Molly Moon & the Morphing Mystery (7 page)

“This is crazy,” Micky replied. “If just being kids doesn't work, use your hypnotism, will you, Molly?”

Molly looked at her brother. He was licking his lips nervously. “If you don't want to come in, don't worry, Micky. You could wait out here, and I'll go in on my own. It won't take long, and you'll be safe here.”

Micky shook his head.

“I've read so many adventure stories,” he mulled. “Hundreds, probably. From ones set in medieval times to ones set far in the future. Space adventures, cowboy adventures, war adventures, survival adventures—”

“That's why you know so much stuff,” Molly interrupted.

Micky nodded. “Suppose now is the time to be
in
an adventure.”

“Sure?” Molly said, smiling with amusement at her brother's logic.

“Yes, sure,” Micky answered with his mind made up. “Let's do it.”

The siblings ascended the casino's short steps to where one of the guards stood, brushing dandruff off the shoulders of his suit jacket.

“Excuse me,” Molly began. “Is this Lily Black's, um…house? We've come for a playdate.”

Micky interrupted her. “Don't be silly, Matilda. I told you this can't be Lily's house. This isn't a house, it's a shop. Oh, Matilda, we're lost. I want my mum!”

The unsuspecting doorman looked down.

“Hey, little fella, don't worry, this
is
Lily's house. She lives here till her dad takes her home, so if you've come for a playdate, you've come to the right place. Come in!”

“Oh, fanks!” said Micky, smiling up sweetly at the guard. “Does Lily have sweets here?”

The guard laughed and ushered the kids through. “Should think so, knowing Miss Lily!” He chuckled.
He pointed into the casino. “Walk straight over there and around that corner, and her room is the second on the left.”

“Okay, thanks, mister!”

Molly and Micky walked through the revolving door.

“Brilliant, Micky,” Molly said, smiling. “You've got talent.”

And so the children padded into the casino. Only seven steps inside, and they felt as though they were in a twilight world—a place of neither day nor night. For the casino was windowless and void of natural light. Instead it glittered with golden lamps and imitation candlelight. The floor's green carpet was filled with a copper-threaded coin pattern that gave the impression that money had been strewn all over the ground. The walls were a pale green, decorated in the trompe l'oeil fashion: An artist had painted fake columns with plants on top of them and views of a garden behind. These views were executed to look three-dimensional so that it really seemed that the casino was set in a weird paradise.

Gamblers of all nationalities sat concentrating on their card games. And shiny silver balls clattered on spinning roulette wheels before they found resting places. Molly and Micky walked silently by them, along
the side passage that ajoined the gambling room.

“Looks fun!” said Micky. “Pity we can't have a go.”

“Come on, Micky. Cameras are everywhere. We don't want Mr. Black spotting us.”

She pulled him behind a slot machine. “Some people call these machines one-arm bandits,” she said, discreetly pulling out the casino map Miss Hunroe had given her, “because the handle you pull is like an arm, and like a bandit, the machines steal your money.” She quickly looked at the map. “So we need to go over there.” Molly gestured toward the corner of the casino. “That's where the vent grille is. Once inside that we can crawl through the vent to his office. She smiled at Micky. “No locks, no guards.”

“What if Black's already seen us via one of the casino cameras?” Micky whispered, his voice now wobbling slightly with worry.

“If he has, we are in trouble,” said Molly. “So let's get this thing done quickly.”

The children both took a deep breath and began to cross the casino floor, walking swiftly from slot machine to slot machine toward the corner of the room. However, when they got there, to their horror, another guard, shorter and brawnier than the door guard, stepped from behind a pillar to obstruct their way.

“Hello, you two. Come to see Miss Lily?” he asked.

“Erm, yes,” Micky said. “The man at the door told us her room is round that corner.”

The guard shook his head. “Not exactly. But I will take you to her. First, though, you have to say good afternoon to Mr. Black.”

Molly gulped. Micky's eyes widened. Molly saw that her hypnotism was needed. She only hoped that Mr. Black hadn't hypnotized this man so that he was
un
hypnotizable. She wondered whether the man was suspicious enough of them to put on his anti-hypnotism glasses. She could see them poking out of his jacket's front pocket.

“And will Mr. Black give us some sweets?” Micky asked, buying Molly time.

Molly looked at the man and considered his frowning forehead, his muscley body, and his officialness. Feeling what it was like to be him, she found it easy to stare up at him and tune into him. Then Molly turned her green eyes on. At once, their hypnotic power shot toward him straight into his eyeballs. His eyes widened. Molly felt him bridle. There was some resistance there. But now she'd started, she couldn't give up.

Micky watched as Molly's eyes strained and as the skin between her eyebrows furrowed.

He saw her jaw clench as she bit her teeth together, trying to concentrate.

