the fireworks.”

  “Next Friday is the opening of the World’s Fair,” Cassandra continued. “And that masked man had a diabolical plot to unleash an army of killer robots there.”

  “Robots?” said Agent Clark.

  “What in heaven’s name is a robot?” asked the president.

  Grover Cleveland shrugged.

  “But the president and the World’s Fair are safe once more, because we have destroyed the robots,” Cassandra said with a curtsy. “You are all quite welcome.”

  “What is a robot?” the president asked again, his face reddening.

  “And here is the really interesting part,” Cassandra said. “The villain is someone you all know and respect! Someone no man in his right mind would suspect!”

  Molly and Emmett cringed, knowing what was coming.

  “You won’t believe me when you hear it,” Cassandra went on. “But I have proof! Go to the ruins of his secret lab! There you’ll find the remnants of his robot death machines. And then you will know that the most vile villain in New York is none other than . . . Alexander Graham Bell!”

  “Me?” A bearded man in a tweed suit and bow tie nudged his way to the front of the crowd. The look on Bell’s face was one of both confusion and pity. “I’m sorry, madam, but I’ve been marching with my fellow inventors all night. And so . . . Wait, what was that about my lab?”

  Cassandra’s face went ashen; her lip trembled. It reminded Molly painfully of the way her mother looked when she first learned of her father’s diagnosis.

  “You can’t be Bell,” Cassandra said defiantly.

  “But I am,” said Bell. Hearing him speak, Molly had to admit that the masked villain, whoever he was, did a remarkable impression of the real inventor. “And, sorry, what was that about my lab again?” Bell continued.

  “Don’t listen to him!” Cassandra warned. “He must have taken off his mask to hide among the crowd!”

  Molly shook her head silently. Cassandra was too flustered and disoriented; she wasn’t paying attention to the details. The Bell before her wore a brown suit, not black like the masked man.

  “Well, I can vouch for Alec.” Thomas Edison sidled his way through the bystanders. “I mean, I can certainly understand how the old boy could get himself accused of sinister skulduggery—who hasn’t caught Bell sneaking a looky-loo at their secret projects? Am I right? Kidding, Alec! Kidding! No need to be Mr. Scowly-Face. Wow, you should invent yourself a sense of humor. But anyway, yes, Bell’s been marching with us the whole time.”

  “As if anyone would suspect otherwise,” President Arthur said, patting Bell on the back. “Mr. Bell is our national treasure!”

  “Well, a national treasure, perhaps,” Edison said, stepping in front of Bell. “Certainly not the national treasure. I mean . . . I’m Thomas Edison.”

  Bell pushed past Edison and approached Cassandra. “Madam, please, my lab? What did you mean by the ruins of my lab?”

  “The, uh . . . lab on Pike Street,” she replied. “Squarish building, dull paint job? You really should take some decorating pointers from your fellow Guildsmen. Anyway, it . . . sort of blew up.”

  Bell looked stricken. “My automatons!”

  “Aha! So you admit it!” Cassandra’s eyes reignited. “You did build an army of killer robots to unleash upon the Fair!”

  “That warehouse was filled with automatons!” Bell cried. “Clockwork figures! They were to be a surprise for the World’s Fair! They were performing automatons!”

  “Wait. What?”

  “Those metal men! They’re programmed to march and sing in unison. They were to sing ‘Polly Wolly Doodle’!”

  “Oh,” Cassandra said sadly. “I would’ve enjoyed that. I love that song.”

  “They’re . . . destroyed, you say? All of them?” Bell staggered. “They were to be the next great step in personal entertainment. More spectacular than a player piano. Miles above Edison’s silly phonograph. At parties and celebrations, everybody was going to have their own clockwork quartet singing in perfect four-part harmony. But now . . .” The crowd parted respectfully as Bell shuffled off. He walked to the railing, dangerously near to Molly and Emmett, and gripped it as if the bridge were a great ship being tossed by violent waves.

  “I think we’ve heard enough from this loony bird,” Agent Clark said as the reporters scribbled frantically on their pads. “Mrs. Pepper, you have admitted to arson and destruction of property; you’ve cast baseless aspersions against the character of Alexander Graham Bell; and you physically assaulted the president of the United States in full view of a hundred witnesses. You’ve given us ample reason to suspect you are criminally insane. You will be taken to the lunatic asylum on Blackwell’s Island to await testing and trial.”

  “No, you can’t! My daughter—” But Cassandra was already being jerked away. She cried out with rage, but her voice got smaller and smaller as she vanished from sight. “Don’t trust him! He’s lying! There’s a lot you don’t know about your national treasure! He sent a ship full of men to their deaths at the South Pole! Does he talk about that little incident? Does he?”

  At the rail, Bell looked westward, watching the plume of thick smoke from his lab rising like a snake charmer’s cobra. “Oh, Emmett,” he muttered softly to himself, but loudly enough for Molly and Emmett to hear. “What have you gotten yourself into?”

