Goldwhiskers

  ‘That is hardly necessary, Miss Goldenleaf!’ protested Inspector Applewood. ‘He’ll be fed when he arrives at Nibbleswick, just like the others.’

  Glory ignored him. ‘It’s all yours if you cooperate,’ she told the orphan. ‘You know, help us out.’

  A crafty look settled on the youngster’s sharp little face. ‘If I talks, I gets it all to meself ?’

  ‘All to yourself,’ Glory promised.

  The mouseling wiped his nose with his paw again, considering. Then he shrugged and climbed back up on to the cork perch. Inspector Applewood frowned. The mouseling started to reach for the crumpet. Glory whisked it away. ‘Oh, no,’ she said, ‘fair’s fair. You first. What’s your name?’

  The mouseling’s bright little eyes were fixed firmly on the crumpet. His stomach rumbled loudly. ‘Smudge,’ he said.

  ‘Smudge what?’ asked Glory.

  The orphan shrugged. ‘Dunno. Just Smudge.’

  Glory tore off a corner of the crumpet and passed it to him. ‘Well then, Smudge, I’m sure you know that orphans just like you have been disappearing?’

  The mouseling nodded, his cheeks bulging with crumpet.

  ‘I’ll bet that’s a bit scary, isn’t it?’ said Glory sympathetically. She tore off another corner of the crumpet and passed it across the table. The mouseling wolfed it down hungrily. ‘Your friends disappearing like that, I mean.’

  Tears welled up in the orphan’s bright little eyes. He pawed them angrily. ‘I’m not scared of nuffing,’ he boasted.

  Glory passed him another piece of crumpet. ‘No, I can see how brave you are. Brave as my brother B-Nut, almost, and he’s a pilot.’

  Smudge’s mouth dropped open. ‘A pilot? That’s wicked, that is! I wants to be a pilot some day.’

  ‘I’m sure you shall,’ said Glory. ‘A bright young mouse like you can go far in life. So back to these friends of yours. Do you have any idea where they’re off to? Maybe Inspector Applewood is right – maybe it’s just cats?’

  The mouseling cast a sidelong glance at the detective. For a minute, the only sound in the room was the chewing of crumpet. ‘Not cats,’ he said finally.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ Glory replied.

  Smudge leaned across the table towards her. ‘No bones,’ he whispered. ‘Cats leave bones. When me mates disappeared, there wasn’t nuffing. Not even a whisker.’

  Glory turned to Inspector Applewood. ‘He’s got a point,’ she said. The detective frowned and scribbled furiously in his notebook.

  ‘So if it’s not cats, what do you think it is?’ In a bold gamble, Glory thrust the remainder of the crumpet across the table towards Smudge and held her breath. It was all or nothing now. The mouseling tore into the crumpet greedily. He glanced around fearfully while he ate, as if perhaps someone might be watching, or listening. Finally, he leaned towards Glory again and whispered, ‘They calls him Master.’

  ‘Who calls him Master?’ she whispered back.

  ‘The ones he takes,’ replied Smudge.

  Glory regarded him thoughtfully. ‘Did you get that, Inspector Applewood? They call him Master.’

  The detective glared at her but dutifully recorded the information in his notebook. Glory turned back to the mouseling. ‘And who is this “Master”?’

  Smudge shrugged. ‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘Only been one what was taken that ever came back. That were last summer. She wouldn’t say nuffing at all. At night sometimes, though, she had dreams. “Master,” she’d say. “Please, Master, not the oobly…” The oobly-something! No one knew what she was on about.’

  The room grew quiet as Glory and the Scotland Yard detective digested this information. So London has a boogeymouse, thought Glory. A boogeymouse named Master who is kidnapping orphans. The question was, why?

  CHAPTER TEN

  DAY ONE – MONDAY 1530 HOURS

  ‘Where are we?’ whispered Roquefort Dupont.

  He poked his mangy snout out of the drainpipe he’d just crawled through and looked around cautiously. There were humans nearby. He could hear them. And it was always best not to attract attention when there were humans nearby.

  Stilton Piccadilly shouldered past him.

  His fierce red eyes widened in surprise as he too looked around. ‘The Tower of London?’ he said. ‘Double G, why did you drag us out here?’

  Goldwhiskers smiled and hopped down out of the drainpipe on to the ground below. ‘You’ll see,’ he replied, his whiskers glittering in the last rays of late afternoon sun.

