Spiders on the Case Read online

  “What is it, dear?”

  She began again. “I wanted to do this all by myself. Well, I mean with Buster’s help, but we needed to figure out a plan. These criminals have gone undetected for a long time. No one ever really checks out those old map books or the fashion portfolios. So the problem is how to draw Tom’s attention to the crime.”

  “And do you have a solution?” Felix asked. There was a hint of huffiness in his voice.

  “We’re going to leave Tom a message.”

  “Just how are you going to do that?” Felix asked with a sneer.

  “Felix!” Edith said sharply. “I don’t like that tone. Let Jo Bell explain.”

  “I think it would be best if I let Julep do the explaining,” Jo Bell said, standing aside to give Julep the floor.

  “Julep!” Edith, Felix, and Fat Cat all exclaimed at once.

  “Yes! Me! Yours truly here. While Felix has been studying military history, and Mom has been crawling through old Bibles, I have spent quite a bit of time in the Egyptian pop-up books. I picked up a bit of hieroglyphics along the way.”

  “You understand hieroglyphics?” Fatty marveled.

  “A bit, and I’m learning more every day. And Jo Bell says that I am to teach all of you,” Julep said, with a pointed look at her bossy brother.

  “We have to learn hieroglyphics to do this?” Felix said.

  “Don’t worry,” Jo Bell replied. “Not that much. The message should be short and simple. But we don’t have any time to lose.”

  Jo Bell turned to her mother. “This morning, Tom saw the silverfish threaded through our storage web. And do you know what he said, Mom?”

  “No, dear. What?”

  “He said, ‘rather festive’!”

  “Really?” Edith said with wonder.

  “Quite remarkable,” Fatty added. “A human being so attuned to something like that.”

  “It got us thinking that the silverfish are the perfect shape for making some of the letters,” Julep said.

  “Julep, show everyone how you can write your name,” Jo Bell suggested.

  Julep bounced up and down with excitement. She cast a dragline, swung up on it, and then dropped another almost parallel. As she spun and swung the silk, she whispered to herself, “Ascend, spin off, rappel, loop … easy on the descent, tie off.”

  Lovely shapes began to form in the air above the family. “Atta girl!” Buster called.

  “What does it say, dear?” Edith asked when Julep was finished.

  “Mom,” Julep said softly.

  Pull that tab on that book, Fatty, and see what happens,” Julep instructed.

  The five spiders and Fat Cat had made their way to the pop-up books on the third floor.

  “What is it?” Fatty asked.

  “I was here the other day when a scholar was fiddling with this book, and I nearly fell off my dragline when I saw what happened.”

  Fatty pulled the tab and, suddenly, dozens of little paper Egyptians popped up.

  “It’s a funeral procession to the pyramid. See, they’re putting the coffin — or sarcophagus — on a barge.”

  “My, my, Julep, I’m impressed. You’ve learned a lot in here.” Edith was beaming with delight.

  “Want to go inside the Beautiful House?” Julep asked. “There are a lot of hieroglyphs in there and we could begin our lessons.”

  “What do they do in the Beautiful House?”

  “Make the mummies.”

  “How?” Felix asked.

  “I’ll wait outside.” Fatty had no choice, but he was happy not to be with the group when he heard Julep’s little voice explaining the procedure.

  “It’s very complicated to get a dead person ready for eternal life. First they have to take out all the stuff like the liver.” Julep turned to her mother. “Mom, do we have livers?”

  “I … I’m not sure, dear.”

  “Anyway,” Julep continued, “they cut all that stuff out and they even weigh the heart. If it’s light, it means you’ve led a good life. If not, you’ve been bad — weight of sin, you know. Weighs a lot.”

  “I bet Agnes Smoot’s and Eldridge Montague’s hearts put together don’t weigh as much as a flea,” Buster said.

  Julep had hopped up onto a shelf that held a tiny paper jar with some hieroglyphs on it. “Your first word.”

  She tapped lightly on the series of five figures.

  “So what does that spell in hieroglyphs?” Jo Bell asked.

  “Brain. It’s the jar they keep the brain in.”

  “Eeeew!” the four spiders and Fatty all said at once.

