Samantha looked up from her journal. The magtrain had come to a stop. It happened so smoothly that she hadn’t noticed. Nipper was already standing on the platform outside the car, waving at her impatiently.

“Come on, Sam. Let’s-go-let’s-go!”

She put away her notebook. Then she grabbed the umbrella and climbed out onto the platform, next to her brother. The rails under the magtrain car still softly glowed orange, dimly lighting their surroundings. They were in a square chamber. The floor was paved with large stone tiles of different geometric shapes. Samantha had a feeling they were still underground.

“Mental note,” she said to Nipper. She tapped her forehead. “Next time, we bring a flashlight.”

“ ‘Yes, you two,’ ” he responded, imitating their father. “ ‘And make sure it’s a high-candlepower light source.’ ”

“ ‘With just the right color balance,’ ” Samantha added.

She gazed around the room. Behind them was the mouth of the train tunnel, but there didn’t seem to be any other exits.

Nipper watched her.

“I looked everywhere while you were still writing,” he said. “I can’t find any way out of here.”

“Let’s check the Plans,” said Samantha.

She swung the umbrella from over her shoulder and pressed the latch on the handle with her thumb. The red octagon burst open above her head.

“Magnifier, please,” she said, extending her free hand toward her brother.

Samantha turned the open umbrella upside down and carefully placed it on the tiles, then crouched over it. Squinting in the dim light, she scanned the lining. She found the mailbox and the Space Needle. She picked a dotted line and followed it until it reached a shape that looked like a bunny, or maybe a rat. That clearly wasn’t Paris or France. She started over and followed a line until it reached a little drawing of a circus tent. There was nothing that seemed French or Parisian about it. She went back to the Space Needle and picked another line.

She followed the new dotted line with her finger and traced a long path to one edge of the umbrella. The line stopped at a shape she thought she recognized.

“France?” she asked herself out loud.

Then she noticed that right beside it was a little drawing she recognized for sure: the Eiffel Tower.

“France,” she answered herself out loud.

Inside the France shape was a square. Inside the square was a drawing of a shoe. On the shoe was the number 4.

Nipper leaned in and looked at the drawing. Then, puzzled, he looked at Samantha.

Samantha closed the umbrella and gazed at the floor. In the dim light, the tiled surface was a jumble of gray and black shapes. Triangles, rectangles, hexagons, and— Aha! About five feet from where she stood, she spotted a lone square.

She walked forward and stopped in the center of the tile.

“Stand here with me,” she told Nipper.

He skipped over and hopped into the square. He bumped into his sister and she glared at him. He shifted a few inches away from her, but he stayed within the square.

“Okay, now what?” he asked.

Samantha thought about the drawing on the umbrella—the square, the shoe, and the number 4. This one was easy.

“One, two, three, four,” she counted, stamping her foot each time.

There was a scraping noise overhead and a bright shaft of light enveloped them. A square hole had opened in the ceiling. As if powered by a huge spring, the tile they were standing on launched upward.

Samantha and Nipper reached toward each other and took hold. They hugged as the tile shot up toward the opening. With a loud click, the tile fit into the square hole…and they were outside!

They let go of each other immediately. Then they looked around.

Samantha and Nipper stood on one of a thousand stone tiles that made up a vast plaza. Around them, crowds of people milled about. Some of them wore matching T-shirts. Others had big, bulky backpacks. They were tourists from all over the world, chattering to each other in a dozen different languages. They snapped pictures of themselves, each other, and the glass pyramid that towered seventy feet over the courtyard.

A person dressed as a circus clown stood in a clearing, performing tricks for the passing tourists.

“I know this place,” said Samantha. “We’re outside France’s most famous museum. That pyramid is the entrance to the Louvre.”

“Did you say ‘loo-ver’?” asked Nipper.

“No. It’s ‘Loo-vruh,’ ” Samantha said in slow, careful French. “It has some of the greatest treasures of the art world inside, including the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci.”

“How do you know that?” asked Nipper.

“Uncle Paul told me about it,” said Samantha. “You were there, too, but maybe you weren’t listening carefully, like I was.”

She thought about her missing uncle for a moment. “Actually, he mentioned this exact place a bunch of times,” she said slowly.

Nipper wasn’t listening carefully to her either, at the moment. He was looking around the crowded plaza.

“Sam,” he said. “Nobody noticed us. We just popped out of a hole in the ground, and no one cares at all.”

Samantha looked around, too.

“Well, people don’t always notice amazing things right in front of their noses,” she said. “Other stuff seems important, so they forget to take a closer look at—”

“Hold on,” said Nipper. “There’s something in front of my nose right now. Something that smells great. And I’m hungry.”

Samantha sniffed twice and nodded in agreement. Something did smell wonderful.

