The Great Gold Robbery (9 page)

“Oh, that was it!” Nilly whispered. Then he pushed his way through the crowded room, jumped up onto that table, raised one of his feet, and slammed his heel down onto the
tabletop.

A new murmur ran through the pub with the way-too-long name as the table split in two with a deafening
crack
. Followed by yet another murmur as a second blow from the dart
champion’s heel split the table into four pieces. Then eight. Then sixteen. Then . . . well, what do you think?

Then Nilly started kicking the table fragments, which sailed through the air to eventually end up as a neatly stacked little woodpile next to the bar. Then he turned to the Scottish man and the
girl with the weird nose and the mustache, who was shaking, backed up against the wall, holding her index finger up in the air in warning.

“You’re not going to call the police now after all, are you?” Nilly warned. “You won’t if you know what’s good for you.”

“Yes, Tartan-Sherl,” the girl squeaked in a voice so pathetic you would almost think she was just pretending to be afraid. “You’re such a dastardly villain, and
we’re so scared we’re about to wet our pants. And since we know what’s good for us, well . . . well . . .” The girl exhaled into her mustache a couple of times and looked
like she was trying to remember the rest of her lines, before she finally continued, “We’ll just leave now without calling anyone.”

“Excellent!” Nilly said. “And since I’m in a good mood today, I’m going to let you go without kicking your sorry party-pooper heads off. Get out of here!”

And precisely—or at least more or less precisely— two seconds later, they were out the door.

Nilly turned to the astonished crowd and flung up his arms in victory. “Bartender, a round of your strongest soda for everyone! My treat! Put the table on my tab too! And pour a little of
something extra good for my new friend Charlie here!”

“But—” Charlie began.

“No, I absolutely
refuse
to take any money from you, Charlie. I have way too much money as it is!” Nilly said.

Charlie Crunch eyed Nilly uncertainly for a second. Then he lit up in a big smile.

“Let me at least buy you a beer. How about a Guinness, Tartan-Sherl?” Charlie asked.

“Thanks, Charlie, but I only drink . . . uh, the hard stuff,” Nilly said.

The two sat down at a table and were served a cola and a beer.

“So, you’re in the bank-robbing business too, eh?” Charlie said, wiping beer foam off his upper lip.

“Yup,” Nilly said. “I’m always on the lookout for other robbers who’d like to team up on crime sprees with a skilled bandit like myself.”

“What a shame,” Charlie said with a shrug. “We only collaborate with people with a proven track record of real robberies.”

“Oh yeah?” Nilly said, setting down his glass. “And just how do they do that?”

“They invite us along on a crime spree that
they
planned, not the other way around.”

“Oh, I see,” Nilly said, and then burped loudly. “Of course, I’ve got a few upcoming crime sprees planned.”

“You do?”

“Sure, I’m a robber, aren’t I?” Nilly said.

“Like what?”

“Like . . . uh, the easiest money you can imagine. It’ll be like snatching it from old ladies and babies.”

“
Like what
, I said!” Charlie said impatiently.

“Snatching it from old ladies and babies, I said!” Nilly repeated.

“Could you be a little more specific, little guy?”

“Well, yeah. There’s this, uh, old lady, you see. And this kid, you know?” Nilly began.

Charlie leaned so far over the table that the
C
on his forehead almost touched the tips of Nilly’s red hair. “Yes?”

“Yeah, well uh, she’s . . . uh, the kid’s grandmother, and she usually takes her for a walk in her stroller through Hyde Park every morning around nine
o’clock.”

“Where’s the money in that?” Charlie asked skeptically.

“In the stroller.”

“The stroller?”

“Yeah. This grandmother is filthy rich, but terrified of being burglarized. So she takes the money with her whenever she takes the kid for a walk,” Nilly said, and then leaned back
in his chair and took a swig of his cola. “The grandmother thinks, ‘Who would have the heart to rob an old lady and baby in broad daylight?’ And who would have the heart to do
that?”

