Amanda Lester, Detective Box Set

by Paula Berinstein

  Simon and Clive were not happy about the situation. Just because Simon thought that Nick was Amanda’s true love didn’t mean he liked the guy. And Clive, normally reticent, expressed strong misgivings about not only Nick, but Amanda’s failure to alert the school to his whereabouts. His behavior was so out of character that Amanda wondered whether Binnie had somehow influenced him, but when she spoke to the girl and discovered that she had mixed feelings about Nick’s situation, she concluded that whatever this was, it must be one of Clive’s heretofore unknown buttons.

  Meanwhile Amanda was beginning to worry about Nick for a whole other reason. The rain was coming down in buckets and flooding was widespread. He had said he was headed back to the tunnels, and they could easily become deathtraps. In fact, the archaeologists had told Ivy that mud was flowing all over the dig site. That made Amanda worry all the more, and she texted Nick frantically, hoping that he was all right and warning him to be careful.

  While she was waiting for an answer, Simon and Clive came up with a plan for kidnapping Hugh. Storming the castle was just about the worst way of trying to defeat Taffeta. It would make much more sense to smoke her out where she’d be vulnerable, and Simon’s new plans for his gadget could make that happen.

  The idea for the enhanced machine was to pick up as many vibrations from the past as possible and amplify them, causing chaos inside the castle. That would disorient everyone inside and prevent them from firing weapons. They’d be so busy holding their ears and trying to keep their eyes closed that they’d drop their weapons and run outside to get away from the noise. Of course a scheme like this would require testing, and the boys installed themselves in the lab to work on their modifications.

  When Nick finally answered Amanda’s text, he pooh-poohed her worries about the rain and told her that he would comply with every one of Sidebotham’s conditions, starting with the court documents, which he’d text her later. If it came to it he’d wear the ankle monitor, go to jail, whatever they wanted, if only they would let him prove himself. She told him that the police had come for him, and he told her that they’d never find him unless he wanted them to. She didn’t know what to say to that, so she just said, “Please be careful,” and ended the conversation. She was so sick with worry that she’d forgotten to tell him about Simon and Clive’s plan.

  27

  Earful’s Secret

  The vibration-boosting experiments proceeded apace. Simon and Clive spent every available hour in the lab trying different ways to strengthen the vibrations their machine picked up. Since all the vibrations they had to work with were from past activity in the lab, they kept picking up all kinds of pouring and tuning and fiddling, but at one point they discovered a small explosion, as well as more than a few fires, spills, and dropped glass. These accidents excited them so much that they almost got completely sidetracked playing them over and over again and trying to stitch them together to provide a steady stream of special effects. When Amanda caught them at that, she told them that if they wanted her help making films she’d be happy to give it later, when everything had been resolved. Simon told her they didn’t need her help, and Binnie, who was a constant presence in the lab, said that she thought Clive could win a prize for his innovations. Amanda got so annoyed with the lot of them that she told them to stop messing around and act like detectives, a horrifying reproof that sounded like something her mother would say.

  When the boys finally got serious again and decided that their signal booster was working well, they went in search of new vibrations on which to test the device. This caused a bit of a ruckus when their work in the halls and common rooms started to play back confidential conversations, and some of the kids started to complain that their privacy was being invaded. Simon and Clive had to promise to destroy their experiments so that no one could get hold of the information, but some of the kids, Carlos Fapp and Polly Pogo among them, weren’t satisfied and lodged a formal complaint with Sidebotham. Fortunately the headmaster was able to mollify them, telling them that she’d personally supervise the destruction of the sensitive data, and Amanda felt that Simon and Clive both owed her one. She did wonder what Carlos and Polly were hiding, however.

  But when the boys got to the library, they happened upon something really significant. They had come up with a way of “carbon-dating” vibrations without the sensor so they could figure out when in time they occurred. In that way, they could separate vibrations relevant to whatever they were looking for from those that weren’t, thereby saving a lot of time and potentially offering a new way to gather evidence. It turned out that they were able to date a particular set of vibrations to the year 1887—the year Legatum was founded, and did they shake things up, for they managed to isolate Lovelace Earful himself, and did he have a doozy of a secret.

