A Dastardly Plot

by Christopher Healy

  “I’ve never seen this in my life,” Bell said, and the confusion in his voice was such that Molly believed him. “But there is something familiar . . .”

  “You believe us?” Emmett asked.

  “Well, whoever made this obviously had nasty intentions,” he replied, scratching his thick beard. “I doubt, however, that this is anything more than an angry man’s fantasy. There’s no way one man could actually endanger tens of thousands of people like that.”

  “He’s got a death machine,” Molly said.

  “That, my dear, is strictly conjecture,” said Bell. He was talking to her as if she were a child and she did not like it. “D-E-A, M-A-C. Those letters could belong to any number of phrases.”

  Molly crossed her arms. “Name one.”

  Bell scratched his beard again. “Dead mackerels.”

  Molly rolled her eyes.

  “Deaf Macedonians,” Bell tried. “Deactivate Macy’s?”

  “The store?” Emmett said. “Mr. Bell, at first I thought Molly was overreaching too. But so much has happened in the past week. And it’s clearly got some connection to the Guild. Since we found these plans in your workshop, we’ve been spied on, threatened, chased all over the city by masked men—men who confronted us at your lab. Their leader has a gun that makes flagpoles fly at you. Whoever these people are, it wouldn’t surprise me if they had death machines.”

  “Fur cryin’ oot loud! It dinnae say deeth machines!’” MacDougal’s outburst startled everyone.

  Molly coaxed her heart back down her throat. “How would you know it doesn’t say ‘deeth machines’? I mean, ‘death machines’?” she asked.

  The gang leader reached into the pocket of his emerald coat and produced a rough-edged piece of paper. “’Cause Ah’ve git th’ ither hauf.” He set down his torn parchment, fitting it like a puzzle piece into Molly’s. The whole thing was a letter. And the words that had been cut off were now clearly readable:

  DEAR

  MACDOUGAL.

  “It was you,” she said, stepping back. She glanced at Crikes and Tusk. Comedy and Tragedy. Why hadn’t she noticed until now? “It was you three in the masks.”

  “These two, aye,” Oogie said, gesturing to his henchmen. “But no me. Ah’m tae important tae play sidekick tae—”

  He was cut short by a sudden commotion out in the tavern. Hushing his captives, he cracked the door.

  “I don’t like it, I tell ya!” growled Chaswick, the leader of the Ugly Flowerpots. “Now get outta my way! We’re going back there to see if Oogie’s holdin’ out on us!”

  MacDougal huffed. “Come wi’ me, Tusk,” he ordered. “Crikes, ye play nanny till Ah git back.” He marched into the tavern, with Tusk at his heels. “Staun doon, ye clarty oxters!” The door slammed behind him.

  “Now what?” Emmett asked.

  Crikes opened a drawer and pulled out a long chain.

  28

  Chained!

  MOLLY, EMMETT, AND Bell were chained to a rolltop desk in the corner, their gadget-filled carpetbags now on the pool table, frustratingly out of reach. While Crikes pressed his ear to the door in an attempt to eavesdrop on the muffled voices buzzing from the other side, Emmett fiddled with a pen and paper clip. Nerves, Molly thought. Her own insides roiled as well. Not even atop the precarious tower of the Brooklyn Bridge had she felt such desperation. How had things gone so wrong?

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Bell,” Molly said. Apologizing felt like the only good thing she had left. “For getting you involved in this. For Emmett lying to you. For blowing up your lab. It’s no excuse, but we only did it because we thought your robots were the death machines.”

  “There’s that ridiculous word again!” Bell grumbled. “Can somebody please explain to me why you keep calling my automatons ro-bots?”

  “You’re the one who called them that,” Molly shot back. “You etched it onto their name tags!”

  “Name tags? I did no such . . .” Bell put his hand to his face and let out a mirthless laugh. “Robert . . . You must have seen a ‘Robert’ model. Each automaton sings a different part of the four-part harmony—Charles is the baritone, William the bass, James the tenor, and the lead is Robert. Perhaps you could use a pair of spectacles.”

