Molly Moon & the Morphing Mystery (6 page)

“But surely Molly can still go in wisout her time-stopping skills,” Miss Suzette commented.

Miss Teriyaki gasped. “Don't be ridiculous!”

“Listen,” Molly interrupted. “Micky and I really don't need time crystals for this. It's a cinch. This job can easily be done without them.” Next to her, she could sense Micky's eyes widening. But her appetite had been whetted. Just the day before, she had been yearning for a bit of adventure again. This little trip into Black's Casino to retrieve the book looked like it might at least
give her a taste of what she'd been craving.

“Besides, I'm very interested to get a look at that book. We could take it down to Briersville Park and keep it in the library there. After all, that's where it belongs.”

Micky shrugged. “I suppose that's true.”

“Zat's de spirit!” Miss Suzette exclaimed, twiddling her silver cane enthusiastically. “Just ze idea I'd had for ze book myself!”

“Vunderful!” Miss Oakkton echoed, thwacking the coffee table with her white gloves.

Miss Hunroe clapped her hands.

“Absolutely not!” she decided vehemently. “I'm sorry, Molly and Micky, but I've acted like a fool, and completely improperly. You've said your parents wouldn't want you to get involved with this risky business, and we cannot ignore that.”

“But Miss Hunroe,” Miss Teriyaki interrupted, “Molly herself thinks that she and her brother can retrieve the book easily. Maybe this is our only chance.”

“Miss Hunroe, it is madness not to accept ze children's help.”

“No, Miss Oakkton, I've been influenced by you enough. These children cannot be involved without their parents' consent.”

“Listen,” Molly interrupted. “We want to help. And our parents have only just
become
our parents. Micky only met them recently. I haven't known them that much longer. We've lived our lives for a long time without them. So we aren't like normal kids. Maybe Micky hasn't made his mind up about it yet,” she added, smiling, “but I have.”

“Oh, I don't know,” Miss Hunroe said, her decision hovering. She pulled out her gold coin again and turned it over and over in her fingers.

“I think zay
must
help,” Miss Suzette advised. “Zese children, Miss Hunroe, are not ordinary children. Molly has special abilities, and Micky ez probably gifted, too. After all, zay are twins. With Molly's gift come special responsibilities. Zis is a critical problem that needs specific solutions. No one can help as Molly can. What is more, if we don't get Molly's help, the whole world may suffer the consequences.”

Miss Hunroe's coin flipped through the air and landed in the palm of her hand. She smacked it onto the back of her left hand.

“Heads you win,” she said.

 

A hundred and eighty miles away, Petula woke up from a midday sleep. She'd had a nightmare of Molly leaving her all alone in Briersville Park, which was silly, she
knew, because apart from Molly and Micky, everyone else—Rocky, Ojas, and the adults—were all there. She shook her head, and her ears and her lips flapped and the sparkling nametag on her collar rattled. But it was odd, she thought, that her sleep had been so undisturbed.

Petula had been out the night before, down on the neighboring farm where her friends the sheepdogs lived. She'd stayed with them until well past midnight. Then she'd trotted home under a starlit sky, barked at the local fox, who she could smell was in the llama field, and she'd gotten back in late. Now she would go and visit everyone and see how they were. It was peculiar, as normally at this time of day she'd hear the butler, Todson, laying tables for lunch. But all was quiet.

So off she trotted from her basket in the pantry, along the corridor to her basket in the hall. There she picked up a small pebble in her mouth and, chewing and sucking it, made her way up the wide hall stairs to the first landing that led to the house's master bedrooms. Portraits of Molly and Micky's ancestors looked curiously down, their eyes seemingly fixed on her.

“Don't you know it's rude to stare?” Petula barked at them.

On the second floor, the hundreds of clocks that lined the second floor passage ticked like clockwork
crickets. Petula nudged open Primo Cell and Lucy Logan's bedroom door.

The room was dark, as the curtains were closed. Both Lucy and Primo were sitting in bed. They were leaning back on cushions, staring upward. For a moment Petula thought that perhaps they had bought a very modern new television screen that was set in the ceiling. But as she trotted into the room, she could see that there was nothing on the ceiling. What was more, neither said hello to Petula. She dropped her stone and barked. Primo and Lucy were still. Petula put her front paws up on the side of the bed. She whined at Lucy and pawed at the silk bedspread beside her, but neither of the humans uttered a word. Then Lucy took a sip of water. She didn't even glance at Petula.

