The room was suddenly lit with the warm glow of its orange lights. Molly stared at Micky and put her hand on Petula. In only a matter of seconds, the person would see the smashed picture frame. They listened to the person putting something down on the far table. They breathed heavily as they moved.
“Miss Suzette?” Micky mouthed the name to Molly and puffed his cheeks out. “Fat!” Molly smelled lavender in the air and nodded. She hoped so. Miss Suzette was small enough to handle. Molly imagined Miss Suzette eyeing the room and discovering the mess, then seeing the disturbed bookcase upstairs. She hoped Miss Suzette would climb the balcony stairs to inspect. Once she was up there, they could escape. But as she was imagining this, a horrible thing happened.
Miss Suzette’s large, fat face peered over the top of the sofa. “YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!” she bellowed.
Like birds set to flight, Molly and Micky moved up and away. Dodging Miss Suzette’s pink-fingernailed grasp, and the swishing of her mother-of-pearl walking stick, they ran.
“Come on, Petula,” Molly cried as she dashed over the broken frame, the wood crunching under her feet. Micky jumped on the coffee table, smashing a flower-filled porcelain vase and slipping on a pile of magazines. He hurdled the other sofa. It was Petula who got stuck. Miss Suzette reached out and seized her around the waist. She lifted Petula up, tipping her at a very uncomfortable angle, pinching her skin with her pincerlike grip. With a furious bark, Petula sank her teeth through the old woman’s lacy dress sleeves and into her forearm.
Miss Suzette shrieked like a banshee, “Aaaaah! You ghastly dog!” and dropped her.
Petula leaped onto the sofa and ran along it to the other end, where Molly caught her. Micky picked up Miss Suzette’s sopping-wet raincoat, bunched it into a ball, and threw it at her so that it hit her in the face like a slop of seaweed.
“Hah!” Micky laughed. Miss Suzette tottered backward and fell in a heap on the floor, her petticoats puffing up to reveal huge lacy knickers. “Hope that makes you think twice before you hurt an animal again!”
And not wanting to hang around any longer in case Miss Suzette decided to morph into any of them, Molly, Micky, and Petula were away. They sped down the archive room and raced to the upstairs passageway. They skidded over the polished floors, Petula’s claws skittering as they went. They long-jumped down the main stairs. And then they sprinted down the stuffed-bird corridor that connected the museum to its other side.
“Hope there aren’t any more of Hunroe’s friends here,” Molly said, panting and breathless, eyeing a stuffed owl.
The twins and Petula arrived at the side entrance. Behind them, they could hear the far-off echoing sound of Miss Suzette’s clipped footsteps as she puffed her way down the museum stairs after them.
Molly paused by the night watchman, who stood like a soldier awaiting orders.
“Thank you!” she said. “After we’re gone, you will no longer remember any of Miss Hunroe’s hypnotic instructions to you. No one will ever be able to hypnotize you again. And you will forget us, and you will be hypnotized no more by me, except you will do something for us. When Miss Suzette, the woman who’s chasing us, arrives, you will stop her from leaving the building. Thanks.” Molly turned to leave, then stopped. “And I seal all of this in with the password…”
“Frilly Knickers?” Micky suggested.
“Yes, with the password ‘Frilly Knickers.’”
With that Molly, Micky, and Petula burst out of the building into the wet night. Rain drenched them so that they climbed into Black’s car dripping.
“Got what we need?” Black asked.
As the car screeched away, Molly looked back at the museum’s side door.
Through the football-sized porthole there, she could just make out the puffy figure of Miss Suzette and the night watchman blocking her path. He had her wrists in his hands and was shaking his head solemnly while she was struggling and shouting as though a demon possessed her.
Nineteen
“Had a nice little trip, did you?” Lily had finally emerged from her bedroom and stood on its threshold with her arms crossed. She was wearing a red silk bathrobe and red furry slippers. Her pajamas had pictures of roses on them. Her eyes darted angrily to the rattling French window and the balcony outside, where rain smacked down hard.
“Oh, Lily, we did ask you if you wanted to come too, so please stop being grumpy,” said Black. “Come and hear what Molly and Micky found out.” He gestured to the sofa.
“Come on,” Molly said. Lily shrugged and came over.
While Molly told Lily everything that had happened, Malcolm fiddled with the TV controls. Finally he got a signal, and a serious-faced presenter, standing in a studio in front of a large weather map of Europe, appeared. The screen flickered, and her voice crackled.
“Our satellite pictures show heavy storms over the North Sea,” she said. “And what looks alarmingly like the beginnings of a tornado have been detected in Northern Europe, near the southern coast of Sweden. It’s anyone’s guess how this tornado will grow and where it will go, as the winds are proving unpredictable, but the National Weather Agency’s advice to everyone tonight is stay at home and batten down the hatches. Don’t make trips out unless they are absolutely necessary. And keep watching news and weather reports to see how this storm and tornado are progressing.” The woman gave a stern nod and the cameras switched to another newsperson, a dark-haired man in a suit, and his guest, an elderly man with white hair and a bushy beard.
“It’s crazy out there, Professor Cramling. In all your years working at Cambridge University, you say you’ve never seen anything like this?” asked the anchorman.
“No. Never.”
“And how do you explain it?”
Professor Cramling scratched his hairy chin. “I can only assume,” he postulated, “that this weather is the unexpected result of global warming. People expected weather to change—but not this suddenly. Every weather professional that I have spoken to is concerned, alarmed, confused.”
Malcolm flicked channels to look at the global weather and news reports. Lots of other countries were having strange, often fatally dangerous, weather, too. One channel showed a weather map of the world. It showed that Canada, America, Europe, and Russia were having snowstorms and blizzards, and Asian countries were having typhoons. Other countries were suffering from severe wet weather conditions similar to London’s.
“But look!” Micky pointed to the world map on the TV. “Ecuador and other South American countries don’t seem to have been affected at all!”
“All flights from British airports have been delayed,” a newsreader reported.
“Not good news,” said Malcolm, watching the birds’-eye TV footage of miles and miles of traffic stuck in a jam on the motorways to the airports. The massive queue looked like an electrical river, as the thousands of cars in it beamed out their red rear lights into the dark night.
“So what do you think?” Micky asked Lily. Lily narrowed her eyes and then softened, pleased that someone valued her opinion. She knelt down on the floor next to Micky. “You see,” Micky went on, “we’ve got to get here.” He pointed to the atlas page that showed northern Ecuador. “To the top of that squiggly blue line. That’s the Coca River.”
“And it’s definitely the place where the weather can be changed? Where the Logan Stones are?” Lily asked.
“Hope so,” Micky said, making a face. “Because we’re going a long way away for a mistake if we’re not right.”