by Bruce Hale
Footsteps scuffed behind me.
“Wait!” I said. “You win.”
Freddie Nostrils giggled. “I told you it, er, wouldn’t take long.”
I slumped. “Just untie me, and I’ll show you where I have the ticket.”
Mr. LeGator stepped forward and thrust his snout into my face. His breath enveloped me like a peppermint cloud.
“What kind of chump do you take me for?” he asked.
I had to bite my tongue to keep from jumping on that straight line.
“No kind of chump,” I said. “I know when I’m licked. You got me surrounded; what am I gonna do? Make a break for it?”
Al LeGator looked me straight in the eye for a long moment. Then he chortled. Freddie and the unseen mugs behind me joined in.
“He’s right,” said the big crocodile. “What could he possibly do?”
At a sign from the boss, two pairs of hands untied my bonds. Twisting, I saw the two muskrats who’d been shadowing us. The ropes dropped away.
I stood and smiled. Suckers.
Hooking my tail around the chair leg, I gave a quick tug.
Kla-gonk!
The chair fell into one muskrat’s knees, knocking him into the crocodile.
“Hey!” shouted Mr. LeGator.
Ba-whomp!
They went down like a duck after the last slice of pond-scum pie.
I bent under the other muskrat’s grab and spun away from the lights. These crooks hadn’t counted on my quick gecko reflexes.
Bwank! I barked my shin on a desk in the dark.
Stifling a scream, I limped down the aisle, making for the door.
“Stop him!” yelled Mr. LeGator.
The windows were shrouded with heavy blackout curtains, so I could barely make out the classroom. I skidded into a corner, where the door was supposed to be.
Whumf! I put my foot through a cardboard box. Stupid dioramas!
Wearing one like a shoe, I spun, dashed for the other corner—and pulled up short. Freddie Nostrils was waiting with arms wide. His buckteeth gleamed in the dimness.
I turned again.
Doughnut Head the muskrat was closing in on me.
I was trapped.
Like any self-respecting gecko, I jumped for the wall. I tried to scuttle up it, but the box on my foot made me slip. The burly muskrat reached for me, grinning.
“Hold it right there!” bellowed a voice. Principal Zero?
Conditioned by years of habit, the kids below me froze. I gently shook the box off my foot. Never had I been so glad to hear my principal’s voice.
But where was he?
My captors were starting to wonder the same thing.
“If you’re Principal Zero,” said Mr. LeGator, “show yourself.”
“Nuh-uh. You first,” said the principal’s voice. “March outside right now!”
“Nothing doing,” said the crocodile.
I crawled along the wall toward the door. Just a few feet more . . .
When the principal didn’t open it, Mr. LeGator said, “Pay no attention. Someone is imitating Zero—it happened to me earlier.”
Freddie Nostrils jerked open the door, flooding the room with light. And there in the doorway stood my partner, Natalie Attired.
The lean prairie dog grabbed her wing, slung her inside, and slammed the door again. Great. Now we were both trapped.
“No more monkey business,” said Mr. LeGator. “Are you going to give me that ticket, or shall I skin you both alive? Or do you want to get into some real trouble?”
And this, I knew, was one multiple-choice quiz I couldn’t afford to flunk.
17
Bird to the Wise
When you’re cornered by a criminal mastermind and the situation looks bleak, just remember: Things are darkest just before . . . they go completely black.
Or something like that.
True, Natalie and I were outnumbered, trapped inside a classroom with Mr. LeGator and his bigger, stronger crew. But on our side, we had . . . um . . . our wits.
Not fair.
Still, we couldn’t surrender. Natalie paced warily between the muskrats and Freddie Nostrils, our fair-weather client. Lili and Al LeGator watched from between the rows of desks.
I crawled along the wall. Spotting a misshapen clay pot atop a cabinet, I dropped it on Freddie’s noggin. Take that, you dirty dog.
“Ow!” The prairie dog staggered under the impact. He straightened and glared up at me.
Okay, maybe I couldn’t get past Freddie’s guard, but I could shed some light on the situation. I reached down with my tail and flicked on the light switch.
