Clocks and Robbers (13 page)

The mysteries don’t end here! Viola, Rosie,
Sylvester, and Woodrow don’t believe in curses —
but nobody can deny that something strange is
happening at Moon Hollow Middle School.
Can they learn the truth before their
new rivals do?
Find out in …

THE

MYSTERIOUS
FOUR

MONSTERS and MISCHIEF

Available October 2011

When the final bell rang at Moon Hollow Middle School one afternoon in late March, four friends raced from their classrooms, not knowing that a surprise awaited them. In separate parts of the hallway, Sylvester, Rosie, Woodrow, and Viola each opened their locker doors. They were too distracted by the pieces of folded notebook paper that fell at their feet to notice who was watching them.

They retrieved the papers and unfolded them. Inside, written in thick black ink in the same messy handwriting, were the words:
Meet me on the tennis courts in five minutes. Mickey.
If someone had been listening very closely, he might have heard strange gasping sounds as four mouths collectively dropped open in shock.

Mickey hadn’t signed his last name, but everyone already knew him. He spent most of his time making sure his classmates knew he was the school bully. And now, he was demanding that the four members of the Question Marks Mystery Club meet him in a secluded area around the corner of the building, where a rusted fence rose
high above the cracked green surface of the so-called tennis courts. Where no one could see them from the street. It was a perfect location for an ambush.

Making eye contact with one another, Sylvester, Rosie, Woodrow, and Viola noticed the pages in one another’s hands. Without exchanging any words, the four understood that they were all feeling the same thing.

Fear.

Dan Poblocki is the author of
The Stone Child
and
The Nightmarys.
Like many writers, he’s had a long list of strange jobs. Dan has traveled New Jersey as a bathing suit salesman, played the role of Ichabod Crane in a national tour of
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,
wrangled the audience for
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?,
sold snacks at
The Lion King’s
theater on Broadway, recommended books at Barnes & Noble, answered phones for Columbia University, and done research at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Indent. He has never been a detective though, and after writing The Mysterious Four books, he thinks he might just give it a try.

Visit the author at www.danpoblocki.com.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

Copyright © 2011 by Dan Poblocki

All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLLASTIC and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

First printing, August 2011

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

eISBN: 978-0-545-38943-3