What a Trip! (2 page)

He was a short guy with a smudgy, thin mustache and a bright, cheery look in his eye. But what he said didn't make a whole lot of sense.

“Are you Fogg?” he repeated, smiling politely.

“Fog?” said Frankie. “Sometimes Mr. Wexler says Devin's brain is in a fog—”

The man shook his head vigorously. “No, no. I mean Phileas Fogg. I am the new servant of Mr. Phileas Fogg whose house is at Number Seven, Saville Row! Passepartout is my name. It is pronounced Pass—par—too! I am French, from France. In fact, I am a Parisian from Paris.”

“I'm a Devin,” I told him. “This is a Frankie. We're Palmdale Middle Schoolians from Palmdale Middle School. It's a long way from here.”

“By the way,” said Frankie, “where is
here
?”

“London, of course!” the man replied.

“That's England, right?” I said.

“Of course!”

“Dude,” I said to Frankie. “I got one right.”

Frankie made a face at me. “Excuse him, Passepartout, but what year is it?”

“Eighteen hundred and seventy-two!” he said brightly. “Now, if you will be so good as to help me find Mr. Fogg's house, I would thank you.”

Frankie and I both shrugged at each other. There was no denying it. We had landed in a book again. The same book that was sitting on the sidewalk in front of me.
Around the World in Eighty Days
. I picked it up and flipped to the first page. “Here we go again,” I said.

“Okay, Passepartout,” said Frankie. “Let's go.”

“Good,” he said, heading down the street. “I cannot be late. The agency that hired me has told me that Mr. Fogg is very punctual, very exact. He fired his last servant because he heated Mr. Fogg's shaving water two degrees lower than requested! And shaving water to an Englishman such as Mr. Fogg is a very serious matter!”

Horses and carriages
clip-clop
ped by us. Everyone was wearing old-fashioned clothes, the men in suits and women in long dresses and hats. Lots of umbrellas.

Finally, we turned the corner onto a wide street of brick and stone houses. The sign said
SAVILLE ROW.

“Mr. Fogg, they say, is very rich,” Passepartout went on. “He spends much of his time playing cards with his friends at the Reform Club, a very famous club of the richest gentlemen in London! This is the sort of person my new master is!”

“Sounds a little dull,” said Frankie.

“I want dull!” said Passepartout. “After spending many years as a circus juggler and acrobat, bicycle racer, and street singer, I am looking to work for a quiet man! I yearn for rest.”

“I love to rest!” I said. “It's my specialty, in fact.”

“And what restful activities do you prefer?” asked Passepartout.

“English class,” I said. “It's a good place to sleep.”

“Well, here we are,” said Frankie, pointing to a green door with a gold knocker on it.

“Let's knock,” said Passepartout. “How do I look?”

“Cool,” I said.

“I do not feel cool,” he said. “I feel very nervous!”

Using the knocker, Passepartout announced that we were there. A moment later, the door opened and there stood a well-dressed man. He was tall and thin, and had a neat, short beard. He was about the age of my dad, maybe a tiny bit older.

The guy had no wrinkles anywhere on his clothes. He looked like one of those store dummies, except that his eyes looked smart, and he obviously had a lot going on inside his dome.

“I am Phileas Fogg,” he stated.

“Good day, sir!” said Passepartout. “I am—”

Mr. Fogg held up his hand abruptly. “What is the proper temperature for shaving water?”

“Man!” Frankie whispered to me. “A quiz already?”

Passepartout blinked. “Eighty-six degrees.”

“Correct,” said Phileas Fogg. “You may enter.”

He waved his hand and we passed through into the entrance hall of a very quiet and very neat house.

“I'm Frankie,” said Frankie going in. “This is Devin.”

Taking us into his living room, Mr. Fogg said, “I am exact. I am settled. I am quiet. My life is one of unbroken regularity. I have my routines. I wake every morning at precisely eight o'clock.”

Passepartout nodded sharply. “Yes, Mr. Fogg.”

“I have toast at twenty-three minutes past eight.”

“Yes, Mr. Fogg.”

“I shave at thirty-seven minutes past eight.”

“Yes, Mr. Fogg.”

