Molly Moon & the Morphing Mystery

Seventeen

“Do you really think Petula needs to come?” Black asked.

It was properly dark now. Micky, Molly, and Petula were sitting in the backseat of Black’s old Mercedes that was parked by the corner of the natural history museum, near its second entrance. Malcolm Tixley was in the passenger seat beside Black. His eyes followed the journey of the half-bent wipers as they swept left and right at the sloshings of water that pelted down on the windshield.

“Petula’s good luck,” Molly explained. “She’s like a mascot. In fact, she has often helped me. She’s been all over the world with me, forward and backward in time, too. She’s part of the team, isn’t she, Micky?”

“Absolutely,” Micky replied. “Wow, it’s wet out there.” A rumble of thunder rolled through the sky as if in agreement.

Black turned off his engine. “Here are a couple of flashlights for you. You may need them. We’ll wait for you here.” He consulted his watch. “Remember, if you’re not back by midnight, I’m coming in.”

Molly read the luminescent clock on the dashboard. It was ten fifteen. “We’ll be fine,” she said, far more confidently than she felt. “Don’t worry about us. Anyway, Malcolm, your red box can still track me, right?”

“Yes,” said Malcolm, pulling his gadget out of his pocket and switching it on. It bleeped reassuringly.

“Good. And you never know, we may find my time-stopping crystals and time-traveling gems in there somewhere. Then, wow, everything would be really cool. Ready, Micky?”

Standing in the rain outside, Micky rang the bell. Water seeped under the elastic wristband of Molly’s jacket. She held Petula tight.

A light came on inside the building and the night watchman, an elderly, whiskered man with a blue uniform, came through the inner safety door of the museum and peered out through the football-sized peephole of the main door. He couldn’t see much as the glass was so wet, but it was clear that the two people outside were children. He knew how dangerous the London streets could be at night, so he reached behind him to lock the safety catch of the inner door, and then he reached for the bolt of the main door.

“Hello, are you two all right?” he asked. “It’s raining cats and dogs out there.”

The little girl came forward.

“We’re lost,” she said in a wobbly voice. “We’re lost. We ran away from home, see, and now we’re lost.”

“Ran away from home? Lost? Dear me!” The night watchman glanced out at the empty, black, glistening street that bounced with rainwater. Then he looked at the two straggly, sodden children and their black pug. They were harmless.

“Come on in, then,” he said kindly, beckoning them inside.

“I’m very sorry,” said Molly as the old man led them through the second door into the museum, toward his office. “And thank you very much.”

“What on earth are a nice couple of kids like you doin’ runnin’ away from home?” the watchman asked. “That’s what I want to know.”

Molly considered the man. Hunroe would have definitely hypnotized him, she thought. Hypnotized him not to be hypnotized by anyone else. Hunroe would have locked her hypnotism in with a password. But if Molly found out the password, then she could override Miss Hunroe’s hypnotism. So, using the skill that no one else knew she had, she opened a thought bubble over the man’s head, and she asked him, “What is the password that Miss Hunroe used to lock in your hypnotism?” The old man frowned.

“I’m sorry? I don’t think I understand your question, dear. Come into the office and have a hot chocolate or a cup of tea or something. We’ll sort everything out there.” But as he spoke, a picture of an apple appeared above his head. Then she switched on her eyes.

As the hypnotic lasers of her pupils beamed into the old man’s, she said, “I unlock your previous hypnotism with the word ‘Apple,’ and now, I’m sorry, I mean, you are a very nice old man and all that, but until I set you free, you are now completely and utterly under my power.” Like a creature born to obey her, the old man stood obediently in front of Molly.

“How did you know the password?” Micky asked incredulously. Molly shrugged casually.

“No, that’s weird, Molly. How did you know?”

“Intuition,” Molly fibbed. Micky held her gaze and tilted his head as though he found this difficult to believe.

“Really?” he said.

Minutes later, Molly, Micky, and Petula were being led by the hypnotized night watchman through the museum in a passage lined with stuffed birds. Ahead, in the musty gloom of the main hall of the museum, they could see the massive skeletal legs of the diplodocus.

“We’ll see you later, then,” Molly whispered to the old man. “Wait by the side door to let us out.”

The watchman nodded and smiled.

“Right…you…are,” he whispered back in a halting tone.

Molly and Micky paused and surveyed the dark, cathedral-proportioned space with its grand staircase that split into two, curving around to join the first-floor balcony. Petula sniffed the air and tried to read its swarms of smells. The overriding odor was floor polish. Under this was the smell of ancient bones, and old fur, and the smell of that afternoon’s visitors’ footsteps, which had brought in scents from the street. And Petula could detect that onions and garlic had been fried a few hours before and a croissant had been eaten upstairs. The scent of lavender blossom flickered through the hall as though someone wearing it had recently walked by. Sensing that the coast was clear now, though, Petula tapped Molly on her leg with her paw, nodded, and stepped forward.

