by Rusalka Reh
Suddenly Darius’s eyes narrow to slits. Then he slaps his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Hey, I’ve got an idea!”
With a single bound, he leaps up from the mattress. Then he lets out a grunt as he jerks the fire extinguisher away from the wall and deposits it on the concrete floor with a metallic thump. “The thing’s been staring us in the face for hours, and we never realized it!”
“What thing? What are you talking about?” asks Mey-Mey, looking puzzled.
“We could give them a nasty shock with this,” says Darius, grinning at Mey-Mey.
He has told her the whole story of Pizzicato, and so now she knows everything.
“You mean we should shoot them? With the fire extinguisher?”
“Exactly!”
Her face lights up. “Not bad!”
She bends down and, with a nimble movement of her fingers, removes the safety catch on the fire extinguisher. As always, her left forefinger sticks out stiffly from the rest, but that doesn’t seem to bother her.
“Take it,” she says and holds the hose out to Darius. “Don’t be scared.” She quickly presses and releases a lever, and there is a loud hiss. “Now it’s ready to fire.” She fetches the sled from the corner, puts it next to the fire extinguisher, and sits down. Then she taps the wooden slats next to her. “Coming?”
Darius joins her. “Where did you learn how to do that?” he asks.
“You mean how to eat chocolate?” replies Mey-Mey, wiping her lips.
“How to use a fire extinguisher,” he replies seriously. “Can’t remember,” Mey-Mey answers slowly and with a frown. “I try lots of things. I’ll tackle whatever’s there to be tackled. So I can soon cope with any problems and I don’t have to keep asking people for help. Then there’s more time to do really important things.”
“Like music,” says Darius and gives her an admiring sideways look.
“Exactly,” she says. “Shall I show you how to use the fire extinguisher?”
Darius laughs. “I can do it pretty well myself, thanks.”
“Great! You might say that we’re—”
“The perfect team!” says Darius with a nod. Then he says softly, “Listen. I’ll help you with your finger as soon as I’ve got Pizzicato back, okay? It’ll do that.”
After a moment’s silence, Mey-Mey replies a little hesitantly, “That’s really nice of you. I was thinking about that too. It would be really good, because…it would be wonderful for my parents…and good for Mr. Archinola and for—” She breaks off.
“The musical world?” asks Darius. “Yes,” says Mey-Mey. “They all keep going on about my finger, as if the rest of me didn’t count.”
Suddenly she grasps his arm. “Shhh! I heard something,” she whispers and jumps up. “Are you ready to fire?”
Darius also leaps to his feet. “Aye, aye,” he acknowledges quietly and balances the fire extinguisher on his arm.
Mey-Mey grabs hold of the hose and aims it at the padded door. A moment later, the door opens.
“Fire!” they both shout at the same time.
Two seconds later, there’s an almighty hullabaloo. A solid stream of white powder hits the two flabbergasted people in the doorway full in the face. One of them collapses to the floor with shock, pulling the other down as well. Somebody screams, and everything is hissing and stinking like crazy.
“Let’s get out!” cries Darius before he drops the fire extinguisher onto the concrete with a loud crash, grabs Mey-Mey by the hand, and leaps with her over the foaming white bodies on the cellar floor. They race up the stairs and push open the door to the examination room.
“I’ll get Pizzicato!” yells Darius.
He quickly looks around the room. Mey-Mey is right behind him.
“Have you got it?” she asks, panting for air.
Darius pulls the white curtain aside, and when he fails to find the violin, he rushes across to the desk. He searches under it, on it, and behind it, and then he tears open the doors to all the cupboards in the office. Nothing.
“I can’t find it!” he says. “There’s something really fishy going on here. Everything seems so deserted.”
Then the two of them get a real shock. “Darius!” somebody shouts. “Mey-Mey!” splutters another. “Darry!” squeaks another.
They both turn around. Apart from three open mouths, they can hardly recognize anything in the three figures now standing in the room covered from head to toe with white-gray powder.
