“I’m sorry,” Lisa said. “I forgot to concentrate. Can you repeat that?”
“Just take a taxi and say you’re going to the Lion on Buck Street,” Michael Jackson whispered. “Now, get out of here before I collapse.”
Doctor Proctor said, “Come on,” and started to walk away.
“Hey, Michael,” Nilly said. “Could I . . . uh, get your autograph?”
“Come on!” Lisa said, pulling Nilly along with her after Doctor Proctor. “He’s dead!”
“Dead? He was just talking to us!”
“No, Michael Jackson! That guy isn’t the real . . . oh, just come on!” Lisa said.
“But I want a souvenir! Please?” Nilly pleaded.
“Come on, Nilly!” she hissed.
Pouting a little, Nilly followed the other two. But by the exit he stopped, lit up again, and pointed.
“Like that! I want one of those!” Nilly exclaimed.
At a counter, there were wax museum souvenirs and celebrity masks for sale.
“Well, hurry up, then,” Doctor Proctor said.
Nilly pushed his way over to the counter. “Excuse me, my lovely lady,” he said to the saleslady, who was standing with her back to him, filing her nails. She turned and looked around at the air over Nilly’s head, surprised not to see anyone.
“Down here, O Eiffel Tower of a woman,” Nilly said, waving from down below.
She noticed him and lit up with a smile.
“One Napoléon mask, please!” he said.
“Sorry, my little friend, but we’re sold out of Napoléon.”
“Hmm.” Nilly rubbed his chin. “Do you have any other small people who tried to achieve world domination? What about Julius Caesar? Genghis Khan? Adolf Hitler? Alexander the Great? Or should we say Alexander the Small?”
“Well,” she said. “Unfortunately, things have kind of been picked over here, but we do have Maximus Rublov.”
“Did he achieve world domination?” Nilly asked.
“Well, he did just buy the Houses of Parliament and half the rest of England. Plus, he owns the Chelchester City soccer team, so we made a mask of him for the World Cup finals.”
She pointed to a shelf of blue Chelchester City soccer jerseys and replicas of the trophy in case you wanted to take one home and claim you were the cup winner. Next to that there was a mask of a guy with a prominent forehead, a receding hairline, narrow eyebrows that appeared to have been shaved with painstaking precision, and a goatee.
“That’s Rublov? Do you have anyone a little more attractive who achieved world domination?” Nilly asked. “A little more like me?”
“Oh, as long as a man has charisma, people don’t care that much about what he looks like, you know,” the saleslady laughed. “And it’s a well-known fact that nothing gives you more charisma than money.”
“Then I’ll take it!” Nilly said.
The Lion, the Hamster, and . . . Look, It’s a Long Name, So Just Read the Chapter, Okay?
AS USUAL, IT was super noisy in the pub we’re just planning to call “the Lion.” The bartender was standing by the tap handles taking beer orders while people toasted, talked about rugby, Hillman engines, and how many goals Chelchester City would beat Rotten Ham by in the final World Cup game. Stuff like that. Things they weren’t talking about included hand-stitched handbags, French perfume, and the most recent royal wedding. As you may have guessed, there were more men than women in the Lion. A few of them were singing a song about how it was an irritatingly long way to go to a place called Tipperary, but suddenly all the singing and chatting in the place stopped. Because someone yanked the door open, its hinges moaning loudly, and slammed it shut again.
A tiny little guy wearing a tweed coat and a—well, as we already determined—very stupid-looking deerstalker hat stood there in the doorway. He took a tobacco pipe out of his mouth, marched over to the bar, climbed up onto one of the towering bar stools, and gave the bartender a stern look.
“My good man, give me the strongest soda you have.”
The bartender kept polishing the glass, which already looked very clean. “The strongest, sir?”
“Don’t you understand English?” Nilly said, taking off his hat and setting it on the bar. “I don’t want the normal watery swill, I need something that will pick me up. Something that will bubble in my nose and scratch up my throat so it feels like I poured an anthill down there. On the rocks, no seltzer.”