“Petula seems to think it’s all right. Glad we brought her.” Molly put her hand under Micky’s elbow, and they both crept forward. Cautious as timid mice, they slipped through the shadows and climbed the staircase. They moved quietly along the upper balcony until they were finally up at the door to the botanical library.

Turning the doorknob, they went through, tiptoeing down the dark archive room, past its shelves of books and towering filing cabinets, to the column of drawers at the end that hid the secret entrance to Miss Hunroe’s lair. Molly pushed the filing cabinet and the secret door opened and they went through.

Petula wondered what the twins were looking for. She supposed it was the book. If it was a bottle of lavender perfume, they were heading in the right direction. The scent was drifting through the cracks along the edges of the door in front of them like heat escaping from an igloo.

Molly gripped the filing-cabinet handle and got ready to push. “Here goes,” she said.

The door nudged open, revealing another dark room—this time, the library. Nothing had changed. The layout of the furniture was the same. The three sofas stood in a horseshoe configuration with the book-laden coffee table between them. There was the tall window with the stained-glass patterns on it.

Micky tapped Molly on the shoulder. “Look,” he whispered, “there’s the feathery tree picture. And it’s not a feathery tree, is it? You were right, Molly—it’s a quill.” He turned on his flashlight.

Molly joined her brother beside the fireplace. “Where there is a quill, there is a way,” she said. “Do you think there’s something behind it?” She reached up to lift the old picture from the wall. Micky helped her as they hauled it down. As they did, they saw that the wall where it had been was plain, without writing on it or a safe embedded in it.

“It’s heavy!” Molly whispered.

“Do you think there’s something inside it?” Micky suggested.

“Crumbs. Bet there is,” Molly agreed.

The twins turned the picture over and, in the light of Micky’s flashlight, saw that the frame’s wooden back was taped down. Quickly they stripped off the tape and peeled the wood away from the frame, revealing the back of the quill drawing.

“Nothing here,” Micky decided, disappointed. The dark sky outside seemed to growl, as though warning the children to behave themselves. Micky pulled out the paper. It was simply a drawing. Nothing more. “Maybe it’s got secret writing on it.” He shone his flashlight through different parts of the parchment, to see whether any watermarked writing was hidden there, while Molly picked at the frame itself.

“Perhaps something’s hidden inside the wood,” she said. “Shall we break it and see? I’ll take the glass out first. I mean, I know it’s not good smashing things up and all that, but this is an exception.”

Petula watched with interest as Molly put her sneakered foot on the picture frame and broke it in half. Outside, a distant crack of lightning seemed to echo the splintering noise.

Molly studied the wood. “It’s solid. Not hollow. Nothing in it.” She sat heavily on the sofa. “It was only a hunch, wasn’t it? I mean, there are quills and feathers everywhere. Maybe we should be looking down in the stuffed-bird rooms.”

Micky sat down beside her and glanced up at the hundreds and hundreds of books.

“Why would there be a quill picture? It must be to show that this room is special. There’s something in here, there must be.”

Minutes later Molly and Micky were up on the balcony level of the room, rifling through the library’s shelves for a box that might hold Molly’s crystals or a book that might contain a good clue as to where the Logan Stones were. The books were organized alphabetically. Molly and Micky ran their flashlights along their spines, reading their titles.

“Ancient Civilization,” Micky read. “The Andes. Annihilation of the World’s Population and Other Extreme Ways Forward.” Micky shook his head in revulsion. “That sounds like a Hunroe sort of book, but not the next one. Apple Picking. The Aztecs. Botany of the Amazon.” Micky frowned while he thought.

“Damn!” Molly despaired. “This is hopeless. The clue might be in a map or in a poem, or it might be deep in a math book written in a code in numbers!”

Micky turned around and leaned over the ledge of the balcony, surveying the mess of the picture frame below. They’d never be able to cover their tracks now, for the frame was unfixable.

At that moment a huge flash of lightning exploded in the sky. Petula froze with fear. And, as though some sort of giant hundred-foot-tall paparazzi photographer had his camera directed at them from outside the window and had detonated its flash, white light blasted in through the window. It flooded the room, and something extraordinary happened.

Passing through the window’s stained glass, where the strange shapes were, and using the etched lines there, the light and shadows formed a picture and some words on the white wall, where the picture of the quill had been.

The apparition was on the wall for only a second, but it was enough.

“WOW!” Micky gasped.