Jake & The Giant (The Gryphon Chronicles, Book 2) (4 page)

“No,
” he cut her off.

“As a contributi
on to science! Your brain waves, and maybe the ones from your fingers, too. I’ve heard you say you think it’s some sort of electrical energy that flows out of your hands when you…you know.”

“Absolutely not.” Jake shook his head stubbornly. “
Aunt Ramona warned me not to let these eggheads know what I can do, or they’ll take me for a lab rat. Izzy, too, to say nothing of Henry and Helena. If they learn about our abilities, they’ll be tryin’ to dissect us.”

“Oh, I don’t think Mr. Tesla would
ever do that. He’s countin’ on Archie to introduce him to Thomas Edison. Did you know Mr. Tesla wants to go to America and work for Mr. Edison someday?”

Before Jake could answer, Dani’s little brown dog erupted
with angry barking. “Teddy, stop that!” she cried, but the wee Norwich terrier ignored her startled efforts to calm him down.

Eight pounds of pure fury, Teddy squirmed
and growled and wriggled, trying to jump out of his satchel on her shoulder—a dangerous height for a little dog to fall. “Teddy, you’re going to hurt yourself! Settle down, be quiet! What’s wrong with you? Teddy—!”

Dani half-caught the dog as he leaped out of the satchel. She wasn’t fast enough to prevent him from escaping,
but at least she broke his fall.

Safely on the ground, Teddy bolted, still barking, his leash trailing out behind him.
“Teddy! Come back!” Dani yelled.

Jake and she
exchanged a look of bewilderment.

Then they both ran after the dog.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Galton Whistle

T
he little dog dashed ahead, barking as he wove through a forest of legs. Though he nearly got trampled twice, it did not slow him down.

“Where’s he going?” Dani cried as they chased.

“I don’t know! Let’s split up,” Jake said. “You go that way to block the exit. I’ll head him off here.”

She nodded and rushed off, tryi
ng to beat the dog to the exits, but Jake sprinted after the tiny terrier directly. His old days as a pickpocket fleeing the London bobbies came in handy as he dodged through the crowd.

“Teddy! Here, boy! Excuse me,” he muttered when he bumped into a stout lady blocking the aisle.

Oddly, Teddy seemed to have a very clear idea of where he was going. He bolted around the corner ahead and into the aisle of medical advancements.

Jake was baffled, but saw he had a chance to catch the dog if he jumped aisles. Turning down a parallel row, he vaulted over a display table and landed in
the middle of the medical aisle.

Teddy was on his way, thundering straight at him like a furry brown cannonball.

Jake crouched down with his arms spread wide, heart pounding, as Teddy barreled toward him. “Now I’ve got you,” he mumbled, but when Jake dove for him, swiping with both arms to catch the wee rascal, it was no better than his efforts to grab that ghost back in London who had refused to answer his questions.

Teddy almost seemed to laugh at him, leaping nimbly through the circle of his arms.

“Blast it!” Jake landed indecorously on his face in the middle of the floor. At once, he pushed to his feet and was off and running again.

This time, within seconds, he caught up to Teddy. The dog had stopped at one of the booths, as though this had been his destination all along.

The little terrier was standing on his hind legs, tail wagging, his front paws leaning on the knees of a tall gentleman-scientist in a lab coat.

The man leaned down with a chuckle to pat Teddy on the head. A pair of his colleagues standing with him laughed.

“Well, well, what have we here? So sorry, little fellow! Did the noise from my invention disturb you?”

“Arf!”
Teddy answered, one ear perked up, the other flopped down.

“P
erhaps
we
didn’t hear anything, Sir Francis, but here’s our proof your whistle really works!” his colleague said with an amiable smile.

“Y
ou could never doubt me, could you?” Sir Francis replied. A bald-headed man with mutton-chop whiskers, he picked Teddy up in his arms just as Jake stepped forward to claim the dog for Dani.

“Sorry about that, sir. I’ll take him.”

“Oh, it’s quite all right, young man. I fear I gave him reason to come to me. Is this your dog?” he asked, and when the man glanced at him, Jake was taken aback by the frosty coldness in his deep-set eyes.

It was a c
hill devoid of cruelty, but made up of unfeeling detachment, as if this Sir Francis fellow were some sort of inhuman machine himself.

What made his dead-eyed stare all the more confusing was that
it was so at odds with the cordial smile on his lips.

Unnerved,
Jake fairly stammered. “N-no, sir, the dog belongs to my friend—”

“He’s mine!” Dani cried, arriving at that moment to
protectively snatch her fuzzy babydoll out of the scientist’s arms.

The gentlemen
standing around laughed at her defensiveness, as though amused that the girl seemed to fear they’d do animal experiments on her pup if they got the chance.

“Apologies, my dear,” said Sir Francis
with a stiff nod. “I did not mean to upset you or your pet. I was just showing these friends of mine one of my new inventions.”

“A whistle that only a dog can hear,” one of the other white-coated fellows supplied
, hands in pockets.

“Well, cats, too, and most animals
can hear it,” Sir Francis corrected. “But the sound it creates falls out of the range of human hearing. It’s to be used as a training tool for dogs and other animals.”

“May I see it?” Jake asked curious
ly.

Sir Francis nodded with a gesture. “Be my guest.”

The other scientist handed it to Jake. Still hugging Teddy close, Dani looked on while he examined it.

The whistle was about four inches long and made of shiny gold brass. It
s design hinted at its purpose: a dog’s head adorned the top of it, while a gold chain passed through a ring on the end. “It’s hardly meant as jewelry,” Sir Francis remarked. “The chain simply makes it more convenient for a dog trainer to wear it around his neck.”

