by Poppy Harris
Oh, Hamilton, thought Bethany. What have you done?
‘Well, I don’t understand it, unless the hamster’s learnt to send his own text messages!’ said Mum.
Bethany turned deep red and hoped Mum didn’t notice. She didn’t want anyone to guess how clever Hamilton was, so she’d have to cover up for him.
‘Oh, that text!’ she said. ‘Yes, I sent that! Sorry, Mum, I’d forgotten all about it.’
She’d need to have a word with Hamilton about this.
‘I wish you’d asked me first, Bethany,’ said Mum, but the phone rang again and she went to answer it.
‘There’s no charge for a first visit,’ said Tim. ‘Shall I come and meet your hamster?’
Bethany hesitated, wondering what to do next. As she did so, she realized that apart from Mum’s voice on the phone, everything had become quiet. It was much too still. The DVD had finished and she couldn’t hear a sound from Kitty.
‘Excuse me, wait there, please!’ she said to the man on the doorstep. Then she banged the door shut in his face and dashed to the kitchen. On an earlier visit, Kitty had flooded the sink while playing with the washing-up liquid, and on another occasion she’d decided to bake a cake and had filled a mixing bowl with flour, milk and tomato sauce before anyone had stopped her. Dreading what she might find, Bethany dashed into the kitchen.
But Kitty wasn’t in the kitchen … and what could be worse than Kitty in the kitchen?
Kitty upstairs, of course.
Bethany was halfway up the stairs when Kitty appeared on the landing. She was sobbing loudly, but it wasn’t the sort of helpless sobbing that means real heartbreak. It was a roar of angry tears because things were not going Kitty’s way.
‘Your mouse has gone!’ howled Kitty.
Bethany rushed past her and into the bedroom. With her heart beating hard and fast and her hand shaking, she looked in the cage and examined the catch on the door. The cage had been opened and neatly closed again and the nest was as tidy as Hamilton had left it.
Bethany took a few deep breaths. If Kitty had opened the cage, she would have left it wide open with the nest spread everywhere. It looked as if Hamilton must have let himself out. Kitty appeared beside her.
‘I looked and he’d gone,’ she sniffed. ‘I just came to see if he was all right.’
‘Kitty,’ said Bethany, wanting to be quite sure of what had happened, ‘did you open the cage? Nobody will be cross. You’re not in trouble, only it would be helpful if you tell me the truth. Did you open the cage?’
Kitty sniffed loudly. ‘It wouldn’t open for me,’ she said.
So she tried, thought Bethany. ‘How did you know he wasn’t hiding in his nest?’ she asked.
‘Just did,’ muttered Kitty. Bethany guessed that she’d tried hitting the cage, but wasn’t going to admit it. ‘I shouted to him to come out and see me and come and play with me, and he didn’t, so I knew he wasn’t in his house.’
Bethany looked at the empty cage while she wondered what to do. Hamilton was capable of hiding somewhere and getting back into his cage again, but if he was outside, there was always the danger that he’d meet with a nasty accident or a cat (which could be the same thing).
Kitty thundered down the stairs. Bethany ran after her to see what she was going to do next – and stop her if necessary.
‘Auntie Angela,’ yelled Kitty, ‘the mousie’s gone, Bethany’s big mousie’s gone away!’
Mum stood at the front door – she had wondered what had happened to the Pexpert man and was surprised to find him still there. She was talking to him as Kitty ran down stairs, threw both arms round her waist and tried to drag her away.
‘He’s gone, Auntie!’ she wailed. ‘Bethany’s big mousie’s gone; come and find him!’
Tim’s scientific brain did the following:
Bethany’s big mousie = Bethany’s hamster
Bethany’s hamster = hamster with my microspeck inside it
Hamster + microspeck + escape = THE MICROSPECK COULD BE ANYWHERE AROUND HERE!
Tim tried very hard to keep his hands from shaking with excitement. From his pocket, he took the tracking device that would home in on Hamilton’s microspeck. It looked a bit like a mobile phone.
‘We’d better find him,’ he said.
‘What’s that?’ demanded Kitty, stretching up to see it.
