Slam! went the metal doors.
“Can you guys believe what we saw yesterday at the library?” called Stevie “The Hulk” from across the hallway.
Edgar and Allan shot him withering glares. They’d asked him to keep it to himself.
“What did you guys see?” asked David Litke, who’d overheard and had come now to stand beside Stevie.
Stevie lowered his eyes as he noted the twins’ glares and realized what he’d done. He turned from them to David. “Oh, um, nothing,” he said unconvincingly.
David looked at him questioningly. Then he turned to the twins. “Are you leaving me out of something?”
“Would we do that?” the twins answered.
“That’s what I’m asking you.”
“What kind of friends would that make us?” Edgar responded.
“The kind who keep secrets,” David answered bluntly.
“Exactly,” Allan said. “And what kind of friend is that?”
David considered. “Oh . . . OK,” he responded, half-satisfied, half-confused. Then he wandered into the morning crowd.
The twins hadn’t lied to him. They’d just answered his questions with other questions until he provided for himself the answer he was looking for. This was a ruse Edgar and Allan usually employed only with adults. But this morning they were tired and discouraged and didn’t want to explain what was likely to come next—that the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe had offered a clue from which the twins had, as yet, managed to discern . . . nothing.
“Sorry,” Stevie whispered when David moved away. “I’ll keep it to myself, like we said.”
“There’ll be a proper time for us to share it with everybody,” Allan answered.
The bell rang, and the boys made their way to Mrs. Rosecrans’s classroom, where they took their seats without further incident.
“Good morning, class,” she said.
Then she began to talk about the public speaking exercise from the week before. The twins weren’t much interested—at least, not until she said, “And Miss Reynolds, who is a real expert, told me in an e-mail that she thinks there are some potentially outstanding orators in this room.”
The twins’ hands darted immediately into the air. “Miss who? Did you say Reynolds?”
Mrs. Rosecrans smiled. “Ah, I forgot. Yes, she insisted on you children calling her by her first name, Birdy. I can’t say I approve of such informality, but it was her choice.”
“Miss Reynolds?” Edgar cried.
Classmates turned to him, confused by his enthusiasm.
“Yes,” Mrs. Rosecrans said cautiously.
The Poe twins turned to each other.
Could it be a coincidence?
Edgar and Allan didn’t believe in coincidence. “We have some questions for you about Miss Reynolds,” they said.
Mrs. Rosecrans smiled. “Well, I’m glad to see you two taking such interest in public speaking.”
“How do you know her?” Edgar asked.
“Where does she live?” Allan asked.
“Where does she work?” Edgar asked.
“Does she seem like the type to keep secrets?” Allan asked.
“About murders and such,” Edgar elaborated.
Mrs. Rosecrans held up her hand like a traffic cop. “Murders?” She was clearly dismayed. “You boys are completely out of hand. Miss Reynolds is a respectable woman.”
“Oh, we don’t mean she committed murder, but—” Allan started.
“That’s enough!” Mrs. Rosecrans snapped.
The twins quieted, wondering what had become of the sympathetic woman of the week before.
Their teacher gathered herself and straightened at the podium. “If you two have questions about Miss Reynolds, you may ask me after class,” she said.
WHAT THE POE TWINS DID NOT KNOW . . .
BALTIMORE SUN
All the News That Print Can Fit
PHYSICS PROFESSOR MURDERED
Baltimore, MD—M. Alexander Martin, PhD, a longtime physics professor at Johns Hopkins University, was fatally injured in a bombing at his office yesterday at approximately 9:25 a.m. The department secretary, Elsie Franklin, reported that Professor Martin was opening his morning mail at the time of the explosion.
While the cause of death cannot be officially confirmed until after an autopsy, campus police chief J. P. Knapp said, “It seems pretty obvious what happened here, though who committed the crime remains a mystery.” As to motive, both colleagues and law enforcement agencies are confounded, as Professor Martin was well-liked on campus.
