Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (6 page)

And the others all said, "Oh, no. Rather not," a bit doubtfully—and Commander Pott started up the engine and on they went again, hoping that that was the end of the nasty surprises and wondering all the more who it was who was trying to guard the secret of the cave and what, for the matter of that, the secret could be!

Round the next two bends they crawled carefully along with the thunder of CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG'S exhaust echoing on ahead of them. And then, all of a sudden, on a perfectly straight stretch of cave, CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG stopped dead!

"Well, that's funny," said Commander Pott, examining the dials in front of him. "We're a bit low on gas, but there's still five gallons. Oil pressure all right, engine temperature a bit high, but not more than it should be going up this sloping tunnel in third gear." And he got out to open the hood and have a look at the engine. He walked round to the front of the car and suddenly stopped. "So that's it!" he said softly. "She saw the trap!"

"What trap?" they all called, leaning out to see.

Commander Pott pointed to a very thin trip-wire stretched knee high from wall to wall across the cave.

He scratched his head and walked up and down the wire, looking at the ground in front in case there was a trap door to catch people in, and looking at the walls and the roof to see if there was some big rock or a concealed weapon waiting to drop on their heads as soon as they touched the wire. They saw him kneel down and examine where the wire joined the wall and he finally stood up and said, "Aha! The devils! I've got it!" Then he walked back to the car and got out a pair of pliers and some rubber gloves he always carried for dealing with faults in CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG'S electrical system.

"What is it?" they asked rather anxiously, because by now the whole adventure was getting almost too exciting.

Commander Pott said cheerfully, "Oh, nothing much. They're only trying to electrocute trespassers and explorers who get this far into their cave. Probably not actually kill them. Just give them a powerful shock to frighten them away. But it wouldn't have been funny if our front bumpers touched the wire. Might easily have short-circuited the whole of CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG'S electrical system as well as giving us all a nasty shock." He looked puzzled. "Funny the way CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG saw the wire and stopped just in time. There really is something almost magical about this car."

(Well, of course, Jeremy and Jemima weren't in the least surprised. They
knew
CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG was a magical car. Just look at the way she could fly like an airplane and skim across the sea like a speedboat. And anyway, hadn't they had their suspicions on the very first day, when they had noticed that the license plate number GEN II could be read two ways?)

Commander Pott put on his rubber gloves (electricity can't go through rubber) and gave one short snip at the wire and, sure enough, as the pliers cut through, there was a bright blue flash and a shower of sparks and the two halves of the wire fell dead.

And now, when Commander Pott got back into the driving seat and pressed the starter, CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG'S engine at once roared into life again. On they went, climbing still up the wide tunnel of the cave with the big headlights searching ahead for more dangers, and I must say that Jeremy and Jemima in the back seat were quite trembly with excitement at where, in heaven's name, this underground adventure was going to end.

Round the bends they went, on and on into the depths of the chalk cliff, and the speedometer showed that they had now come a whole mile inland from the sea. The air was cold and damp and the breeze, that got stronger and stronger, blew the cobwebs to and fro high up in the roof and made Jeremy and Jemima huddle up together to keep warm.

And then, round a particularly sharp bend, they were suddenly faced with a blank wall of chalk that completely closed the cave. They had come to the end—or at any rate, they seemed to have come to the end—of the long cave!

But Commander Pott got out of the car and walked carefully forward, looking at the ground and the walls and then examining, inch by inch, the chalk wall that blocked the cave. He seemed to find something that excited him very much and he came back to the car and announced, "It's not a wall. It's some kind of a door, a sort of secret trap door. We must find the catch that opens it. Come on, everyone. We must just search every inch of the ground and the walls for it. It'll be something very clever I expect, and well hidden, so tell me if you find even the tiniest clue."

So, inch by inch, the family, working in the bright glare from CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG'S headlights, began examining what seemed to be a solid wall of chalk blocking the cave—just as if the original cave diggers had decided they couldn't be bothered to burrow any farther. The only clue, which Commander Pott found very early on, was that there was the tiniest crack that wandered, zigzagging, down the middle of the wall. It might have been natural, just a fault in the chalk surface, but again it might not, because through the crack a sharp draft was blowing from the other side.

