The Great Brain Robbery (12 page)

‘Uh, OK . . . thanks!’ stammered Timmy. Marvella clicked her fingers and Frankie heard the thud of heavy feet advancing down the corridor.

‘You’re welcome,’ Marvella smiled. Moments later there was the sound of a scuffle.

‘Ow! Let go!’ Timmy shrieked. ‘Get off! What are you doing?’ Marvella closed the door as Timmy was dragged away down the corridor. ‘Where are you taking me?!
Heeeelp!’ he yelled. Frankie and Neet exchanged alarmed glances. The door clicked shut.

Dr Gore was white with fury. ‘You told me they’d be here!’ he spluttered. ‘We must find them IMMEDIATELY!’

‘I don’t see why you’re throwing such a tantrum,’ Marvella tutted. ‘So what if we don’t find them? It’s too late for them to stop us now.’

‘Oh-ho!’ Dr Gore spluttered through his moustache. ‘You don’t know what the little vandals are capable of! Frankie Blewitt and Anita Banerjee are vicious little crooks, I
tell you, criminal masterminds!’

‘Calm yourself!’ Marvella hissed slowly, like a snapping icicle. ‘People are staring. Now you have a job to do, so slap on a smile, get up there and get on with it!’

Marvella’s orders were as clear as crystal. Dr Gore mopped his enormous forehead, ratcheted up a tense grin and returned to the admiring crowd.

‘This is all very impressive, Professor,’ ventured a man with a wispy moustache. ‘But . . . um . . . is it entirely ethical? I mean, it all seems a little . . . extreme,
don’t you think?’ The audience murmured uncomfortably while Dr Gore’s yellow eyes flared with contempt.

‘My dear ssssir,’ he sneered, ‘scientific progress demands—’ But Marvella didn’t let him get any further.

‘At Marvella’s,’ she piped up shrilly, ‘we will go to great lengths to give children what they want for Christmas. We are extreme, yes, and I’m not afraid to say
it. Extremely committed to children’s happiness, and . . .’ she added with a wink, ‘extremely committed to your bank balance.’ The audience chuckled and did not press any
further. After all, why stand in the way of progress? Why stand in the way of children’s happiness?

‘One more thing,’ Gore hissed. ‘To make sure everything goes to plan, we are keeping the children under tight surveillance. Last week we targeted a test-group from the local
school.’ The screen flicked on to show security camera footage of the Cramley children on their visit to the toyshop.

‘Good grief,’ gasped Frankie. ‘That’s you, Neet, look. And there’s Esther, and Jasmine, and Benny.’

Dr Gore wrinkled his nose with displeasure and continued.

‘Each of these children was given a tracking device, so that we can keep an eye on their movements. We want to know their migration patterns. Do they travel in groups, or on their own? How
fast do they move past shop windows? And so on.’

‘I don’t remember getting a tracking device,’ said Neet. ‘I don’t get it.’

The projection screen flicked on to show a bird’s-eye view of the town with several dozen small red dots moving around it.

‘Each dot,’ crowed Dr Gore, ‘represents a child of Cramley school and . . .’

‘Wow!’ whispered Neet, dazzled by the technical wizardry. ‘That’s pretty cool!’

‘No, Neet,’ said Frankie, turning pale. Dr Gore had halted mid-sentence and was glaring silently at a spot on the map. Frankie thought he could hear the scientist’s blood
beginning to simmer. ‘Empty your pockets, Neet!’ whispered Frankie urgently.

Neet did as Frankie said and – along with a few hairy toffees and a crusty old hankie – an
I Love Marvella’s
badge came tumbling out.

‘That’s it, Neet!’ Frankie panicked. ‘That’s the tracking device! The badge!’ Frankie peeped through the spyhole and saw Dr Gore striding off the stage
towards them, his long fingers twitching like angry spiders. ‘He knows we’re here!’

The audience gasped as two children in animal masks shot out from under the drinks trolley, dived through Dr Gore’s legs and flew out of the room faster than a pair of
rocket-propelled rollerskates.

‘Bleeeeewiiiiit!!! Baaaaanerjeeeeeeeee!!!!’ the scientist shrieked in his chipmunky voice. ‘Get back here!!’ But Frankie and Neet were doing no such thing. They tore down
the stairs as fast as their legs would carry them. Frankie was breathing so hard he thought his lungs would burst into flames. But he couldn’t slow down for a second. He knew what Dr Calus
Gore was capable of and he wasn’t about to take any chances. Alarms wailed and flashed all around them. Marvella had alerted security. Frankie glanced over his shoulder to see two enormous
security guards charging after them like angry rhinos.

‘Come in, Blitzen! Come in, Blitzen!’ one of them honked into his walkie-talkie. ‘We have located the party-poopers. Repeat. We have located the party-poopers.’

‘Read that, Donner,’ a voice crackled back. ‘I’ve got the exits covered.’

Frankie and Neet exchanged panicked glances. ‘This way, Frankie,’ said Neet, pushing through a side door that led straight into the shop. The store was already heaving with shoppers.
Frankie and Neet pushed into the throng, but the guards were catching up fast. Frankie turned his head to see one of them right behind him, reaching forwards with a huge, hairy hand.

‘The smoke-bomb!’ Frankie cried. ‘Quickly!’

Neet pulled the perfume bottle out of her pocket and yanked the chain.
Whooooooooooosh!
Within moments the shop was filled with a thick blue fog, so dense that Frankie couldn’t
even see his own feet.

