Nick and Tesla's Secret Agent Gadget Battle

by Bob Pflugfelder

  “What the heck is that?” he asked, staring in dismay at the massive plaster foot under Tesla’s arm.

  “A footprint. Duh,” Tesla said.

  She dropped it on her bed and knelt down next to Nick.

  “I know it’s a footprint. But from what?” he said. “A Wookiee?”

  “One mystery at a time,” Tesla said.

  She picked up the emery board and pencil on the floor beside her brother and got to work on the glass she’d just brought down from the attic.

  A few minutes later, the kids had five index cards spread out in front of them, each with its own neatly written label.

  ETHEL

  GLADYS

  UNCLE NEWT

  OLI/OLY

  VERMINATOR SKIP

  “There. We’re ready,” Nick said. “Now we compare these to the thief’s prints and find out who our spy is. Get the other card.”

  “Right.”

  Tesla stood and went to a nearby dresser. She and her brother had hidden the card with the culprit’s fingerprint on it in one of the top drawers, under Nick’s socks.

  Tesla opened the drawer and slipped a hand inside.

  Then she began sifting around in the socks.

  Then she began tossing socks over her shoulder while saying, “Oh, no no no no no.”

  She yanked open the other drawers and sent T-shirts and swimsuits and underwear flying in all directions.

  “No no no no no no no!”

  “What is it?” Nick asked. “What’s wrong?”

  But he already knew the answer.

  Tesla backed away from the dresser and drooped down onto her bed beside the big foot.

  “We’re idiots,” she said.

  Nick couldn’t disagree.

  The card with THE BAD GUY (OR LADY) written on it was gone.

  “We got evidence on a thief and then left it in our room,” Nick said.

  He was slumped on his bed, across from Tesla and the plaster foot.

  Tesla said nothing.

  “Even though we knew the thief was still around,” Nick said.

  Tesla stared off at nothing.

  “And we knew the thief had already been in our room once before,” Nick said.

  Tesla just kept staring.

  “And we were going to be leaving the room empty while we went around gathering—”

  “I already said we were idiots!” Tesla snapped. “You don’t have to keep reminding me why!”

  “I know. I’m sorry. It’s just that I can’t believe it.”

  A moment went by in silence.

  “I mean … we just left it in our room,” Nick said. “Even though the thief was still here. And he’d already been in our—”

  “Stop it!”

  Tesla sprang up from her bed and began pacing and turning, pacing and turning.

  “So we lost our only evidence,” she said. “That’s a setback, yeah. But we have another chance. Like you say, we know the thief is still around. And we know what he or she wants—and we have another one just like it.”

  Tesla stopped pacing and whirled around to face her brother.

  It took him a few seconds to understand what she meant.

  “This?” he said, pointing to a little lump under his shirt.

  His pendant.

  Tesla nodded.

  “That’ll be our bait. Only we won’t try to track down the thief after he or she steals it,” she said. “This time, we’re going to catch the bad guy red-handed.”

  TESLA’S

  RING-A-DING-DING SPY EXPOSURE SYSTEM

  THE STUFF

  • A bicycle bell

  • 1 1.5–3 volt motor

  • 1 AA battery

  • Duct tape

  • 2 dimes or small metal washers

  • 2 popsicle sticks

  • 1 rubber band

  • Wire (22-gauge, single-strand wire works best)

  • A plastic cap from a pen

  • Aluminum foil

  • A CD case

  • Hot-glue gun

  • Bait (whatever you think a thief would be after!)

  THE SETUP

  1. Remove the lower part of the bicycle bell’s handlebar mount and apply a good amount of hot glue to each tab where the screws had been.

  2. Glue the bell onto one side of the CD case, making sure that the thumb ringer faces out. (If you don’t have a CD case, just use some cardboard.)

  3. Cut two wires as long as the distance you want the alarm to be from the trigger. Cut another wire about 3 inches (5 cm) long. Strip the plastic from about 3/4 inch (2 cm) of each end of all three wires.

