Mad Scientists' Club (2 page)

We soon had something worse to worry about, however. Homer Snodgrass came running over to my house right after lunch one day, all breathless.

"Guess what?" said Homer.

"Guess what?" I asked.

"Give the club code word!" he said.

"Skinamaroo!" I said.

"The information you are about to receive classified
confidential
," Homer panted. "You swear not to tell it to anyone not a member of the Mad Scientists' Club?"

"I swear!"

Then Homer told me that Harmon Muldoon had been in his father's store with two men. They wanted ammunition for an elephant gun. Mr. Snodgrass doesn't carry that kind of ammunition, of course, but he did tell them where they could order it in Chicago. The two men were from out of town, and they said Harmon had promised to show them an island in the lake where they could set up a campsite and try to get a good shot at the monster when it came out in the evening. They decided to drive to Chicago to pick up the ammunition.

This news called for an emergency meeting of the club in executive session, and we held it that night in Jeff's barn. Everyone agreed that we couldn't take the beast out again and risk being shot through the head with an elephant gun. But Homer argued that we couldn't disappoint all the merchants and other people in town who were making money on the tourists. Dinky Poore as usual was in favor of writing a letter to the President and asking for his help.

While we were arguing Henry Mulligan suddenly turned his eyes up toward the rafters and started stroking his chin. Whenever this happens everybody stops talking and waits for Henry to speak. After a decent interval of respectful silence Henry brought his eyes down and fixed them on Jeff.

"Your father has a small outboard motor that can be mounted on the canoe hasn't he?"

"Sure," said Jeff. "We use it for fishing at the shallow end of the lake."

"And it's a pretty quiet one as I remember?"

"It doesn't even scare the fish."

"O.K." said Henry. "Now if Homer can bamboozle his father out of a few essential pieces of hardware I think we have enough equipment here in the lab to rig that motor up so that it can be controlled by radio. Then all we have to do is pick a good spot on the shore for our transmitters -- on one of those steep hills on the north side and we can make the beast do anything we want it to."

"And those hunters can shoot at it all they want and they won't do anything more than put a few holes in the canvas," observed Mortimer.

"Jeepers," said Dinky. "I bet that'll make Harmon mad!"

In about a week we had most of the club's radio gear rigged up in the canoe so that we could make Jeff's outboard motor speed up, slow down, idle, turn right or left, and reverse itself. We made a few short test runs with it 'way back in the swamp end of the lake, and everything worked fine. This time Jeff agreed to letting Henry add a pump that would squirt water out of the beast's nostrils. And he even gave in to another of Henry's brainstorms. Freddy could make a bellow that sounded like a bull moose on a rampage, because his voice was beginning to change. So Henry figured it would be a good idea to install a loudspeaker in the belly of the monster and let Freddy bellow into a microphone once in a while from the place where we hid the transmitting equipment.

The first trip of the motorized monster was a sensation. Homer and Dinky and I couldn't see much of it, because it was our job to go back in the swamp, get the beast from its hiding place, and start the motor. Then we called Jeff on our walkie-talkie and he directed the operation from the wooded hill where we had our transmitting apparatus. Henry and Mortimer operated the radio controls to steer the beast and make the eyes blink and the nostrils spout water. Freddy stood by to bellow whenever Jeff tapped him on the shoulder. Jeff watched the monster all the time through binoculars.

She moved through the water much faster now, and every time Freddy let out with the bull-moose call it echoed back and forth among the hills and caused a regular panic on the beach. We got her back into the protection of the swamp just before dark, all right; but we had some anxious moments when she passed the last island out in open water. Four or five shots were fired at her, and Jeff said he could see the bullets splashing in the water. But the beast kept on going as though nothing had happened, and this must have caused Harmon's hunter friends some consternation.

The next day every newspaper in the country must have carried the story. They quoted eye-witnesses who swore that the monster was mad about something, because it was swimming a lot faster and making a frightening noise. A scientist in New York speculated that it might be the mating season for the beast, and suggested the possibility that there might actually be two of them. Within three days there must have been a hundred and fifty reporters in Mammoth Falls from newspapers, magazines, and radio and television stations. Newsreel camera crews were lined up along the beach, and several of them had large searchlights ready to sweep across the surface of the lake at dusk, when the monster usually appeared.

We kept the beast under wraps for a few days, and spent the time visiting with the camera crews and reporters. Most of them were camped on the beach, sleeping in cars and station wagons, because there weren't any rooms available in town. Besides getting a good line on what the reporters were planning to do, we were able to make a little money for the club treasury by running errands for them and operating a lemonade stand. Hot dogs were selling for thirty cents apiece at the beach, and for fifteen cents in town. We did a pretty good business buying them at Martin's Ice Cream Parlor and running them out to the beach in thermos jugs on our bicycles. Freddy Muldoon was able to get five dollars for an old telescope he bought for a dollar ninety-five through a magazine ad, and Henry traded some of his father's shaving cream for flash bulbs and camera film. We kept Dinky Poore's mother pretty busy making cakes and pies; but we didn't make much money on this venture, because Dinky and Freddy would eat up most of the profit. They also drank too much lemonade, and after the first day Jeff wouldn't let them run the stand any more.