  Dupont hopped down beside the big rat. He yanked on the lead in his grimy paw, and Fumble tumbled to the ground as well. Behind him sprang Dodge and Twist, followed by Stilton Piccadilly. Goldwhiskers held up a paw in warning and pointed towards a stone bridge far above them. On it stood a human. He was dressed from head to toe in a scarlet uniform.

  ‘It was here, through this very gate, that the boatmen would pass with their cargo of doomed prisoners!’ he boomed.

  The rats froze as the tour guide pointed directly at the heavy, arched wooden gate beside them.

  ‘Nobody move a muscle,’ whispered Goldwhiskers.

  A crowd of tourists leaned over the stone wall and stared at the gate. They didn’t seem to notice the small cluster of rodents at its base.

  ‘Imagine for yourselves that final voyage of terror!’ continued their guide. ‘Down the Thames and under London Bridge, where sharp pikes displayed the heads of the unfortunate who had passed through the gate before you. Would that be your fate?’ He swooped his large hand down atop the head of a boy in the audience, who squealed obligingly in response. ‘Imagine the torches, their flames throwing eerie shadows upon the dank stone walls! Imagine the cries from the prisoners being tortured! Imagine the horror of it all!’

  The guide shivered. So did his rapt audience.

  ‘Sounds like my kind of party,’ whispered Dupont.

  ‘Shush!’ ordered Goldwhiskers.

  ‘You shush!’ retorted Dupont. Stilton Piccadilly gave him a warning poke. He grumbled, but he fell quiet again.

  ‘Through this very gate they’d pass,’ continued the human above them. ‘Queens and counsellors, dukes, earls, and princes, many of them never to be seen or heard from again. Do you know what they called this gate? They called it –’ he paused for dramatic effect, raising his arm again – ‘Traitors’ Gate!’ The man brought his arm down in a chopping motion, like an axe, and the crowd shrieked and cheered.

  As the tourists moved off, Goldwhiskers crept forward. ‘Follow me,’ he said to the others. Fumble, who was still attached to his ragged lead, pulled up the rear, staggering beneath the weight of a duffel bag bulging with gear.

  The rodents disappeared behind a loose stone in the base of the Tower’s thick wall, re-emerging a few seconds later on the other side. They scuttled across the gravel walkway to the Bloody Tower – ‘where two young princes vanished into eternity’, the guide, several yards further down the gravel path, informed his audience – and squeezed through a crack in the ancient building’s foundation. They reappeared momentarily in the inner courtyard; then, clinging to the shadows that skirted Tower Green, they darted past the ancient execution block towards a building on the far side of the walled fortress’s interior.

  ‘Any idea where he’s taking us?’ Dupont whispered to Piccadilly.

  Stilton Piccadilly shook his head. ‘Haven’t been here in years. Played about in the towers and grounds as a ratling – terribly exciting, as I recall. Especially when the ravens would chase us. They keep ravens here, you know. Always have.’

  Goldwhiskers stopped at the base of yet another enormous stone building. WATERLOO BARRACKS was posted on a sign outside.

  ‘What does all this have to do with our plan for revenge?’ demanded Dupont.’

  ‘You’ll see,’ said Goldwhiskers again. ‘This way.’ He squeezed into a downpipe and scrabbled up it, exiting on to the building’s roof. The others followed, trailing after the big rat as he crawled into a ventil
ation duct. Plunged into darkness, the rats and mice gripped each other’s tails in a long rodent chain as Goldwhiskers nosed his way back down, down, down into the barracks. ‘Two lefts, a right, another left and – this is it! Here we are!’ His voice rose with excitement as they finally emerged into a narrow space behind a heavy mesh screen.

  Only a dim light filtered through the screen’s heavy grid from the room beyond. Roquefort Dupont sniffed at the metalwork suspiciously. It was solid and imposing, impenetrable to humans, but the holes in the grid were not impossible for a small rodent to slip through. Even he might be able to manage it, what with all the weight he’d lost in Norway.

  Dupont peered out into the room on the other side. Thick, whitewashed stone walls muffled the noise of the tourists, who were standing on what looked like a moving walkway. They were being whisked past something. Dupont wasn’t sure what; the crowd of humans was blocking his view. The room had two entrances, one at either end. Both were shielded by enormous steel doors reinforced with enormous steel hinges and locks.

  ‘Whatever the humans have locked up in here must be pretty valuable,’ he observed to Piccadilly in a low voice.

  ‘You have no idea,’ Piccadilly replied. ‘I just worked out where we are.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘The Jewel House.’

  ‘Jewel House?’ Roquefort Dupont twitched his ugly snout. ‘Never heard of it.’