  4. Twist one end of one of the long wires and one end of the short wire onto the metal tabs of the motor, taking care to ensure that they both make good contact with the tabs.

  5. Carefully push out the tabs.

  6. Cut two strips of duct tape about 1/2 inch (1 cm) wide.

  7. Arrange the dimes, one piece of duct tape, and the motor as shown. Make sure the motor is in the center and the dimes are equally spaced from it.

  8. Place the second piece of duct tape across the other side of the dimes and press the tape to secure everything. The tape and dimes should be able to spin freely.

  9. Put hot glue (not too much!) where each wire attaches to the motor and secure it all to the CD case so that the dimes touch the bicycle bell when they spin. Be sure to keep the glue away from the center shaft of the motor.

  10. Tape the free end of the short wire to one end of the battery and the other long wire to the opposite end of the battery. Make sure they make a good connection.

  11. Glue or tape the battery to the CD case, and the alarm’s complete!

  THE FINAL STEPS

  1. For the trigger, fold the exposed end of one long wire over a popsicle stick and glue it in place as shown. Repeat with the other long wire and popsicle stick.

  2. Wrap a small piece of aluminum foil around the end of each stick, making certain it touches the wire. This will help ensure that the sticks have good contact when the alarm is tripped.

  3. Loosely wrap the rubber band around the center of the popsicle sticks and place the pen cap between them as shown below. When the two wired ends of the sticks touch, the alarm sounds. That’ll get old real fast, so while you’re setting up the alarm you’ll probably want to put a piece of paper between the sheets of foil.

  4. Place the bait on the popsicle sticks so that the two active ends of the sticks separate. You might need to loosen the rubber band.

  5. When the thief takes the bait, the wired ends of the popsicle sticks will touch, completing the circuit and activating the motor. The dimes will begin spinning—and the bell will begin ringing.

  6. Hide nearby, listen for the alarm, and get ready to catch a thief!

  Nick and Tesla usually worked on their experiments and gadgets in the basement. When you’re wannabe inventors and you’ve got a real-life, honest-to-goodness laboratory in the house, you use it.

  Except when a possible spy’s there scrubbing scorched banana gunk out of an engine block, that is.

  Oli the apprentice was still with Uncle Newt in the basement. So Tesla stayed there only long enough to gather what she needed for the alarm.

  “I want to see if I can make a Barbie walk,” she said when Uncle Newt asked her why she needed a mini motor, duct tape, and wire.

  (Tesla did have a Barbie doll, but at the time it was under a pile of dirty clothes in her bedroom on the other side of the country.)

  She hurried upstairs, passing the maids, who were trying to figure out how to clean Spaghettios off the ceiling and how they got there in the first place. Then she and Nick got to work in their room.

  A long, frustrating hour passed before Tesla’s idea became a reality. Because Nick’s necklace and pendant were so light, they wouldn’t hold down the ends of the popsicle sticks (and keep the alarm from sounding prematurely) until the rubber band was loosened so much that it barely held the sticks together at all. But
on the twentieth try, Tesla was able to wind the band around the sticks with precisely the right amount of tightness … or so it seemed. She couldn’t be sure the whole thing wouldn’t fall apart the second she and Nick turned their backs.

  Nick apparently felt the same way.

  “You know, with your pendant gone, mine’s our last connection to Mom and Dad,” he said. “If those things are tracking devices, that means Agent McIntyre won’t be able to find us without them. We’re risking a lot on a trap that might not work.”

  “I know that, Nick,” Tesla said. “But what else are we gonna do? Just sit around waiting for Mom and Dad’s enemies to come grab us?”

  Nick thought it over and then sighed.

  “Yeah. I’d probably have a nervous breakdown that way anyhow. We may as well do something while we await our doom.”

  “Geez … way to keep things positive, Little Mr. Sunshine,” Tesla said. “Have some faith, would ya?”

  It was then that the rubber band came loose, the plastic cap holding the popsicle sticks apart rolled free, and the whole trigger mechanism collapsed.