“Um, you could have a cola with ice and a slice of lemon?” the bartender suggested.
“Great. But make it a double,” Nilly replied.
“A double, sir?”
“TWO slices of lemon, you party pooper!” Nilly said, spinning around on his stool and taking a closer look at the pub and its clientele, who were still staring at him. Then, loudly enough for everyone to hear, he said, “And don’t even try giving me Diet Coke, or I’ll shoot your party-pooper head right off your body, understand?”
The bartender filled a glass and set it in front of Nilly, who grabbed it, tilted his head back, opened wide, drained it in one go, and slammed the empty glass back down on the bar.
“Hit me again,” Nilly groaned, pointing at the glass, his eyes bulging and his voice sounding oddly choked up from the carbonation.
The bartender filled it again, and Nilly tossed it right back.
A man in a hat that said MILLWALL on it had walked up to the bar and taken a seat next to Nilly.
“You play hard, stranger,” the man said in a whiskey voice.
“Hard is the only way I play,” Nilly said, looking at the reflection of the man’s face in the mirror behind the shelves with the bottles on them.
“What are you doing here? You don’t look like you’re from around here,” the man said.
“Rumor has it that this is where the best dart players this side of the Thames can be found,” Nilly said with a shrug.
“And so what if that is the case?”
“I’m the best dart player from the other side of the Thames,” Nilly said, snatching a toothpick and starting to chew on it. “I’m looking to challenge him.”
The man in front of him laughed briefly. “You? You’re so small. How good a shot can you be?”
Nilly spit the toothpick into his empty cola glass. “Care to find out?”
“No thanks, little guy,” the man said, and pulled off his cap. “Charlie Crunch don’t steal chump change from pipsqueaks.”
Nilly stared at the man’s shaved head, the unibrow, the letter C tattooed on his forehead. “Let me guess. You’re Charlie Crunch.”
“Maybe.”
“And what if I say I have fifty pounds with a picture of the queen on it in my pocket?” Nilly asked.
The boy and the man eyed each other. And without looking so much as a millimeter away, Nilly plucked a peanut out of the dish on the counter, tossed it up in the air, tilted his head back quick as lightning, and flipped his mouth open so wide that his jaws creaked. The peanut reached its peak and started coming down again. Nilly crossed his bulging eyes, following the peanut’s progress. Everyone else in the place crossed their eyes too. They were all staring at that peanut as it fell and fell and fell. All the way down until it hit the tip of Nilly’s little upturned nose and bounced off.
“Ha!” Nilly cried, straightening back up again. “Did you see that? Bull’s-eye every time!” He pointed triumphantly to the tip of his nose.
An astonished murmur spread through the pub.
“Let’s see your money, little guy,” Charlie Crunch said, laughing out loud.
Nilly pulled a big, smooth bill out of his pants pocket and slapped it on the counter.
“I guess I do take money from little pipsqueaks after all,” Charlie Crunch said, and then laughed loudly. “Let’s play darts.”
NILLY AND CHARLIE Crunch took their positions a little over seven feet from the face of the dartboard (to be totally accurate: seven feet, nine and one-quarter inches, which, according to the World Darts Federation,
is the recognized standard distance, after all). The other pub patrons clustered around them and watched attentively as Charlie squinted one eye shut, aimed with the dart pinched between his index finger and his thumb—and threw.
THUNK!
The onlookers cheered. The dart had pierced the field that said twenty. It was the highest number on the board. But Charlie’s dart was sort of on the outside.
Nilly stepped up to the line.
“You’re going to throw with a mitten on your hand?” Charlie scoffed.
Nilly didn’t respond. He just aimed for the red dot right in the middle of the board. Bent his arm back. And threw.
THUNK!
The dart stood there quivering, as close to the middle of the board as you could possibly get.
“Ha-ha!” Nilly cried. “Eat dust, Charlie Crunch, now you’re the NEXT BEST dart player this side of the Thames!”
“Don’t you even know the rules, little guy?” Charlie asked, raising an eyebrow. “That only gives you fifty points. My dart hit the triple twenty part, which makes sixty.”
