With a triumphant wave, Miss Neversly floated out the door and up the stairs toward the ballroom, where the gang of Shipless Pirates was waiting for Little Bopeep.
She was hardly in the ballroom for a second when they got her.
The pirates caught her by the cheeses, put a sack over her head, and shuffled her out the door before any of the real guests even noticed her appearance. Not that the guests would have clapped or whistled for her anyway—the leg of lamb was undercooked, the punch tasted watery, and the gherkins smelled too garlicky. Several guests did notice the beautifully polished Luggertuck cutlery, however.
The pirates left by the French doors, then Luther left through the Front Hall, followed at a reasonable distance by Bump, Blight, Blemish, and Portnoy St. Pomfrey, the latter at last fully convinced that Luther was the key to finding the Lump.
In Which Luther Proposes . . .
Luther caught up to the pirates at the edge of the mire. (Bump, Blight, Blemish, and St. Pomfrey hid behind the Big Ugly Oak Tree and settled in to watch.)
The pirates had stolen lanterns on their way out of the garden, and these gave enough light for Luther to see their captive. She was still dressed in baby-blue ribbons and frilly white petticoats and still wore the sack over her head.
She fought and clawed and kicked so hard that the crew could barely keep ahold of her.
“All right,” Luther said to the sack. “It’s this simple. Either you agree to marry me or these pirates slit your throat and sink you in the mire.”
The captive squirmed and tried to speak, but the sack muffled her words.
“What’s this?” asked Captain Splinterlock. “You said she was a traitor to the Queen, not some girl who’s broken your barnacled heart!”
“Shut up, what do you care as long as you get paid?”
“Honor is more important than payment, sir,” roared Splinterlock, to the dismay of his crew. “Though I’ll note that we’ve seen no payment yet neither!”
“Here! Here!” Luther shouted, and handed over a large satchel. The pirates all grabbed for it at once.
Luther reached forward and began to undo the turnip sack.
“So, will you marry me or not?”
The sack came off and there, as you know but he didn’t, was Miss Neversly.
“Yes, yes, yes!” she cried. “You didn’t need to go to all this trouble. Of course I’ll marry you!”
In Which Things Get Worse and Worse and Worse for Luther . . .
Realizing that he had just proposed to Miss Neversly was the worst thing that had ever happened to Luther Luggertuck.
Seconds later, her acceptance became the new worst thing that had ever happened to him.
And exactly half a second after that, the even newer absolute worst thing was hearing one of the pirates say, “Cap’n, there’s no Lump in here!”
“Get me a plank!” roared Captain Splinterlock.
In Which a Plank Is Found . . .
“There’s nothing here but a bust of Napoleon,” snarled patch-eyed Lawrence, who peered into the satchel with disgust.
“Wait!” gasped Luther as Old Bart grabbed him and started squeezing the breath out of him. “The Lump is inside the bust!”
Crash! The bust, which was actually quite valuable, was immediately shattered on the ground. Even in the dim glow of the lanterns, it was clear that there was nothing inside but a crumpled piece of paper.
The patch-eyed man uncrumpled the paper and read aloud: “‘Monsieur Smedlap is really Luther Luggertuck, a mean, nasty, rude individual who eats Candied Quail Eggs while his servants eat gruel.’”
Luther was stunned, but the captain wasn’t.
“I said, get me a plank!” he bellowed.
“Why, here’s a plank right here,” cried Lawrence, the patch-eyed pirate.
And lo and behold, there really was a plank.
’Twas old and weathered, but the captain didn’t care. He was overjoyed to have a plank again.
“Get ready to walk, Smedlap or Luggertuck or whoever you are,” he boomed. “By the beams of my sunken ship, you’ll pay for your tricks and your lies! We thought we were catching a traitor, not helping you force yourself on a woman.”
“But I want to marry him,” cried Miss Neversly, to Luther’s horror.
“Irrelevant!” shouted the captain. “No one plays Lose-the-Lump with Captain Obediah Splinterlock! Old Bart, prepare the plank!”
Old Bart laid the plank over a particularly nasty, deep, muddy section of the mire. Then he shoved Luther toward the end of the plank.
