Two Crafty Criminals! Read online

  “But aren’t you coming?”

  “I just want to have another look at the dummy. I’ll come on after.”

  Before he left, Thunderbolt reached up to his Museum and took out his lump of criminal lead. He hardly knew why he was doing it; he had the vague idea that he could drop it in the gutter and pretend it had nothing to do with him.

  “Come on, Thunderbolt!” said Angela, coming back to drag at his arm.

  “Yeah, I’m coming …”

  They caught up with the others at the end of Herriot Street, just around the corner from Rummage’s. Dippy had a bowler hat pulled down so low, and a muffler pulled up so high, that all you could see between them were two watery eyes and a pointy, white, glistening nose that looked as if it would break off if it knocked against anything. He was shuffling along in Mr. Dobney’s boots, unable to lift his feet because he left the boots behind when he did.

  “You must have really little feet, Dippy,” said Angela. “Like a chest of drawers or summing.”

  “Never mind his trotter-boxes,” said Benny. “Once he gets in that window he can take ’em off if he wants to. I wouldn’t be surprised if Rummage is gonna close up a bit earlier tonight. I bet he’s anxious. I bet he’s consumed by guilt. I bet he feels shockin’ nervous.”

  Dippy had begun to tremble. Thunderbolt saw his knees shaking in the tight trousers, and then he heard a clicking sound, which was Dippy’s four teeth going.

  “What’s he doing? He’s not shivering? You can’t have a shivering dummy, it’d give the game away at once!” said Benny, disconcerted.

  “He better have some of this,” said Thunderbolt.

  “Eh? Wossat?” said Dippy.

  “It’s Bridie’s uncle Paddy’s horse reviver,” explained Thunderbolt. “I should think one good swig’d set you up for an hour, at least.”

  Dippy inserted the flask between the muffler and the hat brim. There was a brief sucking noise and then a gasp.

  “Nice, Dippy?” said Zerlina.

  He couldn’t speak. “Ah—ah—” he murmured faintly, and handed back the flask. Benny took a sniff at it and made a face. But whatever it had done for Charlie Maggott’s mare, the horse reviver had certainly fortified Dippy. He shuffled bravely forward, head held high in order to see under the hat brim.

  They stopped by the bright gaslit windows of the big store, where crowds of customers struggled to get through the crowds coming out. Thunderbolt felt a rush of anger: here was Mr. Rummage, making all the money he must be making, and still he was so mean that he couldn’t resist passing out snide coins and having another man punished for it.

  “Do yer best, Dippy!” he said.

  “You got that horse reviver?” Dippy muttered.

  “Give him the flask,” said Angela.

  Thunderbolt passed it over.

  “D’you think that’s a good idea?” said Zerlina.

  “It’s only a little flask,” said Benny. “It’s good for him, I expect. It smells horrible, so it’s bound to be.”

  They saw the sense of that, all having experienced medicines of uncommon vileness in their time.

  “Good luck, Dippy!” said Thunderbolt.

  And Dippy put the flask in his pocket and shuffled forward into the great shop. No King or Queen had ever felt more proud of their army on the way to battle than the New Cut Gang felt of Dippy Hitchcock then, as he weaved uncertainly through the crowds and into the very jaws of danger.

  Dippy Hitchcock had led a peaceful, unambitious life up till then. The most dangerous thing that had ever happened to him was nearly getting knocked over by a sheep. That had been early one morning when he was visiting his cousin Ted in Newbury and a flock of sheep being driven to market had come up the road at a fast gallop. A particularly savage old ewe had made for Dippy as if intending to trample him to death, and he’d skipped out of the way just in time. Apart from that, he’d led a placid life.

  So going into Rummage’s on a daring mission like this was making his poor old heart skip about like a grasshopper. The further in he went, the more he felt the need for another nip of horse reviver. Perhaps when he was in the window …

  But getting in the window wasn’t going to be easy. It looked simple enough from outside—there was a little door at the back of the window space that obviously led into the shop—but what you couldn’t see from the street was that the little doors opened behind the counters. He’d have to get behind a counter first, and there was a swarm of shop assistants already there who’d be bound to think it odd if a strange waxlike figure clambered over to join them. It wasn’t the sort of thing you’d miss.

