The Tiger's Egg

by Jon Berkeley

  “That’s just what we were wondering,” said Miles. “Little was just asking these two.” He pointed at the curled-up rats. “I think they must be Fowler Pinchbucket’s. He’s always bred rats.”

  Lady Partridge took her spectacles from her dressing-gown pocket and balanced them on her nose. “My goodness! They are rats. I though it was a pair of gloves. Do you mean to tell me they were inside the clock too?”

  There was a soft thump as a large gray cat landed on the table. He, too, seemed very interested in the rats. Little said something to him, and he shot her a disappointed look and began licking his paws, as if a pair of tasty white rats were the last thing on his mind.

  “They appear to be asleep,” said Lady Partridge, peering closely at the rats.

  “I think they’re just pretending,” said Miles. “They said they liked to sleep in the clock because it’s nice and dark inside.”

  “That would hardly explain how a selection of my valuables and a mountain of cash got in there with them,” said Lady Partridge. “Although I suppose you could say their money has made them comfortable!” Lady Partridge guffawed with laughter, giving the rats such a start that they were unable to keep up the pretense of sleeping, and instead sat up in the middle of the hoard, blinking sheepishly.

  “Sergeant Bramley,” called Lady Partridge, “I think you should come in and see this.”

  Sergeant Bramley sidled in through the door, stepping carefully to avoid the cats that swirled around him, followed a moment later by Constable Flap. “Master Miles. Miss Little,” said the sergeant, touching the peak of his cap. He surveyed the pile of valuables and the two white rats, who were looking more uncomfortable by the minute.

  “Well, well,” said Sergeant Bramley. “What have we here?”

  “I opened the clock to see if I could fix it,” said Miles, “and we found all this stuff inside. The rats were in there too.”

  “Rats, eh?” said Sergeant Bramley.

  “Rattus norvegicus,” said Constable Flap.

  “Thank you, Constable,” said the sergeant, without turning around. “Now why would anyone hide a couple of rats and a pile of money in a clock, do you suppose?”

  “I think it was the rats who brought the rest of the stuff into the clock,” said Miles. He upended the heavy clock case so the policemen could see inside. “Look. There’s a kind of door here, but the catch is on the inside.”

  Sergeant Bramley looked at Miles and raised an eyebrow. “Best leave the detective work to the professionals, Master Miles,” he said. “What would a rat want with a pocket watch, eh?”

  “That’s just what we were asking them,” said Miles.

  “Asking them?” repeated the sergeant.

  “Little has a way with animals, Sergeant,” said Lady Partridge. “She can speak to them.”

  “Is that so?” said the sergeant, a look of mild irritation creeping across his face. “I’m afraid interrogation of a suspect must be carried out by a police officer. It will never stand up in court otherwise.”

  Constable Flap’s face brightened. “We could always swear the girl in as a special deputy,” he said. He was thinking of the door-to-door inquiries that might be avoided by questioning the rats directly, and he knew that with Constable Wigge on sick leave and the sergeant on important desk duties it would be his own shoe leather that would be worn out in any such investigation.

  “Special deputy?” said Sergeant Bramley. “You can’t just go swearing people in willy-nilly. It’s against procedure.”

  “No it’s not, sir,” said Constable Flap. “As senior officer you have the authority. I read about it in—”

  “Yes, yes, no doubt,” said the sergeant.

  “I’ve got the wording here, sir,” said the constable, pulling a folded paper from his breast pocket. “I keep it about my person in case of emergencies.” He handed the paper to the sergeant.

  Sergeant Bramley put on his glasses and cleared his throat. “Raise your right hand, young lady,” he said.

  “Which one is that?” whispered Little to Miles.

  “The one you write with,” said Miles.

  “I write with both of them,” said Little, and she raised both hands at once.

  “I do solemnly swear . . . ,” said the sergeant, reading from the paper. He paused, and Miles nudged Little with his elbow.

  “So do I,” said Little.

  “Just repeat what I say, miss. I do solemnly swear to uphold and protect the laws of the land . . .”

