Alvin Fernald, Superweasel

by Clifford B. Hicks

  The guard stopped directly beneath the three figures perched atop the fence.

  “Hic!”

  Chapter 4

  Superweasel Strikes!

  The guard stopped abruptly; his figure froze.

  Alvin was looking directly down at the top of the man’s cap. The flashlight came on and swept around in a big circle. Even after it winked off Alvin could still see the man clearly. Would he look up? Time stood still — and so did four human figures, one on the ground and three directly above.

  Finally the guard pushed his cap to the back of his head, scratched his forehead, and seemed to relax. He whistled softly to himself. At last he sauntered off toward the factory, and disappeared around the corner of the building.

  “Hic!” Alvin almost exploded.

  There’s scum upon the water,

  And we’re here upon the fence;

  We’d be home in bed this minute.

  With an ounce of common sense.

  “Quiet!” ordered Alvin. “Poems aren’t funny right now. We’ve got to get down from here. After I climb down inside the fence, you lower the bucket to me, Shoie. Then Superweasel will go to work.”

  His heart still pounding from their close call, Alvin climbed down the fence and dropped to the ground. Almost instantly the bucket came sailing down and hit him on the head. The thick liquid sloshed out, and he felt big drops of it running down inside his shirt.

  “Gaaaaaarrrrg!” He could hardly breathe. He grabbed the rope and lowered the bucket to the ground.

  Shoie and the Pest dropped to the ground beside him. Quickly Shoie untied the rope, and the Pest coiled it around her slim body again.

  Alvin took a deep breath to clear the fumes from his head. Despite their close call, he was surprised they had conquered the fence so easily. On the ground, still in the shadow of the chimney, Alvin motioned to the others to follow, then crept over to the building. Cautiously he poked his head around the corner. There was the guard, now quite a distance away, sauntering toward the main gate.

  Alvin had no way of knowing whether there were other watchmen in the plant, but Superweasel had to take a chance — now or never. Quickly he darted to a side door of the building. If the doors were all locked and required the watchman’s keys, then all their work so far would be in vain.

  He tried to push the door inward; it was as solid as a tomb. Turning the knob, he pulled it toward him, and uttered a soft sigh as the door swung outward.

  The three kids darted in, and Alvin quickly swung the door shut behind them. Shoie was not quite through the door, and the edge of it struck the bucket. The liquid sloshed across Shoie’s pants.

  The awful odor, now so familiar, wafted up to their nostrils.

  “Doggone it!” Shoie was angry. “I’m beginning to smell like a sewer!”

  “Uggggggh!” said the Pest.

  “How’d you like to have that stuff poured down the back of your neck?” Alvin whispered. He risked switching on the flashlight. The bucket was a quarter-full of the dirty yellow stuff. He held his hand over the flashlight so only a tiny beam showed. “Follow me,” he hissed.

  They went up three steps, then crossed a large area with a fancy desk and switchboard at the end. A long hall stretched straight ahead, with doors on each side.

  “I think we’re in the offices,” said Alvin.

  “In the offices,” echoed the Pest, her little voice high and scared.

  They crept down the corridor, Shoie bringing up the rear with the bucket. At the end, they came to a pair of big glass doors. Beyond, they could hear water splashing. Alvin shined the beam of light on the doors. “Executive offices,” he whispered, reading the fancy gold letters.

  He pushed open one of the doors and went inside, stumbling over the thick carpeting. Again he risked shining the beam around the room. They were in another reception room, but here the furniture was the very finest; huge paintings hung on the walls. In the center of the room was a beautiful little statue, the miniature figure of a graceful woman pouring water from a jar. And it was real water that splashed down into the crystal-clear pool at her feet.

  “Perfect!” exclaimed Alvin.

  “What’s perfect?” asked Shoie.

  “The fountain. We’ll dump the stuff into the pool.”

  “Won’t it run right out the drain?” asked the Pest.

  “No, Pest. This must be what they call a recirculating fountain. That means the water in the pool is pumped up through the statue, runs out through the lady’s jar, back into the pool, and is pumped right back up again. The same water is used over and over.”

  “Over and over,” repeated the Pest.