Pictured above: Professor M. A. Martin delivering a lecture.
LOOK AT THE BIRDY
AFTER class, the twins peppered Mrs. Rosecrans with questions.
Her answers were earnest and useful, even if they were frustrating. She and Birdy Reynolds knew each other only from the weekly Roastmasters meetings they both attended at the Bayside Motor Inn on Fridays at six a.m. (an hour chosen to allow participants to make it to their jobs on time).
“Every Friday?” Edgar asked impatiently, wishing this were Thursday instead of Tuesday.
Mrs. Rosecrans nodded. “A couple of weeks ago, after I gave a short speech about my teaching career, Miss Reynolds introduced herself and offered to visit my class to discuss public speaking. And that’s all I know about her. Of course, I might have learned more, since she and I had planned to have coffee after class in the teachers’ lounge, but your speech about ghosts scared her clean off the campus.”
“But she’ll be at this Friday’s Roastmasters meeting?” Allan asked.
“I presume,” answered Mrs. Rosecrans.
“Are children allowed at the meetings?” inquired Edgar.
She nodded. “You two can come, if you’re willing to give a talk of some kind.”
Talking was no problem for the twins. “We’ll be there,” they answered.
“And not just some speech off the tops of your heads,” Mrs. Rosecrans added. “Something planned.”
“Oh, we’ll have a plan,” they assured her.
On Friday morning, Edgar strolled alone into the Roastmasters meeting as if there was nothing unusual about his being there. Wasn’t he attired in a suit and tie, just like the businessmen who milled about the room? And didn’t he carry himself with confidence, making small talk with many of the well-coiffed businesswomen who placed their designer purses on folding chairs to save the best seats for themselves? So what if Edgar was the only person under eighteen in the room? A few minutes earlier, he, Allan, Stevie “The Hulk,” and Katie Justus (with whom they’d shared the news of the ghostly Poe sighting) had been the only people under eighteen on the city bus ride—and that had been no problem.
“Excellent polish job on those wing-tip shoes, sir,” Edgar said to a gray-haired man in a three-piece suit.
Meantime, Stevie, Katie, and Allan took their secret positions behind a large stainless steel cabinet in the empty kitchen adjacent to the meeting room. Each wore a nineteenth century–style costume “borrowed” from Aldrin Middle School’s drama department. Additionally, Allan sported a small false mustache in the style of his famous ancestor.
They awaited their cue.
Back in the meeting room, the Roastmasters—their cups of coffee held before them in two hands, like sacred objects—seemed glad to welcome Edgar.
That is, all but Mrs. Rosecrans, who gave a quick but fretful smile from across the room. The Poe twins, as she well knew, were always unpredictable. But she had agreed to let them deliver a speech here as extra credit for the Shakespeare unit in English class. So what could she do now but cross her fingers?
Edgar was really only concerned with one person: Miss Birdy Reynolds.
And there she was!
“Hello, Birdy,” Edgar called as he crossed the room. She turned to
him. “Your visit to our class inspired me to pursue public speaking more seriously. So I’m here to be a Roastmaster.”
Birdy Reynolds smiled. “Welcome, young man,” she said, straightening nonexistent wrinkles in her stylish Chanel suit.
“Is there a sign-up sheet for speaking?” Edgar asked.
“Oh, we’ll make an exception for you,” she answered. “We like to encourage youthful enthusiasm. In fact, you can go first.”
“Thanks. I think you’ll be very interested in my topic.”
“May I ask what it is?”
“Murder,” he said.
Birdy Reynolds gasped.
“Oh, not a recent murder,” Edgar added reassuringly. “One dating all the way back to 1849.”
She stood up straighter.
“Do you happen to know anything about a murder in 1849?” Edgar asked pointedly.
She said nothing. Likewise, her expression betrayed nothing.
“If you come clean now it’ll save us time and trouble,” Edgar whispered.
