THE NOSE AND HIS PERFUME

Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven: The Nose Only Knows

“The Nose said he would show us his workshop,” Bunny assured Penny the next day, even though she felt as nervous as Penny looked to ask him for one.

She thought maybe if he showed them his workshop, they would find out more about XEssence.

“Do you remember that Peter Spark Basil told us about?” Beau asked, as they put on their boots to leave. Bunny and Penny nodded yes.

“I researched him.”

Bunny asked Beau if he had any luck finding anything out about the mysterious lost Spark.

“Yeah. His name came up in a newspaper article about our family,” Beau said. “He was really smart—he went to university when he was fifteen—but that was all I could find. There’s no mention of him anywhere as an adult. It’s like he just disappeared off the face of the earth.”

“Maybe he died,” Penny said.

“Maybe,” Beau said. “But I feel like I would have found an obituary or something, and the way Basil talked about him made it sound like he was still alive. I did find out one other thing though.”

“What?” Bunny asked.

“Peter wasn’t the only Spark to disappear. Did you know Thelonius Spark disappeared too?”

“Who?” Penny said.

“Thelonius Spark. He and Magnus Campbell founded the store. The official story was that Thelonius Spark was lost at sea, but no one believed it. There was no record of him being at sea in the first place and a lot of people claimed to have seen him when he was supposedly gone. Also, Thelonius Spark never went anywhere without Magnus Campbell—they were a team. It was in all the papers at the time, and the mystery of what happened to him was never solved.”

“I wonder how come Basil never told us that,” Bunny said. “He tells stories about them all the time.”

“I wonder what else Basil never told us,” Beau said.

The children took the elevator down to the basement. Bunny was expecting the basement to be as deserted as usual, but as they got off the elevator, she was surprised to see a strange man there. Though not particularly tall, he was beefy and practically filled the hallway widthwise. Identifying himself as one of Mr. Hartford’s security guards, the man demanded to know what the children were doing in the basement. Nervously talking fast, Bunny explained that Spark’s and Campbell’s was their family’s store and that they knew the Nose. Beau told him the Nose had promised them a tour of his workshop and was expecting them; which wasn’t exactly true, but close enough to sound convincing.

“Ask the Nose if you don’t believe us,” Beau added.

The guard grunted at them to come with him. The children clumped together behind him, following him to the Nose’s workshop. The man loudly pounded on the workshop door, and they heard the sound of the Nose knocking something over inside and swearing to himself.

The Nose flung open the door and barked, “What? I’m working.”

When the Nose saw the children, he frowned and worriedly glanced at the guard. The guard questioned if he knew them, and the Nose said yes, impatiently waving the guard away.

“I’m busy. What do you want?” the Nose snapped at the children, distractedly watching as the guard trudged halfway to his post, stopping at the top of the hall so he could see both the elevator and them.