The Atomic Weight of Secrets or The Arrival of the Mysterious Men in Black (14 page)

B
LACK
H
UMOR

OR

NONSENSE COMES TO SOLE MANNER FARM

“I
’ve been playing violin since before I could read,” said Noah over supper that night, his mouth half-full of roast potatoes.

“We never learned to play instruments,” Jasper said.

“Do your parents play anything?” Noah asked, shoveling another spoonful of food into his mouth.

“No, they... well, I don’t know, actually.” Jasper grew quiet, realizing he had never asked his parents. Did they? Had they taken lessons? Did they play music? He thought of how little he knew about them.

“My father plays the sitar,” Faye said, passing the buttered peas to Wallace, who helped Lucy with a serving before taking his own. “It’s an Indian string instrument, for those of you who don’t know.” There was a collective shuffle from the other children, who found so few things they didn’t know and were not yet used to it, though they had learned so much from Miss Brett that day and enjoyed it immensely.

“Did he play for you?” asked Lucy, excited to hear about the sitar as she nibbled her peas, one by one.

“Yes, he did,” said Faye, “and he was going to teach me how
to pluck the strings that morning when... you know.” Suddenly, Faye did not want to be the first to admit that the lunatics in black had turned her life upside-down.

“You mean...
them?”
asked Noah, pointing out the window, but he, too, did not offer more than that.

“The men... men in black?” said Wallace, guardedly.

“The men in the funny suits and funny glasses and black things?” asked Lucy. “We had one with a big floppy hat.”

Suddenly, the mood was much lighter.

“One of mine had on a woman’s hat with frills and flowers,” Noah said, laughing.

“One of mine had a turban. I thought he was my new tutor. Another had on a lovely lady’s bonnet,” Faye said, breaking into a smile that turned into a laugh.

“The one that took my father away in the carriage had a long black elephant’s trunk,” said Wallace, “and big floppy ears. I thought I was imagining it.” He began to chuckle. “Sounds like I wasn’t.”

“If there ever is a competition for the odd-fellows award, they certainly win,” said Noah, reaching for some chicken pot pie. Miss Brett had made three chicken pot pies, buttered peas, roast potatoes, and a tray of little strawberry tarts. She and the children had nearly eaten through the lot.

“Well, the ones I fought when I tried to escape, they were horrid,” Faye said. “You’ve got to be brave to fight against all those lunatics.”

“You tried to escape?” asked Wallace.

“Of course. Didn’t you?”

“Jasper tried,” Lucy said, “but when we came with Mummy
and Daddy, how were we to know they were bad? They’re adults. They’re supposed to know what’s right.”

“We don’t know they’re bad,” Miss Brett said, trying to keep from smiling at Lucy’s insistence that adults know right from wrong.

“Well, I could tell,” Faye said. “I knew from the minute I saw them. I mean, the minute I saw the first one. With his dark spectacles and black turban.”

“You said you thought the man in the turban was your tutor,” said Noah as he bit into another potato.

Faye opened her mouth to bite back, but didn’t. It was true.

“We had a group of them, all alike, in dark coats and glasses,” said Jasper.

“At first, I only saw them from behind,” said Wallace. “I was out by the lily pond, collecting samples of algae, and I noticed three strangers standing by the front door. Two were rather short fat men. The other was a tall thin man. All three were dressed in black. Completely in black.”

He described identical black overcoats made of some shiny material, and the very tall hats on the two very short men, black as well, with some kind of tassels running around the edge of their brims.

“Were you frightened?” asked Lucy.

“No, not really. It was different, surely.” Wallace thought about it. “I suppose I might have been a bit shocked, but not frightened.”

It seemed to Miss Brett there was more she needed to know about Wallace. He had clearly experienced more, real, tangible sorrow in his life than his friends. It seemed not to be mere disappointment or loneliness. As a consequence, things did not
frighten him in the same way.

“My odd fellows were different—totally different,” Noah said. “The morning after my mother left for a tour, which she does all the time, so I’m used to it, really. No big thing. Only... only this time was harder because for that whole week before we... because—” Noah’s voice got stuck in his throat. It was hard because that was the best week of his life. And it had come to an end.

Recovering, Noah spoke of how he’d busied himself after the coach had come to take his mother away. Working on an experiment in his attic laboratory, Noah had gone to the window for better light. He was having a problem with one of his batteries, and he was testing the sulfuric acid’s corrosive potential when diluted with red lead at a higher ratio. While he was at the window, he heard a noisy, mechanical rumble from outside. He saw a large black motorcar coming up the driveway, stopping at the front door. Out stepped two incredibly odd-looking men.

Now, Noah was accustomed to odd visitors at the Canto-Sagas home. “But I know who comes to visit,” he said, “and those blokes were like no one who comes to visit either of my parents.”

Noah’s mother had visiting admirers who were of the high social, well-dressed set. They were almost always elegant and fancy and colorful and bejeweled. They came with gifts and sweets and flowers. They were either dandies or duchesses or otherwise well-groomed patrons of the arts, followed by servants, and sometimes even adoring fans of their own.

“Father’s visitors could not be more different than Mother’s,” Noah explained.

