The Great Gold Robbery (10 page)

They raced out of the park, onto a paved pedestrian square. The crowd leaped aside, and they almost knocked down a man who was standing on top of a crate, screaming that the end of the world was
coming. Nilly couldn’t have agreed more, because just then they rolled into a street, quite a busy street, with cars and buses speeding toward them, every last one of them on the
wrong
side of the road! This was England, after all.

They were one second away from being mashed by an enormous white Rolls-Royce!

Nilly took a deep breath and leaped over to Betty’s head, frantically clawing at his smooth, bald head, and just as he was losing his hold, he managed to grab Betty’s nostril with
both hands. He heard the middle brother groan as the baby carriage turned to avoid the oncoming traffic at the very last moment, careening over to the opposite side of the street. Where they rolled
right over to the back of a red double-decker bus and came to a stop with a gentle
bump
.

“Phew!” said Nilly.

“Phew!” said Betty.

“Where are we? What’s happening?” Alfie cried, tugging at his bowler hat, trying to pull it back up so he could see.

“We have to get out of here!” Charlie said.

They turned around and saw the five policemen running across the street toward them. Three of them had lost their comical helmets, but none of them had lost their batons. They were blowing their
whistles, their angry faces bright red, and they generally did not look anything like the policemen Nilly had seen in the London tourist brochures. There was exactly zero chance that he and the
out-of-shape Crunch Brothers were going to get away.

The bus started, and Nilly coughed from the exhaust. Then, to his surprise, he felt them starting to move again.

He turned and saw Betty Crunch grinning at him. Betty had grabbed hold of the pole that served as a handrail by the back door of the bus, which had now suddenly become their tow truck.

A voice came over the loudspeaker in the bus ceiling. “Welcome to this guided tour of London. If you’ll look to your right, you’ll see Speaker’s Corner and Hyde Park.
We’ll be driving past Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace, and . . .”

The policemen behind them had stopped running and were standing, doubled over forward with their hands on their knees, huffing and puffing so their backs went up and down.

“Yippee!” Nilly yelled for the second time that day, even though it only ten past nine in the morning.

A face appeared over the roof of the bus. “Forget about Speaker’s Corner! Look who’s down there, everyone! It’s Maximus Rublov!”

More faces appeared over the edge of the roof. Apparently there were seats on the roof deck up there.

“Hi, Rublov!” another tourist called. “What’s the matter? Can’t you afford a bus ticket?”

“Not if I’m going to buy Ibranaldovez!” Nilly yelled, standing up in the baby carriage and bowing gallantly.

Nilly suddenly lost his balance as the baby carriage swung to the left and disconnected from the bus.

Now Nilly and the Crunch Brothers were racing down a cobblestone alley that got narrower and narrower and darker and darker the farther down it they went. The cobblestones made Nilly’s
teeth chatter in his mouth.

“W-h-e-r-e a-r-e w-e?” he managed to say.

Just then the baby carriage whipped to the right, right into the brick wall of a building, and just at the very instant Nilly was sure they would crash, a trapdoor opened and they rolled down a
walkway, coming out on the floor of a cellar, bumping right into a big, black pile of coal.

“We’re home!” Charlie announced.

Nilly coughed, climbed out of the now overturned baby carriage, and rubbed the soot out of his eyes. And as he stood there rubbing, he noticed how quiet it had gotten. No one said a word. There
must be something in the room that was keeping the otherwise very chatty brothers from . . .

Nilly opened his eyes. He was looking right at a pair of legs that were at least as hairy as the ones he’d just seen in the park, but thick like tree trunks. Nilly slowly looked up, higher
and higher, as the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

“Mama,” Charlie whispered.

She whose name could only be whispered had some humongous arms on her, which were crossed over her humongous chest, and above that there was a woman’s head, which looked like it had come
out of a waffle iron, because it was as wide as a snowplow and covered in layer upon layer of superfluous, wrinkled skin. And a pair of staring, glowing hunk-of-coal-like eyes in between the
wrinkles.

“Mama,” whispered Betty.

There was a little
pop
sound as Alfie finally managed to pull the bowler hat back off his head and see again.

“Mama,” he whispered.

But the woman wasn’t paying any attention to them. Her eyes were focused on the little redhead.

“So,” she said, her voice sounding like an average dragon with a slightly above average anger management problem and an ugly, advanced case of laryngitis. “What are you?”
she croaked.

“I’m—I’m—” Nilly began, his voice trembling, “I’m Nil—Sherl! I’m Sherl! And I’m a bandit. But not one of those trustworthy
bandits. A regular bandit down to the core, actually.”

“Good for you,” the woman said, leaning down toward Nilly. And what do you know if she didn’t have dragon breath, too. “Because I’m . . . ,” she began, and
then lowered her voice to a crackling whisper right next to Nilly’s ear, “Mama Crunch.”

“Gulp!” Nilly said, quite involuntarily.

“And I hope you’re not a sissy, Mr. Sherl, because it’s time to eat now. Got it?”

Sherl looked around at the other three, who looked really terrified.

“Uh . . . I wonder what we’re going to be eating, Mrs. Crunch?” Nilly said.