“Mr.…Archi…Archinola!” gasps Mey-Mey incredulously. “Ben?” asks Darius. “Queenie?”
Darius and Mey-Mey look at each other in bewilderment. “Oh God, it wasn’t the Needhams! They’ve escaped!” cries a thunderstruck Mey-Mey.
“And they’ve taken Pizzicato with them!” says Darius.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Missing
In the evening, Mr. Archinola is putting a thick chunk of wood on the blazing fire in the fireplace. Glittering sparks leap up into the air, and there’s a loud crunching and crackling. Alice gently pulls a cover over the sleeping Darius and then leans back against the felt-covered sofa.
“I think he’s got a fever,” she says quietly. “Yes, he gets it when he’s worked up about something,” whispers Mr. Archinola, putting a couple of potatoes wrapped in tinfoil on the fire. “It generally only lasts one night,” he adds, with the knowing air of a specialist.
That same morning the violin-maker and the carer from the children’s home had been to the police to call off the search. They’d also telephoned Mey-Mey’s parents, because they, too, had reported their daughter missing and were in a terrible state. With a mixture of a big reprimand and an even bigger hug, they had fetched their darling daughter that afternoon from Mr. Archinola’s. Ben had gone back to the children’s home with Queenie. Darius was supposed to follow the next day when he’d had enough rest. The grown-ups all agreed—the project had to end. All this excitement was too much for a boy like Darius. He should return to his “familiar surroundings,” so that he could “relax,” and just come back for the last time to Mr. Archinola’s on Sunday for the musical soirée.
The reason why Dr. Needham and his mother had kidnapped Darius in the first place seemed pretty obvious to the grown-ups: these two villains would soon have demanded ransom money for him, because they thought Darius must be a relative of the prosperous violin-maker! And Mey-Mey had seen through their villainy and so had also fallen into their clutches! It all added up, and Darius and Mey-Mey had exchanged secret looks and maintained a grave-like silence. Not a word did they speak about Pizzicato.
In place of the missing persons announcement came a “wanted” notice for the Needhams—for fraud and kidnapping. The police had been inundated with complaints from furious patients, and the hunt had been given high priority. There were even reports on TV about the “wonder doctor and his mother on the run,” and their photos were plastered all over the bus stops and billboards in the town.
“But why did you make me come back from Italy if you thought these Needhams were swindlers?” asks Alice, stretching out on the thick, comfortable carpet.
“Ah, well…I…um…” Mr. Archinola strokes his beard, which he has not brushed even once today thanks to all the comings and goings, and stuck to which there are still some flecks of fire extinguisher powder. “I…um…I just thought…” He searches for an explanation. Then with a sigh he gives up. “I…um…”—he frantically wiggles a poker between the burning pieces of wood—“…well…missed you so much, you see.”
“I missed you too, Archie,” Alice says very simply.
Mr. Archinola spikes one of the baked potatoes and takes it out of the fire. “We can eat now,” he says with a laugh, partly because the potato smells great and partly because he’s overjoyed at what Alice has just said.
“Archie?” Alice holds out her plate. “Yes?” Mr. Archinola puts the potato on it. “How about the two of us going together to Cremona sometime soon?”
“Alice?” Mr. A
rchinola asks in return. When, if not now? he asks himself. Here and now, in this warm glow with the appetizing smell of the potatoes, he summons up all his courage.
“Yes?” asks Alice. “How about the two of us…maybe…getting married there?”
The room goes very quiet. There is nothing but the crackling of the fire and the smell of the baked potatoes.
And although Darius has a fever and his eyes are closed, he is actually awake and has two perfectly functioning ears. And when, in the warm, dry stillness of his guest room, he hears Alice’s answer, a smile spreads all the way across his face. And then at last he falls into a deep sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY
It Doesn’t Belong to Us
“Woo-hoo! Slugboy’s messed everything up as usual!”
It’s early Wednesday afternoon, and Max is smirking as Darius puts a duffel bag down in their room. Max and his friend Daniel have draped themselves over the chairs at the writing table, as if they were both made of rubber.