“Huh?” Nilly responded. “Oh yeah. Of course I knew that. I . . . uh, just wanted to give you a little head start to make things exciting.”
“Thanks,” Charlie said, taking his position and throwing. THUNK! Another triple twenty.
Nilly leaned over and whispered to one of the people watching, a man in a sixpence cap with no front teeth, “Little bit of a brain fart here, um. What’s the most points you can get in one throw again?”
“Triple twenty,” the toothless man said.
“Of course,” Nilly said, and aimed. And threw. THUNK! His dart landed right next to Charlie Crunch’s two.
“Triple twenty!” the audience cheered. Charlie had 120, Nilly had 110.
But before the cheers had died down, Charlie stepped up and threw, and his dart landed so close to his first two that all three darts quivered together for a bit.
“Triple twenty!” the audience cried. Charlie raised both hands over his head and accepted the audience’s cheers.
Nilly stepped up and aimed.
“You don’t need to throw,” the toothless guy said. “There’s no way you can get as many points as—”
But Nilly had already thrown. His dart landed on the triple twenty, and so close to the other darts this time that one of them fell out and dropped to the floor.
A murmur ran through the crowd.
“All right, all right,” Nilly said, pulling the bill out of his pocket and passing it to Charlie, who was staring at him, his face bright red.
“Are you trying to piss me off, little guy?” Charlie snarled.
“Huh?” Nilly looked innocently up at Charlie, who looked like he was thinking about strangling Nilly.
“You won!” the toothless man whispered into Nilly’s ear. “The dart that fell down was his. That means he loses those points. Do you really not know the rules?”
“No, but seriously, Charlie,” Nilly said. “I was just wondering if you could break a two-hundred pound note for me. So I could buy you a drink.”
Charlie Crunch cocked his head to the side and said, “Something’s not right here. This guy doesn’t know the rules, and yet he plays darts like a world champion. No, better than a world champion. Wearing a mitten!” Charlie grabbed Nilly by the hair, picked him straight up, and held him out in front of himself at arm’s length. “Who are you really? How did you know I’d be here? Are you—”
He was interrupted by a remarkably Scottish-sounding cry from one of the tables in the very back.
“Jings, crivvens! Is no’ that Tartan-Sherl, the world-famous bank robber?”
Everyone in the room turned to see who’d said that. There was a tall, skinny man with a beard sitting at that table, wearing something that looked suspiciously like a wig, and something that looked even more suspiciously like a pair of swim goggles. Sitting next to him was a girl with a nose so huge you almost had to believe she’d glued it on. Beneath her nose there was a small, yet thick and bushy, mustache. Not the kind of thing you see on a little girl every day.
“Quiet, you two!” Nilly urged them. “Don’t give me away!”
“Um, that’s exactly what we’re doing!” the girl yelled. “We’re GIVING you away!”
“Uh,” Nilly said. “Uh . . .” He leaned over to the toothless man. “Uh, I’m having a little brain fart here. What was my next line?”
“Huh?” the toothless man said.
“I see, laddie, that you . . . uh, dunna know what you’re supposed to say now,” the skinny man at the table said, standing up. “Well, I’m gonnae call Scotland Yard and have them coom and arrest you. Yes, by golly if I’m not going to do that right now, unless someone stops me with a blow or a kick. A really hard kick. But who would do that?”
“Oh, that was it!” Nilly whispered. Then he pushed his way through the crowded room, jumped up onto that table, raised one of his feet, and slammed his heel down onto the tabletop.
A new murmur ran through the pub with the way-too-long name as the table split in two with a deafening crack. Followed by yet another murmur as a second blow from the dart champion’s heel split the table into four pieces. Then eight. Then sixteen. Then . . . well, what do you think?
Then Nilly started kicking the table fragments, which sailed through the air to eventually end up as a neatly stacked little woodpile next to the bar. Then he turned to the Scottish man and the girl with the weird nose and the mustache, who was shaking, backed up against the wall, holding her index finger up in the air in warning.
