“Something’s gone terribly wrong!” gasped Linda, clutching Norman’s arm. Together they hurried out of a side exit and ran to the door which led down under the stage. There they met Ariadne, still peering down the steps with some interest.
“A big fight,” she told them briefly, “Mr Dix and two other men. And I think there’s someone else in there now, but I can’t think how he got there. It’s too dark to see who’s winning.”
The sounds of struggle and terrible oaths which came from below were getting louder and louder. At last one figure broke free and lumbered up the steps. It was Ray. He was wild-eyed, his sleeve was ripped, and he was covered in cobwebs and grime. Closely on his heels followed Trevor, in a similar sorry state. One after another they pushed past the little group at the top of the steps and ran off at full speed in the direction of the main exit. A third figure staggered out after them. Without his cap or his dark glasses, Mr Dix was almost unrecognizable. He was very nearly bald and his eyes seemed nakedly small and deep-set, like those of an angry gorilla. His teeth were bared in a snarl of rage. He didn’t look in the least like his usual self, but, for a split second, Ariadne thought he seemed oddly familiar. He gave them all a furious, lowering look before pursuing Trevor and Ray down the corridor at amazing speed.
“Are you all right, Mr Bubbles?” called Linda anxiously from the top of the steps.
“What do you think?” answered a hollow voice from the gloom below.
In the hall above the audience were still applauding, half hoping for an encore. When none was forthcoming they began to drift happily away. It had all been a huge success. They had never expected, when they paid their entrance money, that the Book Bonanza was going to be quite such a lively event as this.
Charlie stood hesitating on the stage, all his anger suddenly deflated. Too many weird things had happened all at once. He felt so bewildered he was ready to cry. He had even begun to wonder if he really had found The Stunner’s picture inside that book, or if he’d imagined the whole thing. Dodger scrambled up on the stage to join him.
“That last bit was great, wasn’t it?” he said, peering down the trap-door. “I never expected him to do that.”
Down below Linda and Norman were helping Duggie Bubbles up the steps and leading him away to the helpers’ room at the back of the stage. Luckily he was more or less unhurt. Landing on top of Ray had cushioned his fall. Linda apologized over and over again, and flustered helpers rushed for cups of tea and brandy.
Dodger wandered curiously about the stage. He peered into Duggie Bubbles’ top hat and cautiously touched one or two other props, half afraid that some magic might suddenly rise up out of them and take him unawares. But Charlie hadn’t the heart to investigate. He had decided in the last half hour that he didn’t want to be a conjuror any more. Making magic was altogether too difficult, and, even if you could make it, still harder to control. And being on stage with a real magician hadn’t been any fun at all. It had just made him feel foolish. He wandered off across the stage, miserably kicking up some bits of confetti which were still lying there.
“Hey, look, Charlie!” called Dodger. “Here’s that skeleton thing that he pulled out of the book!” And he jerked the paper concertina open with a flourish. Something fell out of it and drifted across the stage, coming to rest at Charlie’s feet. He picked it up. Then he let out a yell of triumph.
“It’s The Stunner!” he shouted. “I was right! He did take it after all!”
“Not that drawing again,” said Dodger. “I just can’t understand why everyone goes on about that silly old drawing.”
All the same, he followed Charlie as he rushed off to the helpers’ room to find Norman, waving The Stunner. Linda, Norman and Ariadne were hovering attentively about Duggie Bubbles, who was slumped in an armchair. He wasn’t smiling any more. His eyes popped and his jaw hung slackly, making him look more like a discarded ventriloquist’s dummy than a magician.
“Here’s The Stunner . . .” began Charlie breathlessly. “Got her back . . . found her in my Magic book . . . only it turned out not to be my Magic book after all . . . couldn’t tell you, Norman, because then I had to go up on the stage and be magicked at myself . . . and when I got off it again, it wasn’t there, you see, and so . . .”
