The sound of some kind of machine droning could be heard at the far end of the corridor.
WHIRRR.
It was Dilly the cleaning lady.
Tom and the porter looked at each other in a panic, and hid behind the wall of the gift shop.
Dilly slowly made her way along the corridor, swinging the polisher across the floor and dropping cigarette ash as she went. Then she turned the machine off, took out a big bunch of keys and unlocked the door to the shop.
Next the cleaner turned the machine on again.
WHIRRR.
Dilly began polishing the floor inside the gift shop, again dropping cigarette ash everywhere.
The balloon burglars smiled to each other. This was their chance.
The drone of the machine was so loud it covered the noise of their footsteps as they entered the shop.
WHIRRR.
With Dilly’s back turned, they rushed over to the far corner of the shop where the balloons were nestling. The pair grabbed as many bunches as they could, and added them to their already impressive haul.
WHIRRR.
However, just as they had reached the door to the gift shop, the sound of the machine stopped dead.
Tom didn’t dare look back.
“Oi!” shouted Dilly. “Wot is it with balloons tonight? You gotta tell me what the heck you two are up to! Now!”
“Oh! Hello, young Miss Dilly!” slurred the porter.
“It’s you!” the cleaning lady replied. “I should have known. You are always lurking around the hospital, up to no good.”
“Not at all!” replied the porter, trying hard to rearrange his misshapen face to make a smile. “Young Mr Tom and myself are just taking all these balloons up to the children’s ward.”
“Whatever for?” demanded the cleaner.
“I am running a balloon-animal-making competition!” said the porter.
“In the middle of the night?!”
“We are mainly making badgers and owls, and as I am sure you know they are nocturnal creatures and so only come out at night,” added Tom.
“I don’t believe a word of it! You’re both lying. All you rotten kids are up to no good. You’ve got no right to steal those balloons. I’m reporting you to hospital security right now!”
“Oh no! What shall we do?” pleaded Tom.
“Leg it!” replied the porter.
The pair raced out of the shop, the porter dragging his withered leg behind him.
Spotting that the bunch of keys was dangling from the door, Tom turned the key, locking the poor cleaner in.
Furious, Dilly banged on the glass doors.
THUD!
THUD!
THUD!
THUD!
“LET
ME
OUT!”
she shouted as more cigarette ash dropped from her mouth.
However, the pair of balloon burglars was already halfway down the corridor, trailing hundreds of balloons behind them.
“YOU ARE LATE!” shouted Amber as Tom and the porter finally arrived. George was standing beside her, not looking best pleased either. All three teams were now gathered at the bottom of the tall stairwell, which stretched from the very bottom of the hospital to the very top. Everyone was holding huge bunches of balloons. Of course, being the unofficial leader of the Midnight Gang, Amber had to have the largest number of balloons. It looked like two or three hundred. All of Amber’s balloons were tied to her wheelchair. There were so many that she was hovering off the ground ever so slightly. One more balloon and she might just have taken off. It was clear that she and Robin had been very busy in their attempt to make George’s dream come true.
“Sorry!” said Tom as he and the porter arrived. Standing at the bottom of the stairwell, Tom finally had a sense of how incredibly tall LORD FUNT HOSPITAL was. Looking up, he felt dizzy. Tom had never been in a building so tall before. A giant staircase led all the way down from the very top of the hospital. There must have been a thousand steps in all, and the ceiling was a huge glass skylight. Through that Tom could see stars twinkling in the night sky.
Everyone’s faces were glowing with the excitement. To be out of their beds in the dead of night was always a thrill.
“OK, everyone. Give me your balloons!” announced George. He couldn’t wait a moment longer.
“Patience, young Mr George, sir!” said the porter. “This is a delicate operation. We need to get the number of balloons just right. If you take all the balloons now, you could zoom all the way up there like a rocket.”
“That’s exactly what I want!” protested the boy.
“Chance would be a fine thing,” remarked Robin.
If you are thinking of making your pet fly,* here is the number of balloons you will need …
A gerbil: 7 balloons.
A hamster: 12 balloons.
*Please ask the pet first, as some do like to stay on the ground.
A rabbit: 31 balloons.
A tortoise: 39 balloons.
A cat: 47 balloons.
A dog: 58 balloons.
A pig: 117 balloons.
A donkey: 343 balloons.
An elephant: 97,282 balloons.
A blue whale: 3,985,422 balloons.
“I am already floating! Look!” said Amber. The girl was hovering a few centimetres off the ground. “And that is with the weight of the wheelchair!”
“All right! All right!” said George impatiently. “Just tell me what to do!”
“First someone needs to go to the very top of the stairs to take just one balloon off George so that when he has floated up he can safely float back down,” said the porter. “Hands up if you want to volunteer!”
Needless to say, none of the Midnight Gang wanted to climb a thousand stairs.
Without thinking, Tom lifted his hand to pick his nose.
“Thank you, young Thomas, sir,” said the porter.
“But—” protested Tom.
“Very noble of you. Off you go!”