  “I do solemnly swear to uphold and protect the laws of the land . . . ,” said Little, in a voice that sounded remarkably like the sergeant’s own. Sergeant Bramley frowned at her, then returned to his paper.

  “With the utmost . . . Pah!” He folded the paper again and gave it back to Constable Flap.

  “With the utmost pah,” said Little, both hands still raised. She enjoyed these rituals that people occupied themselves with. They reminded her of the way she used to zigzag between the cirrus clouds, trying not to touch any of them, instead of just flying directly to where she was supposed to be.

  The sergeant began again. “I promise to uphold the law without throwing my weight around, and to give back my badge when asked for it,” he said.

  “I don’t have a badge,” said Little, “but I promise anyway.”

  Sergeant Bramley turned and unpinned one of several silver badges that Constable Flap wore on his uniform, and pinned it to Little’s shirt. It was his Criminal Mastermind Outsmarting badge, second class, and the constable was particularly proud of it. He bit his lip and said nothing.

  “Thank you,” said Little. “Can I put my hands down now?”

  The sergeant nodded. “Now,” he said, tapping his pencil against his chin, “ask these here rodents how they came to be napping in a clock on a pile of money.”

  Little had a brief conversation with the smaller of the two, who seemed to be the spokesrat. “They said they sneaked in for a nap, and the money was already in there.”

  “I think it’s the money that was stopping the chimes,” said Miles. “There’s no room for the mechanism to work.” As if to prove him right, the emptied clock gave a whirring cough, and a series of tiny brass hammers began to strike the chimes. It was well before midday, but the clock was made to chime and it had been silent for long enough. The music cascaded through the room, more beautiful than ever without the heavy black case to contain it. The two policemen, the dark-haired boy, the plump lady and the special deputy were lost for a time in worlds within worlds, and not one of them noticed the rats as they sidled and slid down the side of the money mountain and crept to the edge of the table. The edge of the table, however, was as far as they got. Below them the room was carpeted with cats, and canny as the rats were they had not begun to find a way over that obstacle when the last chimes died away and Constable Flap spotted their escape attempt.

  “They’re trying to evade justice, sir,” he said.

  “We’ll see about that,” said Sergeant Bramley. “Constable Flap, go to the van and fetch my lie detector.”

  The constable’s eyes lit up at the sergeant’s request. “Do we have one of those?” he asked.

  “You’ll find it underneath the driver’s seat,” said the sergeant, keeping his eye firmly on the rats. The constable cleared the cats in one athletic leap and disappeared through the door.

  “What’s a lie detector?” asked Little.

  “It’s a device that can tell whether or not you are being truthful,” said Lady Partridge. “I must say I didn’t know myself that they were standard issue in local police stations.”

  “I issued this one to myself, Lady P.,” said Sergeant Bramley, winking at Miles. Miles looked at Lady Partridge and shrugged.

  Constable Flap reappeared with a puzzled expression on his narrow face. He handed the sergeant a large wooden mallet. “This is all I could find under the seat, sir,” he said.

  “That’s my lie detector,” said the sergeant. He reached out and gr
asped the tail of the smaller rat, and raised the mallet in the air. “Now,” he said to Little, “ask these here rodents if they can remember anything further about how they came to be in that clock.”

  Before Little could repeat the question, the rat let out a flurry of frightened squeaks.

  “He says the Treat Man put them in there,” she said. The rat squeaked some more.

  “The Treat Man teaches them to find shiny things and bring them back to exchange for treats. Then he teaches them to open the little door in the clock, but only when it’s dark. Once they’ve got the hang of that he puts two of them in each clock and sends them out. They leave the clock every night to see what they can find, and they fill it up until the bells stop singing. After that they wait and wait, then the Treat Man opens the door and they get a day off and as many treats as they can eat. He empties out the shiny things from the clock and then they go back out on a new mission.”

  Sergeant Bramley put down the mallet, but did not let go of the rat’s tail. “Can the suspect give us a description of this Treat Man?” he said.