Something was wrong, very wrong. Petula barked again, and then some more, but it was useless. Petula suddenly felt very scared. She'd seen humans in this state before. It was as obvious as an unburied bone, Lucy and Primo were hypnotized. But by
who
? Petula looked about her to see whether her barking had summoned anyone to the room. Then, turning on her heels, Petula fled.

Panic rushing through her, she bowled along the passage of clocks until she came to the small flight of
stairs that led to the children's quarters. She must let Rocky and Ojas know what had happened and get their help! Her claws slid and scrabbled up the polished wooden steps. Skidding to stop herself, she reached their bedroom. The room was empty. Petula turned and began to run along the corridor to the attic stairs. Her heart lifted as she approached the children's den. The sound of jingles on the TV escaped through the crack of the closed door. Everything was normal, she thought. Rocky and Ojas were watching TV. But when she pushed the door open, her hopes were dashed. For there in the dark with the curtains shut, reclining in armchairs with glazed expressions on their faces as they gawped at the TV, were Ojas and Rocky.

Petula leaped into Rocky's lap and barked right into his eyes, but he was like someone half dead. The light from the television screen danced across his brown face. Petula pounced at the TV. An ad was on. Three pots of mustard, each with a smiling face, jigged about in front of a barbecued sausage. This should have seemed funny, but today, as though in some nasty dream, the pots of mustard looked sinister. Petula growled and tried to hit the off switch. Having no success, she attacked the television plug and eventually pulled it out of its socket. Now the room was pitch black
except for the light from the passage. Frightened and confused, Petula left that room, too.

Forest the hippie or Todson or the new cook
must
be all right, Petula thought as she sped along the carpet to the main stairs. Inside she felt desperate. A howl of fear was building up in her. For surely Forest or Todson would have called Molly and Micky back home if they knew what had happened to the others. Then a horrid thought occurred to Petula. Perhaps Todson or the new cook were the guilty hypnotists.

Down in the sitting room, Forest was so still he looked like he'd rooted to the floor like a human tree. Even the children's pet blackbirds, sitting on his shoulders, had been hypnotized. Petula was scared. As quietly as she could, she tip-pawed to the kitchen. She found Todson and the Thai cook sitting in armchairs with their eyes closed.

Petula's head swam as the nightmarish reality of her situation sank in. Moving as quietly and as quickly as she could, she crept to her special low chair. This was a chair that she could hide under where no one would find her. Finally under its velvet-fringed bottom, she caught her breath and tried to think straight.

She thought of the strange, glamorous woman who had smelled of red lipstick and rose perfume. Before,
Petula had detected a scent of thorn in the perfume. Now she realized that the perfume had been the rose smell and that it covered the woman's true scent, that of sharp
thorn
. Petula remembered how the woman had whisked Molly and Micky away, and a horrid mixture of anger and worry rose in her guts.

Emboldened by this detective work, Petula made her way to the drawing room, where she knew Lucy Logan had hidden Molly's collection of time-travel and time-stopping crystals. She nudged the inlaid mother-of-pearl box from its low shelf near the fireplace until it fell on the floor and burst open. Nothing fell out of it. Nothing was in it. Someone had stolen the crystals.

Now Petula saw things clearly. This woman stealing Molly's crystals meant she knew about Molly's talents. The woman was obviously a talented hypnotist, for she'd switched every person in the house into neutral. But what about Molly and Micky? Perhaps, just
perhaps
, they weren't in real danger yet.

Petula shivered. She felt small and hopeless and all alone. But there was nothing for it. Molly and Micky must be helped. If Petula didn't go to their rescue, who would?

Petula made her way down to the kitchen, to the back door. With a deep breath, she nudged the wooden
dog flap with her forehead and stepped out into the cool, damp air. Raising her black nose to the wind and cocking her head to sense Molly and Micky's whereabouts, she set off up the long drive.

