The Adventures of Tintin (6 page)

“I’ve lost him!” He turned to the detectives. “You must find my wallet! It’s very important. I have to get it back.”

“And you will,” Thompson said soothingly. “Leave it to the professionals.”

“Stay here, Tintin,” Thomson put in. “Or better yet, go home. We’ll contact you when we’ve gotten him.”

Tintin knew that would be best, but part of him wanted to give chase. He couldn’t go on without that parchment. It was a critical part of the story. Nevertheless, he headed home, walking slowly at first but then picking up speed as his resourceful mind dealt with the loss of his wallet. He began to form a plan.

“We’ve lost the scroll, but we haven’t lost the story,” he told Snowy, who paced him along the sidewalk. “
Karaboudjan
. That’s an Armenian word. That’s our lead, Snowy.” He kept thinking as he kept walking, going over everything that had happened since Nestor had escorted him from Marlinspike Hall the night before. “What was Barnaby Dawes trying to tell us when he said our lives were in danger?”

He broke off as he and Snowy approached his apartment building. Two deliverymen in coveralls were carrying a large wooden crate from a red delivery van toward the front door, which was open. Mrs. Finch must have let them in.

As Tintin and Snowy got to the door, another workman appeared in the hallway. “Mr. Tintin? Delivery for you.”

Tintin looked back at the crate, which the two men were bringing closer to the doorway. It didn’t look like it would even fit through the door. “But I didn’t order anything,” he said, and he was about to turn back toward the third workman when a handkerchief was clapped over his mouth and nose.

“Well,” the workman said, “that’s because it’s you that’s getting delivered.” Tintin struggled for a moment, but there was a heavy, sweet smell and he had already breathed in whatever soaked the handkerchief. He felt himself falling, and then he blacked out completely. The last thing he heard was Snowy barking.

THE DELIVERYMEN QUICKLY
packed the unconscious Tintin in the crate and hauled it back toward the van. The word
KARABOUDJAN
was visibly stenciled on the side of the crate. “Quick!” the third workman was saying as he put the soaked handkerchief back in his pocket. “Get him in the van!”

Snowy was watching all of this from the sidewalk, where he had scooted out of the way of the crate. But now was the time when a dog had to take action! He sprang forward and sank his teeth into the third workman’s leg. The other two already had loaded the crate containing Tintin into the van. They looked up as the third yowled in pain.

“Get off me, you confounded mutt!” he yelled, shaking Snowy off into the hallway. Snowy landed and spun across the slick floor before scrabbling to his feet and charging again—but the workman slammed the door in his face.

Snowy heard the van’s engine start outside, and he knew he didn’t have much time. He ran up the stairs and into Tintin’s apartment, leaping up onto the desk and bracing his front paws on the windowsill. If it was good enough for a cat, Snowy figured, it was good enough for a dog.

The workman he’d bitten was getting into the van as it pulled away from the curb, out of Snowy’s jumping range. He whined anxiously and tensed as another truck approached. Could he do it?

He sprang out the window as the truck was about to pass. It was a fire truck, and Snowy landed between two rungs on the ladder laid across its roof. Crouching against the wind, Snowy kept an eye on the van, which was just in front of the fire truck. He would have to be ready to jump off if it turned.

But it didn’t turn right away. Instead, it suddenly slammed on its brakes. The fire truck followed suit, its brakes squealing as the sudden slowdown shook the ladder loose. The ladder shot forward, extending out over the van, taking the surprised Snowy with it. He tumbled from the ladder right onto the van’s hood. Inside, the three workmen gaped at him. He tried to keep his footing on the slick hood, but the van swerved and Snowy was thrown off onto the street.

He rolled a couple of times and came up running. Ahead of him, the van was turning toward the waterfront—Snowy could tell by the forest of cranes that sprouted around the docks. He jumped from the street onto the low trunk of a passing coupe. The driver shouted at him, and he hopped from the coupe to the basket of a nearby bicycle, whose rider also yelled at him. Snowy barked, but the rider didn’t understand him the way Tintin did. He looked out over the basket and saw the van getting farther away—and the bicycle was slowing down!

Again he jumped down to the street and ran at top speed toward the docks, cutting through a pen full of cows. He had to zigzag sharply through the forest of legs and hooves. The cows lowed and shied away from him, making it a dangerous trip. Snowy had a brief urge to herd them, but he put it aside. He had to find Tintin!

Emerging from the cattle pen, he came out onto the docks and saw the crate containing Tintin being loaded onto an enormous cargo ship. Snowy slowed and tried to keep out of sight, scooting from a canvas-covered stack of crates to an abandoned car to a coil of rope nearly as big as the car. He watched the crate disappear into the ship and whined, trying to figure out how he could get aboard.

The loading ramp was out of the question. There were too many people watching. He looked up and down the dock, growing more and more anxious.
There!

Bursting from his cover, Snowy ran across the dockside railroad tracks to one of the mooring pillars at the edge of the dock. The rope looped around it was so thick that it would have taken him a month to chew through it. He jumped to the top of the pillar and tiptoed up the gently curving rope before making a final jump onto the upper deck. Below, one of the crewmen on the ramp shouted. Snowy looked down and saw the crewman pointing at him.
Uh-oh
. He had to hide again.