‘It’s a kind of bleeper to help us find the big mousie,’ said Tim. ‘What a good thing I had it with me! It’s my magical hamster finder.’
‘Magic!’ said Kitty, and her eyes lit up.
‘What is it really?’ asked Bethany, who didn’t believe in magical hamster finders, but Tim was already gazing at it so carefully that he didn’t seem to notice the question. From the front of the device came a very faint flicker and an even fainter bleep. He moved it in different directions.
‘We should find him easily enough,’ he said. ‘Leave it to me. This is what we’re trained to do at Pexperts.’
I wish you’d go away, thought Bethany.
Kitty was eyeing the tracking device. ‘I want a go!’ she demanded, stretching up to take it. Just in time, Tim raised it out of her reach. It had never occurred to him that he would meet with a problem as difficult as Kitty. She stretched up again in another attempt to prise the tracking device from his hand.
I wish you’d both go away, thought Bethany this time. But as long as they were here, and Hamilton might be anywhere, Bethany wasn’t letting either of them out of her sight.
In the shed, Hamilton was having a simply wonderful time. He had chatted for a while with his friend Bobby, who lived in a hutch in the shed. Bobby was Sam’s rabbit, but luckily Hamilton was fluent in Rabbitspeak.
A pair of Sam’s gloves lay beside Bobby’s cage, and so Hamilton had snuggled into one of them while he and Bobby settled down to enjoy Sam’s trombone practice.
‘He’s learning to oompah,’ explained Hamilton. ‘But he’s only just started learning how to make the right noises. I read about it on the computer.’
‘What’s a compertooter?’ asked Bobby.
‘It’s a thing with a screen,’ said Hamilton, ‘like a window. You click all the right things and it’s got a mouse, but it isn’t a real live mouse. You keep clicking until you find the right bit, and that’s how I found the bit about oompah music.’
Bobby tried to make clicking noises with his teeth, but wasn’t very successful. He just sounded as if he were muttering to himself.
‘The air has to go into the mouthpiece …’ began Hamilton, then remembered that while he understood the science of valves and air pressure very well, it wouldn’t mean anything to the rabbit. ‘You have to put a quiet funny noise in at one end, and it goes round all the tubes. That means it’s a loud funny noise when it comes out.’
‘It’s good!’ said Bobby, gazing up at Sam in admiration. ‘You never know what it’s going to do next!’
‘It’s supposed to oompah,’ said Hamilton, ‘but sometimes it ooms and sometimes it pahs because he hasn’t got the ooms and the pahs to meet in the middle. Sometimes it isn’t quite an oom and a pah, just a poom. It takes a long time before you can do that properly.’
The trombone gave a deep groan.
‘Is it hurting?’ asked Bobby anxiously.
‘No,’ said Hamilton. ‘It’s only playing.’
The more Sam practised with his trombone, the better he got. The noises became louder and stronger, and the slowly drawn-out notes – pa-a-arp – pa-a-arp – pa – arp grew closer together. Hamilton could almost dance to this, and Bobby swayed a bit as they listened. When something tingled in his cheek pouch, he hardly noticed it at all.
Sam stopped pla
ying and put the trombone down in its case. His face was much redder than usual.
‘I need a break, Bobby,’ he said, and took the rabbit out of his cage to be stroked and talked to. He removed some stale old bits of apple core from the hutch floor, and told Bobby everything he’d been doing at school.
He hadn’t noticed Hamilton snuggled down in a glove, and this gave Hamilton the thing he wanted most at that moment. It gave him the chance to explore the trombone, and he couldn’t wait. Stopping only to rub at his cheek, which was tingling a lot now, he hopped into the trombone case. Hamilton wondered if he could design and make a very small trombone to play when nobody except Bethany could hear him.
He examined the valves in great detail, patting at them with his paws. Hamilton’s microspeck meant that he could measure accurately, and by running from one end of the trombone to the other, he had soon calculated its length. He had even worked out how long the trombone would be if you could unfold it all. Getting more and more curious, and more and more excited to see the place where the sound came out, Hamilton slipped right inside the bell of the trombone to explore.
The tingling in his cheek stopped at once, which surprised him. It puzzled him too. He sat for a moment with his head on one side, thinking hard about this.