  Then there was the problem of which window to pick. There were six of them, and to the best of Dippy’s recollection, only one showed men’s clothing. Of the others, one displayed china dinner services, another bicycles, another bamboo furniture, and the last two displayed ladies’ wear. The thought of finding himself in the window with the ladies’ nightclothes made Dippy break out into a cold sweat. This was very unfortunate, because the sweat combined with the flour on his face to make a sort of gluey porridge which slowly seeped downwards, making him look as if he was melting. People who saw him shuddered and said, “Poor man.”

  So which window should it be? The most likely was the one whose little door opened behind the Gentlemen’s Outfitting. However, presiding over the other side of the counter was the man Benny and the gang had seen arranging the window on the evening they got the first coin: Mr. Paget, the Gentlemen’s Outfitting Manager. He’d fixed a suspicious eye on Dippy the second the old man had come into view. In his experience, people with that many clothes on only intended to hide things in them, and if ever he’d seen a shoplifter, it was this shady-looking individual in the big boots.

  Then Mr. Paget blinked, peered more closely, and found his suspicions confirmed. The wretch was wearing a mask!

  The staff at Rummage’s were always being urged to look out for shoplifters, and Mr. Rummage even offered a Thieftaker’s Bonus to any assistant who caught one in the act. Mr. Paget felt every nerve in his body twitch with the prospect of earning the Thieftaker’s Bonus. He snapped his fingers to summon his assistant from the other end of the counter, where he’d been putting away some gloves.

  “Leave them gloves and take charge of the counter, Wilkins,” he said. “I shall only be a few minutes.”

  He lifted the wooden flap and stepped through, moving, as he thought, with the caution of a jungle cat. His eyes never left Dippy for a moment. He began to track the old man from department to department as Dippy blundered blearily from the Gentlemen’s Outfitting to the Haberdashery to the Soft Furnishings and back again, occasionally bouncing gently off the nearest fitting, and every so often stopping to refresh himself with the horse reviver. Mr. Paget, eyes gleaming, mustache bristling, teeth bared like a tiger’s, followed him at a short distance, moving in a silent prowl and darting for concealment from place to place.

  This might have gone on until the shop closed, but two things happened. Firstly, a customer loudly demanded to see some gloves, so Mr. Paget’s assistant had to leave that part of the counter and attend to him at the other end.

  Secondly, another customer tapped Mr. Paget on the shoulder when he was being particularly tiger-like behind a delicately balanced display of glassware.

  Mr. Paget leapt like a dog discovered eating from the cat’s bowl. His arm nudged the top shelf of the glassware display and a cascade of crystal decanters, saltcellars, goblets, and tumblers fell to the floor with a mighty crash. Mr. Paget gave a yelp of dismay and tried simultaneously to pick up the broken glass, answer the customer’s question, and keep an eye on Dippy; but he couldn’t do all three, and Dippy was gone.

  By now, Dippy had drunk so much of the horse reviver that he was more or less oblivious to falling glassware. Finding himself in the Gentlemen’s Outfitting yet again, and seeing the counter unmanned, he vaguely remembered that he had something to do through that little door on the other side.

/>   He clambered over the counter, fell heavily behind it, got up cheerfully, opened the wooden door, and was through in a moment.

  He found himself in a curious narrow space lit by hissing gaslights, occupied by four or five men standing or sitting very stiffly and wearing smart clothes. There was a big glass wall a couple of feet away, through which he could dimly see crowds of people passing to and fro, and that and the other men in there put him in mind of something.

  “Here,” he said to the man standing closest, “is this the Waxworks?”

  The man didn’t speak.

  “Oi,” said Dippy, and prodded him.

  The man fell over.

  Dippy thought he’d killed him. He was horrified.

  “Sorry!” he gasped. “I didn’t mean to kill yer! Here—have a nip of horse reviver …”

  He struggled past the man seated nearby and offered the flask to the dead man. Suddenly a suspicion struck him.

