Dear Principal Henniker,

I know everybody thinks that my brother and I skipped school yesterday to go to George's Pool Hall just because we both had exams that we wanted to miss. But I was actually disappointed that I couldn't take my math test for which I was thoroughly prepared, and I know Eddie had studied hard the night before for his U.S. History test. The only reason we missed our tests at all is because we got hijacked on the way to school.

That morning, we were just walking along nonchalantly, minding our own business, heading down South Main Street past the Northfield Savings Bank, and really looking forward to acing the tests we would take that day, when suddenly a red Ferrari pulled up beside us. The driver, a woman with dark hair wearing a black cocktail dress with spaghetti straps, pulled out a Walther PPK. (We found out from the Northfield News later that her name was Patsy Petunia.) From my extensive study of the literary works of Ian Fleming, I knew full well that the Walther PPK is the preferred weapon of CIA assassins because of its deadly accuracy. So I advised Eddie that we were going to do exactly what Patsy wanted us to do.

We got in her car, and she quickly drove us down in back of the old Nantanna Mills. Once there, she led us to a medium sized room where a naked man who was obviously dead was sitting in front of a computer terminal. The dead man had a large tattoo on his chest depicting a rooster, of the type known as a Rhode Island Red, walking across a dirt road. Soon a bearded man who was also carrying a Walther PPK joined us. He said his name was Vim Wellander and he apologized for any inconvenience he had caused us.

"I need your help," he said. "My naked friend here, Jimmy Jaspers, was killed early this morning by persons unknown just as he was completing some important and very valuable formulas recorded on his computer. We need to get into his computer and copy the formulas, but we don't know the password."

I began to see why this guy thought we could help. Eddie and I together can just about crack into any computer you name, no matter how complex the password.

"So what do we get if we succeed?" I asked him.

"You get to live," he said, "plus our grateful thanks."

I looked at Eddie and Eddie looked at me. We decided right there to help the nice man so we wouldn't end up like the guy in the chair.

"So what can you tell us about Jimmy Jaspers that will give us a clue as to his password?" Eddie asked.

"Hmmm," Mr. Wellander began. "He is obssessed with the idea of discovering a method for producing anti-gravity. Early on he had some success in disproving part of Newton's original theory of gravity using bananas instead of apples, and this, he hoped, would be a key to the ultimate solution."

Eddie and I gave him puzzled looks.

"Well, think about it," he said. "Apples and bananas have different shapes, so different results. On top of that, he was able to use a variant of chaos theory to show how the banana's shape would give a different result. You're familiar with chaos theory, aren't you? The idea that a butterfly in Brazil can flap its wings and two weeks later it rains in New York City?"

"Oh yeah," Eddie said. "Or like if the CEO of Electronics Limited passes gas at a board meeting in Poughkeepsie, and three weeks later there's a tornado in frikkin' Saskatchewan." (Eddie didn't really say that but I don't want to get into even more trouble than I'm already in.)

"Exactly," Vim said. "A very colorful example but very much to the point. I shall have to remember that one."

Patsy who was sitting in the corner grimaced. She obviously wasn't impressed with all this scientific hoodoo. And Eddie looked at me like Vim was totally bananas, apples, plums and pears.

"Later on," Vim continued, "he realized that another part of the solution to anti-gravity might come about through discovering how Jesus was able to ascend into the air without any supports. Eventually, he discovered the history of a secret society that seemed to have the answer to how Christ had done this. It was known as the Prior Abbey of Mount Kinabalu, opened from 9 to 7 weekdays, closed weekends. In the Middle Ages, the society consisted of a group of monks who had discovered the secret of ascension, a secret that the Vatican wanted to suppress. So the monks fled to Borneo and set up their secret society at the base of Mount Kinabalu."

"So how did Christ do it?" I asked, more than a little impatient at all this folderol about an ultra secret society of religious crackpots. Eddie didn't seem very convinced either.

Vim said. "The secret is revealed in part on the tattoo on Jimmy's chest. The tattoo is a reproduction of a picture by Luigi Gambucchi, the famous eighteenth century itinerant artist who specialized in painting farm animals. But what most people never knew about him is that he was a grand master of the Prior Abbey of Mount Kinabalu, so he was in on the secret."

