The Further Adventures of Aardvark Jenkins

by Laszlo Thribb

brain, it must be possible somehow."

  There was a pause during which Henrietta slipped from the room.

  "So who do we know who's a scout and wouldn't mind joining in?" asked Thomas after a while.

  "You mean get someone else into it?" Richard shook his head. "I don't know."

  "Hang on. I've got a class list in my bag downstairs." Thomas got up and made for the door, but before he could reach it, it opened and a boy scout stepped into the room.

  "Can I join in?"

  Thomas and Richard stared open-mouthed.

  "Clean round your factory, mister?" the newcomer grinned.

  Thomas gaped in amazement. "Hal? Is that you? Is that really you?"

  The new scout whipped off his cap. "S'me all right. Scouts honour!"

  "But what? ... where?"

  "My brother's uniform. He won't need it in California." Henrietta beamed. "Fits me perfectly and I don't even need to get my hair cut."

  Thomas shook his head. "Oh no Hal. No!"

  "Oh yes, yes, yes, brother scout."

  "No." Richard stood up. "No!"

  Henrietta smiled.

  Thomas pointed a finger at her. "No. Absolutely not. It's out. Bad plan. No way. Completely forbidden. You may not. Finally and definitely, NO."

  Henrietta didn't even bother arguing. She smiled an even bigger smile. "You want to catch some bank robbers or not?"

  And so it was decided. Next day, she and Richard, both in scout uniform, set off for the timber factory in Kranji.

  1.Chapter Six

  The next morning the gates were open and the factory was busy. The steel shutters had been rolled up and both sides of the building were now open, revealing huge machines. Buzz saws sliced through whole logs of wood; power planes cleaned up the planks and a giant shredder ate all the useless, odd shaped bits of wood, spewing the result into chips for manufactured board.

  The lady with the large teeth opened the door to a tiny room. "Mr Lalcacca, here's some help for you."

  A photocopying machine was whirring away, attended by a very thin, old man. There were piles of paper everywhere.

  "Mr Lalcacca, this is Henry."

  The old man nodded.

  Henrietta looked around the room. "What do you do here?" she asked in her lowest voice. Richard managed not to laugh.

  "Eh?"

  She tried again, louder. "What do you do?"

  "Stuffing."

  It was Henrietta's turn to look puzzled.

  "Stuffing, dear." The toothy lady smiled. "You put these leaflets into these envelopes and then you label them ready for the franking machine."

  "Oh, er ..." Henrietta looked around her at the huge piles of paper and envelopes. Then she brightened. "It's my hay fever," she said. "I'm afraid I can't work in a dusty room."

  Richard looked amazed. "Your hay ... " He was silenced by a short jab in the ribs.

  Henrietta sneezed a little sneeze to demonstrate the power of dust.

  "Oh well." The lady displayed her extensive collection of teeth again. "Richard, are you allergic to dust?"

  "I suppose not," he muttered. "I'll see to you later, Sneezy." he looked daggers at Henrietta as the dentist's delight led her from the room.

  Richard looked at his new mentor. "Hello Mr Lalcacca. How many envelopes have we got to stuff today"

  "Eh?"

  "How many?" Richard pointed.

  "How many? Oh, just six thousand or so."

  The first ten weren't too bad. The second ten were pretty tedious. The third ten were completely, mind-bogglingly boring. By the time he'd done two hundred and thirty three envelopes, leaflets and labels, Richard was certain he would go mad. His sanity was only saved by Mr Lalcacca's announcement that it was time for a break.

  The Coke was cool and refreshing. Richard sat and slurped it while considering just what he would do to Henrietta when he found her. Then he looked up and began to laugh.

  The bedraggled figure that flopped down next to him was almost unrecognisable as the trim neat scout that had accompanied him to the factory that morning.

  "A nice open air job, away from dusty offices. That's what she said," groaned Henry/Henrietta. "So what do you think I'm doing? What I am doing is shifting garbage. That is what I am doing. In the open air." She grabbed Richard's Coke and finished it off in one long swallow.

  He didn't reply, just beamed.

  "Oh, that's better." She put down the can and tried to wipe some dirt off her knee. She only succeeded in smearing the black muck even more.

  "Good job I've got clean clothes with me. Think I ought to take a walk through a car wash." She flopped back against the wall and looked at her filthy hands.

  "Yuk!" she said and stood up. She walked off towards the door marked LADIES.

  "Henry!" called Richard. "HENRY!"

