The Fantastic Family Whipple (30 page)

Ruby put a hand on the boy’s sopping shoulder. “Don’t worry yourself, Arthur. We’re bound to find them sooner or later. But first—let’s try to get out of this rain, shall we?”

Arthur drew a breath, then wiped his brow and nodded.

Surveying the area, the pair found that the lawn sloped down from the trees and butted into a paved thoroughfare some thirty yards ahead of them. There, streams of pedestrians made their way across the Unsafe Sports Complex—some of them carrying umbrellas, others darting from shelter to shelter.

They then noticed a medium-sized snack stand on the far side of the road, complete with patio tables and a large awning—under which several umbrellaless pedestrians currently huddled.

At once, the pair set off sloshing toward it.

By the time they had ducked in under the overhang, their teeth were thoroughly chattering. Exhausted in body and spirit, Arthur collapsed into a patio chair, while Ruby continued toward the concessions window.

A minute later, the girl pulled up a chair beside Arthur and placed a steaming paper cup on the table in front of him.

“ExploCocoa?” she offered.

“Thanks,” replied the boy, managing a brief smile as he took it.

Casually pulling the tab from the top of the lid, Arthur raised the cup to his lips and began blowing frantically through the opening. He now had two minutes to drink
the beverage before a tiny explosive charge was detonated at the base of the cup, spattering scalding hot cocoa onto his face and hands. On any other day, the challenge would have given Arthur an immense thrill, but in his current mood, the usual joys of ExploCocoa were entirely lost on him. At least it was keeping him warm.

“Cheer up, Arthur,” said Ruby. “We’ll get ’em next time.”

“I don’t know,” the boy sighed in between breathy sips. “It’s hard to imagine a better opportunity than the one we just—”

But before the words had even left his mouth, Arthur was forced to rethink them. There on the pathway before him, jutting out above the heads of passersby, emerged the upper portion of an extraordinarily tall man. Seated on the man’s shoulder, holding an umbrella over both of their heads, was a dwarf.

Arthur glanced at Ruby—and found she shared his shock.

Thinking quickly, the girl grabbed two snack menus from the center of the table and held them in front of their faces.

Peering over the tops of their paper shields, the junior detectives surveyed their suspects as they passed in front of the snack stand. Far from their previous carnival attire, the oddly sized pair now wore matching burgundy blazers. It was almost creepier.

Suddenly, the dwarf turned his head in the children’s direction. Having ventured a bit too boldly above their foldable
hiding spots, Arthur and Ruby’s faces were exposed from their noses upward—and for an instant, the miniature man’s eyes seemed to lock onto them. Hearts suddenly racing with the dread of being discovered, the children ducked back behind their menus.

Clamping his eyes shut, Arthur longed to return to a simpler time—a time when he had yet to learn that closing his own eyes had no effect on the ability of others to see him. But it was no use. He was not invisible. He could practically feel the giant assassin towering over him—ready to render him permanently speechless.

“Psst—Arthur,” Ruby whispered, to the boy’s surprise. “They’ve nearly passed.”

Cautiously opening his eyes, Arthur peered around the menu—and caught a glimpse of the giant’s back as it exited his field of view.

By some miracle, they had escaped discovery after all.

“Come on,” said Ruby, rising to her feet. “We don’t want to lose them again.”

Gasping with relief, Arthur joined his partner, and the two hurried off toward the bustling thoroughfare, not noticing as their abandoned cups abruptly burst behind them—two quick
pops
leaving the table covered in steaming hot chocolate.

Crowded as the pathway was, the young trackers had little trouble following their newly found suspects, as the back of
the giant’s enormous head consistently hovered several feet above everyone else’s.

“Where do you think they’re headed?” asked Ruby as the giant and dwarf turned a corner and briefly disappeared from view.

“Maybe they’re on their way to another sabotage,” Arthur replied, “and we can catch them in the act.”

But as the children ventured around the bend, it became clear their suspects had far simpler plans—starting with fleeing the scene of the crime. The pathway ahead was intersected by a series of gates, each leading off the grounds of the Unsafe Sports Complex.

While Arthur and Ruby looked on, the giant squeezed through the center exit and ducked through the gate, the dwarf still seated on his shoulder as he lumbered toward the adjoining roadway.

“What do we do now?” whispered Ruby.

“I guess we get our hands stamped,” said Arthur. “I mean, it hardly seems right to just let them get away after all that.”

“Hardly.”

As the pair approached the gate, they each offered a hand to the attendant for a return stamp, then stepped through the turnstile.

Arriving at Unsafe Sports Street, the children caught a glimpse of their suspects rounding the next corner.

“There they go!” Ruby shouted, then broke into a run, with Arthur following just behind her.

Fearing the fugitives would disappear into the dark recesses of the city before they could reach them, the children splashed onward, burrowing through the perpetual wall of rain.

When they got to the corner, Arthur and Ruby peered around the Unsafe Sports Complex’s outer wall—and could scarcely believe what they saw. Far from vanishing into the maze of city streets, their suspects stood less than fifty feet away, patiently waiting for the signal at the nearest pedestrian crossing—with hardly a vehicle on the road.

It was quite a disconcerting sight. What sort of criminals had no qualms about sabotage and murder, but saw fit to obey even the most trivial traffic laws? With each new trait, these villains only grew creepier and creepier.