  It seemed that there was more to the blue peacocks’ feathers than Amanda and Clive had discovered. Earful had indeed created the invisible ink he’d used in The Detective’s Bible. But he had also found another way to exploit the feathers’ unique properties. He had discovered that the peacocks could actually turn themselves invisible and only be seen with ultraviolet light or by other birds that could see in the ultraviolet range. And he had used that knowledge to develop an invisibility technology that actually worked. Earful could make himself invisible using the blue peacocks’ feathers!

  When the boys discovered this, they let out a whoop so loud that a couple of books fell off the library shelves. Mrs. Bipthrottle told them to keep it down and put the books back where they belonged. Amanda only knew about this because she happened to stick her nose in the library at the exact moment they shrieked and made them tell her what the big deal was.

  After they had replaced the books—Shoe Leather for Detectives and The Chemical Characteristics of Apple Pips—the boys grabbed Amanda and huddled in the farthest corner of the library with their machine carefully wrapped in a padded box.

  “Amanda, I know what’s in the Bible,” said Simon. “We know what’s in there.”

  “You cracked the code?” said Amanda.

  “Didn’t need to,” said Simon. “We saw Earful himself.”

  “What?” Amanda yelled so loud that Mrs. Bipthrottle gave her a look.

  Simon explained what they had seen—Earful painting himself with a solution made from ground up peacock feathers and turning invisible.

  “That’s the big secret then?” she said. “I mean first of all it seems impossible, but second, I can see why the Bible should never fall into the wrong hands. Can you imagine Blixus getting hold of that technology?”

  “Disaster,” said Simon.

  “I wonder if that’s what’s on our pages,” said Clive.

  “Maybe in part,” said Simon. “I’d think a thing like that would take up a lot of space. You have to describe the process, dos and don’ts, maybe even lab notes. It might even take up the entire book.”

  “Boy oh boy,” said Amanda. “This is wild.” She looked at Simon, then Clive. “What do we do now?”

  “Good question,” said Simon.

  “Maybe you should destroy it,” said Amanda.

  “Are you kidding?” said Clive. “We can’t do that. This is huge.”

  “But it’s dangerous,” said Amanda. “Can you see Hugh with this?”

  “Hugh can probably already make things invisible,” said Simon.

  “We don’t know that for sure,” said Amanda. “Anyway, if we can stop him we shouldn’t have to worry about that.”

  There was a pause. Simon frowned. “I can’t believe you’ve been in touch with Nick all this time,” he said.

  Amanda bristled. “I don’t know what you mean ‘all this time.’ It’s been a few weeks.”

  “Why would you not turn him in?” said Clive. He was outraged too.

  “She’s in love with him,” said Simon.

  “SIMON!” Amanda screamed. Mrs. Bipthrottle looked up, got out of her chair, and came over to the kids’ table.

  “I want in,” sh
e said. “You look like you’re having too much fun.”

  This was a surprise. Amanda thought the librarian was going to throw them out for making too much noise.

  “Normally I’m not a busybody,” said the woman, who looked like an aging hippie. “But I must say, you three are so interesting I couldn’t help myself.”

  “I thought you were going to tell us to be quiet,” said Clive.

  “Oh no,” said Mrs. Bipthrottle. “That’s a stereotype. Real librarians don’t act that way. We want you to have fun in the library.”

  Simon looked like he had just seen Professor Sidebotham eat a fly. “You’re kidding.”

  “Not at all,” said Mrs. Bipthrottle. “Now what’s up?”

  “Well, uh,” said Amanda.

  “Come on, you can tell me.”

  The kids looked at each other. Was she serious?

  “Gotcha!” said the librarian. “I would never invade your privacy. I just wanted to tell you to keep having fun. Carry on.” She got up and went back to her desk, then turned around and winked.

