A Dastardly Plot

by Christopher Healy

  “It’s not important,” Emmett replied.

  “You only say that ’cause you never met Balthazar Birdhouse.” Jasper crossed his arms.

  “Jasper works sanitation for a factory nearby. He hauls ash down here a few times a week,” Emmett explained. “He was also an old customer of Miss Addie, so I made a deal with him. He helps me keep the bookmobile hidden by adding his ash to the piles around it, and in return, I give him books.”

  “Parts of books, you mean,” Jasper said. “Which is why I’m still hangin’ on a what’s-gonna-happen-next from three and a half months ago. The boy only gives me portions of the books at a time ’cause he’s afraid I won’t come back. Ha. Who’s the one of us who shoulda been harboring that particular concern? I’ll give you a hint . . . it’s me.”

  “I am sorry about that, Jasper,” Emmett said.

  “You should be,” Jasper said. “It was supposed to be Around the World in Eighty Days, not Halfway Around the World in Forty-Two Days. Oh, and don’t bother telling me I can read the rest now, ’cause it’s too late. I can’t go back after three and a half months. That story is over for me. And because of you it had an unhappy ending. You may have ruined my love of literature forever, Emmett Lee.”

  “So you don’t want the rest?” Emmett asked, reaching under the bed and pulling out a sheaf of loose pages held together by a clothespin.

  “No, I’ll take ’em!” Jasper grabbed the pages. “But only because it would be unfair to Jules Verne if I didn’t see his artistic vision through to the end.”

  Molly let out an embarrassingly loud snort of laughter.

  “This young lady understands the benefit of a good laugh,” Jasper said.

  Molly stood up and offered her hand. “Mr. Bloom,” she said, “it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

  “I can’t argue with that,” Jasper replied. “Now, Emmett, I believe there was a plea for help. . . .”

  “Yeah, um, it’s not good for Molly and me to be seen in public right now,” Emmett said. “So can you possibly scrounge up some breakfast for us? And a newspaper?”

  Jasper raised an eyebrow. “What in the name of Washington’s wooden teeth have you gotten yourself into, Emmett Lee?”

  Emmett pressed his lips together, obviously afraid to share too much.

  “If you do these things for us, Mr. Bloom,” she said, “we’ll tell you everything.”

  He narrowed his eyes.

  “And we’ll give you a second book,” Molly added. “A whole book.”

  “Which paper do you prefer?” Jasper asked. “The Sun or the Herald?”

  24

  Bad News

  PRESIDENT SAFE AFTER FAILED

  ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT

  BELL’S LABS ALSO TARGETED

  —INVESTIGATION UNDER WAY

  MOLLY AND EMMETT bumped heads reading through the article together. Beyond a recap of the previous night’s events, there was little new information, but it confirmed two points: one, police were indeed on the lookout for “a large-eared girl and dark-haired boy of Asian origin,” and two, “deranged assassin Mrs. Nathaniel Pepper” had definitely been sent to Blackwell’s Asylum.

  Sitting in the East River halfway between Manhattan and Brooklyn, Blackwell’s Island was New York’s most notorious spot for punishment and incarceration. Molly slumped. There was now a mile of fast-moving water, hordes of guards, and who-knew-how-many walls and gates between her and her mother. Reuniting felt impossible. Not to mention figuring out who the masked man really was and why he was framing Mr. Bell.

  “All done?” Jasper asked. He sat cross-legged on the floor, shelling nuts from a bag on his lap. “’Cause I think we can all agree I been very patient over here. Sit yourselves down and tell me everything while we share these peanuts. I traded Balthazar Birdhouse my bad hat for ’em. I didn’t trade my good hat, mind you—no story’s worth that. You’d understand if you saw my good hat. But that’s neither here nor there—make with the tale-tellin’. I particularly can’t wait to hear the part about how you two are not the fugitive children in that article. ’Cause if you was, I would seriously question the wisdom of me bein’ here right now.” He popped a peanut into his mouth.

  Emmett looked to Molly, who responded with a shrug. They needed an ally. Jasper could have already turned them in if he wanted to.

  “It started when that no-good Inventors’ Guild stole my mother’s spot at the World’s Fair,” she began.

