Meeting Mr. Mugler

The front door popped open, and Mugler stuck his head out, smoothing his thin black hair. "Come on in," he said in a quick, tight voice, looking around the yard again. "I've got something for you."

                                  ~

Davy had pulled to the side of the road two houses down from the one at the end of the street, curious as to what Tom and his dad would learn from the man who lived there. It seemed they merely wanted to discover if the postal workers knew who had mailed the letter they had received, but something about the whole thing seemed fishy.

With his spy equipment—flying bugs sound trappers with thermo-magnetically heightened microphones and molded earpieces—Davy heard every word exchanged in the post office and had found it quite interesting.

The name Mugler Georges didn't ring a bell, but Mistress Christine certainly didn't tell him about every person she came across in her travels. Maybe she'd interrogated Georges about the whole affair. That would have been enough to drive any man crazy. The way Mugler had acted at his own house—all nervous and paranoid before letting the two strangers in—sure seemed to support the "crazy" theory.

Davy picked up his eavesdropping gadget and summoned the bugs, which flew towards the house, then reinserted his earpieces. It took a few seconds to pinpoint the murmurs of the conversation as the bugs had not settled. Not very long, it became clear, and the bugs automatically locked into a place as best they could. Davy settled back to have a listen. The first thing he heard made his eyes widen. It was the voice of the man named Mugler.

"Here you go. The small jingles and shambles box-like robot told me it's called the sixth clue."

                                          ~

"Box-like robot?" Tom asked, holding the yellow envelope like his life depended on it. "Who gave this to you?"

They sat in a messy living room, not a single piece of furniture matching any of the others. At least it's cool, Tom thought. He and his dad sat on a frumpy couch that leaned towards the middle, facing Mugler on his rickety old chair, where he wrung his hands and rocked back and forth.

"Small box-like robot. It looked like a tool box with many noisy bip-bops, like a lost toy." Mugler answered in almost a whisper. "Just about to scare me out of my pants, what with him a-coming out of the old graveyard behind my house."

The mention of the cemetery made Tom's ears perk up. It can't be a coincidence. . . .it must be related somehow to the fourth clue and where he was supposed to go on August sixth.

"Did it say anything else to you?" Dad asked. "Talk to you at all?"

"Not a lot." Mugler's fidgeting made Tom's head dizzy. "He said some real smart kids would come looking for me and I should give them that letter. Gave me several copies. I don't know about you fellas, but when some strange talking small bot from nowhere tells me to do something, I'm gonna pretty much do it. Who knows if it has a killer bomb or gas or anything lethal? So there you go." 

  Tom inserted his thumb under the flap and started ripping open the envelope as Mugler kept talking. 

"Since that piece of parcel looked just like the ones from the British fella, and since I figured the British fella was an enemy of the dark crystal-eyed lady, I reckoned I'd be a-doing a good task."

Tom stopped just before pulling out the white plain paper of the sixth clue. "British? Who was British?"

His dad leaned forward, a surprisingly difficult task that made the pitiful couch groan like a captured wolverine. "Mr. Georges, I'm more confused than the Easter bunny at a Christmas party. Could you please tell us everything you know about the letter we got from Alsace and who sent it? Maybe start from the beginning?"

"The Easter bunny at a—" Tom began, a questioning smirk on his face.

"Son, be quiet."

Mugler finally settled back in his chair and began his story, seemingly relieved that he'd been given direction on how to go about this conversation. Though Tom desperately wanted to read the next clue, he slipped it inside his diary and listened to the strange man from Alsace.

  "I'd worked there at the post office in Mulhouse for twenty-plus years, and I was just as happy as could be. Well, as happy as a single man in his fifties who smells a little like boiled cabbage can be." Tom involuntarily sniffed at this point, then tried to cover it up by scratching his nose. Mugler continued without noticing.

  "Then they had to come along to ruin my life. It was a warm day in April—of course, every day is warm in April when you live up here, if you know what I mean. Anyway, first this little chubby British gent, who I don't know his name, dressed all fancy-like, comes walking into my shop holding a box of letters that looked just like the one I gave you." He pointed at the diary in Tom's lap. "Goes off about how they need to get out right away, do-da, do-da."

Tom decided that the last part was Mugler's way of saying "etcetera" and held in a laugh.

  "I assured the fella I'd take care of it and he left, all fuming. It wasn't a half hour later when the scariest woman I've ever laid eyes upon came a-stomping in, dressed from head to toe in nothing but black. And she has over-floating hair—a full head of hair lined smoothly with white lining on one side. She has a scarf too, black also. She called herself Mistress Christine, and she was mean. I'm telling you, mean. You could feel it coming off her in waves." Mr. Mugler shivered.

"What did she want?" Dad asked.

"She was a-looking for the chubby man, which told me right away that the British gent must be a good guy, because sorceress Christine surely wasn't."

Tom felt like the final mystery of a great book had been revealed to him. The source of the letters suddenly had a description, a confirmed human. He was no longer a couple of initials and a blurred or imagined image. M.S. was really a man, a chubby man from England. And he was a good guy.