The Splendid Baron Submarine

by Eric Bower

  P and Rose grumbled for a bit about mansions and vacations and savings bonds and unusual hats, but, eventually, they agreed that it was the right thing to do. Finding the treasure was an adventure, but returning it to its rightful owners was what a real hero would do.

  A quick trip to the library revealed that most of Captain Affect’s stolen loot belonged to about a dozen different wealthy families in Europe, some of whom were actual royalty. After telling zorple-headed Aunt Dorcas that we were abandoning her for a few more weeks, we boarded our biggened Air Oh! Plane and flew to Europe with the treasure.

  At first we had a bit of trouble getting into the castles to speak with some of the kings and queens who were the rightful owners of the treasure. Their guards didn’t want to let us inside, even after we asked them nicely and complimented them on the strange hats they wore (P loved all of the royal guards’ hats so much that he bought twenty of them to take home). But once the guards finally informed the royals that we wanted to give them priceless treasure, they happily invited us inside.

  The first royal we visited lived in England. England was a wonderful country. In fact, it was probably my favorite country that we visited. Everyone was very kind and generous. In order to make us feel like we were at home, they all spoke nothing but English to us. Can you believe it? What a swell bunch of people. The Queen of England gladly accepted the golden crown and rubies and emeralds that Captain Affect had stolen from her ancestor, a woman by the name of Mary Stuart. I told her that there was a girl at my school who was also named Mary Stuart, but for some reason, the queen was not amused by that. Or by anything else, really . . .

  A large part of the treasure was returned to the man who was king of both Sweden and Norway, who introduced himself simply as Oscar. Oscar and my father got along terrifically, even though neither could understand what the other was saying because King Oscar only spoke Swedish and Norwegian, and my father only spoke English and monkey. But they were able to communicate through hand gestures and grins, and through wiggling around the little fish that we were served for lunch. At the end of the visit they exchanged hats and promised to remain the closest of friends.

  We continued across Europe to return stolen treasure to King Alfonso of Spain, King Christian of Denmark (whose giant mustache reminded me of my friend’s father’s mustache, which was actually two beaver tails glued to his face), Prince Albert of Monaco, as well as several other rich families that clearly didn’t need the treasure, but, once they saw it, they swore they couldn’t live without it.

  The last of the treasure belonged to a rich woman who lived in Belgium. She had a mansion the size of a small city, with dozens of servants who were constantly bustling about. Some of them were actually paid to do nothing more than bustle, which they did with vigor. I suppose if you hire someone to bustle for you, you want them to bustle with vigor. What’s the point of a vigorless bustler?

  When we showed up at her mansion to present her with a bag full of gold coins (which my family could have used to buy everyone in the town of Pitchfork a new house and a steak dinner), she had yawned before tossing the bag to one of her servants, a skinny man with a skinny mustache, dressed in a skinny white tuxedo.

  “Put this in the treasure room with the rest of my riches. Now go away. I think it’s time for my second afternoon nap . . . or is this my third afternoon nap . . . I can’t re . . .” she murmured before falling asleep on a giant satin pillow.

  The servant took the bag of gold coins to a room that was large enough to fit fifty full grown elephants (or one hundred baby elephants. I suppose it depends on the sort of elephants you want to keep). After emptying the coins from the bag into his hands, he climbed a ladder and placed the money onto one of the many toweringly tall piles of golden coins, golden piles which reminded me of the hills of desert sand surrounding the Baron Estate. It was a very impressive room. In fact, if someone were to ask me to imagine all of the world’s money, I would picture the contents of that room. There must have been millions of coins in there. Some of the piles were so tall that they appeared to be slowly swaying, ready to drop in an instant, creating an avalanche of gold that could literally drown you in riches.

  “Wowwee!” I said loudly as I stared at all of the gold coins. “How many coins do you have here?”

  The skinny servant quickly put his finger to his lips and shushed me from his place at the top of the ladder, letting me know that I would have to be quiet while I was in the treasure room. But then he answered my question, whispering to me while making hand gestures which were so elaborate, that at one point he accidentally tied his skinny fingers into a butterfly knot. He whispered a lot, going on and on and on, going into far more detail than I would have imagined possible for such a simple question.

  Unfortunately, the servant spoke only in French. So even though he was able to answer my question (I’m guessing he did?), as well as several additional questions that I hadn’t even asked (I’m assuming?), I was unable to understand any of his answers. But still, I wanted to be polite, so I acted appreciative anyway.

  “Thank you,” I whispered to him when he had finally finished. “I appreciate you talking so much. Please don’t do it anymore though. It was very boring and confusing.”

  “Je vous en prie,” he whispered back.

  “Gesundheit,” said my father. “Now, I think we should be going. We have a long trip back home, and I’m already quite sleepy. It’s time, everybody. LET’S GO!”

  The Belgian servant gasped. His eyes grew wide as he held his fingers up to his lips and hissed, begging us to stay quiet. And as P, M, Rose and I stepped out of the treasure room, I quickly realized why. The echo was quite powerful in that cavernous room, with the towering stacks of coins, and a little vibration had devastating effects.