  “You were saying … ?” Nick said to Tesla.

  “No biggie. I’ll just put the rubber band back on, and it’ll be good as new. Only take a sec.”

  As Tesla worked, she didn’t ask Nick if he’d changed his mind about her plan. She didn’t want to give him the chance to say yes.

  Rewinding the rubber band took more than a sec. It took a couple hundred. But eventually the alarm was ready again (Tesla hoped).

  That didn’t mean the trap was ready, though.

  “We know there’s someone in the house who’ll steal a pendant,” Nick said. “But how do we let him or her know there’s another pendant to steal?”

  Tesla was about to say the three words she hated most in the world—“I don’t know”—when she was saved by a sound from downstairs.

  The doorbell was ringing.

  “Maybe it’s a new suspect.” Tesla said. “We’ve had so many show up today, why not another?”

  Nick crossed his fingers as he followed his sister down the stairs.

  “Please be Agent McIntyre, please be Agent McIntyre, please be Agent McIntyre …”

  It wasn’t Agent McIntyre. It was Silas and DeMarco.

  “We came to apologize,” Silas said. He elbowed DeMarco. “Didn’t we?”

  “I’m sorry I laughed when you got splashed with mud,” DeMarco said. “And I shouldn’t have doubted you about …”

  He peered past Nick and Tesla.

  Ethel and Gladys were standing on the dining room table scrubbing the ceiling while Oli, still in his black suit and sunglasses, skulked around gathering bananas. From upstairs, the distant, muffled voice of Skip the exterminator could be heard saying, “Ugh! Argh! Get off me! Yuck!”

  “… the you-know-whats,” DeMarco whispered.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Tesla said, extra loud. “In fact, you came by at exactly the right moment. Nick was just saying he wanted to try your water-mud-stunt ramp himself.”

  Nick was about to say “I what?” but Tesla silenced him with a glare.

  “Really?” Silas said, completely missing the signal. “It’s not easy, man. DeMarco fell off four times before he finally made it to the bottom. I thought he was gonna break his neck!”

  “Sounds like fun … right, Nick?” Tesla said.

  Nick gritted his teeth.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Just the kind of thing I love.”

  “Well, let’s go then! Last one with a fracture’s a rotten egg!”

  Tesla shoved Nick toward Silas and DeMarco, then stepped out and closed the door behind them.

  “What was that all about?” DeMarco asked.

  “Someone stole my pendant this morning,” Tesla said. “Now we want to give them the chance to steal Nick’s.”

  “You do?” DeMarco said.

  Tesla stepped off the front porch and headed toward the street.

  “Come on. I’ll explain on the way.”

  Silas and DeMarco followed looking extremely confused.

  Nick followed looking extremely unhappy.

  He’d already figured out his sister’s plan.

  If the spy liked stealing things when people were in the shower, well, Nick was going to have to take another shower. Which meant he was going to need a reason to take another shower.

  The reason was waiting for him at the bottom of a slide in DeMarco’s backyard.

  Ten minutes later, the front door opened again, and something brown and gloppy and very, very grumpy stomped into the house.

  “Sorry about the floor!” Nick called to Gladys and Ethel, who gawked at him from atop the dining room table. “I’ll help clean it when I’m out of the shower!”

  As he started up the stairs, runny mud squishing in his pants with every step, he thought, This better work, Tesla. ’Cuz if it doesn’t, I’m gonna kill you.

  Tesla came in the back door laughing.

  “Ha ha! Hilarious!” she said.

  DeMarco was behind her.

  “Ho ho! Awesome!” he said.

  Silas came inside last.

  “Hee hee! I’m so glad I was there to see Nick try to go down the slide on a bike and fall into the mud and get so messy he had to come home and take off all his dirty things and immediately get in the shower!” he said.

  Tesla glowered at him.

  He gave her a grin and a big thumbs-up.

  Before they’d gone inside, Tesla had warned him not to lay it on too thick.

  Apparently, he thought he was being subtle.

