by Adam Frost
The detective walked through the arrivals gate. A split second later, he felt someone tapping him on the shoulder. Wily turned round and there was Albert.
“How did you get here faster than me?” he asked.
Albert rolled up his trouser leg. “Telekinetic Booster Boots. They might be ready for your next case. But right now I’ve brought you some other gadgets.”
Wily followed the mole outside and down a side street, where a black rickshaw was parked.
“It drives itself,” Albert explained. He pointed to a microphone. “Speak your destination into there. Clap once to go, and twice to stop.”
“Brilliant,” said Wily, climbing inside. “And how do I make it go really, really fast?”
Albert sighed. “Clap four times,” he said.
“Excellent,” said Wily and held up his hands, preparing to clap.
“Wait – your disguise,” said Albert. “Whoever stole the recipe is clearly ruthless. They could have killed you in Venice.”
He gave Wily a rucksack containing a bright red baggy outfit and a large metal baton.
“You are Wang,” said Albert, “the Shanghai Scorcher, a fire-eater in the Chinese State Circus.” He held up the metal baton and breathed on it. A huge plume of fire shot out of the end. “Press this button when you put it in your mouth, and the fire will go out,” he explained.
“Nice one, Albert,” said Wily. “I’ll practise later. But right now, there’s no time to lose. I’ve got to find where the hai lee niffi flower grows. That’s where our criminal will be.”
“OK,” said Albert, “I’ll be on our usual secure line. Report to me every hour.”
Wily nodded and said into the microphone, “Jade Dragon Snow Mountain.”
The rickshaw whirred into life. Wily clapped four times and it shot off like a bullet, leaving Albert sighing and shaking his head.
Wily soon left the city behind. Wooden houses and paddy fields whizzed by. It was not long before he was starting to climb Jade Dragon Snow Mountain.
Everything was covered in snow. The trees, the rocks, the path – all of it was crisp and white. The rickshaw started to slow down as the snow got deeper and the path got steeper.
“Come on,” Wily muttered. But the rickshaw grew slower and slower.
Wily glanced up the mountain. The upper slopes were still a long way off, surrounded by a halo of clouds.
The rickshaw gave one last lurch forward and then ground to a halt.
Wily groaned. He was going to have to climb the rest of the way. But then he had a thought. Albert often put extra features into his inventions. Things he was testing out. Things he didn’t tell Wily about.
Wily clicked his fingers. He whistled. He tried clapping four times again.
Nothing happened.
He tried clapping five times, then six.
That was it!
The two long poles at the side of the rickshaw slid forward, flipped over and buried themselves in the snow.
They looked like … stilts.
Wily leaped out of the rickshaw and grabbed his disguise. Then he planted his feet on the stilts.
Wily lifted his right foot up slightly and the stilt sprang out of the snow, swung itself forward and planted itself back down further up the mountain.
Then he did the same with his left foot.
These weren’t just stilts – they were steam-powered, spring-loaded cybernetic stilts.
Wily strode up the mountain, planting the stilts in the snow, covering a hundred metres a minute. He knew that the flowers grew on “the highest slopes”, but Wily was nearly at the top of the mountain – he couldn’t get much higher – and still there was no sign of them anywhere.
Wily lifted his right foot for a final push to the top, but it was too steep even for the stilts. The poles tilted forward, hurling Wily into a snow-covered juniper bush.
The detective clambered to his feet and stuck his head out of the bush. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Behind the bush was a small field without any snow on it. And it was full of purple flowers. Wily breathed in. The air smelled beautiful.
These must be the hai lee niffi flowers! Wily thought.
He immediately checked to see if any had been picked. No. All the stalks had flowers, there were no holes in the soil. He looked for footprints in the snow surrounding the field. There were none. Excellent – he was in time. Now all he had to do was hide there and wait for the thief to arrive.
Wily went back to the juniper bush. He positioned his phone on a branch, set it to video mode and programmed it to beep loudly if it picked up a heat signature from any other animal. Then he called Albert. Albert’s face immediately appeared on the screen.
“Wily! How can you be there already? It’s taken you less than an hour… Hang on, are those my stilts buried in the snow?”
“Er…”
“But they weren’t finished!”
“You’re missing the point, Albert,” said Wily. “Thanks to you, I’ve overtaken the thief. I’m lying in wait for them now.”
“But the rickshaw will be in pieces. How are you going to get back down?” said Albert.
“I’ll think of something,” said Wily. “But right now I’m sending you some photos of the flowers. I need you to find out more about them – how they grow, what plant family they’re in… Anything you can.”
“OK,” said Albert grumpily. “I’ll try again.”
Wily hung up and then he watched and he waited. An hour passed.
He watched some more. Another hour passed.
He must have dozed off because suddenly the sound of his phone gave him a start.
“Wily, it’s me.” Albert’s face appeared. “From the petals and the stalk thickness, I believe your mystery flowers belong to the compositae family.”
“OK,” said Wily, trying to look like he’d been awake the whole time.
“They’re like blue daisies, but with deeper roots. Maybe that’s why they produce such amazing perfume. Their roots draw all kinds of minerals out of the soil.”