  “It was dark!” Tears began to flow. Misreading a word was far from the worst mistake Molly had made that week, but it was the one that tipped her over the edge of despair. “I would have liked to see them sing!” she sobbed. “‘Polly Wolly Doodle’ is my mother’s favorite song!” She couldn’t believe she was crying in front of a Green Onion Boy. But Emmett started weeping too.

  “Quit blubbering,” Crikes barked. “I can’t hear as it is!”

  “Perhaps you can see my automatons sing yet, lass,” Bell said, his eyes growing puddly as well. “I still have the four originals back at my Guild office.”

  “You do?” Emmett asked, chains clinking as he wiped his face. “But . . . where? Wait, are they behind that door that says ‘Top Secret’?”

  “Hold on.” Molly was stunned. “You’ve been living for three months in a place with a door marked ‘Top Secret’ and you never once peeked?”

  Her friend shrugged. Bell laughed deeply this time.

  Molly wiped her face on her sleeve. “I would’ve looked.”

  “Oh, no question there,” Emmett said, grinning. And for the first time, Molly noticed that he wasn’t just nervously fussing with desk supplies—he was building something.

  “Button it!” Crikes yelled as the angry voices from the tavern got louder. He spun his key ring on his finger. “Don’t know what I’m doing here. I ain’t a blinkin’ babysitter. Not anymore. Not since that one kid went up the chimney. But he had it comin’. He— Hey, boy, what’re you—”

  Molly quickly leaned forward to block Crikes’s view of Emmett. “So, Crikesy, why do you call yourselves the Green Onions, anyway?” she asked.

  Crikes crossed his arms and glared. “’Cause if you cut us, we’ll make you cry.”

  Molly snorted. “So in that analogy, you’re the one getting hurt.”

  Crikes grinned smugly. “But you’re the one crying.”

  “Yeah, after I’ve cut you.”

  Crikes raised his hand for a slap. “Don’t tempt me, smart aleck.”

  “That’s it!” Bell shouted, startling everyone. “The handwriting! I know the handwriting on those plans! Because the braggy blatherskite has been leaving notes on my door for weeks. Notes like, ‘Hey, Smart Alec, you’re just like your telephone—all talk.’ Or ‘Hey, Smart Alec, just because your name is Bell doesn’t mean all your inventions have to have bells.’ And they don’t, by the way—I’ve invented plenty of things without bells.”

  “Who writes notes like that?” Emmett asked.

  “Edison,” Bell growled.

  “Thomas Edison?” Molly asked. “But you two are pals!”

  “Far from it,” Bell said bitterly. “Don’t mistake a public handshake for friendship behind closed doors.”

  There was obviously more to that story, but it would have to wait. “Still . . . Edison can’t be the man in the mask,” Molly reasoned. “He was at the parade with you.”

  “I hadn’t seen him all evening until he stepped up to defend me,” Bell said, getting riled up. “Which I’m now certain was some kind of trick.”

  “You know, the masked man did disappear right before we saw Edison,” Emmett said. “And at the Guild Hall, we were in both offices. Mr. Bell’s and Mr. Edison’s! Everything got mixed up.”

  Molly leaned out as far as the chains would let her and snatched the paper from the pool table. She flipped it over to show the autograph Thomas Edison had scratched on it when she saw him. The handwriting was a perfect match.

  “Hey!” Crikes marched over to snatch the paper back and noticed Emmett’s little project. “Hold on, what’ve you got there—”

  Emmett brought the shaft of a pen to his mouth, and, using it like a blowgun, he puffed a spurt of black ink into Crikes’
s eyes. As the gangster stumbled backward, Emmett scattered a handful of pencils under his feet. The gangster tripped and fell, his head smashing into the corner of the billiards table on his way down. He was out cold.

  Emmett immediately began spitting. “Ucch! I got ink in my mouth. It tastes terrible! Like a sardine that’s been in the sun all day. And then fell into a coal bin. And then got poisoned.”

  “I knew you could do it,” Molly said, patting her friend on the back. “I had no idea what you were doing, but I knew you could do it.”

  Emmett smiled back at her with black teeth.

  Suddenly, a crash sounded from out in the tavern. Followed by some murderous shrieks. And then some grunts, thuds, and howls. It soon sounded like a small earthquake was demolishing Bandit’s Roost.

  “It’s a brawl,” Molly said.

  “And it’s going to mean bad news for us, whoever wins,” Bell said.

