A Perilous Journey of Danger and Mayhem #2 Page 2

  That brought Emmett back from the door. “Wait—the Inventors’ Guild? They’re voting today?”

  “To finally change their membership policy?” Molly asked.

  “Yes!” Cassandra bounced with excitement.

  “How do you know?” Molly asked, flabbergasted.

  “Yes, how do you know?” asked Jasper. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but if a conversation takes place in my presence, I will be part of that conversation.”

  “The Inventors’ Guild—you know, the fancy club where all the most powerful inventors work and never have to worry about money because the Guild seems to have endless resources?” Molly said. “Well, they have a strict ‘No Girls Allowed’ policy.”

  “And they’ve never seemed keen on changing it,” said Cassandra. “Until the World’s Fair, that is, when their stodgy old hides got saved by a bunch of brilliant scientists who happened to be ladies. Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison promised us a vote after that. And they’re finally having it!”

  “That’s amazing, Mrs. Pepper!” Emmett said. “But how do you know it’s happening today?”

  Cassandra giggled devilishly. “Bell told me weeks ago. He and Edison have both promised to sponsor me for membership as soon as the Guild changes their charter to allow women.”

  “You kept this from us? For weeks?” Molly gaped. Keeping secrets was something they’d all gotten better at after three months of being forced to pretend the World’s Fair fiasco never happened, but still, this was big news for her mother to keep quiet about.

  “I wasn’t even going to tell you now,” Cassandra said. “I wanted to surprise you when you came home from school.”

  “School?” Molly blurted, wrapping her arms around her mother. “Who cares about school?”

  “I do,” said Emmett. “Not to, you know, bring down the mood or anything, but . . .” He gestured toward the clock.

  “No, Emmett is right,” Cassandra said. “As much as I’d love to be there as the results are announced, you two probably shouldn’t get caught skipping school right when we’ve finally gotten the Jäger Society’s truancy goons off our back.”

  Molly scoffed. “And all we had to do to make that happen was save the world.”

  Cassandra ushered the children toward the door. “The vote is just a formality anyway,” she said. “Bell and Edison run the Guild; the others will do what they say. Don’t worry, though—as soon as you’re home from school, we’re closing the shop early and heading straight to the Guild Hall!”

  Emmett glanced at a clock behind the counter. “Ugh, the morning bell’s in eleven minutes.”

  “We’re fueled by good news!” said Molly. “We’ll run fast!”

  “Well, actually, we might tire out if we run the entire way,” Emmett said. “We should probably alternate. Run the first block, walk the second—no, wait, walk first. Or—are there an odd number of blocks or—”

  “I’m running.” Molly dashed outside. She didn’t know how she was going to concentrate in class today. Not that she was particularly good at that on a normal day. But today, it was going to be impossible to stop daydreaming about her mother striding up the Guild Hall’s golden staircase, about her grand new office with a telephone and electric lights and tools so new they shone, about Alexander Graham Bell fetching her coffee and Thomas Edison humbly pleading for her help on his latest—

  Molly stopped. There was a man across the street, a man in a long, dark coat. His bowler hat was tilted down to shade his eyes, but he seemed to be staring right at her. All thoughts of Cassandra’s news left Molly’s head, replaced by nightmare memories of Ambrose Rector.

  Emmett dashed past her, saying, “I thought you said run first!”

  Molly looked back across the street. The man was gone. She gripped the straps of her bag and ran to catch up, but not before checking over her shoulder one more time.

  2

  Cassandra the Guildswoman

  I JINXED MYSELF, Molly thought, while ignoring her teacher’s lecture that morning. She’d planned to daydream about her mother as a Guildswoman, not about the mysterious stranger across the street. But, no, I just had to go and wish for more excitement in my life.

  It was true, though, that in the three months since the World’s Fair Affair, her day-to-day life had devolved into a dull, repetitive routine: boring breakfast, boring chores, boring school. (The only time school wasn’t dull was when Molly got in trouble, which was why she tried to get in trouble as often as possible.) After school, it was time for Molly to run the boring pickle shop while Emmett and Cassandra worked together on new inventions. And she couldn’t even chat with Robot while she worked the counter, because no one was allowed to know Robot existed. Boring.