  Forty minutes later, Emmett finished with, “And that’s when we came here.”

  Jasper stared at them with eyes that seemed to barely fit in his head, until he finally broke his uncharacteristic silence with applause. “Wow. Just . . . wow. I take it back—that woulda been worth my good hat,” he said. “Jules Verne got nothin’ on you.”

  “Except our story is true,” Emmett said.

  “Who says Verne’s stories ain’t?” Jasper replied.

  “I’m pretty sure Verne does,” Emmett said. “He writes fiction.”

  Jasper scoffed. “Pfft! You really think that if the man had underwater ships and slingshots to the moon and such, he wouldn’t pretend it was all fake? Course he’d say it was fiction! If the public truly believed there was giant, man-eating dinosaurs in caves below our feet, you know what we’d have? Chaos. Complete and total chaos.” He popped the last peanut into his mouth. “Now tell me again about these man-eating robot thingies.”

  “Well, it turned out they were just singing robot thingies,” Molly said with a twinge of guilt.

  “If Bell’s tellin’ the truth,” Jasper said.

  “He is,” Molly said. “Not even Sergio Vittorini could’ve faked that kind of confused reaction.”

  “Ooh, Sergio Vittorini,” Jasper said. “Man of a Thousand and Twelve Faces. I can only make seventy-six faces, myself. And two-thirds of those ain’t useful in the slightest. The other twenty-five, though—”

  “Jasper, aren’t you technically at work right now?” Molly asked.

  The ashman jumped to his feet. “That reminds me, I’m technically at work right now.” He brushed bits of shell from his coveralls. “I gotta get back before Balthazar Birdhouse starts slandering my good name with the foreman. Can’t trust that Balthazar Birdhouse. He’d stab you in the back while looking you in the eye. Don’t worry, though—he don’t know about you two. When I traded him my bad hat, I told him I needed the peanuts to feed some baby ducklings.” He grabbed the remaining pages of Around the World in Eighty Days, plus a copy of Oliver Twist, before opening the door and peeking around for possible spies. “You stay put,” he added in a serious tone. “Everybody and his uncle’s gonna be huntin’ for you—the police, the Jägermen, the masked villains, maybe even Balthazar Birdhouse. . . . Safest place for you is right here. I’ll be back when I can.”

  “Jasper, wait!” Emmett said. He grabbed a pencil, ripped a blank page from a book, and jotted a quick note.

  “What are you doing?” Molly asked.

  “We need to get a message to the one person who might be able to help us,” Emmett said. “The one person who knows we’re innocent.”

  “My mother?” Molly tried.

  Emmett shook his head. “Mr. Bell.”

  “Do you see a wizard cap on my head?” Jasper asked. “How is it you imagine me getting a secret message to Alexander Graham Bell?”

  “There’s a service entrance in the alley between the Guild Hall and Madison Square Theatre,” Emmett said. “In your ashman’s uniform, no one will question you going in that way. Then just slip the note under Bell’s door or something.”

  He handed the note to Jasper, who held it as if it were a bomb with a lit fuse. “Have I somehow given you the impression I enjoy danger?” the ashman said.

  “Five books,” Molly said.

  “Whoa, hold on,” said Emmett. “These are my books.”

  “Seven and you’ve got yourselves a delivery spy,” said Jasper.

  “Seven whole books,” Molly agreed, and
sealed the deal with a handshake.

  25

  The Letter

  “WHY DON’T YOU speak Chinese?” For the past several hours, Molly had been slowly working through a cinder-block-sized copy of The Count of Monte Cristo, but she found it difficult to concentrate in the small, stuffy wagon. Plus, the protagonist’s long, miserable imprisonment was filling her head with unwanted images. She shut the book.

  Emmett looked up from the pages of Black Beauty and sighed. “I wish I did,” he said. “But my father only spoke English to me.”

  “What about anybody else? You’re not the only Chinese person in New York.”

  Emmett leaned back against a shelf. “I think I told you my mother died in childbirth back in Qingdao, so my father was alone with me,” he said. “There’d been a lot of talk at the time about work opportunities in America, so he packed me up and took a steamer to California. But it takes a while for news to cross an ocean. We showed up just as American workers started to get really resentful of the Chinese immigrants in San Francisco. There were riots. It wasn’t safe. My father felt like he’d brought his baby son into a nightmare.

