The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen (9 page)

Tottering, he swayed and clonked up the rock steps, swiveling and tipping the chair with his toes. At each move, he almost toppled. Every muscle was tense. He felt his calves ache with the strain. His arms twitched, trying instinctively to balance him as he edged his way up toward the light.

Almost there …

He realized that the kidnapper could come back at any time.

He had reached the entrance to the cave.

His breath was heaving through his soupy nose. In and out, it punched through torrents of mucus.

But he had made it. He wobbled on the edge, half in the sunlight, half in the darkness.

For a moment he rested, his eyes closed.

Something cool wrapped itself around his ankle.

Jasper opened his eyes.

It appeared that a Kentucky mountain asp
^*
lived in the cave. And it was wrapping itself around his leg.

It was very important that Jasper didn't move …

… except that at any moment, the kidnapper would be back …

His eyes above the duct tape were wide with fear. He trembled in his seat.

And then he kicked off and went rolling down the hillside through bracken, leaving the asp far behind.

Whenever Jasper slowed, he'd strike out again with his heel and keep himself rolling. Heather mauled his cheeks. Saplings swatted him in the face. Rocks bashed at his trunk. Still the ropes held firm.

He looked down. As the view swung around—forward, backward, forward, backward, forward—he saw that he was heading straight for a precipice. A cliff!

Scrabbling, he tried to stop himself. He stuck out his elbows as far as possible.

BAM!

He came to rest against a small birch that leaned out over the cliff.

Safe. He was still trussed up, hanging over the edge of a chasm, but now at least he was several
hundred feet away from the cave, hidden in the long grasses and mountain laurel.

Mountain laurel. To which, as we know, he was seriously allergic.

The sun shone above. The hills all around were dazzling. The air itself was golden with pollen.

Jasper sputtered behind the tape. He needed to breathe. Otherwise, he would pass out soon. He sucked in as much air as possible.

The air, of course, was poison to him.

His sinuses pounded like a blacksmith forging manacles.

And suddenly he felt something slithering on his back.

The snake. It had not become fully disentangled.

And now it was sunning itself on his back.

That would be no problem, Jasper thought to himself, if he had all the time in the world. He had been suspended above enough pits of asps by arch-villains over the years to know that,
come night, this one would slither back to its lair.

And under normal circumstances, remaining absolutely still for several hours would be no problem for Jasper Dash, Boy Technonaut; he had spent many months studying meditation and martial arts at an ancient monastery hidden high in some jagged mountains somewhere, and knew well how to achieve an inner calm and stillness in the most disastrous circumstances.

But within another thirty or forty minutes, Jasper would be in the convulsions of allergic suffocation—unable to breathe through mouth or nose.

And at that point, roused by Jasper's struggles, the mountain asp would wake up and get nasty.

Blinking back tears, Jasper tried to remain perfectly still.

The snake slept on his ribs.

And slowly, the tide rolled in inside his skull—dripping inexorably—and he faced the very real possibility that he, Jasper Dash, Boy Technonaut, would soon drown in his own snot.

*
It said so in Jasper Dash #14:
Jasper Dash and His Sonic Lava Submersible.

*
The most poisonous of the imaginary North American snakes.

Lily, Eddie Wax, Mrs. Mandrake, and Rick did not have much luck. Besides the mounted bear head, they found nothing. They came back to the hotel tired and frustrated.

Mrs. Mandrake immediately stopped at the front desk and asked for the number of the fancy Schuyler-Brugghensnock Hotel in New York City so she could call them and ask what the smallest ransom demand they had ever received was. “I don't know what class of yegg you foster around here,” she said, “but I have a suspicion this criminal is decidedly of the Kmart holdup variety. I absolutely refuse to be menaced by anyone who would steal from a store that sells snack cakes in bulk.”

Lily wanted to go up to her room to check
to see if Katie was there, but she realized she couldn't, since it was inside someone else's bathroom. She wouldn't have minded sitting down and resting for a minute without someone talking to her. When too many people talked to her, she felt sunken and then, later, itchy.

It would be good to see Katie, though. Maybe she would be in a better mood by now. Maybe they could try to find out about the ransom call that was made to the front desk.

Lily went up and stood near the door of 46B, the room where their vacation capsule had landed. She stood there, too timid to knock. She didn't want to bother anyone. The man could be sleeping.

The lights in the hallway hummed.

She put her hands in her pockets, blew back her bangs from her eyes, and stared at the number plaque on the door.

No one came out or went in. She realized she couldn't stand there forever.

She walked around to a porch and looked out the back of the hotel.

There was Katie down below, floating in the pool with some other kids.

Lily ran for the elevators.