Reluctantly, Tom began ascending the stairs. At first he stomped to show his annoyance, but that soon became exhausting so he stopped and simply climbed them. Tom could hear everything that was going on below as the voices echoed up the stairwell.
As usual, the porter organised everything for the children. He began gathering the balloons bunch by bunch, before handing them over to George.
In no time, the boy was starting to feel weightless, his feet skimming the ground.
“We need to be very careful now,” said the porter. “One balloon at a time.”
Finally, Tom had reached the very top of the staircase. He was now completely out of breath. Tom was not sporty at all and to him this was like scaling Mount Everest. The boy looked down and felt a hundred times dizzier than when he had looked up. It was as if he was going to fall, even though with the handrail there was no way he could.
George was now floating a few centimetres off the ground. One or two more balloons and he would be soaring through the air.
“Are you ready up there, Mr Thomas, sir?” called the porter.
“Ready!” Tom shouted back down, though for a moment he had forgotten what he had gone all that way up there to do. “Take a balloon off George so he can safely float back down again,” he muttered to himself, suddenly remembering.
The porter held one balloon in his hand to George’s hundreds. “I am sure this is the one that will finally make you fly. Are you ready?”
“Ready!” replied George.
The porter looked over at Amber and Robin. “All together now, let’s make it like the launch of a space rocket … Ten, nine, eight …”
The Midnight Gang all began counting down together.
“Seven, six, five, four, three, two …”
But before they could say “one” the impossibly old lady, Nelly, waltzed into the bottom of the stairwell clutching her balloon.
“Oh, hello again,” she said brightly. “As much as I love this balloon you gave me, I won
dered if I could swap it for a pink one.”
Nelly reached out and grabbed the huge bunch of balloons George was holding.
As soon as she did so, her little body shot up through the air faster than a rocket.
Tom desperately tried to catch the little old lady as she flew past, but she was going way too fast. The old lady was much lighter than George, and the helium in the balloons made her zoom up the stairwell at terrific speed.
Glass fell from the skylight as Nelly smashed through it.
Those down below leaped out of the way to avoid the sharp shards of falling glass. The shards hit the ground with a gigantic …
“Yippee!” shouted the old lady with joy as she disappeared off into the starry sky.
“Not fair!” shouted George.
From the top of the stairwell, Tom could see Nelly sailing over the rooftops of London.
“COME DOWN!” shouted the porter.
Tom leaped on to the banister, and slid down. The boy felt his bottom become hotter and hotter as he slid down faster and faster. Very soon he realised he couldn’t stop.
“Arrrggghh!” he cried.
“What’s the matter, young Mr Thomas, sir?” called up the porter.
“MY BOTTOM IS ON FIRE!”
“That’s all we need now,” remarked Robin.
The boy slid down the banister faster and faster. The friction was so great that the old pyjamas the porter had found for him started smoking at the seat.
“ARRRGGGHHH!” screamed Tom.
“MY BOTTOM REALLY IS ON FIRE!”
“Yes, dear, we heard you the first time,” replied Robin unhelpfully.
“George, grab that fire extinguisher!” shouted the porter.
The boy did as he was told, but in lifting it up by the handle he must have set the cylinder off, as foam started spraying all over everyone.
SPLURGE!
“Watch where you are pointing that thing!” screamed Amber, as she now resembled a giant Mr Whippy ice cream.
“I can’t turn it off!” cried George.
As Robin, too, was covered head to foot, he remarked, “I haven’t the faintest idea what’s going on any more.”
“HELP!” screamed Tom. “SOMEBODY CATCH ME!”
With the fire extinguisher still spraying foam everywhere, the porter was also soon covered.
SPLURGE!
Desperately, the porter tried to rub the foam out of his eyes to get into position to catch Tom.
“I CAN’T SEE ANYTHING!” cried the porter.
“Join the club,” remarked Robin.
Looking over his shoulder, Tom could see that he was heading straight for Amber.
“AMBER! TRY AND CATCH ME!” he shouted.
“MY ARMS ARE BROKEN!” she called back.
WHIZZ!
Tom shot off the end of the banister.
He flew through the air.
WHIZZ!
And landed on top of Amber.
SPLAT!
Sending her wheelchair speeding off backwards …
RATTLE!
They hit the wall with a tremendous …
WALLOP!
… and landed in a crumpled, foamy heap on the floor.
CRUNCH!
Then the splurging finally stopped.
“Great news, everybody!” announced George.
“What?” said the others.
“I’ve worked out ’ow to turn this thing off!”
“Just in time!” said Robin sarcastically.
“I am glad my arms and legs are already broken,” said Amber. “Otherwise they would be broken.”
Tom examined the seat of his pyjamas. It was black and charred.
“Well, come on!” said the porter.
“What?” replied the Midnight Gang.
“We have to catch a flying old lady!”
The Midnight Gang rushed over to an ambulance. The old rusty vehicle rattled as its engine was still running.
“Pile in, everybody!” barked the porter.
Everyone worked together to lift Amber and her wheelchair into the back of the ambulance.
