The Great Brain Robbery (19 page)

‘What did I tell you?’ grinned Neet.

The friends opened the front door to a dazzle of flash-bulbs and, as Alphonsine chased photographers out of her flowerbeds with wide swipes of her broom, the children told the crowd exactly what
had happened. They told them how Dr Gore and Marvella Brand had plotted to invade the brains of the world’s children and turn them into unthinking, unstoppable toy-monsters. They told them
about the Mechanimals and the mind-sweepers and the morse code. And of course they told them about the poor Elves, working their fingers to the bone and running round and round on enormous hamster
wheels till they collapsed with exhaustion. The journalists were listening so intently Frankie thought he could see their ears sizzling.

‘And here’s the proof!’ cried Neet triumphantly, holding the roll of film in the air.

A keen-eyed journalist snatched it out of her hands like a hungry dog and scampered off to get the photos developed, ‘We’ve got a scoop!’ he yelped excitedly down the phone to
his editor, ‘the scoop of the century!’

Just as Neet predicted, the story quickly ballooned into a national outcry. By six o’clock that evening,
Marvella’s Elves
had been closed and dazed-looking
children wrapped in blankets were being led out into the fresh air. Frankie and his friends were glued to the TV screen as the story unfolded before their eyes.

‘There’s Martha!’ said Wes, tapping the screen with his finger. ‘And there’s Eric!’ Wes’s friends were so pale they were almost transparent.

‘What’s going to happen to them now?’ asked Frankie.

‘The reporter said they’d be looked after,’ Wes replied. ‘She said they’d be sent to proper homes.’

‘That’s great news, Wes!’ smiled Frankie, putting his arm around his friend. ‘And it’s all thanks to you! If you hadn’t got that message out . . .’ But
Wes was only half listening. His eyes were fixed to the screen and he was fiddling nervously with the buttons of his cardigan. Suddenly Frankie realised what was on his mind. How could he have
forgotten?

‘You can come and live with us, Wes,’ said Frankie. ‘Isn’t that right, Alphonsine?’

Wes looked at his friend with wide eyes. ‘Really?’ he stammered. ‘Are you sure?’

‘But of course!’ cried Alphonsine. ‘We is needing a brainbox like you to teach us all about the interweb, isn’t we, Eddie?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Eddie. ‘This old dog is planning to learn a few new tricks!’

‘Well,’ blushed Wes, smiling, ‘I can definitely help you there.’

‘Hey, look!’ Neet exclaimed, pointing at the TV. The screen showed long queues of people lining up outside Marvella Brand’s Happyland. Frankie’s heart sank.

‘I don’t believe it,’ he gasped. ‘I can’t believe people still want to shop there.’

‘No, Frankie,’ said Neet. ‘They’re waiting to take stuff back, look!’

Neet was right. What was good news for the journalists was very, very bad news for the Marvella Brand corporation. Not only were children not buying any more Marvella toys, they were marching
them straight to the shops and demanding their money back. For the second time in the space of a week, Marvella shop assistants were run off their feet, but rather than putting money in the till,
they were handing it back to thousands of unhappy customers. Indeed, Marvella Brand’s Happyland was losing business faster than you could flush fifty-pound notes down the toilet. The TV
showed dozens of charts with plunging red lines while clench-jawed people in suits spat with fury. Frankie thought he recognised the woman with the pointy shoes. She was talking about
‘shares’, and ‘investments’, and saying a lot of words that did not make much sense to Frankie. But he understood one thing loud and clear. Marvella Brand’s evil
emporium was no more. It was finished, finito, kaputt. It would close its golden doors for the last time that very day and would never again go poking around in the heads of the nation’s
children.

But Frankie and his friends were not the only ones who had seen the news. In a pink, sugar-cube house on top of a hill, a snowy-haired old lady was simply bouncing off the walls with rage.
‘Get me Dr Calus Gore, right this minute!’ she screeched down her pink plastic phone. ‘The children are out of control! It’s as if they have minds of their own!’

But Dr Gore was nowhere to be found. Marvella could rant and rave till the sun fell out of the sky but nothing would change the children’s minds. They’d had enough. They didn’t
want any more. They had had all they could take of Marvella Brand and her sinister playthings, and that was the end of that.

As she watched her evil emporium fall to pieces, Marvella’s smile began to crack like an ancient glacier. Then, all of a sudden, as if somebody had pushed a detonator, she exploded into
the most colossal tantrum. She stamped and howled and snapped her magic wand in two. She kicked and yelled and beat her fists on the carpet. And she was still bawling and hollering like an oversize
toddler when, at four o’clock that afternoon, a cream-coloured envelope dropped through her letterbox.