“I do not like turbulence in my household. Is this understood?”

“Yes, Mr. Fogg!”

“Good,” the man said. He pulled a watch from his pocket. “What time do you have?”

“Twenty-two minutes past eleven,” said Passepartout.

“You are four minutes slow,” Fogg said.

“My watch is set on Paris time,” said Passepartout.

“You are in London now,” said Mr. Fogg.

“Then I shall change to London time!” said Passepartout. He twisted a knob on his watch. “There.”

“Good,” said Fogg. “From this moment, twenty-six minutes after eleven
A.M.,
Wednesday, October second, you are my servant.”

“Thank you, sir!” said Passepartout. He leaned forward as if he were going to hug Mr. Fogg, but his new master swiftly put up his hand to stop him.

“Now, Passepartout,” he said, “there are exactly one thousand one hundred fifty-one steps from my door to the door of the Reform Club, and I have exactly three minutes and forty-two seconds in which to traverse that distance. Therefore, I must now leave.”

Without another word, Phileas Fogg took his hat in his hand, put it on his head, and slipped through the front door, closed it behind him, and was gone.

“Wow,” I said. “He's very … very …”

“I know!” said Frankie, peeking out a front window.

As Fogg left the house and crossed the street, an out-of-control carriage dragged by two wild horses shot right by him. Fogg kept walking at the same pace.

“That carriage almost ran him down!” I said.

“He didn't even notice,” said Frankie.

“The man is a machine!” said Passepartout.

“A robot,” said Frankie.

“A fast robot!” I said, as we watched Phileas Fogg walk quickly down the street.

Chapter 4

While Passepartout wandered off to explore Mr. Fogg's house, Frankie took the book from me.

“We need to follow Fogg,” she said after reading a couple of pages. “He's where the action is now.”

“Good idea,” I said. “Bring the book.”

“And the watch,” said Frankie, holding up the old watch. “I guess I slipped it in my pocket by mistake.”

“Do you think Mrs. Figglehopper will be mad that we borrowed her stuff?”

Frankie shook her head. “Nah, we'll be back in no time.”

I remembered how the work guy was messing with the wires. I wondered if this was going to be like our other adventures or not.

Soon after heading out the door, we caught up with Mr. Fogg. He was walking along a London street, when he suddenly turned and climbed a set of stairs.

“One thousand one hundred fifty … one thousand one hundred fifty-one!” he said. Then he glanced at his watch. “At the Reform Club at exactly eleven-thirty.”

He stepped up to the door.

“Why do you count your steps?” Frankie asked him.

“The information may be useful one day,” he replied.

“In case someone gives you a test?” I asked.

“Life is a test,” said Fogg. “Let us enter.”

Inside the Reform Club, the noise of the street died away. All the horses
clip-clop
ping, and carts and carriages and delivery wagons creaking, and people talking and walking and yelling, just stopped.

An old, bent-over little man met us at the door. “Your newspaper, Mr. Fogg,” he said. “The news today is about a robbery at the Bank of England, sir.”

“Indeed,” said Mr. Fogg. He took the paper and entered a big quiet room.

Frankie nudged me. “This place is like a—”

“I know,” I whispered. “A library!”

The rooms were paneled with dark wood. Bookcases reached from floor to ceiling. As soon as I saw them I started to feel sleepy, just like in our own library. And I wasn't the only one. The loudest thing in the whole place was the snoring of a couple of really ancient dudes in deep leather chairs in the back.

Right away, I noticed a table laid out with munchies. While Fogg went straight to a table to play cards with his friends, I made an emergency pit stop at the food table and began stuffing myself with a bunch of tasty crackers.
Crunch … crunch
.

“Thief!” said one of the men at Fogg's table.

I quickly swallowed the rest of my crackers. “I'm innocent!” I proclaimed. “I just ate two. Well, three. Okay, five. But some of the six were broken, which is why I only had eight of them. Nine!”

“Devin, calm down!” said Frankie, with a frown. “If you'd stop crunching and maybe pay attention, you'd know they're talking about the
other
robbery.”

I looked at the men with Fogg. It was true. They were all buzzing about the same thing, and it wasn't me.

