The Inventors and the Lost Island

by A. M. Morgen

  “The map is long gone. It burned to ash in the Alhambra,” said George smugly. “No matter what you do to me, your boss Don Nadie will never get what he wants.”

  The vice-chancellor licked his lips, then smiled. “That wasn’t a trick, then? The map really burned?”

  George nodded defiantly.

  “That’s a shame, Lord Devonshire. I was almost growing fond of you. No map, no mercy. Those were Don Nadie’s orders. Now I have to kill you.” The vice-chancellor nodded at one of the guards. “Tell the captain to prepare the noose. We will be executing the London Truffle Assassin on the yardarm as soon as possible.”

  The vice-chancellor left George and Ada alone in their cells. They could hear the ship stirring to life around them, the clank of chains and the crisp snap of the sails in the wind.

  “Let’s get out of here,” George said. He shook the door of his cell. “What do you have this time? Some more acid? Will the whale turn into a mechanical beaver to chew us out?”

  Ada sat down in the middle of her cell and buried her head in her hands. Her shoulders began to shake miserably. “They took everything when they searched me on the island. Even my hard-boiled eggs. The last time I saw the whale it was where I left it on the beach, but I can only assume that Shadwell has already set his men on it.”

  “Maybe Patty…”

  This only made Ada’s shoulders shake harder.

  George stomped his feet on the floorboards, testing them for any weaknesses. “We’ll! Think! Of! Some! Thing! We! Have! To!” he cried, punctuating each word with a stomp.

  “I never suspected—never actually thought—that the Society had someone working for them in the government at such a high level already,” Ada said.

  Her chest heaved with sobs. When she looked up, her eyes were red and tears dripped off her nose. George tried to reach through the bars for her, but his fingers only touched the air between them. “Don’t cry, Ada. It will be all right. I’ll save us,” he said, although he had no idea how.

  But not long afterward, the guards came and dragged George and Ada onto the top deck. The morning sun was dazzling on the blue ocean. Overnight, they had sailed away from the Galápagos, and there was nothing but blue water and sky for miles in every direction. The naval officers were assembled on the ship’s deck in a menacing line of navy blue. Only one figure stood out—a man dressed in a long black robe. A matching black hood covered his face.

  George’s executioner.

  With a turn of his stomach, George saw that the lower sails had been raised and a simple noose hung over the yardarm. His legs went weak, and bright lights danced at the edges of his vision. But George was a gentleman, and a gentleman did not cringe in the face of death. He stood upright as the guards led him onto a small platform, directly in front of the noose. The executioner sidled up next to him.

  Vice-Chancellor Shadwell stood at the foot of the mast, his hands clasped behind his back. A smile played at his lips. “Miss Byron, I’m sorry to subject you to this unfortunate event. But I believe your friend’s fate will ensure that you won’t soon forget what happens to enemies of progress and justice.”

  Ada suddenly burst forward and collapsed at George’s feet, sobbing and clutching the hem of his pants. Even though he was the one to be hanged, he was alarmed by Ada’s emotional outburst. It was so unlike her. He’d never seen her so upset—she wailed and thrashed, causing many of the officers to shift uncomfortably. Indifferent to Ada’s pitiful cries at George’s feet, the hooded executioner brought the noose forward inch by inch. When he was about to lower the noose onto George’s head, he leaned in close to whisper,

  “It’s time to jump, little rabbit.”

  The executioner grabbed George by the arm, and Ada sprang up to grab George’s other hand. In a chain of three, they dashed to the side of the ship before any of the sailors could react and took a flying leap over the railing, vaulting into the air.

  George, Ada, and Il Naso plunged into the swirling waters.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  George surfaced and saw Il Naso, unhooded, helping Ada swim to the mechanical whale, which was floating just below the surface. Then he untied the tether that attached the whale to the navy ship’s stern.

  Bullets whizzed over their heads, peppered by confused shouts. The whale was too close to the ship for the sailors to get a good shot. While they reloaded their weapons, George glanced up to see the vice-chancellor glaring down at them. The air around him was strung with puffs of smoke.

