The Great Brain Robbery (18 page)

As the ship raised its anchor, Frankie read the letters painted along its broad white side:
The Polar P
rincess
. He smiled drily. Santa would be getting an
unexpected visitor this year. The ship pulled slowly out of the harbour and the Mechanimals, still pursuing their target, started marching off the end of the dock. Frankie watched as dozens and
dozens of them splashed into the sea where they buzzed and crackled for a moment before sinking like brightly-coloured pebbles. As the ship steamed towards the horizon, Timmy started to jump for
joy. ‘We did it! ’ he cheered. ‘We did it! Wowee! Ha ha! It was soooo cool what you did with those Mechanimals, Wes!’

Wes turned pink with pride. ‘Oh, it was a piece of cake really,’ he said. ‘I can do much cleverer things with computers.’

‘Really?’ said Timmy, impressed. ‘Could you teach me?’

‘Sure!’ grinned Wes. ‘What do you want to know?’

While the new friends chatted together, Frankie and Neet sat on the edge of the dock, watching the Mechanimals topple into the water below.

‘We did a good job, Frankie,’ said Neet, squeezing his shoulder. But Frankie didn’t reply. He just watched, pale and silent, as a shiny blue Gadget the Rabbit sank beneath the
surface of the water and disappeared from sight. Neet knew there was only one thing on his mind: what had happened to Alphonsine, Eddie and Colette?

Later that morning, when the children of Britain rubbed the sleep from their eyes, they felt as if they had just awoken from a very long, very eerie dream. They couldn’t
remember exactly what the dream had been about, but they all had the same, strange feeling that they had not quite been themselves. Some felt as if they had been turned into giant puppets whose
strings had been pulled by an invisible hand, while others imagined that they had been transformed into remote-controlled cars or robots. Either way, they were all very glad that it was over. They
sat up, looked at their feet, legs and arms and gave themselves a little pinch. Their dads were getting breakfast ready downstairs; their brothers were yelling in the next room. Yes, everything was
back to normal.

Except for one thing. Their bedrooms were chock-a-block full of toys. The children rubbed their eyes and looked around in amazement as they struggled to remember how they had all got there. Toy
boxes were spilling over, wardrobes were stuffed full to bursting and there were bags and bags of unopened packages littered around their bedrooms. Some of the children noticed that their
Mechanimal was missing, but most were simply astounded at the mountains of stuff that was piled all around them. Most of it wasn’t even stuff they actually wanted. Little Alice Hinton was
baffled by her twenty fluffy unicorns, while Felix Saunders wondered what he was doing with a huge toy battleship. Over the road, Beate Lübecker was mystified by her bumper-bucket of goo,
while her classmate, Isabel Stone, was not at all pleased to find a dozen new teddies in her bed while her beloved old rabbit was in the dustbin outside.

What’s more, when the children looked at these piles of shopping bags, they began to feel sick, as if they had eaten a whole truckload of marshmallows. They didn’t know why, but they
could no longer stand the sight of the Marvella logo and even the slightest mention of the toyshop made them feel quite dizzy. Indeed, whenever they saw the grinning face of Teddy Manywishes
leering at them from a billboard or the side of a bus, they felt an awful lurch in their stomachs as if they were about to throw up. Parents up and down the country scratched their heads in
astonishment. They couldn’t work out why their children who, just days ago, had begged and grovelled for the very latest gizmo or gadget, were now turning green at the sight of them. The
staff at Marvella’s toyshops couldn’t believe it either. Only the day before, the cash registers had been ringing non-stop. But that morning there were no crowds pushing against the
doors at opening-time, no mobs of squabbling parents and no money going into the tills. Except for the odd whirr of a mechanical toy and the occasional bleep of a video game, the enormous shops
were completely silent.

‘What happened?’ a worried shop assistant asked her friend.

‘I don’t know,’ the friend replied, ‘but I don’t want to be here when the boss finds out.’

Meanwhile, Frankie and his friends had retraced their steps to the bridge from which Alphonsine’s bike had plummeted. Frankie peered anxiously down towards the water as
cars and lorries sped close behind him. The bridge was higher than Frankie had imagined. It was at least five times as high as the highest diving board at the swimming pool and the water below
looked as solid as steel. Frankie’s eyes scanned the surface for any sign of Alfie, Eddie or Colette. Then he saw something that made him freeze inside.

