Bookweirder (33 page)

“No, the boy’s right,” Todd squeaked desperately. “You can join up. It’s 1917. You don’t have a record here.”

The criminal looked up. “You’d say anything to get out of this. They won’t take me.” But his eyes brightened like a child’s, betraying his hope.

“They’ll take anyone who can speak English and fire a gun,” Todd affirmed eagerly. “They’ll probably make you an officer.”

Wentz face took on a wistful, nostalgic look. “My mom would be so proud. My dad was in the marines. My grandpa, too.”

They all stood still and silent, unsure what to do next. Wentz had not lowered the gun. His other arm still held Todd firmly.

“You need to leave, too,” Norman told Todd sternly. “You have to leave here. Not just Kelmsworth. You have to leave the whole place.” He fixed Todd with a stare, making sure he understood that he meant the book. He had to leave the book.

“Of course, of course,” Todd assented contritely, but his shifty eyes glinted with something of that old, golden, foxy glimmer.

“You leave George alone,” Norman insisted. “You let Mrs. Cook and Mr. Hepplewaithe come back, and you put George’s old lawyer, Montague, on his father’s case.”

“Of course,” Todd conceded, his wily confidence returning.

“Or the Undergrowth map goes in the fire back at the Shrubberies,” Norman continued, unconvinced by the lawyer’s promise. “My mother will be happy to burn it.”

Todd’s eyes narrowed. He paused for a moment and then nodded in agreement.

Wentz lowered the gun but kept a firm grip on Todd. He looked hopeful. He didn’t want to shoot anyone either, but he wasn’t sure whether to believe them. Suddenly the doorbell rang. It was the most elaborate doorbell Norman had ever heard. It chimed like a church bell.

Wentz jumped when he heard it. “Who’s that?” he asked, raising his gun again.

“That’ll be the police,” George said coolly. “Shall I tell them to take you to the American base at Norwin Woods?” He paused, waiting for an answer. “Or shall I let them storm in here?”

Wentz finally put the shotgun down on the desk and relaxed his grip on Todd’s throat. The imposter lawyer wobbled on unsteady legs and slumped to the floor. He managed to crawl to an armchair in the corner, where he sat with his head between his knees, breathing deeply.

George nodded approvingly at Wentz, keeping his eyes on the intruder until he had picked up the shotgun and handed it to Norman. Norman held it gingerly. He had accidentally fired the last gun he was given to hold. The moment George left to answer the door, Norman put the shotgun down on a side table between a china vase and a bronze statue.

A
week later, the Intrepid Three and friends leapt from a crowded London omnibus and marched defiantly up the marble steps of the lawyer’s office. Before the imposing brass doors, George halted and turned to review their instructions.

“All right,” said George, taking his usual tone of command, “just like last time, I’ll go up first. Wait for a few moments, then follow me.” He reached his hand to the big brass door.

“Just promise me,” Norman entreated, “that when it’s over, you’ll tell everyone it’s ventriloquism. Like we said, we don’t want to expose Malcolm.”

“For certs, old chap,” George assured him. “His secret’s safe with us.” With that, he pulled open the door and let them all into the lobby.

While George strode up the stairs into the office, Norman and Malcolm waited with the Cooks in the lobby. Pippa bit her lip, her eyes wandering distractedly to the shape squirming inside Norman’s borrowed school blazer. Gordon furrowed his brow and listened intently at the door. They could hear only little bits of the conversation—George saying something about a gamekeeper, a crackling old voice lecturing George on the dangers of going into the woods alone.

“Let’s do this,” Norman declared finally, and he led them up the stairs.

This time the lawyer did not see the Intrepids scurry to their hiding places. This time the lawyer was not the thin, russet-haired Mr. Todd. It was another man altogether, the older, fatter Montague, whom Fuchs had replaced. Norman breathed a sigh of relief when he glimpsed Montague in his black court robes and white powdered wig. Things were getting back to normal in the world of the Intrepids. There was half a chance their plan might work this time.

