War of the World Records (8 page)

On his way out, Arthur peeked into a room on the right, where his mother sat squeezed into a corner by the enormous pair of woolen mittens she was in the process of knitting.

“Mother?” he called. “I'm heading out to do some, um . . . research.”

“All right, dear,” came Mrs. Whipple's muffled reply. “Don't be too long, though. Penelope might need your help a bit later with her team of dancing centipedes. You know how they give her trouble sometimes, and we really can't risk any of your brothers' or sisters' fingertips at present, as we'll need all of them intact if we're to beat the Goldwins at the World Record World Championships.”

“Of course, Mother,” Arthur replied. “I'll be back soon to help out however I can.”

With that, he strode purposefully out the front door. He had an investigation to resume.

• • •

Arthur arrived at the Undertakers' Graveyard at noon, just as he and Ruby had agreed the night before. Not immediately seeing his partner, he slipped through the creaky iron gate, then cautiously made his way to the winged statue of Obediah Digby Lowe, Father of Modern Undertaking, at the center of the cobblestone square.

Arthur was pleased to find the statue far less terrifying in the light of day than it had been in the light of a lantern at midnight. Indeed, as he sat himself down in the statue's shadow, he could hardly help but think of the gaunt figure holding the human skull above him as a wise old friend. After what had happened the last time he was there, the whole graveyard now seemed strangely peaceful—almost pretty somehow. Perhaps there was something to Mr. Lowe's fondness for the place after all.

And so, with a lightness of heart and a clear view of the graveyard gates, he resigned to sit and wait for Ruby.

A creeping thought began to nag at the back of Arthur's mind. He reached into his pocket and produced the sinister scrap of paper he'd discovered the night before. With a bracing breath, he opened the note.

Arthur's eyes fell on the flaming crown insignia that opened the message. Illuminated in the midday sun, there could be no doubt.

It was the same seal he'd seen on the skeleton's ring in
The World Record
.

Either a new treasurer had written this diabolical note, or else the old treasurer's skeleton was not as dead as it had appeared. Arthur wasn't entirely sure which would have been worse.

Drawing a deep breath, he proceeded to the body of the note and began carefully rereading every terrifying word.

Dear Messrs. Overkill & Undercut . . .

There was, of course, no question to whom these names referred. This only confirmed what Arthur had seen the night before—that the dwarf and the giant had survived the wreck of the
Current Champion
and were still after his family. But plenty of other questions remained.

For instance, who was this “Chairman of the Board” mentioned in the last sentence? Arthur had heard a fair bit about the Ardmore Board of Directors recently, but he'd never learned anything about any of its members other than the one whose predecessor had turned up dead. Could it be that the board's leader had a hand in the Whipples' recent spate of calamity as well?

And what about the author of the note: the mysterious Treasurer? Until now, Arthur had imagined this rumored new treasurer as a faceless figure sitting at a desk counting coins and writing checks for stationery supplies. But in Arthur's current estimation, the Treasurer was the most menacing of the four characters mentioned. Indeed, it seemed this last figure was the one actually devising the plots that Overkill and Undercut carried out.

As Arthur reread the first paragraph a second time, his eyes stuck on the word “eliminate.”
Though you have succeeded in creating a moderate amount of chaos, you have yet to eliminate a single one of your targets.

There could be little doubt now that the giant and dwarf had intended at the very least to maim Arthur's family, most likely to murder them, and it had only been through grace and good fortune that they had all survived thus far. If only Arthur knew the Treasurer's identity, he might be able to protect his family against the villain's deadly tactics.

And then it struck him.

Who had the most to gain from a Whipple family downfall? Who had been present at the last four apparent attempts on the Whipples' lives? Who would benefit from their new rivalry contract were the Whipples unable to compete? And whom had Arthur's father openly accused of involvement with the Komodo dragon incident, just the previous night? The more he thought about it, the clearer it became to him. Rex Goldwin and the Treasurer were one and the same.

But if Rex Goldwin was in fact the Treasurer, then Ruby was living in the same house as a murderous madman. Arthur checked his watch. She was now fifteen minutes late. What if her absence was the result of some terrible happening at the Goldwin estate? It was too awful to consider.

