The Atomic Weight of Secrets or The Arrival of the Mysterious Men in Black (36 page)

Then, suddenly, the line went dead.

F
EARS
O
F
F
LYING

OR

MISS BRETT DISCOVERS THE YOUNG INVENTORS GUILD

“H
ello?” Miss Brett called into the telephone receiver. There was no answer. No sound coming from the telephone receiver. Only silence.

“Hello?” Miss Brett tried again, but it was clear there was no longer anyone at the other end. She replaced the earpiece and ran into the kitchen, then through the door to the classroom.

The children were all in their seats, looking rather shaken.

“Is everyone all right?” she asked, looking into each of their faces. A few nodded, a couple shrugged, but they all seemed to be unhurt. Jasper rubbed his neck and Miss Brett could see red marks from where Reginald Roderick Kattaning had grabbed him.

“Where is that man?” asked Miss Brett, looking around, controlled fury in her throat.

“He was pacing and chattering and rubbing his stomach,” Lucy said, “and after he opened the door to the kitchen, he just ran away.”

Miss Brett went to the window and looked left toward the gardener’s shed and the pile of hay bales. There was nothing
moving and nothing apparently amiss. Taking a deep breath, Miss Brett looked around for something to use if she needed to clobber someone. She grabbed the old broom by the door and gingerly stuck her head through the threshold. Carefully, as if stepping on glass, she walked out of the schoolhouse. She looked to her right and to her left, and again. There was no one there.

Broom raised, she walked cautiously to the right, along the wall, and around the corner to see if Reginald Roderick Kattaning was hiding in the bushes. He was not. She walked to the side of the farmhouse and stood below the kitchen window. She looked behind the bundles of hay piled up to the sill. Reginald Roderick Kattaning was not behind the hay bales.

She
did
notice, however, a wire hanging out of the wall of the house. She had not seen it before when she’d been out there bringing potato peelings to the compost pile. She followed the wire to the wall of the building. It went into a little hole that led inside. She stepped back and quickly realized it led directly into the telephone room.

She turned around and saw the other end of the wire. It hung from a pole that ran along the road.

“He’s cut the line to the telephone,” she said to herself.

The children were all huddled at the window, watching Miss Brett and the wire.

“Reginald Roderick Kattaning cut the wire,” Wallace said.

“It’s a telephone wire. He cut off our telephone,” Jasper said.

“I didn’t know we had a telephone,” Lucy said.

“Do you even know what a telephone is?” asked Faye.

Miss Brett came back into the classroom. “I can’t for the life of me imagine what he wanted,” she said, almost to herself.

But the children heard her. They looked to one another, knowingly. This exchange did not escape Miss Brett.

“What?” Miss Brett said. “You know something? What is it? What did he want?”

Faye raised her hand.

“You do not need to raise your hand, Faye,” Miss Brett said, emphatically. “For goodness sake, if you know something, tell me.”

“He wanted our flying machine,” she said, feeling a bit self-conscious at how self-important that sounded.

“Your what?” Miss Brett’s tone was incredulous.

“The flying machine,” Wallace said. “Reginald Roderick Kattaning wanted our flying machine.”

“I heard what Faye said, I... I...” Miss Brett was utterly confused. “He wanted
what?”

“Our flying machine,” said Faye. “We’re calling it an aeroplane.”

“Your flying machine? What does it fly?”

“It flies itself,” said Lucy.

“Are you telling me you have a machine that flies?” said Miss Brett. She felt as if her brain was about to fall out of her head.

“Well,” Faye said, “my first model was a disaster. I’d been working so hard and I really felt like I had the whole thing, but... well, I hadn’t. You see, it was really just a glider. It had no power and I realized...” Faye looked around at the faces of her classmates. Her fellow inventors. Her friends.

Yes, she realized. They
were
her friends.

“Something like this needs teamwork.” She smiled awkwardly at her classmates. Lucy put her hand into Faye’s and smiled up at the older girl. Faye squeezed Lucy’s hand. “So everyone helped... and, well...”

Wallace looked down. “Not me, I only—”

“Everyone.” Faye took a gulp and her breath caught. “It’s just big enough for one child. And it flies. Right now, it can really carry no more than ninety—”

“Faye,” Miss Brett said. “Dear, listen, men have been trying to invent a flying vehicle for hundreds of years.”

“It’s true, Miss Brett,” Lucy said excitedly.

Jasper cleared his throat. “Imagine what power someone would have if they could make a whole fleet of flying machines,” he said. “That has to be why he wants it.”

