The Great Gold Robbery (13 page)

THE MOON PEERED down at London as Big Ben chimed heavily three times. And since clockmaker Edward John Dent, who had made the Big Ben clock sometime in 1853, had done a very
meticulous job, that meant that the time was now exactly three o’clock in the morning. London was asleep, but the hotel room of our three friends was full of activity.

“What else do you see?” Doctor Proctor asked as he continued to study the diagrams they’d received from Hyde and Jekyll.

“The place is absolutely crawling with guards,” said Lisa, who sat with binoculars in front of her eyes. “They’re standing around the entire Parliament building and at
the entrance to the Big Ben tower. Plus, I’ve seen them coming and going out of the manhole covers, too. They have stethoscopes around their necks.”

“That thing doctors put on your chest to listen and see if your heart is beating the way it’s supposed to?” asked Nilly, who was standing on a chair next to Doctor Proctor,
looking at the drawings.

“Yes,” he answered. “That thing doctors put on your chest to listen and see if your heart is beating the way it’s supposed to. But these guards are using them down in the
sewers to listen to see if anyone is trying to dig their way into the vault from below.”

“Yup,” Lisa said, pointing the binoculars up toward the sky. “And they have floodlights lighting up the airspace over the roof in case anyone tries to break in from
above.”

“In other words,” Doctor Proctor said tiredly, pointing back at the floor plan diagrams to illustrate to Nilly just how impossible it was, “
even if
we were to make it
through all three locked, steel-reinforced doors, we still have to get through a room full of laser beams darting back and forth as close together as the strings in a shrimping trawler’s
nets. And if you break one single beam, then the alarm goes off.”

But Nilly wouldn’t give in. “You said there’s a light switch that turns off the lasers?”

“Yes, but listen to me, Nilly!” Doctor Proctor said, exhausted, rubbing a hand over his face. “The light switch is
here
, on the wall
behind
all the
lasers.” He pointed. “You can’t get to it without triggering the alarm. They’ve thought of everything!”

“Hmm,” Nilly said, scratching his left sideburn with his right hand. “So if we do make it through there, what’s next?”

Doctor Proctor rolled his eyes. “Then you’re in the room where the door of the vault is. And motion sensors will detect that you’re there and give you thirty seconds to open
the door before the alarm goes off.”

“Why did they do it like that?” Nilly asked.

“If someone is in there for thirty seconds without being able to open the vault door, then they’re probably not supposed to be in there. In other words, a burglar. Right?”

“Clever. And the door and the lock?”

“The door is made of the thickest steel there is, Uddevalla steel. And the combination lock has thirteen numbers and four letters, and the combination changes automatically every
hour.”

“I see,” Nilly said. “But that doesn’t sound so hard, does it?”

Doctor Proctor just closed his eyes in response, tilted his head back, and moaned aloud.

“Come on, Doctor, there’s a way around everything!” Nilly said. “At least when you’re a genius. And you are. Think about it and come up with the perfect bank
robbery. Now!”

“If I had four months, maybe. But this has to happen in the next two days if we’re going to get the gold back home to Norway in time for the World Bank inspection on Monday! And even
if we could pull all that off, which is already impossible, not to mention getting into the vault somehow . . .”

“Yes!” Nilly said. “Great! We’re in the vault! What happens then?”

Doctor Proctor blinked. For a second it looked like he was about to cry. But instead he started laughing like a man who’d finally lost it.

“Don’t you remember what Hyde and Jekyll said?” Doctor Proctor finally responded. “The alarm will go off the second the gold or the diamond is moved. And as you can see
from the diagrams, there’s only one way out. And it leads straight into the arms of Rublov’s guards. And where do you suppose the road leads from there?”

“The Crunch Brothers,” Lisa said gloomily. “Blood knuckles. Shredded Parmesan cheese.”

Nilly didn’t look like he was listening. He pointed at the floor plan. “What about this way over here?”

Doctor Proctor leaned over the diagram again. “Sorry, that’s just the staircase up into the tower, Nilly. Three hundred and thirty-four steps leading up to the clock. It’s just
there so the clockmaker can set Big Ben.”

“Hmm,” Nilly said, scratching his right sideburn with his left hand. “I think I have an idea.”

“Oh yes?” Doctor Proctor said.

“Oh no,” Lisa said.

“Oh yeah,” Nilly said, hopping down off the chair and running over to the hotel window. “We won’t make our escape through the front entrance, you see. We’ll go up.
Up there.”

Nilly pointed to the clock face on Big Ben, where the beams of light from the floodlights were sweeping back and forth.

“And how are we going to get away from there?” Lisa asked.