Jemima had chosen to grub about in the right-hand corner where the wall met the side-wall of the cave. There were a lot of bits of flint embedded in the chalk. (There had been the whole way along the walls and roof of the cave, just like you find in the chalk of any chalk cliff. Some of them are fossils. It's often worth digging them out to see.) Jemima found a jagged piece of flint almost as big as a football. Some instinct made her tug at it and go on tugging until it suddenly came away in her hand so that she almost fell over backward. She bent down and peered into the hole the flint had left in the chalk and at once she gave a squawk .of excitement and called, "Daddy, come quickly!" And when Commander Pott knelt down beside her, he saw what she had seen—AN ELECTRIC LIGHT SWITCH!

"By golly, you're a clever girl, Jemima! I do believe you've found the secret." He called to the other two, "Stand back everyone. I'm going to press down this switch. Heaven only knows what'll happen. Ready?" And he pressed down the switch.

From somewhere inside the walls of the cave, there came a deep rumbling and grinding of machinery as, very slowly, the jagged zigzag crack in the solid wall widened and widened and widened until the two halves of what was really a secret door slid sideways into deep slots in the side walls of the cave. And what do you think CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG'S lights showed through the opening? A huge, vaulted room, quite as big as the inside of your village church, and all round the sides were cases and boxes and barrels and sacks neatly stacked up against the walls. It was an underground warehouse—a very secret warehouse for secret things. What could these things be? And who owned them? And why did the owners want to keep them secret? And why did they want a very private cave leading down through the cliff to the sea? And where were the owners? And, since it all smelled so strongly of secrecy, and therefore probably of unlawfulness, how nasty could these owners be?

These questions and many others ran through all their minds, and Commander Pott put their thoughts in a nutshell when he put his hands on his hips and declared, "Ho hum! I smell dirty work! Now then everyone, switch on the brains! Full power! What do we do next?"

Mimsie, who was, like all mothers, worried about the children, said at once, "Darling, let's close the secret door again and reverse quietly back down the way we came. I don't like the look of this at all."

But Jeremy and Jemima just wouldn't agree to this. They were both the tiniest bit trembly about the way the adventure was going, but they had inherited some of their father's exploring bug and they were terribly eager to discover the secrets of the big underground vault. "Oh, please, Mimsie," they both pleaded together, "do let's find out what it's all about."

Commander Pott reflected and said, "Well, Mimsie, after all, no one's going to eat us. And the children don't seem worried. I vote we see the adventure through. It would be ghastly reversing CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG the whole way back now over a mile of cave to the sea. Besides we've been climbing ali the way and we can't be far from the top of the cliff. The cave obviously goes on out of this vault on the other side and leads on to the top. Come on, we'll drive the car up on to the level floor of the vault and give her a rest and then have a good explore. After all, this is pretty thrilling and we really
must
get to the bottom of this secret."

"All right, darling," said Mimsie rather reluctantly. "You know I'm just as keen as you are to find out what this is all about. But if you ask me, there's something pretty fishy about all—this something, well, something criminal. I wouldn't be at all surprised if we hadn't come upon a nest of crooks and gangsters. I only hope none of them appear while we're looking into their secret hoard!"

"Oh, well," said Commander Pott cheerfully, "have to take the rough with the smooth. You never get real adventures without a bit of risk somewhere. Come on!" And they all piled back into CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG and crept up the last bit of slope

until they were parked slap in the middle of the huge secret vault.

While the others piled out and began carefully sniffing about round the edge of the bales and barrels and packages, Commander Pott went back and found the switch on their side of the secret door and, with a grind and a hum of machinery, the two halves came together again. Then he came back and they all systematically began to pry and peer into the secret stocks that were piled up round the walls of the big echoing vault.

Jeremy was the first. "Machine guns," he cried excitedly, "packed in grease paper. They're in sections ready to be assembled !"

Mimsie said, "Oh, heavens! Boxes and boxes of bombs and hand grenades!"

"Daggers," called Jemima, "all kinds of them. And bayonets with rifles to go with them!"