  “We left the West Coast to see if New York was any better. There were no riots here, at least, but it still wasn’t exactly a welcoming environment. So my father gave me an American name, spoke English to me, fed me American food, sang American songs. He wanted me to fit in. But I still couldn’t get into American schools. I still couldn’t make American friends.”

  “Until now,” Molly said.

  One corner of Emmett’s mouth crooked up like he was trying to hide a smile. “I just . . . I don’t know who I’m supposed to be. The culture I was born into is a mystery to me, and the only country I’ve ever known doesn’t want me. I mean, I’ve always been curious about my heritage. I used to ask my father about it all the time. But eventually I stopped because he was just so . . . It was the one thing he was strict about. I didn’t like there being any problems between us, so I stopped asking.”

  “What about since he died? Have you tried to connect with other immigrants? Ones who came here before the Exclusion Act?”

  “I’ve been too busy finding food and shelter and stuff. And anyway, I am the way I am because my father turned his back on his heritage. Other Chinese people might not take kindly to that.” He paused and thought for a moment. “There was only one time I ever realized how proud my father was to be Chinese. . . .” From a drawer under the bed, he retrieved a yellowing sheet of paper. “Unfortunately, they were the last words he ever said to me.”

  Molly took the letter gently in her hands and read.

  Emmett,

  I will miss you terribly these next nine months, but I have taken with me a picture you drew when you were six, the one of you and me, very big, standing on a tiny ship that is barely bigger than our feet. Do you remember it? I know you are a more skilled artist now, but there is something about this drawing I have always loved. Perhaps I like thinking of us as giants.

  I know you did not want me to go, but I also know you understand why I could not pass up this opportunity. I have never seen a vessel like the Frost Cleaver. I truly believe this ship will get us through the Antarctic ice. The first ship to reach the South Pole is going to be captained by a Chinese man, a Lee, your father! And when a Chinese man becomes an American hero, that will change everything for us! So I hope that when I return, you will be less angry about me leaving and more proud about what we have accomplished.

  My only regret is that you will not be by my side when we set foot on that new continent. I would have brought you if Mr. Bell had let me, but he is right that you are too young. Even so, I am certain you would have made a better cabin boy than Silas Cotton, a sour-faced young man who does not seem pleased about taking orders from a “foreigner.” None of the crewmen do, frankly. It is going to be a long enough voyage without needing to deal with a navigator like Ezra Hopper, who will only speak to our first mate, whether I am present or not. I pray it doesn’t come to this, but if Hopper

  Pay no mind to that. We’ve not even left the dock yet. I will earn this crew’s respect by the time we reach the Caribbean. And I’m not completely without friends here. Ambrose Rector seems an amiable fellow. Hard to believe someone so young designed this wondrous ship. We are on a perilous journey, but I feel completely safe in his hands.

  Behave yourself for Miss Adelaide. And pace yourself on those books of hers. Something tells me you’ll have read every page in that wagon by the time I get back. I look forward to hearing about all the adventures you are sure to have while I am away.

  With love, respect, and pride,

  Your father

  Molly had been so focused on her separation from her mother that she’d never stopped to consider how much Emmett had already lost. She vowed at that moment that she would see Emmett through this. It was what her mother would do. She wiped a tear from her cheek and launched into the long story of the Pepper family and her own father’s passing. They talked well into the night, occasionally wondering aloud why Jasper hadn’t returned yet.

  They continued to talk the next day, although their concerns about Jasper now made up a much larger portion of the conversation—especially after they finished off the last of the apples Jasper had smuggled to them the day before. Emmett peered through his peephole as the sun set on the dump for the second time since Jasper’s departure. Between an empty stomach and a fretting mind, sleep was impossible. And then, sometime after ten p.m. on the second night, a knock finally sounded at the door.

  “Which do you want first, the good news or the bad news?” Jasper asked as he ducked his head and stepped inside. “The good news is that I won the recipe contest at work. So much for Balthazar Birdhouse’s famous pound cake!”

