032 High Marks for Malice (12 page)

“And somehow Doc managed to get it to print anyway,” Nancy said. “I see.”

“Even I don’t know how he did it,” Maria said. “But I do remember which commands are mine and which aren’t. So what I’ve just done is erase all the ones that someone else put in. Getting to the files, much less opening them, will be tricky.”

“You can do it,” Nancy said confidently. “We’re all betting on you.”

Maria said, “Cross your fingers,” then typed a few lines, erased a few more. Then she gasped. “Look!” A blank transcript form had appeared on the screen.

“That’s like a report card, isn’t it?” Nancy asked.

“Precisely like a report card,” Marty said, and dropped to one knee beside Maria, his face pale. “Boy, is this college in trouble! That’s straight out of the registrar’s office! This means a kid could call up this form and type in any grade he wanted, maybe even change a grade already there!”

Maria looked sick. “Nobody’s ever going to believe I didn’t sell my program to a student.”

On a hunch, Nancy said, “Maria, fill in the form. For a name, use Andrew Bladinsburg.” She spelled it for her.

Maria typed the name on the first line of the form. Immediately the names of classes and grades to go with them scrolled down the screen. A message at the bottom said: “Page 1 of 2.”

“There’s four years’ worth of classes on this screen,” Marty said. “What could be on page two?” He pressed a key. A copy of a Basson diploma appeared, awarded to Arthur Bladinsburg.

“If he graduated, why isn’t he listed anywhere?” Ned demanded.

“Wait a minute,” Marty said. “What’s a diploma doing on the computer? Basson orders them from a commercial printer. I know; I worked in the registrar’s office my junior year. The secretaries used to joke about how the printer kept the master for the diplomas in a locked vault.”

“Why?” Nancy asked.

“A diploma from Basson is like a blank check,” Cass said. “You can write your own ticket, especially in the business world. All the big companies recruit our graduates and pay them top dollar.”

“That’s it!” Nancy said. “Maria, erase that one and see if there are more of these.” Maria tried and was rewarded with the transcript and diploma of someone named B. Josephson.

“He was on that list of graduates Marty gave me,” Ned said.

“Something’s different about these diplomas.” Marty gazed intently at the screen. “Mine’s right above my desk. I know it by heart—and the Latin’s different on these.”

“See if you can pull up your own,” Nancy suggested to him, certain now she was on the right track.

There was no transcript for Martin Chan. Or Maria Arnold. Or Cassandra Denton.

“Where are my records?” Cass asked, alarmed.

“Probably right where they belong,” Nancy said, “in a file in the registrar’s office. This is a different file altogether. Someone’s been filling out fake transcripts and diplomas and probably selling them.”

“Which is why you couldn’t find any of these names listed anywhere,” Marty said. He looked as if he was in shock.

“Right,” Nancy said.
“They never went to Basson!”

“That’s
what was bugging Doc,” Marty exclaimed. “He had a memory like an elephant and he couldn’t remember Bladinsburg, even though they supposedly graduated in the same year!”

“And when he started searching for the man’s records,” Nancy said, “especially after he came across Maria’s program, he became a threat, so they had to get rid of him.”

“And when Line tried to finish what Doc had started, they tried to kill him, too,” Ned said, his face tight.

“They embedded my program on the mainframe,” Maria wailed. “They buried the commands, and—”

Nancy spun around to face Ned.
“That’s
what Line meant! He wasn’t saying a man was buried here. He was saying
commands!”

“No wonder Pick can afford to drive a Mercedes,” Cass said angrily.

“Now that you mention it,” Nancy said, “I wonder how much he’s been charging. Maria, can you see if there are any other kinds of hidden files?”

Still clearly shaken by the way her program had been used, Maria nodded, erased the screen and went to work. “Hey,” she said, after a moment. “I think—” She hit a key. “Nancy, look! Here’s another file on Bladinsburg!”

Nancy stooped beside her. “Andrew Bladinsburg. Nineteen seventy—that’s the year he was supposed to have graduated, the amount—two thousand, five hundred dollars.” She frowned, staring at the monitor. “Wow!”

