Spiders on the Case (9 page)

I
t's never too late, Tom! It's never too late!” Jo Bell had swung up to the top of the display case and was shouting at him through the glass.

“He can't hear you, Jo Bell. He doesn't speak spider,” Julep called up at her.

“It's useless, Jo Bell,” Felix said.

“We're beaten,” Edith nearly sobbed.

“Mom!” Jo Bell glared at her mother. “How can you say that? You never talk that way. We need to think of something!”

Jo Bell slid down her dragline to pace the felt floor of the display case. Her head was tipped down. She found the spotlessness of the freshly vacuumed felt offensive.
There's not a speck of dust! This is no way to live!

But Jo Bell would not let herself or her family be defeated. No idiot human with a vacuum was going to stand in the way of justice.

Jo Bell turned to Buster, her mom, her brother, and her sister. They all seemed to be waiting for her to say something. They were all paying full attention.

“Listen to me.” Her six eyes were smoldering. “This is not an end. This is a beginning.”

“What do you mean?” asked Felix.

“Just that we've been defeated in the display case. But we shall rebuild our web with the hieroglyphic code. And we shall do it not only here. We shall send out our message far and wide. We shall weave it in the case, on the shelves, in the stacks, and right across Tom Parker's desk. The dusting is finished. The cleaners don't come back for a week. And in that time, we shall fight on.”

Suddenly, the spiders felt a fluttering in their spinnerets. “Bestir yourself,” Jo Bell continued. “There is silk to be made! We will weave on and defend the volumes of this library against the tyranny of unchecked greed, against the violence of the X-ACTO blade. We shall spin on with growing confidence, for we have done it once before and shall do it again. And we shall grow bolder in the air! We shall not be defeated and we shall never surrender. Tom Parker will see and understand our message and step forth to rescue what rightfully belongs to the citizens of this fair city!”

A stunned silence followed this speech. But no one was more stunned than Jo Bell herself. Her siblings and her mother were looking at her in awe. Moments before, they had been awash with disappointment and anger, exhausted from their efforts. But now their spigots itched to unleash new silk.

“Allons, enfants!”
Jo Bell had slipped into the first words of the French national anthem without realizing it. But she quickly switched back to English. “Let's go, spiders of the Boston Public Library. Onward!”

“I know where there is a new batch of silverfish!” Julep said.

“I can start making the two-strand hoist,” Buster offered.

“And I can set one up on the shelf where the
Wurmach Encyclopedia of Hieroglyphs
is,” Felix said.

The five spiders had never worked so hard. But it seemed easier. They were able to spin out the hieroglyphic words faster, more smoothly. It was as if their spinnerets had been greased, for the silk just flowed. And not once did anyone complain.

When dawn began to break on Wednesday, they all straggled back to the display case. Four different webs had been woven in places that Tom would never miss — beginning with the computer on his own desk.

“What's this?” Tom whispered. Stretched across the computer screen and anchored on either side of the keyboard was a message that sent chills up his spine.

He rushed to the display case, where he saw the same message repeated. He leaned forward and breathed heavily over the case.

“Tom, are you all right?” Rosemary asked.

“Yes, yes. Just fine.”

“There's a fellow on the phone about the
Wurmach Encyclopedia
again. He'll be in later this morning. I have to go down to that meeting in the trustees' room. I'll be back in an hour, but I can get the Wurmach now,” Rosemary said.

“Wait! I'll get it!” Tom answered.

Tom Parker had a sudden instinct, a hunch like a sixth sense. He raced into the stacks where the early dictionaries and encyclopedias were kept, and he was right. Here stretched the biggest web of all. This time, there were three simple words spelled in enormous glyphs:

“Smoot and Montague, those scoundrels!” shouted Tom.

The children and Edith had followed Tom as he raced to the three sites where they had constructed webs.

“He got it!” Felix cried out. Then they began to dance a celebratory jig.

“Oh!” sighed Edith. “I am so proud of all of you children. It won't be long now!”

