War of the World Records (14 page)

The pavement filled the frame, and the picture cut to an exterior shot of the Grazelby Building.

“With Goldwin effectively vanquished, the twenty-year-old Whipple quickly found himself being courted by the two largest world record publications on earth, each of them angling for exclusive sponsorship privileges. In April, Charles turned down the
Amazing Ardmore Almanac of the Ridiculously Remarkable
to sign a record-breaking contract with
Grazelby's Guide to World Records and Fantastic Feats
, instantly cementing his stardom and simultaneously making him the World's Most Eligible Bachelor. That's right ladies, he's single! But try not to get your hopes up too quickly; he does hold the record for Longest String of Dates without Seeing the Same Girl Twice. Indeed, it's going to take a special woman to capture this lady-killer. In the meantime, however—the future is wide open for you, Charles Whipple!”

With one final shot of Arthur's young, smiling father, the screen went black, then blinding white, as the tail end of the film slapped the projector on its way out.

• • •

“Well,” Ruby announced to Arthur as they exited the screening room, “it appears we've got a motive.”

“Yeah. It looks like my father pushed your father out of the world records game when they were younger, and now Rex is trying to return the favor—using the dwarf and the giant to reenact the Lyon's Curse, which appears to have been responsible for my grandfather's death.”

“And, meanwhile, your father is still angry that Rex took away the one record that really mattered to him.”

“Right,” Arthur puzzled. “Can this get any more complicated?”

“That's usually how it goes in the detective novels. It's probably going to get a lot worse before it gets better—if it gets better at all, of course. Really depends on which subgenre we're talking about here.” Ruby ignored Arthur's blank stare and added, “One thing seems clear, though: our suspicions were right about Rex, and to clear Sammy's name we just need to find a way to prove them beyond any reasonable doubt.”

“Agreed,” said Arthur. “But in the meantime, I'd better get these newsreels back to Mr. Slumpshaw. I imagine ‘proving things beyond any reasonable doubt' could earn us some serious late fees.”

“All right then,” Ruby said, smiling. “I'll wait for you in the main hall. I've had my fill of the Human Oddities section for today—and I'm sure old Slumpy will be happy to have a few moments alone with his favorite celebrity.”

Ruby was right. As soon as Arthur found him, Mr. Slumpshaw began asking all sorts of excited questions about his famous family. When Arthur finally managed to say goodbye, the archivist handed him a handmade business card—which read,
TERENCE
SLUMPSHAW
,
ASSOCIATE
A
RCHIVES
ASSISTANT
/
SE
NIOR
WHIPPLE
FANATIC
—
and instructed him to give it to his father.

Arthur thanked the man one last time, then hurried back toward the main hall. In his haste, however, he inadvertently turned right at the Aeroplanes and Aeronautics wing when he should have turned instead at the Horrors of Horticulture branch—and soon found himself thoroughly disoriented.

He scanned the wall of books to his left, looking for a clue to his current location. His eyes stopped on a large volume entitled
A Complete Listing of World-Record Holders and Their Records, Sorted by Surname: GOLD—GOLE
.

Arthur's pulse quickened as he realized the significance of the book before him. Of all the items in the archives, he had just stumbled onto the book that contained the details of Ruby Goldwin's world record.

But what was he to do? Ruby had made it fairly clear how she felt about his attempts to uncover her secret. He had no desire to betray her trust—but then again, how could he pass up such a fateful discovery?

Arthur decided he should at least make sure the book was a recent edition, before worrying himself too much with any potential moral dilemmas. He placed his finger at the top of the book's spine and peered cautiously down the hall. Ruby was nowhere in sight.

Arthur slid the book off the shelf and flipped to the title page. The edition was only one year old.

This was the point at which he had planned to return the book to its shelf and walk briskly away—but now that it was open, he could not bring himself to close it.

Arthur slowly thumbed to the middle of the volume. Surely there was no harm in checking to see whether or not the Goldwin name was even listed.

It was.

Next, he began flipping through the entries for Ruby's brothers and sisters and their various records. He no longer bothered with excuses.

Rodney
 . . .
Roland
 . . .
Rosalind
 . . .
Rowan
 . . .
Rowena
 . . .
Roxy
 . . .

