Chapter 8
The technician had only been able to find one set of prints, and they belonged to the rightful owner of the chair.
Detective Chenture spent the next hour filling out paperwork and trying to explain the particulars of the case to his counterpart in Halifax. Drake spent the time at Ma's Diner, reviewing the files Chenture had given him. He stepped onto the sidewalk with a cheese chowder-induced glaze in his eyes. As he put his hand on the outside door to the station, he realized he left his fedora at the restaurant, so he went back to get it.
That action probably saved his life. Drake felt the ground suddenly heave beneath him as he tried to re-enter Ma's Diner. The pavement in front of the station buckled upward for a second before bursting open to reveal a shiny black mass that lifted itself to a height of seven feet on eight spindly legs. A high-pitched, if somewhat muffled, maniacal laugh could be heard from a transparent dome that sat on top.
Drake scrambled back to join the crowd that had gathered to watch. It was from this vantage point that he could see that the invader was a giant mechanical spider, piloted by a diminutive man with a huge balding head and wearing a lab coat. The machine appeared to be an accurate representation of black widow, with the addition of a large laser cannon in front and the dome over the thorax that covered the man and his one-button control panel. Drake recognized the man as Norton Nimnul, the most frequent character in Detective Chenture's files. Nimnul was a mad scientist who had begun his criminal career by generating an artificial earthquake under the Global Gold Depository--it was Drake's last case before he retired. Since then, "Professor" Nimnul had engaged in numerous attempts at getting rich and/or destroying the metropolis with his mechanical inventions, most of them inspired by animal models. He had been in and out of the precinct's jail more than a dozen times over the last two years, but his constant humiliations at the hands of the law only drove him further past the brink of insanity.
The crowd waited expectantly as the giant spider just stood there. Some kind of sound could be heard from the dome on top, but the thickness of the glass muffled it beyond recognition.
A representative of the crowd stepped forward. "I am dreadfully sorry," he announced loudly in a British accent, "but we cannot understand a word you are saying. How can we cower properly if we cannot hear your insane rants?" This was Mr. Clutchcoin, the richest man in town. He resembled the man on the Monopoly box, only with hair. Beside him was his wife, Mrs. Clutchcoin, who was indescribable.
Nimnul had a momentary fit as he realized he forgot to put an audio system on his latest engine of destruction. He pressed the lone glowing orange button on the control panel in front of him, which caused the legs of the mechanical arachnid to bend and lower its body to street level. While this was happening, Drake saw a squad car pull up, out of which emerged Muldoon and Kirby, their weapons drawn.
"HOW ABOUT NOW?" Nimnul asked, or rather, shouted. Despite this, the volume of his voice that could be heard by the crowd was still rather faint.
"Better," agreed Clutchcoin.
Satisfied, the mad scientist pulled a pile of notes out of his coat pocket. "CITIZENS OF WHATEVER CITY THIS IS!" he announced at the top of his lungs. "I, PROFESSOR NORTON NIMNUL, HAVE COME HERE ON THIS FINE WINTER'S DAY TO SETTLE MY DIFFERENCES WITH THE LOCAL CONSTABULARY BY BLASTING THIS STATION INTO ITS CONSTITUENT ATOMS.
"BUT FIRST, BECAUSE I AM A GENEROUS MAN, YOU ARE ALL FREE TO STAND AROUND AND LISTEN AS I EXPLAIN IN EXHAUSTIVE DETAIL WHY I AM THE MOST BRILLIANT SCIENTIST ON THIS OR ANY OTHER PLANET." By this time, Nimnul had shouted himself hoarse. He glanced down at the fifty eight pages of single-spaced proclamations he was holding and sighed. He then looked around the dome for a water bottle or at the very least a tin of lozenges among the power bar wrappers and other refuse that littered the floor of the dome, but he had left both of those on top of the stereo in his laboratory (which, coincidentally, looked an awful lot like the spider robot looked right now). This realization caused him to launch into another fit at his own expense. The crowd waited patiently, hoping for a repeat of the previous summer's orgy of destruction.
When he had calmed down again, Nimnul pushed the one button (now green) on his control panel, which caused the dome to roll back partway and allowed him to stick his head out. "Do you think you can still be suitably cowed without the dome?"
"Oh yes, certainly," said Mr. Clutchcoin. The crowd nodded in unison behind him.
Just then a bullet ricocheted off of the thorax of the giant spider right next to Nimnul. The scientist responded by jerking his head back in and slamming his hand down on the button, which caused the dome to slam back down.
Officer Kirby followed up with a second shot, which just bounced off of the bullet-proof glass.
"HEY!" shouted Nimnul faintly. Looking around, he was gratified to discover that he had remembered to bring a bullhorn with him. "I repeat, 'Hey!'" he announced with the help of the device. The crowd applauded at the successful solution to the audio problem. "What are you shooting at me for? I haven't destroyed anything yet!"
Officer Muldoon gestured at the remains of the street around them.
"Oh yeah, I forgot about that," Nimnul replied. "Well, you can't get me, so bleh!" he taunted, sticking out his tongue. He pressed the button on the control panel (now colored purple), which caused the spider to rise to its full height. "This dome is not only soundproof, but also bulletproof, Slim Whitman-proof, and, most importantly, completely rodent-proof!" he announced proudly. "Now, where was I?"