  “Huh?” said Clive.

  “I know,” whispered Amanda. “Was that weird or what?”

  “I like her,” said Simon. “She’s cool.”

  “A bit loony,” said Clive.

  “Can we please get back to the subject at hand?” said Amanda. She lowered her voice and spoke in a husky whisper. “I. AM. NOT. IN. LOVE. WITH. NICK. MORIARTY.”

  “I always thought you were,” said Clive.

  “She is,” said Simon. “He’s her true love.”

  Amanda was just about apoplectic. “I am not and he is not. You know I love Scapulus.”

  “But he’s with Amphora,” said Clive.

  “I know,” hissed Amanda. “I still love him though. And don’t you go telling people, especially Amphora.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Clive.

  “I’d like to be in love,” said Simon.

  Clive snapped his head around to look at Simon so fast he hurt something. “Ow,” he yipped.

  “Sure, why not?” said Simon. “Then I could do a lot more kissing.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good enough reason to be in love,” said Clive.

  “I’d want to kiss someone who wants me to kiss them,” said Simon.

  Amanda felt bad. She’d let Simon kiss her, but only under duress, and sometimes even as a joke. She suddenly wished he’d find someone who could really love him.

  “You’ll find someone,” she said.

  “How about Binnie?” said Clive.

  “What do you mean ‘How about Binnie’?” said Amanda. “I thought you like her.”

  “Not that way,” said Clive. “I like her brain.”

  “She is pretty smart,” said Simon.

  “A bit of a pest though,” said Amanda.

  “Can you imagine?” said Clive, suddenly getting dreamy. “Invisibility. All the things you could do.”

  “Oh, we’re back to that, are we?” said Simon.

  “You don’t think we have time to whip up a batch before we go get Hugh, do we?” said Clive.

  “Now that would be brilliant,” said Simon.

  “Would you two stop it?” cried Amanda. She looked over at Mrs. Bipthrottle. The librarian was smiling. “Listen, we don’t have time. We’ve got to get Hugh now. Every second we delay could lead to a worse disaster.”

  “Speaking of disasters,” said Clive, “how about that chapel, eh? It finally gave up the ghost.”

  Amanda pushed her chair back and stood up. “If you boys won’t be serious, I’m going to have to do this alone. Don’t you want to stay out of prison, Simon?”

  “Of course I do,” said Simon. “We’ve got this in the bag though. Don’t worry so much.”

  “Argh,” said Amanda, and whisked herself out of the room.

  The next task to prepare for the mission was to scope out the castle. The kids looked it up online and found that it was an abandoned, rundown, triangular place dating from the 13th century. Surrounded by flat grassland close in and ringed by woods beyond that, it lay in a depression that formed a natural moat. A bridge—not a drawbridge, but a fixed structure—spanned the moat and led to a massive opening in the front. The stone looked pinkish gray in the photos, and the walls were covered with trailing vines.

  Fortunately, thanks to the castle’s historic significance the kids were able to find photos and even a schematic or two of the interior. The most noise and activity would have taken place in the great hall on the ground floor, so Simon and Clive could pick up the strongest vibrations there to use against Taffeta. There was also an area in which soldiers were housed on occasion, and they would aim for that too, as well as the inner courtyard where horses, knights, and servants would have been running this way and that. Simon was keen to create a hologram module for his device that would pick up the vibrations and animate them on the spot, but getting that to work so quickly was out of the question, so the noise created by the vibrations would have to do.

  There was a catch, however. The detectives would be just as exposed to the stimuli as Taffeta and her gang, so they would have to take protective measures. Each of them would wear a soundproof helmet. Because Taffeta was known to have a gun and they expected her cohorts to be armed as well, each detective would also wear a bulletproof vest.