Arthur snapped the book shut. What was he doing? Here he'd finally found someone who'd stuck with him despite his obvious shortcomings, and now he was stabbing her in the back the first chance he got. What sort of a friend was he?

A shudder ran down his spine as he considered how close he had come to ruining everything.

At that moment, a familiar voice called out from behind him. “What's that you're reading there?”

Arthur whirled around with a start, losing his grip on the book as he came to stand face-to-face with Ruby.

The book hit the floor with a thud. Arthur fumbled to retrieve it, but Ruby got there first.

She picked up the book and proceeded to hand it over. “Couldn't get enough of all these exciting statistics, eh?” she said with a smirk.

It was then that Ruby noticed the name of the volume she was holding. Her face flooded with confusion as she looked up at Arthur.

“It's not—” Arthur spluttered. “I—”

Ruby's confusion quickly turned to heartbreak. “But I told you I didn't want you to know. I mean, how could you—?” And with that, she turned and dashed down the hallway, burying her face in her hands.

“Ruby!” Arthur shouted. “Wait! I didn't—”

He cast the book to the floor and charged after her—only to collide at full speed with an oncoming book cart.

“Oh my! I didn't see you there,” Terence Slumpshaw shrieked from the handle-side of the cart. “Are you all right, Arthur Whipple? You won't tell your father about this, will you?”

Taking no time to reply, Arthur shoved aside the scattered heap of books, picked himself up off the floor, and limped onward as fast as his battered legs would allow.

“Ruby!” he called in vain, losing sight of her as she rounded a corner.

Arthur tumbled into the main entrance hall a few moments later, but there was no sign of his partner. He searched the adjacent rooms and courtyards, then ventured past the front gates and hobbled desperately back to the train station.

But it was too late. Ruby was gone.

Arthur's heart felt as empty as the platform in front of him. Of all the horrible things that had happened to him in recent months—from agonizing personal failures to traumatic near-death experiences—somehow, this was by far the worst.

Qualifications

M
r. Whipple pointed
to a large glass case atop a dark wood pedestal, at the center of which sat a vacant velvet pillow. “It may not look it on first glance,” he said sternly, “but this happens to be one of the vilest, most contemptible objects you will ever encounter.”

Arthur and his siblings looked to one another, then leaned in with morbid curiosity. Their father had yet to reveal his reason for calling the emergency meeting in the Whipple Hall of Records that morning.

“This, children,” Mr. Whipple sighed, “is an empty trophy case. And this particular empty trophy case . . . belongs to me.”

Arthur's brothers and sisters gasped.

“Now,” he said, “I want you all to take a long hard look at it. This . . . is what failure looks like.”

Penelope's eyes began to water. “But how did you get it, Daddy?”

“That's not important, dear. The important thing is that we never allow it to happen again.”

Arthur, of course, knew exactly how the cursed artifact had come to be in his father's possession. Thinking back to the face of the boy who had vowed to defend his mother's legacy, only to fail miserably in the attempt, Arthur felt a newfound kinship with the man he called father.

The children studied the trophy case like cavemen around an electric toaster.

“Let this be a tangible reminder to you all—as it has been to me,” said Mr. Whipple, “why we must never settle for anything less than total victory. With the World Record World Championships hardly three weeks away, and a certain
other
family conniving to supersede us, this has never been more important. Now—let us go forth and make these final days of training the most effective of our lives!”

The children applauded in agreement, then marched toward the door while their father called out the day's tasks.

“Franklin—your shipment of antique anchors should be here by noon. Cordelia—Mr. Prim will be taking measurements on your soup-can Acropolis; try to be agreeable. Arthur—why don't you stay behind for a minute?”

When the others had all left the room, Mr. Whipple sat down beside his recordless son.

“Now, Arthur, your mother and I have been talking, and we've noticed your efforts at finding a suitable record to break have dwindled in recent weeks. We know that before his reassignment, Uncle Mervyn was helping you work through a sizable list of record possibilities—and we'd like to see you get to the end of it before championships qualifications are over. If there is indeed some event you were destined for, that list is your best chance of discovering it. And what better way to spur you on to a record in such an event than competing at the championships? But in order to compete, of course, you'll first have to qualify.”

“Of course, Father,” replied Arthur. “The only thing is that, well, after three weeks, I'm hardly halfway down the list. But if I could have just another three days, I think I could manage it.”

