Flotsam scowled. “I see,” he said. “So you wouldn’t want to tell me if that book I see lying on the ground over there belongs to you?”
Melissa and Eddie looked. The Book of Dangerous Deeds and Dastardly Intentions had fallen out of Melissa’s backpack during their scuffle and was now lying in the dirt. Eddie opened his mouth and closed it again. Melissa managed to defiantly mumble, “Never seen it before.”
“Then you won’t be minding if I be ripping some of the pages out then, would ye now?”
Eddie paled and Melissa turned green, but neither of them spoke.
“Or perhaps,” Flotsam said, pulling a match out of his pocket and lighting it on the heel of his pirate boot, “I’ll just burn it up while you watch. How does that sound to ye?”
The Grimlet twins tried to act tough. They tried not to mind that years worth of wicked schemes and horrible plots were about to be reduced to ash. But as Flotsam’s match singed the first page of their beloved book, it became too much to bear.
“We’ll talk! We’ll talk!” Melissa shrieked.
“Anything you want to ask us!” Eddie promised desperately. “Just give it back.”
Flotsam blew out the match as Ebb and Jeb released their grips on the Grimlet twins.
“That be more like it. I knew you could be reasonable-like,” Flotsam said. “Now, we be missing a captain, see? And we have it on good authority that ’e ran away to this ’ere town to start a new life as a schoolteacher.”
“And why do you think we’d know anything about that?” Eddie asked.
“Because someone’s been teaching you two to cuss like pirates, and we’re thinking that person be our missing captain. So tell us where this teacher of yers be.”
“And then you’ll give us our book back?” Melissa asked.
“Pirate’s honor,” Flotsam told her.
Melissa and Eddie conferred for a moment. Then Eddie nodded and turned back to the pirates.
“We’d be more than delighted to help you in exchange for our book. Our teacher likes to go by the name of Captain Schnabel and does seem to have a rather thorough understanding of piracy. Much more than you might expect from a regular schoolteacher.”
“And where can we find this Captain Schnabel?”
“That’s easy,” Melissa said. “She lives in a tidy yellow house with flowers in the front. It’s about two blocks east of the library.”
“Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Flotsam said, handing Melissa back the book. But Ebb was not so easily appeased.
“Now ’ang on a minute there. Did you say she lives two blocks from the library?”
“I did,” Melissa said. “Yellow house. Flowers. You can’t miss it.”
“But our captain ain’t a she. Our captain is a he.”
“Arghh!” Flotsam yelled. “That no-good detective has given us another worthless lead. A pox on ’im!”
“A pox on ’im,” Jeb seconded enthusiastically, then he stopped and thought for a moment. Thinking and standing at the same time was almost more than Jeb was capable of, so he held on to Ebb’s arm to keep from falling over. “Unless, of course, Captain Rojo Herring be disguising himself as a woman.”
“Aye. It could be,” Ebb said, looking at Melissa and Eddie. “Be it possible that yer Captain Schnabel be our Captain Rojo Herring dressed up as a woman?”
The Grimlet twins shook their heads.
“No. Not possible.”
“In fact, it’s completely impossible.”
“And why be it so impossible?” Jeb snarled. He had good ideas so rarely that he hated to see one dismissed without much discussion.
“Because Captain Rojo Herring is an entirely different person who lives in an entirely different house that’s nowhere near the library,” Eddie told him.
“You know wheres Captain Rojo Herring be?”
“Of course we do,” Melissa said. “And you could have saved us all a lot of hassle if you’d just told us that’s who you were looking for in the first place.”
“Well, tell us where he be! Tell us now!” Ebb said. He could hardly believe that they were so close to finding their missing captain.
“Um…no,” Melissa said.
“Why not?”
“Because we don’t have to, you see,” Eddie explained. Melissa had put The Book of Dastardly Deeds and Dangerous Intentions back in her backpack where Flotsam couldn’t get to it again. “Of course, we might be persuaded to help you, if you did something for us first.”
“What do you want from us?” Ebb asked warily.
