Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (8 page)

And all through the night, while Commander Pott and Mimsie were asleep, and while the twins were being bumped about in the back of the gangsters' car, CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG'S Radar Eye was following every twist and turn of Joe the Monster, hunched over the wheel of his black tourer.

Now, Joe the Monster was in fact head of an international gang of robbers and ruffians and he was known in France as Joe le Monstre. (I hope this isn't the first French word you've learned!) And when things got too hot for him in England, he moved his gang over to France and vice versa.

As soon as they got out of the town of Calais, he ordered the knots on top of the sheet bundles which contained Jeremy and Jemima to be undone by Soapy Sam and Blood-Money Banks, between whom the twins were wedged on the back seat. For although he was a monster in the eyes of the law, neither he nor his gang of crooks were so monstrous as to want Jeremy and Jemima to suffocate.

The two children were too startled to know really what was happening to them. They both knew it wasn't something good, but being children of rather adventurous parents, they weren't easily frightened.

Joe the Monster leaned back from the wheel and said over his shoulder, in a voice that was meant to be sugary, "Now then, duckies, everything's quite all right. Your dear pa and ma have asked us to take you for a little night drive to see something of the French countryside by moonlight." He turned to Man-Mountain Fink, who sat beside him, "Ain't that right, Man-Mountain?''

"Absolutely-one-hundred-per-cent-right-and-cross-my-heart-and-wish-to-die," said the big man all in one breath.

"Hear that, my duckies?" called Joe the Monster above the rushing of the wind. "You're in good hands, the very best. You just go off to bye-byes and when you wakey-wakey there'll be a delicious brekky waiting for you."

Now, if there is one thing the twins, and most other children of their age, hate it is being talked to in baby language. Certainly, as far as Jeremy was concerned, he would much prefer Joe to be monstrous rather than niminy-piminy. At least you know where you are with grownups who behave like grownups, but no child likes a grownup to talk like a baby.

But truth to tell, both Jeremy and Jemima were too sleepy from the previous day's adventures to care very much what was happening to them, so they snuggled up together and Jemima was soon fast asleep. But before Jeremy dozed off, he heard snatches of conversation between Joe the Monster and Man-Mountain Fink drifting back from the front seat.

And the snatches of conversation were something like this: "Just what we want for the Bon-Bon job ... innocent pair of monkeys ... shove 'em in just before closing ... five thousand francs ... keys of the safe are in the till ... when the old geyser goes for the change ... then Soapy can use the jelly."

Trying to make head or tail out of these mysterious sentences, Jeremy snuggled up alongside Jemima and, lulled by the speed of the car and the rush of the wind, and knowing, as children always do know, that their father and mother would soon rescue them, he too went fast asleep.

It had been three o'clock in the morning when the children had been kidnapped from the Hotel Splendide, and it was eight o'clock when the gangsters' car drew up outside a deserted warehouse owned by Joe the Monster in the suburbs of Paris, over 150 miles away from Calais.

And it was precisely at this moment, when the gangsters were carrying the bundled-up children into the building, that the miniature radar on the hood of CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG held steady as if she knew that this was the end of their journey. Then, perhaps because of a short circuit, or perhaps for some other reason quite beyond my understanding, CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG's powerful klaxon began to go "GA-GOO-GA, GA-GOO-GA, GA-GOO-GA," and just went on doing it, making the most horrendous din you can imagine.

Commander Pott and Mimsie were instantly awake, and with, I am sorry to say, a very powerful swear word (it was "Dash My Wig and Whiskers," if you want to know), Commander Pott leaped out of his bed, pulled on some clothes, and dashed downstairs and round to the garage to find what the electrical fault was and stop it before they had the whole population of Calais, led by the police and the fire brigade, charging round to find out who was responsible for the horrendous din. You can imagine his astonishment when directly he tore open the garage doors and stood face to face with CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG, there was one last "GOO-GA" and then dead silence.

"Now, what the devil's the matter with you?" said Commander Pott. And as if in reply, the giant head lamps suddenly blazed on and off in one gigantic wink of warning.