Mama Crunch straightened up and laughed a laugh that sounded like someone trying to start a car when it’s minus twenty degrees outside.

“Yes, I bet you do.”

NILLY AND THE Crunch Brothers were sitting around the dining table. It turned out the room had tilted a little to the northwest ever since a bomb had gone right through the
roof during World War II. The bomb hadn’t exploded, but it crushed the coffee table and had broken both lenses of Grandpa Crunch’s eyeglasses and his almost-full whiskey glass.
He’d nodded off on the sofa after a little afternoon looting. Not much had changed in the living room since then. Even the windows were still covered with the blackout curtains that had been
hung up to keep German soldiers from spotting any lights from the buildings to help them aim. Now the blackout curtains were to keep anyone from Scotland Yard or anyone else from looking in and
figuring out where the Crunch Brothers lived. The only light in the leaning living room came from the coal-burning stove.

“Act like you like it,” Charlie whispered, stuffing a mouthful of food into his mouth and jabbing Nilly, who was sitting still, staring at the plate Mama Crunch had slapped down in
front of him and told him was bottom fish and toenail chips.

“Uh, what’s the sauce?” Nilly asked, poking his fork into something gray and slimy that was covering the fish.

“That’s called Grandfather’s Cough,” Charlie said, and then made a face as he took a bite. “But I don’t think grandfather’s actual sputum tastes
so—”

“Shh!” Alfie said.

They were listening to the sounds from the kitchen, where Mama Crunch was still boiling and sizzling away.

“It was worse yesterday,” Charlie said. “We had hot dogs.”

“Hot dogs?” Nilly asked. “Like in a bun?”

“More like a heated-up bulldog with cauliflower and rickets. This tastes like—”

They were interrupted by Betty leaning over and vomiting under the edge of the table.

Alfie nodded toward Nilly’s plate. “There’s no way out, Sherl. It’s better for you to eat Grandfather’s Cough than to have to deal with”—he dropped his
voice to a whisper—“Mama.” He raised his voice again. “Believe me.”

“I see,” Nilly said, staring at his plate. “Well, then I guess I’d better get it over with. . . .”

“That’s it exactly,” Charlie said.

“That’s what exactly?” Nilly asked.

“Unfortunately, it’s not over with when we eat this up.”

“It’s not? What happens after that?” Nilly asked.

“The worst part,” Alfie said in a deep, funereal voice that made the water glasses rattle.

“The Birmingham pudding,” the brothers all said in unison.

“Shh,” Betty said. “She’s coming. . . .”

The kitchen door opened, and Mama Crunch’s enormous body came in. She was marching straight toward Nilly.

“What is this?” she wheezed, dragon stench pouring out of her enormous mouth.

Nilly quickly stuffed his fork into his mouth.

“I had to admire the way the food looked first, Mrs. Crunch,” Nilly said, chewing slowly. “Delightful bottom fish, Mrs. Crunch, melts on the tongue! And you simply
must
tell me how you got the toenail chips so crunchy and the Grandfather’s Cough so . . . uh, slimy.”

“I mean, what is
this
?!” the woman whose name shall only be whispered screamed, slapping a wad of bills onto the table. “The baby carriage was full of Monopoly
money!”

All chewing and plate clinking suddenly stopped. And everyone stared at Nilly.

“Monopoly money?” Alfie hissed, squeezing one eye shut and slowly licking the long, black-handled knife he was holding in his hand.

“Ahem, yes, isn’t it great?” Nilly said, reveling in his packing brilliance. “Real Monopoly money.”

“But that’s not worth anything!” Betty said.

“It’s not?” Nilly said, looking at Betty in surprise. Then he lit up. “Oh, you’re thinking of the money they use in that game . . . what’s it called
again?”

He looked around but did not receive an answer, just threatening looks from dark-red faces all around.

“Monopoly!” Nilly exclaimed. “Oh, but that’s fake Monopoly money. This is real Monopoly money.”

“What’s the difference?” Charlie asked.

“Well, obviously these authentic bills have watermarks in them,” Nilly said.

Alfie set his bowler hat back on his head and then held one of the bills up to the light. “I don’t see any watermark,” he said.

“Of course not,” Nilly said. “It’s made of water.”

“What kind of nonsense is this?” Mama Crunch said. “Monopoly money is play money whether it’s fake or real.”

“That’s actually a very common misunderstanding, Mrs. Crunch,” Nilly said, holding up a toenail chip. It was yellow and white and looked exactly like a . . . well, an old,
well-used toenail. “But when they created the game of Monopoly, they copied the money used in Monopolynesia.”

“Monopolynesia?” Mama Crunch repeated, lowering her arms to her sides in a way that allowed Nilly to see her bulging biceps.

“Yup,” Nilly said, crunching a toenail chip between his teeth and smiling quickly.

“There is no country called Monopolynesia,” Alfie said quietly.

Nilly chewed and chewed. Then he said, “If the Monopolyppians could hear you now, they would be really insulted, Alfie.”

“Oh yeah?” Alfie said. Then he lifted his chin and pulled his knife across his throat, making a scraping sound. Short, black crumbs of stubble sprinkled onto his fish like pepper.
“And what would they do about that?”