“They could take over the world,” Noah said. “One giant evil empire.”

“Even one bad man with an aeroplane could do any number of horrid, beastly things,” said Lucy.

“Do you think that’s what he wanted? And for some diabolical plan?” said Miss Brett.

“What else could it be?” asked Noah. “Your biscuits are wonderful, but stealing recipes hardly seems likely.”

“And he knew about the pieces, the thing, and the machine,” said Lucy, in horror. “He must have seen us when he was the birdwatcher.”

“I told you I didn’t think it would be safe to drive with him,” Noah said.

“We’ve been so foolish,” said Faye. “We did all of our
experiments out in the open. At our homes, in our secret meadow, and out here. We were so stupid.”

“We...” Jasper gulped and took a second to get the words out. “We almost walked right into the hands of the enemy.”

The children were silent a moment, contemplating their narrow, inadvertent escape.

“At least I managed to place a call,” Miss Brett said. “Of course, I don’t even know to whom I spoke, but someone on our side, someone wanting to help us.”

“If you mean one of the men in black,” Jasper said, thinking of the man jumping on his parents’ bed, trying to fool him and Lucy, “how can we be sure they aren’t doing something awful? We still don’t know whether or not they’ve kidnapped our parents.”

“Children,” Miss Brett said firmly, “we have been through this all before. We simply do not know. We can only judge by the fact that they have not harmed us—”

“They’ve stolen our mummies and daddies!” cried Lucy.

“They almost hurt me,” said Faye. “They dragged me into one of those carriages.”

“And our aeroplane will save everybody,” said Lucy, her expression as full of hope as fear.

Miss Brett looked into the faces of her wards. “Were you planning to use the aeroplane to find your parents?” Whatever the children thought of Reginald Roderick Kattaning flying their machine, nothing could compare to the visions of mayhem, death, and destruction that came to Miss Brett’s mind at the thought of these children flying in the sky.

“Children, my stars, don’t you know how utterly dangerous this would be?” said Miss Brett. “Beside the absolute horror of
crashing or exploding, don’t you think that, even if you survived, someone would notice you? Someone who might be just the wrong person to notice you?”

“But...” said Faye.

“Children, we simply do not know enough to do something that would only create more danger. It’s too much of a risk, in more ways than one. It’s too dangerous to try to find people who could be anywhere. We don’t even know if they want to be found.”

All five children were caught on the sharp hook of her words. Jasper immediately thought of his mother’s letter. He looked at Lucy, who had obviously thought the same thing.

“Don’t want to be found?” said Wallace, thinking of how his father had just driven away and left him.

Miss Brett realized she had now come face to face with the darkest part of her job description. It was the one thing she had not even thought about herself.

“Listen to me,” said Miss Brett. “We all need to be better at telling each other more than we have. I wish you all had told me about your plans, because then I would have told you something I wished I’d not have to.” She sighed. “I’d have told you that when I took this job, I was told to keep you from distracting your parents. I never thought... I thought it could do nothing but hurt your feelings—”

“Who told you to keep us apart from our parents?” asked Faye. “Was it one of
them
?”

“Well. To be frank, yes.”

“But what about Mummy’s—”

“And how do you know your
mummy
wasn’t forced into writing that letter?” said Faye to Lucy. “Why do we trust these
lunatics?”

“But we don’t have a choice, do we?” Jasper said softly. “We have no one else. We know that Reginald Roderick Kattaning is definitely not on our side. We don’t have to trust the men in black. We’re their captives and we don’t even know why. But we have to assume they are not going to attack us, at least for now. Not immediately.”

“Well, the flying machine—”

“Faye,” Miss Brett said, looking right at the girl, “tell me, do you have the blueprints for your invention here?”

“Um, yes,” said Faye. “We have them in the Guild journal.”

Miss Brett looked confused. “The what?”

The children explained how they came to find the green leather book that wasn’t a book, which had belonged to that mysterious organization of long ago, the Young Inventors Guild.

“And you are the new Young Inventors Guild?” she asked.

“I suppose we are,” Jasper said, tentatively, looking at the others one by one.

“I told you! I told you!” cried Lucy.

“But you have a book with the details of your invention?” asked Miss Brett. “All the notes? Everything together?”

For the first time, these very clever children felt quite stupid. Lucy and Wallace had been keeping a meticulous record of all manner of brilliant inventions. Wallace’s excellent penmanship and language made for clear explanations of everything. And with Lucy’s sketches, it was easy for anyone to see exactly what they had planned. No one would have the slightest problem understanding their designs. No one.