Commander Pott was even more puzzled. "There must be something terribly wrong with your electrical system," he said sympathetically. "Let's see what the matter is," and he went to open the hood. But then, for the first time, he caught sight of the thin little radar antenna sticking up in front of the windshield, and he stopped in his tracks. "What in heaven's name ..." he had just begun, when Mimsie came dashing across from the hotel.

"The children," she cried desperately, "they're gone! And their clothes too! There are the marks of a ladder on the window sill and somebody's been at the window breaking in! They've been kidnapped, I know it, by those awful men we ran into yesterday! For heaven's sake, Jack (which she always used as short for Caractacus), What are we to do?"

Commander Pott didn't argue, or say are you sure, or how do you know, or even go to see the evidence for himself. He knew that Jeremy and Jemima would never have left the hotel of their own accord and certainly not, he added realistically to himself, without having had any breakfast. He looked from the tearful Mimsie to CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG and suddenly he knew, he knew absolutely for sure, that that was the meaning of the radar device, and that the magical car had sounded her own horn both to wake them up and because she knew where the twins had gone.

"Here, darling," he said urgently. "Here's some money, be a good girl, and run over and get the rest of my clothes and pay the bill. CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG knows where they've gone. Don't ask me how, but I know it for sure, and we'll get after them."

As Mimsie ran off, glad to have something to take her mind away from her fears, Commander Pott jumped into the driving seat and pressed the self-starter, and at once the great car, with her usual:

leapt into life and Commander Pott steered her out and across the street just as Mimsie came running out of the hotel.

She jumped in beside him and they were off, slowly at first, so that Commander Pott could watch the movement of the little radar scanner on the hood just in front of him. At first it pointed left down the main street and then corrected itself just like a compass when it had got on the right course, and then at the big turning toward Paris it swiveled to the right and Commander Pott obediently whirled the wheel and they were off on the huge main road which said "TO PARIS."

Now Commander Pott really trod down hard on the accelerator and the speedometer climbed up and hung around a hundred miles an hour as the great green car, its supercharger screaming like a banshee, positively ate up the kilometers, which, instead of miles, is how they measure distances on the Continent. As each fork or turning in the road came up, he followed the direction indicated by the radar scanner, and with CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG going lickety-split, lickety-split, lickety-split, they hurtled on toward the gangster hideout where Jeremy and Jemima had been locked into a bare, cell-like room at the back of the deserted warehouse.

Jeremy and Jemima's clothes had been thrown in with them and they now dressed quickly and began, in whispers, just in case anybody might be listening at the door, to wonder where they were and what was going to happen to them and, above all, when somebody was going to bring their breakfast.

Jeremy was just telling Jemima about the mysterious words of Joe the Monster, "doing the Bon-Bon job" and "Soapy using the jelly," when the door was unlocked and Joe the Monster himself came in, beaming (as far as, with his ugly mug, he could beam), while behind him Soapy Sam followed with a tray that he put down on the floor beside the children (there was no furniture in the room—not a stick of it).

Jeremy got stoutly to his feet and said, in as firm a voice as he could muster, "Where are we and what are you doing with us? You'll get into bad trouble if you don't take us back to our parents straight away. You'll have the police after you any moment now." And he glared as big a glare as he could glare into the black-bearded face of the huge man who towered above him.

"Ha, ha, that's good, that's real good! Hear that, Soapy? The young 'un says the cops will be after me." He turned back to Jeremy and leered hideously down at him. "Why, my little man, the cops have been after me since I was smaller than you. Think of that now, all these years they've been hunting after me and my pals and they ain't caught up yet. Often been sniffing at me heels, mark you, even offered ten thousand pounds for what they are pleased to call 'information leading to my apprehension," which, in English means information on how to catch me. And now you expect me to quake in my shoes because of a little English family called POTT! Haw, haw, haw," and he positively shook with demoniac laughter.

Jeremy said angrily, "We're not so little as all that. My father was a Commander in the Navy and he is a famous inventor and explorer, and anyway, besides us, there's CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG."

"And who might he be?"

