Spiders on the Case

by Kathryn Lasky

  “Do we have to use the metric system?” Julep complained. “I haven’t learned that yet.”

  “All right, almost ten feet,” Felix snapped. “A big group of silverfish — and a few glue bugs — have moved from the southwest corner of the balcony to the northwest corner. Hence forth, I’ll refer to this as the geography section because that’s where the Adams atlas is kept.”

  “No! Not John Adams’s personal atlas!” Edith sighed. “Children, as you know, John Adams was the second president of the United States. His books are especially valuable because he scribbled little notes in them.”

  “I thought we weren’t supposed to scribble in books,” Julep said.

  “If you’re the president of the United States, you can scribble on anything you want,” Jo Bell said.

  “But proceed, dear.” Edith nodded at Felix. “Explain your strategy.”

  Jo Bell couldn’t bear how her mother fawned over Felix. And the more her mother did, the more insufferable he became.

  “The southern flank of this quadrant is vulnerable. I would suggest after our initial climb a sneak attack. We’ll gather at Checkpoint Quincy to begin our climb. You all know where that is — just over the doorway.”

  Jo Bell yawned.

  “Are you bored, Jo Bell?” Felix asked. “I suggest you listen up!”

  “Oh, no, not bored, just curious.”

  “What about, dear?” her mother asked.

  “I find it fascinating how one minute Felix is an artist, and the next some kind of military expert.”

  “They’re both art forms,” Felix replied rather snootily. “There is a design to a military campaign just as there is a design for a web. Now, if I may continue?”

  “Yes, dear, please do,” Edith said. “The silverfish must be stopped before it’s too late.”

  Felix looked more smug than ever, and Jo Bell started to feel as if she needed two more eyes to take in all of his fat head.

  “For our climb, use number two quality silk.” Felix then turned to Buster. “In orb weavers, I believe our number two is your number five. Strong, highly flexible, with a good amount of stretch, but it doesn’t go all loopy on you.”

  “Yes, I believe you’re right,” Buster said.

  “I have extensive knowledge of orb weaver silk — some remarkable grades, if I do say so,” Felix continued.

  Jo Bell thought she would vomit.

  “He’s unbearable!” she whispered to Julep, who was playing with a dead glue bug she had found.

  “I can’t believe I’m passing up this glue bug, but I can’t eat another bite.”

  “Don’t worry,” Felix said. “We’ll haul them back in my newly designed web, which is not only elegant but has amazing hauling abilities. We’ll break into teams. Mom, you and Julep are one team. Jo Bell, you take Buster. I’ll roam and supervise all of you. Assault Team One.” He nodded at Edith and Julep. “You should head directly for the atlas. Jo Bell, you and Buster need to go to call number 915.4. It’s one of the few prints left of a sketch that Paul Revere did of the Boston Massacre. The sketch is now being attacked. It’s massacre twice over, first by the British soldiers and now by the silverfish.”

  “May I say something?” Buster asked in almost a whisper.

  “Yes, but be quick about it,” Felix snapped.

  All twenty-four eyes were now riveted on Buster.

  “I have been here for a while and I am familiar with the Adams collection. There is something terribly important I need to tell you.”

  “What’s that?” Jo Bell asked.

  “There’s a drawing in there of Crispus Attucks, the first African American to die in the Revolution. To die once is bad enough, but to die again when the silverfish eat him is unthinkable.” A new somberness seemed to envelop the four spiders.

  “What do you mean?” Felix whispered.

  “If the silverfish eat the drawing of Crispus, he will be gone. Gone from all memory if there isn’t another drawing of him. He sacrificed his life for this country, and the silverfish are devouring the evidence!”

  “We’ll save him,” Jo Bell said. “Buster, you and I can save him together.”

  “Perhaps I should go with you,” Felix said. “This is a very urgent mission.”

  “No, Felix,” Edith said. “Jo Bell and Buster can handle this. Let’s stick to your original strategy.”

  Jo Bell’s six eyes were shining as she looked at her mom. Finally! she thought. Finally, it’s not all about Felix.

