The Crown of the Bandit King

by Matti Lena Harris

  Future uncertain—ask again later.

  Unbelievable.

  When morning came, Deeter was really grumpy without his breakfast. And with no peanut butter granola bars to appease him, Sweet Pea figured it’d be best if we asked the Viking ship to take us to the nearest pancake restaurant. Without the Magic Eight Ball’s help, we didn’t know what else to do or where else to go, anyway.

  As we were sailing out of the cove, I heard Sweet Pea gasp. “Look!”

  She pointed to the cliffs.

  The Detective stood at the cliff’s edge, watching us sail away. Seemed like we made it out just in time. So I decided to ask the Magic Eight Ball one more question. Was the Detective ever going to catch me?

  Yes.

  Chapter 20

  The Professor’s Study

  The Magic Eight Ball was completely useless.

  Oh, I’d suspected as much when I’d tried to use it in the Viking ship the night before, but the next day just confirmed it.

  That morning, the Viking ship brought us to some tiny beach café called the Pancake Shack. Then, the ship vanished like Sweet Pea said it would when we didn’t need it anymore. After the ship disappeared, we entered the Pancake Shack where a tired, saggy waitress named Martha showed us to a booth.

  “You look a million miles away,” Sweet Pea said to me as we read our breakfast menus. “Penny for your thoughts?”

  “Cold macaroni and cheese,” I said, but Sweet Pea only looked confused. “It’s nothing. Never mind.”

  Martha returned to help us with our order, but when our food arrived, I wasn’t hungry. So I tried using the Magic Eight Ball again to take my mind off things.

  “Who is the rogue Collector?” I asked.

  Cannot predict now.

  “How is the widow Hiddleburg involved in all this?”

  Better not tell you now.

  “Who was the man with the Black Umbrella?”

  Answer unclear.

  “How is Jack the fisherman involved in all this?”

  Signs uncertain. Ask later.

  “How is that creepy clown involved in all this?”

  Ask again later.

  “How is the Professor’s student involved in all this?”

  Reply hazy. Try again.

  “Is the Professor the mastermind behind the whole thing?”

  Outlook unclear.

  “Who hired the Choir Boys to hunt us down?”

  My sources are uncertain.

  “Well, what should we do next?”

  Concentrate and ask again.

  “Do you ever give any helpful, straight answers?”

  Yes.

  “Will you ever give me any of those helpful answers?”

  Future uncertain—ask again later.

  I slammed the Magic Eight Ball down on the table, making the silverware rattle and the dishes clank. The people sitting in the booth next to us glanced over at me and shifted in their seats.

  “You’ll wear yourself out, you know,” Sweet Pea said. “Maybe it’d be best if we put it away for now. You know, just for a little while. To give it a rest.”

  “Have a pancake,” Deeter said. He even offered me one of his.

  “No thanks.”

  Messing things up and nearly getting us killed—those were the only two things I seemed to be any good at. I’d led us on a wild goose chase for nothing. Finding the Magic Eight Ball had been a complete waste of time. Maybe I should have visited the Professor first that day after all.

  Of course—the Professor. How could I have missed it? The one question I hadn’t yet thought to ask. And it made me want to slap my head. I reached for the Magic Eight Ball, but Sweet Pea grabbed my wrist.

  “Rookie….” she said.

  “It’s all right. Just one last question. If it doesn’t work, I’ll stop. I promise.”

  She looked at Deeter, who shrugged.

  “Why not?” he asked. “So long as he stops after that. I want to finish my pancakes in peace.”

  Sweet Pea released my wrist and sighed.

  “Magic Eight Ball?” I said. “Should I go see the Professor in his study?”

  I gave it a shake and waited for the answer.

  Yes—definitely.

  “Wow,” Deeter said. “It actually gave you a real answer.”

  “Going to see the Professor?” Sweet Pea asked, frowning. “Are you sure? I mean, he’s one of our suspects. He might be behind the whole thing. Remember?”

  “One way to find out,” I said.