“Not us,” Nilly said. “I need to break in alone, because with the mode of transport we’re going to be using, there won’t be room for anyone besides little old me
and the guy flying the getaway craft.”

“What kind of craft?” Doctor Proctor asked, puzzled. “And who are you talking about? Who’s going to be flying it?”

“I’m talking about a friend of mine who needs to get out a little more,” Nilly said, rubbing his hands together. “I’m going to go call him right now.”

“Out of where?” Doctor Proctor asked, still puzzled.

“That little backwater village,” Nilly said. “Does anyone know the area code for South Trøndelag?”

“You don’t m-m-mean . . . ?” Lisa stammered.

“You don’t mean . . . ?” Victor Proctor groaned.

And then in unison they both said, “YOU’RE CRAZY, NILLY!”

THE CLOCK OVER Mr. Stumbleweed’s window at the Bank of the Very Rich was exactly—and now I mean exactly—2:16:23:14 p.m., or about a quarter past two, when the
front door of the bank opened.

In walked a man dressed in a top hat and an elegant penguin suit—not actually a penguin costume, a tuxedo, but there was something rather penguinlike about it. He was carrying a briefcase
that was attached to his wrist. At his side there was a very young, elegantly dressed girl in a sun hat decorated like a fruit plate, except hopefully the fruit was fake. Hopefully the mink stole
around her neck was also fake.

They walked right up to the window where Mr. Stumbleweed was sitting and asked him if they could rent a safety-deposit box. Mr. Stumbleweed explained the hair-raising sum the bank charged
annually for a safety-deposit box, and they listened without fainting or protesting. Then he and two armed guards escorted the two new customers down to the basement. There Mr. Stumbleweed unlocked
not just one but three locked steel doors, and then they were standing in the safety-deposit room. The safety-deposit boxes were the size of shoe boxes stacked on their sides, and they covered two
of the walls in the room.

“No one without authorization can gain access to this room,” Mr. Stumbleweed said with satisfaction. “And of course we promise complete discretion. Neither we nor anyone else
will know what valuables you store in your box.”

“Nice to know yur bank is secure,” the new customer said in his pronounced Scottish accent. “But tell me, aren’t we almost in the inner sanctum here?”

“I assume you mean the bank vault, Doctor MacKaroni,” Mr. Stumbleweed said with a smile. “Well, you’re part of the way in, but you still need to get through the laser
beams, the motion detectors, and a door made of authentic Uddevalla steel. Well, you would have to get through those if you and your niece were planning to break in, I mean,” Mr. Stumbleweed
said with a sniveling laugh, to which the two new clients responded with a smile and a polite nod.

“Then we’ll give you bank box sixty-seven,” Mr. Stumbleweed said, and handed Doctor MacKaroni two keys. “One primary key and one reserve key. If you’d like to put
anything in your box now, the guards and I will wait outside until you’re done.”

“Thank you,” Doctor MacKaroni said.

As Mr. Stumbleweed waited outside the reinforced door, he heard Doctor MacKaroni’s briefcase being opened and closed and then the door of the safety-deposit box being locked again. He had
to admit that occasionally he was curious and wished he could sneak a peek at what the customers put in their safety-deposit boxes. Diamonds? Gold? Their wills? Secret love letters? But it was none
of his business. So when Doctor MacKaroni came out again with a briefcase that seemed a good deal lighter, naturally Mr. Stumbleweed didn’t ask any questions. Although there was no rule
against thinking about it. And in his head, Mr. Stumbleweed guessed jewelry. Maybe the family’s heirlooms: emeralds, rubies, opals, and other expensive baubles.

When the two left the bank, the clock over Mr. Stumbleweed’s window said 2:34:41:09 p.m., or a little after two thirty.

NILLY WOKE UP and stretched. Which is to say, he tried to stretch, but it wasn’t so easy to accomplish where he was. He twisted and looked at the numbers on his watch
glowing in the silent darkness: 2:40 p.m. In other words, a little more after two thirty. It was time to get to work. But getting up wasn’t exactly easy. He was lying scrunched up in
something that wasn’t much bigger than a shoe box, and one of his feet had fallen asleep. He fumbled around underneath him with his hand until he found what he was looking for. One of the
keys, the reserve key, to the safety-deposit box. He managed to stick it into the keyhole from the inside, twisted it, and opened it cautiously. Then he squeezed his body out the opening. Once he
was free, he jumped. He tried to land softly, but he’d forgotten that one of his feet was asleep, so he ended up collapsing onto the concrete floor.

He lay there for a bit, looking up at the open safety-deposit box above him. And he thought that every once in a while—
once in a while
—it wasn’t so bad to be the
smallest boy anyone had ever seen.