M
iss Hunroe stood alone beside a high, round table in a large, grand room with a very tall triangular ceiling above. Her and her acquaintances' lavish apartments were all situated in the uppermost parts of the four towers that punctuated the top of the natural history museum. Miss Hunroe's rooms were in the Art Deco style. The black lacquer chairs had curved solid wooden backs and smart cushions with a leafy garland pattern on them. There were etched mirrored-glass tables, and at the far end of the room was a concertinaed, free-standing pale wood screen with a long-legged leaping dancer inlaid in darker wood on it. Behind this was an oval-shaped double bed. The walls were green and decorated with gold brocade. A high maple cabinet
displayed a collection of ancient gold plates and goblets, and on the floor, in front of the thirty-six–paned window, a giant, rare solid-gold vase, taken from the Egyptian department in the British Museum, stood proud, filled with magnificent sunflowers. A gorgeous gilt harp stood to the side of the vase, while above, a massive golden chandelier hung from the apex of the room like a giant honeycomb.

The walls were hung with paintings. One echoed the sunflowers on the floor and was by a world-famous painter, Van Gogh. Miss Hunroe had “borrowed” this from its museum home in Amsterdam. Languidly, she sat down at the harp. The sound of the strings as her fingers plucked them was like the sound of a heavenly waterfall. Then Miss Hunroe pinched one of the strings tightly and slid her pinch from the top of the string downward. This made a screeching, unearthly noise. Smiling, Miss Hunroe abandoned the harp and swiveled around on her stool. Crossing her legs, she pulled a clear crystal out of her pocket and held it up to the light.

“If
she's
mastered time travel and time stopping,” she said, “I don't see why I shouldn't.”

There was a knock at the door. “Come in.”

Miss Speal and Miss Suzette entered, each looking modestly proud, as though they were about to receive
gold stars from the head teacher.

“They've gone!” Miss Speal squealed suddenly, unable to control her excitement. She rubbed her hands together. “I just saw them off in a taxi.”

“
And
zay fell for it hook, line, and sinker,” gushed Miss Suzette. Then she added flatteringly, “Miss Hunroe, you were brilliant—a tour de force! You should receive an Oscar for your performance! I loved the part where you refused to let zem go.” Here Miss Suzette imitated Miss Hunroe's words. “‘I'm sorry, Molly and Micky, but I've acted like a fool, and completely improperly. You've said your parents wouldn't want you to get involved with this risky business, and we cannot ignore that.' It was inspired, Miss Hunroe. Well done!”

“The girl's impetuous. And the boy seems to follow her lead. I knew it wouldn't take much,” Miss Hunroe said, brushing off the praise.

“Expect zay'll be at de casino in ten minutes,” enthused Miss Suzette.

“They are nearly there,” said Miss Speal with her eyes shut.

“Let's hope it works,” said Miss Hunroe, plucking three strings of her harp with her long-nailed fingers.

“Oh, play us something please, Miss Hunroe.”
Miss Speal sighed. Miss Hunroe cast her eyes to the ceiling, and then she played. Heavenly music drifted about the room and the women fell quiet, in awe. Then Miss Hunroe suddenly stopped. “But, Miss Speal, you should be ashamed of yourself, losing control like you did. I've asked you not to rub that piece of stone while we are here. You behaved like an idiot. It was as if you wanted them to know our secret!”

“I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself,” the thin spinster mumbled, staring at the ground.

Miss Hunroe tutted nastily and then narrowed her eyes and impersonated her. “‘I couldn't help myself.' Pathetic.”

An awkward silence filled the room. Miss Suzette broke it, trying to change the subject. “I'm sure de Moon girl is a mind reader,” she said excitedly, bobbing about from foot to foot like some overkeen lapdog so that her frilly clothes started to flap. “Did she mind read you, Miss Hunroe? Did you see de way she looked at us? It was very good we knew how to take precautions and bar her probing mind from our
true
thoughts.”

Miss Hunroe nodded matter-of-factly and replied sourly, “She was most certainly attempting to read my mind. I felt it. It was as though a window had been opened into my head and a breeze was coming in. It took all my strength to invent the things she should see
and keep her out of my real thoughts.”

“Yes, yes! For me it was a tickly feeling all over my forehead!” Miss Suzette declared.