  ‘As in the Crown Jewels? You know, those things the royal humans wear when they’re being royal.’

  Understanding dawned on Dupont slowly. ‘So that’s what Goldwhiskers meant by sparklies!’ His beady red eyes narrowed. He turned on the big rat, his thick tail whipping back and forth angrily. ‘You double-crossed us! You said you were going to help us, but you’re just helping yourself!’

  ‘Don’t fret, my American friend,’ said Goldwhiskers, a note of amusement in his voice. ‘Trust me, there’ll be plenty to go around by the time we’re done.’

  ‘I’m not your friend,’ snarled Dupont. ‘And I have no interest in your ridiculous sparklies, or whatever you call them.’

  Goldwhiskers shrugged. ‘Then you’re a bigger fool than I thought.’

  He fiddled with something he had taken out of the duffel bag on Fumble’s back. Curiosity got the better of Dupont. He grunted and nudged the object with his snout. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘My BlackBerry,’ Goldwhiskers replied. ‘A small hand-held computer, really.’

  ‘Let me guess. Cold, hard cash, right?’

  Goldwhiskers grinned. ‘You’re catching on, Dupont. A rat’s got to pay, if a rat wants to play.’ He placed the BlackBerry on the floor. Dodge deftly connected it to a wire that ran along the top of the heavy gridded screen. ‘We’ll be overriding a few systems here.’

  ‘You sound like a mouse,’ sneered Dupont. ‘They’re always fiddling with human gadgets.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Goldwhiskers. ‘That’s what keeps them two steps ahead of you, Dupont – haven’t you worked that out yet?’

  Dupont’s tail thrashed angrily again. Piccadilly placed a warning paw on his shoulder. ‘Don’t touch me,’ snarled Dupont, shrugging it off. ‘Don’t ever touch me.’

  ‘Aha, here we go,’ said Goldwhiskers, ignoring them both.

  Curiosity won out over anger again, and Dupont and Piccadilly drew closer. A schematic of the building’s electrical and computer systems flashed on to the BlackBerry’s screen. It looked like a pile of spaghetti.

  ‘What’s that?’ sneered Dupont. ‘The menu for an Italian restaurant?’ He snickered at his lame joke.

  Goldwhiskers pointed at the screen with his tail. ‘We’ll need to shut it down here and here,’ he told Dodge, who nodded and scampered away. Then he looked over at Twist. ‘Do you know what you need to do, mouseling?’

  ‘Yes, Master,’ Twist replied obediently.

  Goldwhiskers nodded in satisfaction. ‘Then you will please Master, and you will feast tonight!’ he promised. ‘More food than you can possibly imagine, if you and Dodge do your jobs right.’

  ‘How about us?’ demanded Dupont. ‘What do we do?’

  Goldwhiskers turned back to his two rat companions. ‘What do we do?’ he replied. ‘Simple. We wait.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  DAY ONE – MONDAY 2030 HOURS

  ‘THEY’RE GONE!’ shrieked Lavinia Levinson.

  A diva’s shriek can shatter glass, and it quickly brought Oz, his father and DB running.

  ‘What’s gone, darling?’ asked Luigi Levinson anxiously.

  ‘My rubies!’ wailed Oz’s mother.

  ‘Are you sure?’ said her husband.

  Lavinia Levinson nodded. She held her jewellery case upside down over her bed and shook it. Nothing came out. ‘I was going to wear the earrings tonight, the ones the Italian ambassador gave me after I sang at La Scala. They’re so festive, and they match my outfit.’

  She looked sadly down at her flowing, floor-length caftan. It was made of red satin and covered in red spangles. Oz thought it made his mother look even more like Mrs Santa Claus than her red wool cape.

  ‘The ruby necklace? The bracelet and earrings too?’

  ‘Gone! All gone!’ wailed Oz’s mother.

  Oz’s father rushed to the phone and called hotel security. In next to no time their lavish suite was bustling with concerned staff.

  ‘This is dreadful!’ said the hotel manager. ‘Simply dreadful! I can assure you that we at the Savoy will do everything in our power to see that your jewellery is returned to you, Mrs Levinson. I only wish you’d entrusted it to our hotel safe.’

  Oz’s mother dabbed at her eyes with a hankie and nodded. ‘I was planning to, but then I had to rush to rehearsal almost the minute we got here, and I simply forgot.’

