Emma sent back a message to Sherlock Holmes.
DON’T WORRY MR. HOLMES. THE MACDOUGALL TWINS ARE ON THE CASE.
Chapter 4: Escaping School
“This is about Sherlock Holmes and that sky ship, ain’t it?” Mr. MacDougall asked in a whisper while buttering his toast. He didn’t want Mrs. MacDougall, who was in the next room hemming a dress, to hear them discussing a case.
Emma and Jimmy were asking their father for help. The twins needed to figure out a way to get out of their home that morning, and Mrs. MacDougall never let them leave school early, unless their dad had a task for them.
“Dad, you’ve got to help us,” Emma begged.
“Mr. Holmes needs our help. All of London is in danger,” added Jimmy. “Come on, Dad!”
“Okay, okay, if Mr. Holmes needs your help, then I’ll send Laurence over to fetch you. But you’d better stay caught up on your school work,” Mr. MacDougall sternly stated.
The twins promised, and Mr. MacDougall said goodbye, then headed out to clean the city chimneys.
Emma and Jimmy were schooled at home by their mother. Most of the children in London worked either in factories or in businesses, even if they were only five years old. Some went away to live at school. Mrs. MacDougall did not want her children working, and she did not want them away from home for a very long time. She taught the twins in their home in the morning, and she had them run errands for her in the afternoon.
This morning Jimmy was working on his math skills, called arithmetic, and Emma was learning about the history of the earth, when giant animals known as dinosaurs ruled the land. Most girls only learned how to sit up straight, sew, and have good manners. Mrs. MacDougall made sure that Emma had the same schooling as Jimmy. She thought it was a waste for girls to not have the same options as boys. In fact, Emma was even smarter than Jimmy.
Jimmy finished up his math booklet, and Emma paused to check his work. It gave the twins a chance to talk without their mother knowing they were investigating the airship mystery.
“You solved most of the problems correctly, but you made errors solving some fraction problems,” Emma explained. “Do numbers four, five, and nine again.”
Jimmy frowned and snatched his book back. “The only thing I need to solve is this airship mystery.”
“Do you think Laurence will have heard from anyone?” asked Emma.
Laurence was a chimney sweep who worked with Mr. MacDougall. That morning, Jimmy had his dad give Laurence a message to send telegrams to the twins’ friends. Messages were sent to Steve the steel worker, Sally the seamstress, Nolan the newspaper boy, and Thomas the tailor to see if they knew anything about the airship. Once the friends received the message, word would spread, and soon all the children in London would be looking for airship clues.
“I bet he did. I mean, that ship was the size of a flying herd of elephants. Everyone should have seen it.”
Surprisingly, there was no news of the airship in the morning paper.
Just then, there came a knock on the door. “Now, who could that be?” Mrs. MacDougall said, while getting up from her sewing. Mrs. MacDougall was a seamstress who hemmed, mended, and made clothes for a job. She worked at home, so she could also teach Jimmy and Emma.
The twins heard their mother answer the door and have a brief conversation. “He needs them now! Really, Laurence, you tell Nedley not to bother the children until afternoon, after their school work is completed.” There was another brief talk, and then Mrs. MacDougall said, “All right! All right! They can go now!”
Mrs. MacDougall called to the twins to come to the door. “Children, your father needs your help this morning. One of his chimney sweeps is sick, and Emma, he needs your help understanding a bill he has received. Both of you will go with Laurence, but Laurence will make sure you return as soon as you can. You will need to make up all of your missed time from school this afternoon. The sooner you return, the better. School is too important to miss. You will finish your lessons today, even if you finish at midnight.”
“Yes Mom,” the twins agreed. Laurence thanked Mrs. MacDougall, and the three were off into the city streets.
Laurence was huffing and puffing a bit as they walked together. He was a plump old man, who Emma would have said looked a bit like Father Christmas, except he was covered in black soot from head to toe. He left a strange trail of dark footprints behind him as he waddled along.
“You can slow down a bit,” Jimmy assured Laurence, who was wheezing from running to the MacDougall house. “Any responses to our telegrams?”
