by Will Mabbitt
The crowd cheered enthusiastically, keeping their eyes on the sky. Clearly there was more to come!
Our position in the crow’s nest of the yacht berthed next to the Sunbeam allows us the perfect view.
See there, hidden at the back of the crowd, a wizened greyhound with tired and baggy eyes watches the scene from beneath a flat cap. The greyhound’s name is Wilkinson. For ten years he has been training Ursula, his pet seagull, for this very moment. Taking her gently from her cage he tenderly kisses her beak.
Then he fastens her tutu with a neat bow.
“We wouldn’t want it slipping off, Ursula, would we? Not on our big day. Now, remember what we’ve practiced. Land, curtsy, then fly off.”
And, as the Grand Zhool’s bread crumb offering drifted in the wind, Wilkinson threw Ursula into the air.
Ursula flew high and out above the sea, then circled around to land gracefully at the Grand Zhool’s feet.
The Grand Zhool turned to the crowd.
“Behold! St. Statham has sent us his sacred seagull!”
The crowd clapped politely.
Ursula made a perfect curtsy.
The Grand Zhool raised his hands to the sky.
“Behold! The seagull has shown its deference to me, the Grand Zhool!”
Ursula turned around and prepared to fly off.
At the back of the crowd, Wilkinson removed his cap and wiped the sweat from his wrinkled brow. His life’s work was complete. It was notoriously hard training seagulls, but he had done it.
No. He shook his head. They had done it. Him and Ursula. Together.
Then it happened.
Just as she left the ground . . .
Just as she prepared to make her triumphant flight back out to sea . . .
Just as the Grand Zhool was preparing to leave . . .
Ursula did what seagulls do best.
The Grand Zhool looked down in horror at his poo-spattered feet.
He turned to Govvel.
“Fetch the seagull trainer!” he boomed.
Inside the barrel, Mabel Jones felt Jarvis wriggle uncomfortably.
“I can’t see,” he whispered. “Let me have a turn.”
Mabel kept her eye to the hole. She had a feeling something dreadful was about to occur. Maybe it was better if Jarvis didn’t see.
The Grand Zhool glared at the crowd as it parted to make way for Wilkinson the greyhound. He was held firmly between two of the Grand Zhool’s Personal Guard.
They threw him to the hard stone floor of the dock.
The Grand Zhool’s face grew dark with rage.
He looked at the cowering form of the wizened greyhound.
“You’ve made me look a fool, Wilkinson.”
Wilkinson looked up at the raging hippo.
“Please, Your Grace . . . not the coat. Anything but that!”
The hippo scowled.
Mabel blinked. His fur coat seemed to be moving. Writhing. Small paws were appearing. Little snouts sniffing . . .
Sniffing for FEAR.
And then something dreadful did happen.
Something very dreadful indeed.
Parts of the fur coat seemed to spring to life, peeling away from the white silken lining. They moved so fast it was hard for Mabel to make out what kind of animal they were—a blur of ripping claws and biting teeth.
Then she realized. The coat was made of weasels!
Ferocious,
blood-crazed
weasels!
Mabel turned her face away from the peephole as they leaped upon Wilkinson.
“It’s horrible!” she cried. “That poor greyhound!”
Then, after bracing herself for a moment, she pressed her eye to the peephole again.
The Grand Zhool’s carriage was making its way back through the horrified crowd.
On the dockside, a lonely seagull in a neatly tied tutu stood looking at a bloodstained flat cap.
Of Wilkinson, there was no other sign.
CHAPTER 14
Maniacal Pigeon Fever
Night has crept across the great city of Otom and all is silent except for the clanking silver breastplates of the patrolling Grand Zhool’s Personal Guard. It is forbidden to wander the city after dark, but we are safely hidden in the pigeon loft of the old pizzeria, which provides an excellent view of the Grand Plaza and the Grand Library.
Focus your binoculars on the doors of the Grand Library. Read its words with dread:
The patrol has passed from sight. All is quiet. Quiet apart from—
Would you mind stopping that scratching? It puts me off my narrative somewhat.
What do you mean you itch?
Oh, those. Ignore those. That is just the mostly harmless bite of the common pigeon louse. Your hair is probably infested by now. Nothing that a shaven head won’t cure. Only one in five fleas actually carries the maniacal pigeon fever anyway.
Me?
Oh, they don’t bother me. I always bring louse repellent on such unlikely adventures as these, especially after I picked up an annoying dose of sea nits from the sofa in the CADAVEROUS LOBSTER TAVERN. It took ages combing them from my buttock-fur.
Anyway, we are not here to discuss my medical problems. I suggest you keep your personal questions to yourself.
But what is this?
A movement among the shadows?
Pass me the binoculars . . .
Yes. Five figures lurk suspiciously. And rightly so, for they are out and about beyond the hour of the Grand Zhool’s curfew. Who are these mysterious figures?
They scamper across the moonlit plaza to an alleyway that leads alongside the locked and forgotten Grand Library of Otom.
Hark! The sound of breaking glass! A burglary is about to occur!
