For Daniel, Noah, Emma, Marfa, and Jacob – M.R.
Spy. One who spies upon or watches a person secretly; a secret agent whose business it is to keep a person, place, etc., under close observation.
Clairvoyant. A person who can mentally see objects at a distance or concealed from sight.
Gamble. To play games of chance for money.
FEATURING
IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE
CHILD POWER’S DYNAMIC DUO
THE INTREPID SHAPIRO AND THE FEARLESS O’TOOLE;
MR. DINGLEBAT, THE FAMOUS MASTER SPY;
MISS SOUR PICKLE; MR. I.M. GREEDYGUTS;
PERFECTLY LOATHSOME LEO LOUSE AND HIS MISERLY
MUM.
AND
INTRODUCING
“THE CLAIRVOYANT’S GAMBLE,”
WHICH,
ONCE MASTERED,
WILL ENABLE YOU TO AMAZE YOUR FRIENDS!!!
CHAPTER 1
nce there was a boy called Jacob Two-Two. He was two times two times two years old. He had two older sisters, Emma and Marfa, and two older brothers, Daniel and Noah. He was nicknamed Two-Two because, as he himself admitted, “I am the littlest in the family. Nobody hears what I say the first time. They only pay attention if I say things two times.”
Jacob Two-Two used to live in a rambling old house on Kingston Hill, in Surrey, England, but one day his family sailed across the ocean on a big ship and moved into another rambling old house, this one in Montreal, Canada, where Jacob Two-Two’s parents had been born in what Marfa called olden times.
“You’ll never believe this, Jacob,” said Emma, “but when Mummy and Daddy were kids there was no television, or jet airplanes, or computer games, or even take-out pizza.”
“Nobody had heard of the Rolling Stones yet,” said Daniel.
“And in those bygone days,” said Noah, “only farmers wore jeans. How about that, Jacob?”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Jacob Two-Two, because he could never be sure that Noah was telling the truth. Once, when Jacob was a mere two plus two years old, Noah had led him to the globe of the world in his father’s library, pointed out Australia on the bottom, and told him that the upsidedown people in that country had to wear special magnetic shoes lest they fall into outer space, landing – bumpety-bump – on the planet Venus, where little kids who were still too young to be allowed to watch a horror movie on tv, ride a two-wheel bike, or stay home alone, had to serve breakfast in bed to their older brothers and sisters every morning.
“Or the planet Pluto,” said Marfa, “where all that the youngest in the family ever got to eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner was broccoli.”
“Yuck,” said Jacob Two-Two. “Yuck.”
The older he got, it seemed to Jacob Two-Two, the more difficult and complicated his life became. Once he had been appreciated, but not any longer. In the good old days, before he was even two plus two years old, all he had to do to amaze everybody in the family was to use a knife and fork, or tie his own shoelaces, but these achievements were no longer considered such a big deal. Nowadays he was expected to run errands, rake leaves in autumn and shovel a path through the snow in winter, help clear the table after dinner without breaking a plate, and put away his toys at night. He was expected to do all these things, but his two older brothers and two older sisters still considered him to be a nuisance.
Daniel would kick him out of the living room whenever his friends came round to listen to records or just to shoot the breeze.
“Why can’t I stay?” Jacob Two-Two would ask twice.
“Because we’d have to watch what we were saying if there was an innocent kid in the room.”
Marfa wouldn’t allow him into her bedroom if she was going to paint her toenails or try out different hairstyles in the mirror, which seemed to be most of the time.
Noah and Emma wouldn’t let him into their CHILD POWER Command Tent in the backyard unless he paid an entry fee. There they would sit, those two bigshots, wearing bath towels draped over their shoulders like capes, plastic swords fastened to their belts, drinking cranberry juice out of a wine bottle left over from their parents’ last dinner party, pretending to be the dynamic duo, the fearless O’Toole and the intrepid Shapiro, who struck fear into the hearts of big people who didn’t like children.
“May I come in?” Jacob Two-Two asked one afternoon. “May I come in?”
“That depends,” said Emma.
“What did you bring us?” asked Noah.
“I’ve got two slices of Mummy’s apple turnover cake.”