“What are you doing here?” asks Darius as he takes off his “lovely old” jacket. “Is it lunchtime at Auto Frederick?”
Max has been scratching the top of the table with a nail file, and now he flings it across the room. It clinks as it hits the wall and falls to the floor.
“You stupid slug, what you gibberin’ about? Can’t you keep yer silly trap shut just for once? Auto Frederick is super uncool! So I scrammed!” He raises a corner of his mouth and sneers, “What about you? Too stupid fer the violin twit or what?” He lets out an exaggerated laugh. “Bound to’ve been, with your IQ of under fifty!”
He pokes Daniel in the ribs, and Daniel laughs as if Max had just pressed the “silly laugh” button.
Nothing’s changed, thinks Darius disconsolately, and pulls open the zipper of his duffel bag. The pink radio shines out from on top, like the memory of an earlier life that, from now on, he will have to resume. In silence he takes it out and puts it beside his bed.
“Let’s vamoose,” says Max and then gives Darius a clout on the head as he goes past and tugs Daniel out of the room by his hood. “Otherwise, he’ll drive me up the wall.”
Scarcely has Darius finished unpacking and pressing the flat, cool side of his new chisel—a farewell present from Mr. Archinola—against the painful spot that Max had clouted, when Queenie wanders into the room. She’s dressed from head to toe in pink, because for some time now pink has been her favorite color.
“Darry!” She takes a run and comes leaping into his arms.
He holds her tight. “Will you be staying with us again forever now?” she asks, pressing her cheek against his.
“Looks like it,” murmurs Darius and gently puts Queenie down on the floor. “Look, I’ve got something for you.” He picks up the pink radio and holds it out to her. “Goes with your outfit.”
Queenie grabs the radio, without a second look, and immediately clasps it under her arm. It looks as if it’s always been there.
“Why don’t you want it anymore?” she asks, but there’s no way she’s going to give it back again. A present is a present!
“No particular reason,” says Darius. If he doesn’t hear any more music, he hopes that maybe he won’t miss Mr. Archinola and the workshop quite so much.
“I want to show you something, so you must come to my room,” commands Queenie.
Darius wants to shake his head in refusal, because he’s feeling tired and grumpy—Ben calls that “having the grumps”—and in fact he’d rather be on his own, but then she adds, with a conspiratorial air, “It’s got something to do with music.”
This arouses his curiosity. “Okay, but only for a moment, okay?” he says and lets Queenie tow him along by his sweater sleeve out of the room and across the hall.
Queenie keeps a tight hold of his sleeve and pushes the door to her room with her shoulder. Darius is quite dazzled by all the pink: pink walls, pink curtains, pink bedsheets, shiny pink stickers on the bedside table, and a giant pink teddy bear. Apparently it doesn’t seem to bother her roommate, Jessica.
He whistles through his teeth. “We’ll soon have to change your name,” he says, “from Queenie to Rosie!”
Queenie takes no notice. She flits across to the bunk bed, and her pigtail wiggles from side to side behind her like a windshield wiper. First she looks quickly under the bed, and then she looks at Darius. But she doesn’t do anything.
“What’s wrong?” he asks and sits down on the nearest chair. “Are you going to do a dance for me, or what?”
Queenie gives him a strange look. “Okay, go on, dance,” Darius orders and folds his hands behind his head. “I’m the jury, right?”
Then Queenie flings herself onto the bed and begins to howl. “Owowowowowow!”
“Oh Lord, what’s wrong? What’s the matter with you?” Darius is shocked and jumps up, then kneels in front of her. “Hey, come on. Say something, Queenie!”
With a snivel, she whines, “Don’t tell on me, Darry! I brought it with me!”
“It?” asks Darius uncomprehendingly. “What’s ‘it’?” Queenie’s face crumples up again, in readiness for the tears. “The viiiolin!” she whimpers.
Darius gapes. “You’ve got a violin? Where on earth did you get a violin from, Queenie?” he asks in disbelief.