“What?” Ned asked.

“Look at all the contributions he’s made to Basson. Five thousand dollars the first couple of times, then ten thousand dollars, twenty thousand dollars, thirty thousand dollars.”

“At least the college got something out of this crooked deal,” Marty muttered.

“I smell a rat,” Nancy said. “Check the next guy on the list.”

Maria pressed a key and the file of a Reginald Calloway appeared.

“I remember his name. He’s part of a big research company,” Ned said.

“Three thousand dollars for the diploma,” Nancy said, her finger trailing down the face of the monitor. “And he’s doled out a total of—one hundred thousand dollars!”

“Those guys have really paid for those diplomas,” Cass said.

“You bet they have,” Nancy said. “Look at these comments about the last couple of Calloway’s donations. ‘Uncooperative. May need stronger threat next time.’ ”

“Threat?” Marty said, squeezing in next to Maria.

Nancy turned around. “They weren’t sending
contributions, they were paying out blackmail money to Jim Pickering! Calloway would be ruined if people found out he had falsified his credentials.”

“All of them would be,” Marty said. “Their careers would be down the tubes.”

Nancy stood up. “There’s our motive. Pickering and his accomplice have been making a fortune with this little scam. That’s why they killed Doc!”

“This is awful,” Maria said, tears in her eyes.

Suddenly the computer beeped three times. Maria froze. “That’s the signal I told you about, the one that means someone’s trying to break into confidential files. What should I do?”

“Didn’t you say you’re supposed to press two keys?” Nancy asked. “Do it. Let’s see what happens.”

“Okay, but I’ll probably lose what’s on the screen,” Maria warned her. “If I’m working on something when the signal comes, the screen goes blank until after I’ve typed in the code to alert the mainframe. Then whatever I was working on comes back. Here goes. I press
A
first—”

She hit
A
and a line of type scrolled across the screen. “Hey!” Maria cried. “That’s the print command I wrote in my program!”

“Ned!” Nancy exclaimed. “Doesn’t that look familiar?”

He leaned over to see, his eyes widening. “It’s the command Line left in the taffy!”

Nancy shook her head, inching closer to the screen with excitement. “What’s the second letter you’re supposed to type?”

“B.”
Maria hit the key. The computer beeped five different notes and the same line of type appeared a second time, along with a message: Wait. Printer activated.

“What printer?” Ned asked. The one beside the computer was silent.

The message continued: Printing: Contributions.

“Well, well, well,” Nancy said softly. “Pickering lied to you. The signal you’ve been answering all this time is part of your own program.”

“It turns on a printer somewhere!” Maria said. “But where?”

Suddenly Nancy had an idea. “The bell tower,” she said, pulling on her coat. “Let’s go!”

“How can you be sure?” Cass asked.

“It makes sense. Why risk killing Line there—unless he’d found something conclusive? Come on!”

“It’s time for my shift to start,” Maria said. “I’ll stay here.”

“No, you go, I’ll stay,” Marty said. “In case there’s any trouble here.”

“Oh, thank you!” Maria threw her arms around him and kissed his cheek. Then she blushed and hurried out of the lab.

The four teenagers jogged across to the carillon, slowing to a walk when they saw someone
ahead of them taking one of the paths away from the tower. They waited until he was out of sight. Then Nancy unlocked the door. There was barely room enough for the four of them.

“Bet you it’s in there with the mechanisms that ring the bells.” She pointed to the door with the High Voltage sign on it.

“Better hurry,” Ned advised.

It took several tries before Nancy heard a click. As she opened the heavy door, a light in the space beyond came on. Nancy drew in a breath. Then she saw that the stained-glass windows on the front were boarded over. No one could see the light from outside.

The gears, ropes, and motors for the bells sat in the middle of the room. Over in the corner between the windows, they found what they were looking for: a laser printer.

“Bingo!” Nancy said, removing a sheet of paper from the bin on the side. “Here it is in black and white, the whole dirty scheme.”