“Very well, Arthur. I'll inform Mr. Prim you'll be having an especially full schedule for the remainder of the week. Now, remember, we're not expecting anything from you; honestly, under any other circumstances, we wouldn't be troubling you at all. But with such bitter competition this year, we could really use all the help we can get—however unlikely it may be.”

“Yes sir. I'll do my best—er, I'll
be
the best.”

“That's the spirit, boy. Now go show that list of yours what you're made of.”

“Yes, sir. I will do that very thing.”

Arthur headed for the door, but stopped short.

“Sir?”

“Yes, Arthur?”

“Norbury wasn't your fault, you know. And neither is the Lyon's Curse.”

At the sound of the first word, Mr. Whipple's face went white. “Wh—? How did you—”

“Whatever happens at the championships,” Arthur continued, “you'll always be my favorite record breaker.”

With that, he turned and walked through the door, leaving his father with eyes wide and mouth agape.

• • •

Arthur scampered up to his room on his way out of the house and grabbed a bulging bag of letters, all of which shared a single addressee: Ruby Goldwin.

In the five days since Ruby's departure, Arthur had managed to write 1,482 individual letters to his estranged partner—just 7,541 short of the record for Most Apology Letters Sent in One Month by a Single Person—in the hopes that she might find it in her heart to forgive him and rejoin the investigation.

The first hundred or so went something like this:

Dear Ruby,

Words cannot describe how horribly, terribly, truly sorry I am—but I shall give it a try anyway: I am so horribly, terribly, truly sorry. What I did was utterly, completely, unimaginably reprehensible. If you are unable to forgive me, I shall have no cause for complaint whatsoever.

Having said that, I think you should know, as a matter of interest—not that it excuses my actions in any way—that I didn't actually see anything about you in that horrible book. I stopped myself just in time, when I realized what a terrible thing it would be to break your trust. Of course, my change of heart ultimately arrived far too late, as I have no doubt broken your trust nonetheless.

If there is anything I can do to make up for my foolish actions, please let me know as soon as possible, so I might make immediate amends. I will even read a Joss Langston novel if you want me to.

Sincerely Yours with Never-ending
Regret and Remorse,
Arthur

After the initial batch, however, the next fourteen hundred letters looked a bit more like
this
:

Dear Ruby,

Indescribably sorry. Please forgive . . . I'll do anything.

Remorsefully Yours,
Arthur

Unfortunately, none of it seemed to be working. No matter how many letters he sent, no matter how long he stood outside her house looking for her, Arthur had yet to hear a single word or catch more than a few fleeting glimpses of the girl since she'd turned and run from him in the halls of the archives.

He was starting to grow desperate. Not only did he miss having Ruby for a friend, he missed having her for a detective partner. Without her, how was he to find proof of Rex's guilt and Sammy's innocence? She had always been the
real
detective. He had never gotten anywhere before she'd joined the case.

Inspired by his recent chat with his father, Arthur began to devise a new tactic to get his partner back. If he could only break a world record at the World Record World Championships, perhaps Ruby would be so impressed by it that she'd suddenly forget all about the pain he'd caused her and simply forgive him on the spot.

Of course, this strategy required ignoring the fact that Ruby had never once seemed even remotely impressed by world-record breaking in all the time he'd known her—but somehow, this didn't stop Arthur from embracing it anyway.

He knew the investigation might suffer a bit while he focused on selecting and training for his event, but he assured himself it would all be worth it in the end.

If he could only break a world record, he would earn the respect of his family and regain the trust of his partner in one fell swoop. If he could only break a world record, he and Ruby would thwart Rex and exonerate Sammy in no time. If he could only break a world record, all of his problems would be solved.

• • •

Arthur left the bag of letters downstairs for the postman and made his way to the garage to grab some supplies. Then he dashed out to the south lawn, where Mr. Prim stood watching as Beatrice took the last bite of her thirty-seventh schnitzel.

“Time!” shouted the certifier, looking up from his stopwatch. “Now, I'll have to dock two schnitzels from your total for
illegal use of utensils
, but a score of thirty-five schnitzels in two minutes should still qualify you for the championships—probably third or fourth seed, if you're lucky.”

