Watch began sniffing as soon as the Aldens and Soo Lee arrived at QuestMaster. A security guard recognized them from their earlier visit and let them in. Watch could tell right away that dogs were welcome there.
Tracker came out from hiding under C.D.’s computer desk.
“Hi, Tracker,” Jessie said. “Meet Watch. Watch, meet Tracker.” She turned to the other children. “Well, the dogs are here, but where are the people?”
The design studio was deserted. Not even C.D. seemed to be around. Tracker and Watch soon began chasing each other around the empty office.
“This place is going to the dogs,” Henry joked. He checked his watch. “I wonder if we got the time wrong.”
“Hello! Hello!” Jessie shouted, but no one answered back.
Where was everyone? Finally the children heard footsteps.
“Hey, Aldens,” C.D. said when he came into the studio. “What brings you here?”
The children didn’t speak at first. They just stared at one another in confusion.
“Isn’t there a meeting at one o’clock?” Henry asked. “We got an e-mail this morning saying to come here. Are you EyeSpy? I thought maybe you were using a funny screen name.”
C.D. laughed. “It’s not me. I have a feeling someone was playing a prank on you. Sorry about that. Sometimes people on my staff get bored and start sending funny e-mails. There’s no meeting scheduled.”
Jessie wondered about this. “But the message wasn’t funny. It said to come to a meeting today. It also said not to use the network and that somebody would come to fix it.”
C.D. looked confused now. “We haven’t had any network problem that I know of. We’re still looking for bugs in Ringmaster II. And I’ve been having problems with that new feature for Ringmaster III that Jane created. Now she’s telling me she can’t get it to work anymore. She went off to Hampstead this morning for a special computer chip she heard about that might get her idea working again.”
“Does it have anything to do with Ringmaster II?” Benny asked. “There’s a two-headed character named Nadje.”
“Nadje?” C.D. asked. “Are you sure of the name? I’ve never heard of any two-headed character. Sounds interesting. When did you discover this character?”
“This morning,” Henry said. “That’s the weird thing. When we played the Ringmaster II software here the other day and then at home, we didn’t see any Nadje character.”
“Or any sign on the castle that said ‘The Brass Horn,’ either,” Violet added. “That’s the same name as the restaurant in Greenfield where we just saw—”
Jessie gently poked Violet. She didn’t feel right about telling C.D. that they had spied Jane Driver in the restaurant when C.D. thought she was in Hampstead.
C.D. booted up the nearest computer, which happened to be Ned’s. “Okay, Aldens, see if you can bring up this Nadje character somewhere in this game.”
Henry and Jessie tried to remember what keys they had hit when they discovered Nadje. But every time they got to the onscreen castle, only the evil Wumps appeared.
“Are you sure you’re doing it right?” C.D. asked. “I don’t see this Nadje character. And there’s no sign over the castle, either.”
“Maybe we accidentally hit some wrong keys,” Jessie said. “That might have brought up parts of the game someone left in by mistake when they were designing it,” Jessie said.
Before they could say anything to C.D., though, he had turned off the game, for something else on Ned’s screen caught his attention. “What on earth ...” he murmured. He opened up a file marked “Head Shots,” and suddenly several rows of color photographs appeared on the screen.
“Wow!” said Henry.
“Ned shouldn’t have these,” said C.D. in a serious tone.
“Is it the secret?” asked Soo Lee.
“They look like pictures of people who work at QuestMaster,” Jessie said. “And some of their dogs. I’m confused. Why shouldn’t Ned have them?”
C.D. didn’t answer right away. When he did, he spoke very carefully. “I can’t really tell you every detail. These photos are part of Jane’s new idea. It’s too complicated to explain here, but there’s no reason Ned should have these.”
C.D. walked over to Jane’s workstation.
He clicked to open a file on her computer screen and the same row of photos appeared. “Ned must have copied her files,” he said.
“He was spying on Jane at the Brass Horn Restaurant,” Benny blurted out before anyone could stop him. “We saw him spying when we were hiding behind our menus.”
“Benny!” Jessie interrupted. “We don’t really know what was going on, C.D. All of us were just having lunch today at the Brass Horn, and so were Jane and Ned.”
“What?” C.D. said, his voice rising. “Jane is in Hampstead. She left a couple hours ago. As for Ned, I sent him over to your place to drop off a new computer mouse that works better with Ringmaster II. Then I asked him to run some errands for me. Of course, he can go anywhere he wants for lunch, so I guess he did.”
“So that’s why Ned was at our house today,” said Benny. “He came to our door, but Watch started barking, then Ned went away.”
C.D. smiled. “Well, Ned gets kind of grouchy with the way I run QuestMaster, what with dogs and kids and all. And he didn’t want to go to your house in the first place.”
“How long has Ned been at QuestMaster?” Henry asked.
“Since before there even was a QuestMaster,” C.D. said. “I brought him over from another computer company. And when I realized how good Andy was with computers, I asked him to work for us, too. Ned’s always been the one with the big ideas,” C.D. continued. “Now Jane is coming up with some amazing things to do with our games. But it looks like Ned is spying on Jane’s work.”
The dogs began barking. They raced to the hallway. A door banged.
Ned Porter walked in, carrying a pile of boxes. “Call the dogs away, if you don’t mind,” he said to C.D. and the Aldens in a grouchy voice. “Is this an office or a dog pound?”
“Both!” C.D. said.
If C.D. hoped this would make Ned smile, he was wrong. Ned set the boxes down on a nearby table. He gave one of them to the Aldens. “I was supposed to give you this new computer mouse this morning, but that dog of yours chased me away.”
“It’s because you ran away,” Benny said. “Once Watch meets most people, he’s friendly.”
“I came back to get a few things from my desk before I head home,” Ned told C.D. “I’ve been fooling around with some new things on my home computer.”
C.D. paused before he spoke. “Anything you want to share with the staff, Ned?”
“Nope,” Ned replied. He stuffed the photos on his desk into a folder and headed for the door.
“Had lunch yet?” C.D. asked.
Same answer. “Nope,” he said, then he left the studio.
C.D. shook his head. “I’m going to have a private talk with Ned about those photos and about the ‘Head Shots’ file. I hoped he’d tell me on his own, but no such luck. And he lied about having lunch, too. I don’t know what I can say about that.”
Violet looked a little upset. “Maybe Ned didn’t lie about lunch. He was just standing in the restaurant right behind Jane Driver and the two people she was with.”
C.D. straightened up. “What two people? Do you remember what they looked like, Violet?”
Violet wasn’t sure.
“I remember,” Benny said. “I think one was tall with a bushy beard.”
C.D.’s face went pale. “A man with a beard and ... was the other man bald?”
“We couldn’t tell,” said Benny. “He was wearing a hat.”
“I hope they don’t turn out to be who I think they are,” said C.D.
“Who?” Henry asked.
C.D. looked upset. “They’re two people I used to work with a few years back. Now they’ve founded a game company, too. It’s called Comet Interactive Games. We went our separate ways when I discovered I couldn’t trust them.”
“Do you trust us?” Benny asked. “We were hiding behind our menus and spying in the restaurant.”
C.D. smiled a little. “Everybody enjoys people-watching in restaurants, Benny. I think that’s okay if you don’t stare or make them uncomfortable.”
“They didn’t see us,” Benny continued. “Then lunch came, and that was more fun. And now we’re here.”
C.D. thought about this. “Yes, you’re all here. Now I wish Jane were here, too. I need to get to the bottom of this.” |