“A thief stole fifty-five thousand pounds from the Bank of England last night, Fogg!” said one of the men.

Frankie and I went over to the old-guy table.

“Indeed, I heard,” said Fogg. “Disgraceful.”

I raised my hand. “How could anyone steal something that heavy?” I asked. “If there are two thousand pounds in a ton, then fifty-five thousand pounds is—”

Mr. Fogg set down his cards and turned to us. “The standard denomination of English currency is called a pound, just as American money is made up of dollars.”

“Oh, I get it,” I said. “Sorry.”

“Not at all,” said Fogg politely. “For you bring up an interesting point. Fifty-five thousand pounds, even in paper bills, makes a very heavy load. The robber must be very clever to have gotten away with it. The newspaper states that he may even be a gentleman.”

The other guys made noises at this.

“Detectives have gone off around the world searching for the fellow,” one growled as he snapped a card onto the table. “There is a large reward for his capture.”

“But of course, the world is such a big place, he could hide anywhere,” said another.

Fogg played a card. “The world is not so large.”

“I rather agree,” said the man to his left. “They say you can go round the globe in three months or so.”

“In eighty days,” said Fogg, playing another card.

I thought about that. “That's slow,” I said to Frankie. “With jets, it probably only takes a couple days.”

Frankie shook her head. “Jets haven't been invented yet. Planes, neither. It's 1872, remember?”

“Ouch,” I said. “Cruel ancient world.”

“Eighty days,” Fogg repeated. “Indeed, today's newspaper even gives an estimate of the traveling time.”

He flipped open the paper to the travel section and showed everyone the timetable.

From London to Suez, by rail and steamboat…… 7 days

From Suez to Bombay, India, by steamer……… 13 days

From Bombay to Calcutta, by rail………… 3 days

From Calcutta to Hong Kong, by steamer……. 13 days

From Hong Kong to Yokohama, by steamer……. 6 days

From Yokohama to San Francisco, by steamer…. 22 days

From San Francisco to New York, by rail……… 7 days

From New York to London, by steamer and rail…. 9 days

Total: 80 days

One of the gentleman laughed. “Yes, eighty days! But that doesn't take into account bad weather, shipwrecks, railway accidents, missed connections, and the thousand other mishaps that can happen in faraway countries!”

“All included,” said Fogg.

Another of the men made a gargling noise. “On paper it's one thing, Fogg. But I'd like to see you actually do it in eighty days—”

Fogg set his cards down and looked at the man. “I have in my bank account twenty thousand pounds. I will wager that it can be done, and I will prove it by going myself.”

The other men put down their cards. They looked as if they would just keel over and hit the floor.

“You're not serious, Fogg,” murmured one.

Phileas Fogg stood up from the table. “An Englishman never jokes about a wager. Gentlemen, I will bet twenty thousand pounds against anyone who wishes that I can make the tour of the world in eighty days or less. That is, in nineteen hundred twenty hours, or one hundred fifteen thousand, two hundred minutes. Do you accept?”

The other men stood up. One by one, they stared at him, then at one another. “Fogg, it's a deal!” they cried.

It was then that I realized something. I pulled Frankie off a little. “You know what this means? If this happens, if Fogg goes on this trip, and that's what the book is really about, we'll have to go all the way around the world with him to get to the end of this book!”

My friend looked at me. Her face went pale. “Around the world? That's a lot farther than we've gone before.”

“Now, gentlemen,” Fogg was saying, “a train leaves for the coast at a quarter before nine this evening—”

Frankie looked at Mr. Fogg. “Um … I think we have to come, too.”

Mr. Fogg made a face that looked as if he might be smiling, but it was hard to tell. “As you wish. So, gentlemen, my new friends here, my servant, and I will be on tonight's train.”

“Tonight?” blustered one of the men.

Fogg made a brief nod and pulled from his pocket a small notebook. “Today is Wednesday, October second. Therefore, we are due back in this very room of the Reform Club on Saturday, December twenty-first, at a quarter before nine
P.M.
If we are not, I lose the wager and you men are twenty thousand pounds richer. Agreed?”