  Sweet Pea’s frown got a whole lot bigger.

  “I’ll be careful,” I said. “Any sign of trouble, and I’ll leave.”

  “How? We don’t even know the way to use the Gold Doorknob.”

  “Maybe the Magic Eight Ball can tell us,” I said.

  “Hasn’t told us anything before,” Deeter said.

  “Maybe we were asking the wrong questions.” I paused. “Magic Eight Ball, how do we use the Gold Doorknob?”

  Are you seriously asking me how to use a doorknob?

  “Are you seriously expecting me not to punt you across the room?” I shot back.

  “Easy, Rookie,” Deeter said. “Remember, you gotta be polite with Collectibles. Or you won’t get nowhere.”

  Maybe he was right. Still….

  “Yes, I’m asking how to use a doorknob,” I said to the Magic Eight Ball. “It doesn’t have a door. Would you please tell us how to use it? Please.”

  Grab, turn, and pull.

  Could it really be that simple? I fished the Gold Doorknob out of my backpack and placed it on the table where we could all examine it again.

  “Remember how Staccato said the Gold Doorknob doesn’t need a door?” I asked. “What if he was right?”

  Deeter stopped eating his pancakes. For once, he’d found something more interesting than food. Sweet Pea glanced around to see if anyone was watching. Martha stood at the cash register, ringing up some customer’s bill. The other diners ate their breakfasts and chatted with friends. We were just three kids sitting alone in the corner, so no one paid any attention to us.

  I decided to risk it.

  “Grab….”

  I grabbed the doorknob and held it on the side as if it had a door attached to it.

  “Turn….”

  All this time, the Gold Doorknob had felt cold and heavy, but now it started to feel warm and light against my palm as I gave it a slight turn. Something was definitely happening.

  “And pull….”

  I moved the doorknob towards me like I would to open a door. The moment I did, my stomach plunged like I’d gone down the last drop of a roller coaster ride. At the same time, the café and everything in it whooshed past me—the tables and booths, Sweet Pea and Deeter, even Deeter’s plate of pancakes.

  Good thing I didn’t eat much breakfast. I’d have lost it for sure.

  When everything jerked to a stop, I stood on the landing at the top of a broad staircase, which led to a cavernous room filled with books. Stacks and stacks of books. Everywhere, books. Of every color and every size. Some were Collectibles. Others weren’t. They rose up like trees in a forest, all pressed together.

  Weird.

  “Hello?” I called.

  The shuffling sound of turning pages caught my attention. Then, there was movement above me, so I looked up. Books flew lazily in the air, flapping their covers like birds’ wings. They’d land on the book stacks for a moment while other books would take off again.

  Books that could fly?

  How was that even possible?

  At the end of the room was a large, round window with the sun shining through the glass. And beneath the window sat a huge, wooden desk covered with papers. There didn’t seem to be anybody in the room, so I made my way down the stairs.

  “Professor? Are you here?”

  The room was quiet. Not an unsettling quiet. Just muted.

  I wove my way through the rising columns of books. Some of the stacks were so high, they n
early touched the ceiling. Others were chest high, or knee high. There had to be millions of books. Seemed like the Professor really loved his research. But maybe I should’ve expected something like this in the Professor’s study.

  Well, not the flying books. Those were just whacked-out weird.

  Finally, I reached the desk, its surface hidden by a bunch of old, yellowing newspapers. Some of them were open and spread out while others were rolled up and set aside, but there didn’t seem to be much order to them. The dates on the newspapers ranged from 1884 to 1885, and all the papers had big red circles drawn around certain articles. The first one was from a newspaper called The Arizona Champion.

  Astounding Bank Robbery Shocks Small Town!

  The article told the story of some daring bank heist. A lone bandit strolled into the bank and carried out a fortune. No one was hurt, and no one knew who he was. The sheriff led a posse to track him down, but they returned a few days later empty handed. All in all, it sounded like a pretty normal bank robbery. Nothing caught my eye until the last sentence.