“Hey!” said Frizzy the muskrat, squinting. “That smarts.”
Everyone blinked at the sudden light. Everyone except Natalie. She used the confusion to flap herself airborne and sail over the desks.
Mr. LeGator grabbed at her. “You’ll never escape, he said. Give up.
“Mrs. Gecko didn’t raise no quitters,” I said.
He winced. “Apparently, she didn’t teach you proper grammar, either.”
Natalie landed on Mr. LeGator’s desk. While the crocodile focused on me, she pointed a wing feather at the telephone and made a face.
I saw her plan at once. “What say we call out for pizza?” I said.
Natalie rolled her eyes.
“I prefer sweets,” said Mr. LeGator.
Behind him, Natalie had slipped the phone off the hook and was dialing, unnoticed.
“I’ll just bet you do,” I said. “Is that why you hatched this plan?”
Mr. LeGator smiled, a true crocodile smile. “I suppose I can tell you, since it’ll be your word against ours. But after my story’s done, you give me the ticket.”
“No funny business,” I promised.
Lili slumped into a chair. Freddie armed himself with a long pointer, and the muskrats lurked below me, guarding the door.
Al LeGator stroked his mustache. “Like you, Chet Gecko, I have my appetites.” He patted his swollen belly. “But unlike you, I’m willing to do whatever it takes to satisfy them.”
“Like stealing?” asked Natalie.
“Let’s call it creative acquisition,” said the crocodile. “I bought up all the desserts I could at Sweet Thang. And just in case, I created a network of informers to let me know if someone else won the Malted Falcon ticket.”
I crawled along the wall toward Natalie. Freddie and Doughnut Head followed below. Mr. LeGator’s long snout tracked me.
“So somebody squealed on Paige?” I asked.
“Her own best friend, in fact,” he said. “But before I could take steps to acquire the ticket . . .”
“Steal it, you mean,” I said.
He waved a thick, clawed hand. “If you wish. Lili decided she wanted the ticket for herself. So she had Bert steal it before we could.”
Lili hung her head. “Sorry,” she mumbled.
“Not as sorry as you’ll be if you get me for fifth grade,” said Mr. LeGator.
I glanced at Natalie. The phone was still off the hook. Somebody was getting an earful.
“But Bert didn’t give you the ticket, did he?” I asked Lili.
Her wide mouth turned down. “I thought he double-crossed me,” she said. “That’s when I hired you to find it.”
Al LeGator cleared his throat. “And now I must ask you to hand it over.”
I crawled down the wall. My brain was as empty of plans as a nerd’s date book. Pretending to fumble in my coat for the ticket, I stalled once more.
“But why?” I asked.
Mr. LeGator’s eyes took on a dreamy cast. “Since the discovery of sugar, we have quested for the perfect dessert. From the cookie to the cake, from the Popsicle to the sundae, we have searched. And now at last, it’s here.”
He thrust out a clawed hand. “And it’s all mine. Give it!”
The jig was up. I reached into my pocket and pulled out . . . Lili’s envelope?
Mr. LeGator snatched it. �
�At last!” he cried. The crocodile fumbled open the envelope. “Empty?”
“Hold it right there!” bellowed a voice that sounded a lot like Principal Zero’s.
Mr. LeGator sneered and turned to Natalie. “Oh, please,” he said. “I didn’t fall for that last time. Why would I this time?”
Fa-tchoom!
The door burst open, revealing the real Principal Zero. “Because you, mister, are in deep, deep doo-doo.”
“Wha-at?” Mr. LeGator turned an unnatural shade of white.
At a sign from the principal, Maureen DeBree and Vice Principal Shrewer strode into the room and rounded up the conspirators. The kids went quietly.
“You’ve got nothing on me,” said the crocodile.
“On the contrary,” said Mr. Zero. His claws unsheathed themselves. “I’ve had my eye on you. Ever since you came to this school, my office stash of Creamy Cockroach bars has been mysteriously disappearing.”