The next moment, the light changed, and the umbrella-carrying duo made their move to cross.

Edging around the corner, the children tiptoed down the pavement in silent pursuit. Once their suspects’ backs were completely turned to them, Arthur and Ruby darted across the empty street, effectively committing the very violation at which the assassins appeared to draw the line.

The young detectives proceeded to follow their marks onto Chancy Lane, then Hazard Street, and then Deathtrap Road, all the while ducking behind various stoops and waste bins to avoid detection, narrowly dodging sudden backward glances from the dwarf on numerous occasions.
The next series of turns led them through a patchwork of increasingly dwindling and darkening alleyways, the likes of which neither Arthur nor Ruby would ever have had the courage to venture down alone.

It was becoming more and more difficult to remain undetected in such cramped surroundings, so it was much to the children’s relief that the alleyway finally opened out onto a proper street, despite its being a rather deserted one.

By this time, Arthur and Ruby had lost any notion of their whereabouts within the city, but they surmised by the backdrop of boxy gray buildings before them that they had been led into some sort of commercial district.

Peering out from behind a crate of moldy cabbages, the children breathed through their mouths as they watched the dwarf-carrying giant trudge across the street and onto the rear lot of what appeared to be a large warehouse. The two men took shelter beneath an overhang, and the dwarf collapsed his umbrella as the giant lowered him to the ground. Then, retrieving a shiny cigarette case from his jacket, the giant removed two cigarettes—placing one in his own mouth and handing the other down to the dwarf. After hunching almost completely over to light the dwarf’s cigarette, the giant lit his own, extinguished the match, and then checked his watch.

For the next several minutes, the sinister twosome simply stood against the wall of the warehouse, exchanging a few inaudible words in between puffs of smoke and periodic watch checks.

“This must be the rendezvous point,” whispered Ruby. “The place where they get instructions from the boss.”

“Right,” said Arthur. “So we should probably wait till they make contact—and then apprehend the lot of ’em…. Any ideas on how we might do that?”

Ruby shrugged. “We really could use some backup right about now.”

As much as Arthur had imagined single-handedly hauling the culprits down to the police station, he had to agree with Ruby. Though they might have been able to handle the dwarf, the giant was well out of their weight class.

Just as he started to worry their showdown had ended before it had even begun, Arthur spied one of the city’s signature plum-colored telephone kiosks on the street corner across the alleyway.

“Wait here,” he whispered. “I’m going to try and call this in.”

Making sure the giant and the dwarf were looking away, Arthur slipped across the alley and hid behind a stack of discarded boxes on the other side. He crouched there a few moments while he collected his courage, then took a deep breath and scampered around the corner, opening the phone box door and stepping inside in one swift motion. With the rain’s constant patter helping to camouflage the sound of the door clapping shut, Arthur felt confident he had remained undetected.

He yanked the receiver to his ear and dialed Emergency.

“Yes. Hello. I must speak to Inspector Hadrian Smudge. I have urgent information concerning suspects involved with the Whipple Birthday Cake Catastrophe. Lives are in danger…. Yes, I can hold.”

After what seemed to be a never-ending stream of the World’s Schmaltziest Hold Music (which provided a rather bizarre contrast to the otherwise cloak-and-dagger setting), a man’s voice finally crackled through the receiver.

“D.S. Greenley speaking…”

“Oh. D.S. Greenley. Is Inspector Smudge with you?”

“Ah—unfortunately, the inspector is across town receiving the Golden Magnifying Glass Award from the Academy of Qualified Award Givers—but can I help you?”

Arthur was rather disappointed to hear the record-breaking detective would not be available to witness what was likely to be the boy’s crowning achievement in crime fighting. D.S. Greenley seemed a nice enough fellow—he had, after all, treated Sammy the Spatula with respect and mercy during his arrest—but then again, Greenley hadn’t exactly displayed the most effective suspect-apprehension skills on that day either. This worried Arthur. If the man had not been able to properly take custody of a drunken chef, whom Arthur knew to be harmless, how would he handle two bloodthirsty assassins, one of them a giant, no less? But of course, Arthur did not have access to an alternative army of record-breaking detectives, so D.S. Greenley would have to do.

“Well, yes,” the boy replied, the urgency returning to his voice. “This is Arthur Whipple…”

“Oh, hi-ya, Arthur,” Greenley interjected, jovially. “Haven’t seen you since that unfortunate business with the chef. Poor bloke…. So what seems to be the problem?”

“Well, earlier today, at the Unsafe Sports Showdown, this girl Ruby and I saw the same giant and dwarf I reported seeing at the Birthday Extravaganza—the ones suspected in the cake catastrophe. They tried to kill my brother Henry by sabotaging his event—I mean, somebody saw a giant and a dwarf shoot an arrow toward the Penny-Farthing Stunt Park during his run—but we found them, and we followed them to…Hold on a second.” Arthur gingerly cracked the door open so he could get a peak at a nearby street sign. “Dankly Avenue and Bleak Street, it looks like. We’ve got them pinned down outside an abandoned warehouse…. Well, they don’t actually know they’re pinned down, so they could conceivably leave at any moment—so maybe ‘pinned down’ isn’t completely accurate. But they’ve been standing in the same spot for several minutes now, and we’ve been watching them real hardlike.”