“Did you bring forks?”
“I forgot.”
“Can’t you do anything right, Jacob?”
No. Or so it seemed to Jacob Two-Two. And nowadays he also had to stick up for his parents, whom he loved, to Daniel, Noah, Emma, and Marfa.
“They’re always going kissy-kissy in the kitchen,” said Marfa, “at their age.”
“So what?” said Jacob Two-Two. “So what?”
“They’re so boring,” said Daniel.
“Why do you say that?” asked Jacob Two-Two. “Why?”
“I have to apologize for Mummy at school,” said Emma, “because she hasn’t got a career, but is always at home teaching us things, reading us stories, cooking and stuff.”
“What’s wrong with that?” asked Jacob Two-Two.
“It’s disgustingly old-fashioned,” said Marfa, “but you’re still too young to understand such things.”
“And Daddy doesn’t even go to work like real dads,” said Noah. “Instead he’s always banging away on that prehistoric typewriter of his upstairs.”
He worked very hard, said Jacob Two-Two’s mother, to provide for them. But one day when Jacob climbed up to his father’s office, which was on the top floor of the house, to investigate … he found him snoring on his sofa.
“I thought you worked very hard in here to provide for us,” said Jacob Two-Two.
“Oh, but I do,” said his father, rubbing his eyes.
“You were asleep,” said Jacob Two-Two. “You were asleep.”
“I was only pretending to be asleep,” said his father. “Actually, I was thinking, which is a big part of a writer’s job.”
“What’s a writer?” asked Jacob Two-Two twice.
“Well now,” said his father, settling in at his desk and lifting Jacob Two-Two onto his lap, “the truth is I’m a master of magic, sort of.”
“How come? How come?”
“Count the letters on my typewriter, Jacob.”
There were twenty-six.
“Every morning I come up here,” said his father, “toss these letters up into the air, and when they come down again I sort them out, and then there’s enough money to buy hot dogs, cross-country skis, ice cream, red roses for Mummy, and maybe enough left over for a bottle of decent single-malt whisky for your devoted, ever-loving, incomparable Dad.”
The very next day a reporter from Montreal’s Daily Doze came to interview Jacob Two-Two’s father about his latest book. Pretending to be modest, which was awfully difficult for him, Jacob Two-Two’s father told the reporter, “My new book is the best I could do, given my limited abilities.” But when the reporter, escorted by Jacob Two-Two’s father, passed through the living room, he paused and asked Jacob, “What’s it like being the son of a scribbler, kiddo?”
“My daddy’s no scribbler,” said Jacob Two-Two. “He’s a master of magic.”
“Oh, yeah,” snarled the reporter. “How come?”
“There are only twenty-six letters on his typewriter,” said Jacob Two-Two. “And every morning he tosses them into the air, and when they land he just sorts them out and then there’s enough money to buy himself a bo
ttle of whisky and some things for us.”
The headline on the book page of the next morning’s Daily Doze read:
LOCAL SCRIBBLER CLAIMS TO BE MAGICIAN
Misleads Innocent Child
Alongside, there was a cartoon of Jacob Two-Two’s tottering father, wearing a magician’s tattered robes, holding a broken wand in one hand and a bottle of whisky in the other.
“Oooh,” said Jacob Two-Two’s father, rocking his head in his hands. “After all the sacrifices I’ve made for you, Jake, look what you’ve gone and done.”
“Serves you right for being such a braggart,” said Jacob Two-Two’s mother.
Daniel, Noah, Emma, and Marfa agreed. But Jacob Two-Two was tearful. Once more he had meant well but had done something wrong. “I’m sorry, Daddy. Really I am.”
“Oh well, I guess I’ll drive you to school anyway,” said his father, taking Jacob Two-Two by the hand.