  “All right,” Felix barked. “Now prepare to climb!”

  At precisely one minute after seven o’clock, according to the clock on the wall, the five spiders’ spinnerets began to contract. Seconds later, they were squeezing liquid silk from their spigots for hoist lines. Attaching their lines to Checkpoint Quincy, they began to climb a vertical silken highway. On glimmering threads they swung through the amber light of the rare books foyer. They traveled steadily upward with singularly graceful motions to the lofty heights of the John Adams collection balcony shelves.

  Forty minutes later, Felix had reached the recessed lighting fixtures just above the balcony. When the rest of the spiders arrived, he gave a silent signal with his two forelegs, or pedipalps, to indicate a steady stream of silverfish flowing like a trickling creek toward the atlas.

  “Shocking! Positively shocking,” Edith gasped.

  Felix waved his pedipalps wildly for silence. “No talking!” Of course, spiders do not exactly talk but, instead, communicate by sending out vibratory signals. The leg hairs of spiders contain some of the most highly refined sensors of any animal on earth.

  An even larger infestation of silverfish awaited Jo Bell and Buster at their destination. The insects’ long, flattish bodies seemed to be oozing in and out of the huge folio with the precious drawing of Crispus Attucks. “Thank God they don’t have wings,” Jo Bell muttered.

  “I’ll do a dead drop in from the top of the folio,” Buster said.

  “Be careful of the cracks. You might drop into the wrong place,” Jo Bell warned. The leather cases and folios that held so many of the rare book treasures seemed more like mummies than books.

  “Okay, I’ll come in from the side,” Buster said.

  Jo Bell spotted the long antennae of several silverfish poking out from the edges of the folio.

  Three seconds later, Jo Bell and Buster were inside the pages. The damage was impressive.

  “Good grief, Buster. Look at poor Crispus! They are all over him.”

  “You go for the head, Jo Bell. The head’s the most important thing. We can’t have a hero without a face. I’ll get the silverfish at his feet.”

  Jo Bell swung down on a bouncy thread of number four grade silk through the volley of silent gunfire on the page and knocked two silverfish senseless with a double injection of venom. She rolled them to the edge of the engraving and returned to the fray, making her way toward the hero’s face. From the corners of three of her eyes, she saw that Buster had arrived at Attucks’s feet and was working feverishly to wrap up a silverfish and a glue bug, using his super-sticky binding silk. Within another two minutes, a dozen insect bodies were scattered across the engraving — from the cobblestones of King Street to the tippy-top of the state house.

  “We saved him!” Jo Bell exclaimed.

  Together they began to walk slowly around the image of the man who lay sprawled in the streets. They had rescued him from a second death. They had saved the memory of Crispus Attucks, the evidence that he died a true patriot for the cause of freedom.

  It was well after midnight when Edith, her children, and Buster returned to the display case. The night raid on the Adams collection had been their most successful yet.

  “I’m in a webbish mood!” Edith declared. “Yes, it’s time for a new web. We need one to store all the silverfish we’ve hauled back. Anyone want to help?”

  “Your mother certainly is energetic!” Buster whispered.

  “I know, and just hours ago she was c
omplaining about old age. But she likes to show off our catch to Tom. That’s why she picked this display case. Hardly anyone ever comes by it. And since we’ve been here, Tom has put it on the No Dust list. He sometimes tidies it up, but he’s always sure not to wipe out our webs.”

  By now, Edith was skibbling around the case. “I think we’ll have the main socializing web in this corner. But next to it, I’ll weave a storage web for the silverfish. We can just dip in as the mood strikes us.” She paused. “You have to admit that despite how loathsome these pests are, they are rather pretty — they seem to glint in the light. Why … why …” Edith’s voice filled with excitement. “It’s almost like Christmas!”

  “Christmas in July!” came a voice from the floor.

  “Fatty!” the Deadlies exclaimed in unison.

  “Fatty, darling Fatty! What brings you here?” Edith asked.