Molly could feel a slight weakness in the man, as though the instructions that he'd been given, of not to be hypnotized, weren't 100 percent firm. Black had obviously thought that the quality of his hypnotism would be enough to bar Miss Hunroe or her friends from controlling his guard. But Black hadn't reckoned on Molly. Perhaps he hadn't come across a hypnotist with Molly's power before. She hoped Black's instructions weren't locked in.

As far as the guard was concerned, Molly's green, closely set eyes were like alluring green beacons that he could neither ignore nor resist. Like super magnets, they pulled him in. Their green, throbbing pulse seemed to match the speed of his own heartbeat and fix him to the spot.

Molly felt the fusion feeling warm her body.

“Brilliant. The fusion feeling,” she said under her breath.

“The what?” Micky whispered.

“It's a feeling I get, a kind of warm tingling feeling all over my body that makes me know that I've managed to hypnotize someone. You'll get it too when you learn. I'm looking forward to teaching you how.”

“So is he hypnotized?”

“Yup. Cooked.”

Whatever this messy-haired girl suggested, the
guard had to agree with her. He wanted to treat her like a princess and her friend like a prince.

“Yes, certainly,” he found himself saying. “Lots of sweets. Toffees, truffles, hard candy. I can get them for you now.”

“Don't worry about the sweets,” Molly said, keeping her eyes firmly on him. “Micky, tell him what we want him to do.”

Micky's eyes widened, for he hadn't expected this. “What, like hypnotic instructions?” he asked. Molly nodded.

“Make it quick.”

“Um, okay. Right. Um, so, mister, listen to this. We are going to climb through a ventilator shaft. We want you to take the cover off it, then to stand guard and put it back on when we come back through. And once we are out of your sight, you will forget that you ever saw us here; you will forget that you were hypnotized.”

The man nodded obediently.

“Nice.” Molly smiled encouragingly at Micky. Then, without batting an eye, the guard led Molly and Micky to the wall where their chosen vent was. Soon he was tugging at its cover and pulling off the metal grating. Hurriedly the twins climbed in. The space was only just big enough for them. Micky pulled the vent cover
in behind him and placed it on the inside floor of the tiny passage, so that the opening was unobstructed for their return. Outside the vent, the guard resumed his position.

“Don't kick my face,” Micky said as he crawled with Molly's sneakers almost hitting his nose. “I can't believe we're in here. It smells.” Micky sneezed.

“Shh,” Molly whispered. “Sound travels in these pipes.”

The vent duct was dark now, but ahead was a glow where another grille brought in light from the casino. And so the twins began to crawl toward this. When they reached it, Molly stopped, and since the vent went in two directions, she and Micky were able to sit side by side.

Molly pointed through the vent to a roulette table below, where three rich Chinese people sat. Two smartly dressed businessmen and their velvet-suited lady friend sat on smooth-backed stools with piles of betting chips stacked on the green baize table before them.

“Look! That chip's worth a thousand pounds!” Molly observed. “And she's got about fifty of them.”

“And,” Micky noticed, “if the ball lands on a black number, she'll win quite a few more.”

The croupier, a man in a dark waistcoat and a starched shirt and black trousers, stood calm and official behind the spinning roulette wheel. The little silver ball tittled and tattled, as though gossiping with the numbers on the roulette wheel as it spun. Then it stopped. For a few seconds it was impossible to see what color it had landed on, for the wheel was still a rotating blur.

“Red, fifty-two,” the croupier announced. Without a glimmer of emotion, he swept all the gambling chips off the numbered felt toward a slit in the table's surface, through which the chips disappeared.

“Black must make a fortune!” Molly whispered.

“Just like a one-armed bandit,” said Micky.

“Yup. He's an ugly bandit,” Molly agreed. “Come on, let's get the book.”

The twins followed the vent up a slope and around a corner. Now it was dark again, and to make things worse, a cold breeze was blowing as the casino's air conditioning blew through the vent. It made the tight passage like an arctic wind tunnel.

Finally they reached the grille. And true to Miss Hunroe's plans, this vent looked down on Black's casino office. Molly and Micky peered down. A glass kidney-shaped lamp with a brass stem lit the room, its
warm glow making the green leather-topped desk and the paneled walls tinge with gold. A narrow slit window onto an alley outside let in a little more light from the street.

“Empty! Perfect,” Molly exclaimed, and she and Micky began easing off the metal grille.

“Bet I can punch it through,” Micky decided. “You hold it so it doesn't fall out into the office.” Seconds later the grille had given way and Molly was quietly pulling it into the duct.

“After you,” Micky said.

Maneuvering herself so that her legs went first, Molly dropped into the room. Micky followed, and at once they set to work. Molly quickly began to lift pictures off the walls, peering behind them to see where the safe was.

“Maybe it's under the carpet,” Micky whispered, lifting the corner of a Persian rug from the floor.