Floating a little way downstream, was the tyre of a motorbike. Neet gasped. ‘Oh no, Frankie,’ she said, clutching her friend’s arm. The motorbike was in pieces. It had broken
up as it hit the water and bits of fender, exhaust and engine were scattered across a wide area, glinting cruelly in the cold winter sunshine. Nobody could have survived that fall.

Frankie felt the tears streaming uncontrollably down his cheeks. He ran to the end of the bridge, down the steps and towards the water’s edge, hoping with all his heart that he would find
something, anything, that would reunite him with his old friends. Neet, Wes and Timmy followed him down and helped him search the river banks. A few bits of bike had washed up on the shore but
apart from that there was nothing. Eventually, Frankie slumped down on the shore and sobbed. His friends gathered quietly around him. They didn’t know what to say. Timmy saw that Frankie was
shivering. He took off his jumper and wrapped it around Frankie’s shoulders like a shawl.

Suddenly, Frankie’s sobbing spluttered to a halt. He looked up.

‘Do you remember what Alphonsine was wearing?’ he asked Neet, his eyes wide with hope.

Neet paused to think.

‘Not really, Frankie,’ she said gently, ‘why do you ask?’

Then, all of a sudden, she realised what Frankie was thinking. They both sprang to their feet. They had been searching for Alphonsine down on the ground, when they should have been looking up in
the trees. Frankie’s eyes roved over the treetops. There was nothing there. He charged into the nearby woodland.

‘Alfiiiiiiiiiiiiie! Eddiiiiiiiiiiiie!’ he hollered up into the branches. But only his echo replied. His heart was beginning to sink back down into his socks, when he heard a faint
barking.

Frankie ran through the trees with Neet alongside him. He sprang over roots and charged through brambles, not even feeling the scratches on his legs.

A voice rang through the woodlands. ‘Yoooohooooo! Little cabbages!’

Frankie looked up and saw Alphonsine, Eddie and Colette high up in a large chestnut tree, suspended by Alphonsine’s trusty para-shawl.

‘Ooh-la-la!’ smiled Alphonsine, who was holding Colette in her arms while Eddie clung on to her ankle. ‘At last! We’ve been dangling here for ages, have we not,
Eddie?’

‘No, no,’ Eddie wheezed politely. ‘No trouble at all.’ Frankie felt so happy. Happier than he had ever been. Happier than all the Christmas mornings in the world.

Alfie and Eddie chortled with glee as Frankie and his friends told them how the dastardly Dr Gore had ended up on a slow boat to the Arctic Circle.

‘Well done, little cabbages!’ grinned Alphonsine, thumping the kitchen table with her fist. ‘I knew you could do it! You are all such smartycloggs!’

‘Smartypants,’ Timmy corrected her.

‘Yes, yes,’ muttered Alphonsine. ‘Smartycloggs, Cleverpants, same thing! Who wants pancakes?’

E
verybody
wanted pancakes. The friends all chattered happily as they settled down to fill their growling bellies. Well, almost all of them. Frankie noticed that Wes was
strangely quiet.

‘Are you all right, Wes?’ Frankie asked.

Wes shook his head and pushed his plate away. ‘We have to go back for the Elves, Frankie,’ he said. ‘We can’t leave them there a moment longer.’

‘Of course,’ Frankie nodded, putting down his knife and fork. ‘You’re right. We’ll go back straight away.’

But Wes still looked flustered. ‘Only I don’t see how we’re going to get them out,’ he said. ‘The flying-machine is in splinters and they’ll have tightened up
security since our escape.’

Frankie chewed slowly on a blueberry – Wes had a point. But Neet didn’t seem worried at all.

‘We don’t need a flying-machine,’ she said. ‘Look.’ She rolled up her sleeve to reveal the watcher strapped around her wrist.

‘What’s that?’ asked Wes.

‘It’s a secret camera,’ said Neet, winking at Alphonsine. ‘For spying. While we were in the factory I took a whole bunch of photos.’ She opened the back of the
device and took out the film. ‘All we need to do now is get this to the newspapers. As soon as people realise what’s going on in that place, it’ll be shut down for
good!’

‘Clever, clever Neety!’ smiled Alphonsine, tapping Neet on the forehead with her bony old finger. ‘You have the makings of a master-spy, no doubts about it!’

That afternoon, Frankie and his friends got on the phone to newspapers, TV channels and radio stations and, within half an hour, a thick buzz of journalists and photographers
was swarming excitedly up the driveway.