  “What’s the bad news, Jasper?” Emmett said, unamused.

  Jasper handed him a note.

  “This is my note!” Emmett cried.

  “Now, listen here, Emmett Lee,” Jasper said. “Do you know how many times in the last two days I tried to sneak in through that alley door of yours? No, you don’t. And I’m not gonna tell you because . . . you might think it was not enough times. But suffice it to say that approximately two hours ago I finally finagled my way up to that fancy-fancy second floor of the Guild Hall only to learn that I had just missed Mr. Bell.”

  “He went home for the day,” Molly said. “It’s late.”

  “Not so, Molly Pepper,” said Jasper. “Because a colleague of Bell’s told me where he’d gone. He went lookin’ for one Emmett Lee.”

  Emmett cringed. “He’s out searching the city for me? As if I didn’t feel guilty enough already . . .”

  “Oh, he’s not walkin’ the streets, callin’ out your name,” Jasper said. “He thinks he knows exactly where to find you. And therein lies the dilemma.”

  “What are you talking about, Jasper?” Emmett asked, frustrated.

  “They said Bell was heading to your home.”

  “Home? What home?”

  “The address you gave him three months ago,” Jasper said. “The place you told him you lived.”

  Emmett jumped up, tangling his head in the mesh of cords above. “Mr. Bell is going to Bandit’s Roost?”

  “The hangout of Oogie MacDougal and the Green Onion Boys?” Molly cried.

  Emmett nodded. “If Alexander Graham Bell shows up there alone . . . at night . . . and starts throwing my name around . . . ?”

  “He’s not gonna make it out alive.” Jasper nodded. “Shame too. His telephone thingie seems pretty great.”

  “Jasper, did you tell the police?” Molly asked urgently.

  “The police and I are not on the best of terms,” Jasper said. “You can thank a certain Balthazar Birdhouse for that. It would be a pointless errand anyhow. By the time I got to the police station and convinced them to believe me, Graham Bell would be kissin’ the inside of a casket lid.”

  “You should have gone to the police first!” Emmett yelled, his face flushed. “
We’re kids, Jasper! What are we supposed to do?”

  “We find Bell ourselves,” Molly said, her voice cutting through Emmett’s loud, anxious breaths. “We go to Bandit’s Roost and stop Bell before he does anything he regrets. We’re the only ones who know the danger he’s in—we’re the only ones who can act in time to do anything about it.”

  Jasper narrowed his eyes at her. “You do realize they call it Bandit’s Roost because there’s bandits there, right? And possibly a rooster?”

  “You can’t be serious, Molly,” Emmett said. “The Green Onions probably have orders to murder me on sight. Haven’t we put ourselves in enough danger already? The whole reason we wanted to contact Mr. Bell was because we need an adult to help us.”

  “A-hem!” Jasper raised an eyebrow.

  “We’re not just kids, Emmett,” Molly said. “I’ve been running a business. You survived for years on your own—in a home you built, for crying out loud! We can do this.”

  “That’s right, Emmett Lee,” Jasper said. “You can do it.”

  “We all can,” said Molly.

  “We meaning me?” The ashman gulped. “I’m not sure how I feel about that part.”

  “Come on, guys!” Molly cried. “I know you’re not Peppers, but I am. And Peppers don’t quit.” Molly’s eyes scanned the bookshelves. “Did . . . Did Robin Hood call it quits when the Sheriff of Nottingham captured his friends?”

  “No,” Jasper said with enthusiasm. “He did not!”

  “Did Tom Sawyer give up on Becky when she was stolen away to that cave?” Molly asked.

  “Absolutely not!” cried Jasper.

  “Did Jim Hawkins abandon his stranded crewmates on Treasure Island?”

  “I have not read that yet!” Jasper shouted.

  “This isn’t a storybook, Molly!” Emmett yelled. “This is real life.”

  “All the more reason for us to act fast,” Molly said. “You feel bad about what we did to Bell? You wanna make up for it? Then let’s go. Now.”

  Emmett nodded quietly. Molly knew he was scared. She couldn’t blame him; she was too. She put her finger under his chin and raised his head so she could look into his eyes. “You’re not alone,” she said.