  When Nick found out about their plan, he insisted that he was the only one who could talk to Hugh and said he’d meet the detectives at the castle. Amanda hadn’t thought about this before, but now that she did she supposed he was right. Hugh disdained all of them, Nick included, but Nick would know how to push his buttons and stood the best chance of getting results. However the idea of Nick showing himself filled her with trepidation. The detectives may have made a deal with him, but the police hadn’t, and if they saw him at the castle they would arrest him. In the end she realized they’d have to chance it, though, and put aside an extra helmet and vest. She just hoped Lila wouldn’t find out he was going to be there.

  28

  Battle

  On the day of the mission, the rain was coming down so hard that the entire Midlands went on high flood alert. With all that water building up, the Lake District was quickly liquefying and roads were washing away. It was not an ideal time for a siege, but Amanda and her team couldn’t wait any longer.

  Simon and Clive continued to test their device to make sure it was waterproof, which it seemed to be. As an extra precaution they kept it encased in several layers of plastic, which rather affected its ability to pick up vibrations. They were a little concerned that the effect it was supposed to produce wouldn’t be powerful enough to drive Taffeta and her cohorts out of the castle, but they were sure the machine wouldn’t work properly if water seeped inside. Their uncertainty worried Amanda.

  “Look, you guys,” she said. “If the machine fails, we’re going to be toast. We’ve got to be sure.”

  “We are sure,” said Simon.

  “You’re sure,” said Clive.

  “So are you,” said Simon.

  “Actually I’m not,” said Clive.

  “This isn’t good,” said Amanda. “If there’s any doubt we should call the whole thing off.”

  “And then what?” said Simon. “No Hugh and no Blixus, and if no Blixus, Professor Halpin and I could go to prison.”

  “You’re willing to stake your freedom on an iffy machine?” said Amanda.

  “I wouldn’t be,” said Clive. “We need to be sure.”

  “All right, fine,” said Simon. “We’ll test it right here. Who’s going to stay inside the school and be a guinea pig?”

  The kids looked at each other. If the device did work and someone was inside, they might end up in the hospital, or worse. But there was another problem. Apparently the boys hadn’t tested the device on people before. Because it was so dangerous, they’d used it outside where no one could be affected.

  “Simon!” said Amanda.

  “What?” said Simon. “It wasn’t ju
st me. Why do you always blame me for everything?”

  “Okay, fine,” she said. “Simon and Clive. How do you know this thing is going to drive Taffeta out of the castle?”

  “Um, we think it will,” said Clive. “We’ve measured the effects it’s produced. There’s no reason it shouldn’t.”

  “Argh,” said Amanda. “You two mad scientists. You do realize what the stakes are here?”

  “We know, we know,” said Simon. “Just chill out, would you?”

  “Who’s going to volunteer?” said Amanda. “Tell me that.”

  “I will,” said Simon.

  “You?”

  “Yup,” he said. “I should be the one. It’s only right. Okay, Clive?”

  “I agree,” said Clive. “Or I could do it. I don’t mind.”

  “Nope,” said Simon. “I’ll do it. If it doesn’t work, at least I’ll have company in prison.”

  “No you won’t, dummy,” said Amanda. “You’ll be in juvie. Professor Halpin will be in the regular prison.”

  “Oh, right,” said Simon. “Well, I have to be the one anyway. Let’s tell Sidebotham so she can evacuate the building, and then I’ll go in and Clive can turn the machine on.”

  Under normal circumstances evacuating the school wouldn’t have been a problem. People could just go outside and hang around. But with such heavy rain that wasn’t such a great idea, so Professor Sidebotham told everyone they would have to go into the gym. There was something about being in there, though, that made everyone all energetic, and soon the kids were bouncing around, climbing things, attempting to walk with one foot on the wall, and punching each other. Professor Sidebotham decided to put all this activity to good use and told them that they would be quizzed on what they saw during the evacuation, including the number and appearance of bruises they gave each other, as well as the expressions on the faces of the various teachers and staff members as they watched. It was a much more effective way to get them to calm down than telling them to cut it out, and soon they were all standing in little groups, gossiping instead.