“You’re not going to call the police now after all, are you?” Nilly warned. “You won’t if you know what’s good for you.”
“Yes, Tartan-Sherl,” the girl squeaked in a voice so pathetic you would almost think she was just pretending to be afraid. “You’re such a dastardly villain, and we’re so scared we’re about to wet our pants. And since we know what’s good for us, well . . . well . . .” The girl exhaled into her mustache a couple of times and looked like she was trying to remember the rest of her lines, before she finally continued, “We’ll just leave now without calling anyone.”
“Excellent!” Nilly said. “And since I’m in a good mood today, I’m going to let you go without kicking your sorry party-pooper heads off. Get out of here!”
And precisely—or at least more or less precisely—two seconds later, they were out the door.
Nilly turned to the astonished crowd and flung up his arms in victory. “Bartender, a round of your strongest soda for everyone! My treat! Put the table on my tab too! And pour a little of something extra good for my new friend Charlie here!”
“But—” Charlie began.
“No, I absolutely refuse to take any money from you, Charlie. I have way too much money as it is!” Nilly said.
Charlie Crunch eyed Nilly uncertainly for a second. Then he lit up in a big smile.
“Let me at least buy you a beer. How about a Guinness, Tartan-Sherl?” Charlie asked.
“Thanks, Charlie, but I only drink . . . uh, the hard stuff,” Nilly said.
The two sat down at a table and were served a cola and a beer.
“So, you’re in the bank-robbing business too, eh?” Charlie said, wiping beer foam off his upper lip.
“Yup,” Nilly said. “I’m always on the lookout for other robbers who’d like to team up on crime sprees with a skilled bandit like myself.”
“What a shame,” Charlie said with a shrug. “We only collaborate with people with a proven track record of real robberies.”
“Oh yeah?” Nilly said, setting down his glass. “And just how do they do that?”
“They invite us along on a crime spree that they planned, not the other way around.”
“Oh, I see,” Nilly said, and then burped loudly. “Of course, I’ve got a few upcoming crime sprees planned.”
“You do?”
“Sure, I’m a robber, aren’t I?” Nilly said.
“Like what?”
; “Like . . . uh, the easiest money you can imagine. It’ll be like snatching it from old ladies and babies.”
“Like what, I said!” Charlie said impatiently.
“Snatching it from old ladies and babies, I said!” Nilly repeated.
“Could you be a little more specific, little guy?”
“Well, yeah. There’s this, uh, old lady, you see. And this kid, you know?” Nilly began.
Charlie leaned so far over the table that the C on his forehead almost touched the tips of Nilly’s red hair. “Yes?”
“Yeah, well uh, she’s . . . uh, the kid’s grandmother, and she usually takes her for a walk in her stroller through Hyde Park every morning around nine o’clock.”
“Where’s the money in that?” Charlie asked skeptically.
“In the stroller.”
“The stroller?”
“Yeah. This grandmother is filthy rich, but terrified of being burglarized. So she takes the money with her whenever she takes the kid for a walk,” Nilly said, and then leaned back in his chair and took a swig of his cola. “The grandmother thinks, ‘Who would have the heart to rob an old lady and baby in broad daylight?’ And who would have the heart to do that?”
“Heh, heh, heh,” Charlie snickered. “I know someone. Okay, give me the details, little guy.”
“I HAD TO come up with the details on the spot,” Nilly explained later, lying on the sofa back in their hotel room as Doctor Proctor removed his wig and Lisa pulled off her fake nose with its attached mustache. “So I said this grandmother would be in Hyde Park at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“And you expect us to play the part of the grandmother and grandchild?” Lisa said with a groan, and then went into the bathroom to brush her teeth, because it was bedtime for hardworking secret agents.
“With a stroller full of money?” Doctor Proctor said with a sigh, pulling on his nightcap.
“Hey, I had to come up with something!” Nilly said, taking off his socks. “If this goes well, Charlie promised I could go on one of their robberies. And once I’m a part of their gang, I can start pumping them for information, right?” Nilly sniffed his socks and made a face.