The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen

by M. T. Anderson

  Slowly, at first, but then more easily, he pulled the duct tape off his mouth.

  It was stuck now on his knee.

  He threw his head back and breathed deeply.

  He leaned against a rock.

  His hands were tied together, but that hardly mattered. He could walk back to the hotel. He would follow the river.

  Jasper Dash, exhausted, stood up and began walking, entirely unaware of the pack of wolves that had snuck up behind him.

  Lily stood before the door to Eddie Wax’s room. Looking both ways along the hallway, she drew a gadget out of her pocket. It looked like a little cylinder with thin wires sticking out of one end and a toggle switch on the other.

  It was Jasper Dash’s Astonishing Universal Lock Pick.

  She pressed it up against the keyhole. She flicked the switch.

  The cylinder clicked quietly as little wires were extended. They felt the tumblers of the lock, jumped into formation, and began spinning.

  In a moment the door swung open.

  Lily stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

  The room was dark, lit only by the glow of evening. Lily set her jaw and waited for her eyes to adjust.

  Eddie had a single suitcase open on a stand. On the floor there was a saddle with all of the rest of the tack, as it’s called—all the horse straps—laid out around it. He had attached the bit, which usually goes into the horse’s mouth, to a lamp he’d moved to the floor. He had also attached a feed bag filled with oats to the lamp.

  Lily leaned down over the saddle and picked up the bridle.

  It looked very much as if Eddie Wax had been riding an imaginary horse.

  It looked very much, in other words, as if Eddie Wax, truly, was insane.

  A little chill went up Lily’s spine.

  She put down the bridle and began rummaging around in the suitcase. There were three identical pairs of blue overalls, some underwear, some socks, and his tuxedo, bow tie, and Brylcreem.

  Lily straightened up and looked around the room again.

  Now her attention was drawn to the bed.

  In the half-light, she could see that there was a lump in it—an irregular little lump near the pillow.

  She walked carefully around the bed skirts, approaching the lump.

  She reached up to seize hold of the covers.

  She felt danger all around her.

  She pulled the cover back.

  And there, grinning up at her from the bed, was a head.

  A mounted weasel head.

  Lily lifted the stuffed weasel’s head.

  That’s odd, she thought. Eddie must be the one who hid that bear head in the woods. And took the other missing heads from the lobby. I wonder why …

  And with that, she froze.

  Because someone had put a key in the door.

  Katie and Dr. Schmeltzer walked through the woods. Katie carried a flashlight. Dr. Schmeltzer just kept shrieking.

  It was not an easy hike. The pine trees and fir trees clustered tightly around them. Everything was dark and needly. Everything brushed against them. Everything prickled and poked. Dr. Schmeltzer walked into branches and let them snap back. Katie kept her hands in front of her. Otherwise, the branches slapped across her nose.

  They crossed the little bridges over mountain streams that Lily had crossed by day. Now, however, there was nothing charming about them. Beneath them, black chasms hung. Water gargled in unseen holes, past unseen spikes of rock and grim little pools and mossy banks where water rats could hide.

  As they walked, Dr. Schmeltzer’s shrieking voice echoed through the desolate hills, as if calling forgotten mountain ogres to join in a feast. The hugeness of the peak above weighed on Katie. She could hear the impossible heights and the terrifying drops recorded in Dr. Schmeltzer’s yell.

  “Um,” she said, “you know, we’re going out to find a cave with an armed bandit in it.”

  “Yes, my dear,” said Dr. Schmeltzer. “Unless he’s out on a foul errand.”

  “Yeah. My point is that maybe the element of surprise is kind of ruined by having you screaming continually at the top of your lungs.”

  “I am, unfortunately, unable to find the cave without it.”

  “But, see, when we find the cave, the kidnapper might be prepared for us. That is, if he knows an hour, an hour and a half in advance that we’re on our way.”

  Dr. Schmeltzer frowned. “Do you want me to lead you to the cave or not?”

  Katie nodded. “Yes, of course.”