  “I could not take another second of that infernal flamenco,” said the big cat with a delicate shudder. “The constant thumping! Dancing, they call it! I call it clodhopping. Have you ever heard of a cat with a head ache?”

  “No, dear, I haven’t,” Edith said.

  “Well, I have one! So I thought I’d take a break and come here for a few days. And it seems it is also Christmas? What was that you were saying, Edith?”

  “Oh, just a funny little memory of mine.”

  “Webtime story! Mom, a webtime story, please!” Julep jumped up and down on all eight legs. “Please! Please! Puleeze!”

  “Well, for silk’s sake, let me finish this web first!”

  “Can we hear the one about the Place Where Time Has Stopped?”

  “Oh, Julep, you always ask for that one,” Jo Bell groaned.

  “But we all love the story, Jo Bell. You know we do.”

  It was true. Despite Jo Bell’s groaning, it was their favorite. Jo Bell’s only hesitation was that, although the story never wore thin, the dream of finding a wonderful place where spiders could live with no fear of E-Men seemed as far away as ever. The Boston Public Library was the closest the family had ever come to the Place Where Time Has Stopped, where they believed humans and spiders lived together with no fear. The Smoots were the only dark cloud in this splendid library, and Edith still didn’t know about them.

  Buster had never heard any webtime stories. He was intrigued by the idea of a Place Where Time Has Stopped.

  But now Felix was echoing Jo Bell. “A new story, Mom!”

  “All right! All right! Just let me finish here,” Edith said.

  A few minutes later, the dim golden dusk of the display case was spangled by the silverfish that Edith and her children had woven into the storage web.

  “It reminds me of one Christmas in particular,” Edith marveled. “It’s like tinsel on a Christmas tree!”

  “Which Christmas, Mom?” Julep said. “Come on, tell us.”

  “Oh, it was so long ago. I hardly remember all the details. I think I was even younger than you, Julep.”

  Julep peered at her mother. It was unimaginable that her mother had ever been that young. Had she ever whined — as everyone was always accusing Julep of doing?

  “Well, children, once upon a time so long ago, when I was but a wee thing …”

  There was nothing quite like Edith’s webtime story voice. Jo Bell could tell that Buster was instantly enchanted. His chelicerae, his spider jaws, dropped wide open. He had read and read and read his entire life, but he had never really heard a story told. Buster had never felt ashamed or sorry for being what he would describe as an “instant orphan.” In fact, Buster had thought that his biggest problem in life was not being venomous. But now he realized he was wrong. He was lonely. And he always had been lonely.

  As he perched in a corner of the somewhat messy web, enveloped by the bluish light — for brown recluse silk has a tinge of blue — he felt as if he had finally arrived in a snug harbor. A silken harbor where the threads were stirred by a soft voice.

  He knew about The Nutcracker. A score by Tchaikovsky was in the music manuscript room, and he had read the story of the ballet that began on Christmas Eve, when a little girl was given the gift of a doll — a nutcracker prince. That night she dreams that the prince enters a fierce battle with a mouse king. But never had the magic of the story seemed more real than now.

  “It was in the first theater I ever visited. It was called the Palace, in the great city of Chicago. I can’t remember where we had come from, or exactly where we went after the E-Men arrived. It was all such a blur. But I do remember my dear dad and mum and your great-aunt Tessie had decided we should weave our webs in the tippy-top of the Christmas tree. It was an artificial tree, of course, and it rose out of the stage in the first act. When the ballet starts, the scene is set for a lovely party to begin at the Stahlbaum house. It is a grand house, for the Stahlbaums are very rich, and every Christmas Eve, they give a wonderful party. Clara and Fritz are their children.”

  “How old are they?” Jo Bell interrupted.

  “Oh, I would say just about your age and Felix’s age — middle grade and elementary school.” This was an influence from the time Edith had spent at the Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Phoenix, Arizona. It had left a lasting impression, and she often thought of her children in terms of grade levels. Felix was a solid sixth grader, Jo Bell a seventh grader, and Julep a kindergartner. Or possibly a first grader.