Beatrice dabbed the corner of her mouth with a napkin and rose to her feet, her expression stoic and steely. She was not accustomed to being seeded any lower than first or second, and this came as a bit of a disappointment. Given Mr. Prim's pedantic tendencies, however, she was happy to have qualified at all.

The certifier turned from the table to find Arthur waiting for him there, a box of matches in one hand and a bundle of thin-shafted torches in the other.

“Um, hello, Mr. Prim,” he said. “I'm ready for my fire-eating attempt.”

• • •

Five minutes and one half-singed eyebrow later, Arthur forcefully crossed out the words
Most Torches Extinguished with Mouth in One Minute
from his list of record possibilities.

Next, it was on to ostrich-egg juggling—which ended rather messily—and then perpendicular pole climbing, which proved much harder to execute when covered from head to heel in ostrich-egg yolk.

And so it went for several hours: Arthur failing at various record attempts, while his siblings succeeded in others—all of them under the strict supervision of Archibald Prim.

By the end of the day, Arthur had eliminated nearly three pages of possibilities from his notebook. Discouraged that none of the day's attempts had been good enough to qualify him for a spot in the WRWC, yet comforted by the thought that the next day could only get better, he rounded out his evening by writing another 297 apology letters to Ruby, then fell fast asleep.

Unfortunately, the next day would prove no better than the first, with a total of seventy-three failures—eighteen of them being the direct result of Mr. Prim's meticulous deductions.

By the afternoon of the third day, with only a handful of events left on his list, Arthur began to lose hope that he would qualify in anything.

After cleaning up the feathers from his pillow-diving attempt, he retrieved his magical domino from his pocket and rubbed it desperately for luck as he readied himself for his next event: knife-block speed stocking.

Originally created three years earlier by a group of enterprising chefs as a solution to the “too many cooks in the kitchen” problem, competitive speed stocking had only just begun to reach a wider audience and was set to make its WRWC debut.

Play is conducted as follows: a lone contender stands within the hollow center of a ring-shaped table with twelve kitchen-variety knife blocks facing inward around its inner ring. Each block—except for one—is preloaded with a standard twenty-piece knife set. At the start of play, the contender begins transferring knives into the empty block from the one beside it, taking care not to sever any fingers or important arteries in the process. When the empty block has been filled and the adjacent one emptied, the competitor pivots to the next full block and begins transferring its knives into the newly emptied one until it has also been filled—and so on. When the knives from all twelve blocks have been transferred, one revolution is complete; a regulation contest consists of seven revolutions.

Arthur had been involved in speed stocking ever since being introduced to the sport twelve months earlier by his family's former chef. Sammy the Spatula was one of the sport's originators and had—before his incarceration and subsequent disappearance—sacrificed much of his free time to coach Arthur on his technique. Arthur had recently worked his way to the top of his local speed stocking club thanks to Sammy's instruction—though he had yet to achieve anything like the scores required for international competition.

But now, as Arthur stood at the center of the table reaching for the handle of the first knife, something inside him snapped. Years of bottled-up frustration surged through his veins and into his fingertips. His hands became a blur. The rat-tat-tat of blade against block reverberated through the air like machine gun fire.

“Two minutes, 21.674 seconds,” announced Mr. Prim as Arthur popped the last knife into place. “Well, well, well. It appears you may finally have a qualifying time here, Arthur Whipple. Nowhere near the top seed of course, but if no one records a better time before the championships begin, you may just scrape by in nineteenth or twentieth.”

Arthur panted heavily with exhaustion and relief. “Thank you, Mr. Prim,” he smiled.

“Don't thank
me
, young man,” Mr. Prim said sharply. “I am merely a servant of the numbers. Despite what you may be accustomed to, you'll get no special treatment from
this
certifier.”

“I'm sorry, sir—I didn't mean . . .”

“Your next attempt begins in four minutes thirty seconds. I'd have thought you'd want to put in a little preparation beforehand, considering your less-than-stellar success rate.”

“Of course, sir. I'll go fetch the bucket of fiddler crabs and the first aid kit.”

• • •

Despite his efforts, Arthur did not qualify in any of his remaining events. He took solace, however, in having not been completely barred from the championships. At least he would have a chance to contribute this year, even if it was only in one event. He would just have to make it count.