9

Leaving from the Los Robles Apartment House after picking up Sheldon, Raj drove the guys to go get Leonard over on Ocean Grove. Sheldon was wearing his 1990s Batman shirt and was carrying his original Batman Annual Number One for Adam West to sign, Raj had smeared white paint over his face and green stuff in his hair to resemble the fictional Gotham City psychopath known as the Joker and Howard was dressed as Robin the Boy Wonder, Batman's eternal sidekick. They stopped at a light on their way to get Leonard, and Leslie Winkle from the university pulled up alongside them in her Honda Hatchback. She smirked at Raj in white face with the green-tinged hair, but when she saw Howard in the Robin mask and yellow cape, she cracked up laughing.

"What's she laughing at?" Sheldon wondered out loud as she pulled away.

"I don't know…" Raj looked around. "I don't see anything."

"Neither do I…" Howard looked around.

"How can you see anything from under that mask?" Raj asked and made the turn on to Ocean Grove. Jimmy's place was three up from the corner with the high brick perimeter wall. The gates were occasionally left open, but this time, they were closed. A brief buzz at the intercom outside the gate and Leonard opened the gate for them from the house.

"Come on in, I'm ready…" His voice came through the speaker. The guys drove on through down the twenty-foot tree-lined driveway toward the front veranda around the outside fountain. Sheldon glared at the house obstinately as if it was mocking him. In his mind, he pictured Jimmy standing in an upstairs window laughing and plotting against him. He checked the windows looking for him, his eyes crisscrossing from the first floor to the garret windows. His ego however large and fragile fueled his internal rage. He wished Leonard never met him. Raj stopped the car out front under the front entryway, and Howard undid his seatbelt, opened his car and got out of the car.

"What are you doing?" Sheldon looked to Raj then Howard in the back seat. "We can't go in. We have to stick to the schedule. We have only have fifteen minutes to get to the Hallmark otherwise we won't get good seats."

"It's common courtesy…" Howard answered.

"I don's see how being courteous makes it so common." Sheldon sat in the car a few seconds more, begrudgingly rolled his eyes then forced himself to undo his seatbelt and get out of the car. Setting his feet out on the property, his face made that annoyed sneer up to Jimmy's residence.

"At Hell's heart at stab at thee…" He made another Star Trek reference stolen from Herman Melville. Howard and Raj just rolled their eyes and continued on to the concrete steps up to the front door. Eight feet off the ground and covered on top by the extended roof off the second floor, they heard their steps scraping the concrete. There was a slight variation in the sounds of their shoes on the old original concrete and the recent repaired concrete. The newer concrete sounded crisper, the older parts duller and heavier. Raj hesitated to rub the sweat from his eyes. Howard buzzed for Leonard. The inside latches of the huge oak door were being pushed aside to open it.

"Hey, guys," Leonard started pulling open the door. "Pull around the side and pick me up… oh, no!" Leonard stood in his Robin the Boy Wonder costume before Howard's Robin the Boy Wonder. Wanting to have the large front door locked and bolted from the inside as he left out the side kitchen entrance suddenly became secondary as he and Howard looked at each other's costumes.

"Oh, come on…" He looked at Howard's costume. "We can't both go there dressed as Robin." The guys started mulling into the front entryway.

"Yes, you can." Sheldon spoke up. "There were multiple Robins in DC Comics. Howard can be the Dick Grayson version, and you can be the Jason Todd version."

"Why can't I be the Dick Grayson version?" Leonard reacted as he rebolted the door and slid the iron latch back into place. "I don't want to be the one who gets killed by the Joker."

"How about…" Raj knew the comics mythology as well. "Leonard goes as the Dick Grayson Robin of Earth-One and Howard goes as the Dick Grayson Robin of Earth-Two."

"Why can't I be the Dick Grayson Robin of Earth-One?" Howard didn't like that solution.

"People, listen up…" Sheldon raised his voice. "We have ten minutes to get there in line. If we are getting seats in the first three rows, we must leave now. I am not taking minutes out of our stop at the refreshments counter."

"We have an hour before the movie starts." Leonard looked up through his mask and glasses. "Look, I'll just run up and put on my suit from the fund-raiser." He had a plan. "I found a top hat in Jimmy's grandfather's upstairs lab. If I add a monocle and carry an umbrella, I can tell people I'm the Penguin."

"We don't have time." Sheldon insisted but Leonard just ignored him and raced down the long hallway for the back stairs with his yellow cape flapping. "We have ten minutes… This is coming out of your bathroom time, Leonard!" He turned around with a moan. "Oh, I know I should have added thirty minutes to the schedule for miscellany."

"Leonard," Raj looked up to Leonard heading up the front staircase. "This Joker makeup is burning my eyes. Where's the nearest bathroom."