“Just one,” Laurence wheezed. “From…(huff).. Nolan.” Laurence caught his breath, and he wiped the sweat from his brow. The chimney sweep then continued. “There doesn’t seem to be much news about a flying boat, or what have you. Now, I’ve got to dash back to work. Your dad wanted me to tell you to stay out of trouble. No sense in that though. If you’re chasing flying boats, I know you’ll get up to some kind of mischief.”
“It’s an airship,” Emma explained. “It scared a whole crowd of people. I don’t know why no one is talking about it!”
“Baah!” Laurence said, with a dismissing wave of his arm. “Next you’ll be seeing the Ghost of Christmas Past. Oh! Look at the time!” Laurence added, looking at his pocket watch. “I have to get back to work!” He said goodbye and ran down the street as fast as he could. Jimmy thought, from behind, he looked like a penguin scampering away.
“Just Nolan,” Emma said. “Only Nolan has news. That’s strange. That ship caused quite a stir on Baker Street. More of London must have seen it. Why didn’t anyone else report anything? Why just Nolan?”
“Well, Nolan is the newspaper boy,” Jimmy joked. “He should have news for us.”
Chapter 5: Nolan and the Mysterious Stranger
Jimmy and Emma raced along Baker Street as fast as their legs could carry them. They had to get to Nolan, to find out what he knew of the airship and the Mad Bomber.
“Slow down a little, Jimmy,” Emma called after her brother. She was having a hard time keeping up with him, as they zig-zagged along the sidewalk.
“I can’t!” he called back. “I don’t want Mom making me do school work until midnight! Anyway, we’re here.”
The youth stopped at a bustling intersection full of traffic. It was the entrance to the London Underground Railway. Horse drawn carriages lined the road, waiting to pick up passengers. Business men in suits and ties walked about in a hurry. Some of them headed down, underground, to catch a train, and others came up from a train that had arrived. Standing at the entrance to the Baker Street Underground Station was Nolan - a young, grimy looking boy, standing on a wooden crate and yelling “Extra! Extra! Read all about it! King and Queen of Spain to visit London!”
The twins approached Nolan the newsboy; his greasy blond hair stuck out at odd angles, and his shirt and pants had multiple patches to hold them together. A gentleman approached the boy, gave him a few pence, and took a copy of the paper.
“Thank you, sir,” Nolan said, and then he turned and saw Jimmy and Emma. “Hey, it’s the MacDougall twins. Boy, have I got news for you.”
“You have news about the airship?” Emma asked.
“Sure, sure,” Nolan continued. “I got to make this fast though. These papers don’t sell themselves,” Nolan added, pointing to a stack of fifty newspapers at his feet.
Jimmy reached into his pocket and handed Nolan over a few pence. “Thank you, muchly,” Nolan said, pocketing the coins and handing Jimmy a copy of the Times.
“Anyway, so I was meeting some of the boys yesterday, in front of the office of the Daily Times Gazette, because Henry, one of us newsboys, had come down with a bad cold. He was so sick, he couldn’t sell his papers. We, the boys and I, were meeting to divide up his papers and add them to our piles. If someone’s out sick, we sell their paper
s for them, so they don’t lose their money for the day. You can’t eat if you don’t have food, I always say.”
“What does this have to do with the mad bomber?” Jimmy asked. He was getting nervous. They only had six hours left to solve the case before the mad bomber would strike again.
“I’m getting to that. Let me tell the story,” Nolan said. “Anyway, as we are standing out front, this strange man kicks open the door of the newspaper office and storms out. He yells back, ‘I’ll show you a real story! You’ll see just how real my story is tonight!’ And, he starts to march away. Then, he sees me and the boys, and comes straight at us. I thought he was gonna yell at us, too. Instead, he comes right up to me and says, ‘You there! Give me one of those papers!’
“He snatches one out of my hand, looks at the headline, and says ‘Bah! You think this is news. Just wait till tomorrow, then all of London will know real news!’ Then, he wandered off into a cab and took off down the street.”