Nobody was listening to this explanation, even if they could have followed half of what Charlie was trying to tell them. They were all staring at The Stunner. Ariadne was the first to recover from her surprise. She took the drawing out of Charlie’s hand and looked at it carefully.
“I think it’s The Stunner, all right, the real one,” she said. “I am glad to see her again.”
“We’ve just found it, up on the stage,” Charlie explained. “Inside that skeleton thing.”
Now they all turned to Duggie Bubbles. His expression was blank. He was the only one among them who had showed no surprise at Charlie’s dramatic entrance.
“I never wanted it,” he said. “Didn’t want anything to do with it. Never saw the wretched thing until today.”
“It’s Linda’s uncle’s drawing,” said Norman quietly, “and apart from being valuable, it’s very precious to him for family reasons. At the moment he still hasn’t realized that he’s been robbed of it, because there’s a clever fake hanging on his wall in its place, put there by Mr Dix. We couldn’t tell you, Linda, until after the Bonanza was over. We didn’t want to worry you, and anyway, we weren’t sure. But now perhaps you’d like to explain, Mr Bubbles, what it’s doing here.”
Duggie Bubbles’ face had lost all its doll-like pink colour. He looked suddenly grey, and years older.
“It’ll be the end of my career if this goes any further. I’ll be finished if the papers get hold of it . . .” His voice trailed away miserably. They waited. “You see,” he said, “Duggie Bubbles is my stage name. My real name’s Douglas Dix. Howard—that’s Mr Dix—is my older brother.”
“I thought there was something familiar about him when I saw him without his dark glasses!” said Ariadne.
“I don’t see him very often. We’ve never got on well. He’s a lot older than me, and I don’t like some of the ways he has of making money,” Duggie told them. “Anyway, being seen about with him wouldn’t have been very good for my image. But he rang me up out of the blue the other day and said he wanted me to keep something for him. For safety, he said. A small drawing. Said there were some people he didn’t trust watching the barge, and he had to get rid of it as soon as possible.”
“Why didn’t he ring the police?”
“Oh, he’d never do that. He doesn’t like to involve the police for, er, personal reasons. I didn’t like it at all. But he puts a lot of pressure on. Says he knows things about me that would ruin my career. So I said I’d go down to the barge and collect it from him. Last night, that was. But when I got near to the river there seemed to be a spot of trouble going on. Some sort of fight. So I beat it as fast as I could. You can’t afford trouble in show business, you know.”
“We were there too,” put in Charlie, “I saw you. Do you remember, Norman? And those two men, the ones that kept pushing me over. They were here today, at the Bonanza.”
“They must have been the same two who were watching the barge. They must have been after The Stunner too,” said Norman.
“Probably,” Duggie agreed. “My brother telephoned me again early this morning. Sounded pretty anxious. Said he was being watched all the time, but that he was going to get to the Book Bonanza somehow—he knew I was making a personal appearance there—and smuggle the drawing to me in a copy of my book. He wanted me to hang on to it for him until the coast was clear.”
“So that’s what Mr Dix was doing at the Bonanza,” said Ariadne. “I followed him all afternoon, but I never guessed he had The Stunner inside that book.”
“And we were following those two men, who were following Mr Dix . . .” said Charlie.
“Until he turned round and caught them at it. Just like a game of Grandmother’s Footsteps!�
�� finished Ariadne.
“I thought I’d let Howard slip me the drawing,” Duggie continued, “but I didn’t want to have anything to do with stolen goods. I was going to make him give it back, or return it myself if I could find out who it belonged to. I would even have gone to the police, even if he is my brother. But when I got hold of the book, the drawing wasn’t inside. It was the wrong copy. They must have got muddled up when the news photographer was taking the picture. We realized that as soon as we looked inside and saw this kid’s name.”
“Chas. L. G. Moon,” Charlie prompted him.
“Howard was furious. I’ve never seen him in such a rage. He threatened to ruin my act. So I had you up on stage and got it back.”
“But how did you do it?” Dodger wanted to know. “I was watching you every second.”