We should join it.
Of all the dangerous deeds ever perpetrated in the course of an unlikely adventure, this must surely be the most foolhardy. Mabel and Jarvis, both forbidden creatures, entering a forbidden building, to search for a forbidden book.
And all forbidden by order of the Grand Zhool himself!
Outside the library waits Sir Timothy Speke. He is half keeping watch and half trying to free Carruthers Badger-Badger, who is wedged in a small window.
“It’s not that you’re FAT, Carruthers, just that the window is too small,” explains Speke as he pulls on his unfortunate friend’s legs.
Inside the library, Mabel Jones wipes the dust from a sign on a nearby door.
She turns to Jarvis, who is dawdling behind, leafing through a book of music with Omynus Hussh.
“I used to play music once,” mutters Jarvis. “In the old days.”
Mabel sighs. Sometimes she forgets that Jarvis must miss his old life in the past as much as she misses hers.
“Come on, you two,” she says gently.
But Jarvis isn’t listening. His head is deep in the book.
He doesn’t notice that, behind Mabel’s back, the door to Room Z has swung open, revealing pure darkness beyond . . .
He doesn’t see, at that very moment . . .
In a single beat of a vole’s heart . . .
In the flicker of an eyelash before the blinking of an eye . . .
In the fraction of a second that ends as soon as it begins . . .
THE LONG, BONY FINGERS
OF A COLD, HAIRY HAND
REACH FROM THE
ROOM AND PULL
HER INTO THE
MUSTY DARKNESS!
Mabel Jones starts to scream, but no sound escapes as another similarly cold and hairy hand clamps around her mouth.
She hears the closing of the door and the turning of a key.
“Hello,” croaks a voice so close to her face she can almost feel the creature’s whiskery lips brushing again
st her ear.
“I’ve been so lonely.”
CHAPTER 15
The Librarian
In the darkness, Mabel Jones felt her feet leave the ground. She struggled uselessly against the creature’s tight embrace.
Now she was high above the floor. The creature that held her leaped through the darkness with great agility until it stopped suddenly, and Mabel felt herself being carefully lowered onto a shelf. The hand that was clamped around her mouth was slowly released.
“My name is Mabel Jones, and I’m not—”
“Shhhhhhh!” said a voice, and Mabel felt a finger pressed against her lips.
There was the sound of a match being struck. A small flame illuminated the darkness. Then a larger flame appeared as a candle was lit. Mabel looked at the creature that sat beside her on the top bookshelf.
It was a gray and grizzled gibbon with long, matted hair. No wonder he had swung through the library with such ease. He had a strange expression on his face, half sad and half wild. But that might have been because his eyes looked in two different directions at once.
Mabel looked him in the eye closest to her—the sad one.
“Hello. I’m Mabel Jones,” she said.
The gibbon jerked his head to the side and looked at her through his madder eye.
“Shhh!”
Mabel reached out for the identification card that hung on a lanyard around his neck.
“You’re a librarian,” said Mabel. “But the library has been closed for years. You haven’t been here all that time, have you? On your own?”
The gibbon raised a long arm and proudly gestured around the room with his long hand.
“My books!”
He bounced on his haunches and hooted excitedly.
Mabel looked about and her heart sank. As far as the candlelight reached, all she could see were rows upon rows of empty bookcases.
“Where are they all?”
Leonard’s shoulders sank and he swiveled his head to fix her with his sad eye.
“Zhool came for hooman books. Hooman books all burned.” He made a silent hooting face, then distractedly picked a small beetle from his fur and chewed it.
“All of them?” asked Mabel. She couldn’t believe that she had come all the way to Otom only to find that the DOOMSDAY BOOK had been destroyed.
“Except one!” Leonard bounced excitedly on his haunches again. “He never find that one. Leonard reserved the best one!”
Mabel held her breath. “Which one?”
Leonard laughed a hooting laugh, then stopped suddenly. “The book I reserved is called . . .”
He paused and, if Otom was the sort of place to get thunderstorms, then Mabel would’ve heard the distant sound of thunder.
“THE DOOMSDAY BOOK!”
He giggled again.
“Where is it now?” asked Mabel. “Can you show it to me?”
“Oh no,” replied Leonard. “Book smuggled from library under sweater and hidden away.”
He put his fingers to his lips and moved his face close to hers, his wild whiskers brushing against her cheeks, his wild eye boggling into hers.
“The CRYPTOGOG holds the secret.”
“What secret?” asked Mabel.
Leonard smiled. “The final hiding place of the DOOMSDAY BOOK!”
Mabel scratched her head.
“Where can I find the Cryptogog?”
Leonard looked glumly at the floor.
“Grand Zhool has the Cryptogog.”
He silenced another fit of the giggles with one of his long-fingered hands.
“But he can’t open it.”
Mabel scratched her head. “Open it?”
“Cryptogog is a special box. Very special,” hooted Leonard.
“Why doesn’t he just smash it open?”
“Smashing the box will destroy the secret it contains.”
“So how do you open it?”