George stood with his back to them, regaling the lawyer with details of the poor state of the Kelmsworth estate. The lawyer shook his wigged head and tutted as he tried to get a word in.

“My father, if he were alive, would not stand for this!” George bellowed finally. That was the signal.

Malcolm slipped from his hiding place inside Norman’s blazer and slinked as stealthily as only a stoat could to a desk just behind George’s back.

“What do you mean, if he were alive?” the lawyer asked. “I assure you that he is still alive and well. I have every assurance that he is being treated properly while in custody.”

“Liar!” George shouted, leaning over the desk and pointing furiously. “When was the last time you saw him?”

“I saw him last … last week,” the old lawyer sputtered. “We went over some briefs for his latest appeal.”

“He died on Sunday. Murdered in a prison brawl,” George spat out. “He blames you, you know. He knows now that you double-crossed him.”

“I … I don’t know what you mean.” Montague rose unsteadily to his feet. It was then that he saw Malcolm.

The stoat stood upright on the desk opposite. He was dressed from head to toe like an English lord, in black frock coat and top hat. Pippa had laboured for a week reproducing Lord Kelmsworth’s best outfit in miniature.

Montague swayed and pointed a wavering finger at the animal in front of him. “Wh … what is that?”

“It’s my father,” George simply declared.

Norman cast a glance over to Gordon’s hiding place. The redhead was only just suppressing his laughter.

“What d-do you mean, it’s your f-father?” the lawyer stuttered, confusion in his bleary eyes.

“My father was a Buddhist. Didn’t you know that?” George declared coolly, as if it were the most normal thing. “He’s been reincarnated.”

“As a weasel?” the lawyer cried, his voice cracking.

“As a stoat,” Malcolm corrected him, in his poshest accent. “You, sir, are the weasel.”

The lawyer’s lips quivered, but no words came out.

At that point the big orange cat poked its nose out from behind one of the pillars. It lowered itself into a crouch as if about to pounce.

Malcolm eyed it disdainfully from his podium on the big desk. He drew his sword casually and pointed it at the dumbstruck feline. “Shoo!” he commanded, in a threatening whisper.

The big ginger cat cowered, retreated two steps, then turned and fled with a howl. The lawyer took a few steps backwards, too. He was trembling now and appeared to shrink as Malcolm addressed him.

“Please,” Montague begged in the smallest of voices, “make it go away.”

“I will not go away. I will have my revenge,” Malcolm declared. “You, sir, have betrayed me, and you will suffer for it.”

George backed up, allowing Malcolm to leap onto his shoulder. The boy began to walk towards the cowering lawyer. The lawyer pulled his white wig from his head and held it in front of him as if to shield himself.

“No,” he whimpered as he shrank away. “Stay back.”

But George kept coming towards him until Malcolm’s sword was no more than a foot from the quivering lawyer’s nose.

“Now, sir, it is time to pay your fee,” Malcolm declared ominously.

That was too much for the man. He backed away timorously, taking two slow steps without taking his eyes off the blade. Then, with an agility that no one had expected of him, he turned tail and fled. They heard the shaky tap-tap of his footsteps tripping down the marble stairs and then the slamming of the big brass door.

With the slam of the door, the Cooks erupted in celebration.

“Huzzah!” cried Gordon, finally bursting into laughter. “Did you see his face!” He snickered.

“Well done, Malcolm!” Pippa exclaimed. “You were marvellous.”

The stoat removed his top hat and gave Pippa a low bow.

Norman joined in. “Huzzah!” he shouted, listening to it echo off the marble floor and high ceilings, and he flashed back then to his father declaring “Huzzah!” for clotted cream and scones. That had been only days ago, and this was a very different huzzah. “Now, let’s get on with the business of ransacking this office, shall we?” he said.

George was already rummaging through Montague’s desk, pulling out drawers and riffling through files. He glanced at a few pages quickly, tossing them over his shoulder when he realized they were of no use to him.

