“What?” said Elliot. “What do we have? We’re supposed to find the dragon without Mr. Mendizabal? And what do you mean assault?”
“Don’t worry, children,” Professor Fauna said. “I have much experience with mythical creatures.”
“With dragons?”
“Well . . . a little.”
Elliot buried his head in his hands.
Mr. Mendizabal got out of the truck. “Wait for two minutes, then move quickly. Keep against this fence, close to the ground, and be quiet.” He turned to the children. “Zorte on. That means ‘Good luck.’”
Mr. Mendizabal turned the corner and disappeared behind the fence. Professor Fauna kept time on his watch, which was attached to his wrist by a sparkly pink band and had galloping unicorns on the face. After two nerve-racking minutes, Professor Fauna and the children crept around the corner after Mr. Mendizabal, staying as close to the fence as they could.
They saw that Mr. Mendizabal was talking to the guard, holding a big map, folding it, unfolding it, and turning it around in his hands, acting very lost and confused. He and the guard were both looking away from Uchenna, Elliot, and the professor. Mr. Mendizabal asked the guard a question and pointed to his left, but the guard responded and pointed in a totally different direction.
As quickly and quietly as they could, they made it past the guard post, up the driveway, and to the main door of the building. Uchenna tried the door, and it was unlocked.
“This is the second time I’ve broken into a Schmoke brothers’ property this week,” Elliot murmured. “I’d never broken into anything before! Ever! What has happened to my life?”
“Welcome to the Unicorn Rescue Society,” Professor Fauna said. And he led them inside the Schmoke-Mendizabal Pharmaceuticals complex.
* * *
They found themselves in a large lobby, still under construction, with exposed girders and electrical wires dangling from the ceiling. On the other side of the lobby was a single cherrywood door. Professor Fauna crossed the lobby and tried the bright brass doorknob. That door, too, was unlocked.
Behind the door was a small room with a few desks, some filing cabinets, and big schematic plans pinned up on the wall.
“A map!” Elliot whispered, pushing past the professor. “Now I feel more comfortable.” He craned his neck up to study the plans—they were placed at adult height. Uchenna pulled a chair over, and Elliot gratefully climbed up on it. His thin finger ran over the passageways and schematic lines. “We’re here,” he announced at last, pointing to a room on the plan. “In the administrative office.” He pointed to another area of the plan. “These rooms here are marked research laboratories, these are bathrooms, and this is the cafeteria. These green lines are the motion detectors, these blue ones are the sprinkler system, these red ones are the computer network cables.”
“How do you know all that?” asked Uchenna.
“When I was little, I got separated from my mom in a big shopping mall. It was the worst three minutes of my whole life. Now, I try not to go anyplace where I don’t know my way around. If that meant I had to learn to read forty-seven different kinds of schematic maps, so be it.”
“Okay, then, Mr. Map Expert. What’s this tangle of blue lines?” Uchenna pointed right in the center of the map.
“That’s in the basement. It looks like an intense fire safety system. Sensors and sprinklers and the like.”
Uchenna’s eyes lit up. “Why would they need an intense fire safety system in the basement, unless—”
Elliot finished her thought. “There was a dragon down there!”
“Brilliant, children!” Professor Fauna said. “Now we can go into the dragon’s lair!”
Elliot sighed. “Just another day in the life of Elliot Eisner.”
“Yeah,” said Uchenna, “because your life is awesome.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Leaving the office, Uchenna, the professor, and Elliot found themselves in a long narrow hallway, with other hallways branching off in various directions. They stopped.
“I think the basement’s this way,” Uchenna whispered, pointing to her left.
“No,” said Elliot. “We need to go right, right, left, downstairs, left, right, then through a big door.”
“What? How do you know that?” Uchenna asked.
“It was right there on the plans!”
Uchenna looked at Professor Fauna. The professor just shrugged and followed Elliot to the right.
The twists and turns of the hallway happened just as Elliot said. Right, right, left, then down a staircase. The group’s footsteps echoed on the linoleum floors. Elliot wished they could move more quietly. Uchenna peeked around corners and into empty rooms, checking for lurking guards. Professor Fauna was pulling his beard nervously and muttering to himself. Jersey was snoring in his backpack. Elliot couldn’t decide who was more useless, Professor Fauna or Jersey.
They reached the basement. Elliot led them left, down a narrow hallway, and then turned right.
At that point, Elliot expected to find the doorway to a giant room containing the herensuge, but instead they entered a cozy library, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, overstuffed leather chairs, and a fire roaring in the fireplace.
The room was clearly decorated by someone with expensive taste and too much money. On the mantel was a candelabra with seven white candles. On the far wall, a giant painting of an old man glowered at them with cold, glittering eyes. He looked like a king—or at least like he behaved like one. He had one hand resting on a globe, while the other held a cigar. The gold nameplate on the ornate frame simply read: SCHMOKE.
The room was deserted, but two tiny glasses on the table—half full of pale yellow liquid—indicated that someone had been there quite recently.
“This can’t be right!” whispered Elliot. “The map said this would be a big room with incredibly robust fire safety.”