“From…from…” Queenie is shaking with all her sobs. “I took it from the wonder doctor’s place, where your jacket was hanging. It was so pretty. So I stuck it in my backpack. But you mustn’t tell anyone, not even Ben!”
Then again she starts howling like a wolf cub. Darius takes her little hand in his. “Shh, Queenie, shh, it’ll be all right. Don’t worry.” He pulls a handkerchief out of his pants pocket and holds it up to her running nose. “Blow,” he says very gently. Then he wipes away her tears and asks, “Has the violin done anything special since it’s been with you?”
Queenie nods. “It glowed once. Like a sort of blue.”
“Have you played it?” he asks, because he knows that Pizzicato has to be handled very carefully, and so he needs to be quite sure.
Queenie shakes her head. “Jessie would have noticed,” she says softly.
Darius breathes a sigh of relief and strokes Queenie’s hair. “The violin’s name is Pizzicato, by the way. And it doesn’t belong to us.”
“But it didn’t belong to the wonder doctor either, did it?” says Queenie.
“No, least of all to him!” answers Darius.
As he did a long time ago in the violin-maker’s guest room, he now sits cross-legged on the floor and pulls the violin from under Queenie’s bed. It lets out a mellow sound.
“Hey, Pizzicato,” he whispers. “Pizzicato, magic violin! It’s lucky I’ve got you back!”
Gently he strokes its strings.
You’re really beautiful, he thinks. But I’ve lost interest in your miracles now. So I’m going to take you home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Second Violin
“Are Mey-Mey’s parents here?” whispers Mr. Archinola nervously. It’s the following Sunday, and he has a quick look into the salesroom. About thirty people are sitting there. The men are wearing suits, and their black shoes are shining. The women are dressed in all their finery and have put their hair up. On a wooden platform is a little semicircle of music stands, a cello on its endpin, and four empty chairs. All eyes are on it, and the air is full of expectant whisperings and murmurings.
“They’re sitting in the back row. Look, over there,” Alice answers quietly, pointing to a woman and a man. Next to them sits Mey-Mey, who is chatting away animatedly. And next to her, with eyes shining, Darius has just taken his seat, and beside him is Queenie, who is swinging her legs backward and forward because she’s never been to a concert before and is very excited. Just for today she’s put a pink bow in her hair, and it’s bigger than her head. She thinks she looks like a butterfly, or perhaps an Easter bunny—she likes them both. Alice gives the violin-maker a kiss on the cheek, and he blushes with pleasure.
> “Are all the musicians here?” she asks. “All except for the second violin,” he replies, looking at his watch. “No idea where she can be.”
After about ten minutes, Mr. Kaplan steps onto the wooden platform with his viola and his newly strung bow, followed by a redheaded lady in a blue silk dress, who sits down behind her cello. Next comes a man in a suit, carrying a violin. They all bow.
“Where on earth is the second violin?” asks Mr. Archinola, now beginning to get really worried.
The telephone rings. “Violin-Maker’s Archinola.”
Mr. Archinola listens without saying a word. He slowly turns pale. “Right,” he says in the end, “in that case there’s nothing we can do. So whether we like it or not, the concert”—he glances at Alice—“will have to be canceled.” In despair he adds, “But I’ve got a room full of people! I’m sorry, I’ll have to hang up.”
“Oh dear!” moans Alice, appalled. “What’s happened?”
“She says she’s ill, but it sounds to me like stage fright. This was her first concert.”
Without another word, Mr. Archinola squeezes her arm and then strides into the salesroom, walking past all the guests, who are looking at him expectantly. His shoe heels click through the room like audio exclamation marks. Then he steps onto the platform.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry to have to tell you that the second violin has just rung to say she’s been taken ill.” A murmur of consternation buzzes through the room. Mr. Archinola clenches his hands together. “It’s extremely embarrassing for me, knowing that you’ve made the effort to come here all for nothing. Of course, you’re invited to stay and have a glass of wine with me and my fiancée.” He puts his fingertips together. “I really am terribly sorry, but there’s nothing I can do. That’s all I can say.”