  Scotland Yard arrived in full force, and Oz heard the hotel manager whisper the words ‘cat burglar’ to the detectives. One of them approached Lavinia Levinson. ‘So sorry we have to meet under these circumstances, madam. I’m a devoted fan.’

  ‘Thank you,’ whispered Oz’s mother, dabbing at her eyes again. ‘You’re too kind.’

  The detective whipped out a notebook and pen. ‘Would you like to tell me what happened?’

  Sniffling, Lavinia Levinson nodded. ‘Well, I was getting ready for a party – we were all getting ready for a party –’

  The detective looked up. ‘The one at the Tower of London? I read about that in the papers.’

  Oz’s mother nodded again. ‘Yes, that’s the one. Anyway, I went to put on my ruby earrings, and they weren’t there. I thought maybe I’d put them in a drawer, or tucked them inside a shoe – good hiding place, you know, shoes – but no. And then I checked and all my other jewellery was gone as well!’

  ‘Would you mind if we inspect the room while you’re away – for fingerprints and such?’ asked the detective.

  ‘That would be fine, Inspector,’ replied Oz’s father. ‘I do hope you’ll find the thief who did this.’

  ‘We’ll do our very best.’

  It was a subdued ride to the Tower of London. Oz’s parents held hands silently in the back of the limousine. Oz and DB stared out at the passing city. London was lit up for the holidays, and they passed shop after shop whose windows glowed with gaily decorated Christmas trees and brightly wrapped packages. High above the streets, strung between the tall lamp posts, were strands of twinkling snowflakes. The glitter did little to lift their spirits, however.

  Oz leaned over to DB. ‘I tried to get in touch with Glory,’ he whispered, pulling his CD player from his trouser pocket. Thanks to Bunsen’s tinkering, it was now a radio transmitter and receiver preset to the Spy Mice Agency’s frequencies. ‘She didn’t answer.’

  ‘She’s on holiday, Oz, remember?’ DB whispered back.

  Oz shrugged. ‘I know, but I still thought it might be worth a try. Maybe she can help somehow.’

  ‘A mouse catching a cat burglar?’ DB snorted. ‘I don’t think even Glory’s up to that.’
r />   The limousine slowed as it approached the Tower, bumping its way over the broad cobblestone drive towards the front gate. A security guard checked their invitation, then waved them through.

  ‘It’s showtime,’ said Oz’s father, as they pulled up in front of an imposing stone building. He climbed out and extended a hand to his wife. ‘No more long faces now!’

  ‘You’re right, dear,’ said Oz’s mother, managing a weak smile. ‘It’s only jewellery, after all.’

  Her husband gallantly kissed her hand. ‘Which you, Lavinia, with your natural sparkle, don’t need to look beautiful.’

  Oz’s mother’s smile broadened. ‘Thank you, dear. You look very handsome too. Just like James Bond.’

  ‘A dinner jacket makes any man look like James Bond,’ said Oz’s father, winking at Oz. ‘Even a shaggy bear like me.’

  Oz’s mother leaned down and kissed her son on the cheek as he emerged from the limo. ‘You look just like James Bond, Junior, sweetie.’

  Oz reddened and plucked awkwardly at his bow tie. For the first time in his life, he actually felt a bit like James Bond. Except for his shoes. He gazed down at them glumly. Finally, his chance to wear a tuxedo, and he’d blown it. He’d forgotten his black dress shoes. They were still at home in his wardrobe. He was stuck wearing the brown museum grandpa shoes instead. Luckily, with all the excitement his parents hadn’t noticed.

  ‘And you look equally smashing,’ said Lavinia Levinson, patting DB’s cheek. ‘That yellow dress makes you look like a princess.’

  ‘I can’t believe I’m finally going to see the Crown Jewels!’ DB crowed, bouncing excitedly up and down. She thrust her programme at Oz. ‘See, Oz? After dinner, there’s dancing and a private viewing of the jewels just for us. It’s gonna be awesome! No crowds, no long lines.’

  Oz, who had been shown the programme repeatedly over the past few hours, nodded absently.

  A limousine pulled up beside them, and Prudence Winterbottom climbed out. The British soprano was dressed in a silver gown, and she was practically encrusted with diamonds. Diamond earrings, a diamond necklace, diamond bracelets, diamond rings – even a diamond tiara. ‘Lavinia, darling!’ she cooed. ‘You look lovely!’ Her sharp ferret eyes bulged in surprise as they travelled from Oz’s mother’s bare ears to her bare neck and arms. ‘No jewels tonight?’ she said. ‘Saving them for the concert tomorrow and the royal reception, are you?’