  “Great!” whispered Shoie. “I can see what you mean.”

  Alvin took the bucket from Shoie, and handed him the flashlight. With the others watching, he poured every drop of the murky yellow stuff into the pool, turning the water yellow. Alvin began to gag. He held his breath as long as he could, then risked a deep breath. By now the polluted water was pouring in a steady stream from the jar the woman held in her hands, and the sharp smell was seeping through the room. Shoie flicked the beam of light into the woman’s face. Alvin had the distinct impression that she was turning up her nose at the stench.

  “Let’s get out of here!” gasped Shoie.

  “Out of here!”

  “Wait!” said Alvin. He grabbed the flashlight and handed Shoie the empty bucket. “Come with me.” Alvin retreated from the pool to a desk at the corner of the room. Gulping in a few breaths of fresher air, he found a sheet of paper on top of the desk, along with a big felt-tip marker. Across the paper he scrawled:

  SUPERWEASEL HAS STRUCK! THE SMELL YOU SMELL IS THE POLUTION YOU ARE DUMPING INTO WEASEL RIVER. BEWARE, ALL CRIMINALS WHO POISEN OUR PLANET. SUPERWEASEL WILL FIND YOU AND STRIKE AGAIN!

  SUPERWEASEL

  “You never were a very good speller, Alvin,” said the Pest critically.

  Alvin found some tape on the desk and, holding his breath, walked over to the statue. He taped the sign to the lady’s neck. For a moment he stepped back and surveyed his work. In his opinion the sign improved the lady; she certainly wasn’t wearing many clothes. Then, coughing and sputtering, he retreated across the room.

  At that moment he heard the creak of a door somewhere within the building...

  The kids froze.

  Then Alvin Fernald sprang into action. He swept the flashlight around the room and spotted a door with “Randolph E. Biggs, President” lettered across it in fancy gold. “Follow me,” he hissed. He opened the door and slipped inside. The Pest followed, then Shoie, who banged the bucket against the door on the way through.

  “Ssssshhh!” Alvin eased the door shut.

  A moment later they heard the door to the outer office open, then a gasping cough.

  “Good Lord!” a man’s voice said.

  Alvin could imagine the night watchman reading the sign on the statue. Suddenly there was movement on the other side of the door, the click of a phone picked up, the whirrrr of the dial.

  “Hello, Mr. Biggs.” Then a cough. “This is Berger, the watchman at the plant. Sorry to bother you this time of night, sir, but I thought you should know that something funny’s going on here...” The man sniffed, then coughed ... “Somebody’s been in your outer office. I’m going to check your private office next ... Yes, sir. I’ll meet you at the front gate.”

  Alvin heard the slam of the receiver, then the soft shuffle of footsteps in the thick carpet. The man was coming straight toward them!

  He pulled the other kids flat against the wall. The door swung slowly open, with the kids behind it. There was a click, and the room suddenly was flooded with light. A long moment of silence, then the light clicked off and the door closed again.

  “Hic!” Alvin clapped his hand over his mouth. Surely the guard had heard him. Then, with relief, he heard the outer door close. Shoie and the Pest stirred beside him. “Wait,” he whispered.

  Nerves on edge, he forced himself
to count to one hundred by fives. Only then did he open the door. He slipped across the reception room, and eased open the door to the hallway. At the far end a bobbing circle of light vanished as he watched. The guard had turned a corner of the corridor.

  The three kids slipped like shadows down the hallway. At the far end, Alvin opened the door through which they had entered the building. The guard was still ahead of them, now hurrying across the paved area toward the front gate.

  Alvin sprinted toward the fence where the shadow of the chimney cut across it. Halfway there, Shoie and the Pest passed him as though he was standing still.

  The others were halfway up the wire mesh by the time he reached it. He was still breathing hard and struggling upward when Shoie spoke into the night air.

  “Holy smoke!”

  “What’s the matter?” Alvin clawed his way to the top, and all three figures momentarily hung there as though suspended in the middle of the night.

  “I forgot the bucket! It’s back in Mr. Bigg’s office.”