  “The Treat Man smells like the mushy stuff under the washing machine,” Little translated. “His fingernails are dirty.”

  “That’s Fowler Pinchbucket all right,” said Miles.

  The sergeant released the rat and handed the mallet back to Constable Flap. “Good work, Constable,” he said. “And you, Miss Little. You can hold on to that badge for the time being. I may need you to testify in court, once I’ve decided if these here rodents are suspects, witnesses or evidence.”

  “Whichever they are,” said Lady Partridge, “they’ve certainly ratted poor Fowler Pinchbucket up a treat,” and she dissolved into helpless laughter.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  A RESPECTABLE ESTABLISHMENT

  Sergeant Bramley, sweaty-faced and silver-buttoned, raised his fist and hammered on the door of the Canny Rat. “Open in the name of the law,” he bellowed. Constable Flap had suggested that they make use of the element of surprise, but the sergeant did not get many opportunities to shout anything in the name of the law, and he was not about to miss one when it fell into his lap. Windows opened in several neighboring houses at the sound of his command, and the heads of the people of Larde leaned out into the narrow alley. The sergeant raised his fist to knock again, but the door swung open before he had the chance. Mrs. Pinchbucket emerged from the gloom, a smile pasted on her sour features. “Good morning, Sergeant,” she said. “And there’s young Miles and his . . . sister. How nice of you all to drop by.”

  “I have a warrant to search these here premises,” said Sergeant Bramley, skipping the formalities. He produced a piece of paper from his pocket and waved it in front of Mrs. Pinchbucket’s nose. If she had taken the trouble to read the tiny writing Mrs. Pinchbucket would have discovered that it was just the guarantee on a new sofa that the sergeant had bought the weekend before. The sergeant disliked applying for warrants, which involved driving to Shallowford and climbing the steep driveway of the district judge’s house while his suspects generally made good their escape. He found that people tended to believe in official documents without reading them at all, which made it seem doubly foolish to go to all that trouble.

  Mrs. Pinchbucket was no exception. She paled slightly, and opened the door wider. “By all means,” she said. “There’s nothing illegal here. It’s a perfectly respectable establishment, and if there was anything illegal here, which there isn’t, it wouldn’t be ours, and we would know nothing about it. Fowler!” she called over her shoulder. “Come up and close that cellar door behind you. There’s a terrible draft.”

  “No can do,” came Fowler Pinchbucket’s thick voice from somewhere below. “I’m counting the loot. There can’t be a draft anyhow, woman. There’s no window down here.”

  Mrs. Pinchbucket’s face turned even paler, and her smile more brittle. “Such a hoot, my husband,” she said. “We have visitors, Fowler,” she called in a voice like broken glass.

  “No need for introductions, ma’am,” said Sergeant Bramley. He marched past Mrs. Pinchbucket in the direction of the cellar door, followed by Miles and Little. Constable Flap closed the front door of the tavern and stood in front of it with his arms folded, leaving the anxious landlady no choice but to follow the sergeant and his companions.

  If you have ever been visited by an officer of the law when your cellar is stuffed with stolen goods you have probably found yourself wishing, as Mrs. Pinchbucket did, that something would happen in the nick of time to save you from a long stretch in prison. A husband who can hide things very quickly. A sudden earthquake. A fully grown Bengal tiger who is on your side. None of these things came to Mrs. Pinchbucket’s aid, however. When Miles, Little and the sergeant descended the cellar steps they found Fowler Pinchbucket sitting in the center of an enormous pile of coins, silverware, jewelry and trinkets that must have amounted to half the total wealth of Larde, and certainly cleared up any doubts about the mysterious burglaries that had been sweeping the town. Behind him on a long trestle table were a dozen or so of the ugly black clocks, and behind them an entire wall of wire-fronted cages. Some of the cages were empty, and in others Miles could see pairs of white rats, stuffing themselves with nuts or curled up asleep in nests made of shredded paper.

  “Well, well, well,” said Sergeant Bramley. “What have we here?”