  “So we go by the way I know.”

  “If there’s any way—”

  “The way I know is entirely using the language of our friends the bats.”

  “Yeah. Our friends.”

  Dr. Schmeltzer let out another bloodcurdling scream.

  This is definitely getting old, thought Katie.

  Eddie Wax huffed like a winded spaniel and shut the door behind him. He turned on the light and sat down on the bed.

  “How are you, horsey?” he asked the floor and the lamp. “Were you made by a finer hand than mine to take me to all the great places on the earth?” He went over and stroked the lamp’s mane, which it didn’t have. He asked the lamp, “Are you going to take me to the pyramids and to Paris, France, Europe? That’s,” he said sternly, “what a good horse does.”

  Lily heard all this and did not feel any better about being in his room with him.

  “Have you been watching Prell?” he asked the lamp. He went over and pulled back the covers of the bed. There was the weasel head. He said, “You’re next, Prell. They ain’t gonna keep you all boxed up in here like a saltine cracker. A hairy saltine cracker. Every animal should be free.”

  Lily was hiding inside the entertainment center, curled up on the shelf beneath the TV. She may have been in the entertainment center, but she was not entertained. She felt sorry for Eddie—but she was afraid of his lunatic ravings about stuffed animals.

  “They say if you love something, set it free,” said Eddie Wax. “But what if you don’t love anything?”

  Eddie sighed.

  “Then,” he said, “you watch the Animal Channel.”

  And he walked over to the entertainment center and opened the doors.

  Imagine riding in a car that propelled itself by scraping a giant metal squeegee along an endless track of chalkboard. Now imagine going to a NASCAR race where there were eight of these screeching cars competing against each other and maybe a few angry coyotes.

  What a horrible, terrible noise. I wouldn’t care if that kind of squeegee car had really comfortable seats and a dashboard drink holder big enough for my big four-liter Halt’n’Buy Thunder-Guzzler. I would get out of that squeegee car. I would leave that race and that noise. I would go to a room where there were only sheep, pillows, and macramé. And there I would do mathematical problems until I could breathe normally again.

  Well, this is kind of how Katie felt, being led through the rocky passes by a man who screamed constantly. Constantly.

  Her nerves were tired. She felt like people had been drumming all over her skin for hours. She felt like she hadn’t slept for days, and she wouldn’t sleep for many more.

  And he just kept right on striding along, tripping over rocks, yelping, howling, beeping, screeching, ululating, growling, keening, and once, tintinnabulating. This meant that he sang “DING DONG DING DONG. DING DONG DING DONG” in a voice that resembled the doorbell at the mansion of a South American dictator.

  “Are we getting close?” she asked.

  “Oh, I think we are,” he said.

  “Then could you stop screaming?”

  “Could you stop looking? Could you stop using your eyes?”

  “Would you cut it out?” said Katie, finally being rude to her elders. “My friend is in danger!”

  “I cannot cut it out.”

  “You’re not even blind! You can see perfectly where you’re going!”

  “No one ever said I was blind. They said I was bri
lliant.” He explained, “I wear the blacked-out glasses so I don’t accidentally rely on my sight.” He opened his lungs really wide. “AYOO AYOO AYOO AYOO AYOO.”

  “Can you please stop that?”

  “I cannot. I follow the ways of the bat.”

  “We need to find my friend!”

  “He is no friend of mine, if he does not appreciate the special qualities of my voice.”

  “How could anyone appreciate your voice? It is completely obnoxious.”

  “I will have you know,” said Dr. Schmeltzer, “that I am a highly accomplished ventriloquist. I am not simply some hack. I can place my voice anywhere. I can—”

  Ventriloquist? Katie thought… She remembered back to that afternoon on the porch … Something bothered her … She had never actually seen the thief… She had, in fact, heard the thief and then she had run right into—

  Dr. Schmeltzer let out a hideous scream.

  “Okay,” said Katie. “I am really tired of this.”

  Dr. Schmeltzer let out another hideous scream.