  “Well of all the stupid —” Alvin let the sentence hang, his heart sinking. He knew that the bucket might be eventually traced to his house. His fingerprints were all over it, and so were Shoie’s.

  The Magnificent Brain suddenly flashed a picture of Alvin in prison serving a ninety-nine-year-term for breaking and entering, trespassing, damaging property, vandalism and a dozen other charges.

  The purr of a powerful automobile engine shook the picture from his mind. The front gate clanged open.

  “We’ve got to get out of here!” said Alvin, starting to climb down the other side of the fence.

  There was a shout from the direction of the front gate, then the clatter of footsteps on the pavement. Alvin dropped the last five feet to the ground and raced toward the river. Shoie and the Pest had already disappeared over the edge of the bank.

  There was another shout behind him. Alvin was certain he’d been spotted. He expected to hear the sound of a gun at any moment. At last he tumbled into the relative safety of the creek bed. The odor here was as awful as ever, but he preferred it to poking his head back up into the night air.

  Superweasel had struck — and probably had made a real mess of things in more ways than one!

  Chapter 5

  A Strategy Meeting

  There it was, in a big, bold headline:

  MYSTERY BREAK-IN AT CHEMICAL PLANT

  The three individual parts of Superweasel were again in Alvin’s bedroom, seated side by side on the edge of the bed, pulling the afternoon paper this way and that. Finally the Pest said, “Go ahead, Alvin. You read it aloud.”

  Alvin cleared his throat as though he were about to make an important announcement, then began:

  One or more persons, for reasons not yet known, broke into the Biggs Chemical plant last night, according to Police Chief Robert C. Eaton.

  “Burglary was not the motive,” Chief Eaton stated flatly. “Nothing was taken. The criminal was obviously very clever — much more resourceful than the average burglar. As yet we have not determined how he gained access to the plant. The Biggs factory is completely encircled by a high wire fence which is fully floodlighted at night. Anyone attempting to scale the fence would have been seen by one of the night guards.”

  The criminal or criminals left three items of evidence behind:

  1. A dented bucket of unknown origin. The police say this may provide fingerprints or other clues.

  2. A particularly bad-smelling substance, dirty yellowish in color, which was poured into a small decorative fountain in the middle of the executive reception room. Police theorize that this substance was brought to the fountain inside the bucket. The substance had such a nauseating odor that the executive offices at the plant could not be used today.

  3. A sign, draped around a statuette in the fountain, which read:

  SUPERWEASEL HAS STRUCK! THE SMELL YOU SMELL IS THE POLLUTION YOU ARE DUMPING INTO WEASEL RIVER. BEWARE, ALL CRIMINALS WHO POISON OUR PLANET. SUPERWEASEL WILL FIND YOU AND STRIKE AGAIN!

  SUPERWEASEL

  “Look, Alvin,” interrupted the Pest, her blue eyes shining with excitement, “they corrected your misspelled words.”

  Alvin ignored her, and went on reading:

  When a reporter for the Daily Bugle contacted Randolph E. Biggs, owner and manager of the chemical plant, he stated that he had no idea why anyone would want to break into the plant, nor the nature of the mysterious substance dumped into the pool.

  “It is obvious we are dealing with a sick mind, indeed a criminal mind,” said Mr. Biggs. “Anyone who would dump such a foul-smelling substance anywhere near other human beings is a vandal. I intend to prosecute this so-called ‘Superweasel’ to the very limit of the law.

  “He probably is someone who is a nut on ecology,” went on Mr. Biggs, “but there is not the slightest reason for him to declare private war on our company. We are proud of our efforts to protect Riverton’s environment, and are extremely careful never to pollute the air, soil, or water.”

  “Hogwash!” exclaimed Shoie.

  The Pest was so angry that she leaped to her feet and stuck her tongue out at the newspaper.

  “Wait,” said Alvin. “There’s one more paragraph.”

  The Daily Bugle, with its private contacts, has made every effort to determine the identity of ‘Superweasel,’ but with no success. Anyone knowing his identity is urgently requested to call the City Desk of the Bugle immediately, in view of Superweasel’s stated threat to strike again.