  Even so, it wasn’t the running from gangsters, staging jailbreaks, and fighting murderous madmen that she missed. Well, maybe she missed that stuff a little. But even so, she hadn’t been asking for a mysterious stranger. Most mysterious strangers she’d met tried to kill her at one point or other. And even if Ambrose Rector himself wasn’t a threat at the moment, several Green Onion Boys had evaded arrest after the Fair. And those guys were ruthless criminals. Any one of them could be out for revenge.

  Really, all she’d wanted was some change. Change was always good. Change brought excitement. Although, of course, that’s exactly what she’d thought when she restarted school, and when she got to quit being her mother’s assistant, and when Emmett and Robot became new members of their little Pepper “family.” Actually, that last part was still really nice.

  After the Fair, when President Arthur offered to grant Cassandra any favor as a reward for helping save half of New York, Molly expected her mother to ask for a spacious new lab or maybe a stockpile of the latest research equipment. Instead, Cassandra passed her “wish” on to Emmett, who used it on two very specific requests.

  The first was for all the proper documentation he needed to stay in the country without immigration police or Jägermen harassing him—and Molly was secretly giddy about how unhappy that must have made President Arthur. It was Arthur, after all, who had signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, a law that barred Chinese immigrants from entering the country. Although Emmett had been in America legally since infancy, he was an orphan, and had no adult guardian to get his paperwork in order when the laws changed. The prospect of being shipped off to a country whose language, customs, and people were unknown to him terrified Emmett. But, reluctantly or not, Arthur held to his promise, and Emmett officially moved in with the Peppers.

  Emmett’s second request was to attend school. But not the isolated uptown school that most immigrants were forced to attend, which would have meant a grueling two-hour walk each way every day. Emmett wanted to go to the same nearby school as Molly, even if some teachers or white students might not be happy about it. Molly had wondered if this might have been an even more troubling prospect for the president, but he made it happen, nonetheless.

  President Arthur had nothing to do with Robot becoming the fourth resident of the pickle shop, however. In fact, he could never know about it. No one could. Because the Peppers could never risk anybody learning that Robot—a singing clockwork automaton—had inexplicably developed a mind of his own after a piece of Rector’s strange meteorite was implanted into his chest. Robot was no longer just a machine; he could talk and think. He could fly. He had magnet powers. And probably a bunch of abilities the Peppers didn’t even know about yet. He was also quite devoted to Molly. Robot was the only good thing to ever come from Ambrosium.

  Which was why Molly hated the need to keep his existence secret. But Robot’s creator, Alexander Graham Bell, would undoubtedly want him back if he learned about his newfound abilities. Bell would probably want to experiment on Robot, or worse, experiment on the chunk of Ambrosium that gave him life. And Molly could never let that happen.

  So, after years of it being just her and her mother eking out a life on their own, Molly suddenly had what felt like a real family
. Ironically, this new “family” structure meant she saw far less of everybody. She and Emmett were made to sit on opposite sides of the classroom at school, and once they were home, Emmett went straight to work with Cassandra.

  Molly had no problem with Emmett taking her place as her mother’s assistant; it was a job she’d never really wanted and one for which Emmett—a born tinkerer—was far more suited. But Molly hadn’t considered that the time spent aiding her mother had also been time spent talking, joking around, and having fun. There was no fun behind the pickle counter.

  Very soon, though, the Peppers would be able to put the pickle business behind them. As a Guild member, Cassandra would have all the assistants she needed, meaning Molly and Emmett could get back to important kid business, like tic-tac-toe, and jumping in puddles, and devising a plan to bring their living automaton out of hiding. That was what Molly decided to focus on for the remainder of the school day—not mysterious strangers, or loneliness, or whatever her teacher was saying about John Quincy Adams.

  The children returned that afternoon to find Cassandra already extinguishing lamps and pulling down shades. “Hello, children,” she said brightly. “How was school?”