  Julep continued, “The best part is how they get the brain out. You won’t believe this.” Julep was bouncing around with great excitement now. “They liquefy it! They take the brain out with little hooks through the dead person’s nose.”

  “Absolutely revolting,” Fatty said.

  Julep had begun swinging on a dragline from one jar to the next. “This one here is for the lungs.”

  “Ick!”

  “This one is for the guts.”

  “Yuck!”

  “Why did they save all this disgusting stuff?” Jo Bell asked.

  “The dead person needs to have it for his next life. They believed that.”

  “I’m not sure what good a liquefied brain is going to do you in the hereafter, and I certainly don’t see why knowing how to write words like ‘lung’ and ‘guts’ is going to help us tip off Tom about these criminals,” Felix muttered.

  “Mommy,” Julep wailed. “He’s making fun of me.”

  “I think,” Buster began, “Julep is teaching us the alphabet so we can write whatever words we want in hieroglyphics. No one will know their meaning except Tom.”

  “Yes,” Julep said with a grateful glance at Buster. “We should go to the pyramid. There are a lot more hieroglyphs in there.”

  It felt to Jo Bell as if dark shadows were reaching out to grab them as they entered the pyramid. The little group followed Julep down some stairs.

  “Please look left,” Julep said in the voice of an experienced tour guide. “You will notice quite a bit of writing on the walls. We are now in the burial chamber. Let’s be respectful as we approach the sarcophagus of the lady. She’s a princess, Princess Henttawi. It’s open so we can see the mummy.”

  The five spiders crept forward. Julep turned to Edith. “Mom, meet mummy.”

  “The wrapping technique is rather similar to ours,” Edith commented. “She could be a June bug all wrapped up like that.”

  There was writing all over the place — on the sarcophagus, the walls, and the boat that was supposed to transport the dead person to the next world. Most important, there was a papyrus scroll called the Book of the Dead tucked at the feet of the mummy.

  The five spiders visited the pyramid three times in all, and by the end of the third visit, they had learned enough hieroglyphs to write just about any word they wanted.

  The spiders had left the pop-up book section and were stepping out of a ventilation grate on the main floor of the rare books reading room when Buster called, “Freeze! It’s him!”

  “Who?” Edith whispered.

  “Eldridge Montague!”

  “The map thief?” Jo Bell asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Here you are, Professor Montague, the New World Explorers’ Atlas,” said Rosemary, handing Montague a valuable book.

  “I knew it! I just knew it!” Buster screeched.

  Edith and her children felt the reverberations of Buster’s outburst in every nano-hair on their thirty-two legs.

  “I knew it was only a matter of time until he decided to get into the sixteenth-century maps. There are books with maps by explorers like Ponce de León. He’s going in with his blade!”

  Jo Bell felt a tremor deep in her spinnerets. She had seen the shadow of a blade just the week before. It was dreadful. She pulled up seven of her legs tightly so that she was clinging to her dragline with only one.

  “
I want to see this creep!” Felix hissed. “Follow me!”

  Five minutes later, they were all nestled in an empty light socket above the desk where Eldridge Montague sat. Rosemary, Tom’s assistant, had returned to her desk to answer a telephone call. How convenient! Jo Bell thought, for the ringing telephone muffled the soft zip of Montague’s blade.

  “That’s how he does it! He waits until there’s noise to cover the cutting sound. And please note that huge raincoat he is wearing. On the inside, it’s lined with big pockets for the map he cuts out,” Jo Bell whispered to her dumbstruck family.

  The map was lovely. The paper — the color of weak tea — showed a hand-drawn map by the famous French explorer Samuel de Champlain. The prettiest part was the wide Atlantic Ocean with full-rigged ships and delicate drawings of leaping fish. Great forests and mountain ranges were rendered with tiny strokes of a very fine pen. And quicker than a wink, Eldridge Montague had slipped the priceless map into his raincoat.

  Edith gasped. “Felix!”

  But it was too late. Jo Bell, Julep, and Buster all caught a glimpse of what Edith had just seen. Felix had dropped a dragline into Eldridge Montague’s pocket and was being swiftly transported — along with the map — out of the rare books room.