“Are you sure you remembered the right route?” Uchenna wondered. “Maybe it was right, left, right downstairs, right, left? Or right, left, downstairs, left, right, right?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Elliot. “I can picture the map in my mind. There should be a big door exactly—HMPH!”
Just then, Professor Fauna grabbed both children, smothering their mouths with his big hands, and yanked them against a wall. They tried to struggle, but he kept their heads pinned to his chest. Uchenna grabbed his arm and tried to pull it away, but he was too strong. Elliot shimmied to the left and right, but the professor held him tight.
This was it.
They had flown in an airplane with a weird social studies teacher to the Basque Country, without telling their parents, gone with him into the basement of an empty pharmaceutical plant, and now this was the end. Of course it was.
Elliot began to whimper.
“¡Mala palabra!” Professor Fauna hissed. “Be quiet, children! And stay still!” He yanked them behind a piece of mahogany furniture and shoved them to the ground.
As they hit the plush carpet, the children saw the fireplace sliding sideways and heard voices echoing . . . from inside the fireplace.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
At first, the voices from the fireplace were unintelligible. But as they grew louder, the words became clearer.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Milton,” one of the voices said. It was gravelly and confident. “These things take time. Íñigo here says this dragon saliva will produce the cure-all, and I believe him.”
Three men emerged from behind the fireplace. Two of them wore expensive blue suits, and though one was tall and fit and the other was short and fat, they were, very obviously, brothers. Their eyes glittered like cut gemstones. They had the same thin brown hair on top of high, shining foreheads. They shared the same complacent, I’m-so-rich-I-could-buy-you smile.
They were, of course, the Schmoke brothers.
; The third man was a little older, and if you gave him a mustache and a black beret, he would have looked exactly like Mitxel Mendizabal. He wore a suit, too, but even Uchenna and Elliot could tell that it was a lot cheaper than the Schmokes’. He was carrying a clipboard.
The taller Schmoke reached up to the mantel and yanked the candelabra to the right. The fireplace slid slowly back into its natural position.
Professor Fauna’s grip on the children relaxed. Uchenna moved her head so she had a better view. Elliot began to pray.
“Mr. Schmoke,” said Íñigo Mendizabal to the taller man. “Mr. Schmoke,” he said again, looking at the shorter man. “You must understand, these things take time. But with a little more effort, I’m sure we will soon see results.”
While Íñigo was talking, the Schmokes walked across the room to retrieve their glasses. They stood in front of the sideboard, only inches from where the children and Professor Fauna were hiding.
“I thought you said you grew up with this thing,” Edmund, the shorter Schmoke brother, growled.
The taller Schmoke, Milton, suddenly turned to his brother. In a gentle voice, barely above a whisper, he said, “Edmund, has Íñigo been lying to us?”
“No, no, of course not, Mr. Schmoke, and Mr. Schmoke!” stammered Íñigo. “I am . . . confident . . . yes, confident! . . . that within the month my scientists will be able to synthesize the compound for mass production.”
“Ha! Mass production?” Edmund Schmoke scoffed. “Who said anything about mass production?”
Íñigo was confused. “Isn’t that why we’re doing this? So that we can produce a miracle cure in our factory? A medicine like that would help a lot of people. And I’m sure it would be very valuable.”
Elliot nudged Uchenna.
But Milton Schmoke shook his head like he’d just heard a really bad joke. “Íñigo, my boy. Schmoke Industries already sells plenty of medicine,” he said. “We’re good at it, and we make a lot of money. Why would we come out with a product that competes with the stuff we already make?” He knocked on the side of his head to show how dumb he thought that idea was. “We’re not going to sell this medicine.”
“Th-then, what are we doing this for?” Íñigo asked.
“You see,” Edmund Schmoke explained, “we inherited a number of things from our dear old dad. Our dashing good looks, for one. Some money, too, though honestly not all that much by our current standards. And we also inherited an unfortunate case of hereditary baldness.”
He pointed a thumb at the portrait on the wall, in which thin wisps of hair were combed from one side of the man’s skull to the other. They did a terrible job of hiding that the top of his head was completely bare.
“It hasn’t hit us yet, but it’s in our genes. We know it’s coming, and we’re going to be ready.”
Uchenna elbowed Elliot. His mouth was hanging open.
Íñigo, too, was shocked. “You went into business with me—and persuaded me to help you get the herensuge—so you wouldn’t go bald? I trusted you! When you came to me asking about the herensuge, you said no harm would come to her, and we’d make the world a better place.”
“And the world will be a better place!” Edmund Schmoke responded. “Can you imagine what a sad, dark place it would be if the world’s handsomest billionaires were bald?”
Íñigo appeared speechless.
“Don’t forget, we also paid you a lot of money to make this happen,” growled Milton Schmoke, pointing a thin finger in Íñigo’s face. “Once we’re done here with the dragon, we’ll use this laboratory to make mustache wax, or maybe self-tanning spray, or something else cheap and profitable. And you’ll get your fair share. But if you’re not happy with this arrangement, I’m sure we can find another business partner who’d love to take your seat on the board of directors.”
“Milton,” said Edmund Schmoke, “I’m sure Íñigo knows how lucky he is to have this opportunity.”