Eddie spread the
Cramley Chronicle
on the breakfast table for everyone to see. The front cover showed a huge colour photograph of Frankie, Neet, Wes and Timmy.

‘Cooooo!’ said Neet, as she spotted the headline:
YOUNG HEROES STOP MARVELLA MADNESS
. ‘Do you see that? We’re heroes!’

Frankie smiled with pride and turned the page. The whole newspaper was devoted to their story.
TERROR IN TOY TOWN
blared another headline next to a picture of a giant Mechanimal
swivelling its robotic eyes.
WHERE’S CALUS GORE?
demanded another above the holiday snap of Dr Gore wearing his duck-shaped rubber ring. Frankie chuckled with glee and turned to the
back page.

On the reverse cover was a large picture of Marvella Brand standing outside a police car and speaking to a scrum of reporters. Frankie narrowed his eyes as he studied the picture. There was
something odd about it. Something about Marvella had changed.

‘She’s not smiling,’ said Neet. And indeed she wasn’t. Marvella’s famous smile had gone, melted away. Frankie thought she looked like an old snowman slumped in the
sun. But it wasn’t just her smile that had changed. Her eyes also looked different. Frankie couldn’t be sure but he thought he could see the traces of the little girl he had seen in the
photograph, sitting on her uncle’s knee. Only much, much older and much, much sadder.

‘Listen to this,’ said Wes, who had been reading the article. ‘
Marvella Brand’s Happyland will close immediately
,’ he read aloud. ‘
But in its
place, Miss Brand will open a workshop in memory of her uncle, the legendary toymaker, Mr Crispin Whittle.
’

Eddie raised his bristly eyebrows. ‘Really?’ he asked.

‘That’s what it says here,’ Wes replied, ‘and that’s not all, listen:
Before starting her stint in jail, Miss Brand insisted that her workshop would be open to
everyone. “All children shall be included,”
she said. “
No child shall be left out.
”’

‘Well knock me down with a dandelion!’ said Alphonsine, reading over Frankie’s shoulder. ‘And tickle me with a feather.’

Frankie looked back at the picture. He noticed that Marvella was clutching something in her dry, old hands. But it was not a fairy wand. It was a smooth, cream-coloured envelope.

‘What was in her uncle’s letter, Eddie?’ asked Frankie.

Eddie smiled and buttered his toast. ‘I have no idea,’ he said, taking a bite. ‘I never read other people’s mail.’

After such a turbulent term, Frankie just wanted life to get back to normal. He wanted to watch cartoons, go to football practice, and make his volcano model for Geography
class. But getting back to normal wasn’t all that easy. Whether he liked it or not, Frankie Blewitt was now an international superstar. Every day, the poor old postman would struggle up the
driveway with a sack full of mail, and Frankie would spend at least an hour sifting through admiring letters, postcards and party invitations from children all round the world. One day Frankie
shook his head in astonishment as he opened a smart-looking envelope and pulled out a stiff white card. It was an invitation from the royal princes asking Frankie to come and spend Christmas in one
of their castles. He could hardly believe it. Just weeks before, he had spent his lunchbreaks alone on his bench and now even royalty wanted to be friends. Frankie chuckled to himself and slipped
the invitation back in the envelope. All the attention was nice for a while, but he knew who his friends were, and that’s who he wanted to spend Christmas with.

And what a Christmas it was turning out to be! On Christmas Eve there was a surprise fall of snow. Frankie and Wes gasped as they looked out of the frosty window at a smooth white landscape
sparkling beneath the bluest of blue skies. The scene reminded Frankie of one of those nature programmes about life in the Arctic Circle and, all of a sudden, a shiver ran down his spine. Somewhere
out there, bobbing about on an iceberg with only killer whales for company was his arch-enemy, Dr Calus Gore.

‘Are you thinking . . . ?’ said Wes with a tremor in his voice.

Frankie took a deep breath, then smiled. ‘Well, I hope he remembered his mittens!’ he said. The two boys laughed till their sides ached then, grabbing their bobble-hats, they ran out
into the snow and swept Dr Calus Gore clean out of their minds.

Frankie, Wes, Neet and Timmy spent all day tumbling around in the fresh, dry snow. They made snow-angels, sucked on icicles and raced toboggans that Alphonsine had hammered together that very
morning.

‘We should build an igloo!’ said Frankie as they were walking back home for tea.

‘Great idea!’ laughed Neet, knocking the snow from her ears. ‘What do you think, Wes? . . . Wes?’ But Wes had stopped dead in his tracks.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Frankie. But Wes didn’t answer. He just dropped his toboggan in the snow and raced towards the house at breakneck speed. Frankie and the others
exchanged alarmed glances, then sprinted after him. As they approached the house, Frankie noticed a rusty old car parked outside. His heart started pounding with fear – somebody was
there.