  Emmett quickly swung a chain of paper clips to snag the key from Crikes’s finger. In seconds, their shackles were off and the carpetbags strapped back on.

  “Are you . . . barring the door?” Bell asked as Molly shoved a pool cue through the door handle.

  “You want to go out into that?” she replied as a pained scream rang out from the tavern.

  “Not particularly,” said Bell. “But it’s the only way out.”

  “This is a secret room with a secret entrance,” Molly said. “So we just need to find the secret exit.”

  Emmett began running his hands along the wall.

  “I’m sorry, children,” Bell said, amused. “But that’s not the way logic works.”

  “Only because you’re thinking like a scientist and not like a criminal mastermind,” Molly replied, without pausing in her opening of drawers and lifting of carpets. “Imagine an unexpected gang war erupts in the middle of your hideout. You need to beat a hasty retreat, so you slip away through the hidden door that you’ve built behind your bar. Do you want that handy escape hatch to lead you into a dead-end room where your enemies can trap you and then skewer you with billiard cues? Or do you want it to be the first step on a route out of the building?”

  Bell stood silent for a second, then started peeking behind picture frames and feeling under cabinets. He pulled forward one whiskey bottle to find it was attached to a lever. A panel on the wall slid open to reveal a dark passage.

  “Ooh! I found it!” the inventor said with excitement. But the newly revealed tunnel was not empty. A man was standing there.

  The man in the crooked mask.

  “Gee,” the villain droned sarcastically. “Thanks for ruining my surprise entrance.”

  29

  Meet the Wizard

  “I TRULY REGRET not throwing you off that bridge when I had the chance,” the masked man said in his deep, sinister voice.

  “You can quit play-acting, Edison,” Bell said defiantly. “We know it’s you.”

  “Bravo, you’ve deciphered all the incredibly obvious clues,” the villain said, his voice changing to the familiar New York accent that Molly had heard at the Guild Hall. He removed his twisted mask to reveal the aquiline nose and tufted brow of Thomas Alva Edison. “Someone should write a series of detective novels about you.”

  “It’s all true,” Emmett said, gaping. “You really are working with the Green Onion Boys.”

  Edison stuck out his tongue. “Ugh, give me some credit, kid. Those buffoons are working for me. It’s a very important distinction. The King of All Inventors doesn’t work with anybody.”

  The noise out in the tavern was dying down, which meant that the victors of the brawl—whoever they were—would be forcing their way in shortly. The passageway Edison was blocking was the only escape route.

  “Good point, Edison,” Molly said. “You’re the world’s greatest inventor, so why—”

  “Hey, I’m no slouch,” said Bell.

  Edison snickered. “Yeah, and which of us is the centerpiece of the World’s Fair?”

  “At least I’m getting by on honest work,” Bell snapped. “Not chasing children around in a ridiculous Hephaestus mask.”

  “Hephaestus! Greek god of craftsmen!” Molly slapped her forehead. “That’s who that is!”

  “Of course!” Emmett chimed in. “I feel like we should’ve figured that out sooner.”

  “True,” said Molly. “But Hephaestus isn’t traditionally a villain, so . . .”

  “Oh, you may think of me as a villain now,” Edison said. “But that’s just because I’m going to hold a hundred thousand people hostage. And what do I want in exchange for those hostages, you ask?”

  “We didn’t,” Bell said. “But go ahead.”

  “I want the government!” Edison said. “This country needs a true visionary in charge. Enough with Jolly Mister Muttonchops—it’s my turn at the presidency. And with all those hostages—including bigwigs like Grover Cleveland and Ulysses S. Grant and silly Chester A. Arthur himself—the spineless weasels in Congress will happily pass a resolution to make me commander in chief. Don’t you think? No, don’t answer. I don’t care what you think.”

  The door rattled. Molly needed Edison out of the way. Should she tackle him? But what if he had another hidden weapon in his coat? No, she had to attack the one weakness she knew this villain had. “So, you’re planning to take a hundred thousand hostages?” she said, overplaying her skepticism. “How? By having the Green Onions block some exits for you?”