Tim Taverner was trying hard to concentrate on the signal from his homing device (which, of course, was the thing making Hamilton’s cheek tingle) but with Kitty pulling on his jacket, it was hard for him to concentrate on anything. He had walked slowly and carefully down one side of Bethany’s house, back across the front, all the way round twice and back the other way, and finally into the back garden, with Bethany and Kitty following. Bethany stayed close to him because she was curious about what he was doing and didn’t trust him. Kitty was there because she was longing to get her hands on the homing device.
‘How does it work?’ Bethany wanted to know, but Tim pretended not to hear her.
‘Hammy, Hammy, Hammy!’ shouted Kitty as she raced about the garden. Bethany didn’t try to stop her. If Hamilton could hear Kitty – and surely everyone in the street could hear her – he’d keep well out of the way.
‘How does it work?’ Bethany asked again, more forcefully this time.
‘Oh, it’s electronic,’ said Tim vaguely, scowling as he listened for a signal.
‘Yes, but how does it pick up a signal from a hamster?’ Bethany persisted.
‘Oh, that’s too complicated to explain,’ said Tim.
‘I’m sure you could explain it,’ said Bethany, hoping that he’d feel flattered.
‘It gives out a call sound,’ said Tim, who was making it up as he went along and wishing she’d leave him alone.
‘Come on, good little hamstery, come to Kitty-witty!’ Kitty bellowed, crashing into Tim’s legs and making a grab for the tracking device. He was just in time to hold it away from her.
‘I can’t hear a call sound,’ said Bethany. ‘I can’t hear anything.’
‘That’s because you’re not a hamster,’ said Tim. ‘It’s a signal that only hamsters can hear, but they respond to it.’ He looked at the tracking device and felt a tingle of excitement. A pale yellow light was steadily flashing. Very quietly, it beeped.
‘He’s round here somewhere!’ he said.
‘Let me have a go!’ cried Kitty. He held it away from her, and with a cry of, ‘It’s my turn!’, she hurled herself against him and struggled furiously to climb up him as if he were a tree. ‘I want it!’ The shout turned into a sob. ‘I wa-ha-hant it!’
Bethany dragged her away from him. ‘You can’t have it, Kitty,’ she said. ‘It’s not a toy.’
‘Not fair!’ wailed Kitty and kicked her.
‘Is it time for you to go in for tea, Kitty?’ asked Tim as pleasantly as he could.
Kitty kicked him too.
‘Kitty!’ said Bethany. ‘Go into the house at once!’ Kitty aimed another kick, but Bethany dodged. With a cry of rage, Kitty lay on the ground and kicked.
‘Sorry about her,’ said Bethany. ‘She’s very naughty.’
‘That’s quite all right,’ said Tim, but he only said it to be polite. All he wanted was the hamster. In fact, he didn’t want the hamster at all, just the tiny microspeck! And what had he ended up with? Kitty.
In the shed, Sam was making very strange faces. Hamilton, who had stopped exploring for a while and come out to see what was happening, understood what Sam was doing. He’d read about it on the computer.
‘Is he trying to whistle?’ asked Bobby.
‘It’s called an embouchure,’ said Hamilton, who was carefully watching everything Sam did. ‘It’s no good just blowing down a trombone – you need a special way of doing it. You have to pull faces.’ He rubbed his cheek, which was buzzing again.
‘Did you find that out on the compotater too?’ asked Bobby.
‘Pardon?’ said Hamilton, who was still watching Sam’s strange faces in fascination. ‘Oh, yes. On the Internet.’
The only net Bobby knew about was the wire netting on the front of his hutch and his garden run. He wondered whether the Internet was anything like wire netting and whether there was any Internet lying around in the shed.
As Bobby thought this over, Hamilton ran to the trombone and climbed inside it again. He liked it in there – his cheek didn’t buzz when he was in the trombone. Besides, he hadn’t finished exploring.
‘No, Kitty,’ said Bethany very firmly. ‘That is a very important piece of equipment, and it belongs to Mister Pexperts. You’re not to touch it.’ She didn’t like Mr Pexperts at all, but she was trying to make Kitty behave.
