Two Crafty Criminals! Page 7

  If he had, he’d have seen Dippy still sitting on his chair, cured of his hiccups now but troubled by a wasp which had been slumbering in a dusty corner for months and had just woken up. It had taken a fancy to the pink of Dippy’s cheeks, and kept trying to land there and see what they tasted like; and Dippy kept hearing it approach and swatting violently at the air, nearly losing his balance, and then trying to be still again.

  When the onlookers had moved away, laughing and going bzzz at each other and slapping the air, P.C. Jellicoe finally turned to look in the window. By chance, that coincided with a moment when the wasp was having a rest on the nose of one of the other dummies, and there was nothing moving but Dippy’s eyes, swiveling wildly in their sockets because the wasp was just out of his line of sight and he had the uneasy feeling that it was walking down his neck.

  P.C. Jellicoe saw Dippy’s eyes move, and blinked and rubbed his own. But when he looked again, the eyes were looking straight ahead—staring directly at him, in fact—and so unsettling was the effect of Dippy’s disintegrating flour-caked cheeks and goggling bloodshot eyes that the constable took a step backwards in shock.

  He hoped no one had seen him. He had half a mind to go and tell Mr. Rummage to take the horrible thing out of the window as a danger to traffic. It was probably some new fashion, but if a nervous horse caught sight of it, it could easily cause an accident.

  However, Mr. Rummage had gone back into the shop, and the doors were locked. P.C. Jellicoe tested them all in order to look efficient, settled his helmet more firmly on his perspiring head, and strode off towards the Blackfriars Road at the regulation three miles an hour, leaving the road clear.

  “Thank goodness for that!” breathed Benny. “But what’s that old clot Dippy up to?”

  “I think he’s signaling to us in semaphore,” said Thunderbolt. “He’s done X, and T, and Z, and F so far.”

  “Well, he can’t spell, then,” said Benny. “I wish Rummage’d turn the bloomin’ light off. Then Dippy could slip out and open the doors. And where’s Bridie? Seems to me you can’t rely on anyone!”

  As a matter of fact, Bridie was extremely busy. She and Sharky Bob were investigating the other mystery: that of the waxwork model that two lots of crooks—three, if you counted the Frenchman—were after.

  “What I reckon, Sharky,” she said, “is that someone’s got hold of this while Thunderbolt’s back was turned, and hidden something in it.”

  “Maybe diamonds,” he said.

  “Yeah, could be. ’Cause it certainly ain’t worth nothing on its own. So we oughter open it up, seems to me, and have a look.”

  They were upstairs, having lugged the dummy up there for safety. The rest of the family were all crowded into the kitchen, where Uncle Paddy had the whistle going and Mr. Sweeny was playing the fiddle, so for the moment the bedroom Bridie shared with five others was empty.

  She set the candle stump on the chest of drawers and hauled the dummy onto the bed. It had got pretty battered in all its adventures, and it hadn’t been beautiful to begin with, she had to admit.

  “Take his clothes off,” said Sharky.

  “Yeah, I’m going to. What’s that ye’re eating?”

  “His ear,” said Sharky. “It come off in me hand.”

  “Well, what was yer hand doing on his ear in the first place?”

  “Pulling it off,” he said. There was a grand simplicity about Sharky Bob.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake … Eat it, then; I don’t suppose it’ll do ye any harm, the amount of terrible rubbish ye’ve packed down yer manhole already. Now move back out the way. I’m going to try and get his clothes off without making them look any shabbier …”

  Happily munching on the wax ear, Sharky sat on Siobhan’s side of the mattress and watched Bridie wrestling with the dummy’s clothes. She got them off eventually and felt in the pockets, but the only thing there was a paper bag that had once contained boiled sweets. She gave it to Sharky to smell.

  Then she felt along the coarse sacking sausage shapes that were the dummy’s arms and legs. In one leg she found a half-eaten turnip, and in the other she found a length of twine with an immense and complicated knot in it. She recognized it as the one Thunderbolt had used when he’d thought of taking up escapology. They’d spent forty minutes tying him up and he’d taken three and a half hours to get loose, which, as Benny said, was a bit long to expect a music-hall audience to watch a kind of lump heaving and grunting. Thunderbolt had tired of escapology and thrown the twine away, and here it was again. But not even Benny would imagine that gangs of crazed knot fanciers would take desperate measures to steal it.