"It's not a 'he' it's a 'she' and she's a car, the most wonderful car in the world, she's ma ..." Jeremy was going to say "magical," but he shut his mouth just in time. Better keep that a secret!

"Oh, you mean that old green rattletrap of yours?" sneered Joe the Monster. "I'll give you that it's certainly a rum old bus—the way it took to the air last evening when we had you cornered. I suppose your inventor Pa has found some way to make a car fly. That right?" Joe the Monster's small piglike eyes became smaller and craftier than ever. "I suppose you've got something there. That invention might be worth a lot of money in the right hands. Now, if you'd like to tell your old pal Joe how it's done, maybe I can take out some patents and give your dad a piece of the money I'd get for sellin' 'em. What about it, young feller, you and me go into partnership sort of?"

Jeremy said bluntly, "I don't know how it works and I wouldn't tell you if I did know."

"Oh well," said Joe the Monster, "I guess I'm not all that keen to go into the motorcar business. Now then, let's get down to brass tacks and then you two youngsters can tuck in to that scrumptious brekky Soapy's brewed up for you. Now then," he looked at them both craftily, "just you both listen to me, and if you do what you're told, you'll come to no harm and even earn yourselves a bit of pocket money into the bargain. And when it's over, I'll see you're both put on a train and sent back to your precious dad and mum in that hotel in Calais."

Jeremy opened his mouth to speak, but Joe the Monster held up a big hairy fist. "Now don't you argue with me, young 'un, and I don't want any more of your lip. Just listen carefully to what you have to do." He paused and spoke slowly, looking from one to the other of them to see that they were paying attention. "Now, all I'm telling you both to do is to go and buy yourselves a big box of chocolates. How would you like that? Just kind of a reward for being such a jolly couple of kids, see? I like kids, I really luv 'em." (Joe the Monster tried to put a sweet, fatherly expression on his face, but all that he could manage was a kind of apelike grimace.) "Now then, not far away from here, twenty minutes' ride, is the most famous chocolate shop in the world. It's called Le Bon-Bon, which, in case you don't know it, is French for candy, and it's run by an old geyser called Monsieur Bon-Bon. He's been in it for fifty years and his dad before him and his grandad before that, and he makes the finest sweets and chocolates in the world, get me? Absolutely the top lollies. Now this here old geyser's a funny old guy and he only opens up his shop for four hours in the middle of the day. Can't be bothered to keep it open any longer because he and his parents have made so much money that he doesn't have to work too hard, see? So he keeps the shop open from ten to twelve in the morning and from two to four in the afternoon. At twelve o'clock this morning, me and my pals are going to drive you round there and give you a pocketful of money and all you've got to do is what I tell you. You walk into the shop and ask for a box of chocolates costing four thousand francs, that's about three English pounds, in the old francs which are the only kind I understand, so you can see it's a fine box of chocolates, eh?" And he looked enquiringly from one to the other.

"Not bad," said Jeremy grudgingly, as if, in his family, they were given a three-pound box of chocolates every day.

"Not bad, he says!" shouted Joe the Monster angrily. "I'll say it's not bad. It's the biggest box of chocolates either of you have ever seen." He quickly calmed down, fished out a pocketbook stuffed with notes and took out one and handed it to Jeremy. "There you are, five thousand francs. I'll tell you what, I'll even let you keep the change. So there you are, duckies, all you do is walk into the shop together when I tell you, hand over the money, and say politely, 'a box of chocolates for four thousand francs, please.' The old geyser don't know much English, but he'll understand that sentence in any language under the sun. Then you hand him that bit of money and take the chocolates and your change, and that's the end of that. Easy job of work, eh? Nice slice of cake. You're a couple of the luckiest kids I ever did see. Now then, you got all that straight?"

They both nodded.

"O.K., then," said Joe the Monster breezily. "Come on, Soapy, and let's get our chow. Looking at the fine breakfast you've dished up for these kids is making me hungry.'' He turned at the door, "Ta-ta, kiddies, and be good until Uncle Joe comes and fetches you." He walked out followed by Soapy Sam who locked the door behind them.