  “Here,” he said, “you’re a wossname, ain’t yer!”

  He flicked the man’s nose. A hollow knocking sound came from it.

  “Ahh,” said Dippy. “Thassit. I ’member now. I’m a dummy. Well, you stay there, mate, out the way, and I’ll take yer plate. Tape yer place. That.”

  He stood up cautiously. No one seemed to have noticed. The other men in the little space were obviously pretending to be dummies as well.

  “Not a word, eh?” said Dippy to the nearest one, and winked. “Prime lark, this is. Gissa bit o’ room …”

  He nudged the man slightly, and he fell over too. Dippy shook his head sadly.

  “Drunk,” he said to himself. “Shockin’.”

  He had another nip of the horse reviver. There didn’t seem to be much left. Still, the chair was vacant now, and he could sit down.

  He was vaguely aware that there were people watching—that in fact a small crowd was gathering outside the glass. Normally he’d have felt shy, but being a waxwork (he’d forgotten the shop-window plan, and his mind had wandered back to the Waxworks), he didn’t feel shy at all. In fact, he thought, I’ve got quite a talent for this business.

  He arranged himself comfortably, legs elegantly crossed, hands on hips, and gazed out at the crowd. He couldn’t see them very well. All he could really see was a reflection of himself—And very fine I look, too, he thought. He raised his head a little, tilted his chin to one side, loosened the fit of the jacket over his shoulders, and settled into a trancelike stillness.

  Outside, Police Constable Jellicoe was urging the crowd to move on.

  “Make way there! Come on, move along! Clear the way! Clear the way!”

  They protested, but P.C. Jellicoe took no notice. Lot of nonsense! Perfectly ordinary shop-window display. Rather stylish, if anything, but not worth gathering a crowd for.

  “Move along! Move along!”

  The crowd dispersed reluctantly.

  Benny, Thunderbolt, and the twins, watching from across the street, sighed with relief as the crowd moved away.

  “He’s done it!” said Benny. “That’s the first problem out of the way.”

  “He’s gotta stay there for a long time yet,” said Zerlina doubtfully. “And people keep looking at him … Are they going to leave the window lights on all night?”

  “Dunno. What’s that little boy staring at?”

  For a small boy was tugging at his mother’s hand just outside Dippy’s window.

  “Mummy! Mummy! Look at the dummy! It’s got hiccups!” he said in a piercing voice that reached across the street.

  “Oh, Septimus, really …,” said the mother, stopping reluctantly.

  Benny and Thunderbolt listened apprehensively and sidled across the street to see what was going on. Two urchins who’d seen the nauseating Septimus in his sailor suit and had come up intent on mayhem were staring at Dippy instead.

  “Cor! Look at him!”

  “Must be a mechanical one …”

  Dippy, legs crossed elegantly, eyes happily vacant, was sitting perfectly still, except that every ten seconds or so his body jerked as if an electric current had been applied to the chair. Soon the urchins, and the sailor-suited Septimus, were counting and joining in.

  “Nine—ten—HIC!”

  “That was a good un! He’ll fall over in a minute!”

  “Eight—nine—HIC!”

  “I heard that one through the glass!”

  “How’d they do it?”

  “I reckon compressed air.”

  “HIC!”

  “Or hydraulics. Betcher there’s a tube going up his trollywags—”

  “HIC!”

  “Septimus, come on! This is not the way to behave!”

  “Mummy, what are trollywags?”

  “That’s enough!”

  Benny and Thunderbolt exchanged an uneasy glance. Further down the street, P.C. Jellicoe had seen the crowd beginning to form again, and was strolling purposefully back to disperse it for the second time. Since that was the last thing they wanted, Benny took the initiative by whipping the caps off the two urchins’ heads and running across the street.

  “Oi!”

  “Oo done that?”

  “There he goes—”

  “Get ’im!”

  Hiccups forgotten, the urchins gave chase. Benny led them along the New Cut and left into Waterloo Road, where he chucked the caps into the back of a dustcart that happened to be passing. There was a brisk exchange of threats and insults and the urchins raced off after their caps; so that was one problem dealt with.