Birdy Reynolds seemed just about to cooperate when Mrs. Rosecrans joined them. “Good morning, fellow Roastmasters,” Mrs. Rosecrans said to Birdy Reynolds with what seemed to Edgar artificial cheer. Then she turned to him, her voice tinged with suspicion. “What’s the plan here, Edgar?”
The plan was to employ a trick from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, wherein Prince Hamlet puts on a play that recreates a recent murder in order to observe how the presumed killer will react. All the innocent audience members think it’s merely a story, but the guilty party recognizes it for what it is—an accusation—and the killer’s panic betrays his guilt.
“May I have your attention?” came a voice over the PA system, interrupting all the chatter in the room. Edgar turned and saw a white-haired man at the podium. “If you’ll all get seated, we can get started.”
The perfumed ladies rejoined their designer purses at their seats, and the business-suited men settled into those that were left over. A hush replaced the chattering of a moment before.
Edgar didn’t bother finding a chair but started straight for the podium.
“Ah, I see we have our first speaker,” the white-haired man said. “And, even better, it’s a youngster. We at Roastmasters appreciate youngsters. Welcome, youngster.” He chuckled and patted Edgar on top of the head.
“Youngster”—what a ridiculous word, thought Edgar. He patiently waited for the man to take his seat with the others.
Then he began. “Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Edgar Poe, and I’m pleased to join you in this lovely meeting room to talk of a crime long unsolved. Nay, to do more than merely talk of it, but to dramatize it. Nay, more than that, to solve it! If you please, imagine this fair city in the year 1849, alive with a thriving seaport and citizens both respectable and disreputable. Passing among them happens to be Baltimore’s most venerable literary figure, the great Edgar Allan Poe.”
At this, the swinging double doors to the kitchen burst open and the costumed Allan stumbled into the room, crying aloud: “I’ve been beaten, kicked, bruised! O why, when I am so undeserving of violence? My life force . . . it is slipping away.”
All the Roastmasters turned wide-eyed in their chairs toward the unexpected commotion.
Allan stumbled farther into the room, his face streaming fake blood. “Who has done this dire deed to me?” he cried, before falling “dead” at the base of the podium.
The Roastmasters looked at one another, dumbfounded.
Then the kitchen doors opened again, and nineteenth-century versions of Stevie and Katie raced into the meeting room, tracing Allan’s path.
“What vile villain has done this to such a great man?” cried Stevie in a booming voice. “Poe, the greatest of all American writers, dead!”
“It is Reynolds who did it!” said Katie, who had played Cosette in Aldrin Middle School’s production of Les Misérables. “Reynolds is the murderer!”
Stevie and Katie knelt brokenheartedly beside the body of the great Poe, while Edgar leaned from the podium to loom over the scene, speaking in as deep a register as he could muster, like a voice from the heavens: “Shall we let this crime go unsolved?”
After a moment of silence, he straightened and said in his regular voice to the audience, “Thank you, Roastmasters, for your rapt attention.”
The Roastmasters looked confused. All except one member: Miss Birdy Reynolds.
She was weeping in her seat.
The plan had worked!
The white-haired man rejoined Edgar at the podium. “Thank you,” he said, a bit baffled, “for your dramatization.”
There was a spattering of applause.
Edgar joined his brother and friends in front of the podium, where they bowed as one.
Mrs. Rosecrans looked perturbed.
Miss Birdy Reynolds indicated for Edgar and Allan to come to meet her near the coffee urn at the back of the room.
Would she reprimand them? Threaten them? Deny everything?
They met. “Thank you, boys,” she said.
Edgar and Allan were taken aback.
“I’ve lived with the secret of your ancestor’s murder for far too long,” she said with feeling. “The whole Reynolds family, generation after generation . . . secrets eat at the heart. It’s time I share the truth about what my ancestor did to yours.”
The twins glowed, on the verge of solving another ancient murder and setting another ghost free!
“Which ancestor?” Allan asked.
“And why’d he do it?” Edgar added.