  Fowler Pinchbucket stared at the policeman with his mouth open, his brain struggling to come up with a brilliant idea, or indeed any idea, to explain away the incriminating evidence that surrounded him. “It’s a research project,” said Mrs. Pinchbucket’s flinty voice from the cellar steps. “For insurance purposes. We’re employed by a foreign gentleman to survey the town’s valuables. All these items will be valued and returned. They’re simply on loan, you might say.”

  “That’s right,” said Fowler, who hadn’t quite followed his wife’s explanation but knew it would be wise to back it up.

  “Valued, eh?” said the sergeant, his pencil poised over a notebook he could barely see in the dim light. “And who might this foreign gentleman be?”

  “We don’t know, exactly,” said Fowler. “He comes by every week or two. Never gives us notice. He looks through all the loot—the borrowed stuff, every last item—then he goes away again. He says we can keep what we want.”

  “No he doesn’t,” said Mrs. Pinchbucket frostily. “He asks us to kindly catalog all the items and return them to their rightful owners.”

  “Exactly what I meant,” said Fowler. He got to his feet and wiped his sweating hands on his trousers.

  “It doesn’t look very cataloged to me,” said Miles. “And how are you going to give it all back? Are the rats trained to replace the stuff where they found it?”

  Fowler glowered at Miles. “The Wednesday boy, eh?” he said. “How did you know about my rats?”

  “You were ratted up a treat,” said Sergeant Bramley, trying out Lady Partridge’s joke. Fowler looked at him blankly, and the sergeant made a mental note not to try humor on desperate criminals. Especially not Lady Partridge’s humor. He cleared his throat. “I’m afraid I’ll have to arrest you both on suspicion of rat-assisted theft. You have the right to remain silent, and for that matter I’d prefer it that way. Run up those steps, Master Miles, and tell Flap to get down here with those extra secure handcuffs he got on mail order.”

  When Miles, Little and the two policemen emerged with the handcuffed Pinchbuckets the neighbors were still leaning out of their windows. They had been waiting for a little drama to liven up the morning, and the arrest of the Pinchbuckets was just the sort of thing they had in mind, although some felt that a few shots and a scream or two might have made things more exciting. As Mrs. Pinchbucket passed by the window of a balding man in a vest, she called up to him: “You owe us two shillings since last Tuesday, and don’t think I’ve forgotten.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  SOMEWHERE MUCH

  Miles Wednesday, circus-savvy and almost twelve,
headed for the long field where the Circus Bolsillo would be preparing for the last show of the season. The Pinchbuckets had been locked up in the small cell at the back of the police station, and the Canny Rat had been secured until someone could be appointed to sort out the stolen goods and return them to their owners. Meanwhile there was a big top to raise and there were animals to be tended, and the thought of the familiar work put a spring in his step.

  He arrived to find the twin peaks of the big top already hoisted, and sections of canvas being laced into place to make the walls of the tent. Tembo and Mamba, who seemed to enjoy the work at least as much as their performance in the ring, trumpeted loudly as Umor walked them back to their enclosure, their part of the job completed. Miles ducked into the huge cool oval of the empty tent and looked upward. As he expected, Fabio and Gila were perched on the crossbar that joined the two main tent poles, checking the rigging and the trapezes and setting up the colored spotlights. “Master Miles!” called Gila. “Where have you been?”

  “Nowhere much,” said Miles.

  “Then get up here to somewhere much and give us a hand,” called Fabio.

  “We don’t have all day,” said Gila.

  Miles started up the tent pole toward the distant ceiling. He did not have Little’s confidence with heights, and chose his footholds with care, but there was no place in the circus he loved more than to be perched up high under the striped sky of the big top. Up there in the rigging was an oasis of peace from which he could look down on the bustle below as he tightened bolts and checked pulleys, and the nervous thrill in his stomach only added to the attraction.

  “Well, Master Miles,” said Fabio as he reached the platform at one end of the crossbar. “Last show of the season tonight.”