“It was so long ago now, all us upstairs thought you were dead.”
“I might as well be,” murmured the old man. “Now I’m just rotting away in the dark, waiting for the end. My dream of becoming one of the world’s most famous scientists is nothing but ashes. I have more chance of capturing lightning in a bottle!”
Elsie’s face lit up. A thought had flashed across her mind. It was an idea so crazy it was brilliant, and so brilliant it was crazy. “I think there’s still a chance your name could go down in history.”
“How?” spluttered the old man.
“Not the sabre-toothed tiger!” exclaimed Dotty.
“NO!” laughed Elsie. “That’s just a skeleton!”
“No. I suppose there’s little help for that now. You don’t mean the manmoth, do you?”
“The ‘mammoth’, yes.”
“That’s what I said,” protested the lady. “Manmoth. You want to bring that manmoth upstairs back to life?”
“YES!”
“So we have a new arrival, do we?” asked the professor. “I wondered what all that noise was.”
“Bringing it back to life is madness!” exclaimed Dotty.
“Good madness or bad madness?” asked Elsie.
“Is there a good kind?”
“YES! Listen, that creature has been perfectly preserved for ten thousand years. It looks like it snuffed it yesterday. Right?”
Dotty nodded her head.
“So surely with the professor’s lightning-catching thingummyjig we could give it a ginormous shock and restart its heart?”
Elsie and Dotty looked at the professor. He was the science expert after all, even though he had very nearly burned the Natural History Museum down to the ground. His old eyes lit up with a dark fire. He stared straight ahead as the plan began to take shape in his mind.
“This is a genius idea of mine!” he whispered.
Elsie looked mightily confused. Wasn’t it her idea?
“I can use my lightning technology to create life! The dream of all scientists since the dawn of time. To be God!”
“I think it’s gone to his head a bit,” murmured Dotty.
“I will go down in history as the greatest scientist of my age. No, of all time. Isaac Newton? An apple fell on your head and you came up with the idea of gravity. Who cares? Nicolaus Copernicus? You discovered that the Earth revolves round the Sun rather than the other way round? Big deal! Charles Darwin? So you completely changed the way we think about life on Earth with your theory of evolution?
Duh! They will rip up your books, burn your paintings and tear down your statues and put up ones of ME! ME! ME! YES! IT WILL ALL BE ABOUT ME!”
There was an uncomfortable silence for a moment.
“Have you finished?” asked Elsie.
The professor paused for thought. “Yes. You two will be my assistants. You must do everything I say, and be prepared to lay down your lives in the name of science if need be. Now come on! There’s no time to lose.”
Instantly, the old man started busying himself about his laboratory, handing pieces of scientific equipment to Elsie, who followed him around like an eager puppy. Dotty looked on in disbelief.
“Have you two completely lost your minds?” she asked.
“The mind is an abstract construct,” replied the professor.
“What he just said,” agreed the girl, not having understood a word of it.
“If you do manage to catch a bolt of lightning and somehow bring this manmoth…”
“Mammoth,” corrected Elsie.
“Manmoth, that is what I said, back to life, what are you going to do with it?”
It was a good question, and stopped both of them in their tracks.
“Mmm,” pondered the girl. “Well, maybe the mammoth can come and live with you?”
Dotty went dotty. “With me? I rent a tiny attic room in a boarding house. There’s a ‘no cats or dogs’ rule.”
“What about a rule?” asked Elsie.
“No!”
“Well then…”
“There ain’t a ‘no dinosaurs’ rule either! I ain’t sure the landlady thought she’d need any rules about animals that’ve been extinct for millions of years.”
“Well, if it can’t live with you, maybe it can come and live with me,” said Elsie.
“You don’t have a home.”
“So maybe we can set it free.”
Elsie noticed the professor smiling to himself. He was hiding something. But what?
“We can work on all the finer details in good time,” he said. “First, we have to bring it back to life. Now, where did I put that copper wire?”
Dotty grabbed whatever bit of scientific equipment Elsie was holding and put it down on the counter.
“Come on, Elsie, this is all going to end in tears,” said the lady.
With that, Dotty grabbed the girl’s hand and dragged her over to the secret door.
“Please, Dotty, I beg you,” cried the professor. “I need your help too!”
“NO!”
“PLEASE!”
“NO MEANS NO!”
Just the other side of the door, bootsteps could once again be heard.
The pair fell silent.
“Shush!” hushed Elsie. “It’s Clout.”
“He doesn’t know I’m here,” hissed the professor. “Nobody does. If you’ve led him here, then—”
“Shush!” shushed the girl again.
All three kept dead still as the bootsteps came to a halt right outside the secret door.
There followed the sound of light tapping.
TAP TAP TAP…
Dotty held her chest. Her heart was racing.
TAP TAP TAP…
Elsie had had to hide herself countless times before. The trick was not to breathe. The girl stretched out her hand to silence the old lady. Dotty clasped her hands together and closed her eyes in prayer.
TAP TAP TAP…
Had Clout worked out there was something behind the secret door?