“No, no, I love that man,” cried Miss Neversly, to Luther’s even greater horror.
Luther’s nasty, clever, Luggertuckian brain searched for a new Evil Plan.
“Perhaps,” thought Luther, “I could—”
But he was distracted by a nagging thought: Why was there a plank out here in the middle of nowhere? He couldn’t imagine why someone would carry a board all the way out here and then leave it, but somehow it seemed familiar . . .
He remembered just as Old Bart gave him a hard kick in the backside. He stumbled forward, teetered for a second on the edge of the plank, and waved his arms in a bid for balance that finally failed.
A disgusting muddy gulp was heard as the mire swallowed him whole.
In Which Portnoy St. Pomfrey Finally Gets It Right . . .
After seeing Luther disappear off the edge of the plank, Bump, Blight, Blemish, and St. Pomfrey left their hiding place and snuck back to the castle. They figured, rightly, that Miss Neversly could take care of herself.
“Egads,” whispered St. Pomfrey, pathetically trying to figure out what was happening. “Luther didn’t have the Lump after all!”
“Of course not,” whispered Bump. “I have it here in my pocket.”
“What?” croaked St. Pomfrey.
“Yes, see, here it is,” said Bump, and he held up the Lump, which did not glow mysteriously in the moonlight.
St. Pomfrey gazed at it in wonder nonetheless.
“Where was it? How did you know where to find it?”
“Well, sir, I thought about all the things that Luther stole and why,” said Bump.
“He stole the wig and the monocle to use as a disguise.
“He stole the stationery to write a letter to the pirates.
“He stole the keys from Old Crotty so that he could sneak around using secret passages, like the one behind Hercules’s Armpit. He stole the Lump to pay the kidnappers. But why did he steal the bust of Napoleon and, more importantly, why did he return it?”
A dramatic pause ensued.
“Well,” the detective asked impatiently, “why?”
“Why, to hide the Lump in, of course. Once you—the most famous detective in England arrived—he couldn’t risk keeping the Lump in his own room or on his person, but he still needed to keep it handy.
“So, he stole the bust, hollowed it out, and stuffed the Lump inside.
“Then he hid it right above our noses on the mantel in the Front Hall, so that tonight when the kidnappers got Little Bo-peep, he could grab it quickly on his way out the door.”
St. Pomfrey interrupted.
“Yes, yes, we just saw him take Napoleon off the mantel. But why wasn’t the Lump inside it?”
“Because,” said Bump, “Blemish, Blight, and I had already visited Napoleon this afternoon and removed the Lump and inserted that note.”
And with that, he handed the Lump to the wide-eyed detective.
Bump, Blight, and Blemish shook hands to celebrate a job well done.
St. Pomfrey stared vacantly at the Lump for several minutes.
Finally, he said, “You boys are pretty good detectives. How would you like jobs with my detective agency in London?”
“Really?” cried all three boys at once.
“Absolutely!” said the detective, who knew the boys would work cheap.
“It does not, I hope, involve the shoveling of manure, does it?” asked Blemish.
“No, my boy, in fact I shall have to insist that none of you spend any more time around manure. You will be sleuthing for sultans, traveling to distant vistas, guesting in overdecorated English manors, and eating as much of your clients’ food as you can eat. The smell of dung simply will not fit in.”
This sounded mighty good to the boys. Pretty close to a dream come true. Of course they accepted St. Pomfrey’s offer.
“Fine, it’s all settled then,” said St. Pomfrey. “Of course, as employees of St. Pomfrey Detection, Inc., your share of the Lump reward naturally goes to the company treasury.”
(Reader, you will not be surprised to learn that the company treasury and St. Pomfrey’s personal bank account were one and the same.)
But Bump, Blight, and Blemish didn’t care. They were getting out of the stables at last.
“And I’m sure you’ll also understand that—for the good of the company—people must believe that I, Portnoy St. Pomfrey, the greatest detective in all of England, solved the case. I regret that I must take all the credit when we return to the manor, but I must. I must.”
In Which M’Lady Luggertuck Almost Gets Her Lump Back . . .
