Never Say Genius (25 page)

The twins looked all over for a clue telling them what they were supposed to do or who they were supposed to see at the lunch counter. A few tourists with cameras were milling around, but they seemed harmless. Nothing really captured the twins’ attention until Coke spotted another note. This one was taped to the bottom of the glass in front of the lunch counter. He peeled it off and read it.

“John Bull!” Pep yelled. “The train!”

They ran over to a little booth nearby with a short gray-haired lady sitting behind it. A sign next to the booth said ASK ME.

“Where’s John Bull?” Pep asked breathlessly.

“Downstairs,” the lady said, pointing. “When you get to the lower level, look to the right. You can’t miss it.”

“Thanks!” Pep said, already on the run.

“What’s your rush?” the lady said. “My goodness, that old train has been sitting there for years. It’s not like it’s about to leave the station.”

The twins thanked her and ran down the stairs. Sure enough, when they got to the bottom and looked to the right, a big, old-time train was sitting there, its smokestack almost touching the ceiling.

John Bull was one of the first steam locomotives in America. The plaque in front of it said the train was imported from England in 1831 and used to move freight and passengers between New York and Philadelphia. Back in those days, it took two days to make that trip by horse and buggy. John Bull reduced it to five hours, which was considered amazing at the time.

But Coke and Pep weren’t interested in the history of rail travel in America. They were interested in who had sent them all those ciphers and what was going to happen at two o’clock, which was now just five minutes away.

They searched all over the John Bull until Coke noticed
another
piece of paper. This one was on the tip of the big iron cowcatcher on the front of the train. He picked it off, and Pep peered over his shoulder as he looked at it.

“Dumbo the flying elephant!” Pep yelled first.

Directly behind the John Bull, on the wall, was a directory of the museum’s three floors. The twins searched frantically for the word ”Dumbo.” It wasn’t there. But the directory showed a little icon on the third floor.

“That must be Dumbo!” Pep yelled.

“Follow me!” Coke said.

There was an escalator right behind the John Bull. The twins dashed up it, taking two steps at a time. They went as high as the escalator would go. At the top, they looked all around until Pep spotted a 3 WEST sign on the other side of the museum. They ran over there, and the first thing they saw, at the end of the hallway, was Dumbo.

It was part of a kiddie ride, a shiny gray fiberglass elephant car with room for two small children to sit inside. Dumbo wore a purple hat and a white ruffled collar around his neck. The plaque in front of it said the ride had been inspired by the 1941 animated film
Dumbo
, and began operating at Disneyland soon after the park opened in 1955. Riders could make it fly up or down by moving a bar in front of them.

“Now what?” Coke asked, looking around desperately. It was 1:58. Time was running out.

There was a low glass wall surrounding Dumbo to prevent visitors from climbing on it. The twins couldn’t examine Dumbo, but in the back at the bottom of the glass wall, Pep found another note.

FOLLOW DUMBO’S TRUNK

“Is it a cipher?” Coke asked.

“No!” Pep replied. “We’re supposed to follow the trunk! Hurry!”

Dumbo’s trunk was pointing at a slight angle to the left. There was a small gallery about twenty-five paces away, titled “Treasures of Popular Culture.” Coke and Pep ran over there, and the first thing they saw in that gallery, inside a glass display case, was this:

“It’s Dorothy’s slippers!” Pep exclaimed. “The real ones!”

The twins pressed their noses against the glass to get a better look at the sequined shoes. The plaque explained that Judy Garland, who was just sixteen at the time, wore these sequined shoes (size five) in the movie
The Wizard of Oz
. In the original story by L. Frank Baum, Dorothy’s slippers were silver. They were changed to ruby red for the movie so they would show up better against the yellow brick road.

“Well, that’s all of them,” Pep said, throwing up her hands. “That’s all the clues.”

“It’s two o’clock,” Coke said. “Nothing happened. Nobody’s here. After all that. Maybe we made a mistake somewhere.”

“Do you think it was all a big hoax?” Pep asked. “Maybe they were just playing with our heads the whole time. Nothing was going to happen on July third at two o’clock.”

“Maybe Mya was right,” said Coke. “Maybe it’s going to happen on July Fourth.”