“Just a small task,” Eddie said. “We have something rather heavy we need carried to the top of Mount Magnificent. If you help us with that, then we’ll happily tell you where to find Captain Rojo Herring.”
To the Mansion
Jane could not quit smiling to herself as she hurried up the trail toward the Mansion at the Top of Remarkable Hill and contemplated her brilliant plan. The Grimlet twins would be so surprised come Mon-day when they learned that she’d managed to rescue her grandfather without them. Captain Rojo Herring was a better choice to help her than they had been. As an experienced pirate, breaking someone out of jail was probably as easy for him as tying his own shoes—or at least it would be if he had feet instead of peg legs.
Unfortunately, Jane’s plan was not nearly as brilliant as she thought it was. A truly brilliant plan would have recognized that Dr. Presnelda’s revelations about Ms. Schnabel went a long way toward explaining her teacher’s behavior in the last few weeks. And if Jane had understood Mad Captain Penzing the Horrific and Ms. Schnabel were the same person, she might have made the wise decision of going to her for help instead. But, predictably, Jane’s plan was average instead of brilliant, and so she turned to a person who couldn’t even help himself.
As Jane ran to the Mansion at the Top of Remarkable Hill, a sudden, chilly gale rushed up the mountainside. Jane looked at the sky and saw that the west wind was pushing dark anvil-shaped clouds toward the town.
“That’s strange,” Jane said. The clouds looked like cumulonimbus storm clouds—a fact Jane knew from doing the same weather work sheet over and over again. But according to the weather forecast that morning, the weather in Remarkable was supposed to be even more pleasant than usual.
Then Jane heard a wild screech and saw a small, feathered figure flapping vainly against the wind. It was Salzburg, trying to stay aloft in the rough weather. But the wind was too much for the parrot, and she lost control. She cartwheeled through the air and hit the ground with a loud thump.
“Salzburg!” Jane cried as she rushed over to the bird. “Are you okay?”
The parrot had lost a few feathers and seemed a little dazed, but other than that, she was unharmed.
“Come on, I’ll take you home.”
Salzburg growled at this suggestion—she would much rather Jane took her back to Grandmama at City Hall—but when the wind blew again and brought a faint murmur of thunder with it, she settled onto Jane’s shoulder without so much as another grumble.
The cumulonimbus storm clouds were nearly overhead by the time Jane finally reached the Mansion at the Top of Remarkable Hill. She rang the doorbell and almost immediately heard Captain Rojo Herring’s voice from inside.
“I’m coming! I’m coming!” he yelled. “But you can start unloading it onto the driveway if you want. I don’t have much time.” He had a big, expectant smile on his face as he opened the door—a smile that slid away as soon as he saw Jane.
“Oh,” he said dismally. “It’s only you.”
“Sorry,” Jane said, wishing she were someone he’d be gladder to see.
“I thought you were the Munch jelly delivery person. I just placed an expedited emergency jelly order. Now, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m in a dreadful hurry and I don’t have time to talk.” He started to close the door in Jane’s face.
“Wait!” Jane said. “I have your parrot.”
“Oh. Good,” he said, sounding insincere. “I
was afraid I might have to leave her behind.”
“Behind what?” Jane asked. Captain Rojo Herring was acting quite strange—and he was suddenly speaking much more like a normal person and less like a pirate.
“Uh…it’s not important,” he said. He checked his watch and then peered down the driveway. “I do wish my jelly order would hurry up and arrive.”
“Well, um, while you’re waiting, I was wondering if I might get your advice about something.” Jane was nervous. “It’s about my grandpa. You probably don’t remember him.”
“Of course I remember him. He’s an extraordinary man. I met him out at Lake Remarkable one night.”
Jane was sure that the captain had mixed her grandfather up with someone more interesting, but now was not the time to explain this. “He’s been arrested,” Jane told him.
“He has? What on earth for?”
“For stealing the ropes to the bell tower.”
“Great heavens! So he’s the saboteur, huh? I wonder if it has anything to do with Lucky.”