  “Great,” said Emmett.

  “Boring,” said Molly. “I only got in trouble twice.”

  “Excellent,” Cassandra replied. “Drop your things and let’s go!”

  Molly tossed her bag over the privacy screen. It landed with a clatter. “Falling bags!” Robot said from somewhere in back.

  “That was just me, Robot!” Molly called out.

  “That was not you,” said Robot. “That was a bag. I saw it.”

  “I threw the bag,” Molly explained. “Sorry we can’t take you with us, Robot. But we’ll celebrate when we get back!”

  “Huzzah!” Cassandra threw the door open and marched outside.

  Emmett began to follow, looking strangely somber. “You okay?” Molly asked gently. “My mother’s about to achieve her biggest dream—I thought you’d be more excited.”

  “Oh, sorry! No, I’m thrilled for her,” he replied, shaking the glum from his face. “I was just thinking about my father. And what happened when he achieved his dream.”

  “Ah,” Molly said, wincing from the pang of guilt she felt any time Emmett mentioned his father—which he did frequently. She hoped today wouldn’t be the day she’d be forced to reveal her secret about Captain Lee. “But this is completely different,” she said. “My mother’s not going anywhere.”

  “No, I’m not,” Cassandra said, popping back inside. “Because no one is following me. Let’s go, go, go!” And she ducked out again.

  “I’ll be fine, Molly,” Emmett laughed. “Your mother, however, might explode if we don’t get her to the Guild Hall fast.”

  Molly smiled. She took Emmett’s hand and bounded down the street after her mother, so full of joyous anticipation that she didn’t think twice about the man in the long coat, huddled behind the ice wagon across the street.

  Emmett crinkled his nose as they approached Madison Square Park. “The city really has given up on street cleaning, haven’t they?” he said, hopping over a fly-swarmed pile of horse manure.

  “Without tourists, who do they have to impress?” Molly said, swatting a bug from her nose. “Us folks who actually live here?”

  The streets of Manhattan were practically empty compared to the way they had been in May, before the World’s Fair That Wasn’t, when the sidewalks had been so packed with visitors that Molly couldn’t travel from corner to corner without tripping over a gentleman’s cane or getting bumped by a fancy lady’s bustled skirt. But then came the front-page articles about the chemical leak in Central Park that sickened thousands, triggered mass hallucinations, and forced the cancellation of the Fair. Tourism slowed to a trickle after that.

  That “official account” of the incident was, of course, utter nonsense, a complete fabrication concocted by government authorities to avoid a public panic. It had been decided by the men who decide such things that the public must never know about Ambrose Rector and his Mind-Melter—the true cause of the disaster. Nor could anyone ever learn that Rector was only stopped by the intervention of the Peppers and a courageous group of women called the Mothers of Invention. And nothing rankled Molly more than that she was forbidden to utter a word about her heroic actions that day. Perhaps, she thought, once her mother was a member of the prestigious Guild, they’d be able to finagle a way out of the strict secrecy agreements the government had forced them to sign.

  The Peppers crossed the street to the most majestic building in all of Manhattan, the palatial Inventors’ Guild Hall. No matter how many times they came here, they still craned their heads up to take in the grandeur—marble pillars like petrified redwoods, dreamlike stained-glass portraits, statues so lifelike one might think that Medusa had run amok. Molly got goose bumps at the thought of spending her afternoons in this modern-day acropolis rather than her cramped, vinegar-scented home.

  She gave a pleasant wave to the security guards as she strode inside. The smattering of visitors in the grand entry chamber were all focused on the marvelous clockwork ceiling, watching its mechanical figurines chop silvery trees, slide down copper pipes, and ride tin-plated dragons. No one paid her mother any attention now, Molly thought, but the next time Cassandra Pepper walked through that entrance, people were going to swoon and wave their autograph books the way they did for Thomas Edison or Nikola Tesla.

  Molly was disappointed to see that the clerk at the Welcome Desk was the same toucan-snouted, weasel-eyed man who had thrown them out a few months earlier.

  “You,” the man sneered.