It didn’t take him very long to find what he was looking for. Norman didn’t even question it when George lifted a sheaf of papers into the air and cried, “Aha!”

It was ridiculous that he’d discovered anything so quickly. Legal documents were impossible to read. Norman had seen the contract for the lease of their house back home, and every other word seemed to be
whereas
or
heretofore
. Norman was a pretty smart kid, but he couldn’t understand a thing.

There was no way that George should have been able to find what he was looking for and recognize it so quickly, but Norman understood that this was the way things worked in George’s world. Just as it was normal for stoats to talk in Undergrowth, it was normal in the Intrepids’ London for George to find and read crucial legal documents.

Since the disappearance of Fuchs-Todd, things had gone back
to normal for George and the Intrepids, and normal for them was that all their crazy plans worked, and that George was never wrong.

On the train back to the village of Kestleton, the Intrepids managed to get a compartment to themselves. They pulled the curtain across the window so Malcolm could join the celebration without making the conductor think he was hallucinating. Malcolm was as jubilant as the rest of them, re-enacting the scene at the lawyer’s office for their amusement.

“Are you sure that you can’t stay at Kelmsworth a little longer?” Pippa asked. She might have meant Norman, too, but her question, as always, was to Malcolm.

“We’d love to, milady, but we have some business of our own to settle back home.”

“Not even one night?” Gordon asked. “We could have a proper celebration at the lodge tonight. I’ll bring biscuits.”

Malcolm gave Norman a questioning glance, but Norman shook his head. “No, we have to carry on to Liverpool tonight,” he explained. “The ship sails tomorrow. My father is already there waiting for me.”

“Is Malcolm’s kingdom very far to the north, then?” George asked. “Farther north than Winnipeg, even?” he said, naming the most northerly outpost of North America he could imagine.

Norman answered before Malcolm could. “Much farther. It’s hundreds of miles north of the last train station.”

“Cor!” cried Gordon appreciatively. “Do any people ever visit? Human people, I mean?”

“Only Norman so far,” Malcolm replied with a tiny grin.

Norman did his best to change the subject. “So, George, what exactly did you find back in London?”

“It’s an appeal letter,” George explained. “It’s dated nearly eight months ago, but it has never been filed.” He held the letter up for Norman to see.

Norman scanned the thick text, but it was incomprehensible. “Maybe it’s just a rough draft. Maybe it has been filed.”

Gordon shot Norman a curious glance. It still shocked the younger Cook when anyone dared to question the wisdom of his idol, George.

“It can’t have been filed,” George explained calmly, as if tutoring a slow learner. “It mentions some proof, the testimony of an Admiralty official that my father was working for Her Majesty’s Secret Service. That’s the sort of thing that would have caused the case to be reopened right away.”

Norman didn’t push it. He only hoped that George had found what he was supposed to find: the papers from the old plot of
Intrepid Amongst the Gypsies
.

“Do you have the letter? The one that will get his case reopened?” Norman asked.

“No, but we’ll find it all right,” George declared.

Norman smiled. This was the old George Kelmsworth. It might not have been exactly where Fuchs had interrupted the story, but he was sure that it was close.

They said goodbye at Kestleton Station, a little platform surrounded by a dozen brick cottages. A carriage was waiting for George and the Cooks. Norman and Malcolm stood on the train steps and bade their companions farewell.

“Thanks for your help, Norman.” George reached out a hand for Norman to shake. “I’m sorry I doubted you to begin with, but you’re a real brick.”

“You’re pretty solid yourself,” Norman replied, hoping this was an acceptable compliment.

George turned to address the stoat on Norman’s shoulder. “And, Malcolm, you’re a wonder. I’d never imagined that an animal could even talk, but you are one of the wisest and bravest creatures of any sort I’ve ever met.”

Malcolm bowed and looked from one child to the other. “An honour fighting at your side, gentlemen … and lady.”

Norman coughed nervously. “You’ll remember …?”