"Well, I'm dashed," said Commander Pott, "dynamite in these cases, and yards and yards of fuse. And gelignite the stuff burglars use to blast open safes and vaults."

"Revolvers," called out Jeremy, "automatic pistols. Big ones and small ones—every kind. With boxes and boxes of cartridges."

Mimsie called out anxiously, "Now don't touch anything, children. You can look, but not touch. Something might go off." (Mothers are always thinking something is going to go off—on Guy Fawkes' day, for instance, with the fireworks. And very often mothers are right about this. I must admit that Jeremy and Jemima knew this through one bitter experience with a box of firecrackers, and they were very careful about the way they peered into the boxes and bales.)

So the search went on. And there was no doubt about it, the family had come upon a great secret arsenal of weapons that certainly hadn't been hidden down in the vault except for some secret and probably criminal purpose.

Finally they all came together again in the middle of the vault and they looked at their father to see what he was going to say about this extraordinary and rather frightening discovery.

Commander Pott had a scruffy bit of paper in his hand and he said, "You know what I think all this stuff is for? In one of the boxes, full of blackjacks and clubs and brass knuckles, there was this scrap of paper that says 'SPECIAL ORDER FOR JOE THE MONSTER, 453 BASHERSTREET, SOHO, LONDON.' Now he's the man I've read about from time to time as being responsible for most of the bank robberies and holdups in England that the papers are always full of. But the police have never been able to catch him and they've never even been able to find out where he gets his weapons from. Well, there's no doubt about it. This is his secret arms dump, and I bet my bottom dollar he smuggles what he wants from time to time over the Channel on foggy nights by speedboat. Now," Commander Pott scratched his head, "what do we do next?"

"I know, I know, I know!" cried Jeremy excitedly. "BLOW IT ALL UP! ! !"

"Don't be silly, darling," said Mimsie. "What about us and CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG? Do you want to blow us up too?"

"Well," said Commander Pott thoughtfully, "it would be rather fun, wouldn't it? But first of all we must find the way out of here. The cave must go on to the top of the cliff, or Joe the Monster and his gang couldn't have got all this stuff down here. Now, I've noticed that the draft we've been feeling all the way up the cave is coming from over there." He pointed to the back of the vault. "From behind those huge packing cases. Let's just have a look."

He went over to the packing cases and hauled on the front one and, instead of weighing a ton as they had all expected, it moved easily aside, and so did the next one and the next one. And when he moved the fourth, with the help of the family all tugging and panting, there was the continuation of their cave sloping upwards and, in the distance, there was a pale glimmer of light.

"By golly!" cried Commander Pott. "That must be the top. Now then, we'll get CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG through the opening and go on up until we get out of here, and then I'll run back and lay a fuse down the cave to the dynamite and we'll get as far away as possible before the fireworks display." He looked at his watch. "It's after eight, so it'll be dark enough to get the most out of our fireworks. But I'm famished and I know all of you must be, so after the big bang, we'll go off to the nearest town and find somewhere for dinner and bed. We'll certainly all have earned it after this evening's work—if all goes well. And I don't see why it shouldn't."

So they piled back into CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG and she started up with her two sneezes and two small explosions and they motored between the packing cases and up the slope and out of the secret vault with its huge hoard of explosives and guns that belonged to the biggest crook in England—JOE THE MONSTER!

Outside the vault, Commander Pott stopped the car and went back while the twins watched through the entrance to see what he did. He took a long roll of fuse out of one of the boxes (it looks like stiff thin rope and it's stuffed with magnesium powder or some other quick-burning explosive, rather like the fuse you light when you want to set off a firecracker) and he attached one end to the stacks of dynamite (that comes in oblong sticks) and piled all the gelignite (that's a stiff putty stuff) on top of the dynamite and then he unrolled the length of fuse and came back to the car after blocking up the entrance again with the big crates so that the explosion, when it came, wouldn't chase them up the cave. Then he gave Jeremy the big roll of fuse to unwind as they. went along and off went CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG up the sloping cave toward the distant glimmer of light that was in the entrance.