Not yet.
There was the sound of bootsteps again, as Clout moved off.
“If I know Mr Clout, he will be back,” whispered the professor. “We have to move at lightning speed if we want to bring the monster back to life.”
“What could possibly go wrong?” muttered Dotty.
In his secret laboratory, the professor expounded his plan.
“We need to make a giant hot-air balloon from silk handkerchiefs, and fly it high over the museum into a lightning storm. Elsie, you will need to steal the silk handkerchiefs. Have you ever stolen anything before?”
“Once or twice,” lied the girl. “How many do you need?”
“Mmm. No more than a thousand.”
“A thousand?”
“Give or take.”
“Where am I going to get a thousand silk handkerchiefs from?”
“A thousand well-to-do ladies and gentlemen, of course. Now, we will also need a round piece of metal,” continued the professor. “Like a soldier’s tin helmet.”
Suddenly Dotty jumped up and down, looking as if she desperately needed a wee, but in actual fact she was just overexcited.
“Ooh! Ooh!” she cried, waving her hand in the air.
“Yes?” asked the professor.
“I know where to get a tin helmet. Me boyfriend, Titch, will have one from his war days.”
“Perfect! We will need to attach it to the top of the balloon. Let me show you…”
The professor reached into the pocket of his dirty laboratory coat. “Now where on earth is my chalk?”
Elsie looked a little sheepish. “Oh, it must have slipped out of your pocket and into my hand,” she lied.
“Very good, child. Very good!” The professor was mightily impressed. “Those fingers will come in handy when you’re stealing the handkerchiefs.”
The old man held out his hand and she placed the stolen chalk into it. Then he began drawing his invention on the wall of the labor
atory, giving a commentary as he sketched.
“So here is the balloon, with the tin helmet at the very top. The balloon will have a wicker basket attached by ropes at the bottom here. In the middle of the basket, we will place a metal drum. Inside that drum, wood will be burned. The hot air will cause the balloon to inflate and take to the skies.”
“Ooh, this is all getting very involved!” muttered Dotty.
“Silence while the great professor speaks!” he snapped. “Then the pilot of the balloon will fly up into the heart of the storm. When lightning strikes here…”
He bashed his chalk against his drawing of the metal helmet.
“…the lightning bolt will travel along this length of copper wire, all the way down through the museum itself. The end of the wire we will have embedded right into—”
But before he could finish his sentence Elsie did it for him: “The mammoth’s heart.”
“Exactly!” exclaimed the professor. “You’re a fast learner, young lady.”
Dotty put her hand in the air.
“Yes?” he asked grandly.
“Can I say something?”
“No!” he snapped.
The lady crossed her arms in a sulk.
“So you, Elsie, will steal the thousand silk handkerchiefs, then you and Dotty will sew them together to make the balloon. The tin helmet this Titch character will provide; the basket, metal drum and firewood Elsie can scavenge from the streets. Copper wire I have here from my last experiment. It couldn’t be simpler!”
Dotty and Elsie stood there open-mouthed in shock. “Simple” was not the word that sprang to mind.
“So who will be going up in the balloon?” asked Elsie.
The professor grinned a wicked grin. “Not you, child.”
“No?”
“No. I need a little person to squeeze through all the nooks and crannies of the museum and thread that copper wire all the way down from the roof to the main hall.”
“Are you going up in the balloon, then, Professor?” asked the girl.
“Ha! Ha! No, child. My infirmity would prevent me from undertaking such a deadly mission.”
“So who is?”
The professor’s dark eyes fixed on Dotty. Elsie followed his gaze.
“Why is everyone looking at me?” Dotty asked.
“Because you, cleaning woman, will have the honour of taking on the most dangerous – perhaps deadly – part of the mission.
Flying the hot-air balloon
straight into a
lightning storm!”
“ME?” exclaimed Dotty.
“YES, YOU!” replied the professor.
“But I’m scared of heights. I even feel wobbly standing on a chair to dust the ceiling.”
“Listen to me, woman!” commanded the professor. “What better honour could there be in life than to die in the name of science?”
“DIE?”
“That would be the worst-case scenario.”
“I’m too young to die.”
The professor peered over his half-moon spectacles to examine the lady. “I beg to differ.”
“How dare you!”
“I will go up in the balloon!” offered Elsie.
“No, no, no,” began the man. “How on earth would we get this great fat lump down a chimney?”
“Charming!” exclaimed Dotty. “Now I’m old and fat?”
“Don’t fret, woman. There is little chance of you falling out and plunging to your death, as I can strap you to the basket.”
“That’s reassuring,” replied the lady.
“Obviously, the real danger is being hit by lightning.”
“WHAT?”
“Don’t worry. It’s a very quick and painless death. You will be incinerated in a millisecond. You would barely know what hit you. That’s the beauty of the scheme.”
“You’re nuts.”
“Thank you,” replied the professor.
“What about Clout?” asked Elsie.
“Yes,” mused the man. “The security guard can be very troublesome. We need to somehow make sure he’s otherwise engaged.”