Without exception, his father’s visitors had neither feathers nor baubles adorning their clothes. They wore dour faces and an
air of brittle seriousness. His father’s visitors dressed either in serious gray or brown attire, and simple gray or brown derbies, and often wore monocles dangling from their pockets. Some of his father’s visitors wore white lab coats and thick glasses and always carried notepads full of computations.

That morning’s visitors were neither dressed in feathers nor finery, nor were they in lab coats or prim suits. “They were both dressed totally in black—what a surprise, eh?” Noah said. “I do believe that those two might still be the strangest I have yet to see. Their very shapes were like something from one of Miss Brett’s nonsense poems. One man had arms that reached almost down to his knees. He had huge shoulders, but very short legs. If it hadn’t been for his enormous moustache, I could have easily mistaken him for an ape. In one oversized hand, he carried a black walking stick, like a prop in a circus show. His eyes were hidden behind thick glasses with lenses so dark they appeared black. His head was covered by a wide-brimmed hat pulled down so low it seemed to sit upon his glasses.

“The other man was very, very thin, but only to his middle. His bottom half seemed to spread out like a Bartlett pear. His arms came just to his hips and sort of hung there at a forty-five-degree angle. He wore a very, very tall stovepipe hat, like they wore in Grandfather’s time. He had a standing collar and an oversized black cravat made into a prominent bowtie that fluttered whenever he let out a breath. On his nose was perched an extremely large pair of pince-nez spectacles with dark, almost reflective lenses hiding his eyes. His sideburns were so enormous they completely obscured the small bit of cheek above his cravat. They looked like two bushy gophers clinging to the sides of his
face.”

Noah remembered watching these strange creatures as they looked around, surveying the area before walking up to the door and raising the knocker.

“I quickly put the volatile chemicals away and hurried to the top of the stairs. My best friend Ralph was with me, and Ralph followed quietly.

“I thought Father would look out the window and send for the police. You can imagine my shock when he opened the door and greeted them, well, not as if they were old friends. But he greeted them as if he had expected them.

“I was pretty well stunned. I really didn’t know what to think. But Ralph didn’t like them right away, and showed it. And Ralph usually likes everyone.”

“So each of you had a very different visitor, it seems,” said Miss Brett, standing to clear the table. The children followed her lead and began to help. “Not a single one seems to have been in more than one place.”

“How many of these blackguards could there be?” asked Faye, balancing all the plates atop one another. Helping around the farmhouse was a very exciting thing to do, she had found, and something she’d never done before. She walked over to the stove to warm the milk. Miss Brett brought in a tray of miniature tarts.

“Oh, Miss Brett! How scrumptious!” exclaimed Lucy.

“Don’t let the Knave of Hearts in here,” said Noah.

“Exactly,” said Miss Brett.

The tarts were delicious. They were strawberry jam tarts Miss Brett had made. She also brought out whipped cream that smelled of vanilla. Full though they were, all managed to devour
two tarts each.

“When did you first meet those blackguards?” Faye asked Miss Brett.

All faces were suddenly upon their teacher. No one had asked before now, but obviously Miss Brett must have come across those fellows before arriving at Sole Manner Farm.

“It was dear old Mr. Bell from the teaching college who had told me, in his strange accent, of this ‘special opportunity,’” she said. “Mr. Bell had, more or less, taken me under his wing when I came to study, and with that funny cape he always wore, ‘under his wing’ is the right way to put it. He had said there was a unique position available for which I would be perfect. Mr. Bell simply told me that I would be contacted.”

That evening, when she had arrived home to the lady’s boarding house and opened her satchel, Miss Brett found that someone had secretly left her a note. She had clearly been contacted. A meeting had been scheduled.

“My story is much like yours,” she continued, “except I had to go to an office. It was there that I met my first man in black, although I wouldn’t exactly call him a blackguard, Faye.” From there, Miss Brett told them of her meeting. At least, most of it.

On the note Miss Brett was given, there was written a precise hour when a carriage would arrive to collect her. “And at that hour exactly, the carriage came to the boarding house. It drove a most circuitous route, all over town, round and about, until it finally stopped in front of a building. The driver told me to go to the seventh floor.

“I climbed out of the carriage and entered the building. There was no one around, so I simply stepped into the elevator. As it
began to ascend, I realized I had not been told what office number to go, but when I stepped out of the elevator, I learned it didn’t matter—there was only one door on the entire floor. I walked down the hall and stood in front of the door.

“A high-pitched nasal voice from within told me to come in, just as I raised my hand to knock.

“I entered the room. It was empty except for two chairs on either side of a small desk, upon which sat a small lamp. In the chair behind the desk sat a very small, very thin man who looked as if he might have a twist in his back.” He wore a black French-style hat, she added, that pulled down right to the top of his nose. He had on a black shirt with an Elizabethan ruff that came right up to his chin, and short trousers made of black velvet that ballooned out over his chair, almost floating above his knobby knees that stuck out on either side of the desk. Black stockings were pulled up and over those knees. “I would have liked a better look at those stockings,” Miss Brett said, “but I could have sworn they were made of the finest, most delicate, most intricate lace.”

According to Miss Brett, the man also wore a pair of fine black leather gloves on his very thin hands whose bony fingers threatened to push through the thin tight leather. His spectacles featured dark, almost black, lenses. The hat and the lenses so hid his face that she could hardly see his features, except for the crooked nose upon which the spectacles sat.