St. Pomfrey, with the stable boys close behind, made a grand entrance back at the costume ball, just as the clock struck midnight.
“M’Lady Luggertuck, I bring you the Lump, stolen by your own son and rescued by me from his murderers at enormous risk to myself and my associates, requiring the doubling of my fee,” he pronounced grandiloquently, ostentatiously, and falsely.
He presented the Lump with a grand flourish.
Unfortunately, his fingers, damp from his evening in the mire, lost their grip on the heavy stone as he flourished. The Lump slipped away and sailed through the air.
M’Lady Luggertuck, overlooking the news that her son had been murdered, screamed, “My Lump!”
The assembled guests gasped. The musicians stopped playing, all except a tuba player whose instrument let out a long “bluuuuuuuug.”
The Lump’s graceful arc ended with a dull thud on the polished ballroom floor. It made a morose tinkle as it shattered into a hundred pieces of ordinary rock. It was not and had never been the world’s biggest uncut diamond.
The pride of ten generations of Luggertucks was worthless.
M’Lady fainted. Sir Luggertuck fainted. Crotty fainted. The colonel, who had been dozing in a chair, woke up, was told what had happened, and then fainted.
Gateberry, Howbag, and Hillhemp—peeking through a window—realized that they were witnessing the greatest story of their careers and fainted.
Faintings, Reader, are not all created equal. The colonel’s faint, for example, was just a little flop. Crotty’s was a crumple.
M’Lady Luggertuck’s faint ’twas neither a little flop nor a crumple—’twas the toppling of a titan, already top heavy because of her monstrous wig. Guests ran for safety as she teetered first one way, then the next.
Reader, I fear I must pause here before M’Lady falls to discuss Miss Neversly’s Pickle Éclairs. They were pale green and gross and, since not a single one had been sampled by a guest, they were still piled high on a platter that sat at one end of the pickle table.
I needed to tell you that because when M’Lady Luggertuck fainted, it was upon the opposite end of the aforementioned pickle table that she landed with all the force of a felled tree.
That caused the Éclair end of the aforementioned pickle table to rise suddenly. Which led, inevitably, to the platter of Miss Neversly’s Pickle Éclairs being launched high into the air.
Up, up, up they soared—almost touching the dazzling chandelier—before gravity returned them speedily down, down, down to earth.
Thwack, thwack, thwack. They rained down upon the guests, who desperately sought shelter under chairs, credenzas, and servants.
I’m not sorry to say that the final Éclair landed with a particularly loud thwack right in the middle of M’Lady Luggertuck’s forehead, dislodging her wig and revealing her gray hair for all to see. It was a mercy, really, that she was unconscious.
Lord Emberly, who had come to the ball only to get some of Loafburton’s Royal Rum Plum Rumpus, laughed and laughed until tears ran down his whiskers.
In Which M’Lady Goes to Bed Early . . .
Crotty was revived by the adoring Footman Jennings. Together they helped M’Lady Luggertuck back to her room. She did not return to the ball.
The new maid, Milly, now painfully aware of what life at Smugwick Manor was really like, grudgingly slunk forward with a mop and bucket to clean up the soggy clumps of green Éclair.
“Allow me to help,” came a kindly voice. Well, Lord-Love-a-Duck! It was Montgomery!
He took the mop from Milly, who smiled and blushed and batted her eyelashes. (Reader, I’m as flabbergasted as you are! Love really did bloom for Montgomery after all. Who would have guessed it?)
The musicians began to play again, although they were nearly drowned out by all the guests gossiping about the Luggertucks’ humiliation. This would be the talk of the season.
Horton and Celia, who had watched the whole thing through the French doors, entered the ballroom to talk to Bump, Blight, and Blemish. Horton was dying to find out where the Lump had been hidden. Bump was dying to find out how Miss Neversly came to be dressed as Little Bo-peep.
They supplied each other with the pertinent facts, while everyone, including Horton, ate several helpings of Sweet Sugarapple Pie. Bump, Blight, and Blemish went off to ring the purple bell, so that all the servants could join what had surprisingly turned out to be a very nice evening at Smugwick Manor.