  She threw the knotted twine into the corner and continued the surgery.

  “Try his belly,” said Sharky Bob. “I bet there’s diamonds in his belly. That’s where I’d put ’em, in the belly.”

  “That’s where you put everything, Sharky.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  But the belly held only straw, and so did the chest and the arms. By the time she’d got to the neck, the bedroom was covered in wisps of hay and cornstalks and ragged bunches of straw and bits of sacking. The head, on its broomstick spine, stared up reproachfully through its one remaining blood-alley eye.

  Bridie scratched her own head and stared back at it.

  Then she plucked off the ear that Sharky hadn’t eaten and twisted it this way and that. It was funny stuff—sort of sooty streaks in it; soft but not sticky; and it did have a smell, or was she imagining it?

  She sniffed at it. It did have a smell, and quite a strong one, too, but it was nice. In fact, it was very nice. No wonder all those dogs had been so keen to get at it. The more she rubbed it between her fingers and thumb, the stronger and the nicer it smelled.

  “I wonder …,” she said.

  “It can’t …,” she went on.

  “I don’t suppose …,” she muttered.

  Then a light seemed to switch itself on in her head. She slapped the ear back in place and clapped her hands.

  “Come on, Sharky!” she cried. “I got it! I know what they were after!”

  And she thrust the head, horsehair whiskers and blood-alley eye and all, into an old cotton shopping bag and swept Sharky off the bed and down the stairs.

  By this time, the kids in the alley opposite Rummage’s were hopping with impatience. Dippy couldn’t creep out while people were looking, and the window seemed to act as a magnet for all kinds of passersby.

  Including dogs. A suspicious-natured cur called Rags, who belonged to Fred Hipkiss, the grocer, had stopped to investigate a lamppost when he caught sight of Dippy’s face. Rags suddenly leapt backwards, all his mangy hair stood on end, and a low growl came from his throat as he stalked up to the window. After his trouble with the hiccups and the wasp, Dippy was feeling rather sleepy, and gave a sudden jerk as he nearly nodded off. That roused Rags’s fury. Clearly the horrible thing in there was challenging him to a fight. He leapt up at the window time and time again, barking madly, tumbling down each time only to get up in a frenzy of noise and temper and try again. Benny dealt with that; he ran across, lassoed Rags with Thunderbolt’s emergency twine, and hauled him away.

  The next problem was a young man called Ernest and his best girl, Ethel. They were strolling along moonily, stopping every so often to look at each other and sigh. Finally they drifted to a halt outside Dippy’s window and gazed into each other’s eyes. The kids tiptoed across and hid in the angle of the bow window nearby.

  “Oh, Ernest,” Ethel sighed.

  “Oh, Ethel,” Ernest mumbled.

  “D’you love me, Ernest?”

  “Oh, yes!”

  “How much do you love me?”

  “Oh … A yuge amount. Enormous.”

  “Would you save me from a burning building?”

  “Not half!”

  “What else would you do for me, Ernest?”

  “I’d …” Ernest paused.

  “What?”

  “Ethel, you
see that dummy in the window?”

  The gang froze. Ethel drew back her head from Ernest’s shoulder.

  “What about it?” she said.

  “Well, them gloves it’s got on, they’re just like the ones I told you about what I saw in Whiteley’s.”

  “Is that all? You’re more interested in gloves than in me! I don’t know why I bother with you—you don’t love me at all!”

  “I do! I do! Honest!”

  “Well, what would you do for me?”

  “I’d … I’d … Ethel, I’d swim the fiercest river in the world!”

  “What else?”

  “I’d … I’d run a thousand miles in me bare feet!”

  “And?”

  “I’d fight ten lions with me bare hands!”

  “Oh, Ernest!” Ethel said softly. “And when can I see you again?”

  “Well, I’ll come on Tuesday if it isn’t raining,” he said.

  “Ohhhh!”

  And Ethel stamped her foot and flounced away. Ernest followed, protesting.

  “Helpless!” said Angela. “Run a thousand miles, fight ten lions …”

  “And he’ll come on Tuesday if it isn’t raining. Huh!” Zerlina scoffed.