  Molly peered up toward the girders. The masked man was gone. She had no idea how long ago he’d slipped away. As the crowd dispersed, Agent Clark approached Bell. Molly and Emmett froze like gargoyles on the ledge.

  “Mr. Bell,” they heard the federal agent say. “I’m truly sorry you got caught up in this. Fire brigade is on its way to your lab now. Top priority, though, is locating the woman’s accomplices. Including that Chinese boy. Now, I’ve just gotten word that you have a lab assistant at the Guild—”

  “No,” Bell said sharply. “I got a good look at the young man in question. It was not my assistant.”

  “Are you positive?” Clark did not sound convinced. “Maybe in the dark, you didn’t—”

  “It was not him,” Bell repeated. “If you’ll excuse me.” He marched off.

  After what felt like
an eternity of inching slowly along the ledge, Molly finally dropped back onto solid Manhattan ground. There were still lots of people milling about, but it was unlikely anyone would recognize them in the chaos. She helped Emmett down, but he pulled away from her as soon as he was safe. “We ruined Mr. Bell’s life,” he said sourly. “I knew he was a good man. I should never have let you talk me into thinking otherwise.”

  “Hey!” Molly shoved him. “My mother is gone! Arrested! On her way to a lunatic asylum!” Her voice dropped. “I’ve never done anything without my mother.” She started crying. It was the last thing she wanted to do. Especially in front of Emmett.

  “Molly,” he said softly. “Hey, Molly, I . . .” He reached for her, but now it was her turn to pull away.

  “Stop.” She didn’t really know this boy, this stranger. They’d only just met. He obviously didn’t really know her. Not if he thought she’d care a whit about some man she’d never met when her mother had just been taken from her. Her mother. Her friend. The person she laughed with and had adventures with and shared deep talks with . . .

  She glanced at Emmett through teary eyes. In the forty-eight hours she’d known him, she’d done all those things with him already. She sniffled and, sort of, almost, smiled. The situation she was in terrified her. But she wasn’t in it alone.

  “Let’s just go,” she said. “Before someone sees us.”

  The children hurried off the street and slipped into a back alley, where, stretched on clotheslines above them, sheets flapped in the wind like the sails of the fantastic pirate ship Molly wished could carry her away.

  Part II

  22

  Nowhere to Turn

  “I KNOW WE’RE trying to stay out of sight,” Emmett said after an hour of creeping through unlit alleys and forgotten side streets, “but this seems like a really long route to your shop.”

  “We can’t go back there,” Molly replied, climbing over a discarded sofa and startling a stray cat. “The police have my mother, so I assume they’re looking for me and that’s the first place they’ll check. Besides, the Jägers have probably changed the locks on us by now anyway.”

  “So, where are we going?”

  Molly stopped. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’m just trying to put distance between us and anyone who might be after us.”

  “That’s a lot of people right now,” Emmett said. His stomach growled audibly.

  Molly sighed. Her mother would know where to go. “Don’t you have some . . . you know, some Chinese people we could stay with?”

  Emmett looked at her askance. “No, Molly, I do not have any Chinese people,” he said. “I haven’t even had a home for . . . Wait. I know where we can go. Follow me.”

  Hours later, they stepped over the fallen gate of a garbage dump. Mounds of soot and ash rose high against the night sky like netherworld versions of Saharan sand dunes. Here and there, men in rags gathered around small fires, drinking from old biscuit tins and roasting skewered who-knows-what. Emmett led Molly deep among the shadowy hills, behind the tallest ash pile of all, in the loneliest, most remote corner of the dump.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “Only place I could think of where no one will find us,” Emmett replied. In the faint moonlight, Molly could see the silhouette of a small but fully enclosed wagon. It was not much bigger than the chicken cart they’d stowed away on the day before. She squinted to make out the words painted across the side:

  MISS ADDIE’S BOOKMOBILE

  “My home,” said Emmett. “Until three months ago, anyway.” He fished through his pockets and pulled out a small key. “Whew,” he said. “So glad I didn’t lose this. Without the key, this place is basically impenetrable.”

  “Tougher than the Bastille, I’m sure,” Molly joked.

  Emmett grinned slyly as he unlocked the cart’s tiny door. “Duck,” he warned. He crouched as he opened the door and Molly followed suit, narrowly avoiding a flour sack that whipped out of the doorway on a spring-loaded broomstick. That sack would have felt like a right hook from a boxer if it had hit. “The Bastille doesn’t have one of those,” Emmett said.

  Molly followed him inside, feeling her way into the blackness. “So you haven’t been here in months, right?” she said. “What are the chances this place isn’t teeming with rats by now?”

  “One hundred percent,” Emmett replied. “I rigged tiny broomstick traps over all the mouseholes.”

  Molly laughed, even though she wasn’t sure he was joking. Seeing this place reminded her that her friend was far more than just an inventor’s assistant.