“Heh, heh, heh,” Charlie snickered. “I know someone. Okay, give me the details, little guy.”

“I HAD TO come up with the details on the spot,” Nilly explained later, lying on the sofa back in their hotel room as Doctor Proctor removed his wig and Lisa pulled
off her fake nose with its attached mustache. “So I said this grandmother would be in Hyde Park at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“And you expect
us
to play the part of the grandmother and grandchild?” Lisa said with a groan, and then went into the bathroom to brush her teeth, because it was bedtime
for hardworking secret agents.

“With a stroller full of money?” Doctor Proctor said with a sigh, pulling on his nightcap.

“Hey, I had to come up with something!” Nilly said, taking off his socks. “If this goes well, Charlie promised I could go on one of their robberies. And once I’m a part
of their gang, I can start pumping them for information, right?” Nilly sniffed his socks and made a face.

“Where are we going to get the money to fill a baby carriage by tomorrow morning?” Lisa asked. “If we’re supposed to be in the park by nine, the banks won’t even be
open yet!”

Nilly clasped his hands behind his head and contemplated his toes. “Relax, I have a solution. Just trust
Tartan-Sherl
, people!”

Doctor Proctor blushed and said, “Aam sorry about that, Nilly. I was trying to call you T-O-R-D-E-N-S-K-J-O-L-D, after the most famous Norwegian naval hero of all time. But, hech, ever
since I took that multilingual pill, my tongue just cannae handle some of the Norwegian sounds anymair.”

Lisa popped her head out of the bathroom door and stopped brushing her teeth for a minute. “Did you just say you have a solution, Nilly? Great,” she said sarcastically. “The
only thing we can count on is that it’s probably a plan where
you
have all the fun and get to be the hero!” She disappeared back into the bathroom, and they heard more brushing
noises.

“Lisa,” Nilly said. “Of course it will be fun for you, too. You get to play the lead part tomorrow.”

“I do?” Lisa called, and for a bit it was quiet from the bathroom. Until she called, “What if something goes wrong tomorrow?”

“Relax, this is a watertight, bulletproof plan,” Nilly said. “Nothing’s going to go wrong! Because there’s nothing that
can
go wrong!”

And after that Nilly didn’t think there was much more to discuss. And neither did Big Ben, apparently, because it struck eleven times. And fifteen minutes later they were all in their
beds. They may not all have fallen asleep right away. But by the time Big Ben struck twelve,
then
they were all asleep.

THE MORNING SUN shone on the large park in the middle of London named Hyde Park, and it was exactly—no, not exactly—it was
about
nine o’clock. An old
woman was walking with a baby carriage along one of the paths that crisscrosses the park.

You could see someone sitting on a bench holding a newspaper in front of him- or herself. The strange thing was that when you looked more closely, the hand that was holding the left side of the
paper was large and hairy, while the hand holding the right was tiny, hairless, and very pale. The newspaper was the
Daily Observer of Times
, the thickest, widest newspaper in the Western
Hemisphere. And if we had had X-ray vision and could see through all the pages about British politicians who’d done something wrong, floral decorations in Harrogate, and the Rotten Ham
team’s soccer coach, who was actually a krill fisherman who had never played soccer before, we would see that there weren’t just one or two, but
four
, people hidden behind the
paper.

They happened to be sitting in alphabetical order. Alfie, Betty, Charlie. And Maximus Rublov. Wait! Rublov was here? Well, at any rate, it was a tiny little guy who was the very spitting image
of Rublov.

“Is that them, Sherl?” Alfie whispered.

No response.

“Sherl!”

“Oh, right, that’s me,” the tiny little guy said, adjusting his Rublov mask.

“I asked if that odd woman over there with the baby carriage is her!” Alfie said.

Rublov—who actually was Sherl (who actually was Nilly)—peeked out from behind the newspaper. “Yes, that’s them. Synchronize your watches!”

“Why?”

“Because it’s . . . uh, good to have synchronized watches. . . .”

“Get on with it, shrimp!” Alfie ordered.

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

Nilly let go of the paper, hopped down off the park bench, and ran toward the baby carriage, yelling so that everyone around them could hear his words loud and clear: “This is a masked
robbery in broad daylight! Give me the baby carriage right now, or it doesn’t look good for you! Or your grandchild!”

The odd woman adjusted her dress, bonnet, and swim goggles, and then called back just as loudly and clearly, “Terrible! Awful! Don’t shoot me with that . . . uh, pistol.” And
then added in a much quieter voice, “Where is the pistol you were supposed to have?”

“They didn’t have a gun I could borrow,” Nilly whispered back. “Just pretend to faint!”

And with that the odd old woman collapsed in the grass, her skirt sliding up to reveal a pair of unusually thin and hairy legs.

Nilly leaned over the baby carriage and looked down at Lisa’s face. She was wearing a baby bonnet and sucking on a big pink pacifier. She looked furious.

“You call this the lead role?” she hissed.

Nilly grabbed hold of her and tried to lift her out.

“Put up a little resistance, would you!” he whispered.

Lisa hit him on the head hard and started bawling.

“Not
that
much resistance!” Nilly moaned. “And help me get you out of the carriage, you weigh half a ton!”

With that they both tumbled over backward, and Lisa rolled away across the grass, screeching at the top of her lungs.

“Hey there!” they heard a man’s voice call out. “What’s going on?”

Nilly got up onto his feet, grabbed the baby carriage, and started walking.

“Stop!”

Nilly turned around. There was a man in a black uniform. At first Nilly thought he must be a knight who had misplaced his horse, since he had a black helmet on his head and a riding crop in his
hand. But then he realized this was serious and started to run.

“Stop in the name of the law!” the man yelled.

It was a policeman!

Nilly’s heart started beating just as fast as his short legs were drumming against the ground behind the baby carriage.

“Coppers!” he hissed as he ran past the park bench. The
Daily Observer of Times
was flung up into the air, and three men in jeans and suspenders came running up alongside
Nilly and the baby carriage.

They heard a whistle blow behind them.

“He’s got reinforcements,” Charlie panted.

Nilly turned to look, and sure enough, now there were three policemen running behind them. And the police were gaining on them. And yet the Crunch Brothers started slowing down.

“Faster!” Nilly said. “What are you guys doing?”

“We’re bank robbers,” Charlie wheezed. “We’re out of shape.”

They were approaching a downhill slope, and the policemen were only six or seven yards behind them.

“Hop in!” Nilly said, jumping into the baby carriage.

“Huh?” Charlie said.

“Hop in, now!”

And with that, the three brothers jumped into the baby carriage, and they started careening down the hill. Alfie and Betty were each clinging tightly to a side, while Charlie was sitting in the
baby carriage with his legs dangling off the back. Nilly was sitting in front, trying to steer by leaning left or right. They were moving faster and faster, and the wobbly little baby carriage
tipped ominously each time Nilly had to turn to keep them on the narrow asphalt path. Eventually the path widened a little, and Nilly looked back at the policemen, who were getting smaller and
smaller, and finally gave up running.

“Yippee!” Nilly cried, closing his eyes and enjoying the feel of the wind and the sun through the holes in his rubber mask.

“Uh, Sherl . . . ,” Alfie said.

Delightful wind, delightful speed, delightful freedom.

“Sherl!” Alfie said with more urgency.

“Oh, right, that’s me, isn’t it?” Nilly said, opening his eyes. The baby carriage had slowed. They were at the bottom of the hill, and there were five policemen blocking
the path ahead of them with their arms crossed.

“Hang on!” Nilly said, hopping over to the left side and up onto the top of Alfie’s bowler hat, jamming it down over Alfie’s eyes.

“I can’t see!” Alfie wailed, flailing his arms as the baby carriage suddenly veered left. So suddenly that Nilly and the bowler hat were about to fly off, when Betty grabbed
the lapel of Nilly’s tweed jacket at the very last instant and held on to him.