  “Me,” Cassandra replied, her chin held high. “And you’d better get used to it, because you’re going to be seeing a lot of me. Well, not a lot of me. You’ll only be seeing as much of me as you see right now. What I mean to say is—”

  “Why are you here?” the clerk snapped. “Do I have to call the police again?”

  “No, you do not,” Cassandra said calmly. “And you didn’t have to last time, either. I see your nose has recovered nicely, by the way. Good job on that. But, no, today I really am expected. Please tell Alexander Graham Bell that we are here to see him.”

  The clerk glared. “Mr. Bell is not in the building.” He placed his hand on the telephone mounted next to his desk.

  “Well, that can’t be right,” Cassandra said. “Bell needed to be here for the vote this morning.”

  “Obviously, Mr. Bell was present for the quarterly meeting and charter vote, but he left shortly aft—” The clerk narrowed his eyes. “How do you know about that meeting?”

  “Call Edison, then,” Cassandra said, keeping her composure quite admirably, in Molly’s opinion. “We’ll go up and see Thomas Edison.”

  “You will not,” the clerk said. “You will leave.” He stretched his neck to look past the Peppers, to the guards.

  Molly was not going to let this annoying little man ruin their plans yet again. “Distract him,” she whispered to Emmett before ducking away.

  “What?” Emmett sputtered. “Molly, I—” Emmett stepped to Cassandra’s side. “Um, hello, Mr. Pianosmith. I don’t know if you remember me, but I used to work for Mr. Bell.”

  The clerk crossed his arms. “You’re difficult to forget. You’re the one who’d been illegally playing house upstairs after hours.”

  “So, you know about that, huh?” Emmett muttered. “Well, um, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Mr. Bell always said you were the most astute of all the clerks.”

  “He did?” Pianosmith’s voice suddenly softened. “Mr. Bell knows me by name?”

  “Absolutely,” said Emmett. “He was always saying things like, ‘You know who keeps this whole place running? Mr. Pianosmith, that’s who.’”

  The clerk leaned across his desk. “He complimented my tie clip one time,” the man said proudly. “But I never realized—”

  “Get me Thomas Edison, right away!” Molly had s
nuck around the desk and was screaming into the telephone. She didn’t care about getting caught—she was finally using a telephone! She shuddered with excitement at the sound of the operator’s “Please hold.”

  “Hey!” Pianosmith barked.

  But Thomas Edison’s familiar voice had already come on the line: “Hello?”

  “Eddy, it’s Molly Pepper! We’re coming up!” she blurted into the phone.

  “Um, what?” Edison replied.

  “He said he can’t wait to see us,” Molly reported, hanging up the phone before Pianosmith could yank it away. “Let’s go.”

  The clerk buried his face in his hands as Molly, Emmett, and Cassandra marched up the gold-railed staircase in their own little victory parade.

  Thomas Edison sat in a plush velvet chair, tinkering with an apple-sized gadget on his sleekly varnished desk. He gave his visitors a quick nod as they entered.

  “To what do I owe the . . .” Edison trailed off, hunching down to tighten a loose wire on his device.

  “I believe the word you’re looking for is ‘pleasure,’” Cassandra said.

  “Is it, now?” Edison asked, raising one thick eyebrow. He put down his pliers and folded his hands. “Seriously, why are you here? The more we’re seen together, the more people might start asking questions about you-know-who and the you-know-what, you know?”

  “Yeah, but now we have a perfectly good reason to be here,” Molly said, spinning the gears of a model on a nearby shelf.

  “Which is what?” asked Edison. “And please don’t touch that.”

  “Where’s my office?” Cassandra asked.

  Edison stared. “I don’t know—somewhere down in Pickle Town. You actually forgot your own address?”

  “Where is my office here at the Guild Hall?” Cassandra rephrased. “Will you be building me a new one, or am I taking over someone else’s? I assume you’ve kicked out that awful Hoity-Toity Boy by now.”

  She and the children smiled at him.

  “Okay, three things,” Edison said. “First . . . No, actually, there’s just one thing: What are you talking about?”