  Emmett lit a candle on the wall and began turning a crank. The lighted taper began sliding along a wire, igniting the wicks of several other candles as it moved and glass covers—jam jars in a previous life—descended over the lit candles. Now Molly could see the books. There must have been fifty crammed onto those tightly packed shelves. Seventy, maybe! If she had to live alone in a garbage dump, she couldn’t think of a nicer place to do it.

  “And no, I haven’t read them all yet,” Emmett said, anticipating Molly’s question. “A lot of them, though. There wasn’t much else to do in here.” He sat on the edge of a homemade bed—the only furniture—and pulled a cord that sent a metal claw (crafted from forks and door hinges) along a second network of wires to pluck up a book and deliver it back to him. The Tales of Edgar Allan Poe dropped into his lap.

  Molly grinned giddily. “You could read every single one of these books without lifting your head off the pillow! I’d call it lazy if I didn’t know how much work it must have taken to make it.”

  “I mostly built it because I’m indecisive,” Emmett said. “I could never choose a book, so I’d just close my eyes and let the claw pick for me.”

  “Emmett, you have got to be an inventor when you’re older,” Molly said, gaping at the complicated machinery around the room.

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged again and it triggered a burst of frustration in Molly.

  “Why do you say ‘I don’t know’ whenever someone mentions you becoming an inventor?” she asked sternly.

  “I don’t know,” Emmett replied. “Sorry. I mean . . . It’s just . . . Could I?”

  “The mechanical hand you built just grabbed a book for me!”

  “So, you think . . . yes?”

  “Aargh!” Molly cried. She threw open the Poe book, pursed her lips, and began reading.

  “Sorry, I guess I’ve just always assumed I’d end up a sailor like my father. That’s what he’d always wanted.”

  “Do you like boats?”

  “No, I hate them. I get seasick. That’s why my dad always left me reading on the docks while he worked.”

  “Then be what you wanna be!” Molly said. “Stop being so goosey about everything in your life! It’s not like your father’s here to stop you!” She looked back to her book, immediately regretting her choice of words. “Sorry,” she muttered. “I didn’t mean . . .”

  “It’s fine,” Emmett said in a tone that told Molly it wasn’t fine. “Maybe we should just stop talking for a bit. You’ll probably like that book, by the way. Lots of dark, creepy stuff.”

  “Thanks, that’s exactly what I need tonight.” And yet, she was so overcome by exhaustion that, even as she flipped through the illustrations of devils and spirits, she drifted into a deep, peaceful slumber that lasted until morning—when she was jolted awake by a banging at the door.

  23

  An Unexpected Guest

  “I THOUGHT YOU said no one would find us here!” Molly raised the Edgar Allan Poe book into bash-ready position.

  On the floor, Emmett sat up groggily and put his eye to a peephole.

  “It’s Jasper,” he said, sounding relieved. But Molly kept Poe ready to strike. She squinted as sunlight flooded through the open door.

  “Emmett Lee! Where have you been? I thought you were never comin’ back,” said the stocky man in sooty gray coveralls who stood outside. “You know how long
you been gone? Three and a half months! That’s a quarter of the year that I been waiting to find out how Phileas Fogg and Passepartout are gonna get outta Hong Kong. You can’t leave a man waiting three and a half months on somethin’ like that! You know what that is? Cruel and unusual. That is cruel and unusual treatment, my friend. Forbidden by the Constitution. I half thought to bust my way in here and grab the rest of that book myself. You know what stopped me, Emmett? These eyes. I know you got the place all booby-trapped and I don’t wanna lose one of these eyes. I got beautiful eyes, Emmett Lee. Or so I been told. I ain’t so vain as to think of them that way myself. Still, I gotta take care of these beautiful eyes. And you know what these eyes are missing, Emmett? Chapter twenty-two of Around the World in—” A glimpse of Molly finally caused him to pause. “Excuse me, miss. I did not realize Emmett had company.” He tipped his frayed cap and hustled away.

  “Jasper, come back,” Emmett called. “It’s fine.”

  Jasper slowly made his way back to the cart and peered inside, cautiously, as if there might have been a tiger ready to swipe at him. He was probably in his early twenties, tall and thickly built. Molly lowered her book, but Jasper continued to eye her suspiciously.

  “Jasper Bloom, this is Molly Pepper,” Emmett said. “We’re in some trouble. And we could use your help. You know I wouldn’t joke about something like this.”

  “You don’t joke about hardly anything, Emmett Lee,” Jasper said, crouching to step inside. “A sense of humor is what you need. Keeps me alive, my sense of humor does. Remember what Miss Addie used to say about jokes? Nothing. ’Cause she didn’t make any. And where is she now? Dead. God rest her soul. Not me, though. I’m still walkin’ this earth ’cause I can see the humor in anything. Except Balthazar Birdhouse. Nothing funny about that man.”

  “Who?” Molly asked, desperately trying to follow Jasper’s rapid patter.