But Duggie Bubbles wasn’t telling him that.
“I’m a magician, aren’t I?” was all he said.
18 Escape!
Trevor and Ray had reached the River Walk, pouring sweat and sobbing for breath, but still running. Twice they had nearly managed to throw Mr Dix off the scent, skidding round corners, dodging down side-roads, running the wrong way up one-way streets, scattering shoppers at every turn. But he had clung on relentlessly. Though he was the older man by far, rage seemed to fire his pace.
“Oooh, my back! My legs! My weak ankles!” cried Ray piteously as he puffed behind Trevor, but Trevor didn’t seem to hear. He was making for a small wooden landing-stage which stuck out from the river embankment between two moored barges. A ladder led down to the water, where a small boat, which belonged to one of them, was tied up. Mr Dix was gaining on them rapidly. They scrambled over a low wall, and across somebody’s garden, recklessly treading down the plants. They had reached the landing-stage when Mr Dix caught up with them. Trevor was already half-way down the ladder. Ray was hopping about on the platform above. His shoe had come off. A split second before Mr Dix made a grab at him, he picked it up and hurled it. It caught Mr Dix a stinging blow on the side of his head. He staggered about, cursing.
“Wait for me, Trevor!” Ray’s voice was a high-pitched scream.
He slithered down the ladder and gave a great leap into the boat. It rocked dangerously as he landed in it, nearly capsized, but not quite. It turned round twice, quite out of control, drifting away from the landing-stage. They had no oars. Trevor, hunched in the bows, was paddling with his hands for all he was worth. Ray lay flat on his back in the bottom of the boat, moaning.
“Paddle, Ray, you daft idiot, for pity’s sake, paddle!” shouted Trevor.
The boat drifted out a little way and seemed to waver uncertainly. Ray dragged himself up over the side and flapped a hand hopelessly in the water. His weight listed the boat over to one side. It spun round once more. Then, quite suddenly, a swift current caught it and they were carried out into the main course of the river, away on the out-going tide.
Mr Dix was forced to stand there and watch them go. He couldn’t contain his fury. Lifting his arms to heaven, he let out a wild cry. He shook his fists in the air. He literally capered with rage. But his foot caught against Ray’s discarded shoe. He staggered for a moment, then tipped headlong over the edge of the landing-stage into the river below. Great ripples marked his fall. When at last his dripping head emerged from the filthy water, he was just in time to hear Ray’s voice, carrying faintly back over the tide,
“This isn’t doing my rheumatism any good, you know, Trevor . . .”
19 A Little Celebration
A few days later, a little celebration was about to take place at Uncle Owen Bowen’s. His room had been slightly tidied up and the table was laid with all sorts of delicious food: egg sandwiches, sausage rolls, plenty of chocolate biscuits and a big fruit cake with nuts and cherries on top. There was fizzy lemonade and even a bottle of wine for Uncle Owen himself. Linda had taken him for a stroll by the river. This was supposed to be so the children could get everything ready, but it was really so that Norman could have time to return The Stunner to her original frame and rehang her on the wall without Uncle Owen ever knowing the difference.
“But why can’t we tell him?” Charlie wanted to know. “It was so exciting about Duggie Bubbles disappearing through the stage and me finding her and everything.”
“People as old as Mr Bowen aren’t as fond of excitement as you are,” Norman told him. “They like a more peaceful kind of life. It’s all thanks to you we got her back for him, Charlie. And we’d never have found out what was going on here if it hadn’t been for you, Ariadne, and Dodger too. But Linda thinks it’s better if he never knows about The Stunner being taken from him. It would only upset him. But we’ll have to see that he doesn’t let her out of his hands again.”
“But what about Mr Dix?” asked Charlie.
“Vanished. Scarpered. Completely disappeared. Or so Linda’s just been telling me,” said Norman, working away busily. “Nobody’s seen him since the day of the Bonanza. I think that magician brother of his, Duggie Bubbles, has told him to get out of London quickly, before there’s trouble. Or he might have decided for himself that things were getting too hot for him. He must know by now that he’s lost all hope of getting The Stunner for himself, and, what’s more, we could have the law on him for forgery if he shows his face here again.”