“Well, my patience is starting to run out,” he replied. “If the experiment doesn’t yield a positive result in the next forty-eight hours, we may have to renegotiate our deal. You know me, I don’t tolerate”—sniff, sniff—“do you smell fish?”
Professor Fauna and the children kept perfectly still. None of them made even the faintest sound. Even Jersey’s faint breathing inside the backpack stopped. Uchenna inhaled slowly. The smell of fish was definitely wafting from the backpack.
Edmund sniffed the air. “It must be the oysters we ate before our little inspection. That fool butler, Phipps, probably spilled some on our rug.”
“It’s such a nice rug. And so expensive,” Milton observed. “I guess we’ll just have to withhold Phipps’s pay to cover the cost of replacing it.”
“A word of advice, Íñigo,” Edmund Schmoke said, turning to his unhappy business partner. “Good help is hard to find. But even mediocre help is worth holding on to if you can dock their wages so much they have to work for free.” He burst out laughing, and his brother joined him.
Chuckling and patting each other on the back, the Schmokes left the library through the non-fireplace door. Íñigo Mendizabal followed obediently behind, head down and shoulders slumped.
CHAPTER TWENTY
When the room was clear, Professor Fauna slowly released the children. They rolled out from underneath the sideboard, stretching their necks and cramped legs. Elliot and Uchenna glanced at the professor. He had scared them, grabbing them like that. But he had been saving them from being spotted by the Schmoke brothers. He had meant well. Maybe he always meant well . . . But then what explained his suspicious behavior whenever the Schmokes came up?
“Why are you standing there gaping at me, children?” Professor Fauna demanded. “Let us save the herensuge!” He strode to the fireplace. Uchenna and Elliot shook themselves and followed. Jersey scrabbled at the inside of his backpack, eager to be let out. The professor grabbed the candelabra and pulled it to the left.
The fireplace groaned and lurched open, revealing a dark passageway behind it.
“I knew I hadn’t misremembered the map,” Elliot said. “I just hadn’t accounted for a cheesy secret passage!”
“Cheesy?” Uchenna laughed. “There’s no such thing as a cheesy secret passage.”
“Come on. Fireplace and candelabra? It’s the kind of thing I used to imagine when I was like five years ol—”
“Children!” Professor Fauna interrupted. “While I find your argument fascinating, it would be wise to continue on our journey before those horrible men come back.”
As they walked through the fireplace, cool, damp air blew past them from deeper in the passage. The only light came from bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling. The walls were rough, and the floor was covered with gravel and the occasional larger rock. It sloped gently downward. The fireplace began to close behind them.
“I think we’ve left the building and are inside the mountain,” Elliot observed. “This was not on the map.”
“Maybe they’ve got lots of dragons down here,” said Uchenna. “Like the seven-headed one.”
“That wasn’t a real dragon, Uchenna,” the professor reminded her.
“Says you,” she replied.
Professor Fauna led the way deeper into the cave, following the shiny pipes and cables attached to the cavern walls. The tunnel took a hairpin turn so they were going back in the direction they’d come—except deeper and deeper into the earth. Then, the narrow passage opened onto a huge chamber.
The room was bigger than the school cafeteria, and the ceiling was so high that the light from the lightbulbs on the walls didn’t illuminate it. The only thing visible above were the tips of pointy stalactites, which glistened as they dripped water to the cave floor.
In the center of the chamber was a small wooden desk covered in papers. On the nearby wall, a number of machines hummed and dials glowed in the darkness. And in
the shadows on the far side of the chamber they saw bars. Steel bars.
The steel bars of a massive cage.
Elliot and Uchenna hesitated, staring across the great chamber. Was there a dragon in that cage? A real dragon? Was it possible? From inside the backpack, Jersey started whimpering.
“Okay,” murmured Uchenna. “Here we go.”
She strode past the desk and into the shadows. The cage loomed larger and larger and larger. How big could it be? It was nearly as big as Mr. Mendizabal’s house. But it appeared to be . . . unoccupied.
“Guys, I don’t think there’s anything in here.”
Jersey was whimpering louder. Elliot and Professor Fauna walked up behind Uchenna. The cage was dark and looming . . . and empty.
“There’s no dragon here,” said Elliot. “You know, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m actually kind of disappointed not to be face-to-face with a dragon right now.”
Jersey was scratching uncontrollably at the inside of the backpack. “Okay, okay,” Uchenna said. She unzipped the main compartment of it. In a shot, Jersey leaped out and scrambled down to the stone floor.
“Hey! Wait!” Uchenna shouted. But Jersey didn’t wait. He went careening around the side of the cage, his wings speeding his little legs along. Uchenna bolted after him, with Elliot and the professor right behind her.
Jersey ran down the long side of the steel cage until he suddenly came to a claw-and-hoof-scrabbling stop. He stood on the stone floor, his limbs quivering, his little chest heaving. He whined and whimpered and stared at the cage.
“What is it?” Uchenna said. “Jersey, what do you see?”
Elliot grabbed her arm. “That. That’s what he sees.”
Jersey had found the dragon.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE