As they drove to Grabber Mansion, Molly told Max about the rules of the sandwich-making industry.
“Never cut the bread too thick,” she said. “Nor too thin. A thick sandwich tastes too much of bread and too little of the filling. A thin sandwich tastes too much of filling and too little of bread.”
Max promised that he would get it just right.
“And don’t put too much butter on the bread,” Molly went on. “If you use too much butter it oozes out of the edges, and people will get it on their fingers. You have to watch that one.”
Max nodded. “I’ll be careful,” he promised.
“And when you’re making tomato sandwiches,” Molly said, “make sure that the slices of tomato are not too thick. If they’re too thick, they’ll make the sandwiches soggy – and that’s the worst thing that can happen in this business. If you get a reputation for soggy sandwiches, then you’ll soon find yourself with no work at all.”
They were now approaching the turn-off to Grabber Mansion. “There it is,” said Max. “There are the gates.”
His mother shook her head. “No, they’re not for us, Max. Those gates and that driveway are not for the likes of us. We go in the back way – through that gate over there.”
She pointed to a much smaller gate some distance away. Max swallowed hard. He glanced at the front gates as they drove past; they were very grand, he thought, with a large coat of arms worked in metal at the top. He could just make out the metal letters at the bottom: Let Grabber Win.
“Did you see that?” he said to his mother. “Did you see the motto on the gates?”
“What did it say?”
“It said ‘Let Grabber Win’,” said Max.
“Shocking,” said Molly. “Nobody can win every single time – unless they’re selfish and ruthless, the kind who’d sell their own grandmother if it suited them.”
Max liked that expression. He could imagine Pablo Grabber taking his own grandmother to market, with a sign around her neck saying Grandmother for Sale – Going Cheap.
“I’d never sell Grandfather Gus,” he said. “Not for any amount of money.”
“That’s the spirit,” said Molly. “Money isn’t everything, you know, Max. In fact, the really important things in life just can’t be bought …”
“Such as Grandfather Gus?” Max asked.
“Precisely,” said Molly.
They drove round to the back of the house, where Molly parked the van. Now they had to unload all the sandwich supplies – a task that involved a great deal of fetching and carrying. At last they had everything stacked on a large worktable in the kitchen, ready for the sandwiches – all two thousand of them – to be prepared.
If you’ve ever made two thousand sandwiches – or even ten, for that matter – you’ll know that you have to employ some sort of system. That means that you have to lay out at least twenty slices of bread, and then butter all of them before you start to add the fillings, spreading these over several pieces of bread at the same time, using the largest knife you have. Max soon got the hang of this, and in no time at all he and his mother had made a plateful of sandwiches.
“That’s a start,” Molly said, smiling at her son. “If we carry on like that, we’ll be all right.”
They were not the only people working in the kitchen. Although there was no sign of any members of the Grabber family – they thought themselves far too important to stick their noses into the kitchen – their head steward came to inspect progress from time to time. He was an unpleasant-looking man with small, suspicious eyes, and he moved about the kitchen like a shark patrolling a bay. He checked up on the woman who was preparing jug after jug of lemonade; he tasted the cakes being baked in great ovens, by a baker specially brought in for the job; and he picked up a sandwich now and then to make sure it was just right.
Fortunately, the sandwiches met with his approval. “These are good enough,” he said. “But don’t let me see you slacking! Everything must be perfect by the time the guests arrive.”
It was hard work, and Molly could see that Max was getting tired.
“You should take a bit of a break,” she said. “I can carry on here while you go outside for a little while. Go on, you deserve it.”
Max was pleased to be able to lay aside his breadknife. Slicing loaf after loaf of bread was a demanding task, and his arms were beginning to ache. He looked about him. There were several doors leading out of the kitchen and he could not remember which was the one they had entered through. One of them though looked familiar, and he decided to go through that.
He was wrong. The door he chose did not lead outside, but opened into a long, dimly lit corridor. Max quickly realised his mistake and turned to go back into the kitchen. But now he found, to his alarm, that the door had locked itself behind him and that no matter how he turned the handle, it refused to open.
After trying fruitlessly to open the door, he decided to knock loudly, to attract attention inside the kitchen. This did not work either. Not only was the kitchen a very large room, but there was also a great deal of noise being made by a mixing machine being operated by the baker. This meant that nobody heard his knocking.
There was only one thing to do, and that was to see whether he could find his way outside through any of the other doors further along the corridor.
The first door was no use, as it was firmly locked. He had better luck with the second door though, and he was able to push this open slowly. As he did so, he saw something that made him give a start of surprise. On this door was a sign on which a few words had been painted. It was not a large sign, and it would have been easy to miss it, but Max did see it, and he read out the words under his breath. This is what the sign said: OTHER PEOPLE’S STUFF.
Max thought perhaps he had misread the sign, and so he read it out again, just to be sure. It still said the same thing: OTHER PEOPLE’S STUFF.
His curiosity firmly aroused, Max opened the door further, so that now he could see what lay beyond. And it was an extraordinary sight. Max found himself standing in a room entirely lined with shelves, from floor to ceiling. A few of these shelves were empty, but most of them were filled with objects of every description. He noticed an old gramophone – one of those ancient machines with a large brass horn, out of which the music came. He spotted a pair of skis and a model boat in a glass case. He saw several Chinese vases, brightly painted with scenes of people playing and dancing. He saw bundles of documents, all tied up with red tape. There seemed to be something of just about everything you could ever think of.
Max hesitated. He knew that he should not be in this room, and that if he were found, he would be in trouble. But something told him that he simply had to take a closer look at all these things. And what did that sign mean? Did all these things belong to other people, and, if so, what were they doing stacked up in this room?
And then the answer came to him. It came to him like a light being turned on in the darkness. These things were all stolen goods – everything here was, as the sign made clear, other people’s stuff!
Another thought came to him. Was there a chance – just the slightest chance – that if he started to search this room, he might find the long-lost Ideas Book – the book of plans that had been taken by Mr Grabber when he had acquired Grandfather Gus’s factory all those years ago? The thought made Max’s heart beat faster and faster. Yes. He would look for it. He would never again get the chance, and he would not miss it now. He would search for the book and, if he found it, he would take it back to Grandfather Gus. He knew there was a danger that he would be caught, but he loved his grandfather and he would take any risk for him – any risk at all.
The trouble was that Max had no idea what the Ideas Book looked like. It was a book, of course – he knew that much – but there was a large number of books on the shelves, and it could have been any of them. So he realised that he would have to work quickly, opening each book to see if any of them looked as if it was a book of plans.
&nbs
p; The first ten books he looked at seemed to be business books, full of figures but not much else. Then there were several books of maps, a couple of ancient dictionaries and even some books with stained covers, full of kitchen recipes. Max looked up at the shelves and sighed. It would take all his time – and all his energy – to work his way along the shelves, but he had to try.
He was rewarded after fifteen minutes, when he reached for an old book with a red cover. Something told him that this was a special book the moment he laid his hands on it, and when he opened the cover and looked at the first page, he knew that he had found what he was looking for. There, in the centre of the page, in large black letters, was his grandfather’s name: AUGUSTUS MONTY CHAMPION. And underneath, in smaller letters, were the words: Ideas and Plans for Better Cars. Finally, at the bottom of the page, came the warning: Strictly Private.
Max would have loved to have paged through the Ideas Book, but caution told him that he should not linger in this room of other people’s stuff. So, tucking the newly discovered treasure under his arm, he began to make his way towards the door. And it was at this point that he heard voices in the corridor outside.
Max looked about him for places to hide. There was a cupboard on the other side of the room and that, it seemed to him, was the only possible place to conceal himself. The problem though was that he did not know whether there was room for him in this cupboard – it could already be full of other people’s stuff – just like the shelves. If that were the case, all would be lost.
To his great relief, the cupboard was largely empty. Climbing inside it, still clutching the book, he pulled the door closed behind him. Now he was in the pitch dark, with only a small crack in the wood to let any light into his cramped and dusty hiding place. Yet in spite of the dark, he felt much safer now; nobody would find him there – unless, of course, somebody chose to look for something in the cupboard … There was no point in thinking about that possibility though, as there would not be much he could do if that happened. And perhaps the voices he had heard would just go away; perhaps they were the voices of people who were going somewhere else, rather than coming into the Other People’s Stuff room.
Unfortunately, they were coming in. Max heard the door of the room open, and then he heard footsteps and voices, much louder now than they had been before.
“It’s somewhere on one of these shelves,” said one of the voices. “I think it’s up there.”
That was a deep voice, and it came from Mr Grabber. It was answered very shortly afterwards by a boy’s voice, which Max recognised as the voice of Pablo Grabber. He recognised it because it was the same voice that had boasted about winning the races at the town sports.
“You’ve got lots of great stuff here, Dad,” said Pablo.
“You’re right, son,” came the reply. And then, after a certain amount of shuffling: “I don’t know where it can have got to. It was definitely somewhere here.”
“What does it look like?” asked Pablo.
“It’s red,” said Mr Grabber. “And it has the name of the stupid old man who wrote it on the front page. I hope we find it, son. It’s just the thing we need for the competition.”
Max was puzzled, but then he remembered something that Grandfather Gus had said about a contest being run to find a better car design. So that must be it: Mr Grabber was planning to steal one of his grandfather’s ideas to win the prize. And then he thought, “The stupid old man” … ? Max bristled in anger at those words. Mr Grabber was talking about Grandfather Gus, who was definitely not a stupid old man. How dare these thieves talk about his grandfather like that!
It was at this point, just as Max was struggling to control his feelings of anger at what he had overheard, that he felt a tickle in his nose. It was not a serious tickle to begin with, but slowly it became stronger. It was the dust, of course: if you hide yourself away in a dusty cupboard that has not been opened for months, if not years, then dust is bound to get into your nose, and if dust gets into your nose, you are bound to feel a tickle. And if you feel a tickle in your nose and you cannot do anything about it, then the odds are that you will sneeze.
Max struggled. He took a deep breath in an effort to calm himself, but that only seemed to make it worse. So, next, he breathed out as slowly as he could, but that had the effect of increasing the tickliness even more. And then, in a gush of relief, he let out the loudest and most cupboard-shaking sneeze of his life. Or that’s how it seemed to him – and how it seemed to the wicked Mr Grabber and his unpleasant son, Pablo.
For a few moments, both Grabbers stood quite still. Then Mr Grabber said to his son, “Did you hear that cupboard sneeze?”
Pablo Grabber shook his head in wonderment. “I did, Dad, but … but cupboards can’t sneeze, can they?”
“They certainly can’t,” said Mr Grabber. “But people in cupboards can sneeze, you know.”
Inside the cupboard, Max was frozen in dread. Through the little crack in the wood he could now see the two Grabbers advancing slowly towards his hiding place. In terror, he watched as they stopped right in front of the cupboard door. Mr Grabber was scowling, and Pablo Grabber had a cruel grin on his face. They were playing with him; they were deliberately prolonging his fear.
Then Max acted. He did not think it through too much, but he used the one weapon he had in his armoury – surprise. Throwing the cupboard doors open, he pushed them as hard as he could. Swinging on their hinges, the doors burst open with great force, knocking Pablo Grabber quite off his feet. Down he went on the floor, just as he had made Max fall down on the race track. And as he went down, Mr Grabber, completely taken by surprise, took a step backwards.
This gave Max the chance he needed, and without a moment’s delay, he ran across the room to the door that led to the corridor. Pushing this open as quickly as he could, he dashed out and down the corridor, not daring to look behind him, Grandfather Gus’s book clutched to his chest as he ran. He heard cries from somewhere behind him, but he paid no attention to them. All that he was thinking of was the need to get as far away as possible from his two Grabber pursuers. He did not care how he did this – all that counted was distance between him and those chasing after him.
There was another door at the end of the corridor, and Max was relieved to discover that this was unlocked. Slipping through it, he found himself at the foot of a wide staircase. He now launched himself up it, taking three, sometimes four, steps at a time. It was a dangerous way to climb a staircase, but Max did not care. It would be far more dangerous to be caught by the pursuing Grabbers.
There was a landing at the top of the stairs, and off this landing there were several open doors. Max saw that these were doors that led to bedrooms, and with a sinking feeling he realised he had run right up into the living quarters of the Grabber family. This was like running into the very nest of an angry swarm of wasps, or the private cave of a grumpy and cantankerous bear. But there was nowhere else for him to go, and so he ran into the first of these bedrooms, not knowing what to expect, and with no idea of how this would help him evade his would-be captors.
The bedroom belonged to Pablo Grabber. On a dresser near the window, there was a small forest of silver trophies – every one of them, Max thought, the result of a successful bit of cheating. On the walls there were posters of racing cars sponsored by Pablo’s father, with TEAM GRABBER painted in large red letters on their sides.
Max looked about him. He wondered whether he might climb out of the window and make his way down by way of a drainpipe. When he looked though, the drop seemed far too long, and he quickly decided that this would be far too perilous. In desperation, he saw that the only possible hiding place was under the bed. It was a tight fit, but he managed it, and did so just in time.
He heard Pablo and his father on the landing.
“He must have gone down the fire escape,” said Mr Grabber. “I’m going to go down and have a look.”
“He’ll have run away by now,” said Pablo.
??
?I’ll just check nonetheless,” said his father.
“I’ll stay up here,” said Pablo. “I need to get ready for the party.”
Max listened to Mr Grabber’s footsteps on the stairs. Then he heard Pablo come into the room; more than that, he was able to see his shoes and ankles as the other boy walked across to the bed. And there Pablo sat down, almost squashing the breath out of Max in his hiding place below.
What happened next was one of the oddest, most peculiar, and, looking back on it, one of the most exciting moments of Max’s life. Once again, he did not have much time to think about it. Sometimes, the more you think about things, the more reasons you see for not doing whatever it is you were planning.
It was the sight of Pablo’s ankles that decided it. They were so close, and they were so fat and tempting, that Max simply had to do what he did. Reaching out with his right hand, he grabbed the ankle closest to him and pulled on it as hard as he could. Up above him, the bed rocked and bucked as the unfortunate boy found one of his legs being dragged away beneath him. At the same time, Pablo began to bawl at the top of his voice. It was a cry of outrage and alarm – a blood-curdling screech.