Arthur returned the note to his pocket and flipped open the
Grazelby Guide
in an effort to distract himself. He thumbed through the pages and began jotting down possible record attempts on his notepad as he continued to wait.Soon, Arthur had filled nearly ten pages with prospective records. Looking up from his list, he saw that the sun now sat rather lower in the sky than it had when he'd arrived, enveloping him in the shadow of the winged undertaker. Ruby was still nowhere to be found.

He packed up and started for home.

When Arthur had reached the main road, however, he paused, then turned in the direction of the Goldwin estate. He could hardly return home before determining whether or not Ruby was all right.

In a matter of minutes, the Goldwin house loomed overhead. Arthur walked directly up to the front door and rang the bell.

Now that he believed Rex Goldwin to be the Treasurer, this was truly a terrifying prospect—but Arthur took comfort in the fact that Rex remained unknowledgeable of Arthur's newfound knowledge. As far as Arthur could tell, Ruby's father had no reason to deviate from his charming, if arrogant, public persona.

The door swung open, sending Arthur's heart pounding against the walls of its cage. A dark figure stood in the doorway.

Rita Goldwin was dressed in mourning. She wore a black, slim-skirted suit and matching black veil. Pinned to her lapel, an emerald brooch in the shape of a Komodo dragon hinted at the source of her grief.

Arthur's anxiety somewhat subsided. But when he noticed the expression on Mrs. Goldwin's face, he began to wonder if he wouldn't rather have taken his chances with her husband after all—however murderous he might be.

“
You
,” hissed the woman in the doorway.

“Um, hello, Mrs. Goldwin,” Arthur said with a forced smile.

Rita Goldwin did not smile back. “You've got a lot of nerve coming here after the devastation your family caused last night. I should sic the lizards on you—and let
you
explain to them what happened to their brother!”

“I'm terribly sorry, Mrs. Goldwin. Please don't sic any more lizards on me. I was just hoping to catch, I mean, I thought maybe, er, is Ruby in?”

“I'm afraid Rubilda does not want visitors at the moment,” Rita Goldwin replied curtly. “She's extremely busy preparing for the World Record World Championships. Frankly, I'd have thought you'd be doing the same, knowing the competition you'll be up against this year.”

“So then, she's all right, is she?”

“Well, of course she's all right. What sort of question is that? She's simply sacrificing her time for the sake of the family. Is that such a foreign concept to you? Now, if you have no other business here, I really must get back to my own affairs. And please know, the next time I catch you so much as setting foot on our property, I
will
sic the lizards on you.”

“Oh, right—well, fair enough. Sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Goldwin,” Arthur said shakily. Then, remembering his original mission, he blurted, “Maybe you could just tell Ruby I dropped by?”

But before he could get out this last, feeble request, the door clapped shut in front of him. It seemed a bad idea to test the house's mourning mistress any further, so he turned on his heels and headed for home.

On the way back, Arthur thought about the excuse Mrs. Goldwin had given for Ruby's unavailability. From what he could surmise, the girl had not been harmed but was presently living under a certain degree of duress within her own home. He only hoped she managed to find a way out of it soon, or he'd be forced to face the investigation alone— a prospect to which he was not looking forward. Of course, there was also the fact that Ruby had quickly become the best friend he'd ever had and he was already starting to miss her—but he did his best not to think about that.

Upon his return home, Arthur spent the rest of the day compiling his list of world record possibilities, his mind wandering periodically to the predicament of his missing partner, or to unravelling conspiracy of giants, dwarves, and neighborhood supervillains upon which he had stumbled. With his cheek plastered to the pages of the
Grazelby Guide
, he finally drifted off to sleep, his dreams inhabited by cheering crowds and glistening golden trophies.

• • •

The next several days went very much the same. Arthur woke up, visited Abigail and Hamlet at Mr. Mahankali's cottage, shared a quick breakfast with the rest of his family, started down his list of potential records with Uncle Mervyn, headed over to the Undertakers' Graveyard to wait for Ruby, then—when she failed to arrive—headed back to the house to continue down the list until he was too tired to proceed.