No sooner had she stepped out into the lobby and had time to notice that three of the animal heads on the wall were now missing than she heard a bloodcurdling scream. She stopped cold.

It was a man in a black cloak and black glasses walking out of the hotel bar. He smiled pleasantly and tipped his hat.

But then there was another scream.

This one was a voice she recognized: Mrs. Mandrake.

“I've been robbed!” shrieked Mrs. Mandrake, coming down the stairs. “The priceless Mandrake Necklace is gone!”

Lily ran over to her. “When?” asked Lily. “When did you last see it?”

“Earlier!” said Mrs. Mandrake, covering her eyes.

“Figures,” said Sid, the hotel manager, nodding grimly.

Lily sprinted for the pool. There was no time to lose—she and Katie had to get on the trail of the thief!

Katie and the Cutesy Dell Twins were laughing and talking with a team of brawny water polo players.

“You could play around us,” said one of the Twins. “We'll just drift.”

“We can be like sand traps in golf,” said the other Twin.

“Water hazards,” said Katie, smiling.

Lily ran right up to the edge, her old ripped sneakers squeaking on the tiles.

“Katie!” she said. “Someone stole a priceless necklace!”

All the kids stopped talking and turned to look at her.

She backed away. Katie looked furious.

“Oh, hi, Lily,” said Katie, sounding nicer than she looked. “We were just playing water polo.”

“Getting in the way of people playing water
polo, more like it!” said one of the boys, and they all laughed and shouted, “Huzzah!”

“Oh …,” said Lily. “There's a—you know—there's a mystery … With the kidnapping and … I thought maybe you'd want to come with me. Sometime this afternoon, not now.”

Katie smiled. “Sure, Lily. Maybe later.” She looked around at her new friends and then asked Lily, without much force, “Maybe you want to come swimming?”

“No,” said Lily, her hair falling over her eyes.

Everyone waited awkwardly for a minute. Some of the water polo guys treaded water.

Lily didn't want to take up too much of Katie's time, since Katie looked busy on the inflatable cushion, so she asked, “Have you, um, seen Jasper?”

“No,” said Katie. “He's probably goofing off somewhere.”

“Okay,” said Lily. “See you later. I'll be …
whenever you're done … I'll be in our room.” She corrected herself, “Not in. I guess we can't go in. I'll be outside our room in the hallway. Waiting. Okay?”

Suddenly one of the water polo boys shouted, “Victory goes to the sharkiest!” and they all raised their brown arms and barked like sea dogs.

Lily turned and walked quickly back inside the hotel.

She didn't want to be stared at like that any longer than was absolutely necessary.

Behind her, Katie floated on her raft, watching Lily go. Katie already knew that a priceless necklace had been stolen, of course; she had heard the thief at work. She wanted to tell Lily her clues, but doing that would mean she would probably end up having to help find the burglar, and that was the last thing Katie wanted to do at that moment.

She felt a little sick and empty, though, watching Lily retreat. Even as she turned her
head and put on a quick smile for the Cutesy Dell Twins, Katie was anxiously planning for dinner, when, she promised herself, she would make it all up to Lily. Once Jasper got back, she would include him and Lily in the little dinner party with the Twins. They would dress up for the restaurant and sit there like grown-ups around a table, and Lily wouldn't embarrass her.

Katie vowed to herself that Lily would have a good time, and would like the Twins, and would forgive her for what had just happened. Then Katie would tell Lily and Jasper about what she'd heard that afternoon—the burglar's bungling— and Jasper and Lily would have all sorts of startling ideas about things like
motive, opportunity,
and
means.
They would argue about who could be the guilty party while Jasper balanced the forks and knives on top of each other, which he always did absentmindedly when he was excited by the conversation. The Twins would watch the three of them talk it all through and would be impressed that Katie and her friends
were so used to adventure. And everything would be fine again.

Katie promised herself this as she floated on her raft with the noise of water polo sloshing around her. The boys crowed. The Twins squealed. The ball slapped the water. Katie floated like an island, touching no one, suspended in blue.

And what, meanwhile, was happening with Jasper?

Not much,
in a sense
—because he was tied to a chair and couldn't move. But, my friends, let's look a little closer.

There—at the microscopic level—in Jasper Dash's pure and noble bloodstream—now clogged with histamines and immunoglobulin E
^*
—down at the level where antibodies sounded the alarm at the invasion of foreign microbes— there, we see the action unfolding like the most furious aeroplane dogfight you've ever seen in a
World War II newsreel: machine guns rattling, riddling wings with bullets—wings tipping toward the earth—tumbling—torn engines spewing smoke into the sky! Parachutists bailing! Yes, indeed!