“Did you get a good look at him?” Emma asked. She thought this sounded just like the mad bomber.
“Course I did,” Nolan said proudly. “But the guy was real funny looking, like he didn’t want anyone to know who he was. He wore a long, black overcoat, pince-nez glasses[2], but with the lens darkened, so I couldn’t make out his eye color…Oh yes! And a deerstalker hat, with the flaps down, to cover his ears.”
“That doesn’t tell us too much,” Jimmy said.
“Let me finish,” Nolan went on. “He had a sharp nose, well-trimmed dark beard and mustache, and the coach he went off in, it had initials on the side. In big writing were the letters S.H.
“S.H.!” the twins shouted together.
“That’s what I said, and that’s what I meant,” Nolan concluded, and he leaped back on top of his crate. “Anyway, I got to get back to work. Hope that helps you and all.”
“One last thing, Nolan,” Jimmy added. “Who was the stranger yelling at, in the newspaper office? We need to ask that man some questions.”
“Good luck with that,” Jimmy stated. “That was Old Man Withers, the news editor. He doesn’t speak to anyone who doesn’t have a story, and even if you did, he doesn’t ever talk to children. In fact, he hates kids!”
“That’s okay, Nolan. Thank you for the information,” Emma said.
As she and Jimmy walked away, they heard Nolan begin calling out, “Extra! Extra!” again, and selling his papers.
“What do you think?” Jimmy asked his sister.
“It’s not much,” Emma conceded, “but it is a start. I think we need to split up. Jimmy, you need to talk with Old Man Withers and find out what the mad bomber said to him. Also, we need to know why he didn’t print a story about the airship. Why was the story left out of all the papers?”
“Got it,” Jimmy agreed.
“And I’ll go see if I can find our friend Steven the cab driver. We need to find that cab with the initials S.H. on its side. That might be the clue to solving this case.”
“I agree, but I’m a little worried about those letters and the deerstalker hat.”
Emma frowned and nodded. They were both worried..but it couldn’t be true, could it? With the deerstalker hat and the initials S.H..Could the mad bomber be..Sherlock Holmes!
2 Fun Fact: Pince-nez glasses are small, foldable glasses that were popular in the 19th century. Unlike modern glasses, pince-nez glasses had no stems to rest on ears. They were held in place by a spring that grips or “pinches” the nose.
Chapter 6: Jimmy in Disguise
Jimmy looked up at the towering building before him. Will this work? he wondered. Do I look like an adult? What if Old Man Withers sees through my disguise?
It had taken Jimmy a good hour to prepare, and he straightened his neck tie, adjusted his monocle[3], and made sure his top hat wouldn’t fall off his head. With the help of makeup, and his spare dress up kit that was kept hidden with Sally the seamstress, Jimmy had transformed himself from a child to a full adult. Emma had always called Jimmy the master of disguise, and this was the part of detective work Jimmy loved best. In the past, Jimmy had gone undercover as a circus clown, a street performer, and even once as a blind Frenchman. Every time, he had successfully fooled people; one time, he’d even tricked his mother into thinking he was a young beggar, and she put a penny in his cup when he knocked at their door.
Now, as he entered the office of the Daily Times Gazette and approached the desk of Mr. Withers, he wondered if Old Man Withers would be the first person to see through one of his disguises. Nolan had said Mr. Withers hated kids. What if he could hear something in Jimmy’s voice or see a piece of the costume that wasn’t perfect? What if he yelled and chased Jimmy out onto the street? Jimmy shuddered as he found himself standing in front of Mr. Withers’s desk.
“Excuse me, but are you Mr. Withers?” Jimmy asked the elderly white haired man, who was editing a news story.
Mr. Withers adjusted his spectacles, crossed out a few words on the paper before him, and then responded in a gruff voice, without looking up, “I am, and I am busy at the moment.”
“But, I have a story I believe will be of interest to you. One that so many people will read, it could sell a million newspapers!” Jimmy said in as deep a voice as he could manage.
Mr. Withers looked up at the person before him and frowned. Oh no! Jimmy thought. He sees through my disguise! But instead of tossing Jimmy out onto the street, the old man gave a grin, revealing a mouth with many missing teeth.