Both of the twins were relieved, in a way. Neither of them particularly wanted to confront the unknown.

“Hey look, there’s Kermit the—,” Pep said, turning around to look at the rest of the exhibit.

At that moment, five guys dressed head to toe in black SWAT uniforms came running out of nowhere.

‘H
ANDS UP!”

Coke and Pep spun around to see themselves surrounded by five guys wearing black ski masks. They didn’t appear to be armed, but they were all poised like ninjas, as if they were about to do martial arts moves. Three elderly tourists backed against the walls of the room, panic in their eyes.

“What?!” Coke shouted. “Who are you?”

“We’re with the Washington, D.C., Police Department,” one of the SWAT team barked. “You’re under arrest!”

The voice sounded familiar, but Coke couldn’t place it. And then the guy started whistling “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” Coke looked down. He noticed that the “policeman” was wearing cowboy boots. This had to be the guy at the rest stop, the guy who’d been sending them all those ciphers.

“What did we do?” Pep asked, trembling. “We didn’t do anything!”

“Attempted robbery,” said the guy wearing cowboy boots. “We know you were about to steal Dorothy’s ruby slippers.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Coke said. “We would
never
—”

“SHUT UP!” said the guy with the cowboy boots. “I don’t want to hear your lame excuses. Take ’em, boys.”

“Sure thing, boss,” one of the SWAT team guys said, grabbing Coke roughly by the arm. Another grabbed Pep.

The three old ladies who had been looking on, shocked, now appeared to be angry.

“Kids!” one of them said, sneering. “They’re a couple of juvenile delinquents.”

“Imagine,” the second old lady said, “stealing Dorothy’s slippers. Shameful!”

“And where are their parents?” asked the third old lady. “That’s the problem with children these days. No adult supervision. They just run wild in the streets.”

“We didn’t—,” Coke tried to explain, but a black-gloved hand clapped over his mouth.

“Excuse us, folks,” the guy in cowboy boots said as they made their way with the twins toward an emergency exit. “Sorry for the disturbance. Gotta keep young creeps like this off the streets. Just doing our job, you understand. Enjoy your day.”

“Thank you, officers!” one of the old ladies said gratefully. “Thank you for keeping us safe.”

“No problem, ma’am.”

The SWAT team dragged the twins out the exit and into the dingy stairwell, locking the emergency exit door behind them. No alarms had sounded. There was no sign of Mya or Bones coming to the rescue. Coke and Pep were on their own.

There were stairs leading up from that point, presumably to the roof of the museum. Pep was trying to bite the guy holding her, but it was no use. Coke couldn’t move his hands to get to any of the stuff in his backpack.

The guy wearing cowboy boots pulled off his ski mask.

“Archie Clone!” Pep said, gasping.

Yes, it was evil Archie, the lunatic who had already tried to boil the twins in oil and drown them in ice cream.

“You can take off your masks now, boys,” he said. “It’s safe here.”

The other members of the SWAT team pulled off their masks. Coke and Pep recognized two of them as the bowler dudes who had been terrorizing them all the way across the country. The other two were pimply teenagers whose faces were not familiar. The five had posed as a legitimate SWAT team, and all of them had big, evil grins on their faces because they had pulled it off.

“It’s so nice to see you two again,” Archie Clone said with false sincerity. “I hope you enjoyed the museum. Did you get the chance to see Albert Einstein’s pipe? Warren Harding’s pajamas?”

“No, we were trying to—”

“Shut up!” Archie Clone said. “They were rhetorical questions.”

“What does that mean, boss?” asked one of the bowler dudes.

“None of your business!” barked Archie Clone irritably. Then he turned back to the twins, rolling his eyes.

“Please excuse my dim-witted assistants,” he whispered. “Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to hire geniuses, like us. These are the guys who used to beat me up at school. Now they work for me.”

“Leave us alone!” Pep shouted, trying to pull away from the bowler dude who was holding her. “You have a sickness, do you realize that? You should get help.”

“Pep, Pep, Pep,” Archie Clone said, shaking his head sadly. “I thought you and I had an understanding. Actually, I kinda thought you liked me. I was hoping we could watch the Fourth of July fireworks together.”