Chatterton lives in Australia. Visit his website at Visit lives in Australia. Chatterton MARTIN CHATTERTON MARTIN twenty books, including T including books, twenty than more of is the author He Sydney. Seattle to from and traveled the globe mate, fitter’s as a pipe- lingerie, worked teenagers, sold sulky taught a design company, opened he also the way whenever he was asked. Along writing books began by year, twenty-second glorious nearing its plan, now five-year His the Earth. Walk Ever to Writer the Greatest become to an ambition plot led to espionage botched A himself. fend for learned to Chatterton periods, long often absent for MI5) for agents working in fact deep-cover teachers but (allegedly parents both the very from promise showed With in Liverpool. he was born moment T CHATTERTON he B ra T in h wa The Brain rose to his feet and paced e h s . oles right. red briskly back and forward in front of the had pea completely disap fire. His voice took on a businesslike HE What starts as a simple inquiry— 978-1-56145-527-0 $16.95 978-1-56145-527-0 B tone. RAIN , who was phenomenally talented and attractive as a baby, was phenomenally , who The Brain Full of Holes Full Brain The “So it is down to us, my dear,” he of Holes Full Brain The where have the holes in the Swiss cheese F INDS A said. “We must find your father for you. gone?—escalates into a wacky scientific It is as simple as that. Now I have one or L investigation, complete with a mysterious EG , than eighty. more of and the illustrator two further questions.” www.worldofchatterton.com. governmental organization, an enticing “Anything.” The Brain pointed his pipe at Helga young blonde with a missing father, and fixed her with a piercing stare. and a two-headed butler from another Sheldon remembered how disconcerting dimension. PRINTED AND BOUND IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA STATES UNITED IN THE BOUND AND PRINTED he’d found that look the first time he’d Yes, it’s another case for the World’s seen it, but Helga did not seem to notice. Greatest Detective, Theophilus Nero In fact, despite her warm expression, she had something rather steely about her Hercule Sherlock Wimsey Father Brown own eyes. Sheldon could easily imagine Marlowe Spade Christie Edgar Allen her giving The Brain a run for his Brain (a.k.a. The Brain) and his money. Sheldon focused his attention loyal if confused sidekick Sheldon back on the conversation. The Brain was Young adult fiction adult Young www.peachtree-online.com about to ask the first important question McGlone. of the investigation. An exciting moment. Astute readers will heed the advice Kirkus Reviews gave in their review of “His sandwiches. What sort of THE BRAIN FINDS A LEG: “surrender...to sandwiches did he take with him on the industrial-strength zaniness” Tuesday?” that follows! ISBN 13: 978-1-56145-527-0 ISBN 10: 1-56145-527-X ISBN Brain Full of Holes INT:Layout 1 1/4/10 1:17 PM Page i The Brain Full of Holes Brain Full of Holes INT:Layout 1 1/4/10 1:17 PM Page ii Brain Full of Holes INT:Layout 1 1/4/10 1:17 PM Page iii The Brain Full of Holes Martin Chatterton Brain Full of Holes INT:Layout 1 1/4/10 1:17 PM Page iv Published by PEACHTREE PUBLISHERS 1700 Chattahoochee Avenue Atlanta, Georgia 30318-2112 www.peachtree-online.com Text © 2008 by Martin Chatterton First published in Australia by Little Hare Books in 2008 First United States edition published by Peachtree Publishers in 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means— electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover design by Maureen Withee Book design by Melanie McMahon Ives Printed January 2010 in the United States of America by Lake Book Manu- facturing in Melrose Park, Illinois 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 First Edition Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Chatterton, Martin. The Brain full of holes / written by Martin Chatterton. p. cm. Summary: Having moved to Switzerland, thirteen-year-old Sheldon and his new stepbrother Theo (“The Brain”) Brain investigate a mystery involv- ing particle physics, Swiss cheese, a missing truck driver, and a carnivorous cuckoo clock. ISBN 978-1-56145-527-0 / 1-56145-527-X [1. Mystery and detective stories. 2. Physics—Fiction. 3. Stepfamilies— Fiction. 4. Switzerland—Fiction. 