No sooner did they open the front door than they were greeted by a surprise. A moving van was parked in front of the house next door, which had been vacant for months. Jacob Two-Two and his father watched, spellbound, as the movers began to unload items which seemed very unusual, to say the least. Three crates of carrier pigeons. A huge telescope. A clothing rack, possibly ten feet long, laden with military uniforms from all nations as well as other costumes. A trunk so heavy it had to be carried by two men: SECRET CODES, EYES ONLY was imprinted on its side. Not one, not two, but three barrels labeled . An enormous crate marked MILITARY SECRETS AT REDUCED PRICES, another marked DISGUISES, and a third identified only by the warning KEEP TIGHTLY SEALED AT ALL TIMES. Then a wiry old man, his smile jolly, leaped out of the cab of the moving van. He was wearing a pith helmet, a safari suit, and jungle boots.
“Oh dear,” said Jacob Two-Two’s father, “that must be our new neighbor.”
The new neighbor summoned one of the movers, had him lean an extension ladder against the wall of his house, and then scampered to the top and climbed in through a second-floor window. A minute later he came bounding out of the front door, beaming at Jacob Two-Two, and he sang out, “Bonjour. Shalom. Buenos dias.”
“Why did you go into your house like that?” asked Jacob Two-Two, already enchanted.
“Lesson number one, amigo. Never enter a new, insecure dwelling the way they’d expect you to. By slipping in through a second-floor window you can surprise anybody lying in wait for you downstairs. I can tell we are going to be friends,” he said.
“Oh, yes,” said Jacob Two-Two. “Oh, yes!”
“I am a world traveler. A man who has done many astounding things. I have had a bath in Turkey and eaten turkey in a city called Bath. I once gobbled a sandwich in the town of Rainy River and later waded in a rainy river in the Sandwich Islands. You are looking at a chap who once went out with a fair maiden called Florence in the city of Adelaide, and then kept company with another, called Adelaide, in the city of Florence. I have, in my time, gorged myself on Toulouse sausages in the Canary Islands and kept a canary in a city called Toulouse. Long ago, in my days as a struggling young man, I went hungry in the city of Hamburg, but, by Jove, I lived to eat hamburgers in Hungary,” he said, and then he handed Jacob Two-Two his card. It read:
X. BARNABY DINGLEBAT
Master Spy
No Job Too Small
Free Estimates On Request.
CHAPTER 2
ow that he was two times two times two years old, Jacob Two-Two had to attend an expensive private school for boys called Privilege House, where his best friends were called Mickey, Robby, and Chris. And where his only problem was the ill-tempered Miss Sour Pickle, his geography teacher, who insisted on absolute silence in her class. One day, writing something on the blackboard, her back turned to the class, she suddenly whirled around and demanded, “What’s that terrible racket I hear?”
“We’re breathing, Miss Sour Pickle,” said Jacob Two-Two.
“Well, I suppose you must. Even in geography class. But not so loud, please. It’s bringing on one of my headaches.”
Another day she caught Robby wearing the Number 99 sweater of the Los Angeles Kings in her class. “Hockey is not a sport,” she said. “It’s violence on ice. Wayne Gretzky. Number 99. Remove that sweater at once, Robby.”
The boys were delighted to discover that she knew Wayne Gretzky’s name.
“Are you a hockey fan, Miss Sour Pickle?” asked Chris.
“Certainly not,” she said. “Why, not one of those brutal, overpaid hooligans could tell me the population of Sri Lanka, or what is the average annual rainfall on the Island of Orkney.”
Miss Sour Pickle enjoyed nothing more than sneaking up behind Jacob when he was daydreaming and demanding that he rattle off, in short order, the names of the capital cities of, say, Albania, Libya, and Tibet, or that he stay in for an hour after school.
Miss Sour Pickle aside, Jacob Two-Two got on just fine with everybody at Privilege House.
Then something happened.
After his father drove him to school, the very morning that Mr. Dinglebat became their new next-door neighbor, Jacob Two-Two was in for a second, less welcome surprise. A school assembly had been called. Mr. Goodbody, their gentle headmaster, announced he was retiring. “The directors of Privilege House, in their wisdom,” he said, biting back tears, “have appointed Mr. I.M. Greedyguts as your new headmaster. Mr. Greedyguts is the distinguished author of several books, including Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child. During his army years, he was a sergeant-major in the military police and, following that,” he added, weeping openly now, “he was a prison warden.”
