The Atomic Weight of Secrets or The Arrival of the Mysterious Men in Black (7 page)

“Quick! Come in!” he said.

Lucy scrambled into Jasper’s room. The two hid under Jasper’s blanket and looked at his pocket watch. He had painted the numbers with phosphorous, which glows, so he could read them in the dark. It was 8:57 in the evening.

By 9:43, Lucy was yawning at regular intervals.

“It’s all right, Luce. We’ve got the alarm,” said Jasper. “Maybe you should go back to sleep in your bed. I’ll wake you when—I mean if—they come home.”

Yawning twice again, Lucy went back into her own bed and fell quickly to sleep. Jasper yawned, too. His eyes itched and he rubbed them. He shut them, just to soothe the itchiness. It felt much better to have them closed.

Suddenly, Jasper awoke with a start. He looked at his pocket watch. It was 4:26 in the morning. He checked the alarm. Everything seemed to be in place, but the alarm hadn’t gone off.

He tiptoed into Lucy’s room. She was fast asleep. He decided not to wake her. He tiptoed down the hall to their parents’ room. He peeked inside.

Everything was exactly as it had been. The bed was made without a wrinkle. Daddy’s slippers were placed neatly next to his bedside table. Mummy’s glass jug of water sat, still full, untouched, on hers.

Jasper went over to the glass jug. It had a matching cup that
sat on top as a cover. He ran his finger across it. A very thin layer of dust had settled there.

Dust? Jasper knew what that meant. Mummy’s water jug hadn’t been used in, oh, probably about seventeen days.

Jasper walked back to his room. He climbed into bed, too worried to rest, too exhausted to sleep. But he decided he would just close his eyes.

Sleep came anyway.

In the morning, Lucy came running in.

“Well? Did it never ring?” she asked, with anticipation.

“It never rang, and Mummy and Daddy never came home,” said Jasper. “We were right. They haven’t been here in days.”

“Eighteen days?” Lucy asked.

“Eighteen days,” Jasper said.

At breakfast, Rosie served warm butter cake and apricot jam with fresh pears from the tree in the garden. On a tray, she brought in a pot of sweet steaming milk that smelled of vanilla. Rosie dropped lumps of chocolate into the milk and stirred as the chocolate began to melt.

“Sorry, darlings, your parents have gone to the laboratory early this morning,” she told them as she poured hot chocolate into their cups. “I think they should be—”

“They haven’t been here for seventeen—no, eighteen days now,” Jasper said accusingly. He could see tears trailing down Lucy’s cheeks. This made him even angrier, but also braver. “Nothing was touched in their room. There was dust on Mummy’s
water.”

Rosie spilled the hot chocolate.

“Oh, dear!” she exclaimed, rushing into the kitchen, teeth clucking loudly as she went.

She came back with a rag to wipe up the spill. Her eyes, too, needed wiping. Like Lucy’s, they were very wet.

“We don’t think it’s your fault that Mummy and Daddy have gone,” Lucy said, sniffling, “but we want them back. We want our mummy and daddy.”

“Oh, child, I am sorry. But your parents have been so very busy they don’t always come home, and I... I—”

“They never come home, do they?” Jasper said.

“Never ever,” Lucy said.

Rosie put the rag to her lips to stifle a yelp and rushed into the kitchen again. This time, she did not come back out, so Jasper and Lucy excused themselves to no one and went up to the nursery.

They sat quietly by the nursery window, looking out at nothing in particular, not speaking, and not wanting to. Just before noon, their eyes followed a shiny black motorcar as it pulled up to the house. They were excited at first, thinking it might be their parents, but out stepped a man with a large black cloak, dark glasses, and a tall black woolen hat with a very large pompom on the very tiptop. He hurried into the house. From up in the nursery, the children could hear voices. One was a mumble, and the other was Rosie’s anxious clucking. Within minutes, the man rushed back into the car and sped off.

At supper that evening, Rosie smiled nervously. The meat was slightly burnt and there were no vegetables. Rosie gave them each two pieces of apple pie with cream. She didn’t say a word.

After supper, the children climbed into their beds.

“Well, your parents...” Rosie put a handkerchief to her lips. “They wanted... they really truly... they had hoped... truly hoped... to be home before you went to your beds.” Rosie blew her nose loudly. “Perhaps you will see them in the morning.” Clearing her throat, she began to hum, but her humming was punctuated by the nervous clucking of her teeth.

Jasper and Lucy fell right to sleep. The worry and exhaustion had just been too much for one day. But for the two Modest children, the day was not quite over.

At 3:17 in the morning, the little bell rang on Jasper’s bedpost. Jasper sat up with a start. It took him a moment to remember that he had not disconnected the bell. Something was happening. Something was definitely happening right then and there, he thought as he ran into Lucy’s room.

“Wake up, Lucy. The bell—it’s ringing.”

Lucy shook off the sleep and beamed at her brother. “Mummy and Daddy! They’re back, aren’t they?” Lucy jumped up with excitement and flung her arms around her brother. “Oh, Jasper, they’re back!”