  But Henrietta didn't pause. She opened the door and swept in.

  Then she swept rapidly out again, followed by a piercing scream and the toothy lady.

  "You filthy-minded little boy!" she yelled. "How dare you peep at me? You invade the sanctity of the ... Don't your parents teach you right and wrong? You ... you ... bad person!" She stormed off, her teeth looking even whiter against the red of her face.

  Henrietta stood open-mouthed.

  "Nice one Hal!" called Richard. "Good move there."

  "Oh shut up you." She looked tearful. "But I've got to go!"

  "Come on then." Richard stood up. "I'll show you where the gents is, shall I?"

  Henrietta glowered at him. Then she kicked at a bit of wood and followed him to the other end of the factory.

  But by lunchtime she was in a slightly better mood. She'd finished her garbage duties and had been reassigned to counting planks of wood as they were loaded onto the lorries. She'd even managed to clean up a little.

  "Come on, Richard. Eat up." She looked around the now quiet factory floor. Most of the machinists had finished lunch and were having a quiet snooze.

  "What's up?"

  "Time for a bit of snooping."

  The ground floor was quick and easy to check. No surprises at all. They crept up the stairs that led to the offices above. There were eight doors, four on each side of a short corridor.

  "What do we do?" asked Richard in a whisper. "We shouldn't even be up here."

  "Just knock and march in."

  "March in?"

  "If we creep in, it's obvious we're up to something. If we walk straight in and anyone asks, we're just looking for ... oh, Mr Lewis."

  "Who's Mr Lewis?"

  "Rick! You aren't very good as a burglar, are you?"

  He gave her a dirty look and tapped on the first door. When nobody answered, he opened it and peered in.

  There were two desks, some filing cabinets, telephones, and a fax machine. There was also a complicated looking chart on the wall. Papers were everywhere.

  "Mr Lewis," called Richard in a low voice.

  "Stop messing around." Henrietta nipped past him and opened a filing cabinet. "Close the door and wait outside. If anyone comes, knock three times."

  Richard slid out, his heart pounding. Henrietta had said the men she saw had guns. If anyone came along he'd be okay, but Henrietta was in deep danger.

  He opened the door again. "Hal!"

  Henrietta quickly slid the drawer shut, then darted out into the corridor.

  "I wonder which one is Mr Lewis's office," she said in a stagey voice. Then she realised they were alone.

  "You idiot!" she hissed. "I might have been just about to find something."

  "Look! This is just too dangerous. And if they had got something to hide - guns or some incriminating evidence - they'd lock it up."

  "Hmm. Well, yes, okay. I suppose you're right."

  They trudged down the stairs in deep thought.

  "What we need," said Richard, "is a key to the gate and a key to the building. Then we can come back here at night and search properly."

  The first objective proved to be ridiculously easy to o
btain; the other, impossible.

  They sauntered, still deep in thought, out through the little reception area. The receptionist was still at lunch. On the spur of the moment, Richard nipped behind the desk and opened a cabinet on the wall. It was filled with racks of keys, each neatly labelled.

  Most of them were for cars, but the top left hand one read, quite clearly, MAIN GATE.

  "You can't just take it!" hissed Henrietta. "They'll miss it."

  Richard tapped his nose and smiled. "Wait here."

  He dashed off into the factory and was back in less than twenty seconds. "Thank goodness for old fashioned places with real soap, not bottled stuff," he grinned. "I've never done this before, but I've read about it. Keep a look out."

  Carefully he pressed the key into the soap, first one side, then the other. Then he put the key back on the rack and wrapped the soap in several layers of lavatory paper.

  He handed the prize to Henrietta. "Bung this in your pocket."

  She took it almost reverently. "Sometimes, oh great envelope stuffer, you surprise me."

  "Why thank you, miss sneezing garbage collector!"

  Then the hooter blew for the end of lunchtime and the factory came back to life.

  At four o'clock they were twenty dollars richer, but no nearer acquiring a key to the factory. They walked round the outside of the building hoping to spot an alternative way in.

  "There must be something. What about that key rack?"

  "No such luck." Richard shook his head. "They were all car and van keys except for the one for the gate."

  "A window?"

  "Window?"

  "We unlock it now and get in through it later."

  "They're all barred."

  "Ah, pooey to it," yelled Henrietta. "Let's cheer ourselves up and plan what to do with our gains. All this garbage handling has given me quite an appetite - what good nibbles can we get for twenty dollars?"

  "We can't