He dashed across the deck and disappeared into the ship’s superstructure, pausing for a breath once he got to a quiet, dark place where no one would think to look for him.

Tintin was on the ship, and so was he. Now all Snowy had to do was find him.

Tintin woke up slowly, confused because he was inside, someplace, and the last thing he remembered was talking to a deliveryman standing on his front stoop. He thought he heard the deliveryman’s voice. He cracked one eye open with effort as the deliveryman said, “Eh, not here. Your side, Tom.”

Hands rummaged roughly through Tintin’s pockets and pulled at his coat. “Nothing,” Tom said.

“Get that pocket,” the first man said.

“I’ve looked at this one already, Allan,” Tom said. “I’m sure of it.”

Tom and Allan
, Tintin thought.
Now we all know each other
. He was starting to feel almost awake again. “Have a look in his socks,” Allan said, and Tom did. Tintin’s foot twitched as Tom accidentally tickled him.

Tintin rolled to one side. He couldn’t move his arms. Aware of a movement, he looked up and saw Sakharine, hatless but still wearing his red suit, approaching from a steel doorway. Looking around, Tintin put it all together. He was on a ship, below deck. He sat up and noted more details. His hands and feet were bound, and he was in a cage, probably in the ship’s hold. Light slanted down from a couple of portholes. Beyond their small pools of illumination, he could see the vague outlines of stacked crates and other cargo. Tintin filed all of it away, trying to keep a level head even though the situation was fairly dire. Who knew what might come in handy when it was time to escape?

The two thugs who had searched him now stood waiting for Sakharine to give them some kind of direction. Allan was tall with hefty jowls, his face set in what seemed like a permanent frown beneath a leather captain’s cap. Tom was more heavyset, with a tweed cap and a few days’ black stubble darkening his cheeks and chin. Both wore heavy sweaters. Tom’s sweater was blue, while Allan’s was gray.

“Have you found it?” Sakharine demanded.

“Doesn’t have it,” Allan said.

“It’s not on him, boss,” Tom agreed. “It’s not here.”

“Not here? Then where is it?”

“Where’s what?” Tintin asked. He felt that since they were talking about him, he ought to take part in the conversation. Plus he was beginning to shake off the after-effects of whatever Allan had used to knock him out back at Labrador Street.

Sakharine banged the bars of the cage with his cane, making Tintin and the two henchmen wince. The sound echoed through the hold, amplified by the metal walls and floor. “Oh, I am tired of your games,” Sakharine growled. “The scroll, from the
Unicorn
. A piece of paper like this.”

He showed Tintin a curled bit of parchment nearly identical to the one that Tintin hoped was still in his stolen wallet. “You mean the poem,” Tintin said.

“Yes!” Sakharine cried.

“The poem written in Old English.”

“Yes.”

“It was inside a cylinder,” Tintin said.

“Yes.”

“Concealed in the mast.”

“Yes,” Sakharine said through gritted teeth.

Tintin finally shrugged. “I don’t have it.”

Sakharine snapped his cane through the bars of the cage. Tom caught hold of the end, and as Sakharine pulled, a long, thin sword emerged from the cane. With a flick of his wrist, Sakharine pressed the tip of the sword into Tintin’s cheek.

Uh-oh
, Tintin thought. He had enjoyed playing the joke on Sakharine, but now it didn’t seem like such a good idea.

“You know the value of that scroll,” Sakharine said. “Why else would you take it?”

Tintin realized something then. He did not fear Sakharine. If Sakharine had wanted Tintin dead, he would already be dead. And as long as he knew something Sakharine didn’t—in this case, the location of the parchment—Sakharine would have to keep him alive.

“Two ships, two scrolls,” Tintin said. “Both part of a puzzle. You have one, you need the other. But that’s not it. There’s something else.”

Now he was trying to draw Sakharine out. Tintin was a journalist and knew how to talk to people. There was a story here, and he wanted to know what part Sakharine played.

And even if he never got a story out of it, how could he resist the mystery?

Sakharine leaned in to press against the bars, holding the point of his sword to Tintin’s face. “I will find it, with or without your help,” he said menacingly. “You need to think about exactly how useful you are to me.”

He stood up straight again, sheathing his sword and latching the cage. Then he used his cane to tap his way toward the door as Tom and Allan followed. “Stay the course!” Sakharine ordered. “We’ll deal with him on the way.”

The three villains left, muttering to one another and slamming the door behind them—but just as they were shutting it, Snowy shot through the gap into the hold! He ran toward Tintin as the booming sound of the door being locked and bolted echoed through the chamber.

“Snowy!” Tintin said. He looked toward the door, making sure that neither Sakharine nor his goons had noticed. Snowy slipped through the bars and licked his face. “It’s good to see you, too. See if you can chew through these ropes.”

Snowy started gnawing at the knots near Tintin’s wrists, and Tintin started to formulate a plan. He wasn’t going to have much time; if Sakharine’s thugs returned, Tintin was sure he would never leave the ship alive.