The former Mr. Big forced a chuckle. “Nonsense,” he said. “It could just as easily have been young Gecko over there.”
“I thought so, too, at first,” said the principal. “But fourth-grader geckos don’t leave size twelve footprints.”
“Even if I did take your candy, that’s not against the law.”
“True enough,” said Principal Zero. His tail twitched. “But I think the teacher’s union would be very interested in your corrupting students and conspiring to steal. You, sir, are a very bad role model.”
Mr. LeGator thrust his chest out. “Where’s your proof?” he asked.
The principal pointed at the phone. “I heard every word. And I’m sure somebody here would testify to get out of lifelong detention.”
Lili and Freddie wilted under his stare.
Beaten, Mr. LeGator and his gang slouched outside. Principal Zero nodded to us. “Much appreciated,” he said, and followed them.
Natalie joined me at the back of the room. She surveyed the crushed dioramas, broken pottery, and scattered papers, and she shook her head. “What a mess.”
“Worse than my bedroom,” I said.
“But not by much.”
We started pushing the rubbish into piles and setting the toppled chairs upright. It seemed like the least we could do.
“Well, that’s that,” said Natalie.
“Yup,” I agreed. “Quick thinking, partner. But how did you find me?”
Natalie raised an eyebrow. “Good thing I got restless,” she said. “I was walking the halls and thinking, when I saw our muskrat friends and Lili carrying something in a sack—something with a long green tail. I followed.”
“I’m glad you did. You deserve a spot in the birdie hall of fame.”
I picked up the Bird History diorama I’d stomped on earlier. It was the one with Mahawkma Gandhi. Carefully, I tried to straighten the box.
Natalie cocked her head. “But there’s one thing I don’t get.”
“Hmm?”
“Where is that winning ticket?”
I couldn’t answer. My attention had been captured by the diorama, by the brown birdie figure of Gandhi with its shawl askew. Something about it . . .
“Oh, Chet?” said Natalie.
I rotated the box in my hands. Natalie leaned closer and read its label, “The Life of Mahawkma Gandhi, by Sally Monella.”
“What did Paige say that ticket looked like?” I asked.
“A brown cardboard falcon.”
I reached into the box and plucked out Gandhi. “You mean, something like this?”
Turning the paper bird over, we both read Paige Turner written on its back in an even hand.
“Wow,” breathed Natalie. “Is that . . . ?”
“Yep,” I said. “The stuff dreams are made of.”
The brown cardboard figure lay in my palm. Such a slight slip of paper, the cause of so much mischief.
As I gazed at it, visions of ice-cream mountains and fudge lakes began to form in my head.
“Chet, you’re going to give that to Paige, aren’t you?” asked Natalie.
I smiled dreamily.
“Uh, Chet? Chet?”
1
Cheat, Stink, and Be Hairy
It was no use, no use. I had followed a lead as thin as a dragonfly wafer until it finally petered out here, in a blind alley. Swiveling my head right and left, I could tell—
I was trapped. A whisper of fear tickled my neck.
Then it hit me—foom! A shapeless something, heavier than a heartache, dropped onto my head and shoulders, dragging me down . . . down . . . when—
“Chet Gecko?” A voice cut through the red darkness.
“Are you with us?” said my teacher, Mr. Ratnose.
What was he doing in the alley?
My eyes blinked open. “Wuzza?” With a supreme effort, I raised my head.
“If you can’t stay awake, I’ll have someone pinch you,” he said.
Several voices tittered.
Mr. Ratnose’s classroom swam into focus. Kids, chairs, chalkboards, and cream cheese—Bo Newt grinning, Shirley Chameleon simpering. I was back at my desk, at school, facing down Public School Enemy Number One: boredom.
It was a humdrum morning at Emerson Hicky Elementary. You ask yourself, How dull can it get? Then you go to Mr. Ratnose’s class, and you find out.
The school newspaper on the corkboard said it all: BOREDOM EPIDEMIC FLATTENS SCHOOL. No duh.
