Molly Moon & the Morphing Mystery

Molly looked at Micky and raised her eyes to the ceiling. He narrowed his eyes at the female crowd, then made a tiny gesture of a shrug to Molly. Molly breathed out irritatedly. “It better be good,” she said, returning to the third sofa and leaning against its back.

“And quick,” Micky muttered, joining his sister.

“Well, we spotted you quite a while ago, Molly,” Miss Hunroe began. “Word got to us that you had moved into Briersville Park. We were suspicious to start with. We were aware of the huge success you had had in America, starring in a Broadway show, and we calculated how much money you had made.” Miss Hunroe pulled some cuttings from newspapers out of an envelope. They were from American newspapers.

“‘Moon is out of this world!’” Miss Hunroe read. “‘Molly Moon has eclipsed Davina Nuttel and taken her part in Stars on Mars. Last night the whole of Manhattan was alive with the gossip. Who is this Molly Moon? Nobody knows…’ And so it goes on.”

Molly hung her head. She was slightly ashamed of how she had conned her way to the top in Manhattan.

Miss Hunroe continued. “At first we thought you were a bad egg. But then we saw how you used the money to help the other children in the orphanage that you grew up in. We saw your loyalty to them, especially your good friend Rocky. Then it all clicked into place. We realized that that huge twenty-five-room house, Briersville Park, was in fact your family home. For though you are called Moon, you are really a Logan—the great-great-granddaughter of Dr. Logan who wrote the phenomenal book Hypnotism: An Ancient Art Explained.”

Molly bit her lip. It was really odd how these women knew so much about her life.

“I don’t know whether you realize this, but the world is full of hypnotists,” Miss Hunroe stated. “Full of people who have mastered the ancient art.” She paused. “It has to be said, very few are as good as you. It’s an honor to meet you,” Miss Hunroe said smoothly. “My friends and I are elite members of the National Society of Hypnotists. Only a small proportion of these registered hypnotists are truly talented. There are very few time stoppers, and there are even fewer time travelers. What’s more, I have yet to come across a mind reader….”

A shiver went up Molly’s back as Miss Hunroe spoke. She wondered whether Miss Hunroe somehow knew about Molly’s secret mind-reading skill. Molly really didn’t want this to be exposed now. Her heart galloping, Molly decided to read Miss Hunroe’s mind again. She knew that what she was doing would be invisible to everyone in the room, and yet she found her nerves were on edge as she did it—as though this time, she was going to be caught. What are you thinking? Molly thought to Miss Hunroe.

A bubble popped up again over the blond-haired woman’s head, and as she continued to talk, pictures in it, illustrating her words, appeared.

“As you might suspect, Molly and Micky,” Miss Hunroe continued, “not all hypnotists are good, kind people. Hypnotism can be used for a person’s own fulfillment, and if that person has no morals, and they don’t know the difference between right and wrong, these bad hypnotists can use their powers entirely for themselves. They can easily become powerful, influential, rich. Yes, bad hypnotists can be destructive without a care for the damage or suffering they are causing others.” Above Miss Hunroe’s hair, the thought bubble filled with pictures of different people in wonderful surroundings—a gray-haired woman in a large, lavishly furnished room, a Mexican-looking man sipping a cocktail on a yacht on a calm sea somewhere hot and tropical, and an ugly, tall man posing in front of a casino called Black’s Casino with a cigar in his hand. Then fast cars shot through the bubble, as well as racehorses and jet planes.

“I believe that you learned how to hypnotize from your ancestor Dr. Logan’s book. Am I right?” Now above Miss Hunroe’s head was the picture of a bespectacled man in Victorian clothes with a potato-shaped nose.

“Yes, that’s right,” Molly admitted.

Miss Hunroe continued. “That book holds lessons for hypnotizing animals, then people, long-distance hypnosis, crowd hypnosis, that sort of thing, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s true,” Molly agreed. And now, to check on the other women in the room, she opened thought bubbles over their heads, too. All were thinking about what Miss Hunroe was saying, except for Miss Suzette, who was thinking about a jam-and buttercream-filled cake, and then a chocolate cake, as though she was hungry and making her decision about which she would buy at the local café when this was all over.

Miss Hunroe flipped her coin. Then she asked lightly, “Did you know that your great-great-grandfather wrote a second book? Volume Two?”

Both Molly and Micky were taken completely by surprise at Miss Hunroe’s announcement. Molly saw that above all the women’s heads, their thought bubbles filled with the images of a heavy book, with an oval shape in each of its corners.