Georgia Byng - Molly Moon & the Morphing Mystery

“How do you know about this stuff?” Micky asked. “Do you have a copy of the second book?” From the sofa, Miss Teriyaki laughed. Miss Hunroe smiled.

“Oh, dear no. If we did, well, all would be well and you two wouldn’t be here. Now where was I? Ah, yes. To move from animal to animal is the elementary form of morphing. But do not think for one second that it is easy to do.”

“Can you do it?” asked Micky.

“Oh, I wish,” sighed Miss Hunroe.

“How do you know about it?” asked Molly.

Suddenly the wrenlike voice of Miss Speal, the skinny, tiny, dark-haired woman with the thin face, piped up. She rose to her feet and spoke quickly, in a half whisper, as though frightened that if she spoke louder something horrible would happen. “My parents were hypnotists. They looked after the book for a while, when I was about seven years old. But it was a dangerous thing to possess, for its contents are extremely powerful.” Molly found the hairs pricking up on the back of her neck. Miss Speal’s face was so pale and bloodless that she looked like a ghost, and now, talking about the book in this way, she was even spookier.

“I remember finding it once when my parents were out. I wasn’t that good at reading, but I knew the book was very, very special, as I’d heard my parents talking about it, and so I opened it and made an effort to understand it.” The woman stroked her black, limp hair as she remembered. “It was a very heavy book. Four flat stones were embedded in its thick leather cover, one in each corner! One was orange with red streaks in it, one was light gray with white-and-black cloudy parts to it, one was green and brown like the color of plants and earth, and the last was blue with white flecks in it, like waves and white foam.” Miss Speal then pursed her lips and suddenly reached into her coat pocket.

“Miss Speal,” cautioned Miss Hunroe soberly. But ignoring her, the thin raconteur pulled a small piece of blue stone from her coat pocket and thrust it up toward the children’s eyes so that they both could see it. It was a watery-blue-colored stone, mottled with patches of white.

“This is the blue stone from the book!” the woman announced. “It fell out, and I’m glad it did, because a few days later the book was stolen.” Outside, a crack of lightning broke through the sky.

“Miss Speal,” Miss Hunroe cautioned again. “Please try not to get overemotional about this. The children need to know about the book. Do you want to tell them, or shall I?”

Miss Speal sniffed, and her eyes darted to look at the sky outside. “Yes, yes. Well, inside the book was the title, Hypnotism, Volume Two: The Advanced Arts . There were about ten chapters, but I can’t remember what all the skills were. It was intoxicatingly exciting, and I read it as though I had opened some sort of spell book.” As she spoke, she rubbed the blue stone. It was as though it was a talisman that brought memories of that precious evening back to her. Outside, thunder rumbled.

“MISS SPEAL!” Miss Hunroe now scolded the woman. “Please control yourself.”

Miss Speal put the flat stone back into her pocket and looked nervously at Miss Hunroe, rather as a dog with its tail between its legs might look at its master. “Yes,” she finished, her attention now on her audience. “As I said, the book was stolen….”

“Before you learned any of its lessons,” Miss Hunroe added, helping her along.

Miss Speal looked bewildered for a moment, then her eyes widened. “Y-yes, yes, before I learned any of its lessons. I read the list of lessons but never learned them.”

“Who stole it?” Molly asked.

Miss Speal shook her head. “The devil knows.”

“But the important matter,” said Miss Teriyaki, impatiently, “is where it is now .”

“First things first,” insisted Miss Hunroe, reprimanding Miss Teriyaki and tapping her sharply on the wrist with her remote control. “I haven’t finished explaining morphing.”

Miss Teriyaki put her hands together and humbly bowed to Miss Hunroe. “Sorry, sorry,” she said subserviently, readjusting the ice pack around her ankle.

Miss Hunroe pressed the button on her remote control again. “As I said, the elementary stage of morphing is into an animal, but the sophisticated level…” She turned toward the children and said very seriously, “The thing is that the second level of morphing is being able to change from human to human. And as you can imagine, anyone who could do this could become very, very powerful and influential. Why, a person with this skill might choose to morph into the president of the United States of America!” Up on the screen came a picture of the president of the United States talking to an important-looking army official. A line of soldiers stood behind them both, saluting. “Or they might morph into the body of the president of China.” Now on the screen was a picture of thousands of soldiers standing at attention, saluting the Chinese president. “Once inside another person’s body, they’d have control over that person’s very mind and so of course their actions . Do you see how dangerous this could be?”

“Of course,” Molly said.

“And so,” Micky guessed, “you’re telling us that the prime minister of this country is really someone else—that an evil hypnotist has morphed into his body.”

“No, not yet. At least I hope not.” Miss Hunroe crossed her arms. “But we do know that the book has passed into the hands of a very undesirable person. We know that he is highly likely to try to learn the book’s lessons for bad ends.”

Miss Hunroe pressed a button on the slide controls, and up on the screen came a photograph of a leathery-faced man with a mop of dark hair. His skin was rough and pockmarked. He wore a smart pinstriped suit with a red tie and a brimmed homburg hat. Molly recognized him from the thought bubble that had appeared over Miss Hunroe’s head earlier.

“His name is Theobald Black. He’s a hypnotist. He uses his talents to embezzle money.”

“Embezzle. What’s that?” asked Molly.

“It means,” Micky quickly explained, “when you get something—usually money—through trickery.”

“Yes, that’s right,” agreed Miss Hunroe. “Mr. Black here picks on easy prey—rich old ladies or gentlemen. Here are some photographs we got of him in action. Here he is hypnotizing a very rich heiress who owns gold mines.” Up on the screen came a black-and-white photograph of Mr. Black on a park bench, holding a pendulum up in front of a small middle-aged woman in a hat with a stuffed bird on it. “And here he is taking control of an old man who has made a fortune in marmalade—”

“And jams, very good jams,” Miss Suzette interjected. “Wiltshire Jams is de company’s name.” Now another picture came up. It was taken through the window of a café and was of Mr. Black sitting at a table with an old man in a bowler hat. Their faces were very close, and Mr. Black was staring into the man’s eyes, as though hypnotizing him.

“He runs a casino, Black’s Casino. On the screen, Mr. Black, dressed in black, was talking to the casino doorman. “He has a daughter called Lily.”

Now a photograph of a girl of about seven with short, dark curly hair came up. She was dressed in a smart pink peacoat, with boots to match.

“As far as we know, she is not a hypnotist. But she is quite a number.” In the next picture, Lily was outside a restaurant with a furious look on her face. She seemed to be stamping her foot, and her hands were clenched in fury by her sides. “She was angry in this picture because her father couldn’t get a table at the Orchid.”

“But if he’s a hypnotist, surely he can get a table at any restaurant,” Micky said.