“No, Lucy—”

“They’re not back?” Her face fell.

“I don’t know.” Jasper hated the disappointment in his sister’s face.

But Lucy nodded, stoically. She understood. She got down, reached, and pulled something from beneath her bed. The two of them ran back into Jasper’s room and unhooked the bell. He
had left it ringing because if it stopped, they’d know the door was open again.

Now, as silent as could be, they tiptoed toward their parents’ bedroom. The door was still closed. Jasper and Lucy could hear shuffling from within. Lucy tapped Jasper on the shoulder. She showed him what she had brought—a wooden spoon, upon which was attached a small mirror. It looked like an oversized dentist’s tool. In her pocket, she had a second mirror and some wire. She hooked the second mirror to the wire and attached it to the spoon, facing the other mirror.

Carefully, they slid the spoon under the door. The first mirror reflected what was in the room. The second reflected what was in the first mirror so Lucy and Jasper could see. Both of the children hoped it would be their father, putting on his slippers and pouring their mother a glass of water, and their mother, brushing out her long brown hair. Instead, they saw nothing of the sort. What they saw sent chills down their spines.

In the room was a very tall man, dressed all in black, with a black velvet top hat perched high on his head. His suit was black velvet—trousers, vest, and jacket. A black scarf covering his chin, he wore big dark glasses that seemed to wrap around his head. With a hand caressing the rim of his hat, he walked casually around the bedroom. Was he looking for something? As the children watched, riveted, the man went over to their mother’s dressing table. The children half-expected him to tear open the drawers and search their contents, but instead, he placed their mother’s brush in the middle, moving it from its position on the right-hand side.

He then went to the bedside table. Was he going to inspect
the drawer? No. He first removed a black handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped the dusty rim of the water jug. He proceeded to simply pour water into the glass that sat beside it on the bedside table. He then returned half of the contents back into the jug, inspected the glass, swirled its contents, and replaced it, now half-f, on the bedside table.

Then the man walked to the other side of the room, stopped, bent down, and disappeared behind the bed. He reappeared holding their father’s slippers. Jasper’s neck tingled as the hairs stood up in silent protest. He threw a glance at Lucy, and he could see, even in the dimness of the hall, that she was not happy about this either.

It was difficult to see, but with a slight adjustment to the mirror, Jasper and Lucy could observe the man as he carried the slippers into the bathroom, apparently placing them beside the bath. He stood back, inspecting his handiwork.

Lucy and Jasper could not believe such bizarre behavior, nor could they believe that this most bizarre man was puttering around their parents’ room, moving things around as he pleased, making himself, in some bizarre way, at home. Whether their parents had been there or not, it still housed their things, and the man was still an intruder.

The children took calming breaths and watched as the black-clad intruder went over to the bed and sat upon it. Checking its firmness, the fellow began to bounce. Furious, Jasper and Lucy watched as he bounced four or five times in a quite restrained manner, and not very high at all. He stopped to set his hat back straight on his head. The children looked at one another in disbelief.

The man then bounced five more times, getting a bit higher with each bounce. Even with his face hidden, and even though the children could only imagine a dour expression hidden beneath his hat, scarf, and glasses, he appeared to really enjoy himself. He bounced and he bounced and he bounced some more, getting quite high, with his arms and legs flapping as if he was trying to fly.

Then he bounced and bounced and bounced right off the side of the bed and fell flat onto the floor.

He jumped up quickly, looking around as if to check that no one saw him tumble. Jasper and Lucy instinctively squeezed together, though there was no chance the man could see them outside the door.

The man then brushed himself off and looked at himself in the mirror. He adjusted his glasses, which had gone askew, fixed his hat again, and pulled his scarf higher onto his nose. Leaning over toward the bureau, the man seemed to be counting the drawers, of which there were only five. When he got to the fourth, he opened it.

Lucy stifled a gasp. It was her mother’s nightdress drawer. How awful! This strange man was peeking into her mother’s private things! Worse than that, the man reached in and very deliberately picked up a pink flannel nightdress. But the man did not stop at the nightdress—he looked beneath it. So he was searching for something.

The man removed an old green leather-bound book—only it wasn’t really a book, because it didn’t seem to have many pages, if any at all. It had a leather binding, with loose leather straps hanging from its spine. Perhaps it was not what the man
had hoped would be there, and perhaps the real thing was well-hidden and protected by their parents, and this was merely to put the man off the trail.

But the man did not seem disappointed. He simply wiped the empty green binding with his sleeve, then leaned over. To Jasper and Lucy’s astonishment and disgust, the intruder leaned over and kissed it. He gazed upon it as if it were something to revere and adore. He looked at it in awe, lowering his head as if in prayer. Then, treating it as if it were the Crown Jewels, he gently replaced the book, wiping off some speck of dust that may or may not have rudely settled upon it. Then, with careful neatness, he returned the pink flannel nightdress to its place, covering the green leather thing, and closed the drawer with care.