Mr. Ratnose shot me one last glare, then scrawled some numbers on the board. He claimed to be explaining fractions, but he might just as well have been describing his vacation in Left Armpit, Arizona.
I longed for something, anything, to break the monotony.
He turned with a flourish. “And now, time for history.”
Anything but that.
But the lean rat had a surprise in store. He grabbed a stack of papers with one hand and thwacked them against his open palm.
“They say, ‘History repeats itself,’” said Mr. Ratnose. “But I sincerely hope yesterday’s won’t.”
Bewildered faces greeted his remark.
Mr. Ratnose began pacing. “I’m referring, of course, to your grades on yesterday’s history test. I am deeply disappointed in you.”
Igor Beaver, a teacher’s pet’s pet, raised his hand. “Wh-what do you mean, teacher?” he whined. “Did I get a bad grade?”
Mr. Ratnose’s whiskers bristled. “No, Igor,” he said, keeping his voice even. “You got a good grade. In fact, far too many of you got a good grade.”
Igor gasped. “You mean . . . ?”
“I do. We’ve got cheaters!” Mr. Ratnose waved the stack of papers.
“B-but how do you know?” asked Igor.
“Because,” our teacher snarled, “I added a dummy question.”
I thought, Giving a dummy question to these dummies is like sending snow to Eskimos. But I didn’t say it.
Mr. Ratnose looked like he was ready to take a bite out of our tests. “It was a trick question—none of you could’ve known the answer. But too many of you did.”
He tossed the offending tests onto his desk. His gaze raked the classroom. “Look at the student on your right.”
Igor and Cassandra the Stool Pigeon looked right. The rest of us stared at our teacher, beaming confusion like a country-western station beams corniness.
“Look right!” snarled Mr. Ratnose.
We looked.
“Now look left.”
We looked again.
Mr. Ratnose bared his yellowy teeth. “One out of three of you is a cheater.”
Cassandra raised her wing tip. “You mean, one-third of the class?”
Say what you will about the dame, she understood fractions.
“Exactly,” said Mr. Ratnose. “And do you know what this means?”
Several students shook their heads.
“You’re all taking the test again—right now.”
The groan that followed could’ve been heard as far as Zanzibar. Given a choice between boredom
and torture, I’ll take boredom any day.
But we had no choice.
Igor and two other kids passed out the tests. I scanned mine. It was the same one we took yesterday.
And I didn’t remember any more answers than I had the first time. While we sweated through multiple-choice madness, Mr. Ratnose patrolled the aisles, hairless pink tail dragging behind him.
Suddenly, he stopped. “Hmm?”
Mr. Ratnose bent and plucked a sheet of paper from the floor, beside Shirley Chameleon’s desk. His forehead furrowed like a mole’s front yard.
“Miss Chameleon, what is the meaning of this?” he said.
“Of what?” she asked. Shirley watched our teacher with one eye, while the other one shot me a worried glance. It’s gross, but you get that from chameleons.
Brandishing the paper, Mr. Ratnose leaned over her. “This, as if you didn’t know, is the answer key to the test!”
“No!” said Shirley.
“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Ratnose. “You, missy, are a dirty rotten cheater. One week of detention for you!”
Shirley crumpled like a paper pagoda in a rainstorm. Her eyes teared up.
That did it. I can’t stand to see a reptile cry.
“Uh, Mr. Ratnose,” I said, “let’s not be hasty.”
He turned his laser-beam gaze on me. “How’s that?”
“I mean, how do you know it’s Shirley’s paper? She’s never cheated before.”
Mr. Ratnose’s expression turned colder than a snow-snake’s belly button. “Do you want to share her detention?” he asked.
“Um, no . . .”
“Then put a lid on it, mister.” Mr. Ratnose turned to the class. “Everyone, back to your tests.” He stalked off down the aisle.
Shirley swung her sorrowful puss in my direction. Her eyes held a plea. Her mouth framed a question. “Help me?” she whispered.
I nodded. After all, what self-respecting private eye would turn down a dame in distress?
A smart one, as I soon discovered.
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