Molly opened the central drawer of the desk. And as though the heat of an oven had just hit her in the face, she stumbled backward.

“What is it?” Micky asked worriedly. Then, looking into the drawer himself, he uttered a sigh. “Wow!”

For there, almost so carelessly deposited that it seemed like it must be a trap, lay the book. Its brown
leather cover, heavy with inlaid stones, had golden embossed words that read
Hypnotism, Volume Two: The Advanced Arts
.

Molly ran her fingers inside the indentation in the top right-hand corner of the leather cover and remembered Miss Speal's stolen stone.

With a shaking hand, and full of respect for the book, Molly opened it.

M
olly glanced around the room suspiciously. “Can't believe he left it in such an obvious place. Do you think it's a trap? Or maybe the book's a fake.” Something buzzed past her nose. “What was
that
?”

“A ladybug, Molly. You're just jumpy because you're nervous,” Micky said, jittering himself. “They're crawling all over that plant.”

Molly pulled the heavy book from the drawer and opened it up. “Let's check if it's the real McCoy.”

The pages inside the book were yellow from age. Molly found the title page,
Hypnotism, Volume Two: The Advanced Arts
, and read on.

“By Dr. Logan, Published by Arkwright and Sons, 1910…I can hardly believe that our great-great-
grandfather wrote this,” Molly whispered. “Can you? The first book was written in 1908. So he wrote this one two years after he wrote the first book.”

“It's very fancy looking, with those stones stuck on the front,” Micky observed.

“Yes, much fancier than the first volume,” Molly agreed.

“Don't expect there are many copies exactly like it,” Micky said. “Maybe it's unique.”

“Let's hope so,” Molly replied, running her fingers along the headings. “Do you think Black has photocopied it? “‘Chapter One,'” she quietly read, “‘Recapping Hypnotism. Chapter Two, Time Stopping. Chapter Three, Time Traveling…' Ah, now this is more interesting. Look. ‘Chapter Four, Morphing—Animals. Chapter Five, Morphing—Humans. Chapter Six, Mind Reading. Chapter Seven, Hypno-Dreaming.' Wonder what that is. ‘Chapter Eight, The Logan Stones. Chapter Nine, Possibilities.' Wow.” Hurriedly, Molly flicked to the first page on morphing.

Unable to control their curiosity, the twins began to read the book's instructions.

“‘MORPHING or body borrowing,'” read Micky,

“Imperative? What does that mean?” Molly asked.

“Don't know. But I like the idea of being a body borrower.” Dr. Logan's words ran before the twins' hungry eyes and Micky read on.

“‘Bring yourself into a semitrance.' How do you do that?”

“It's just like going all daydreamy and letting the world drop away from you.”

“Oh, okay.” Micky read on.

“He makes it sound so easy,” said Molly with a chuckle of amazement.

The eager twins read on, completely oblivious to two eyes that were upon them.

 

Lily Black crouched in a cupboard in the office, peering out through the crack where its two doors met. Her heart was thumping against her rib cage and in the confined space her breath sounded to her like a steam train as she tried to quiet it. Her expensive white wool dress itched horribly, she was so hot.

She could make out two children in her father's office, and she could hear them.

“‘Morphing to humans is much more difficult to accomplish,'” the boy was reading out in a low voice.

Lily was in two minds as to what to do about the intruders in her father's office. She wanted to blow the whistle on them, but she couldn't because she wasn't supposed to be there either. Moments before they'd arrived, Lily herself had been reading the hypnotism
book. That morning she'd found the spare key to her father's forbidden room. It had been hidden under a china soap dish in his bathroom. After school, she'd come to the casino and waited near the corridor outside the office until the guard there had needed to go to the loo. Then she'd unlocked the door, slipped inside, and locked the door behind her. She'd found the book and skimmed through it. Then she'd heard noise coming from the vent above the office, and that had scared her stiff. Faster than she'd known she could move, she'd bolted to the cupboard and hidden there.

If her father found out what she'd done, he'd go berserk. And Lily would be in such trouble that she didn't dare think of it. But there was another reason, a more important reason. This reason was that Lily had high suspicions that the children were hypnotists like her father. Lily had no talent for hypnotism herself, but she knew all about it. She didn't want to step out into a firing line without armor. She wasn't a brave person at all, and she also wasn't an idiot.

“He makes morphing into humans sound like a piece of cake,” the boy was saying.

“Just don't morph into a piece of cake,” the girl replied with a wry smile.

As the girl spoke, something caught Lily's eye. Something was moving in the high slit window behind
and above the twins. To her amazement, four
cats'
faces were peering down at the children. Each cat was a different breed and a different color. Lily shrank back, feeling suddenly scared. For four cats to be standing on the outside sill of a slit window peering into a casino was very odd. Even though she was completely hidden, Lily felt very conspicuous, as though the cupboard door was transparent and made of glass. Now she really regretted that she'd ventured into her father's office at all. She wished she'd stayed at school to do homework.