“Shhh!” said the librarian. “Am reading.”
He put his long hands together and opened them as if reading an imaginary book.
Mabel reached for his arm.
“Please. I need to know how to open the Cryptogog!”
The librarian scowled at her.
“Shhh. Good bit. You leave, please.” He pretended to turn a page.
Carefully Mabel took the candle and started to climb down the empty bookshelf.
“Only the humble shall succeed,” murmured Leonard, turning another imaginary page. “Only the humble . . .”
Mabel felt sorry for the librarian. It seemed as though the years of solitude and the destruction of his beloved books had driven him mad. As she reached the bottom, she looked up at him one last time.
“Good-bye, Leonard,” she called.
The gibbon closed his imaginary book. His sad eye fixed on her and he spoke in the softest and quietest of voices.
“The magic word, Mabel. What’s the magic word?”
“The magic word for what?”
Leonard jerked his head to one side and fixed her with his wild eye. Then, hooting angrily, he swung off into the gloom.
CHAPTER 16
The Plan
“So,” explained Mabel Jones in the darkness of the alleyway that ran behind the Grand Library, “all we need is to break into the Grand Palace and steal the Cryptogog.”
Omynus Hussh rubbed his doorknob with his good paw and smiled.
“Filchsome thievery? I knows just the loris for the job!”
He rubbed his head against Mabel and looked up at her with his saucery eyes.
“Then when I gots the Cryptothingummy, I’ll slits the Grand Zhool’s throat and riffle his pockets and steal his rings and we’ll buy a pirate ship and—”
“We only need to get the Cryptogog, Omynus,” Mabel interrupted, frowning. Omynus meant well, but old habits die hard for a silent loris trained in
since birth. “I think we should all go.”
Jarvis brushed the hair from his eyes.
“We’ll need some kind of distraction. Something or somebody good at causing a disruption . . .”
Everyone turned to stare at Speke.
“What’s that, chaps?” he said, looking up from a notice on the wall. “I’m afraid I was miles away.”
He pointed to the notice:
PORTRAIT ARTIST
WANTED
Apply to
GOVVEL
at the Grand Palace
Clever, cunning Mabel Jones smiled. A plan had formed in her mind.
And, just in case it didn’t at that same moment form in your mind, be quiet, for Mabel is about to explain . . .
“Speke, you can infiltrate the palace in the guise of a visiting portrait artist.”
Speke clapped his paws together in delight.
“Subterfuge! How jolly.” He paused. “I think Carruthers should accompany me, though. I’ll need someone to open the paints. They can be awfully tricky with webbed paws.”
Mabel nodded and continued. “Then, while you two distract the Grand Zhool, me, Jarvis, and Omynus will break in and steal the Cryptogog!”
She looked at the otter.
“Are you sure you’re happy to do this, Sir Timothy? It’s very dangerous.”
Speke took a deep breath and his chest swelled with pride.
“For ALBEMARLE, I’ll do it.”
Unnoticed by his friends, Speke’s hand crept to his waistcoat pocket, where he kept his dear departed father’s medal. “And for Daddy,” he whispered, a tiny tear forming in his eye.
“I say,” said the muffled voice of Carruthers. “Now you’ve formed your cunning plan, do you think you could unwedge me from this window?”
CHAPTER 17
Letters Home
To Sir Lockhe
ed Beagle,
Head of the Albemarle Top-Secret Service
This just in from our Near Far Eastern division: a coded message from Agent Badger-Badger. Requires your urgent attention.
Springfeather
Dear Uncle,
We have finished Grandad’s portrait and found a delightful frame. It is a great work of art and could surely hang in the Palace of the Grand Zhool. Sorry to hear about Grandma’s face. Maybe she could have an operation to remove the tattoo if it truly is as rude as you describe. The judge will throw the book at her as it is her third prosecution for gross indecency this year. Surely she will be going to jail again. I guess you could keep her from view. Have you tried keeping her down the well?
Your nephew,
Carruthers
Dearest Nanny Mimsy,
Our awfully important secret mission to steal that book I told you about is going rather well. Mother would be so proud. I remember her fondly joking, “Your useless art will get you nowhere, Timothy,” as she filed my latest childish doodles carefully behind the trash can.
But actually it seems my scribblings have come in rather handy. I have successfully applied to paint the Grand Zhool’s portrait! It will be the perfect distraction while my friends riffle through his palace in search of the Cryptogog. Hopefully we will find it before that bounder Von Klaar.
Anyway, better dash—I’m having my whiskers trimmed in preparation for tomorrow’s exciting spy work.
All my love,
Timmy
x x x x x x x x x
PS Have you seen Algernon Teddy? He wasn’t in my suitcase. I’m afraid I’m not sleeping well without him.
CHAPTER 18
The Beggar
ICE CREAM! ICE CREAM! WHO WILL BUY MY WONDERFUL ICE CREAM?
Hello.
I’VE GOT STRAWBERRY . . .
It’s me.
RASPBERRY . . .
The narrator!
TUTTI-FRUTTI . . .