  There was a rumbling noise, and I turned back just in time to see the Belgian servant knocked off his ladder and drowned in a crashing wave of gold coins.

  Poor guy.

  Though I suppose it could have been worse.

  It could have been squirrels.

  There Are Some Benefits to Being a Dunce

  And now here I am, sitting in the corner of the schoolhouse, with a pointy dunce cap on my head while whispering my story to a mouse named Howard.

  Howard was polite enough to listen the whole time, though I could tell from the expression on his face that he didn’t believe a word of what I was saying. I suppose it is pretty unbelievable. I mean, there’s no way that I would ever believe someone who told me that story. Unless they happened to have proof. Which I have.

  Let me explain.

  There was one part of Captain Affect’s treasure that we hadn’t been able to return to its rightful owner.

  The Wish Diamond.

  James Reavis (the fake Vice President) was absolutely right when he told us that it was the most stolen diamond in the history of the world. We performed hours and hours of research, but we still couldn’t figure out who its rightful owner was. We kept tracing the diamond back further and further in history. We followed it through the Renaissance, and the Dark Ages (which we learned were actually somewhat dimly lit because of the sparkles provided by the Wish Diamond), and even across the span of the Roman Empire. And it had been owned by people in every country in every continent in the world. It seemed as though the one thing uniting every person in history was that at one time, they had stolen the Wish Diamond.

  “I’m baffled,” M finally said as she dropped the oldest book in the library onto the table. “It says here that very little is known about the behavior of early cavemen, but we do know that one of their favorite games was stealing the Wish Diamond from each other.”

  “So are we supposed to find the first caveman or cavewoman and give them the diamond?” P asked.

  “I don’t think the first caveman or cavewoman would have much use for the diamond, Mr. Baron,” Rose told him.

  “
Don’t look now,” M whispered. “But the librarian has just spotted the diamond. And I can tell by the greedy look in her eye that she’s already planning on stealing it from us.”

  She was right. The sweet little old lady who had greeted us so kindly when we’d come into the library now looked as though she would gladly bash all of our brains in with her biggest book if it meant she had a chance to own that diamond. And it wasn’t just the librarian. The Wish Diamond had caught every eye in the room. Nice, polite, friendly, and decent people suddenly had wickedness in their eyes as they stared at the shimmering diamond that would make them filthy rich. I saw several people slink outside and peer at us through the back window. I imagined that some of them were planning on following us home to the Baron Estate, where they would do whatever they could to take ownership of the most beautiful diamond in history, even if it meant separating our heads from our bodies.

  My family huddled closely together and discussed what we should do next, when suddenly I felt a gentle tap on my shoulder. I ignored it at first, since I was distracted by thoughts of the Wish Diamond, but then I felt a very chilly and wet finger poke inside my ear.

  “Augghhhh,” I grimaced, turning around as I dried the inside of my ear. “Gross. Ghost spit.”

  The three ghosts smiled at me and waved. I noticed that each of them had a suitcase in his hand.

  “Well, we’re off,” one of the ghosts said proudly.

  “Yup,” said another ghost. “The treasure has been returned, and Captain Affect’s curse is now officially broken. We are finally free to move on to a better place.”

  “To Cleveland!” the third ghost said excitedly.

  “Congratulations,” I whispered. “But we haven’t returned the last part of the treasure yet. We’re still trying to find the rightful owner of the Wish Diamond. Do you have any idea who it is?”

  The ghosts laughed.

  “There is no original owner of the Wish Diamond. It’s been stolen so many times that every person in the world can rightly say that they are the true owner of it. It belongs to everyone and to no one.”

  “So what should we do with it?” I asked.

  The ghosts shrugged.

  “We can’t tell you that,” said one of them. “But whatever you decide, please be careful. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed for the Wish Diamond. It’s bad luck, and it turns good people into evil people in a heartbeat. Anyway, thanks for your help, kid.”

  “I’m sorry to say that since the curse is now broken, you won’t be turning into a ghost like us,” another ghost said. “It’s a shame. I think you would have been a pretty good one, W.B.”

  It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me. The ghosts all gave me a big, ghostly hug before they disappeared.

  “What about you, W.B.?” Rose asked. “What do you think we should do with the Wish Diamond? Also, are you hugging your invisible friend? Because that’s a little weird.”

  I thought for a moment, and then my brain did that funny thing it sometimes does in between being knocked around by my many trips, flips, falls, stumbles, bumbles, bumps, and thumps.

  It had an idea.

  “Hey, P?” I whispered. “May I please borrow your Shrinking Invention?”

  Howard the mouse watched with a curious expression as I reached into my pocket and pulled out a very unique and very tiny item no larger than a peanut, though it was the most sparkly and stunning peanut that the world had ever seen.

  It was actually the Wish Diamond, which I had shrunk.

  I told my parents that if we were to keep the Wish Diamond for ourselves, we would have to spend the rest of our lives trying to protect it from greedy thieves. And what fun would that be? We could attempt to sell it, but I knew we wouldn’t be able to. Why would anyone buy the diamond from us when they could save their money and just steal it from us instead? That’s why no one had ever successfully sold the Wish Diamond before. It was too beautiful to be sold.