"Jimmy has one in his study." Leonard pointed the way from the overhead balcony and hastened to his room. Exchanging a look with Howard, Raj looked over to where Leonard had pointed and turned to the right of the house. Flanked by trophy cases and covered by a decorative dark blue curtain tied back with gold rope, the archway opened into a room that was part museum and part library. The room looked like a copy of Bullfinch's Mythology had exploded. It wasn't so much decorated in any style inasmuch as it was filled both orderly and disorderly with artifacts and books on every shelf. The Marilyn Monroe mannequin was dressed as Aphrodite in front of the bathroom, the wood-paneled walls behind her were decorated with maps of the ancient world from various eras. One of them had Troy marked at the same time as Sumeria, Gaul and Dacia. The far corner had a sarcophagus in it with a fake mummy in it, but the most populated objects were the relics. African totems, Polynesian tikis, Russian dolls and Native American pukas. Raj walked through barely acknowledging the artifacts for the bathroom to get his makeup out of his eyes. Howard mulled past the statues both large and small looking them over in partial interest. Behind him, Sheldon strolled in out of boredom with a wry smirk to his face.

"Hey, Raj, look what I found…" Howard found a Hindu statue of the goddess Kali with eight arms, bare breasts, a garland of skulls, wild hair and long tongue. "Kind of makes you feel at home, huh?"

"No, my dad's got the real thing in his study in India." Raj had cleaned off the body paint that was burning his eyes. "Only, his is bigger and is made of solid silver."

"Really?" Howard noticed the sticker under the base. It was marked, "Ayodha, India, 1944 reproduction." He tried to remember where he had picked it up from to place it back then noticed a two-foot high phallic-shaped figure of the statue of Artemis the mother-goddess of Ephesus with multiple breasts

"Here's a girl I'd love to meet." Howard showed it to Raj. "Can you imagine trying to get her bra off? It'd take you all night."

Raj grinned and started snickering.

"How about this one?" Raj picked up a Syrian marble carving of a male warrior with extended genitalia. "You think he's got enough naked statues?" They were giggling like adolescent boys. Sheldon meanwhile stopped and sat down at Jimmy's desk under the bear head on the wall.

"I got an idea." Howard put the Syrian piece close to the Ephesian piece. "When we get back, maybe they'll be a bunch of baby statues all around them." They started cracking up with bales of laughter. Sheldon glanced momentarily over Jimmy's desk and started straightening it, dumping his loose pencils in their holder, picking up a book with work and notes in the pages and aligning his blotter with the edge of the desk.

"Tricca, Greece, 1985…" Howard lifted and read the stickers under the artifacts. "Uchte, Germany, 1897… Yoruba tribe, Dahomey, 1976…" He picked up a skinny figurine carved from a piece of wood.

"It's Polynesian Maori." Sheldon claimed sitting in Jimmy's seat.

"Jimmy has it tagged on the bottom."

"Well, he got it wrong." Sheldon was accessing Jimmy's desktop Compaq Presario computer on the desk.

"Should you be getting on Jimmy's computer?" Howard asked.

"Know thy enemy…" Sheldon commented. "A man with no security system on his computer has no secrets…" He chuckled derisively. "Oh, how simple the foolish can fall." His hand guided Jimmy's mouse to a file marked Recent. It was filled with pages marked by dates and chapter numbers.

"I don't think Jimmy's going to like this." Raj answered.

"Maybe he should have a password to keep others off of it." Sheldon looked down. "I wonder what that little timer is for?"

"What timer?" Howard asked coming around to look.

"That one…" Sheldon looked at the seconds counting down. "It started counting down from three minutes."

"Okay, guys…" Leonard came down the stairway and looked around the foyer. When he didn't see the guys, he looked toward the dining room then around to Jimmy's study where the guys were mulling en masse around Jimmy's desk. "Guys…" Leonard buttoned his vest and carried the top hat. I couldn't find my monocle or an umbrella so I guess I'll tell everyone I'm Alfred." He saw Sheldon at Jimmy's desk with the computer turned on before him.

"Sheldon, what are you doing?" His voice rose hysterically. "Jimmy doesn't want anyone on his computer! I don't even use it!"

"Oh, please…" Sheldon scoffed. "He'll never know I was on it." He paused. "I wonder what the timer is counting." It hit all zeroes and from over his head, he heard crunching sounds like giant gears and tumblers falling into place from somewhere in the mansion. It sounded like thunder or cannons firing on the house. A counterweight was heard coming down somewhere, and the sounds of over a hundred gears started turning. The guys stood around looking around the room for a Goonies trap or an Indiana Jones net to fall down on them. It sounded as if they were in a giant clock as several sounds went off around them. Howard cocked his ears to the noises as the sliding doors to Jimmy's study started rolling shut and two more gates came down to seal the room up around them. Gates sprang shut at both ends of the dining room and at both ends of the hall to the game room. A gate closed off the front ends of both the upstairs corridors, and a large steel plate covered up the front entrance. Around them, all the gates in the house started springing to life and closing up by themselves to seal all the doorways in the house. Steel-reinforced panels slid down over every window in the house. In the basement, the metal activity rattled dust from the rafters. The whole house was being sealed and locked up. Every door, every window was getting sheathed in an iron plate or blocked by steel bars. The entire house was becoming a large impenetrable vault.