  “You’re doggone right Superweasel will strike again!” exclaimed Shoie. “We’re not going to let that guy Biggs get away with all his sweet talk while he’s ruining the river!”

  “Ruining the river!” said the Pest.

  “Calm down, you guys. Of course we’re not going to let him get away with it, and of course Superweasel will strike again. The sooner the better. Actually, this news story is great. It’s exactly what we needed to give Superweasel a rousing start in his battle against polluters. Now, everyone will be talking about Superweasel. Anything he does from now on will be big news.”

  “Well, what are we going to do?” asked Shoie.

  Alvin ran the question through the Magnificent Brain. He was just beginning to get some results when the Pest suddenly tossed her hair, closed her eyes and recited:

  The Weasel needs some super ways

  To fight the town’s pollution;

  So try your best, you two nitwits

  To find the best solution.

  “That’s awful,” said Shoie.

  “I never agreed with you more, old bean,” said Alvin. “Besides, Pest, you threw the Magnificent Brain out of whack.” He pulled on his ear. “Do either of you have any good ideas?”

  There was a long pause, then Shoie said, “We could probably find some dead fish floating in the river down below the dam. Superweasel could do something with them.”

  “Not bad,” said Alvin thoughtfully. “Not bad at all. The dead fish would prove that the chemical plant is killing wildlife. But what could we do with dead fish that would cause a lot of excitement — and get Superweasel some more attention?”

  Another long pause. Then the Pest piped up. “We could throw them into the secretarial pool,” she offered.

  Alvin started to laugh. “Pest,” he gasped, “What do you know about the secretarial pool?”

  “Well,” she said, now embarrassed, “in school, we’ve been studying the different kinds of jobs, and all big companies have a secretarial pool. The secretaries swim in it...”

  Alvin interrupted her. “That’s a good one, oh, that’s a prize! Pest, a secretarial pool is a group of secretaries. Whenever one of the bosses needs a secretary, he just calls the secretarial pool and asks for a secretary.”

  The Pest looked down at her sneakers. “Well. Well, it’s not such a bad idea anyway. I’ll bet if we tossed some dead fish in among all those secretaries we could cause a lot of excitement.”

  A thoughtful look cr
ossed Alvin’s face. “Speaking of pools,” he said, “you may have a good idea, Pest. The Biggs family has the biggest swimming pool in town. And it’s heated, so they are already using it. Maybe a few dead fish in his swimming pool would make Mr. Biggs admit what he’s done to the fish in Weasel River and the pond.”

  “Great!” said Shoie.

  “It’s not a bad idea,” said Alvin thoughtfully, “but not really a good one, either. Mr. Biggs probably would clean out the fish without saying anything, and no one would know that Superweasel had struck again. No, we need something even better.” A pause. “We’ve got to figure out some way to get Biggs to close up that sewer running into the river.”

  Shoie usually left the great ideas to Alvin, but suddenly he could hardly wait to talk. “I’ve got it! From what you just said, Alvin! Why don’t we dam up that sewer?”

  Alvin’s eyes opened wide. He reached out and pounded Shoie on the back. “Old bean, I always knew you had a great brain, too. If we can dam up that drainpipe, then that lousy yellow stuff will back up until it begins to flood the factory grounds. And Biggs won’t even realize what is happening until suddenly his whole factory will smell like the Weasel River. Do you suppose we can plug that pipe, and somehow let people know it was Superweasel who did it?”

  “Superweasel can do anything,” declared Shoie, proud of his idea.

  “I still like the other idea — about the dead fish in Mr. Biggs’s swimming pool,” said the Pest stubbornly.

  “Okay,” announced Alvin. “Pest, you toss the dead fish in the swimming pool while Shoie and I are damming the sewer pipe. That way Superweasel will strike in two places at the same time. Agreed?”

  “Right!” the other two said enthusiastically.

  “Then we have some planning to do. Let’s make a list of everything we need. Pest, hand me a pencil and paper off the desk...”

  His little sister didn’t respond. She sat motionless, a faraway look in her eyes. Alvin bonked her on the head. “Wake up, Sis.”

  He hardly ever called her Sis. When he did, it was to express a fondness for her that he didn’t want to put into words.