Molly Moon & the Morphing Mystery

would have found the book. I knew it would be a disaster for either him or Hunroe to have access to the book. So…” Black stopped and looked awkwardly at the twins. “So I stole it.”

“You stole it?”

“Well, I had to.” Black paused and fiddled with a button on his shirtsleeve. “I had it for years, and no one guessed that it was me who had stolen it. So it was safe with me. In the fabulously secure casino building of my brother’s. Lily said you saw the book. Well then, you must have seen the three flat colored stones in the corners of its front cover.”

“And we saw the fourth stone,” Molly said, popping a chocolate into her mouth. “Speal had it. It was blue. She treated it like some sort of super-precious thing. Mmm. Toffee.”

“Ah, so that is where it has been all these years. Well, Miss Speal is right. That blue stone is very precious. And that’s why the book is extra precious. The stones on its cover are the key. Each one of those stones can help change the weather on its own. If I was holding a stone now, for instance, I could change the weather near here. A stone on its own has limited power. All four stones together can make mammoth-scale, worldwide weather changes happen, but to do this the holder of the stones has to be in a very special place.”

“Where?”

“And you think that is where Miss Hunroe is going right now?” Micky guessed, opening a smart leather- covered atlas that lay on the table.

“I am sure of it.”

Black played with the heavy sashes that tied back the curtains as he spoke. “I think that Miss Speal has been manipulating the weather with the piece of blue stone for a long time. We’ve had monsoonlike downpours in London lately, and do you remember that mini cyclone that went over Primrose Hill?” As he spoke, a massive blade of lightning jagged across the dark sky. “Now Hunroe has the whole book and, so, all the weather stones. She has the power to cause typhoons, hurricanes, high seas, tidal waves, tsunamis, and droughts. She could drown millions in an afternoon. If she decides that the rain should stop, crops die, and then millions of people have nothing to eat. She could cause millions of people to die slowly, of starvation.”

Black sounded so serious that Petula whimpered and hid her nose in the crook of Molly’s arm.

“Wow, just think of the good things you could do with the weather stones,” Micky interjected. “You could make it rain where there were droughts. You could make a jungle grow in the Sahara Desert! These stones sound fabulous, Mr. Black.”

“Don’t they? But remember, there is a flip side to the power of the stones. They can be used for enormous good or enormous evil.”

“And you don’t have a set of time crystals?” Molly asked him, eyeing his vast collection of pendulums. “Because if you did, well, I could easily sort this all out.”

Black shook his head. “Sadly, I’ve never had my own.”

“Hmm.” Molly sighed, thinking how simple everything would be if she could use her time-stopping or time- traveling skills.

“I wonder whether Hunroe knows how to use your crystals,” Black said. “I don’t think she could, or she would have used them by now.”

“Maybe, then,” Molly mulled, “we should just call the police and have her arrested. Then I might get my crystals back. And then we could sort everything out.”

“She’ll be long gone from the museum by now,” Black said knowingly.

“How are you so sure that Hunroe wants to do bad things with the weather?” Micky said. “I mean, I know she’s not exactly a cuddly doll, but maybe she’s simply hoarding the book and the stones like an evil squirrel might.”

“I know Miss Hunroe,” Black said. “Believe me, she is as twisted as a person can be. She looks wonderful, like a superstar beauty, but underneath she is as rotten as a gangrenous wound. Underneath she hates everyone. She’s a misanthrope.”

“A misanthrope?” Molly asked.

“A misanthrope,” said Micky, “is someone who hates other people.”

“Yes,” agreed Black. “And Hunroe is that sort of person. When she hates, she really hates. I remember once at school we had a lecturer come to talk to us about the world’s population, about how there were too many people on the planet. And I always remember Hunroe in that class. She must have been about ten. She said, ‘Why don’t governments just poison the water supplies of the major cities?’ She wasn’t joking, though the lecturer thought she was. With the book in her hands, the world is in serious danger.”

“Let’s go back a bit,” Malcolm interrupted. “All this stuff about the stones on the book’s cover— how do they actually change the weather?”

Just then, Dot opened the door and came in with a tray of cups and a tall silver pot. On a plate was a pile of buttered crumpets.

“Hot chocolate and crumpets. You all look like you need it. Don’t mind me,” she said.

“Ooh, thanks!” said both Molly and Micky, helping themselves.

“That is just what the doctor ordered,” said Black as Dot handed out linen napkins. “Hmm. Yes, where were we? Well, the book’s stones, once taken from their places on the book’s cover, can be rubbed, and as I said, the weather about them where they are changes. Each stone represents one of the elements. The blue stone represents water; the orange, fire and heat; the gray, wind; and the green-and-brown stone is earth. Each one of these stones affects the weather, but used in any old place like this the effects are haphazard. For controlled weather changing—to change weather in different countries thousands of miles away—there is a special place where these weather stones have to be taken. And this is where Miss Hunroe will be heading. In the chapter of the book called ‘The Logan Stones,”’ Black continued, “where weather manipulation is explained, Dr. Logan refers to this place. Dr. Logan found the Logan Stones, obviously, for they bear his name. They are great rocking stones, huge things. One is orange, one gray, one blue, one green.”

“Like the chips of stones on the book’s cover?”

“Exactly. Logan describes in the book how the miniature pieces of stone dripped off the big Logan Stones. Apparently the giant stones are hard as diamond. Little pieces cannot be chipped off them. But he managed to cause the rocks to ‘drip’ to produce the little stones for him. I have no idea how. But what I do know is this. In Hypnotism, Volume Two: The Advanced Arts, he states that if you stand in the very center of the ring of the stones, in the very center of the force field that the four big Logan Stones make, with the four colored stones in your hand, and if you rub the stones with your fingers, using your imagination, and going into a hypnotic trance to think up the weather that you would like to see in the world, that new weather will happen.”

“It sounds out of this world,” Molly said. “Amazing that our great-great-grandfather found this place a hundred years ago. It sounds like it’s from the future.”

“Yes, or like some ancient place from the beginning of time,” Black remarked.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Micky asked, with a mouth full of crumpet. “Why don’t we just go there?”

Black looked beaten.

“The book doesn’t hold exact directions,” Black said. “It simply has a clue in it. A riddle.”

“A riddle?”

“Yes. In the back of the book there is a line that says, ‘Where there is a quill, there is a way. Muse o’ life, and you will find.’ Muse means ‘think’ in Old English. Muse o’ means ‘muse on.’ In other words, ‘Muse o’ life, and you will find’ means ‘Think about life, and you will find the answer.’ It could be anywhere.”

“No,” said Micky, wiping his mouth. “It couldn’t be anywhere. That riddle must mean something extremely specific.”

“Yes, well, you’re probably right,” Black admitted. The hopelessness that he felt was evident in his voice.

“And lucky for you, Mr. Black,” said Micky, “I happen to have a fondness for riddles.”

“He does,” Molly agreed, stroking Petula. “Micky’s really into crosswords and word puzzles.” Black gave a halfhearted smile.

“In fact,” Micky went on, “half of the riddle is obvious to me already.”