5. Humorous stories.] I. Title. PZ7.C3915Brf 2010 [Fic]—dc22 2009024510 Brain Full of Holes INT:Layout 1 1/4/10 1:17 PM Page v To Annie, the brain behind The Brain —M. C. Brain Full of Holes INT:Layout 1 1/4/10 1:17 PM Page vi Brain Full of Holes INT:Layout 1 1/4/10 1:17 PM Page 1 Chapter 1 Cheese again. It was always cheese. Didn’t the Swiss have anything else to put on their sandwiches? Sheldon McGlone looked at his lunch and shook his head with the air of someone well used to dealing with life’s disappointments. It wasn’t that Sheldon really had anything against cheese, or dairy products, or the Swiss for that matter. He’d often enjoyed a tasty cheese sandwich back in Australia. But lately it seemed that all he’d been getting on his school sandwiches was Swiss cheese, chock full of the completely pointless holes that they were so proud of. Sheldon couldn’t see the point of holes in cheese, or any other food, with the possible exception of the bub- bles in fizzy drinks, or the bit in the middle of a dough- nut. Why, he wondered, would anyone go to the trouble Brain Full of Holes INT:Layout 1 1/4/10 1:17 PM Page 2 MarTin CHaTTerTon of making cheese when a large chunk of the finished article was going to be thin air? What made things worse was that this sandwich had been made by his mother! Not a Swiss person, but a fel- low true-blue Aussie. True, Sheldon’s mother, the for- mer Mrs. Mary McGlone, had married a Swiss man. Maybe that meant that she was now technically half- Swiss, which would make Sheldon about one-quarter Swiss, or five-sixteenths, or something like that (maths not being Sheldon’s strong point). He supposed he’d get used to it eventually, in the same way he was getting used to eating fondue and watching Swiss television. Sheldon shrugged and took a bite of his sandwich. Lunchtime was lunchtime, after all, and, as cheese sandwiches went, this one wasn’t too bad. Looking up (with a mouthful of bread and cheese) at the ridicu- lously beautiful mountains, he had to admit that, from this angle, Switzerland wasn’t half bad, either. It was another effortlessly sensational Alpine day, one of an odd series that had been turning up again and again recently, despite it being officially winter. Proba- bly global warming, thought Sheldon. Most things were, these days. Whatever it was, it felt pretty good. The blue sky stretched itself across the snowcapped mountains and Sheldon snorted up another lungful of air crisper than a jumbo bag of extra-crispy, spearmint-flavored crisps. The air was very different from the slow-moving, chunky sort of air he’d left behind in Farrago Bay. Not that the Aussie air was polluted—it was simply that this Alpine stuff felt like it had been freshly made every morning just for him. It was so good that, from time to 2 Brain Full of Holes INT:Layout 1 1/4/10 1:17 PM Page 3 The Brain Full of Holes time, Sheldon even felt the urge to have a bit of a yodel. There was something about the echoing valleys between the Alps and the springy, flower-strewn mead- ows that lent itself to yodeling. Of course, Sheldon knew he’d never give in to the temptation. Beside Sheldon at the school lunch table, his step- brother, best friend, and self-styled World’s Greatest Detective, Theophilus Nero Hercule Sherlock Wimsey Father Brown Marlowe Spade Christie Edgar Allen Brain, adjusted his battered spectacles, lifted the corner of his identical sandwich with the end of his unlit pipe, and peered suspiciously inside. “Remarkable,” he said. “I know!” said Sheldon, shaking his head from side to side. “Swiss cheese. Again!” “Ah,” said The Brain. “That wasn’t quite what… never mind.” The Brain was always doing things like that. Just when you thought you knew what he was thinking, he’d surprise you by revealing that he was, in fact, thinking about something entirely different. Sheldon looked at The Brain—almost everyone called him that— and not for the first time since they’d arrived in Switzer- land, Sheldon thought about what a strange, complicated journey it had been to end up here, related to this rather odd-looking individual. The first thing you noticed about The Brain was the size of his head. It wasn’t so big that it made people form a baying mob armed with pitchforks and flaming torches intent on stringing him up from the nearest tower, but it was definitely on the sizeable side. And 3 Brain Full of Holes INT:Layout 1 1/4/10 1:17 PM Page 4 MarTin CHaTTerTon anyone who knew The Brain knew that the reason he needed a head that size, was that a normal-sized head simply would not have been large enough to contain the astonishing amount of fizzing little gray cells that were stuffed in there.