“I see
,” Jake said with a vague nod, wondering if it would work on pet gryphons. He hadn’t seen Red since they had left the steamship. The poor, seasick beast had flown off into the forest as soon as they had let him out of his crate in the ship’s cargo hold.

Jake smiled to himself at the thought of h
is strange but extremely loyal and fiercely protective pet, half-eagle, half-lion. He had tried to make Red stay behind in England, but the Gryphon was having none of it. When their party had boarded the steam-liner, Red had run back and forth along the shore roaring so loudly that he had risked being seen by non-magical humans.

That was when
Jake had realized that gryphons apparently didn’t like flying over the ocean. Maybe because they were half-lion, and lions couldn’t swim.

Well,
the creatures definitely did
not
enjoy traveling belowdecks in a crate, either, as Jake had also learned.

He had barely managed
to coax Red into the large crate marked
“Danger! Live Animals”
in which the Gryphon had spent the duration of the voyage. Red had been very glad to be released when they arrived, though this, too, had been tricky, keeping the mythical beast from being seen by any of the crew or passengers.

Som
ehow they had succeeded, and the Gryphon had flown up into the forests to recover from the journey. Why, at this very moment, he was probably gulping down some of those famed Norwegian salmon from the streams up on the mountain, Jake mused, still examining the whistle.

He handed it
back to its inventor with a nod as the other scientists took leave of him.

“Quite ingenious, Galton. Well done!” one said.

“Give our regards to Charles when you see him,” the other added.

“I shall
, gentlemen. Good day,” he said with a nod as his colleagues drifted on to peruse more displays.

“Wait
—you’re Doctor Galton?” Dani turned suddenly and gaped at him.

“Last I checked,” he answered
in amusement.

“Sir Francis Galton—
the Prince of the Polymaths?” she exclaimed. “Mr. Charles Darwin’s cousin?”

“Half cousin,” he admitted in a modest tone. He seemed pleased by her recognition and bowed politely. “At your service, young lady.”

To Jake’s surprise, Dani was ecstatic. “My goodness, I can’t believe it’s really you!”

“What’s a polymath?” Jake mumbled.

“An expert in many different fields of science. Sir Francis Galton is one of Archie’s heroes!” she exclaimed.

“Well, bless me,” the polymath said with
another chilly smile that never quite reached his eyes. “You know young Master Archie?”

“He’s my friend,” she said.

“And my cousin,” Jake replied.

Sir Francis eyed him at once in speculation, as though Jake’s being cousins with a genius might make him a genius, too.
Not bloody likely,
he thought, sorry to disappoint the Prince of the Polymaths.

“Of course, the admiration is most heartily returned,” Sir Francis said with almost a h
int of warmth. “Indeed, I’ve often said the lad reminds me of myself when I was his age. It’s not easy being a child prodigy,” he added.

“Sir,
if it isn’t too much trouble,” Dani spoke up, “I wonder, would you sign my book?” Without waiting for an answer, she thrust Teddy into Jake’s arms and scrambled to retrieve it from her satchel.

“
I’d be honored, young lady,” Sir Francis said in surprise. “I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me for my autograph before!” He accepted her book and set it on the table to sign it.

“So, um, what inspired you to invent a whistle for a dog, Dr. Galton?” she ventured.

“I was studying the range of human hearing, actually.”

“
Dr. Galton has studied
everything!”
Dani gushed to Jake, no doubt already imagining how the value of her autograph book was climbing as the ink from his signature dried. “Geology. Meteorology—that’s the weather—”

“I’m not stupid,” Jake retorted
.

She ignored him, counting off more subjects.
“Anthropology, medicine, all sorts of mathematics. And when he was younger, he went as an explorer to wonderful faraway lands! Isn’t that right, sir?”

Sir Francis
laughed. “Have you been checking up on me, my dear?”

“Sorry—Archie told me all about you. Between you and your cousin, Mr. Darwin, well, genius obviously run
s in your—what do you call ’em—genetics?”

“Yes, my research does suggest that intelligence
is a genetic trait. And you are correct, our extended family has always been a science-minded clan, whether doctors or inventors.”

“Inc
luding inventing weapons of war?” a familiar voice remarked from behind them in a hostile tone.

Jake gla
nced over his shoulder in shock as his cousin Isabelle joined them, a rare look of loathing on her face.

She folded
her arms across her chest. “Wartime profiteering.... Rather an odd line of business for a peace-loving Quaker family, isn’t it, Dr. Galton?”

Jake and Dani turned to the golden-haired fourteen-year-old in astonishment. Neither of
them had ever heard the soft-spoken, sympathetic, usually tenderhearted Isabelle speak to anyone in such a harsh tone before.

Sir Francis
also looked taken aback by her unprovoked attack, though the flash of embarrassment on his face revealed her words were true.

Still,
Jake was suddenly on guard. He had
never
seen Isabelle be deliberately mean to anyone before. He had not thought her capable of it. She was usually so good and pure that surely her reaction must mean that Dr. Galton was not to be trusted.

Jake
glanced darkly at the scientist once more, all the more suspicious.

Isabelle gave the Prince of the Polymaths a glare. “Jake, Dani, come along.
Before somebody here should deem us among the Unfit.” She took them each by an elbow and steered them away.

Dani studied her
with a worried look, but Jake was baffled. “What on earth did Mr. Tesla do to you? Implant a mean streak in your head?” he asked under his breath.

Staring straight ahead, Isabelle walked them toward the exit. “Stay away from that man, you two. It’s bad enough he’s befriended my brother. Please, I don’t want you going near him.”

“Why ever not?” Dani exclaimed.

“That is a deeply wicked man,” she said in a hard t
one.

“Why?” Jake demanded. “What’s he done?”