  “So who wants something to drink?” Tesla said.

  She opened the refrigerator.

  “Me!” said DeMarco.

  “Me, too!” said Silas. “Say—why don’t we take our cool, refreshing beverages outside to enjoy in the warm summer sun? That way we won’t be in anyone’s way!”

  Tesla made a mental note: Next time (if there ever was a “next time” for trying to catch a spy), Silas wouldn’t be allowed to talk at all.

  She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of diet soda.

  “Whoa!” she cried, simultaneously jumping back and throwing the bottle at the fridge.

  “What’s wrong?” said DeMarco.

  “I don’t remember this part of the plan,” Silas whispered.

  “That’s because it’s not part of the plan,” Tesla hissed back at him. “Look.”

  She pointed at the refrigerator. Something was lurking behind the soda bottle.

  Slowly, cautiously, Silas and DeMarco came closer to look at it.

  “Creepy,” Silas said.

  “Cool,” said DeMarco.

  Lying on its back in a glass bowl was a small black spider. On its abdomen was a red hourglass.

  It was a black widow, one of the most poisonous spiders in the world. Right next to the ketchup.

  “It’s not moving,” DeMarco said.

  He kept getting closer.

  Silas didn’t.

  “Maybe it’s asleep,” Silas said. “Or playing dead.”

  “It’s not playing,” Tesla said. “It’s just dead.”

  “How do you know?” Silas asked.

  “My uncle told me and Nick he found a black widow and put it somewhere. We assumed he meant it was alive. But there’s no lid on that bowl to keep the spider from getting out. It must have been dead when Uncle Newt found it. Even he wouldn’t put a live black widow in the refrigerator in nothing but a bowl.” Tesla rubbed her chin pensively. “I think.”

  DeMarco was so close to the refrigerator now, he was practically inside it.

  “Ever seen one of these before?” he asked Tesla.

  “Only pictures,” she said, stepping up beside him.

  “Same with me. It’s hard to believe something that small could kill you.”

  DeMarco stretched a hand out toward the bowl.

  “Please tell me you’re not gonna touch it,” Silas moaned.

  �
�Why not? Tesla says it’s dead.”

  “Oh, well, if someone thinks it might be dead, then why not? There’s nothing gross or scary about touching dead things, right? Especially crazy-poisonous dead things. So, sure—help yourself. See what it tastes like while you’re at it.”

  DeMarco threw a scowl at his friend.

  “You’re taking all the fun out of this, you know.”

  When he turned around again, the spider was an inch from his face.

  Tesla had taken the bowl out of the refrigerator and was gently pushing one of it’s hairy legs.

  The other side of the spider’s body lifted up like a teeter-totter when Tesla pressed down on the leg.

  The little corpse was totally stiff.

  “You know, you’re right, Silas,” DeMarco said, taking a step back. “This is gross and scary.”

  Tesla walked the bowl over to the sink and turned on the tap.

  “You don’t have to drown it, Tez. It’s dead, remember?” Silas said. He scuttled back so far he ended up pressed against the wall. “Right?”

  “I’m not drowning it. I’m conducting an experiment.”

  She filled the little bowl with water, then brought it back to the refrigerator.

  “Yup,” DeMarco said, stealing another peek at the spider as Tesla went past. “They float, all right.”

  “That’s not the experiment.” Tesla put the bowl back where she’d found it and closed the fridge door. “All right, guys—let’s go outside.”

  “Right!” Silas said. “I’ve got an idea! Let’s play a loud, lively game that will keep us distracted while Nick finishes his shower!”

  He gave Tesla another thumbs-up before heading out the back door.

  Tesla changed her mind about trying to keep him quiet next time. If there ever was a next time, she’d just make him go home.

  “Whee ha ha hee!” Silas said. “Tag is so much fun!”

  He was standing on the back porch beside Tesla and DeMarco.

  “Nobody in the house can hear you, Silas,” DeMarco said.

  “So … I should be louder?”

  “No,” Tesla said.