Easy peasy, except that there wasn’t as much useable script as Jake would have liked. But as the humans in the tower could tell when the show began, that didn’t matter. Didn’t matter at all.
While Jake was gone, the experts got back to the task that had been interrupted by the news of Chaz’s disappearance: polishing their presentation for the descendant of Coconut Man, presuming that he (or she) would still appear, once the quilters had been cleaned out.
Megan and Joey had the job of duke-minders, which meant mostly listening to his worries about Mr. Peabody. How could he have let the house fill with impostors? What was the world coming to?
Suddenly he was interrupted by a loud
BOOM!
A ferocious explosion, the sound of an ancient cannon, echoed through the woods. Then a searchlight carved through the night, so bright that the humans in the tower had to shield their eyes.
And that was just the beginning.
Ten more lights came into play, illuminating one part of the house and then another, probing deep into its windows. Did Megan see the flash of a human face at one of them? Someone with an arm up to shield his eyes, trying to peer through the impossible glare to the woods beyond?
Now came the voice. A booming voice with a sort of electronic “wah wah” between some of the phrases, hiding the fact that sentences weren’t continuous:
“Tonight you are surrounded [wah wah] come outside [wah wah] leaving all your belongings behind….”
There was a short silence while the lights still darted and probed. Then the voice came again. “We are waiting [wah wah] soon [wah wah] we will attack.”
Megan’s eyes were on the front door of the huge house—and yes, there were shapes under the portico, quilters hanging back in there, indecisive, needing one more push.
It came in the form of a different voice, but one with the sort of breathiness you get when someone is speaking softly with his (or her) mouth very close to a microphone. A voice that didn’t sound quite human.
“Please be aware,” it said, “that canisters of tear gas are ready to be released. Those of you who delay your departure may be driven out in ignominy, driven out like RATS!”
Megan glanced at her mom and could see her hand was to her mouth in amazement. Sir Quentin?
“As you progress down the driveway no harm will befall you,” said the voice. “But if you delay, then we cannot vouch for the consequences. Go now, I tell you, NOW!”
There was another loud boom, this one seeming to come from deep inside Buckford Hall.
First a quilter emerged from the front door and started running down the hill, holding up his skirt with one hand and using the other to shield his eyes from the continuing glare of the lights. Then another man, this one in a frilly pink shirt. And another wearing a tight leopard-skin dress.
Then came the next batch, and…
“Mom, look!” said Megan.
In this group was one figure who looked like a genuine middle-aged woman, holding by the hand a slightly overweight girl of about nine, running as fast as her stubby legs could carry her.
“It’s that girl!” said Chaz. “That girl who wanted to play.”
Olivia, with her Aunt Flo.
The duke’s wheelchair was parked at a window, and Megan glanced at him from time to time, glad to see he was smiling more and more broadly beneath his bristly white mustache.
“Jolly good show,” he said. “Don’t know how Fisher did it, a Yank like him, putting in that extra part. Managed to sound quite English, what?”
“It must be the microphone,” said Megan’s mom. “Special effects.”
“Newfangled gadgets!” said the duke. “What will they think of next? Mrs. Fisher, Susie, do you think your husband would record the whole script for me? With those special effects?”
At this point, after a day of such peaks and valleys, it didn’t take much to finish Susie off, and to the duke’s surprise, to everyone’s surprise, she could hardly talk through her laughter—imagining Jake at the microphone, as she told Megan later, with big ears and whiskers. Jake as Sir Quentin.
“I know he’d love to,” she finally managed to say. “It would be the high point of his life.”
The first job after the quilters had left was to restore electricity to the house, which wasn’t easy until the fuses were found.
“Why would the quilters hide them?” asked Joey.
His dad shrugged. “To make sure no one put them back, I guess,” he said. “Maybe they were planning to sneak into our tower to listen in the dark.”
With all the quilters far away by now, there was no one to lead them to the fuses. No one, that is, until a mouse ran up to Trey with a message for Megan, who crossed her fingers and wrapped the message in a nice little lie.