  “Go lick Don Nadie’s boots, you canker sore,” George shouted, emboldened by the distance between them. “Tell him the 3rd Lord of Devonshire sends his regards!”

  George climbed onto the whale’s deck, opened the hatch, and dropped inside. Il Naso and Ada followed him down the slick ladder. In her hand, Ada held the tracking apparatus that had been placed on the hull.

  George tackled the Italian policeman in a hug. Just a few months ago, Il Naso had tracked them through the streets of Venice like a dog hunting a fox. And after Il Naso had burned his grandfather’s map, George never would have imagined that when next he saw him, he’d want to squeeze him and never let go. But Il Naso had saved his life. George’s gratitude wiped away every other feeling.

  Il Naso stumbled back, surprised, his boots slipping on the wet floor. George hugged him harder. “You saved my life! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

  Il Naso smiled broadly. He patted George on the head. “It is all right, little rabbit.”

  As they all gathered around the pilot’s chair, George wiped salt water from his face. “Where did you come from? How did you get here?”

  Ada wrung water from her hair with one hand while the other moved in a blur over the controls. “Yes, not to sound ungrateful, but how did you get here on my ship?”

  Il Naso chuckled. Tiny drops of water sprayed from his black mustache. “There will be plenty of time for stories soon. First we need to get away from these terrible men.”

  “Agreed,” Ada chirped. Patty was sitting motionless in the copilot’s seat. Ada flicked a switch in Patty’s back and she jerked to life.

  “I will never get used to that thing,” Il Naso muttered.

  “George, man the periscope,” Ada said. “We’re going to make sure the vice-chancellor never bothers us again.”

  “How? He has a fleet of the British navy’s finest ships and enough cannons to blow us to bits! Let’s get out of here while we still can,” George pleaded.

  “We will. But first, we ought to do a little damage. Remember what we did to those tobacco ships in London and what the Society did to Captain Bibble’s ship at Levrnaka? That was nothing. I’ve got a new weapon I want to test.”

  George heard the clunk of a lever. His eyes widened as he swiveled the periscope. A gleaming silver horn shot out from the whale’s prow with a loud hiss. Ada turned a dial, and the horn began spinning furiously, just like the arrows that the Society had fired at them from Captain Bibble’s stolen vessel.

  Diving deeper, Ada steered the whale through the fleet, darting around and underneath the large ships like a minnow between porpoises. Ada jabbed the horn into the bottom of each ship with satisfying muffled crunches, condemning the fleet to founder in the middle of the ocean or pump the lower decks until their arms fell off. The naval fleet was too close together to fire their cannons without risking striking each other.

  George whooped. “Shadwell will be limping back to London like a dog with his tail between his legs!”

  When they’d finished turning the bottoms of Shadwell’s ships into Swiss cheese, George plotted the course back to Chatham Island, hoping the destruction of the navy boats would give them time to track down Oscar and Ruthie. The thought of leaving them behind with no explanation was impossible to even consider. With the fleet destroyed and the vice-chancellor’s crew in lifeboats, they would have time to look for Oscar and Ruthie, and with Il Naso on their side, they had a nose to track them down. Ruthie couldn’t be hard to sniff o
ut, George reasoned.

  Once they settled on a plan, Il Naso wrapped himself in a blanket with a cup of tea and began to tell the story of how he’d rescued them. “When last I saw you in Venice, little rabbits, I had finally closed the case against the English poet which had plagued me for many years. I had not taken a vacanza in all that time. I love my city of Venezia, you must understand, but I needed to get away.

  “The treasure map, it fell into my lap in such a way, I think it is the perfetto thing. I will go to Spain in the sunshine and solve a riddle, perhaps find a treasure. This would be fun for me.” Il Naso lurched forward and, in a rough whisper, said, “But then I found out other people wanted this treasure, too. Bad people.”

  George grinned sheepishly. “When I gave you the map, I didn’t know how much trouble it would cause.”

  The policeman arched an eyebrow at him. “I smelled them coming, but I did not know what they wanted. Then I understand. They are looking for this map. Every step I take, they are right behind. I hide in the Alhambra, where I have many ways to escape, but still they trap me.”