It was not a boy that Mr. Withers saw before him, but a London gentleman. Jimmy was wearing a top hat and an overcoat. A fake mustache was glued below his nose, and a monocle was held in his right eye. Jimmy looked like a millionaire.
“Now, what story would that be?” asked Mr. Withers kindly.
Jimmy paused for a moment. Then, he realized his disguise had worked. He said to Mr. Withers, “Why, yesterday I saw a most extraordinary sight. There was a giant barrel shaped object that…”
“BAH!! Not another one!” Mr. Withers snapped at Jimmy. “You fell for that airship hoax.”
“Hoax?” Jimmy asked surprised.
“Sure, it’s a scam, a fake, people do them all the time. They create fake news stories, to try and trick the public and the newspapers. Another fellow told me the same story yesterday. He’s probably the one who faked the whole thing. Trust me, it’s nothing but a candle stick tied to a balloon in the sky. That’s all you saw,” Mr. Withers concluded, and then he turned back to editing the news. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m busy.”
Jimmy couldn’t believe it. The newspapers were not printing the story of the airship because no one thought it was real!
“You said another man brought you the story yesterday. Can you describe him for me? If he faked this airship, then I have some rough words for him!” Jimmy said, trying to sound tough.
“Not much to describe,” Mr. Withers answered, and he gave the same description as Nolan, of the mysterious stranger. “Listen, don’t let it upset you. These hoax stories come in all the time. You know, one time in America, they even printed a story about bat people living on the moon!”
Jimmy thanked Mr. Withers for his time. He left the news office feeling disappointed. He hadn’t gotten any useful information out of Mr. Withers. The twins now only had three hours to find the mad bomber and help Sherlock Holmes..unless Sherlock Holmes was the mad bomber. But how could Sherlock Holmes be the bomber? Jimmy and Emma were with him when the airship attacked. It was impossible, yet Sherlock Holmes could often perform the impossible. But if Sherlock Holmes was behind it all, then this must be some kind of test for Jimmy and Emma. Sherlock Holmes would never hurt anyone. Was this a test? Jimmy found himself with many questions and no answers.
Just as Jimmy made it to the street in front of the newspaper office, a hansom cab pulled up in front of him.
It was Steven the cab driver with Emma. She quickly opened the door to the carriage. “Get in!” she called out to Jimmy.
“What’s the hurry?” Jimmy asked, as Emma yanked him into the cab, and Steven made the cab jolt into the busy London streets.
“Look!” Emma called and pointed ahead of them. Quickly moving along the street in front of them was a reddish colored wagon, pulled along by two galloping horses.
As the carriage barreled around a corner, Jimmy made out two distinct letters on its side..S.H!
3 Fun Fact: A monocle (pronounced mon-i-kull) is an eyeglass for one eye that is held up by the muscles around the eye.
Chapter 7: Chasing the Bomber
Steven the cab driver cracked his whip, and he made his horse gallop as fast as she could go. Jimmy and Emma felt like the cab they were in might fly off the road, at the speed Steven was going.
“Don’t lose them, Steven,” Emma called.
“I’m doing the best I can, miss, but he’s got a four wheeler pulled by two cob horses. I’ve only got my Bess here, and she’s going as fast as she can!” Steven called back. “Don’t worry, ma’am, I won’t lose him.”
“Yeah, but I might lose my lunch,” Jimmy said, while holding his belly. He wasn’t used to fast motion and was feeling a little sick.
The two horse-drawn carriages continued to fly through London, past cathedrals and towers, swerving between bus carriages and people walking along the street. As they traveled, the mad bomber continued to get further and further away. Finally, they moved away from the busy streets of London and out into the countryside. Tree branches smashed against the side of the cab, and Bess gave an occasional loud, “Neigh!” But she didn’t let up. The four wheeler in front of them remained in sight. They swerved along a forgotten, muddy road, and then suddenly, they could see a massive, pointed structure in front of them.
The Amazing Airship Adventure Page 2