Mister Monday Read Online Free PDF Page B

words would be spelled properly.
    “It says A Compleat Atlas of the House and Immediate Environs ,” Arthur read aloud. “The letters all moved around.”
    “Hi-tech,” said Ed, but he didn’t sound very convinced, or convincing.
    “Magic,” said Leaf, very matter-of-fact. “Open it up.”
    Arthur tried to open the book, but the covers wouldn’t budge. It wasn’t as if they were stuck together. He could see the pages rippling a bit between the covers like they were free, but he simply couldn’t open the book. Even when he applied so much force that he would have ripped the covers off any normal book.
    The sudden effort made him cough, and then it was hard to get his breath back. He could feel another asthma attack coming on, that sudden tightening of the lungs. The monitor that was checking the oxygen level in his blood began to beep, and there was the sudden sound of a nurse’s hurrying footsteps in the corridor outside.
    “Uh-oh, I guess that our set’s over,” said Leaf.
    “Did you see if the dog-faced men found anything?” Arthur wheezed hurriedly. “A piece of metal?”
    “Like what?”
    “The minute hand of a clock,” Arthur gasped out. “Silver, with gold inlay.”
    Ed and Leaf both shook their heads.
    “All right, visiting time is over,” said the nurse as she hurried over. “We can’t get Master Penhaligon overexcited.”
    Arthur grimaced at being called Master Penhaligon. Ed and Leaf mirrored his reaction and Leaf made a gagging sound.
    “Okay, Arthur,” said the nurse, who was no fool. “Sorry about that. I was on the children’s ward all morning. Now get going, you two.”
    “We didn’t see anything like you mentioned,” Ed said. “And the dog-fay…the dogs were gone this morning. But the whole oval had been dug up and then the turf replaced. They did a good job; you couldn’t tell from a distance. I couldn’t believe they did it so quickly.”
    “The whole oval?” asked Arthur. That didn’t make sense. He’d buried the clock hand somewhere in the middle. Surely as soon as they found it they’d stop digging? Or were they just covering up what they were doing?
    “Out!” said the nurse. “I have to give Arthur an injection.”
    “All of it,” confirmed Leaf from the door. “We’ll come back and see you later!”
    “Tomorrow,” said the nurse firmly.
    Arthur waved good-bye, his mind racing. He hardly paid attention as the nurse instructed him to roll over, lifted his ridiculous hospital gown, and swabbed the area she was about to inject.
    Mister Monday and Sneezer. Who could they possibly be? From what they’d said, the minute hand was part of some Key that Mister Monday had given to Arthur in the expectation that he would die. Then Monday would take it back. And the whole plan had been set up by Sneezer, but there was some double cross involved. At the end, Sneezer was under the power of something else. Those glowing words. The same ones that had given him the notebook. The Compleat Atlas that he couldn’t open, so it didn’t really matter how “compleat” it was.
    Arthur had taken the minute hand—he would call it a Key, he decided—and he hadn’t died. So whatever it was, he felt as if he still owned it. Though the dog-faced men in the bowler hats probably worked for Mister Monday. If they’d dug up the whole oval, then they would have found the Key for sure and taken it back to him.
    Maybe that would be the end of the whole mystery, but Arthur didn’t think so. He felt a deep certainty that something was only just beginning. He’d been given the Key and the Atlas for a reason, and he would find out what it was. Everyone in his family said that he was too curious about everything. This was the biggest thing he’d ever encountered to be curious about.
    I’ll get the Key back, for starters , he thought fiercely, thrusting his hands under his pillow as the prick of the needle brought him back to the immediate reality.
    As he felt the injection going in,