The Orphan of Awkward Falls (13 page)

Josephine slapped the leather seat when they slid inside the Rolls for the ride back to Hibble Manor. “A hundred and fifty-three!”

“What?”

“I did the math,” she said. “Your grandfather and Sally were engaged in 1936, which makes him one hundred and fifty-three the day he died! She must be close to a hundred herself.”

Thaddeus stared out the fogged window, brooding. “If you ask me, the crone was unhinged. I doubt her memory is trustworthy.”

“She was a little spooky,” said Josephine, “but besides thinking she was about to go onstage, she sounded pretty lucid to me. I wonder why she wouldn’t talk to us about your parents?”

“I found her evasiveness on the subject quite offensive. And she clearly did not understand the importance of Grandfather’s work.”

Josephine nodded. “The real question is, how did the professor stop the aging process? If we could find the answer to that, it would change the course of science!”

“We’d be a shoo-in for the Nobel Prize!” said Thaddeus.

“We have to figure out how to read that notebook. I have a feeling the answers are in there.”

“I believe you’re right,” agreed Thaddeus.

In minutes, Norman had them back across the iced roads to Hibble Manor, where they hurried from the car park down to Thad-deus’s lab. While drinking cups of steaming cocoa, they thumbed through the old notebook, trying again to make sense of it.

Josephine nibbled her pinkie nail, then suggested tentatively, “I think we should show this to my father, Thaddeus.”

Thaddeus looked shocked. “No. I won’t allow it.”

“But he’s a microbiophysicist, a really good one. Maybe he could decipher the code.”

“I thought you said I was more brilliant than he was. Much more brilliant, you said, as I recall.”

“Well, I…”

A dark cloud came over his chubby face. “You didn’t really mean it then, did you, about me being like Einstein? You were only saying that to trick me!”

“Thaddeus, you’ve got it wrong. Of course I think you’re brilliant. You’re the smartest kid I’ve ever met.” She paused, softening, not wanting to hurt his feelings any more than she already had. “But you are just a kid. My dad’s a real…I mean, he’s a PhD and has lots of experience in labs all over the world.”

Thaddeus’s lower lip slid out a bit. “You think I’m not a real scientist.”

“No, Thaddeus, you’re missing the point. Your grandfather’s notebook could turn out to be one of the great scientific discoveries of all time. My dad could help us!”

“Absolutely not,” he said. “Even if he can read the notebook, what good will it do? He’ll tell the authorities about me, and I’ll end up in the orphanage. I don’t want to go there, Josephine. I meant it when I said I’d never let them take me alive!”

“You don’t understand, Thaddeus. My father isn’t like that. Once he understands the situation, I don’t think he’ll turn you in. I’d never do anything to get you sent to the orphanage.”

The boy folded his arms and frowned. “Why should I believe you?”

“Because I’m on your side,” she said sincerely. “If we’re going to be friends, you have to trust me.”

Thaddeus’s eyes narrowed, and his forehead wrinkled with suspicion. Josephine realized she had crossed a line she probably shouldn’t have. The corners of the boy’s mouth turned south, his chin slid forward, and he shook his head. “Who said we were going to be friends? Norman and Felix are my friends. I can trust them.” Then he turned his back on Josephine and resumed his work.

Josephine realized with a shock that the strangest kid on the planet had just rejected her. She was surprised at how much it hurt.

Stenchley spent all day lovingly preparing the professor’s corpse for reanimation. He had removed the professor’s burial suit and given the body a thorough sponge bath using the noxious fluid he’d found pooled on the lab floor. This made his master’s skin appear a bit less rotten. Whereas the flesh had been beef jerky-ish, it was now more along the lines of a nice catcher’s mitt.

Stenchley had then strapped the carcass onto one of the lab’s stainless-steel gurneys and gotten down to the gory business of installing new organs. At this point, the madman’s abnormally good memory of decades working in the lab with the legendary Celsius Hibble took over. Stenchley had assisted in many reanimation operations, and his hands automatically knew what to do. From a bank of refrigerated cabinets, he retrieved preassembled system sets designed by the professor for quick insertion. The digestive system, the cardiovascular system, the spinal nerve bundle, were all stored in convenient moisturized packets, each ingeniously constructed of real
human tissue combined with mechanical microcircuitry. Stenchley was so happy mucking about in the old lab, twiddling knobs, inserting needles here and tubes there, sawing things, feeling the satisfying squish of fresh organs between his fingers, that he found himself whistling as he worked.

Things went so smoothly, at least by Stenchley’s standards, that by nightfall he was already at the last step in the reanimation process: raising the body from the radium infusion bath, its legs and arms twitching and jerking with something like life. Like a child with a horrifying new doll, the madman giggled excitedly as he dressed the body again in its moldy tuxedo and combed the clumps of white hair that still clung to its skull.

When the body was groomed to Stenchley’s satisfaction, he stood the professor up and stepped back to admire his work. Any sane person would have regarded the refurbished corpse as hideous, with its ghoulish grin and bones sticking out of its decomposed flesh. As the thing began to stagger ridiculously around the lab, Stenchley was delighted. Instead of the souped-up mass of rotten flesh that it was, the madman saw only the great Professor Hibble resurrected. He did not mind at all that the former Nobel Prize winner was not fully conscious and could now have been outsmarted by a reasonably clever pigeon.

“Master, I have rescued you from the grave!” the madman declared proudly, his joy undiminished by the fact that he had been the one who sent the professor there in the first place. “Welcome home, sir!”

Anhydrous ammonia is one of the most dangerous and smelly chemicals known to man, and for this reason it is stored in specially constructed steel tanks at 250 pounds of pressure per square inch. What that means is that far more anhydrous ammonia than there is room for is forced into the tank, then the top is sealed in place before the ammonia can escape. At that point, the ammonia is absolutely dying to get out of the tube, and will come rocketing out of any opening it can find like a poisonous, 250-pound liquid sledgehammer.

Fetid Stenchley did not know any of these handy facts about the safe handling of anhydrous ammonia. He was so focused on his grisly project that the rows of missile-shaped steel tubes standing next to his worktable barely attracted his attention. To an illiterate murderer like Stenchley, the words
DANGER! ANHYDROUS AMMONIA
printed on the side of the tubes may as well have said
HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Since the professor had been lying dead in a coffin for ten years, his sense of balance wasn’t what it had been, and he teetered and staggered first one way, then the other. Stenchley, who was busy dreaming of all the wonderful activities he and his restored master would soon be enjoying, did not notice that his master was about to trip into a row of steel tanks, each one stamped with the kind of red lettering that often meant danger. The professor lurched into the tanks, knocking them down like bowling pins. One happened to clip
the side of a worktable on its way down, cracking its sealed cap. This created just the sort of tiny opening that the pressurized anhydrous ammonia inside had been waiting for. The chemical blasted out of the hole, smacking Stenchley square in the chest, and pinned him against the lab’s stone wall.

A curious thing happens when anhydrous ammonia shoots out of its tank into the normal pressure of the atmosphere. The temperature of the ammonia instantly drops to minus twenty-eight degrees Fahrenheit, giving it the ability to freeze-dry anything it happens to touch, such as the skin of hunchbacked killers. Clothing is frozen onto the flesh in the process as well. Fetid Stenchley screamed in agony as the ragged gown he still wore from the asylum fused instantaneously with his chest, forming a frozen straitjacket. His bare neck and lower face caught the blast directly as well, which gave him the surprising sensation of being on fire. Stenchley was so convinced he was burning, he ran out of the lab, up the steps, out the secret door, and into the icy storm, burying his face in a snowbank for relief.

Back inside the lab, the spewing ammonia tank shot like a torpedo into the stone wall and exploded, sending a rain of rocks spraying across the room.

The professor’s bumbling corpse lay murmuring amid the pile of ammonia tanks, oblivious to the chain of events he had just set in motion.

A low, thundering boom rocked the floor of the lab just as Josephine was about to leave. Dust fell from the ceiling, and glass beakers crashed to the floor, their contents spattering around the room.

“Quick, under the table!” Josephine grabbed Thaddeus and pulled him under the heavy operating table with her.

“What’s happening?” he asked. “Are we going to die?”

“It could be an earthquake. My family lived in California for a year when I was in fourth grade, and we had them all the time.”

They huddled there for a few tense minutes until they were sure the danger was past.

“I think it’s over,” Josephine said. Then an acrid, burned-plastic odor began to waft into the room.

“What’s that terrible smell?”

Thaddeus sniffed the air. “Ah, anhydrous ammonia. I’d recognize it anywhere. I think it’s coming from this floor drain.” The boy crawled over to a large round grate set into the lab floor and sniffed.
“Yes, this is definitely the source.” He turned his ear to the grate. “I can hear something. I think someone’s down there.”

Josephine crawled over to the grate and listened. “Is there a basement or cellar below this room?”

“As far as I know, this is the basement,” Thaddeus replied.

After a moment, Josephine was able to make out faint irregular pinging sounds, like someone using a hammer. “I can hear it too. Helloooo down there!” she called. The odd sounds continued. “Maybe it’s just rats.”

“We certainly have plenty of those, but that doesn’t account for the ammonia. I say we investigate.”

Thaddeus found a screwdriver and set to work removing the screws that held the rusty iron grate in place over the drain. Josephine helped him lift the manhole-size grate and slide it out of the way.

Josephine aimed a flashlight into the hole, but could see only a few feet down, as the pipe curved off to one side. She had an idea. The drainpipe was about three feet in diameter, more than large enough for what she had in mind.

“Hold this.” She handed Thaddeus the flashlight and found a length of rope lying in a pile of odds and ends. She used several granny knots to secure the rope around her waist, then tied the other end to the sturdy leg of the operating table. “I’m going in there.”

Thaddeus wrinkled his nose. “Do you think that’s altogether wise? It looks treacherous.”

“Nah. I’m only going to go far enough to see what’s around the bend in the pipe. If anything goes wrong, you can pull me out. No prob, right?”

“I suppose not.” The boy handed her a surgical mask. “At least wear this.”

Josephine strapped on the mask and lowered herself into the hole, pushing her back and feet against opposite sides of the drain and crab-walking down bit by bit. The smell of ammonia was stronger now that she was inside the drain. When she came to the curve in the pipe, she saw that it was not a ninety-degree bend, but more of a gradual curve that would require careful negotiation to keep her from falling farther down the drain. She touched the toes of her left foot onto the curve of the pipe and slowly shifted her weight onto that foot. The surface was slicker than she had expected, however, and Josephine immediately slipped, sliding down the drain, past the curve, into another vertical section where she hung suspended by the rope around her waist. Below her dangling feet she saw a faint light that appeared to be the end of the drain. It could be a nasty fall if she dropped from where she was now.

“What happened?” called Thaddeus.

“It’s okay, I just slipped. I’m fine. I can see the end of the drain from here.”

“What shall we do now? There’s no more rope.”

“Pull me up a little.” She figured if she could get her back and feet against the walls again, she could untie the rope from her waist
and crab-walk safely down to the end of the drain. Being Josephine, she’d worry later about getting back up again.

Thaddeus pulled with all his might, which was not much. Together with Josephine’s own efforts, it was enough to get her back in position. She inched her way up the drain a bit so that the rope had slack in it, then she worked at the knot, trying to untie it—her fall had cinched it incredibly tight. But she became so focused on the knot that she lost her balance and dropped down the drain again.

Unfortunately, Thaddeus had failed to let go of the rope after pulling Josephine up and he was now jerked into the drain as well. He fell on top of the dangling Josephine, who struggled to hold onto the rope. Now that she had to support not only herself but a boy who ate far too many Chocochewy Nutlogs, her hands began to slide down the rope. She lost her grip and the two fell down the drain, landing hard on another grate at the bottom of the pipe.

For a moment, they were both too stunned to react.

“Ouch. Are we still alive?” moaned Thaddeus.

“I think so,” Josephine grunted. “You okay?”

“Actually, several parts of me are hurting, but I’m not sure yet which ones. Is this your elbow or mine?”

“That would be my knee.”

Slowly, they untangled themselves from each other. The space inside the drainpipe was so tight, only Josephine could get in position to see through the grate that supported them.

She peered down into the room below. “Wow.” In the glowing blue light she could see a shiny stainless-steel console with blinking lights and switches built into it, flanked by several monitor screens of different sizes. “It looks like some kind of control room. We have to get in there somehow.”

Thaddeus wriggled around, trying to get a look. All he could see was Josephine’s shoulder and his own left foot. “Oh, bother! We’ll never get out of here. We’ll be stuck in this drain forever. Norman!” he yelled. “Save us! Help!”

As if the rusty screws that had held the grate in place for the last hundred years heard Thaddeus’s wish, they lost their ability to hold the weight of two twelve-year-olds and snapped in half. The grate dropped to the floor below, followed by Thaddeus and Josephine.