“Right, who wants to be lookout?” asked the porter.
“I am not sure I’m the best candidate,” mused Robin, indicating the bandages over his eyes.
“I’ll do it!” said Tom. It sounded fun.
“Excellent, Mr Thomas, sir, I’ll just strap you to the roof!” he replied.
“You’ll what me to the what?!” demanded Tom.
“There’s no time to argue! Nelly is flying high over London as we speak!”
The man whipped off his old leather belt, and with some difficulty hoisted himself up on to the roof of the ambulance. He strapped the belt to the siren and gave it a tug to make sure it was secure.
“Right! Up you get!” said the porter as he offered his hand to hoist Tom up.
Tom stood on the roof of the ambulance and held on tight to the belt.
“You are my eyes!” said the porter, sliding down the windscreen. “You tell me when you spot the old girl!”
“OK!” said Tom.
“Ready?” said the porter.
“Y-y-yes!” replied the boy.
The ambulance sped off.
BRMMM!
As the vehicle zoomed off into the night, Tom’s eyes searched the black sky. What fun Sally’s missing, he thought. Suddenly these imaginary adventures had taken a whole new turn. Far off in the distance, Tom was sure he could just make out the large cloud of balloons with an old lady dangling beneath it pass in front of the full moon.
“There she is!” cried Tom.
“Which way?” asked the man.
“Straight ahead!”
BRMMM!
The ambulance sped up.
Tom had to hold on tight as the porter drove the ambulance as fast as it could possibly go. Which was surprisingly fast.
“LEFT! LEFT! DEAD AHEAD!” shouted the boy.
The ambulance skidded round corners, went the wrong way down one-way streets and even mounted the pavement in pursuit of the flying old lady.
“I don’t see why we have to be in such an awful rush,” muttered Robin, sitting up front between the porter and George. “What goes up must come down. I am sure the old dear will land somewhere, and she can find her own way back to the hospital.”
“I don’t care so much about the ol’ lady,” remarked George. “I just want me balloons back! It’s my go next.”
“I can’t believe how uncaring you two boys are!” said Amber, who could hear everything from the back. “That poor old lady desperately needs our help. And what’s much more important is that we are having a ride in an ambulance! Faster, man! FASTER! And put the sirens on!”
The porter smiled and did what he was told.
Up on the roof, the noise was deafening. Tom now had to shout instructions at the top of his voice for the porter to have any chance of hearing him.
“RIGHT!”
Far up in the sky, the old lady was skimming the roofs of some of London’s most famous landmarks: St Paul’s Cathedral, Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square and the Houses of Parliament. Then the hem of Nelly’s nightdress caught on the tallest spire of Westminster Abbey.
The nightdress was whipped clean off in an instant.
“Oooh-hoo-hoo!” laughed Nelly. “I AM IN THE NUDDIE!”
Indeed she was.
“SHE’S NAKED!” shouted Tom. Now he was staring at some wrinkly balloons and a wrinkly bottom.
“OH NO!” the porter shouted up.
“IT ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE SHE IS HAVING THE TIME OF HER LIFE!” shouted down Tom.
Then DISASTER struck.
The branches of a tall tree wiped out half of Nelly’s balloons. Immediately the naked old lady began descending at an alarming rate.
“STOP! SHE’S RIGHT ABOVE US!” shouted Tom down to the porter.
The man slammed on the brakes and the ambulance came to an abrupt halt.
The lady came straight down on the r
oof with a …
BUMP!
… knocking out Tom in the process.
THUD!
It was now a tight squeeze in the back of the ambulance. Tom was lying on the stretcher, out cold after being knocked out for the second time in two days. Amber was in the middle in her wheelchair. On another stretcher was Nelly, wrapped in a blanket to cover her modesty. The old lady was sitting up, buzzing from her first balloon flight.
“When am I going flying again?” she asked brightly.
“You’re not!” replied George curtly.
The boy was grumpy that his dream of flight had been so cruelly snatched from him by this old dear.
“It was me who was meant to be flyin’ tonight. You’re not even a member of the Midnight Gang!”
“The Midnight Gang? That sounds jolly exciting! Please may I join?”
“NO!” snapped George. “After tonight, you will never ever ever be a member of the Midnight Gang!”
“You could have put another ‘ever’ in that sentence for emphasis,” mused Robin.
“EVER! EVER! EVER! EVER!” said George.
“Mmm, still not quite enough ‘ever’s,” muttered Robin.
“Oh shut up! Porter?”
“Yes, Mr George, sir?”
“I don’t suppose we ’ave time to stop off at an Indian takeaway? I need to get a couple of dishes for me newsagent mate.”
“I hate to disappoint you, sir, but we are in rather a hurry,” replied the porter.
“I thought not. It’s just that ’e is starvin’ hungry …”
“I am sorry, sir.”
“Not even a poppadom?”
“It’s not wise to stop, sir.”
“I’ll tell ya now, my mate Raj is not goin’ to be ’appy.”
The Midnight Gang Page 10