  There were plenty more to come.

  Mr. Paget was dealing with a problem that very moment inside the shop. In his excitement after knocking over the glassware and losing Dippy, he rushed about, challenging everyone who looked remotely like him. He’d challenged three men in black overcoats and insisted on prodding the face of one of them because he said it looked like a mask, and the customer had made such a fuss that Mr. Rummage himself had to come and sort it out.

  “I have never been so insulted!” the customer was bellowing.

  “I am truly sorry,” Mr. Paget kept saying, squirming and bowing and trying to escape by walking backwards. “I deeply and humbly beg your pardon, but the fact is that your face does look as if—”

  “What? How dare you? How dare you, sir?” the customer demanded.

  Mr. Paget squirmed and cringed even more, and backed into a dummy advertising “Dux-Bak” Rainwear, sending it crashing to the floor.

  Mr. Rummage merely looked at him and raised his eyebrows. When he did that, he looked terrifying.

  “Well?” he said.

  “Yes! I’ll pick it up! Sorry! Sorry!”

  Mr. Paget gathered the “Dux-Bak” dummy in his arms and laid it on the counter like a corpse in a funeral parlor.

  “I’ll mend it!” he babbled, sweating at the thought of all the damage he’d done. “I’ll stay behind and mend it personally myself, on my own, without any help!”

  “You’ve done quite enough damage already,” said Mr. Rummage, who had his own reasons for not wanting anyone on the premises after closing time. “Go! Go on! Leave!”

  Mortified, Mr. Paget slunk away and left.

  By now it was time to close. Mr. Rummage ushered out the rest of the staff and went over the whole shop, locking doors and windows and peering suspiciously into cupboards, cloakrooms, and lifts—into every corner that might have concealed an intruder or a policeman.

  Finally he went to check the main doors again and had a nasty shock, because peering through the glass at him were four pairs of eyes.

  He nearly dropped the lantern he was carrying, but caught it in time and hurried to the door to chase the eyes away. They seemed to belong to a pack of children. They scattered in all directions as he opened the door, but then Mr. Rummage heard a burst of laughter from the left, and looked along the front of the shop to see a group of idle good-for-nothing rascals hooting with laughter outside one of his windows.

  How dare they! He gaped in amazement as
they slapped their thighs and held their sides, bent double with merriment, pointing and making strange slapping movements with their hands.

  “Constable! Constable!” he shouted, and set off at once to see what was the matter.

  P.C. Jellicoe, who was built more for solidity than for speed, was getting fed up. This was the third time he’d had to come and sort out these customers of Mr. Rummage’s, and he had the rest of his beat to see to. He lumbered back and looked down at Mr. Rummage disapprovingly.

  “If you can’t control your customers, Mr. Rummage,” he said, “I shall have to ask you to cover your windows up.”

  “They’re not my customers! I don’t allow riffraff like that into my Emporium! While they’re in the street they’re the responsibility of the law, and I want them moved on, d’you hear?” P.C. Jellicoe sniffed majestically, but since he couldn’t think of anything to say in reply, he merely nodded austerely and sauntered along to the little crowd around the window.

  From across the street, Benny and Thunderbolt and the twins, lurking in the shadows of Targett’s Alley, watched in despair.

  “Oi! Move along!” P.C. Jellicoe was saying. “Clear the way there! You’ll be facing a charge of obstruction if you don’t move along!”

  “But, Constable, look at him!”

  “It’s as good as a play—”

  “Move along!”

  “But he’s—”

  “He’s done it again! There he goes!”

  “Cor, he nearly got it that time …”

  All the spectators, in between their chortling, were swinging their arms about and slapping at the air. The constable raised his voice.

  “This has the makings of a scene of civil disobedience of the most reprehensible type. Be about your lawful business, else I shall be compelled to read the Riot Act and start making arrests.”

  He was longing to look in the window and see what they were laughing at, but he feared that he might want to join in, which would be beneath his dignity.