  “So you destroyed the map,” George said, filling in the rest of the story.

  Ada raised her eyes from the control panel. “What’s the Society’s smell?”

  “Ada, that’s disgus—”

  “The Society of Nobodies smell like smoke and corruption and greed and sadness and misery,” Il Naso interrupted, pounding his fist into the palm of his hand for emphasis. “They are rotten like spoiled fish. On the outside, they look like us, but on the inside, they have festered and grown rancid. This is because they are unhappy and lonely like their leader.”

  George scoffed. “Unhappy and lonely? How do you know that?”

  Il Naso tapped his nose. He continued, “When I saw you at the Alhambra, I did not know yet if I could trust you. So I followed you to your whale and stowed away. As I did with the Society, I study the map and I study you. Both things I have solved. I know that you are silly, petulant children, but you are good. I want to help you stop the Society. This will be the greatest case of my career.”

  The story riveted George, but there was one thing he didn’t understand. “Mr. Naso, how could you study the map? We saw you burn it.”

  With a grin, Il Naso stood. He strode into the belly of the whale, then returned a short time later holding a square of parchment.

  Ada’s hands flew to her mouth. “Is that…”

  “My grandfather’s map,” George confirmed, taking the delicate paper from Il Naso. He unfolded it tenderly, as if afraid of shattering it. The world bloomed in front of him in ink and chalk and paper. The map was no worse for wear after its time in Il Naso’s care. Warmth rushed into George’s cheeks as he realized all at once that the time he’d spent trying to re-create the map with Oscar had been spent in vain. They could never have made a map identical to the one he now held in his hands. But the hours had not been wasted. Now he only appreciated the real one more. Plus, he’d spent that time with Oscar, he thought with a twist of his heart.

  “I knew that if the Society realized I did not destroy the map, they would hunt me forever—or come after you. This treasure must be very important. And still, I did not know if you could be trusted with the map.” The Italian policeman hung his head. A tear trickled down his cheek. “The Society destroyed my nose with their awful stink bombs. It will never be the same. Maybe if I could have smelled your intentions, I would not have stayed hidden in the cargo hold for so long. I am sorry that I did not trust you sooner.”

  “What changed your mind?” Ada asked.

  “I am not usually so trusting of Truffle Assassins or Byron children,” Il Naso said. “But your ape stole food to feed me while I was on board your ship. I was thinking of your father, signorina. Lord Byron was a great lover of animals. In his apartment in Venezia he had cats and dogs, and also monkeys and peacocks, yes, and many others. I could see he loved these animals. I did not like your father, but on this one thing we agreed: animals are more easily trusted than people. And if this kind animal loved you, then you must be not so bad.”

  The hard line of Ada’s lips softened into a half smile. “I heard my father loved dogs best of all.”

  George’s cheeks burned with shame. All that time on the ship when he had been angry with Ruthie, she had been stealing food for Il Naso, not herself. Il Naso must have been the one stealing things around the camp as well, so that he could survive. George patted Il Naso’s sopping shoulder with his free hand. “It’s all right, perfectly all right. We have the map, everything is going to be fine. Now all we need is the Star of Victory to decode it.”

  When the whale returned to the beach on Chatham Island, the three of them raced to the camp, where the Star of Victory lay among George’s things. Finally (finally!) he would have the map and both parts of the Star of Victory assembled. He’d never had all the pieces of the puzzle together in one place at the same time. There would be no more secrets, no more wondering, no more indiscernible clues hidden in sunken ships. Whatever his grandfather had meant for him to find—whatever he wanted to protect from Don Nadie—George would be able to discover at last. He would finally be the hero his grandfather had meant for him to be and defeat Don Nadie for good.

  George slapped his forehead. “I almost forgot to ask—were you stealing our driftwood? And my gold buttons? I’m thankful to you for saving us, but I would like my buttons back.”

  Il Naso shook his head. “I did not steal any gold buttons. Only food.”

  “Then who did?”

  “I don’t know,” Il Naso replied. “The smells of this place are not familiar.”