“Do you think she's a natural morpher? Do you think she can body borrow?”

“You couldn't learn without that book,” Miss Speal replied. “Unless you had a teacher. For instance, I taught you all to morph into animals, but I originally got my lessons from the book.”

“Where
are
the cats?” Miss Hunroe asked impatiently. She looked at her watch.

As if on cue, the door opened, and led by a beautiful short-haired, blue-eyed white Burmese cat, the two other female hypnotists, Miss Oakkton and Miss Teriyaki, entered. Miss Oakkton held two cats, a big ginger tom and a gray hairless sphynx cat, while Miss Teriyaki, with a crutch under her right arm, held a fluffy white Persian cat under her left arm. A gray Siamese followed her.

Miss Teriyaki spoke. “Oh, Miss Hunroe, you were so clever to make the story up that my skiing-accident scar was from a trip into the casino! I'm sure those gullible children believed it completely!” Miss Hunroe blinked at Miss Teriyaki, then glared at Miss Oakkton.

“You're late, Miss Oakkton. Just like you were last week when we were in Black's Casino. May I remind
you that your lack of punctuality then upset our whole plan. If it hadn't been for
you
, we would have the book by now. Because of
your
sloppiness then, we were caught inside the casino. Because of
you
, the guard
you
were supposed to deal with was left unhypnotized. But there was a reason, wasn't there? Ah, now, what was it you were doing? Buying tobacco? So all in all, because of
your
dirty pipe habit, we have all had to go to these
ridiculous
lengths to persuade these horrible Moon children to help us.”

“Ze cats ver difficult to round up,” explained Miss Oakkton.

“You always have an excuse,” whined Miss Speal.

“You ought to set your watch five minutes fast, like a child dat is always late.” Miss Suzette laughed patronizingly. “That would teach you!” Miss Oakkton growled at her under her breath.

Miss Teriyaki passed the big-eyed, white, fluffy-haired Persian cat to Miss Suzette and bent down to pick up the gray Siamese.

“Oh, daaaahleeeng!” Miss Suzette exclaimed, pressing her nose up to her pet's.

Miss Oakkton kept the large, hairy orange cat firmly tucked under her arm, while giving the thin, hairless sphynx to Miss Speal.

“Ready?” Miss Hunroe asked as her white Burmese
cat rubbed against her ankles. The women murmured yes. Miss Hunroe frowned irritatedly. “Not you, Miss Speal. I've ordered the plane. It takes off at five thirty. You should be in the chamber by eleven tomorrow morning our time.”

Miss Speal dropped her head apologetically. “Thank you for forgiving my stupidity, Miss Hunroe.”

“We will meet you there as soon as our business is finished here,” Miss Hunroe added. Then she turned her attention again to the other three women. They were all now staring at a patterned rug on the floor. “Let us go,” Miss Hunroe decided. In the next second, an astonishing thing happened. She and the women staring at the rug disappeared as instantly as blown-out flames. All that was left was their clothes—a pile of frills of cotton and silk, of wool skirts, trousers, shirts, and jackets, of old-fashioned bras and pants of varying sizes, and of nylon tights. Scattered about under the mounds of material were an odd assortment of shoes, as well as a crutch. Four cats sat on the belongings as though they owned them.

The cats stared at the floor as they adjusted to their insides. For each of them now had
two
beings inside them—the original cat beings, and the women who had just entered, and who were now taking them over.

The real cat characters shrank back and down like
sea anemones reduced from blooming flowers to tiny balls. Miss Hunroe, Miss Teriyaki, Miss Suzette, and Miss Oakkton took control of the cats' minds as quickly and as thoroughly as an egg cup of black ink might color a small mug of water.

The white Burmese was the most difficult of the feline creatures to take command of. And today, as was often the case, it resisted Miss Hunroe's control. It fought hard, refusing to let its identity be squashed and replaced by Miss Hunroe's personality. But it was no use. Miss Hunroe won the tug-of-war, and the blue-eyed cat succumbed to Miss Hunroe.

“Miaaww,”
Miss Hunroe mewed. And then, in the language of cat—for once in an animal, it was possible to speak to other animals of the same sort—she asked, “Are you ready?”