‘We’re getting out of here, Frankie,’ called Neet. ‘Hold on to my ponytail.’ The crowd began to shout and shove their way towards the exit. Frankie felt himself
being carried along on a surge of people that was so thick and fast-moving he was afraid he might drown. ‘Hold on, Frankie!’ called Neet. Frankie took a deep breath, then, before he
knew it, he tumbled out of the fog and crush of the shop into the crisp winter air.

‘Nice one, Neet!’ said Frankie coughing the smoke from his lungs. ‘Now we need to get home and tell the others.’

But Neet didn’t reply.

‘Neet?’

Frankie felt an enormous hand clamp down on the back of his neck and winch him off his feet. It was Rudolph, the henchman that had taken Timmy away. Frankie saw that Neet was in his other hand,
wiggling and squeaking like a gerbil. The guard turned them both around to face him and grinned like an enormous toddler playing with glove-puppets. Frankie tried to shout but Rudolph’s huge
thumb was squeezing his throat so tightly, he could only draw the thinnest wisp of air into his lungs. He felt the sweat beading on his forehead and saw stars floating before his eyes. Then, just
as he was about to black out, he heard a shrill howl of pain. The guard’s enormous fists sprang open, dropping Neet and Frankie on to the pavement. ‘Waaaaaaah!’ yelled Rudolph
clutching, his bottom. ‘Owweeeeee!’ Frankie couldn’t work out what had happened. But then he heard the most ferocious barking. So savage were the growls he felt sure a wolf had
escaped from the zoo. But no! Frankie recognised those fluffy white ears and that pink satin collar. Colette! The poodle let go of the guard’s trousers and, as he went howling back into the
shop, she trotted delicately over to Frankie and licked the tip of his nose.

‘Thanks, Colette!’ gasped Frankie, catching his breath. ‘You’re a lifesaver!’

The familiar sound of a motorbike engine revved behind them.

‘Let’s go, little cabbages!’ cried Alphonsine, chucking them a helmet each. ‘No time to be fandangling about!’

Neet and Frankie swung themselves on to Alphonsine’s growling panther of a bike and within minutes they were roaring away from the toyshop and out of town. As they sped into the
countryside, they told Alphonsine about everything they had discovered at Marvella’s. By the time they had finished, Alphonsine was crosser than a plateful of hot-cross buns.

‘Disgracious!’ she fumed. ‘Disgustful! Snitching children’s memories and turning zem into adverts! That Dr Calus is as mad as a mushroom!’ Colette growled in
agreement. ‘We must stop him! Straightaway! Once and forever!

The motorbike turned off the main road on to a muddy path that led into the forest.

‘Where are we going, Alfie?’ Frankie hollered over the engine.

‘We can’t go home,’ Alphonsine yelled back. ‘Somebody has been there. Somebody has turned the place outside-in.’

‘What do you mean?’ Neet shouted.

‘When Eddie got back, somebody had broken into the house,’ she shouted. ‘One of Gore’s little spies no doubt, sniffling around, trying to find you. It is not safe. I am
taking you to a tip-top secret hideaway. We is meeting Eddie there.’

Neet and Frankie clung on tightly as Alphonsine’s motorbike lurched valiantly over muddy ditches and around clumps of twisted roots. The forest was so densely tangled that, within minutes,
Frankie felt completely lost. But Alphonsine’s sense of direction was as sensitive as a bloodhound’s nostril and, before long, they were nearing their destination.

Wiping the mud from his visor, Frankie glimpsed a distant bloom of colour through the trees. The motorbike’s tyres churned on up a narrow, winding path and, little by little, a tall,
rickety cabin came into view.

‘Ooooh!’ cooed Neet. The cabin was as colourful as a gypsy caravan. Huge petals of paint were peeling off the wooden walls and swallows flitted in and out of the holes in the sloping
roof as if they were weaving it together with threads of air. It was clear that nobody had set foot there for a very long time, but it had a certain magic that hadn’t faded.

‘Where are we?’ asked Frankie. Alphonsine put her finger to her lips and approached the cabin, eyes flicking from side to side to check they had not been followed. Then,
toc-a-toc-toc
, she rapped swiftly on the bright blue door.

As Eddie opened up, Frankie’s eyes widened in astonishment. He stepped inside and looked around him. The dusty rays of light that streamed through the broken roof illuminated the most
extraordinary collection of objects Frankie had ever seen. Draped with a layer of silky cobwebs were miniature merry-go-rounds and wind-up dragons, clockwork unicorns and mechanical mermaids. He
felt like a giant who had accidentally wandered into a fairytale kingdom, frozen in time. Frankie approached what looked like a workbench. On its surface was a pair of dusty old spectacles and a
log-book embossed with two deep-set letters. Frankie rubbed the dust away with his thumb to reveal two small, golden initials.
C.W.

Eddie nodded and told Frankie what he already knew.

‘A very long time ago,’ he said, ‘this was Crispin Whittle’s workshop.’

‘Do you think we’re safe here?’ asked Frankie.

‘Perfectly,’ Eddie replied. ‘Marvella is the only other person who knows about this place, but she never visits.’

‘Are you sure?’ whispered Neet, nervously.

Eddie nodded. ‘After her uncle died, many moons ago, she never returned. Too many sad memories, I suppose.’

Frankie picked up a tarnished picture frame and gave it a wipe. In it was a yellowing photograph of a sprightly-looking fellow with round glasses and tufts of hair sprouting from his ears. A
little girl sat daintily on his lap. She had sparkling eyes and an eager smile that seemed to warm the glass of the frame.