  “Witnesses say the robber was wearing an odd metal crown during the robbery. Authorities suggest the shock of the event may have caused the witnesses mental strain.”

  Odd metal crown?

  That paper had been dated March 15, 1884. The next article was from a newspaper called The Arizona Sentinel. It was dated a few months later, on June 9, 1884.

  Bank Heist Leaves Local Authorities Baffled!

  This article was much more interesting. The robber was unarmed, yet no one tried to stop him. He entered the bank, demanded the money, and the bank tellers gave it to him. For no good reason at all. Then he walked out again. And apparently, the robber wore a crown.

  The Bandit King—that was what the articles called him from then on.

  Article after article documented his bank heists, but usually the details were the same. Only once, a bank teller refused to hand over the money and then fell down dead of a heart attack. The teller had been an older man with a weak heart, and his death was the first fatality related to the robberies. An unusual event, since the Bandit King never even brandished a gun.

  And always he was wearing a crown.

  The final article in the Professor’s pile came from The Arizona Silver Belt newspaper, and it was the same as the others. So was the heist, which had taken place on May 1, 1885. There was nothing unusual about this robbery at all.

  Except that it was the Bandit King’s last.

  After that, the articles talked about the continued hunt for the Bandit King. The lawmen searched and searched, but they never found any trace of him, or even learned his true identity. The Bandit King had simply vanished.

  May 1, 1885—there was something about that date.

  Sweet Pea had mentioned a date when she read about the crown in The Complete Encyclopedia of Forbidden Collectibles. The last known use of the Bronze Crown—May 1, 1885. The day of the last bank robbery.

  It had to be more than coincidence.

  Obviously, the Professor had been doing his own research on the Bronze Crown.

  But why?

  Then, in the corner of the room, something odd caught my eyes. Odd even for a place like the Professor’s study. There were tools for digging. Shovels. Buckets. Even a pick-ax. And they were dusty like they’d been used recently.

  Why had the Professor been digging?

  I glanced back at the desk and spotted something else half-buried under all those newspapers. An old map of Arizona, with tiny red dots drawn on it. Next to the red dots were dates matching the robberies. On the very corner of the map, a big glass paperweight obscured the last dot. That dot was probably the most important, so I touched the paperweight.

  Then I couldn’t move.

  As soon as my hand grasped it, I felt so heavy that I couldn’t lift my hands or my legs. I was totally stuck. And I felt like a complete idiot. Probably looked like one, too. I should have known the paperweight was a Collectible, but I’d been too busy studying the map to really notice the jumpiness I was feeling.

  At the top of the staircase came the sound of a door opening and closing. Someone had just entered the Professor’s study.

  Oh, no. Now what?

  My instinct was to run and hide. So much for that.

  I listened as the footsteps traveled closer and closer towards the desk. They belonged to the Professor, but he was a huge mess. Even more than usual. His brown tweed jacket was dirty and torn. Around his face, his feathery white hair hung down in dusty straggles. And he had a gash along his hairline that was trickling blood down his forehead.

  “You! What are you doing here?” he asked. “I beat you once, and I’ll do it again if I have to! Don’t think that because I’m old I can’t win another fight!”

  Fight? Why would I fight him? Of course, I couldn’t ask him that. All I could do was make a little mmm-mmm sound in the back of my throat. Like a frog trying to swallow a beach ball.

  Safe to say that fighting was out of the question.

  He must have noticed the predicament I was in. His eyebrows lifted, and the sharpness left his eyes. Then he started chuckling.

  “Well, you’ve got yourself into a pickle, haven’t you, young scholar?” he said. “I should have thought a Finder such as yourself would know better than to touch the Glass Paperweight. Unless….”

  He stood beside me and gazed into my eyes. A long, hard look, like he was peering right into my head. Finally, his shoulders relaxed, and he nodded.

  “Fascinating,” was all he said.

  He gave the Glass Paperweight a very gentle tap on the side with his pinkie finger, and I could move again. I felt so light in comparison to the way I’d felt before that I couldn’t keep my balance, and I toppled to the ground in a heap beside his desk.