  “Of course not!” Edison said, rolling his eyes. “I mean, that’s part of the plan. Hence the letter you so inconveniently stumbled upon.” He chuckled. “Do you realize how adorable it is that you thought it said ‘death machine’? I loved that. No, it will be my greatest invention of all that takes care of those fairgoers.”

  “What’s this invention?” Bell asked.

  “It’s basically a death machine,” Edison said. “But I don’t want to ruin the surprise. Now that I’ve caught the high and mighty Alec Bell, I’m gonna make you watch me use it. I want you to witness my ultimate victory firsthand. You kids, too. Consider it a thank-you.”

  “Thank-you? For what?” Emmett asked, as the door rattled again.

  “Everything was going smoothly until you broke into my office,” Edison said. “I showed up there shortly after you tripped my alarm and quickly discovered the missing shred of evidence. By taking that little strip of paper, you basically signed your death warrant. I mean, I couldn’t have you running around, warning people to stay away from the World’s Fair.”

  Outside, it sounded like Oogie MacDougal was yelling, Bah! Get out the way! Or possibly, Beluga’s a whale! But probably the first one.

  “After spying on you, however,” Edison continued, “I was relieved—and frankly, quite tickled—to find that you thought the plan was Alec’s. And when you discovered Alec’s warehouse full of robots for me, I knew just what to do: frame him! So, thanks for that idea, kiddies. Credit where credit is due. I rigged the warehouse to explode—kinda hoping you’d be inside it when it did—and planted evidence to make it look like those robots really were the dangerous weapons you thought they were. Once the evil Alexander Graham Bell is arrested, everyone will believe the Fair to be safe again, wholesome fun for the entire family.”

  “You’re despicable,” Bell hissed.

  CRUNCH! Everyone flinched as the pool cue snapped and the door exploded from its hinges. Oogie MacDougal, his emerald coat torn and top hat dented, stood seething with bruised and bloodied thugs at his sides.

  Edison waved to him. “Oogie, old man! Nice to see you making use of that exoskeleton I built.”

  “Children, run!” Bell yelled, and leapt onto Edison, knocking him away from the passage. For once, Molly and Emmett did not question an order from an adult. They ran.

  “Ach! Th’ wee neds are gaun!”

  Molly and Emmett heard the unmistakable brogue of Oogie MacDougal reverberating through the darkness as they felt their way along the walls of what they really hoped was an escape tunne
l.

  “Still with me, Emmett?” Molly asked breathlessly as she stumbled on.

  “Yes! Keep moving!”

  The suggestion was unnecessary—stopping was the last thing on Molly’s mind. Not even when her fingers brushed past something damp and furry did she consider pausing. Not even when she heard MacDougal’s chilling calls echo down the passageway: “Oh, Em-mett! Ah’m com-in’ fur ye!”

  Molly gasped as a bobbing lantern light appeared behind them. The gang leader was gaining fast. Finally, her hand hit a metallic lever. She yanked it down and, with a raspy grinding, another wall panel slid open. They were now in one of the abandoned tenement buildings across the street from Bandit’s Roost, and compared to the utter blackness of the tunnel, the dim moonlight seeping through broken windows was as welcome as the sun.

  “Made it!” Molly cheered. They pushed open the paint-chipped front door, and were stopped in their tracks.

  “Think we don’t know where our own secret tunnels end up?” The tall, stoop-shouldered Tusk stood on the steps with a squad of Onion goons.

  The children spun back inside to see MacDougal step out of the secret passage. They were trapped. Emmett spotted a craggy hole in the wall and began kicking moldy boards out of the way until they could squeeze through. He and Molly emerged into the kitchen of the next building over. Any crumb that had once graced its cupboards had been long since carried off by rats, and the rusty sink was drier than the mildew-coated floorboards. Oogie peered through the crevice at them; it was too small for his tall frame, but he grinned wickedly.

  “Rin aroond tae th’ next duir!” he called to his minions as he began ripping away chunks of wall by hand.

  “Rin?” Tusk asked.

  “Aye, rin,” Oogie said. “Wi’ yer legs. Move ’em.” He wiggled two fingers back and forth like a pair of running legs.

  “Oh, run! Yeah, right. Going!”

  As MacDougal continued his one-man demolition job, Molly and Emmett tried the kitchen door, but it wouldn’t budge. Something must have been blocking it from the other side.