“Bingo again!” Ned had pulled a piece of paper from a cardboard carton beside the printer. “Basson diplomas with a blank where the laser prints in the name.”

Cass wrinkled her nose. “What’s that smell?”

Nancy sniffed. “Gasoline. And smoke—” She broke off. Hurrying to the door, she opened it and was confronted by a wall of leaping flames.

She had led them into a trap!

N
ANCY SLAMMED THE DOOR
against the inferno. “Quick, Ned,” she exclaimed. “We’ve got to find the fire extinguisher! There must be one to protect the motor that rings the bells!”

Ned went in one direction, Cass ran the other. “Someone’s taken it,” Ned yelled. “The wall rack is empty!”

“We’ve got to get out! Help! Somebody help us!” Maria screamed, panicked.

“Keep calm,” Nancy said firmly. “No one can hear you. Let’s see if we can remove these boards and break out the windows.” But the boards were bolted into the stone.

Smoke seeped through the seams around the
door and the temperature in the room was rising. Nancy gnawed on her lip, trying not to let guilt and fear clutter her mind. They were there because of her. If they all died, it would be her fault. They couldn’t get out, but was there a way to let people know that they were trapped in here?

Suddenly the light overhead dimmed, then blinked. “Uh-oh,” Ned said. “The fire’s gotten into the wiring.”

Nancy gasped. “Look! Smoke’s coming from behind the printer!”

Crossing to it, Ned peered at the rear of the machine. “There are sparks shooting out back here! It’s starting to burn!” Suddenly the lights went out. Pitch-blackness swallowed them up—except for the printer, which shot sparks as if it were full of firecrackers.

A spark whizzed past Nancy and hit one of the ropes which led to the bells up above. That gave Nancy an idea. “The bells!” she shouted. “We’ve got to ring the bells!”

Ned grabbed her and gave her a quick bear hug. “I told Line you were a genius! Come on, Cass! Quick, Maria! We’ll make enough racket to wake up this whole campus!”

“They’re programmed by a computer,” Maria said, coming to life. “It’s under that metal cover. Maybe we can get it to play something.”

Nancy shook her head, her hair flying. “Not if that fire’s spread to the electrical wiring. Besides, this is no time for ‘Silent Night’! It needs to
sound like something’s gone wrong, so somebody will come! We’ve got to untie the ropes and do it ourselves!”

She rooted in her pocket and found her pen-light. “This’ll have to do,” she said. She directed her penlight at the carillon machinery.

The ropes were attached to pulleys with a knot Nancy recognized. “Watch me!” she instructed. Grabbing the end of a loop, she flipped it upward. The knot undid itself.

The others followed her lead. Ned managed two ropes and twisted them together so he could ring both of his bells at once.

“Let ’er rip!” Nancy yelled, tugging on hers.

Everyone pulled, and above them, the clamor began. The big bells filled the room with ear-splitting volume. The notes clashed and tumbled against one another.

The room was boiling and the bells were heavy. It took all of Nancy’s strength to keep them swinging. Her arms began to burn from the effort.

“I know it hurts,” she called to the others, “but don’t let up!”

Smoke was thick in the air now. It stung Nancy’s nose and coated her tongue.

“Hey!” Maria shouted above the noise.-“Are those sirens?”

Nancy wondered how anyone could hear anything. Between the pounding of the bells and the
pounding of her heart, she was certain that she would be hearing-impaired for life.

“They are!” Cass yelled.

Then Nancy heard it, the rise and fall of sirens, as sweet a sound as had ever split the night air. The bells had done the job. They were safe.

• • •

The fire was out. A policeman had taken brief statements from the four teenagers. Now, Nancy and Ned watched as the firemen began to rewind their hoses. A crowd had gathered. Maria and Cass, who had been milling around, trotted back to Nancy.

“We’ve been listening to the fire inspector,” Cass said, keeping her voice low. “He knows the fire was no accident. He said the police would want to ask further questions.”