Vim showed us a list of names of grand masters. Luigi's name was there along with some really famous people, including Nicholas Flamel, Michelangelo, Isaac Newton, Jeremiah Ingalls, Charles Dickens, Albert Einstein, and Donald Duck. (Vim explained that he thought this was a code name for someone who worked at the Disney studios.) The next to the last name on the list was Elvis Presley, and the very last name was someone I'd never heard of: Heinrich Grubbelmeiser.

"So who is this guy Grubbelmeiser?" I asked Vim.

"Oh he is a very famous plumber from Las Vegas. We're pretty sure that Grubbelmeiser must have known Elvis because he was the plumber for Wayne Newton."

That one had us scratching our heads. Who the hell is Wayne Newton?

Anyway, Vim pointed out various features of the tattoo of the Rhode Island Red. We could see that there was a wolf hiding in the bushes on the left of the picture. The rooster appeared to be trying to get to the other side of the road in order to be safe. To the right of the road was an open field where many people were gathered to observe a very strange event. I would have sworn that the event in question was a depiction of the ascension of Jesus into heaven, but it was all wrong. Instead of being carried up into the clouds, the Christ figure was being beamed up to a ship that looked suspiciously like the Star Ship Enterprise.

"Are you saying that Christ was a space alien?" Eddie asked.

"Exactly," Vim said. "How else do you think Christ could have brought people back from the dead or walked on water?"

Eddie wasn't happy about this suggestion. He had served faithfully as an altar boy and St. John's, and he took his religion very seriously. "Well, did you ever think," he yelled, " that the real answer to Jesus' ascension is that he's the Son of God, and maybe you should show him more respect?!!!"

"Come on," Patsy shouted back. "We've waited long enough. Get us the password already."

Eddie calmed down, looked at me and whispered, "It just can't be that easy." I knew he had a good idea as to what the password was already, and so did I. After all, the picture was of a chicken crossing a road, the oldest joke in recorded history. And so the password had to be.....

Eddie turned the computer around, typed: "TOGETTOTHEOTHERSIDE" and pressed enter. Immediately, the computer screen lit up. The woman in the black dress was smiling and pointing her gun at the ceiling.

"I can't believe he did it," she said. "Is the formula there?"

"Yes," Vim said. "It's right there in that file."

But just at that moment, a bolt from a crossbow struck the computer's central processing unit, and the screen went black. Eddie and I hit the floor while Vim and Patsy started shooting out the windows at an unknown assailant. A fair number of bullets and crossbow bolts flew over our heads as the battle escalated. Eventually, Vim and Patsy were driven by the hail of bolts to a back room. At that point, the door opened and a strange man with a white beard carrying a crossbow entered.

"We've got to get out of here now before they come back," he said.

We didn't give him any argument. We ran out the door and headed up the road back to South Main. We didn't stop running until we reached George's Pool Hall on the Common.

"This is as good a place as any to hide," the man with the crossbow said. So we went inside and sat at a table in the back.

"So who exactly are you?" Eddie asked.

"I'm Heinrich Grubbelmeiser," he said.

"Wow, the Heinrich Grubbelmeiser that's the current grand master of the Prior Abbey of Mount Kinabalu, opened weekdays 9 to 7, closed weekends?" I asked.

"Not exactly," he said. "I'm really a federal marshal. I made up all that stuff about the Prior Abbey because I knew about Jimmy Jaspers's obsession with finding anti-gravity. The little crook has been financing his so-called research with money stolen from investors who are looking to get their money back."

"I see you wanted to prevent them getting those formulas," Eddie said.

"Those weren't really formulas," Heinrich said. "Jimmy Jaspers had his money squirreled away in special accounts in the Cayman Islands. Vim and Patsy had been hunting him down for a while trying to find the account numbers so they could have all the money for themselves. Early this morning, when they found him, they tried to torture him to get the password to his computer. When he died, they decided to grab you two to break into the computer."

"So that's what this is all about," I said. "Yup," said Heinrich. "Well, I gotta go. You two might as well stay here where you'll be relatively safe. I'll be back in a few hours."

He left but he never came back, so I guess Eddie and I spent all day at George's Pool Hall for nothing. That night we saw on WCAX News where Grubbelmeiser, in conjunction with local police, had managed to capture Vim and Patsy. I guess he forgot about us.

And that's what really happened. I think it's immensely unfair for Eddie and me to be in detention after getting abducted and shot at by those crazies. So I'm writing this so you'll cut us some slack, please? After all we helped foil a couple of dangerous criminals who are now behind bars.

Signed, Tommy Renfield