Kitty let out a screech that sent the crows flying from the trees as she hung off Tim Taverner’s jacket. The scream hadn’t got her what she wanted, so she tried holding her breath instead, but Tim didn’t seem to notice that she was turning scarlet. He was struggling to prise her fingers from his jacket while keeping the tracking device out of her reach with his other hand. The flashing light was stronger and clearer now, and the beep louder. He turned in all directions, trying to find where the signal was strongest, with Kitty still hanging on.
Tim found that the light and the beep were at their clearest when he faced the shed at the bottom of the garden. He marched purposefully towards it, trying to pretend that Kitty wasn’t there.
‘I’m pretty certain he’s in that shed,’ he announced. ‘Looks like the perfect hiding place for a hamster!’
And you’re not getting your hands on him, thought Bethany, staying close beside him and a step ahead. She didn’t trust him one little bit.
Kitty lost her grip on Tim, fell over, lay on the grass and howled, but when she realized that nobody was taking any notice, she got up and ran after them.
‘There’s a bunny rabbit in there,’ she said.
‘Is there?’ asked Tim hopefully. This was encouraging. ‘A bunny rabbit?’ Where there was a rabbit, there would be rabbit food, and where there was rabbit food, there might well be a hamster. The tracking device certainly thought the hamster was in there.
‘I’ll show you the bunny rabbit,’ said Kitty, pulling on Tim’s hand. ‘It’s in here.’
By this time, Tim was anxious to get Kitty out of the way, and not just because she was by far the most irritating child he’d ever met. He didn’t want Kitty running into the garden shed yelling ‘Hamster!’ or ‘Bunny rabbit!’ at the top of her voice and scaring everything away.
‘Don’t you think you should go back to your mummy now?’ he suggested.
Kitty pouted. ‘My mummy’s gone!’ she cried dramatically.
‘Oh!’ said Tim. He hadn’t expected this and felt very uncomfortable.
‘Kitty’
s my cousin,’ said Bethany. ‘She doesn’t live here, we’re just looking after her until her mum comes to collect her. Kitty, would you like to go and see what Auntie Angela’s doing?’
Bethany needed to make sure that Kitty was out of the way so that she might get to Hamilton before her cousin or this man did. Normally, mentioning Auntie Angela might have worked, but Kitty was too excited to listen and too determined to get hold of the tracking device, which was now beeping steadily.
Tim moved towards the shed. The bleep was louder now, and more frequent. The light flashed clearly. Bethany saw it and bit her lip. She didn’t like not knowing where Hamilton was, but the idea of this stranger or Kitty finding him was far worse. What was Mr Pexperts really up to? Run, Hamilton, she thought. Run and keep running, and stay out of the way.
They were at the shed door. As Tim put out his hand to open it, the bleep stopped as abruptly as if it had been switched off.
‘We’ve lost him!’ said Tim. ‘Now where’s he gone?’
‘BUNNY RABBIT!’ bellowed Kitty.
Hamilton, thought Bethany. Where are you?
Hamilton sat in the bell of the trombone, the sturdy metal stopping Tim Taverner’s tracking device from finding him. The device could track through many things, but not through a trombone. As long as Hamilton was in there, the signal couldn’t find him.
Then a lot of things happened all at once.
Sam picked up the trombone and held it to his lips. He decided it was time to find out if he’d got his embouchure right.
Kitty threw open the door. ‘Hello, bunny-bunny-bunny!’ she shouted. ‘I’ve come to play!’
She darted to the rabbit hutch as Sam drew in the deepest breath he could and blew hard into the trombone. Out from the bell came a loud and terrifying noise – and Hamilton.
Tim hurled himself forward in an effort to catch the hamster. Bethany dashed in front of him, then he tripped over her and landed on Kitty, who screamed and hit him. She kept on hitting him as he struggled to get up again – and the more he struggled, the more she pounded him with her fists. Hamilton had sailed on past them and landed on Bethany’s shoulder as she scrambled to her feet. He ran down her arm and, with her help, into the sleeve of her sweater, where he hid. Bethany looked for the tracking device, but it had fallen out of Tim’s hand as he fell and wasn’t making any sound at all. In the meantime, Tim was still trying to get up and Kitty was still hitting him.