Nipper began to push his way across the crowded plaza, following the scent. Samantha walked quickly after him, weaving around people. She followed her brother to a low stone wall that appeared to surround the plaza, then through a break in it. On the sidewalk a few yards away, a man stood beside a bright yellow food cart. The front half of the vehicle was a rectangular box balanced on two wheels. The back half was a bicycle. A metal rack rose from the front, supporting a red-and-white-striped awning. A dozen loaves of bread lined the shelves of the box. Some were long and thin, and others were wide. They smelled absolutely delicious.

Samantha caught up with Nipper and approached the man. He was wearing jeans, a black T-shirt, and a yellow apron. Stenciled on the sides of the cart and on his apron were large letters: PAIN DU JOUR.

Nipper waved at him, then sniffed the air dramatically and shook his head from side to side. Then he did it five more times. It reminded Samantha of Dennis.

As soon as Nipper had the man’s attention, he called out cheerfully, “Sir. We don’t want any pain, but could you give us some of that great bread?”

The man stared at him for a moment. Then he smiled.

“Not ‘pain.’ It’s pronounced ‘pan.’ That is the French word for bread,” he explained in English, with a hint of a French accent.

Samantha glared at Nipper but didn’t say anything. She wasn’t sure if goofball kid brothers were as common in France as they were in the USA.

Nipper kept going. “Mr. Pan—or may I call you Peter? I’d like your freshest jumbo breadstick.” He gestured toward Samantha. “My personal assistant will handle the finances.”

“It is a baguette,” said the vendor patiently. He grabbed one of the vertical loaves and slid it into a paper sleeve. Then he turned and held it out to Samantha. “Please pay two euros for your boss, young personal assistant lady.”

There were so many things wrong with this exchange between her brother and the vendor that Samantha was speechless. And, unfortunately, euro-less.

She shrugged and held out both hands, palms up, to indicate that she had no money. Then she remembered that she did have some of the loose change from her desk. She quickly fished around in her pockets and came up with two quarters. Sheepishly, she presented them to the vendor.

Uncle Paul had taught her to say three things in eleven languages. The first thing was “please.”

“S’il vous plaît,” she said carefully.

A look of disappointment washed over the man’s face. He pulled the baguette away and put it back on display. Then he turned and opened a side door of the cart. He fumbled around inside for a moment and produced a different loaf of bread. It was already wrapped in paper.

“My half-dollar special for two special customers,” he said. He handed the baguette to Samantha with one hand while taking the two quarters with the other.

Samantha eyed the delicious-smelling baguette on the shelf as she accepted the special bread. She unwrapped and examined it quickly. It felt a little hard and it didn’t smell very fresh.

“When did you bake this?” she asked.

“Why…it was baked in the morning,” said the man, sounding insulted.

“Which morning?” Samantha pressed.

Meanwhile, Nipper noticed a new scent. It was quite different from the aroma of freshly baked bread and it was absolutely not delicious. It smelled like old banana peels, melted crayons, and sweaty sneakers left in a backpack for a month.

“This is definitely not a freshly baked baguette,” Samantha continued, arguing with the street vendor. As she spoke, she waved the bread in the air.

Nipper, nose twitching, was watching his sister when something flashed through the air and—thwack!—hit the baguette. It sliced into the bread, coming to a stop halfway through the narrow loaf.

If it had actually been a freshly baked baguette, the sharp object would have sliced all the way through a light and flaky crust and out the other side. It would have continued in a straight line until it hit Samantha right between the eyes…and that would have been the end of this story.

Fortunately, it had been fifty-seven hours since the baker removed the special baguette from his oven and left it to cool. For that reason, the flying object remained lodged in the stale French bread.

“What’s this?” asked Samantha, pulling the metal object from the bread and holding it up. It flashed silver in the light.

“It’s a shuriken!” gasped Nipper. “A ninja throwing star!”

The flat, shiny object was indeed shaped like a star, about three inches across. It had eight needle-sharp points. The outline of a crown and two crossed swords was engraved in the center.

Samantha puzzled over the weapon and its engraving for a second. Then she slid it carefully into the front pocket of her pants.

Thwack! Bang!

A second flying blade whizzed at her and hit the bread. And a third sailed past Samantha’s neck and slammed into the side of the bakery cart.

Alarmed, the vendor hopped onto his bicycle and began to pedal away.

Nipper grabbed a thick, round loaf off the back of the cart as the man departed, and he whirled around, holding the loaf in front of his face for protection.

Thunk! Thunk!

The round loaves were heavier and thicker than baguettes. Just in time, Nipper’s bread stopped two metal stars from hitting his face.

“Sam! We’re under attack!” he shouted to his sister.

The food cart was gone and they had walked too far from the Louvre plaza to call for help. They were alone on the sidewalk, with nowhere to hide.

Halfway down the block, a hooded figure clad all in black tiptoed toward them. He may have thought that he was being sneaky, but his horrible smell gave him away.

With nothing but bread to defend themselves, the Spinners stood and faced the approaching menace.