  “Toodle-oo!” Montague called out merrily to Rosemary at the desk. Then, poking his head into Tom’s conservator’s room, he waved jauntily. “See you soon, old boy.”

  “What are we going to do?” Julep cried. Fatty, of course, was nowhere to be seen. Hanging out in the deserted stacks was one thing, but a cat couldn’t exactly waltz into the reading room during library hours.

  Edith gave a little moan and passed out cold. Jo Bell gently tweaked the nano-hairs on her mother’s various legs. “Mom! Mom!”

  Finally, Edith came to. And was she mad! “What did that harebrained son of mine think he was doing?”

  “He’s read too much military history, I guess, Mom. He wants to be a hero,” Jo Bell offered.

  “He should have read enough to know that heroes often die,” Edith fumed. “We have to go back to the display case to regroup until Fatty shows up this evening after closing hours.” She looked up at the clock on the wall. “Thank goodness we don’t have too long to wait. Just another two hours.”

  But those two hours seemed like an eternity. And when Fatty had not shown up by five thirty, the family really began to worry.

  Fat Cat had seen every thing. He had looked down in horror from a ceiling grate as Felix leapt into the thief’s pocket. His first thought was What is that kid trying to do? Lose another leg? Adolescence was a trying time, but Felix was going to get himself squashed trying to be a hero.

  Fatty had to think fast. He skedaddled down a back stairs that led to the library’s main entrance on Dartmouth Street. He spotted Montague almost immediately. His raincoat flared out behind him as he went down the library’s main granite stairs and turned toward Boylston Street. The sidewalks were thronged with people, for the weather had cooled and it was the start of a lovely summer evening. Fatty followed Montague as he crossed Boylston Street, then Newbury, and walked another block to Commonwealth Avenue.

  The broad avenue was lined on either side with elegant brick town houses. In April it looked as if it were snowing pink magnolia blossoms, for each tiny yard had a magnolia tree. Now, however, it was summer and the street was shaded by the deep green of magnolia leaves. Fatty crossed Commonwealth. At the corner of Dartmouth and Marlborough streets, he turned left. This was another elegant block, but the houses were somewhat smaller. Montague walked halfway down the street and then up the steps to number 16, which he entered.

  Fat Cat leapt onto the black iron railing that lined the steps. There were three doorbells. One said BENNETT, on the third floor. One said CARLISLE/MILTON, on the second floor, and for the first-floor apartment, there were the names MONTAGUE/ DE FUNK.

  Easy peasy, Fatty thought.

  Five minutes later, he squeezed into the building through bulkhead cellar doors directly below Montague’s study. The crook was having a drink and apparently some cocktail weenies wrapped in puff pastry. Fatty drooled. He loved cocktail weenies, but he could not be distracted at a time like this. His godspiderling was in the pocket of a thief.

  Fatty pressed himself as close as possible to a floor grate. “Felix,” he whispered. And because this faithful and very intelligent cat spoke spider, there were no meows and not a word was heard.

  “Fatty!”

  “Young man, you have really done it now! Your mother is a wreck.”

  “I had to, Fatty. But how did you get here?”

  “I saw the whole thing — what happened in the reading room.”

  “So you know it was bad. The guy’s terrible!” Felix exclaimed.

  “That’s no excuse. You have recklessly endangered your life.”

  “I’m not in his pocket anymore.”

  “Where are you exactly?”

  “In a champagne glass,” Felix answered.

  Just then, footsteps were heard.

  “Oh, darling, let’s not have just plain old wine. Let’s have a glass of the bubbly! This is such an occasion! The New France map! How much do you think we can sell it for?” It was Agnes Smoot, and both Fatty and Felix heard the big slobbery smooch she gave her husband.

  Holy silk, Felix thought as he heard the champagne cork pop, then felt the glass he was in being lifted.

  “Get out of there, Felix!” Fatty cried, accidently letting out a little screech.

  “Darling, is that a cat yowling?”