“When we came in at the side door,” she said, “I saw something gleaming in one of the boots in that room. Big rubber boots.”
She led a couple of rain forest experts and John the footman to the little room full of boots, quite anxious about whether the things they were looking for actually “gleamed,” because who knew about British fuses?
They were just where the messenger had said they would be—not gleaming but white, which was close enough. It didn’t take long for John and the experts to carry the boots to the big fuse box near the butler’s pantry, and push them back into place to bring the lights of the massive house on again, section by section.
As the group headed back to the South Tower, a mouse darted out from behind a pink satin couch and scrambled up to Megan’s shoulder. Trey.
“Guy from Mouse Hall has something to tell you,” he said. “He’s in Mr. Peabody’s office. Bring Jake.”
Megan tugged on Jake’s sleeve to hold him back, then she led him to the office, where a messenger from Mouse Hall gave instructions. Jake should use the one phone in the palace—Mr. Peabody’s phone—to send an anonymous tip to the police telling them to watch out for certain license numbers. They’d be particularly interested in Mr. Peabody’s car because—surprise, surprise—he’d made a habit of robbing English aristocrats and was wanted under a number of different names.
Oh, and the police should definitely stop the bus full of men dressed as women, among whom were certain criminals known to the police for their skill in planting listening devices.
After he’d made his report to the police, Jake called a couple of tabloid newspapers (on Mouse Hall’s advice), telling them of the expected arrests. And why would the papers be interested in what sounded like normal police routine? How about the arrest of a man who had robbed some of the loftiest in the land, fiddling the accounts at the stateliest of homes? How about a busload of young executives from a mighty international corporation who’d have a hard time explaining why they’d been caught in very bad company, all dressed as women?
It was while Jake was on the last of these calls that a second messenger mouse appeared and said something to Trey that looked urgent. And to judge by Trey’s reaction, astonishing.
“Wait, wait, wait,” he said. “Are you sure? Really? Up there?”
More signs, until Trey seemed satisfied enough to relay the message to Megan.
“Ready for goose bumps?” he whispered. “Seems the great-great-grandson of Coconut Man is in your parents’ room. Now. Sort of hidden. And you shouldn’t tell anyone else. Not yet.”
Yes, of course that brought goose bumps. Gigantic goose bumps. How could it not? There was no way a real human could have made it into the house through all that noise and light. Surely in the chaos of the evening only a supernatural presence could have drifted out of myth and legend and into the South Tower?
egan raced up the spiral stairs and quickly scanned the room. The scene was just as she’d left it, except that now the lights were on, revealing the duke in deep conversation with Laura on the problems faced by lemurs. No sign of a visitor, not even a ghostly hint of one.
Megan made herself go look in the bedroom, but no one was there but Ken.
“Looki
ng for a certain great-great-grandson, are you?” he asked with a huge grin. “Here’s what you want.” He waved toward a messenger mouse who was sitting on the bed.
Megan glared at Trey. Had he lied when he promised her a living, breathing heir to Coconut Man? She unstrapped the Thumbtop from the messenger’s back, pulled out her magnifying glass and looked at the screen. Nothing there but a story, starting with “Once upon a time.”
“You’re meant to read it aloud,” said Trey.
“I’m meant to what?” she asked.
“Trust me,” he said. “Do it.”
Megan went into the next room, where everyone looked busy, as if they had much more important things to do than to listen to some kid reading them a fairy tale.
She took a deep breath.
“Hey,” she said, and felt herself starting to get a bit pink when everyone stopped talking and gazed up at her. “I’m going to read you a story.”
The adults looked at each other with expressions ranging from annoyed to indulgent. Only Chaz showed any enthusiasm.
“Oh goody!” he said, sitting on the floor in front of her. “Story time.”
Megan peered at the Thumbtop’s screen through her magnifying glass.
“Once upon a time,” she began, “an Englishman came to the island of Marisco. He was the captain of a British naval ship.”