"I think he's going to know!" Raj reacted stunned and scared. Howard rushed to the doors and found a spring-loaded trigger in the wall that released the doors to push them back, but the gate on the outside was made out of solid steel and held down by counterweights besides locked by something in the floor. It would require a master generator on the premises to pull everything up at the same time. He was both impressed and stunned by the architectural marvel.

"Good news!" Raj called. "At least, his study's private bathroom isn't closed off!"

"No- no- no- no- no- no…" Leonard ran to the doors of the study and tried rolling the gates back up the same way he had seen Jimmy do it the night of the fund-raiser, but they were locked in somewhere. They rattled, but they didn't move. They were trapped in the study with only the electric lights to keep them out of the dark.

"Leonard," Howard looked around. Steel plates on the windows, a locked gate at the doorway and more steel plates on every exterior entryway in the house, they had been locked up in a giant trap. "What the hell is this?"

"It's a security feature left behind when the place was a bank in the Twenties…" Leonard whined and rested his head in deep humiliated depression against the cold iron bars. "When I first asked Jimmy if I could use his computer, he said he had it wired into the gates and plates across the house to stop his sisters from changing his password and screen-saver, and I don't know his current password."

Howard and Raj turned and looked toward Sheldon with hostile intent.

"Don't blame me for this." Sheldon tried to deflect blame. "This is Jimmy's security trap – not mine!" He pompously changed his attitude. "Look, people usually use passwords of something they are familiar with that would be easy to remember, and he has left us dozens of clues around us." He grinned egotistically. I'll have us out in no time." He pulled up the login page in the computer and typed in a possible password. "Olympus…" He listened to the room. "Nothing… How about, Hercules?" He typed and looked up again. "Not it, Greece…" He tried again.

"Call Jimmy!" Howard begged Leonard. "He'll let us out!"

"Jupiter…" Sheldon typed again, but nothing happened. "Drat…"

"I can't…" Leonard commiserated the situation. "He's in Las Vegas for the weekend."

"King Arthur." Sheldon kept trying.

"Why?"

"They needed an expert to verify Native American remains under a restaurant out there." Leonard spoke slowly to keep from losing his temper. "He was recommended by a colleague."

"Atlantis." Sheldon refused to admit defeat.

"I thought you said he was out of anthropology." Raj spoke up.

"He decided to get back into it." Leonard held on disgustedly to the bars looking at the way out. Gates had even come down over the short hall to the front door. They must have come down all through the house. "He won't be back until Monday morning."

"Hobbit." Sheldon tried again. "Oh, wait, that's not factual." He paused. "I'll try it anyway… Oh, drat!" It didn't work.

"He sure picked a bad time to get back into it." Raj looked out through the bars. "We're going to miss meeting Adam West."

"Thanks for reminding me, Raj…" Leonard sighed.

"Cu Chulainn…" Sheldon tried Irish legend.

"Wait a second…" Realizing he was a structural engineer, Howard was peeking around the gate and up into the wall and thought he saw something that could help. He could swing the wooden doors open after clicking a restraining block out of the way, but the gates remained locked. "Guys, I need something long and thin enough to reach into the wall. If what I'm seeing is the mechanism to lift the gate, I can get us out."

"Here," Raj found a long metal shaft to the left of the door. "Will this work?"

"Perfect!"

"Eriskegal." Sheldon typed a Sumerian goddess.

"No!" Leonard stopped them. "Jimmy said that weapon was excavated from a Celtic grave in France. It's worth almost five thousand dollars!"

"It's solid iron, Leonard." Howard took it and tried to trigger the secondary release system. "There's no way it can be damaged any more than it already is." He lifted it by its end up through the wall and allowed it to swing backward against the box. It was a tiny amount of space to work in, but he thought he saw where the chain pulling the gate rolled around the gear. One eye closed, he grazed the side of it then prodded again. A sudden shock stunned his fingers and made him drop the bar on his foot. He screamed out in pain and hobbled backward in pain.

"I was wrong!" He lost his breath when his heart jumped a beat. "It's a junction box!" He held his shaking hands up.

"Well…" Sheldon watched as Howard stumbled backward on to Jimmy's leather sofa. "That's what happens when you prod an electrical box with a conductive object made of iron."

"Why didn't you warn me?"

"I just assumed you knew what you were doing."

"Sheldon, do me a favor?" Leonard looked back at him.

"I'm working as fast as I can, Leonard." He typed another possible password. "Tutankhamen…" Nothing happened. "Drat!"

"Stop coming over here!" Leonard requested very angrily.