“What are you going to do with that copy?” Ariadne wanted to know.
“Put it in a package and post it through the letter-box of his barge, I suppose,” answered Norman. “It’s all locked up and empty there, Linda says. Only a few empty milk bottles left on the gang-plank.” He carefully straightened the real Stunner in her frame on the wall and stood back to admire his handywork. “Lovely, isn’t she?” he said, but he was looking over at the door, where Linda had just appeared, rosy-cheeked and looking rather stunning herself, with Uncle Owen following close behind. He beamed with pleasure at the sight of the loaded table.
“A party! How kind of you all. I love parties. Used to go to a lot of them at one time. What a wonderful cake! When can we start?”
As all the chairs were occupied by stacks of paintings, they began at once, without bothering to sit down.
“A very curious thing about Mr Dix,” said Uncle Owen, munching away happily. “Nobody can understand why he left so suddenly. Overnight, without a word, not even to me! A neighbour of mine said she saw him running down the River Walk, dripping wet and shouting, but that must be just wild gossip, of course. Extraordinary fellow. But, do you know, the people from the Welfare Service have been round to see me, and they say I can stay here as long as I like! And, I must admit, it’s lovely here without Mr Dix. I can paint down by the river whenever I want to now. Quite like old times. Beauty thinks so too, don’t you?” He bent down to offer a piece of roll to the old cat who was purring about his legs.
“Linda and I’ll decorate the hall for you when we’ve got some time off, if you like,” Norman offered.
“You’re too kind, too kind. Do you know, the whole house has changed since Mr Dix went away? Even the smells seem to have disappeared. And I never hear those footsteps overhead at night any more. I really think Lily must be quite at rest at last.”
They all looked at The Stunner. A pale rippling light was thrown up from the river on to the wall where she hung. Even Dodger stopped short, with a chocolate biscuit half-way to his mouth, and gazed at her, as though he’d just caught sight of her for the first time.
“I think I see why you were making all that fuss,” he said at last, through a mouthful of crumbs, “about her being pinch—” but here Charlie nudged him warningly in the ribs with his elbow, “—about her hanging there,” he corrected himself quickly. “She does look rather a pretty kind of lady.”
“Not half bad,” agreed Norman.
“Beautiful,” said Ariadne. “I’m so glad she’s yours, Mr Bowen.”
“She’s only mine in a way,” said Uncle Owen, filling his glass. “Art belongs to everyone, really, you know. Especially to you
young people—to you, Ariadne, my dear, and Charlie and Dodger here. It gets handed on from us older people to you young ones because it belongs to you. It’s not something chilly or stuck-up or always in a glass case. It changes all the time. And it’s not only painting, it’s singing and dancing and books and libraries and telling stories and acting plays and getting a good tune out of a musical instrument. It’s yours by right, and it’s worth sticking up for and never letting anyone take away from you. Because it’s the best present you’ll ever have.”
“Here’s to Art, then,” said Norman, raising his glass.
“And here’s to you, Mr Bowen,” said Charlie Moon.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shirley Hughes is best known as an author and illustrator of picture books and she has had over two hundred books published since she started writing and illustrating in 1960. She was born near Liverpool and studied art at Liverpool Art School and Ruskin School of Art in Oxford.
Although many of her picture books are for younger children, she thinks it’s just as important to have pictures in stories for older readers. She says about her writing, “In conceiving a story I tend to think in pictures rather than words, and the text tends to develop out of these, like the captions to a silent film.”
Shirley was honoured for her outstanding contribution to children’s literature in 1999 when she received the OBE.
If you enjoyed the Charlie Moon stories why not try her picture books for older children, such as ENCHANTMENT IN THE GARDEN and THE LION AND THE UNICORN.
The Charlie Moon Collection Page 16