She shook her head. “I’ll share the story exclusively with you two and your family,” she continued. “Poes only. What you do with it afterward, the newspapers, television, the Internet . . . it’s up to you.” She handed Edgar a printed calling card with her name and address.
“Tomorrow night, at my estate,” she continued. “I’ll send a limousine for you and yours at seven. Then dinner. And truth.”
And justice, the boys thought.
They gave her their address.
Then Miss Birdy Reynolds turned and fled the room.
“What kind of English project was that?” Mrs. Rosecrans demanded as she caught up to the boys.
“An A-plus,” they answered.
WHAT THE POE TWINS DID NOT KNOW . . .
CODED NOTES FOR PROFESSOR S. PANGBORN PERRY’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY, JOTTED IN A SECOND-STORY ROOM OF A GREEN SPRING VALLEY MANSION:
NOTE: The text of the preceding letter is written in a replacement code intended to disguise the communication as mere gibberish. The decoded translation is as follows:
While pretending to be unconscious in my hospital bed in Kansas (before escaping from the local police), I took some time to consider my failure back at the Dorothy Gale Farm and OZitorium. Just how had those brats eluded me? A lesser man might have avoided such a painful question. But I am not a lesser man.
If the ever-connected Poe twins are to be mine, then I must draw from the same inspiration that animates them: their ancestor Edgar Allan Poe. My previous inspiration, Professor Marvel from The Wizard of Oz, failed to provide me with sufficient malice to overcome the twins, who, after all, are descended from a man of truly dark imagination. A wicked witch and flying monkeys are mere child’s play when compared to the horrors found in Poe’s stories. Lying in my hospital bed, I realized I had to turn the twins’ own ancestor’s imagination against them. Yes, the pendulum swings!
With this thought foremost, I’ve made my way to the boys’ hometown from Shanghai, where Dr. Psufo performed surgical magic and gave me a famous new face.
I am a whirlwind of vengeance and ambition, for whom impersonating the ghost of a long-dead literary genius is no more difficult than using a tiny handheld device to short out a library’s electrical system at just the right moment. With the help of
my actress friend in the role of Miss Birdy Reynolds, with the elimination of my only scholarly rival, Professor Martin, and with my concoction of a tasteless, odorless knockout drug for each member of the Poe family, I now approach the culmination of my life’s work!
Mr Poe in the Great Beyond
Sitting at his desk, Mr. Poe muttered, “How dare that strutting villain disguise himself as the ghost of me!”
Of all people!
With the plastic surgery and hairpiece that Perry had obtained while hiding in Shanghai, he was virtually indistinguishable from Mr. Poe’s famous portrait photograph of 1840. Indeed, Edgar and Allan had already been fooled into believing that their great-great-great-great granduncle had been murdered. In truth, the great author had died of a brain tumor—a natural cause of death—which was, of course, why he was here rather than haunting Baltimore.
And events on Earth seemed to be growing only worse!
Soon, the twins would take a limousine ride to an isolated country estate. What terrors awaited them there?
Mr. Poe feared he knew: the pendulum.
But he wasn’t beaten yet. He’d been hard at work.
“Mr. Poe?”
A soft, female voice. He spun his chair around.
“Ah, Miss Dickinson,” he said, standing up to greet her formally.
He had not seen her since his demotion. Until now, only Mr. Whitman had taken the elevator ride down to the clamorous barnyard on the 121,347,935th floor for a social call.
“It’s gracious of you to call on me,” he said, straightening his cravat.
Miss Emily Dickinson was as lovely, demure, and well-kept as always, her complexion creamy from so little exposure to the sun during her lifetime, her hair in a neat bun, her black dress modest and without a wrinkle. At first glance, she might have been mistaken for an ordinary woman. But the light in her eyes indicated that there was nothing ordinary about her—she was a poet of enormous courage, power, and depth, perhaps the second best of the nineteenth century, by Mr. Poe’s estimation.
The Pet and the Pendulum Page 5