  “Sounds like it, doesn’t it? I’ll go check.” Felix felt the flute he was in being set back down on a table. When he picked up the vibrations of Agnes’s and Eldridge’s footsteps on the carpet, he quickly cast a dragline and hoisted himself out of the glass.

  “Must have been one of those vile alley cats sniffing around the garbage. But I don’t see anything from here,” said Eldridge. “Now, you were asking about how much we could get for the New France map. Minimum a million dollars. But who knows what the gent at the French Institute might give us. He might pay double, I think!”

  “Oh, Eldridge! You’re a genius! We’re on our way!” Agnes Smoot sighed. Then there was another slurpy Smoot smooch.

  “I’ll tuck this away for now,” Eldridge said.

  Fat Cat pressed his ear to the grate. He heard Eldridge walk about ten steps, then heard the sound of a drawer opening. It was a file cabinet. He could tell by the metallic noise as the drawer was pulled out.

  “Felix!” cried Fatty. “You listen to me. Get down here this minute and come back with me, or else I’ll drag you out by your fresh new leg!”

  Felix was down the grate in a flash.

  “Climb in my ear,” Fat Cat ordered. “We’ll get back in a jiff.”

  “You have to admit, Fatty, I did pick up some invaluable information,” Felix said as he settled into the dense fluffiness of Fatty’s furry ear.

  “Possibly, but at great risk!”

  “What do you mean, possibly? Fatty, don’t you get it? You could sneak into Montague’s apartment and bring those maps back to the Rare Books Department.”

  Fat Cat stopped dead in his tracks. “Are you nuts? First of all, that is breaking and entering. It’s a crime.”

  “They won’t send a cat to jail.”

  “No, but possibly to the pound. And never mind that! You think I could go trotting along the streets of Boston with a million-dollar map in my mouth?”

  “Oh, I never thought of that.”

  Fatty heaved a deep sigh. “Of course you didn’t. You are young and reckless and on occasion incredibly stupid.” He paused, then muttered, “Youth is wasted on the young.”

  “What’s that you just said?”

  “Youth is wasted on the young — George Bernard Shaw the playwright said it first.”

  “I don’t think it’s really wasted on me, Fatty.”

  “If you get yourself smushed, it will be.”

  It was
a hard statement to argue with, and Felix remained silent.

  Somehow Edith had pulled herself together — for her children. It was the hardest thing she had ever had to do. She had to trust that Felix, reckless as he was, would come back alive and with all eight legs attached! In the meantime, there was work to be done.

  “Children,” she said, turning to Julep, Jo Bell, and Buster. “Now that we have a working vocabulary for hieroglyphics, we need to figure out what to say.” They all nodded and listened carefully. “In order to alert Tom to these crimes, the message needs to be short and …” She seemed to be looking for a word.

  “Not sweet,” Jo Bell offered.

  “Exactly. Not sweet, but direct.”

  “How about ‘murderers at large’?” Julep said.

  “I’d say that’s excessive,” a voice outside the case intoned.

  “Fatty! You’re back!” Edith exclaimed.

  “Oh, Fatty, you don’t know what you missed,” Jo Bell cried. “We saw the thief cutting a page and then Felix hopped into his pocket and —”

  “I know it all, I saw it all, and now I bring you Felix.”

  “Felix!” Edith cried out.

  “Get into that display case, Felix, and apologize to your mother this instant!” Fat Cat ordered.

  Edith swung down from the web to embrace her errant son.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” Felix said. “I really am. It was very foolish of me. I didn’t mean to cause you worry.”

  “Oh, you gave my poor old heart a twitch, you did.” She folded two of her legs beneath her cephalothorax and patted the region in the thorax where her heart was beating rapidly. “And I think my number ninety-five spigot port side seized up a bit. You know it always does when I get nervous.”

  Spiders have hundreds of microscopic spigots that are connected to their spinnerets. Each spinneret produces a unique silk for a specific purpose. Edith’s number ninety-five spigot had a silk quite useful for frame building in web construction. It was this type of silk Edith had been counting on to construct hieroglyphs.

  “Well, I’m back. So you don’t have to worry about old ninety-five. But —” Felix looked up at Fatty, who was now plopped on top of the display case. “Can I tell them what we found out?”