  “Never mind them,” said Benny. “What we gonna do about Dippy?”

  “He’s paralyzed!” said Thunderbolt. “It’s that horse reviver—it must’ve turned his blood to ice!”

  “He’s not moving at all!” said Benny. “Wake up, you old clot!”

  Dippy awoke with a loud snort. He blinked again, then looked around, and Benny tapped the glass. Dippy peered forward and finally saw a row of desperate faces through the window. They were all saying something that he couldn’t make out. Get to the floor? Give to the poor?

  Then they started gesturing at him. He thought they’d gone mad. He was about to say so to the man sitting next to him when he had a horrible shock: the man was dead! Some horrible murder had been committed—a deranged taxidermist had stuffed the victim and sat him up in a chair—and he’d be next—

  With a yelp of terror, Dippy tried to escape. He uncrossed his legs and stood up … But having been crossed for so long, the left one had gone to sleep, and when Dippy put his weight on it, it gave way.

  “They’ve cut me leg off!” he gasped, grabbing at the nearest thing, which happened to be one of the other two dummies left standing. It fell over with him, and the two of them landed locked in an embrace which made Dippy think of “The Mummy’s Vengeance,” a story he’d read only the month before in one of Thunderbolt’s penny shockers.

  Incoherent with terror, he scrambled up, found the little door, wrenched it open, and tumbled through into the darkness of the shop, giving out little squeaks of fear.

  The darkness was cool and quiet. Dippy still couldn’t stand up straight, because his leg hadn’t woken up. Maybe if he had just a little sip of the horse reviver … There was still a bit left in the flask.

  He swallowed the last mouthful, smacking his lips with satisfaction.

  Someone behind him was shouting. Wasn’t it Benny’s voice?

  “Swallow some more!”

  Or was it “Open the door”?

  Yes! That was it! He had to open the door. Nothing to it, really … He laughed a scornful laugh, thinking of how fearful he’d been.

  Just get over the counter and he could open the door and go home and have a lie-down, same as that other fellow was doing further along.

  That other fellow was the “Dux-Bak” Rainwear dummy which Mr. Paget had put there earlier, but to Dippy’s fuddled eyes it looked so comfortable lying there that he thought he’d join it. At the third try he got onto the polished mahogany counter, knocking off a display rack of “Silk-O-Lene” Cravats on the way, and stretched himself out peacefully. He fell asleep at once.

  Meanwhile, alone in the basement, Mr. Rummage was feverishly shoveling sixpences and shillings and half crowns out of a tea chest and into a Gladstone bag. Ever since he’d discovered the stash, hidden away under a trapdoor in the Ironmongery Department, he’d been torn between gloating over his good luck and trembling in case he was found out. And when he’d heard those two plainclothes detectives this morning dropping hints that they were onto him, he’d been itching to get down here and dispose of the loot. If he could get the coins home to his comfortable house in Streatham, he could hide them there safely till the danger had passed.

  He scooped up the last few sixpences with a “Skoopitup” Enameled Dustpan, shut the Gladstone bag with a snap, and replaced the trapdoor. Then he hauled a heavy “Skweezitout” Mangle over to stand on top of it, looked around critically to make sure that he hadn’t left any sixpences on the floor, and turned off the one hissing gaslight.

  Nearly done, he thought. Soon to be safe. He picked up the Gladstone bag, tiptoed to the stairs—and then froze.

  Burglars!

  There were noises from the floor above—muffled thuds and mutterings of a sort which wouldn’t have been made by any honest person. Mr. Rummage bit his lip. He wasn’t afraid of burglars, but if he had to call a policeman while carrying a Gladstone bag full of snide coins …

  Perhaps he could scare them away without involving the police.

  Pausing only to take a “Slysitoff” Silver-Plated Carving Knife from a nearby rack of kitchen equipment, he tiptoed up the stairs and into the main part of the shop.

  Now, where had that noise come from?

  He had the impression that it was somewhere in the direction of the Gentlemen’s Outfitting Department.

  Creeping through the dark, with his sinister black bag in one hand and the knife held high in the other, he made his evil way across the floor.