By this time several of the reporters had made camp on the same island the hunters had been on, and rented some high-powered motorboats. They were determined to get close enough to the monster to get some good pictures. There were also a lot of people tramping around the shore every day, trying to get back into the swampy end of the lake. So we decided to move the beast to a new hiding place.

We picked out a deep cove studded with rocks and small islands, about two miles east of the swamp. Late at night, long after the searchlights had been turned off and people had gone to sleep, we towed the monster over there with a rowboat. Early the next morning, before the sun had come up, we took her out for a brief appearance on the lake and caught everybody by surprise. Some early-morning watchers on the beach started shouting, and this woke up a few of the reporters on the island. But the monster was not where they expected her to be, and by the time some of them had scrambled into their boats we had her back into the cove and covered up among a jumble of rocks.

This created quite a lot of confusion, and people began to believe the professor who had claimed there might be two monsters. But we could see that the string was running out for us. There were so many people exploring the lake now, and so many "scientific expeditions" on their way to investigate the "phenomenon," as they called it, that we were pretty sure somebody would discover our hiding place sooner or later. Even though most people were too scared to take boats out any more, there were several boats making regular patrols of the lake, and every once in a while a helicopter would fly over it.

We held a meeting to discuss the situation. Dinky Poore argued that Abraham Lincoln said you couldn't fool all of the people all of the time, and we might as well quit while we were ahead and claim the hundreddollar reward the newspaper was offering. But Henry claimed that P. T. Barnum had proved Lincoln was wrong, and so had a lot of politicians. Homer Snodgrass was in favor of continuing as long as we could, because all the extra tourist business was good for the town, and Mammoth Falls had always been a pretty poor place. But Mortimer and Jeff and I were beginning to feel that we should confess the whole business to Mayor Scragg, because he was getting worried about the monster making the lake unsafe for boating and swimming. We also felt that Harmon Muldoon would get wise to us pretty soon and spill the beans. We had seen him sneaking around the lab a lot lately, and trying to follow us sometimes. We knew Harmon was a pretty bright boy. He had been our radio expert when he was in the club, and he had enough brains to figure out the whole deal eventually.

Freddy wasn't around when the meeting started, but he came busting in now, all out of breath after running all the way from his house. "The jig is up, fellas," he announced. "I think Harmon has snitched on us!"

We all started questioning Freddy at once, of course, and Jeff had to rap for order so that we could get the story straight. It seems that Harmon had been up early in the morning, fiddling with his ham radio outfit, and had picked up Freddy's bellow coming over the air. He recognized it as the sound the monster made, and he knew that it couldn't get on the air unless the monster was sitting next to a microphone.

"Holy smoke!" said Mortimer, slapping himself on the forehead. "We should have had brains enough to change all our frequencies after Harmon left the club. He knows which ones we use."

Freddy explained that Harmon had then gone to the local newspaper and told a reporter what he suspected, in the hopes of claiming the reward. The editors didn't intend to print his story until they had more proof, but they were certainly going to investigate his theory. Freddy got all this information from his father, who works in the composing room.

It didn't take us long to make a decision after getting this news. Mortimer had made good friends with one of the out-of-town reporters on the beach. His name was Bud Stewart and he wrote for the
Cleveland Plain Dealer
, which we knew was a big newspaper. So Jeff and Mortimer went to see him, and told him the story after he had agreed to a proposition. He got his home office to agree to buy the club an oscilloscope and a ten-channel transmitter for our lab, in return for exclusive pictures of the monster. Then we all sat down with Mr. Stewart and mapped out a plan of action.

Early the next morning we took him to our hiding place and uncovered the monster for him so he could take pictures of it. He also wanted to get some pictures of the beast in action, of course, so we planned to take it out for an excursion that very night. We figured that if we waited any longer Harmon Muldoon would have time to show the local newspaper people how to get a fix on the location of our transmitters by tuning in our frequency from two or three different places. Mr. Stewart went out to the airport to hire a helicopter. He planned to fly over the lake just before dusk, and when we saw him we were to unleash the monster.

That night we were all in our positions early, just in case Mr. Stewart misjudged the time. It seemed like a long wait, but he finally appeared and waved to us from the helicopter. We had the beast all ready and started her out to the open water. Those of us who had to stay back in the cove couldn't see what happened next, but we could tell, from all the shouts and the way the helicopter was flying, that this was the monster's most triumphant appearance. We got all the details later, including a look at Mr. Stewart's pictures.

The reporters who were camped on the island were ready for us this time, and three boatloads of them appeared as soon as the monster got out there. They had newsreel cameras mounted in the boats, and they were only about half a mile from the beast when Jeff gave the order to head her back to the cove. But Henry couldn't make her do a tight enough turn, and she started back on the far side of a large island that lay across the mouth of the cove. This island is a huge granite mountaintop that rises up out of the water as high as a hundred feet in some places. Once the beast got behind this mass, Henry lost contact with her, and for a few moments she was running free. For some reason the monster doubled back on its tracks, and to everyone's amazement shot out from behind the island again, heading straight for the boats of the pursuing cameramen. Incredibly, the beast suddenly gained speed and went roaring full throttle at the tiny boats now less than a quarter of a mile away.