Now she had everyone’s attention. Big time. Susie and Jake both hurried over to Megan’s side, their eyes wide. Megan handed the Thumbtop to her mom, who peered through her own magnifying glass as she took over the story.
“The Englishman drove off a band of pirates from the coast of Marisco,” she read. “In gratitude, the ruler gave this captain the deed to much of the forest that covered the western part of the island. The captain and his crew stayed for a few weeks, enjoying the Mariscans’ hospitality and the beauty of the island. Unfortunately, one afternoon when the captain was sitting in the shade of a palm tree, a coconut fell on his head. He lost his memory and wandered off into his forest. His crew searched for him diligently, but after a week they gave up and sailed away.”
“Coconut Man!” breathed Chaz.
“Yes, Coconut Man,” said Susie, and carried on with the story—how Coconut Man stayed on the island for many years while legends grew around him. Tales of good deeds, like saving a boy from drowning and pulling an old man from a burning hut.
Chaz leapt to his feet to say, “He still does good deeds!”
“Yes,” said the ex-president. “Hush.”
Susie had skimmed ahead to see where the story was going, and she grinned at Chaz. “His spirit lives on in Marisco, but Coconut Man himself went away. Listen to this.”
She told how one day another British ship arrived, and its crew hunted everywhere for Coconut Man. He hid from them for days, but finally the sailors spotted him high up in a tree and dragged him to their ship. Why?
At this point in the story Susie went to stand behind the duke and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Coconut Man’s older brother had died in a hunting accident, falling from his horse,” she read. “And Coconut Man had inherited his title. He was now the twelfth Duke of Wiltshire.”
It was lucky that the sixteenth Duke of Wiltshire was safely in his wheelchair, because there was enough shock on his face to fell any vertical nobleman. His color went from pink to a full red, and for a moment he looked as if it was hard to catch his breath.
“Frederick!” he said finally. “You’ve solved the mystery of Frederick! My great-great-grandfather. We always heard he was a bit addled, don’t you know. Wrong in the head. Hit by a coconut, was he? That’s rich. I say old chap, are you all right?”
Ex-President Pindoran had leapt to his feet and bounded over to grab the duke’s hand.
“You!” was all the ex-president could say. “You are the heir to Coconut Man. Our real mission here is to save the rain forest. And the forest is yours.”
There was one thing the rain forest group still needed, of course. Proof. Something that would stand up in court against the expensive lawyers of Loggocorp.
“Do you think your great-great-grandfather left any evidence?” asked Sir Brian. “Some proof that he owned the forest?”
“Like something in your family papers?” prompted Susie. “Memoirs? Diaries? Letters?”
It was John the footman who spoke.
“Maybe there’s something in that there cupboard in the library, Your Grace,” he said. “Full of old papers, it is.”
“Well, at least we can have a look-see,” said the duke. “Take me downstairs, John, there’s a good chap.”
Heinrich, Jake, and Pierre helped John carry the wheelchair down the stairs, then everyone ran to keep up as the duke motored quickly to the library and parked in front of a tall closet. Then Megan saw the eagerness in the experts’ faces evaporate. The door to the closet was open, and the papers in it were in total disarray, as if they’d been taken out and shoved back in no particular order.
“Peabody,” said Jake sadly. “Looks as if he got here first.”
It was then that a mouse ran up Megan’s arm. Sir Quentin.
“Observe those canines,” he whispered.
Megan noticed that one section of the wall was free of books, giving space to portraits of six dogs.
“Does not the animal on the left bear a strong resemblance to the pet in the portrait of the twelfth duke?” asked Sir Quentin. “And is there not something strange about its gaze?”
Yes, that spaniel—the one with three colors in its coat. Megan remembered it now from two nights ago, when the duke had pointed to the ancestor with a naval uniform and a faraway look—clutching that dog. In this portrait, one of the dog’s eyes was a bit shinier than you’d normally expect.
