Molly Moon & the Morphing Mystery

believe.

“Really?” he said.

Minutes later, Molly, Micky, and Petula were being led by the hypnotized night watchman through the museum in a passage lined with stuffed birds. Ahead, in the musty gloom of the main hall of the museum, they could see the massive skeletal legs of the diplodocus.

“We’ll see you later, then,” Molly whispered to the old man. “Wait by the side door to let us out.”

The watchman nodded and smiled.

“Right…you…are,” he whispered back in a halting tone.

Molly and Micky paused and surveyed the dark, cathedral-proportioned space with its grand staircase that split into two, curving around to join the first-floor balcony. Petula sniffed the air and tried to read its swarms of smells. The overriding odor was floor polish. Under this was the smell of ancient bones, and old fur, and the smell of that afternoon’s visitors’ footsteps, which had brought in scents from the street. And Petula could detect that onions and garlic had been fried a few hours before and a croissant had been eaten upstairs. The scent of lavender blossom flickered through the hall as though someone wearing it had recently walked by. Sensing that the coast was clear now, though, Petula tapped Molly on her leg with her paw, nodded, and stepped forward.

“Petula seems to think it’s all right. Glad we brought her.” Molly put her hand under Micky’s elbow, and they both crept forward. Cautious as timid mice, they slipped through the shadows and climbed the staircase. They moved quietly along the upper balcony until they were finally up at the door to the botanical library.

Turning the doorknob, they went through, tiptoeing down the dark archive room, past its shelves of books and towering filing cabinets, to the column of drawers at the end that hid the secret entrance to Miss Hunroe’s lair. Molly pushed the filing cabinet and the secret door opened and they went through.

Petula wondered what the twins were looking for. She supposed it was the book. If it was a bottle of lavender perfume, they were heading in the right direction. The scent was drifting through the cracks along the edges of the door in front of them like heat escaping from an igloo.

Molly gripped the filing-cabinet handle and got ready to push. “Here goes,” she said.

The door nudged open, revealing another dark room—this time, the library. Nothing had changed. The layout of the furniture was the same. The three sofas stood in a horseshoe configuration with the book-laden coffee table between them. There was the tall window with the stained-glass patterns on it.

Micky tapped Molly on the shoulder. “Look,” he whispered, “there’s the feathery tree picture. And it’s not a feathery tree, is it? You were right, Molly—it’s a quill.” He turned on his flashlight.

Molly joined her brother beside the fireplace. “Where there is a quill, there is a way,” she said. “Do you think there’s something behind it?” She reached up to lift the old picture from the wall. Micky helped her as they hauled it down. As they did, they saw that the wall where it had been was plain, without writing on it or a safe embedded in it.

“It’s heavy!” Molly whispered.

“Do you think there’s something inside it?” Micky suggested.

“Crumbs. Bet there is,” Molly agreed.

The twins turned the picture over and, in the light of Micky’s flashlight, saw that the frame’s wooden back was taped down. Quickly they stripped off the tape and peeled the wood away from the frame, revealing the back of the quill drawing.

“Nothing here,” Micky decided, disappointed. The dark sky outside seemed to growl, as though warning the children to behave themselves. Micky pulled out the paper. It was simply a drawing. Nothing more. “Maybe it’s got secret writing on it.” He shone his flashlight through different parts of the parchment, to see whether any watermarked writing was hidden there, while Molly picked at the frame itself.

“Perhaps something’s hidden inside the wood,” she said. “Shall we break it and see? I’ll take the glass out first. I mean, I know it’s not good smashing things up and all that, but this is an exception.”

Petula watched with interest as Molly put her sneakered foot on the picture frame and broke it in half. Outside, a distant crack of lightning seemed to echo the splintering noise.

Molly studied the wood. “It’s solid. Not hollow. Nothing in it.” She sat heavily on the sofa. “It was only a hunch, wasn’t it? I mean, there are quills and feathers everywhere. Maybe we should be looking down in the stuffed-bird rooms.”

Micky sat down beside her and glanced up at the hundreds and hundreds of books.

“Why would there be a quill picture? It must be to show that this room is special. There’s something in here, there must be.”

Minutes later Molly and Micky were up on the balcony level of the room, rifling through the library’s shelves for a box that might hold Molly’s crystals or a book that might contain a good clue as to where the Logan Stones were. The books were organized alphabetically. Molly and Micky ran their flashlights along their spines, reading their titles.

“Ancient Civilization,” Micky read. “The Andes. Annihilation of the World’s Population and Other Extreme Ways Forward.” Micky shook his head in revulsion. “That sounds like a Hunroe sort of book, but not the next one. Apple Picking. The Aztecs. Botany of the Amazon.” Micky frowned while he thought.

“Damn!” Molly despaired. “This is hopeless. The clue might be in a map or in a poem, or it might be deep in a math book written in a code in numbers!”

Micky turned around and leaned over the ledge of the balcony, surveying the mess of the picture frame below. They’d never be able to cover their tracks now, for the frame was unfixable.

At that moment a huge flash of lightning exploded in the sky. Petula froze with fear. And, as though some sort of giant hundred-foot-tall paparazzi photographer had his camera directed at them from outside the window and had detonated its flash, white light blasted in through the window. It flooded the room, and something extraordinary happened.