  “Isn’t there anybody my age?” Julep whined.

  “You mean pre-K?” Felix snorted.

  “Children, stop that. No interruptions, please. All eyes on me!”

  Buster was shaking with frustration at the interruptions.

  “As I was saying, there is a party, and the children’s godfather arrives.” Edith gave a quick glance up toward Fatty, her own children’s godspider, who had settled on the top of the display case. “He brings presents for Clara and Fritz. To Clara he gives a doll — a nutcracker prince. Fritz is jealous and a fight breaks out between the children, breaking the doll. But that’s only the beginning of the story. For after the guests leave and the clock strikes midnight, strange things begin to happen. Clara starts to shrink, and the Christmas tree begins to grow and grow and grow. Oh, it was a wonderful feeling for all of us as the tree rose up, up, and up, as if on threads of silk. I can just see my mother and Aunt Tessie, their twelve eyes sparkling. It was as if we were at the very heart of a miracle. We could look out from our web and see the audience gasping in wonder. Children wiggling in their seats suddenly grew still, their eyes round with disbelief!”

  “Too bad little human kids have just two eyes,” Julep moaned softly. “There’s so much to see!”

  By this time, twenty-six spider eyes were round with disbelief. Edith’s silken voice wove through the night as the silverfish glimmered in the gossamer lattice of threads. Edith was not only a spinner of webs, but a spinner of enchantment.

  Jo Bell nestled in the taffeta petals of a rose pinned to the brim of the elderly lady’s hat in the Bates reading room of the Boston Public Library. Buster had never bothered to find out the lady’s name. He simply called her The Hat. The lady was reading a book entitled Elements of Crime Detection by Ellis Frumkin. And Jo Bell was reading alongside her.

  A footprint is a treasure trove of information. A detective can not only determine the type of shoe worn but can also reveal the height and weight of the suspect, where he or she has been, and where he or she might be going. Recall if you will the Sherlock Holmes story “A Scandal in Bohemia” and Holmes’s brilliant detection of where his partner Watson has just been: “It is simplicity itself…. My eyes tell me that on the inside of your left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it, the leather is scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they have been caused by someone who has very carelessly scraped round the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it.

  But, thought Jo Bell, we don’t have to deduce anything to know who committed the crime. It was Agnes Smoot! She had learned a lot about fingerprin
ts, witness protection, and dragnets set up to catch criminals. But none of it helped.

  Jo Bell made a decision. She crawled out of the taffeta rose, then cast a dragline to lower her self down. The Hat seemed to sense something out of the corner of her eye and raised a hand with liver-colored age spots to flick Jo Bell away.

  Don’t do it, lady!

  It was a narrow escape. Jo Bell’s spinnerets went into high gear and she squeezed out a half foot more of line to The Hat’s shoulder. Next she skibbled down a sleeve, hopped from there to the desk, and cast another dragline to swing her self under the long tables of the reading room.

  Buster had camped out on the collar of a man who had fallen asleep reading old issues of the Boston Globe.

  “What’s up, Jo Bell — want to read this? The most fascinating art crime ever was right here in Boston. The thieves tied up two security guards with duct tape and made off with three hundred million dollars’ worth of art. The crime was never solved.”

  “That’s just the problem, Buster,” Jo Bell said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Our crime is solved! We know who did it. It’s Agnes Smoot and her husband!”

  “I still don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  For someone as smart as Buster, he could be a bit dense at times, Jo Bell thought.

  “Look, we’ve spent all morning reading about crime detection. But we’ve already detected the crime. What we have to figure out is how to catch the thieves!”

  “It would be so much easier with venom,” Buster said mournfully.

  “Buster, you are venom obsessed!” Jo Bell shouted. “Get over it. Venom is out of the question.” She immediately felt terrible. She shouldn’t have yelled at him. Buster was so sweet, and even kind of cute in his own way. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings. But he did have a venom fixation. In a softer voice she continued, “We need to read about catching a thief — entrapment.”