  “That’s it,” she said.

  But this time he wasn’t screaming to locate himself. He was screaming to warn her of the ten pairs of glowing golden eyes that were staring at them from the woods.

  Wolves.

  When you read about “eyes glowing yellow in the dark,” you think that it’s just a figure of speech. The truth is, however, that wolves’ eyes do glow by reflecting back light, and therefore it is terrifying when you see them illuminated at night. Once I had a party where I invited only wolves. It was kind of a tea dance. I was young and didn’t have many friends. The wolves wanted the party in the dark; I convinced them to have a single night-light on so I could make my way around the room and see whether they were laughing with me or at me.

  Yowza, after about ten minutes of that— their eyes glowing yellow in the dark, the brown evil light glinting off their fangs and the porcelain teacups, the lace doilies hanging torn from their snaggy teeth—I agreed to turn the light off. It was just better not to see. After that the party improved, and they were real nice. One of them even gave me an extra tool set he had in his car.

  So the wolves’ eyes, as I was saying, glowed yellow in the dark. The wolves stared at Katie and Dr. Schmeltzer. Dr. Schmeltzer and Katie stared at the wolves, which, in Dr. Schmeltzer’s case, meant he screamed continuously.

  And then the wolves started running.

  Loping, really. They leaped and ran with a long-legged, rangy kind of gait.

  Right into the forest.

  Away from the screaming man, who terrified them.

  Katie shone the light into the pine wood where the wolves had been circling.

  There she saw a slouch-shouldered form.

  Jasper Dash, Boy Technonaut.

  She ran forward and he ran forward and she threw her arms around him. He would have thrown his arms around her, except that they were tied behind him. His face was covered with dirt and tracks of dried mucus.

  She had never been happier to see a face in her life.

  “Oh—Jasper—I’m so glad to see you!”

  She turned him around and, putting the flashlight on the ground, began to work at the knots on his wrists.

  “It seems a shame,” said Dr. Schmeltzer, watching her, “to undo all that work when someone went to the trouble of tying it. Who’s to say that you won’t just need to tie him up again?”

  Katie shot Dr. Schmeltzer a dirty glance.

  Jasper’s ropes fell to the ground. He sighed with pleasure and swung his arms in the air. He chafed his wrists.

  “Katie,” said Jasper, “I cannot even list the deuced awful things that have happened to me this afternoon.” He took her hands. “Thank you for finding me. Thank you.”

  “Well, all’s well that ends well,” said Dr. Schmeltzer. “Let us now proceed posthaste to the cave. I shall scream loudly and incessantly to guide you.”

  Katie was angry now. She said, “It almost seems like you’re trying to get us caught.”

  “Young lady, that is the most—”

  But he did not finish his sentence, as he had seen a pair of glowing eyes looking at him out of the woods. The wolves were back, watching carefully, and braver. No scream would deter them now.

  The three humans stood stock-still for a moment.

  Wind picked up on the mountain, driven with the night. The pines around them surged.

  “Let’s go, chums!” exclaimed Jasper, and at the same moment, Katie ran forward to grab Dr. Schmeltzer’s arm. Katie on one side, Jasper on the other, they began to tug him back toward the lodge. The wolves watched behind them.

  Dr. Schmeltzer began his screaming again.

  More wolves, alerted by the noise, slipped toward them through the wood.

  The pine branches swayed in the wind. Jasper saw gray bodies darting through the hemlocks.

  Dr. Schmeltzer yelled.

  Jasper pulled the old snotty duct tape off of his knee. He hesitated. Katie saw what Jasper had, grabbed it out of his hand, and shoved it over Dr. Schmeltzer’s mouth. Dr. Schmeltzer shook his head and protested. But soon he just mumbled.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” said Jasper. “It’s for your own safety.” They dragged him along the path. As they stumbled forward, Jasper asked the professor, “Do you have any allergies we should know about? Grass, trees, flowers?” The professor shook his head. “Cats, dogs, mold, dust mites, ragwort, ragweed? … Do you have any history of asthma in your family? …”

  They disappeared down the path.