“Why would it have anything to do with Lucky?”
“Well, she loves beautiful music even more than she loves those figgy doodles he feeds her. Maybe he was worried about the effect the bell-tower music would have on her. I know how much he wants to protect her.”
“But Grandpa John doesn’t know anything about Lucky,” Jane said.
“Sure he does. Just ask him.”
“I can’t! At least not unless we break him out of jail. I‘m going to need your help to free him.”
“What?” Captain Rojo Herring said. “Why would you think I’d be able to help you?”
“Because you’re a pirate—and Captain Schnabel said that pirates knew all about things like that. I mean surely you’ve had to escape from the brig before…” Her voice trailed off. For the first time she noticed that Captain Rojo Herring’s house was in disarray. His clothes had been shoved into a duffel bag. About half of the books from his bookshelves were piled into moving boxes. Even his piano was wrapped up in a padded furniture blanket that was secured by ropes.
“Are you going somewhere?” Jane asked. Captain Rojo Herring sighed sadly and gestured for Jane to come inside.
“I have to get out of town as fast as I can. My old pirating crew has very nearly caught up with me.”
“So I suppose this means you don’t have time to help me,” Jane said despondently.
Captain Rojo Herring shook his head. “I couldn’t help you anyway, Jane. What that detective said today at the bell tower was right. I’m…I’m not a real pirate.”
“What!” Jane said. “But what about the hat? What about your pegs legs! What about your pirate clothes?”
“Fakes. All fakes. The peg legs screw over my real ones. My outfit is just a costume I borrowed from…well, never mind where I got it.”
“I don’t understand,” Jane said. “Why would you pretend to be a pirate?”
“It’s hard to explain. I used to have a job, you see. It was a job I didn’t like very much, and I wanted to get away from it.”
“What kind of job?” Jane asked.
“It’s not important. But I was good enough at it that no one wanted me to do anything else, even though I was sick of doing the same thing over and over.”
“How did you get away?”
“One day, I found myself dressed as a pirate. It…well, it made sense if you were there. And I was a little bit hungry, so I went out and got myself something to eat. I guess no one recognized me, because for the first time in as long as I could remember, no one asked me about…about my work. It was the most relaxing meal I’d ever had. So I kept the pirate suit. And every so often I’d dress up in it and go out on my own. And then one day, I got carried away and joined a pirate ship as the captain.”
“But you didn’t like it?”
“No. I hated being at sea almost as much as I hated doing what I was doing before. The only difference is that I wasn’t much good at sailing. So one day, I crashed my ship on a coral reef and put a hole in its bow. While my crew was fixing it, I slipped away and escaped. But now they’ve tracked me to Remarkable,” he said with a sigh. Then he looked out the window toward the balcony where he’d seen his mystery woman. “I think I could have been very happy here.”
“You could stay anyway,” Jane said.
The doorbell rang. Captain Rojo Herring brightened again. “It’s the delivery truck. Would you do me a favor and answer that? I don’t think I can bear to start a new life without some of that fantastic Munch jelly to see me through.”
“Sure,” Jane said.
But it was not the driver of the jelly truck who had rung the doorbell. Indeed, the driver of the jelly truck had been forced to turn back when a sudden rainstorm had washed out the road between Munch and Remarkable.
So Jane was utterly and completely taken by surprise when she opened the door, because what she found on the other side were three mean and smelly pirates.
The Science Fair Dance
It would be nice to be able to say that Jane and Captain Rojo Herring put up a good fight against the combined forces of Jeb, Ebb, and Flotsam. It would have been nice to say that they at least held their ground for a short while. But alas, this would not be even slightly accurate.
Captain Rojo Herring was captured before he’d even had a chance to turn and run—and Jane soon found herself locked inside Salzburg’s enormous parrot cage so she wouldn’t bother anyone by going for help.
Jane did her best to escape. She kicked at the birdcage’s door, shook the bars with her fists, and yelled and screamed for someone to let her out. It was to no avail. There was no one to hear her. She feared she’d be stuck in the cage until someone noticed that she was missing—and by then, it would be much, much too late to save Captain Rojo Herring.