  M handed me the diamond, and P handed me his Shrinking Invention. He had successfully adjusted the invention the previous day, so that it could shrink things to very specific sizes, which was necessary for me to carry out my plan.

  “Of course we trust you, son,” M said as she grinned. “After all, you’re the one who risked his life to rescue that treasure from the bottom of the sea in the first place. You should decide what happens to the last part of it.”

  Rose Blackwood sighed as she nodded her head.

  “I suppose that’s fair,” she said. “But next time we find a priceless treasure, can I be the one who decides what we do with it?”

  With my parents and Rose shielding me from the prying eyes of the library patrons, I pressed the button at the end of the Shrinking Invention and shrunk the Wish Diamond to the size of a peanut. I hid it in my mouth.

  When the librarian and the greedy crowd approached us as we were leaving, P told them that we no longer had the diamond, and if they needed proof, then they could search us.

  Apparently, they needed proof. They grabbed us and turned us upside down, trying to shake the diamond out of us. They made us turn our pockets inside out. Rose emptied her handbag, and P emptied his cap. But of course, there was no diamond to be found.

  “Where did you put it?” the librarian demanded, waving her fist in our faces. “We all saw that you had it in there! It was as big as a cannonball! Give it to me or I’ll knock all of your teeth out! I’ll rip your noses off and bury them in your backyard! I’ll turn your skin inside out and cover you in salt!”

  “We hid it,” Rose told her with a wink, “somewhere in your library. First person to find it gets to keep it.”

  In a flash, the librarian and the rest of the crowd rushed back inside the library and began to tear it apart, shelf by shelf, wall by wall, in search of the diamond which was currently wedged behind my back teeth.

  The next day, the whole town of Pitchfork gathered together to repair the torn-apart library. And as they rebuilt it, everyone kept a watchful eye on everyone else, just in case they happened to spot something that sparkled in the rubble.

  I had brought the diamond to school so I could show it to the class while I gave my report on what I’d done over my summer vacation. It was proof that everything I told them was the absolute truth.

  Unfortunately, Miss Danielle was not interested in the truth, because the truth was too weird. The truth is often too weird when it comes to my family. So she made me sit in the corner and put on my dunce cap before I had the chance to show the little diamond to everyone. Which was a shame. I really wanted them all to have a chance to see it before I did what I did next.

  “Here you go,” I said to Howard, holding the shrunken Wish Diamond out to my little mouse friend. “Take it. It’s yours.”

  Howard blinked twice as he turned his little mouse head to the side, uncertain if I was being serious or not. When he realized that I wasn’t joking, Howard reached out and took the diamond before disappearing into his little hole in the wall. I imagined he was excited to show it to the other Howards, or maybe he was just going to stuff it into a little mouse closet for safekeeping. Either way, for the first time in history, the Wish Diamond had been given away instead of stolen. And that had to count for something, right?

  Right?

  Oh my goodness, did I just make a horrible mistake?

  No. No, I didn’t. I did the right thing.

  . . . Didn’t I?

  I turned around to see what the rest of the class was doing and found that the classroom was empty. I looked at the clock on the wall and saw that school had ended almost an hour ago. I suppose Miss Danielle forgot to tell me. Or maybe she did tell me, but I was too busy whispering my story to Howard to pay attention.

  I stood up and went to my desk, where I gathered all of my books and pencils and put them into my book bag. After stumbling over my chair and b
onking my face against the wall, I gracefully made my way out of the classroom.

  The sun was still shining brightly in the sky. It was Friday, which meant I’d have all day tomorrow and Sunday to join my parents in whatever their new adventure might be. P had recently invented something he called a Doppelgänger Device, and I was dying to know what it did. I didn’t have a scientific brain, but I had recently discovered that I have a very curious brain, which wasn’t too shabby a brain to have.

  As I made my way down the schoolhouse stairs, preparing for my long walk across the Pitchfork Desert to the Baron Estate, I spied something rather strange scuttling by. At first I wasn’t quite certain what it was, but once my brain understood what my eyes were seeing, I realized that it was a squirrel carrying a diamond peanut. And since there is no such thing as a diamond peanut, I realized that it was actually the shrunken Wish Diamond that I had given to Howard the mouse.

  I heard a thin, shrieking noise, and saw little Howard scampering down the schoolhouse steps, waving his angry little fist at the squirrel, which had clearly just stolen his diamond. He was followed by all of the other little Howards, who also waved their angry little mouse fists at the thief. The squirrel cackled happily as it made a mad dash for the nearest tree while staring at its new tiny treasure.

  The squirrel (why is it always squirrels?) was staring at the diamond so intently, that it accidentally ran headfirst into the tree, knocking itself unconscious.

  The Howards, seeing their chance to regain their treasure, hopped off the bottom step of the schoolhouse and scurried across the dirt towards the diamond. But when the Howards were two mouse-lengths away from the diamond, a little green lizard appeared out of nowhere and snatched the Wish Diamond up with its teeth.

  The squirrel had regained consciousness, and he and the Howards began to chase the lizard, which had already started to run towards the desert where it could enjoy its newly stolen prize.