  On the mountain the temperature dropped. Wind came in from the north. The woods rattled with it.

  A storm was brewing.

  Eddie Wax stared in shock at Lily, who was curled up in his entertainment center.

  She looked him in the eye. She said, “You didn’t do it, did you?”

  He didn’t know what to say. He was flabbergasted. He stared for a minute; then he started laughing. He said, “If it ain’t Lily Gefelty, audiovisual component.”

  She swung her cramped arms out and began to unfold. She held on to the shelf and tried to crawl out. He gave her a hand. Her leg was stuck. He had to shove her back into the cabinet first and then help lift her out.

  She stood up in front of him. “You didn’t kidnap the Quints, did you?”

  “Course I didn’t kidnap the Quints,” he said.

  “You didn’t steal the necklace, either.”

  “Lily, I thought we was friends.”

  “You’ve been stealing the stuffed animal heads from the lobby, though, haven’t you?”

  “The word is ‘liberating.’ I been freeing them to run in the wild and snarf their own food.”

  Lily looked at him sadly. “You’re really upset about Stumpy, aren’t you? You’ve never gotten over her.”

  “What’s to get over?” he said defiantly. And then he stopped and sat down on the bed. He leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees; his head slumped. “People say she’s gone, but I feel her all the time with me. At night my heart races along, going faster and faster, and it’s also her heart, and even though I’m lying in bed, our heart is galloping. It’s us going flying over the beaches, and there’s wild grasses under her hoofs, and I can feel the lather all over me. Or during the day, sometimes I’m in town and it’s all cars and gas stations and the music in the Piggly Wiggly and the Burger King, but all I can hear is the sound of her flying across the cliffs. We’re charting unexplored countries. We’re finding gold.” Tears were running down his face. “We’re having our series. We’re having adventure after adventure, and nothing ever changes. We’re always together.”

  Lily went over and sat next to him and put her hand on his arm.

  She knew it was a good time not to say anything. Sometimes sadness is beyond words, because it is not an idea but a sensation, like hunger or pain.

  And Eddie Wax, unspeaking, cried for all he wished were true.

  It appears that people have somewhat forgotten about the Qui
nts, with everything else that has been happening.

  Don’t think that the Quints didn’t realize this.

  “Um,” said La. “Isn’t someone supposed to come and check on us?”

  “It would be really nice if we had a lamp or a bonfire.”

  “I’d like a mailbox,” said one, “so I could keep getting postcards.”

  They waited for something to happen.

  Katie, Jasper, and the gagged bat specialist made their way down toward the lodge. The wind was howling in the crags now. The trees shrugged and waved their arms.

  Katie and Jasper, on either side of the duct-taped professor, exchanged glances in the bobbing glare from the flashlight. It was good to be back together again. They almost smiled.

  They knew that now that they were reunited, nothing could stand in their way. They had encountered some awful things in their time— and yes, by awful things I mean tentacled things, sweating chloroform and hungry for subway cars—but nothing had ever defeated them; nothing, as Jasper saw it, had ever stood for long in the way of justice, truth, and kindness.

  Go then, Jasper and Katie, back to your friend Lily, who awaits you. Steel your courage. Prepare to fight evil and injustice. Rush down the mountain while the storm gathers—and I wish you luck. We need more like you.

  Though Dr. Schmeltzer, whose mouth has been duct-taped, would not necessarily agree.

  Lily and Eddie Wax went down to the game room. The game-room walls were spiky with antlers. Antlers came out of the stone chimney and the window frames and the doors. People were playing cards there and billiards, sitting delicately to avoid getting poked.

  Lily was worried. She said, “I wonder whether Katie and Dr. Schmeltzer found Jasper yet. Maybe we should go out after them.”

  They looked around the room.

  The Manley Boys were shaking the billiard table as if they thought it was a pinball machine. They picked it up and rocked it.