Megan moved closer to the wall, then did something she had been taught you must never, ever do: she reached out and poked the painting squarely in the eye.
The spaniel swung outward, revealing a small safe.
“Well, knock me over with a feather,” said the duke. “Always did think there was something odd about that painting. Now we know, what? Must have been one of Frederick’s little jokes.”
He wheeled over to the safe, where they could now see a rusty box with “12” painted on the lid. John fetched some tools to force the lid, and there it was. A document, yellow with age, chewed at the corners as if by termites, smeared in places as if by seawater.
“May I?” asked ex-President Pindoran.
As delicately as he could, he lifted the document out of the box, and smiled broadly.
“It is written in the classic Mariscan language of years past,” he said. “And it reads, ‘I, Gavilan, Ruler of Marisco, give to Lord Frederick and his descendants the rights to our Western Forest until the end of time.’”
Now was the time for the presentation that the experts had been polishing, off and on, all day—the presentation that would persuade the heir to Coconut Man to preserve his forest.
They sat around the table in the middle of the library and took turns. Megan was glad to see that the duke kept smiling and nodding in agreement as first Laura made her case for a wild forest where lemurs could continue to live in peace. Then Pierre pointed out that if the woods were left intact, botanists would surely discover new species of plants—plants that might provide miracle cures for many diseases. Heinrich described the amazing diversity of animal life in forests such as the one in Marisco, which probably hid species that had never before been seen. Martin spoke most eloquently of the need for forests to soak up the carbon in the atmosphere and help put the brakes on climate change.
Then came Sir Brian, who told the duke that by saving this forest in its natural state, His Grace would set an example to the world and encourage activists in many countries to stand up to those who wanted to profit by cutting their trees.
Finally, ex-President Pindoran made an eloquent speech about the benefits to Marisco of leaving the rain forest intact, under the care of a foundation run by
the Mariscan people—a foundation that would hire wardens to protect the forest, and build an education center, and attract a carefully controlled number of tourists.
“And there is something else,” the ex-president added. “Many people in my country feel that the spirit of Coconut Man still lives in the woods and must not be disturbed. You, as his heir, can make sure that his spirit lives on.”
All eyes were on the duke, who was gazing at the tabletop with a slight smile.
“Well, well, well,” he said finally. “Imagine that. Could be a godsend, what? A forest that I could sell for millions of pounds. I could pay all my bills in one go. Wouldn’t have to bother with all those tourists and conferences.”
Megan held her breath, and noticed that her mother was clutching Jake’s hand.
“But it wouldn’t do to get rich that way,” the duke went on. “We can’t give in to bounders like Loggocorp or Corpolog or whatever they call themselves, can we? Filling my house with spies. Pretending to be quilters. Ridiculous. Besides,” he added, reaching out to pat Chaz, who was sitting on his father’s knee. “Your Coconut Man would come back to haunt me if I sold his beloved forest.”
“So…” began Sir Brian.
“So just tell me what you want me to do,” said the duke. “Your foundation—sounds like a good idea to me. As long as you don’t expect me to pay for it, what?”
Megan could feel her pocket rotating as a mouse did a pirouette. Both Jake and Susie stood up for pirouettes of their own, while those who hadn’t learned to rejoice in the style of mice clapped or stood or raised their fists in the air or yipped or shouted “Ja wohl” or “Très bien” or “Good on you” or “Jolly good show.”
here were loose ends, of course, though the question of what happened to Mr. Peabody and the quilters wasn’t loose for very long. News about them came from the Director of Security for the Buckford clan, who appeared in the South Tower just before the humans went down to dinner.
“We have heard from clans in two police stations,” he said. Mice at a police station in Basingstoke, halfway to London, reported that the cops had stopped Mr. Peabody’s car and arrested him as a fugitive who was wanted for crimes under many different names. He had been Mr. Prendergarst when he worked for the Earl of Uckfield, robbing him blind, and Mr. Clotworthy when he cooked the books of Lord Barton of Ludlow.
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