“You can call it spiderwebs,” Buster said. “But it's truly a dragnet — and it's Jo Bell's. What a brilliant idea, Jo Bell.” He couldn't conceal his admiration.

“But if it hadn't been for Julep, none of us could have learned hieroglyphics. And” — Jo Bell paused — “if it hadn't been for Felix, I would never have thought of the double-strand hoist.”

“Mission accomplished!” Felix said, and gave a snappy little salute with his pedipalps, his two forelegs.

“Well, not quite accomplished,” Edith cautioned. “When the thread on the dragnet is pulled tight and the vandals ensnared, then we can truly say mission accomplished.” Edith turned to Jo Bell with gleaming eyes. “Thank you, dear,” she said.

All five spiders had the same image in their minds: Agnes Smoot and Eldridge Montague ensnared in the sticky threads of a great big web with two spiderish cops arriving to haul them to jail.

A
fter his quick translation of the call numbers, Tom Parker went immediately to the map section and then to the fashion journals. He felt weak when he saw the damage. In their haste, the vandals had destroyed binding threads and spines of the books. Beautiful pages of maps and fashion drawings were gone. Tom had to sit down, right down on the floor.
This might only be the beginning
, he thought. He had to act.

He took the two violated books and, cradling them in his arms, ran down to the first floor and across the courtyard to the library trustees' room. He burst in just as the trustees were taking a vote on cutting funding to the branch libraries.

“I am sorry to interrupt, but I'm here to show you another kind of cutting!”

A stunned silence enveloped the room as Tom lay the books on the table in front of the members of the board.

 

“I can't believe it!” Buster gasped.

“Believe what?” Edith asked. Edith and her kids had retired to the display case to wait for Tom's return.

“They're back!”

“Who?” Jo Bell asked. “Tom and the police?”

“No. Them! Eldridge and Agnes. Rosemary is fetching them both books right now!”

Four minutes later, all the spiders were casting draglines through the air and scrambling toward the desk where Eldridge sat with yet another antique atlas. It contained priceless maps from the sixteenth century, showing the spice trade routes. They watched in horror as Eldridge took out his blade.

Suddenly, a voice rang out. “How you got that blade in here, I'll never know. But I insist that you drop it right this moment.”

“It's Tom! He's back!” Jo Bell cried.

“Thank heavens!” said Edith.

The spiders' exclamations of relief and joy set the air buzzing. Every hair on their bodies seemed to reverberate.

“There must be some mistake!” Eldridge Montague protested.

“There's no mistake,” said Tom. “Now drop it.”

They heard the X-ACTO blade hit the floor.

“Great silk!” Edith exclaimed. “Look who's here!”

It was Agnes Smoot, and she was not carrying a blade but a huge book raised above her head. Her intentions were clear. She was going to slam it down on poor Tom's head. And there was no other human being in the room. Rosemary had gone off to fetch a book for Agnes.

“What are we to do?” Edith said in a hysterical pitch that seemed to defy the laws of vibration.

Jo Bell did not even think. She cast her dragline and landed squarely in the middle of Agnes Smoot's wig. She began to crawl down Agnes's bangs and leapt onto the rim of her glasses. It was an act of stunning courage, for Jo Bell knew that Felix had lost a leg the only time he confronted a human. But this woman was creeping up on Tom with a fat book that could knock him senseless, and Jo Bell couldn't simply stand aside.

A second later, Buster landed by her side. “Venom! Use your venom, Jo Bell!”

“I can't!” Jo Bell cried.

A sudden terrible scream tore the air. Jo Bell felt as though she were falling, falling … falling. But it was Agnes Smoot who was falling. Her eyes crossed crazily as she looked up at Jo Bell dangling on the bridge of her glasses.

“BROWN RECLUSE!” she shrieked.

The glasses and the book all went tumbling to the floor. Tom turned around and, seeing how narrowly he had escaped being clobbered by a five-pound book, grew deathly pale.

“Don't faint now!” Jo Bell screamed.

And although he didn't speak spider, Tom seemed to understand. The next thing she knew, he was racing to his desk to hit the emergency button.

And then it was over.