  The tents had been ransacked by Shadwell’s men. Their supplies and possessions were scattered across the dirt, but there was no sign of Oscar or Ruthie.

  Hands trembling with excitement, George retrieved the Star of Victory from where it lay on the ground outside his tent. Its silver rods sparkled, and the blue sapphire shimmered as if it knew it was finally going to serve its purpose. His heart began to thump like a drumbeat behind his ribs. With Ada and Il Naso crouched beside him, George unfolded the map on his crossed legs. He turned the Star upside down so that its silver sprays served as a tripod on which the blue sapphire stood. He peered into the gem.

  “What do you see?” Ada asked.

  Looking through the Star of Victory wasn’t very different from peering through the periscope. George took a deep breath and allowed his eyes to adjust to the distorted image he saw through the glittering gem. The lines of the map seemed to lift up and float above the paper in three dimensions. This didn’t surprise George—he’d seen it before, when they’d examined the small scrap of map back at his house. Now, though, it was clear that the floating map was not what he was meant to see. What he sought was hidden underneath.

  George slid the Star across the page, moving his lips silently as he discovered the message hidden beneath the continents teeming with rivers and the oceans swirling with beasts.

  It did not reveal a lost island, or shipwreck, or hidden weapon.

  It was a birth record.

  For the 1st Lord of Devonshire.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  CHRISTENINGS AND BURIALS 1763

  George, the son of Thomas Devonshire of Greenwich and Victoria his wife, was born the 16th and baptized the 28th of August by the Reverend Mr. Gilbert Crocker.

  “I don’t understand,” Ada said when she had finished looking through the Star of Victory.

  “Neither do I,” George said truthfully.

  “Don’t look at me,” Il Naso said. “I told you everything I know.”

  George stared blankly at the map. Dread filled him. He didn’t see how they could stop Don Nadie and save C.R.U.M.P.E.T.S. with his grandfather’s birth record. In his imagination, he saw himself walking into C.R.U.M.P.E.T.S and waving the paper in the air while scientists laughed in his face. “In the letter he wrote to my grandfather, Don Nadie said that my grandfather stole something from him. But how cou
ld he steal his own birth record?”

  Il Naso scratched his mustache. “This is what I do not understand: Don Nadie needs the map for the final step of his plan. How can this be useful to him?”

  Ada sprang to her feet and began to pace. She always claimed walking stimulated the brain. “The simplest hypothesis is always the best,” she said. “But nothing about this situation is simple. According to all the evidence we’ve gathered, your grandfather stole something very valuable from Don Nadie, then hid its whereabouts in the map. We have found that the map is in fact your grandfather’s birth record. Don Nadie needs the map to complete the last part of his evil plan. Hence, Don Nadie needs your… grandfather?” She stopped so abruptly that her feet kicked up a cloud of dirt. “Are you sure your grandfather is really dead, George?”

  “He’s very dead,” George said, shivering at the memory of his grandfather’s stiff body being placed in his coffin. “I’m sure of it.”

  Il Naso began to pace around the camp with his nose lifted in the air as if the answer could be smelled on the breeze. “Maybe this Don Nadie is having some fun with you. Criminals like to do this sometimes with their victims. You have a saying for this in English, I think. Cat-and-mouse game?”

  “Or a wild-goose chase,” Ada offered.

  While George pored over the map and Il Naso stalked away to try to sniff out Oscar and Ruthie, Ada rattled off a few other options:

  “A prank?

  “A distraction?

  “I said all along it might be a diversion.”

  George’s careful examination of the birth record uncovered an odd clue. “Aha! Wait—stop!”

  Ada halted in her tracks. “What is it?”

  “Something’s wrong,” George said, waving the birth record in the air. “First, this states that my grandfather was born in Greenwich, when I know for a fact that he was born on the seaside. Greenwich is not on the seaside. Second, he was born on a cold winter’s morning. The twenty-eighth of August is not winter. Lastly, he was about to turn sixty years old the year he died in 1826. Turning sixty-three is not the same as turning sixty, which means that the birth year is wrong.”