  “Clearly, you aren’t who you were in the graveyard,” he said.

  “The graveyard?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes. I had a jolly good battle with someone who looked exactly like you. Right down to your pink earlobes. But he didn’t get your eyes right. His were too dark. Yes, far too dark.”

  The Professor helped me to stand, and then he gave me another appraising look. “No, you’re the same Finder I met in the library. Only you’ve seen an adventure or two yourself since then, haven’t you?”

  “A few,” I said. “But Professor, what were you doing in a graveyard?”

  “Research, of course.”

  Figured.

  He handed me a tiny slip of paper with a single name written on it: Rose Sullivan.

  “Who is that?” I asked. “Who is Rose Sullivan?”

  “My dear boy!” the Professor said. “Who is she? To those of us trying to protect the Bronze Crown before it’s too late? Why, she’s the most important person in the world. She’s the whole key to the mystery. Our last hope!”

  The Professor’s face fell, and he sighed.

  “And unfortunately,” he said, “she’s dead.”

  Chapter 21

  The Last Journal Entry

  “Rose Sullivan is dead?” I asked.

  Of course, I had no idea who Rose Sullivan was, but if she was our last hope, then her death couldn’t be a good thing.

  “I’m afraid so,” the Professor said.

  He staggered to the other side of his desk and shuffled through the newspapers there. When he didn’t find what he wanted, he began searching among his stacks of books instead.

  “Ah ha!” he exclaimed, and he lifted a blue teacup. “Would you like some tea, young scholar?”

  “No thanks,” I said.

  “I hope you don’t mind if I do? That battle in the graveyard has tired me out. Oh, to be five hundred again! In my younger days, I could have given that scoundrel quite a thrashing!”

  The Professor poured himself a cup of tea from a matching blue teapot sitting on the windowsill. Then, after drinking a few sips, he plopped into his desk chair. One of the flying books landed in front of him, but he shook his head.

&n
bsp; “Not now,” he said to the book. “We’ll research homemade lasagna recipes later.”

  The book flew away.

  “Professor?” I said. “What exactly happened in the graveyard? You had a fight?”

  “Yes. I had to know the date, you see. And it could only be found in a tiny, forgotten graveyard in Arizona. But when I arrived there, you ambushed me.”

  “It wasn’t me, sir, I swear!”

  Everyone already thought I was a thief and an arsonist. I certainly didn’t need any more false charges added to the list.

  “Oh, I know. The culprit looked and sounded like you, though. He asked for my help, and when I let my guard down, he attacked me. But I still have a surprise or two up my sleeve that the scoundrel didn’t count on!”

  The Professor chuckled, almost spilling his tea.

  “In the end,” he continued, “I found the date I needed, written on Rose Sullivan’s grave. She died on May 1, 1885.”

  “The date of the last bank robbery!” I said.

  “Correct, young scholar! And the date of the last known use of the crown. That date is very important. You see, even a Collectible as powerful as the Bronze Crown has a weakness—all Collectibles do—and I intend to find that weakness. More importantly, every person has a weakness. For Mr. John Ketter, his weakness was Rose Sullivan.”

  “John Ketter?”

  Why was that name familiar?

  “Better known as the Bandit King. From what I’ve been able to learn in my research, he was an Ordinary who happened upon the Bronze Crown by accident. When he discovered its power, he used it to rob banks.”

  “Wait, he had the power to rule the world, and all he did was steal some cash?”

  “Not a particularly creative use of the crown, it’s true.” The Professor sipped his tea. “But then, something terrible happened, and the crown has been lost ever since. I believe that terrible event involved the death of Rose Sullivan.”

  “How did she die? And what happened to the crown?”

  “No Artisan is entirely sure. I was hoping John Ketter’s private journal might shed further light on the matter, but it was destroyed in a fire. Now, the only way to read his journal is by using The Book of All Words. Did you bring it?”