“I don’t think he’s engaged, or married,” said Dotty.
“It’s a figure of speech!” exclaimed the professor.
“Perhaps we could lock him in the cleaning cupboard,” suggested the girl.
“That would be perfect,” he replied.
“How are we going to get out of here without being seen?” asked Elsie. “The whole museum is swarming with police and guards right now.”
“You can climb out of the coal chute, just here…”
The man wheeled himself over to the wall, and revealed a small opening hidden by a box.
Dotty examined the hole. “What about me?” she asked.
“You can try and squeeze yourself up the chute and then I can poke you through by prodding your ample bottom with this broomstick.”
“That’s very kind of you,” replied Dotty sarcastically, “but they ain’t looking for me. Just the girl. I think I’ll wait a while, and then when the coast is clear go out the door and up the stairs.”
“Yes, but don’t wait too long, please,” replied the professor. “I don’t want you cluttering up the place.”
“Well, excuse me!”
“Elsie?”
“Yes, Professor?”
“I want you back here at this time tomorrow night with one thousand silk handkerchiefs.”
“Tomorrow night?”
“Yes, child. No later than nine o’clock tomorrow night. And look here, the air pressure is getting lower…” The man pointed to a barometer on the wall. “We need to be ready for a lightning storm by the end of the week.”
“I’ll do my best, Professor!” said the girl as she shimmied up the chute.
The professor stared at Dotty for a while.
“Are you still here?” he asked. Meanwhile, Elsie ran away from the museum as fast as she could. Her mind raced along with her legs. How on earth was she going to steal one thousand handkerchiefs in just twenty-four hours?
Elsie knew there was no way she could do this all on her own. So she decided to get some help. Expert help. There was a legendary group of tearaways who were the best pickpockets in the whole of London. If only she could find them.
They were named the .
They were so called because their sticky little fingers would worm their way into the coat pockets of every rich lady and gentleman in London, and then worm their way out with things stuck to them.
Sometimes, it would be nothing more than a half-sucked sweet, a snotty rag or – worst of all – a set of false teeth.
However, at other times their fingers would stick themselves to precious things. Things like pocket watches, gold coins, silver-rimmed spectacles, jewels and, of course, silk handkerchiefs.
The members of the were:
JOSEPH, or “BIG JOE”, the self-appointed leader. He could pick pockets in his sleep.
ZOE, the real leader. She had been thieving since before she could walk. She was known to readers of The Times, who wrote often about her crimes, as the “BABY-FACED BADDY”.
NELLIE was better known as “SMELLY NELLIE” as she used her bottom burps to distract her victims.
BELLA, or “LITTLE’UN”, was the shortest of the gang. She could barely reach the pockets of the rich ladies and gentlemen of London, so carried a stool around with her to help.
LOTTIE was the baddest of the lot. Pickpocketing was just one of her many crimes. She was wanted by police forces all over England for “duffing up a strongman”, “doing a cheesy burp in the face of a nun” and “force-feeding cheese to a nun”.
GRACE, or “DANGEROUS GRACE”, was the toughest member of the gang. Nobody, but nobody, crossed GRACE, unless they wanted a wedgie, a Chinese burn or a knuckle sandwich.
GEORGE, or “GUILTLESS GEORGE”, looked innocent, but he was anything but. GEORGE disguised himself as a choirboy, which meant he could get away with absolute murder.
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br /> “LIGHT-FINGERED FREYA” could steal for England. One day at a fairground, she stole 318 silk handkerchiefs, a barrel of sugar plums and a carousel.
ASIA and ATHENA were sisters, and partners in crime. When they weren’t warring with each other, they oversaw a criminal empire that included gambling, extortion and bare-knuckle boxing. They were known as the “Sisters of No Mercy”.
Two more sisters rounded off the gang: SANAYA and RIYANA, the “GRUESOME TWOSOME”. The pair worked as a team: SANAYA would pose as a sweet flower-seller as her little sister, RIYANA, came round the back and robbed you blind.
The were legendary figures on the streets of London. Rumours of their exploits swirled across the city. But nobody had a clue where to find them. Except Elsie.
Elsie had noticed that all over London there were small red handprints on walls and buildings. Once, in the dead of night, she had seen Dangerous Grace put one on the side of St Paul’s Cathedral. Elsie was sure it was some kind of secret sign. Some way that the gang communicated with one another. So Elsie had followed Grace as she added more red handprints to the door of 10 Downing Street and even Westminster Abbey.
The handprints looked like arrows, pointing somewhere.
So the night the professor sent Elsie out on her mission she followed the trail all the way to the Houses of Parliament. The last one she found was on the clock tower of Big Ben. It pointed upwards. Surely this couldn’t mean that the secret hideout was up there?
There was only one way to find out.
Elsie forced open a tiny door at the base, and climbed up the staircase to the very top of the tower.
“Hello?” called out Elsie as she stepped into the room, the huge clock face looming behind her like a full moon.
BONG! bonged Big Ben.
“Is there anybody there?” asked Elsie.
The Ice Monster Page 5