When she had worn herself out, she leaned back against a wooden bird perch and tried to think what to do next. She’d heard once that people could focus their minds and send messages to loved ones when they were in trouble. She knew her brother would be at the school dance by now, and she knew that the Mansion at the Top of Remarkable Hill had a clear line of sight to the top of Mount Magnificent. She closed her eyes and did her best to send him an urgent mental message, hoping he would come to her rescue.
Unfortunately, this was even less effective than kicking and screaming had been. Anderson Brigby Bright wasn’t thinking about Jane even a little bit. His entire focus was on Lucinda Wilhelmina Hinojosa.
After so many months of worry and anticipation, Anderson Brigby Bright could hardly believe he was actually at the Science Fair Dance with her. He wanted to draw a picture of the moment so that he could keep it forever, but he feared that it might appear he was showing off if he got out his oil paints and asked her to hold her position for the next hour. And he didn’t want anything to ruin his perfect evening.
Not that the evening had been perfectly perfect so far. Anderson Brigby Bright had already been forced to overlook a few small glitches—some of which might be considered his fault. For example, he’d been so excited for the evening to start that he’d arrived at Lucinda’s house a few minutes early. He assumed that she, like he, would have spent most of the day getting ready. He was a little surprised when she answered the door in an old pair of sweatpants and an oversized red T-shirt that complemented the color of her eyes, which were bloodshot and swollen from weeping.
Then, oddly, she seemed to have no idea what he was talking about when he said he’d come to take her to the dance. She didn’t even seem to want the wrist corsage he’d brought for her—not even after he pointed out how well its exotic flowers matched his small yet elegant boutonniere.
He might have still been on the porch trying to persuade her that it was time to leave if her mother hadn’t intervened. She told Lucinda that she might as well go do something fun like go to a school dance instead of sulking about Ysquibel in her room. Lucinda had then screamed “You’ve never understood me or my torment!” before
her mother replied “That’s absolutely enough, Lucinda!” and shoved her daughter out the front door.
The only thing Lucinda wanted to talk about as they walked to Remarkable’s School for the Remarkably Gifted was how her unreasonable mother didn’t appreciate her musical passions. Anderson Brigby Bright tried to sympathize, but this was difficult because he’d never met anyone who didn’t appreciate him.
And now, at last, they were together at the dance. Despite her informal attire, Lucinda looked beautiful under the twinkling lights that hung over the gifted school’s outdoor courtyard. Giant woven tapestries of the periodic table hung down from the roof of the school’s gymnasium, and twirling models of DNA double helices dangled from nearby trees. They were standing right next to an ice sculpture of the Large Hadron Collider, which was so detailed that it looked as if it might start circulating high-energy proton beams at any moment. It was all too romantic.
“Are you as happy as I am, Lucinda Wilhelmina Hinojosa?” Anderson Brigby Bright asked as he looked soulfully into her red-rimmed eyes. She just stared back at him—the kind of deep and meaningful stare that a girl gives a boy when she thinks he’s being especially stupid.
“This is the worst day of my life,” she told him.
“It is?” He couldn’t imagine what she was talking about. He’d caught a glimpse of his reflection in the punch bowl and knew he looked debonair. Most of the other girls at the dance had swooned with jealousy when Lucinda walked in with him.
“I’ve had this day marked on my calendar for months. I’ve never been so disappointed.”
“You’re disappointed?” Anderson Brigby Bright was starting to get confused.
“Of course I’m disappointed! I was supposed to hear the latest and probably greatest composition by Ysquibel today. But it didn’t happen. It’s even more disappointing than not being able to locate him after months and months of trying.”
“You’re still thinking about Ysquibel?” he asked incredulously. She was clearly wasting her time obsessing about that musician when she could be enjoying his company. Despite the fact his own grandfather had been arrested, he hadn’t given the bell tower a second thought since learning it had been sabotaged. But then, he wouldn’t have given it a second thought even if it had worked perfectly.
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