In Which Two Young People Finally Get a Moment of Peace in Which to Speak Pleasantly to Each Other . . .
Celia introduced Horton to the Shortleys, who quite liked him and said they would be delighted to have him as their guest for the rest of the summer.
“Why, you may as well ride back with us in the carriage this very night,” suggested Mrs. Shortley.
That wouldn’t be proper, Horton knew, and he was about to say so when Mr. Shortley started talking.
“By the way, young Halfpott,” said Mr. Shortley. “I was very sorry to hear from Celia about your father’s poor health. He and I were at school together, you know. I asked my personal physician to drop round and see him. The doctor confided to me that he has begun a promising treatment of medicines and hopes to see a rapid improvement.”
Horton, both grateful and confused, barely had time to say thank you before the Shortleys waltzed away to join in the latest dance.
“Would you like to dance, Horton?” asked Celia.
She was beaming, but Horton felt terrible. He felt he had misled Celia and the Shortleys. He knew it was time to say what should have been said long ago.
“Er, don’t you realize that I can’t dance with you? And I can’t stay with the Shortleys? I’m just a servant. A kitchen boy. I shouldn’t even be talking to you.”
“But that’s not true,” Celia protested.
“Yes,” argued Horton. “Yes, I am.”
“No, Horton,” said Celia, laughing. “I don’t think you really are a kitchen boy anymore. Or at least you won’t be tomorrow morning when M’Lady Luggertuck wakes up and figures out what happened. I seriously doubt she’ll want you working in her kitchen after this.”
(This turned out to be an understatement of enormous magnitude.)
“And anyway, I don’t care if you work in a kitchen or not,” said Celia. “You’re a friend of mine and that’s all that matters.”
And lo and behold, Reader, she kissed him.
Now, she meant to just kiss him on the cheek, but by some little accident her lips went astray and landed upon his. Please, may we dwell on that for just a moment? It was the first kiss she ever gave and the first he ever got and neither one of them ever forgot exactly what it felt like.
Then they danced—or at least Horton attempted to. He wasn’t doing well to start with and then he stepped in one of the sp
lattered éclairs.
But no matter! They laughed and talked and—yes, I will say it—kissed again.
Horton was very, very happy and that is the last and best Unprecedented Marvel of our story.
In Which M’Lady Luggertuck Gives Crotty Instructions Regarding Her Corset . . .
The next morning, M’Lady Luggertuck awoke to learn that her son, Luther, was not dead. He had been found half-drowned, humiliated, and thoroughly covered in stinking, putrid mire mud. The footmen were giving him a good scrub in the horse trough, Crotty told her.
The Lump, however, was still as worthless as it had been last night.
M’Lady Luggertuck showed no emotion at either of these facts. She sat wordlessly as Crotty dressed her.
Finally, as Crotty put the corset on, she spoke: “Tighter, Crotty, tighter.”
Charles Dickens inspired this story. Cece Bell and Robbie Mayes helped me write it. Caryn Wiseman found a home for it. Susan Van Metre believed in it and knew how to make it better. Gilbert Ford, Chad W. Beckerman, and Melissa Arnst made it beautiful. Jason Wells and Laura Mihalick figured out how to tell everybody about it.
From there, librarians, teachers, booksellers, and bloggers endeavoured to put it into your hands.
I thank all of them and I thank you, dear Reader, for opening it.
Tom Angleberger once worked as a kitchen boy— forced to grease potatoes, spoon up cobblers, and make forty pounds of coleslaw a night for a big restaurant. He later worked with the real Hillhemp, Howbag, and Gateberry at a newspaper. But now he writes books, including The Strange Case of Origami Yoda.
Many authors helped inspire Tom to write the story of Horton Halfpott, and you may find some of their names in the book, if you look carefully enough. Most important were Charles Dickens, who is funnier than you would think, and Daniel Pinkwater, who is funnier than a pickle éclair. Tom lives in Virginia, and he hopes, dear Reader, that you will visit him online at www.hortonhalfpott.com.
Horton Halfpott; Or, the Fiendish Mystery of Smugwick Manor; Or, the Loosening of M’Lady Luggertuck’s Corset Page 10