Miss Speal, sitting on a stool with her hairless sphynx in her arms, watched as the four cats before her twitched their tails and nodded to the white Burmese. Then she stood up and opened the door for her feline friends.

The cats descended a straight, steep, thirty-step staircase and came to an open fire exit onto the main roof of the museum. Nimbly they leaped out onto the slated tiles there and, in an ordered fashion, trotted along the full length of the roof down to the museum's
central towers. Here, traversing the triangular peak of the roof, they came to the front of the museum, where they negotiated a wrought-iron fire escape that descended until they were at ground-floor level. They each leaped onto a balcony and walked along a thin, granite windowsill before hopping from the head of an ugly stone gargoyle onto the bare branch of a tree in front of the museum. Soon the procession of cats had snaked its way down to the cold pavement of Brompton Road.

A big red double-decker bus stopped at the light, and all four cats sprung on board.

“Oh, my word!” exclaimed the Jamaican bus conductor.

“Ah, look at those sweet cats!” cried an eight-year-old girl on her way home from school.

A wobbly-chinned woman, surrounded by shopping bags, looked up. “How extraordinary!” she said.

“MIAAWW!”
screeched Miss Oakkton, the orange cat, swiping at the child with her claws. Miss Teriyaki, the Siamese, hissed and leaped forward aggressively. The girl shrieked and stumbled backward so that her purple-felt school hat fell off.

“Blood clot!” the conductor gasped. “Like a bunch of witches' cats, I'd say. Are you all right, sweetheart? Best to leave 'em alone.”

And so the bus pulled away. The people on it nervously eyed the feline passengers. The four cats—the white Burmese, the gray Siamese, the fluffy white Persian, and the huge orange cat—sat beside the stairs near the vehicle's open back. Then, at Knightsbridge, they stood up, raised their noses to the air, and disembarked.

 

AH2 pulled up his collar as another gust of cold air blew through the street. He'd followed Molly Moon and the boy who looked like her brother out of the natural history museum. He had hailed a cab to tail theirs, but with the heavy late-afternoon traffic, his black taxi had lost them. With his tracking device, however, AH2 could of course deduce exactly where Molly Moon was. And so he had switched it on and made his way through the crowded pavements after her.

It was odd. Molly Moon and her accomplice were inside a smart old building that bore the sign
BLACK'S CASINO, ESTABLISHED
1928. What an eleven-year-old girl could need to do inside a casino was beyond AH2. Then again, he considered, digging his hands deep into his pockets, she was
really
an alien. And the brother was probably an alien, too. Maybe the place was a nest of aliens. As AH2 grew dizzy watching early gamblers entering the casino through its cylindrical
rotating door, his imagination took flight. It would be incredible, he thought, if he were to uncover an alien headquarters. AH2 imagined himself interviewed on news programs, his face transmitted to televisions all over the world. He'd be a hero.

“All those years of knowing aliens were here with no one believing you!” he pictured the news journalist saying. “How did you cope?” AH2's mind spun off into a fantasy.

“I had a very strong gut feeling,” he imagined himself saying. “And coupled with the proof I was collecting, I was confident that I'd be able to prove to the world that aliens had arrived.”

“Well, it's truly impressive,” the interviewer would reply. “I'm sure everyone watching would like to personally shake you by the hand and thank you.”

AH2 was awakened from his daydream by something gliding past his feet. He looked down to see an
extraordinary
sight. Four cats—two white, a ginger, and a gray—slipped quietly past him as though following one another. Hiding in the shadows for a moment until the casino doorman had his back turned, they then all leaped toward the tiny alley that ran alongside the casino. One, two, three, and lastly the fourth cat disappeared around the corner of the alley before anyone else noticed them.

AH2's fantasy that this place was a den of aliens suddenly became concrete.

“Bingo!” he said under his breath.

 

Twenty minutes earlier, a cab had dropped off Molly and Micky at the end of the street. “There it is, luv,” the Cockney cabby had directed them. “Gambling's not good for you, though. Don't spend all yer pocket money!”

Micky and Molly paid him and thanked him. They paused as he drove away, then stood still to watch the casino entrance.

“Here we go,” said Molly. “Remember, Micky, we're Lily Black's friends, so behave like a seven-year-old.”