The exhaustive search for a world record to finally call his own kept Arthur occupied and somewhat contented, but as each day passed, Ruby's absence weighed heavier and heavier on his soul.

Out of desperation, Arthur formulated a plan to both contact his partner and expedite their investigation.

On the seventh day, he set his plan into action.

That morning, his family had planned a trip into the city to stock up on supplies for their pre-championships surge in record breaking. It was just the thing his plot required.

Arthur rose earlier than usual and drafted a copy of the letter he'd received in the birthday cake from Sammy the Spatula. He then sketched two copies of the Treasurer's note, taking extra care to replicate the details of the fiery crown on the Treasurer's seal.

After tucking Sammy's original letter and a copy of the Treasurer's note beneath his mattress for safekeeping, he sealed the copy of Sammy's letter and the original Treasurer's note, along with a brief explanatory message, inside a large envelope. He addressed the envelope to Detective Sergeant Greenley and placed it inside his knapsack. Then he hurried downstairs to join his family as they marched outside and piled into the car.

The drive from the Whipples' country house to the city took a little under an hour, and Wilhelm parked the car just off Haggle Street, the main thoroughfare in the District of Distinctive Objects.

While the rest of his family searched the shops for the World's Strongest Rope and the World's Lightest Running Shoes, Arthur ducked into The Fearsome Feather: Record-Breaking Books and Uncommon Collectibles.

There, he traded a mint-condition Cannibal King rookie card for a unique printing of Joss Langston's
Manslaughter Park
—certified to be the First English-Language Novel Illustrated in Color—which he had inquired about by telephone the day before.

Arthur secured a table outside a nearby café while he waited for his family. He retrieved a black pen, a handwritten note, and a small shipping box from his knapsack. Arranging the items on the tabletop beside his newly acquired copy of
Manslaughter Park
, Arthur opened the unsealed shipping box and slid out a typewritten letter that he had produced the night before:

Joss Langston Appreciation Society
International Head Office

Dear Miss Rubilda Goldwin:
Thank you for your entry in the Joss Langston Appreciation Society's recent essay contest. We are pleased to inform you your essay entitled “Secret Codes & Hidden Messages in the Works of Joss Langston” has won our Grand Prize! Enclosed, please find a highly-collectible, RECORD-HOLDING copy of Miss Langston's gripping novel
Manslaughter Park
.

Congratulations on your win! We look forward to hearing more from you in the near future.

Yours Sincerely,
Art H. Urwin
President,
Joss Langston Appreciation Society

Arthur set the letter aside and opened the leather-bound novel to its first page. He uncapped the pen and set about encoding the contents of his handwritten note into the pages of
Manslaughter Park
, using the simplest cipher he could think of.

On the first page, he selected a
d
and an
e
within the novel's existing text and drew a short line beneath each of the two letters. On the second page, he underlined the letters
a
and
r
. On the third page, he underlined a space and then another letter
r
.

Slowly flipping through the book, Arthur continued the procedure, methodically underlining two characters per page, and then crossing out the corresponding characters on his handwritten note. He felt a bit guilty defacing a world-record-holding artifact in this manner, but “desperate times” and all that.

A half hour later, Arthur finally crossed out the last handwritten character on his note and closed the book with a sigh of satisfaction. All his partner had to do now was string the underlined characters together into words and sentences to uncover the following message:

dear ruby, i really hope you are not dead. i went to the graveyard on saturday at noon as we discussed, but you did not turn up. i dropped by your house, but your mother informed me you were not seeing visitors. i have gone to the graveyard every day for the past week, but have yet to see any sign of you. i will continue to visit the graveyard every day at noon until you arrive or send word. i have made some breakthroughs in the case that i am eager to share with you. on the northern wall of your estate, at the one-hundred-thirty-seventh spike, you will find a hollow stone. inside, i have enclosed a facsimile of a mysterious note i found the night of the komodo dragon attack, after catching a glimpse of the giant mr. overkill. i suspect it to be a clue of vital importance. i have sent the original to d.s. greenley for analysis and now await his reply. if you are in fact alive, i have reason to believe you may be in some danger, so please be wary. yours sincerely, arthur