 

Four cats vied for position on the narrow sill to see what was going on in Black's office.

“Just take the book now and
leave
, you idiots,” the white cat that was Miss Hunroe urged nastily. Then she noticed both Micky and Molly stop reading and turn their heads toward the door. “You fools!” she spat.

“Someone's coming,” Molly hissed to Micky. “Quick!” She shut the book and slipped it back into the drawer. Grabbing the sleeve of Micky's sweatshirt, she pulled him toward the floor behind the sofa.

“We're so stupid, Molly. We should have—”

“Shh.” Molly strained her ear to the shuffling noise outside the room. Someone was opening the door.

Up on the window ledge, the fluffy white cat that was Miss Suzette and the gray Siamese that was Miss
Teriyaki leaped away, leaving the white cat that was Miss Hunroe and the ginger cat, Miss Oakkton. They stood still as statues at the edge of the window, waiting to see what would happen next.

In the cupboard, Lily pushed the door a centimeter open to watch Molly and Micky disappear behind the sofa; then she quickly shut it again. Her father was going to be in the room soon. If she told him about the twins, at least he'd know that they were there. But then he'd be very, very cross with her. Lily winced. She hated the idea of being scolded. He hardly paid her much attention as it was, and she didn't want her ration of the day to be taken up with him telling her off.

Theobald Black entered. From her hiding place, Molly caught sight of a black shoe and the bottom of his green velvet trouser leg. She bit her lip and gripped Micky's wrist tightly. Micky pointed to a couple of ladybugs on the ground. Molly gave him a puzzled look. Micky then tapped the knotted boards of the wooden floor, pointing again, this time more emphatically, to the ladybugs. Without waiting for a response, he began staring intently at the pattern on the floorboard. Molly guessed what he was doing. It was a crazy thing to be attempting, but if morphing was real, it was definitely a very neat way of getting out of the room.

Then, before she'd expected anything to happen,
Micky, amazingly, disappeared. His wrist vanished from Molly's grasp as fast as a light turning off. Instead of him, Micky's clothes, like a snake's molted skin, lay bodyless in a heap on the floor. Molly's eyes scrutinized the pile to try to see a ladybug. And there one was. It seemed to be jumping about. In fact, Molly could have sworn it was shaking its little legs as though it was doing a jig. Then it spread its wings and flew straight toward her, landing on her nose.

 

From her perch above, Miss Hunroe, the white cat, saw all of this. She splayed her claws in annoyance. Now her eyes were trained on Molly.

Molly felt the sofa move as Black dumped his full weight on it. He began to make a call. Molly listened to his heavy, congested voice as he spoke to someone.

“I'll look for it, Terry. Probably dropped it here somewhere yesterday. Yes, then I'll get him for you.”

Molly shivered and crossed her eyes as she tried to look at the ladybug on the end of her nose. She didn't want to be caught red-handed in Black's den. He was three times bigger than her and a hypnotist. He'd be too alert to
be
hypnotized, and he'd easily use his physical power to overcome her. Molly wouldn't stand a chance.

She stared at the floor. Now Molly was desperate to
follow Micky's example. She concentrated on the weave of the wood of the floorboard. It was oak, streaked and knotted with dark brown marks. She focused on the pattern. She thought of nothing else. For a moment her mind faltered. All she could see were brown woody marks. There were no pictures, and she had to see
pictures
. If the book was right, that was the only way into morphing. Yet all she could see were mud-colored splodges.

Molly gulped and took a deep breath and breathed out slowly. With an enormous effort of will, she tried to forget about Black, and she tried to levitate her mind into a trance. She turned her scared feelings into careless feelings, light and easy. She let her mind drift away from the casino office. And soon her concentration brought a result. Black's voice began to sound distant and small. Molly let her eyes linger over the pattern again. Now the lines began to move and twist as Molly's imagination opened. And a hugely obvious picture sprang out from the lines and grooves—the image of a long finger with a painted fingernail poking a worm. Molly smiled. Now, still thinking of this picture, she focused on the ladybug that was walking up the wall.

The words of the book echoed in her head.
Focus on your animal and enter its being
. Molly considered the ladybug. She imagined what it felt like to have the six tiny legs.
Then she thought of its curved shell with heavy folded wings on top. She let herself conjure up this feeling of what life must be like as a ladybug. She imagined antennae projecting from her head, and she thought about wanting to fly. And as she thought, still holding on to the image of the finger and the worm, she dropped into the essence of ladybug. And she threw herself forward, toward the insect.

A peculiar feeling, the likes of which she had never
ever
felt, shuddered through her. And Molly the human disappeared.