Next, Mr. I.M. Greedyguts waddled onto the stage, huffing and puffing, his triple chins wobbling. He was so fat, it seemed to Jacob that he had been blown up with a bicycle pump. Munching on a foot-long submarine sandwich, he glared at the boys and said, “Wandering round the schoolyard this morning, I noticed several boys with their shirt-tails hanging out. Or missing buttons from their jackets. Or with socks falling down around their ankles. I saw boys with faces unwashed and with shoes unshined. From now on these offenders will report to my office for punishment. I also wish to announce that I have fired the school cook, Mrs. Bountiful, and hired a new caterer to provide the meals for Privilege House.”
When school was out that afternoon, Jacob Two-Two had his third surprise of the day. A panel truck was parked outside and the sign printed on both sides of it read:
PERFECTLY ADORABLE LEO LOUSE’S SCHOOL MEALS GUARANTEED YUMMY BEYOND COMPARE
Oh, no, thought Jacob Two-Two. Oh, no. Not Perfectly Loathsome Leo Louse, who came to their house every Friday night to join in his father’s weekly poker game.
CHAPTER 3
acob Two-Two’s mother disliked Perfectly Loathsome Leo Louse even more than he did. “Must we have that awful man in our house again?” she asked.
“I’ve known him for what seems like a hundred years,” said Jacob Two-Two’s father, “and Perfectly Loathsome Leo never gets invited anywhere else.”
“No wonder,” said Jacob Two-Two’s mother.
Perfectly Loathsome Leo Louse’s suit was so shiny you could just about see your reflection in it. His shirt collar and cuffs were badly frayed. He used a rope, instead of a belt, to hold up his trousers. One of his socks was brown, and the other black, to match his smelly shoes, one black, the other brown. He had never married, because a wife would be too costly, as would children, always growing out of their clothes, and he didn’t bathe very often either, because soap was so expensive.
“He’s so mean,” one of the poker players once said, “he wouldn’t help a man off a hot stove unless there was some gain in it for him.”
“He has the first dollar he ever earned,” said Jacob Two-Two’s father.
Whenever he came to the house, Perfectly Loathsome Leo Louse would pretend to be fond of Jacob Two-Two when the other men were around, but played nasty tricks on him if he caught him alone. That very evening, for instance, as Perfectly Loathsome Leo Louse appr
oached the house for the poker game, he came upon Jacob watering the front lawn. “My God,” he said, “do you still live here?”
“Why not? Why not?”
“Your mother told me she was having you exchanged for a girl. Maybe the deal hasn’t come through yet.”
Later he caught Jacob Two-Two alone in the kitchen and immediately indicated an imaginary spot on his shirt. “Hey, is that a bumblebee I see there?” And when Jacob Two-Two lowered his head to look, Perfectly Loathsome Leo flicked Jacob’s nose hard with his bent finger. “Gotcha, didn’t I?”
Because he was such a miser, the other poker players, including Jacob’s father, tried their best to beat him in the game. But, unlike the other men, who came to have fun and trade stories about the good old days, Perfectly Loathsome Leo was a very careful player, and that night, as usual, he ended up being a big winner. Whooping with joy as he scooped up his money, he then looked longingly at the food that remained on platters on a sideboard, and said, “Oh, I didn’t have time to shop today. Do you mind if I take home enough food for my lunch tomorrow?” And then, without waiting for an answer, he wrapped up enough smoked salmon, salami, ham, potato salad, and coleslaw to last him the rest of the week. Next he turned to Jacob Two-Two’s father, and asked, “Are you, um, through with this morning’s newspaper?”
“Take it,” said Jacob Two-Two’s father, laughing out loud.
“Anybody driving my way?” asked Perfectly Loathsome Leo Louse.
“Now that you’ve got all our money,” said one of the players, “why don’t we call you a taxi?”
“Oh, no!” protested Perfectly Loathsome Leo Louse, alarmed. “I’ll walk.”
“Don’t worry,” said the player. “I’ll drive you.”
Once Perfectly Loathsome Leo Louse had gone, Jacob Two-Two’s mother opened up all the dining-room windows to air things out. “I will never understand why you put up with that man,” she said to Jacob Two-Two’s father.