  Meanwhile, in the street outside, the New Cut Gang were rapidly changing their plans.

  “He’s dead,” said Zerlina. “That horse reviver’s done for him. He’s only an old man.”

  “I think he’s fallen over and broken his leg,” said Thunderbolt. “Or his neck, maybe.”

  “Stuff!” said Angela. “He’s fast asleep. I can hear him snoring from out here!”

  “Never mind all that,” said Benny impatiently. “We got an emergency here. Oh, no! There’s Jelly-Belly …”

  Just turning around the corner, under the flaring lights of the Theatre, P.C. Jellicoe was moving majestically into the New Cut.

  But as the policeman stopped to inspect the pictures of the actresses outside the Theatre, Benny had an inspiration. He’d seen Thunderbolt fiddling absently with his lump of lead, and now Benny snatched it out of his hand and hurled it through the plate-glass window with an almighty crash. Glittering splinters of glass flew everywhere.

  Before the others could react, Benny yelled, “Mr. Jellicoe! Mr. Jellicoe! Quick!”

  The constable had heard the noise and turned to look. When he saw Benny jumping and beckoning, he fumbled for his whistle.

  “Hurry!” Benny yelled, and to the twins: “Go and drag him—go on! Make him hurry—”

  P.C. Jellicoe was breaking into a run, but he had to do it slowly by leaning forward and walking faster and faster. All the time he was trying to get his whistle to his mouth.

  Peep-peep! came a feeble sound.

  Thunderbolt ran to help. The constable lumbered up and stopped, heaving and puffing.

  “Woss—goin’ on? Eh? Oo—done—that?” he said, crimson and breathless, pointing at the window.

  “Someone inside!” said Benny. “We was just going past when there was this crash. Someone’s in there murdering people—look at the mess in the window!”

  There was no denying that something awful had happened in that window. P.C. Jellicoe scratched his head.

  “Hmm,” he said, still breathless. “I better summon assistance.”

  He felt for his whistle again, and turned towards the main entrance.

  “Can I whistle it for you, Mr. Jellicoe?” said Thunderbolt. “I reckon I got a bit more puff.”

  “I think you’re probably right,” said the policeman, and
handed him the whistle before knocking loudly at the front door.

  Thunderbolt filled his lungs and gave such a blast that it nearly shattered another window.

  And that was the sound that did it for Mr. Rummage. By this time he’d crept into the Gentlemen’s Outfitting Department. Hearing the smash of the window, he’d almost lost his temper: How dare they! Vandals! He took a tighter grip on the “Slysitoff” Carving Knife. Any burglar he caught would be lucky to escape without a puncture.

  And then came Thunderbolt’s blast on the whistle.

  Police!

  He’d have to hide the coins. Quick! Where could he put them?

  He looked around in a panic, and had an inspiration: the “Dux-Bak” dummy on the counter! The one old Paget had knocked over! One quick slice with the carving knife and he could tip the coins into its belly and have done with them.

  He scuttled over to the dummy and held the knife high …

  And of course it wasn’t that dummy at all. Dippy had been snoozing peacefully, stretched out on the counter, but when he heard footsteps he opened his eyes.

  And seeing a wild-eyed lunatic about to slice him open with a carving knife, he sat up at once and screamed at the top of his voice.

  Mr. Rummage was even more startled, if possible. To find a dummy opening its hideous eyes and sitting up and screaming at him was more than his nerves could take.

  He dropped the knife, leapt six feet backwards and four feet in the air, and screamed even louder. The Gladstone bag flew out of his hand and landed on the floor, where it burst open, scattering a fountain of coins everywhere.

  And while Mr. Rummage and Dippy were screaming at each other, the door burst open and in came P.C. Jellicoe, followed by a mob of howling children.

  The shop was dark, of course, but Benny struck a match at once and lit the nearest gaslight.

  “Look!” he said, pointing dramatically at the quivering Rummage. “Guilt all over him, Mr. Jellicoe!”

  And holding the detective camera still, he took a photograph.

  “Eh?” said the policeman. “This is the shop owner!”

  “Look at these snide coins, Mr. Jellicoe!” said Thunderbolt. “Thousands of ’em! He’s been pitching ’em! See? He’s the one that did it!”