Mask on the Cruise Ship Read Online Free Page A

was an “AAAGGH!” as the man fell back, back … into one of the firs separating our yard from the neighbors’.
    I saw the man was dressed head-to-toe in black, including turtleneck, pants and hiking boots.
    The evergreen he smashed backward against buckled under his weight. Then the tree trampolined him forward again. He slid straight down to thump in a painful heap on Mother’s snapdragons.
    There were voices behind me, on the stairs.
    â€œWhat the — ?” Mr. Wellman erupted.
    â€œProperty destruction?” came Pantelli’s admiring voice. “Cool, Dinah.”
    From Mother, in an apologetic tone to Julie, “Somehow a household with Dinah in it is never quiet, if you know what I mean.”
    â€œIt’s not my fault,” I objected, as the others joined me on the balcony. I pointed to the masked man, who was picking himself up with difficulty from the flattened snapdragons. “Bet it’s your inept thief again, Julie.”
    Julie could only moan.
    Deciding to be a bit more practical, I started to charge downstairs after the thief — but Mother and Madge held me back. “No tangling with criminals,” Mother warned. “We leave on our cruise tomorrow.”
    Mr. Wellman punched in 911 on his cell phone. He had to plug a finger into his free ear and retreat inside the house to make the call, though, because at that moment our beefy neighbor stomped outside.
    â€œWHO’S BEEN ATTACKING MY TREE?” yelled Liesl’s uncle, Mr. Dubuque. He waved a hairy, white-knuckled fist at the fir tree.
    He had a point. The tree was now bent slightly back, out of line with the orderly row of the rest of the trees. The Dubuques, I knew, did like to be orderly.
    â€œYou’ll need a gigantic splint for the tree,” Pantelli called down helpfully. “And don’t forget to talk to the tree while you prop it back into place. Trees hear , you know.”
    Doubtless Pantelli meant well, but Mr. Dubuque only grew angrier. He spluttered out some words that Madge and I had always been strictly forbidden to use.
    Meanwhile, the masked burglar was hobbling into the Dubuques’ backyard.
    â€œHim!” Mother, Madge and I shouted, pointing along the side of our house at the burglar.
    â€œHer!” shouted Liesl, pointing at me.
    In fairness, from where she stood, Liesl probably hadn’t seen the burglar. But there was nothing fair in her expression. In Liesl’s sharp white face, her dark eyes glittered with malicious pleasure.
    What was worse, Talbot then laughed.
    â€œI might have known,” wailed Mr. Dubuque, glowering up at me.
    â€œDon’t be silly, Albert,” said Mother, a rare impatient note in her voice. “Dinah isn’t Hercules. She’s not able to twist trees out of shape.”
    Trust Mother, in a crisis, to respond with a literary reference. Mother loved books — in fact, she was finishing her last course before getting her library science degree.
    However, the reference was lost in the approaching wail of police sirens. The masked burglar hobbled out the Dubuques’ back gate into the alley.
    I glared at Talbot — and at Liesl, who, smirking at all the commotion, was pulling at her wedge.

Chapter 4
A simply smashing launch
    P ULL ONLY IN CASE OF EMERGENCY.
    I studied the sign over the glass-encased, red fire alarm on the Empress Marie ’s deck. One of her decks, to be precise. There were eleven on the 91,000-ton ship that had initially reminded me of a fat white bar of soap. Some bar of soap. Steel, glass and marble a thousand feet long, with a beam (that’s nautical for width at a ship’s very widest part) of 105 feet wide.
    â€œThere won’t be any emergency, small fry,” Jack assured me, his gray eyes amused. “Not with Mr. Trotter around, running the Empress like a drill sergeant.”
    We’d already seen the program manager. He’d fluttered by us, patting his