“Maybe,” said Wily. Then he looked at the field and gasped. At least twenty flowers had gone.
Wily raced across to where the flowers had been. His phone hadn’t beeped – no animal had been near the flowers. There were no footprints in the snow – so what had happened?
“Albert,” said Wily, “I don’t know how but…”
At that moment, a flower on the other side of the field started to tremble. It shook for a couple of seconds and then vanished underground.
“It’s the roots!” Wily exclaimed.
He spotted another flower trembling. He hung up on Albert, raced across the field and grabbed the flower. Someone underground was tugging the roots. Wily tugged the stalk hard. The animal pulled the roots even harder. The flower started to stretch but it didn’t snap. Eventually the animal gave up and another flower started to twitch.
This time Wily let the animal take the flower. But as the flower disappeared, he held the stalk gently and allowed his arm to be pulled underground. Then he tried to grab the animal with his hand. He felt fur – and then a foot – and then a nasty bite.
“Ow!” Wily yanked his arm out of the hole and started to burrow. Within five seconds, he reached a network of tunnels that had been dug underneath the field. He saw a flash of dust and gave chase. The tunnels were slightly too narrow for his body, so he had to keep stopping to move clods of earth and pebbles out of the way.
Wily reached a crossroads. He listened. He heard a scurrying from one of the tunnels, then a squeak from the other. He decided to follow the squeak. He ran faster and the squeak got louder. He was catching up.
The tunnel curved and Wily increased his speed. Then he bumped into an elderly mouse. The mouse fell on his back and gave an earsplitting EEK!
“Sorry,” stammered Wily, “but I don’t suppose you saw a badger passing this way.”
“This is China, young man,” said the mouse, “we don’t get any badgers. It’s mo
stly red pandas up here.”
“Red pandas,” Wily said. “Did a red panda dig this tunnel?”
But the mouse had already tottered off.
Wily looked down at his front paw. Earlier, he’d grabbed the thief’s tail. Now he was holding a clump of fluffy white fur. A badger’s tail wasn’t that white or that fluffy. But a red panda’s tail was…
Rou Red Panda. She owned the biggest department store in Beijing. Was she planning to make her own perfume? And then sell it – illegally – on the black market?
Wily thought about the black face paint he’d found in Pisa. If Rou had painted her fur black, she’d look a bit like a … badger.
Could she have been Princess Parmigiano’s secret admirer?
Had she also been the animal in the hyena mask?
Wily looked again at the fur in his hand. He smelled it. All he could detect was the hai lee niffi flower. It drowned out all other smells and scents.
He needed to find Rou Red Panda. If she was the thief, she was one step closer to making Utopia.
She had at least twenty hai lee niffi flowers.
She had the secret ingredient.
Wily had to get off Jade Dragon Snow Mountain as quickly as he could. He tried pressing all the buttons on the giant stilts, but none of them worked. Then he had an idea.
Ten seconds later, Wily was hurtling down the mountain, using the stilts as a pair of skis.
He called Albert as he whizzed through the snow. “Albert, are you there? I’ve found a new lead. I don’t think it’s Bianca any more. I think it’s Rou.”
“Rou Red Panda? Are you sure?” said Albert.
“Think about it. She owns a huge department store in Beijing. She has lots of wealthy customers. If she made Utopia, she could sell the bottles in secret and make a fortune.”
A tree branch whipped towards Wily. He ducked and kept skiing.
“But why would she have a hideout in Pisa?” asked Albert.
“That was her base in Italy,” said Wily. “While she was trying to get the recipe.”
“I see,” said Albert. “OK, I’ll meet you in Beijing. The quickest way for you to get there is on the bullet train. There’s one passing Luhuzho in fifteen minutes – it’s right at the bottom of the mountain.”
“Thanks, Albert.” Wily hung up and whooshed off down to Luhuzho.
As he approached the bottom of the mountain, he could see the railway tracks curving round the hillside and into a tunnel. And there was the bullet train, flying along at an astonishing speed. He was going to miss it!
Wily skied faster. When he reached the railway line he flung himself towards the train, but too late – it was gone. Wily landed on the tracks, one ski on each rail. Sparks flew off the back of them as he whizzed along. He could see the train ahead, but it was disappearing fast.
Could he catch up?
Further up the track, Wily saw a railway tunnel and, in front of the tunnel, there was a signal box showing a green light. He pulled off his left ski and threw it like a javelin, hitting the signal box and turning the light red.
The bullet train screeched to a halt, Wily unhitched himself from the other ski and did a forward roll on to the back ledge of the train. Then he threw the ski at the signal box and turned the light back to green.
“Faster than a speeding bullet,” he said with a smile.
The train arrived in Beijing two hours later. Wily had spent the journey reading about Rou and her business empire. Her flagship store was in Wangfujing, not far from Beijing’s central train station.
He’d need to watch the place closely – without being seen. He wondered if he’d need to go via a clothes shop, to pick up a disguise. But then he remembered – Albert had already put the perfect thing in his rucksack.
When Wily walked out of the train station, he was the circus performer Wang, the Shanghai Scorcher, wearing a red baggy jumpsuit and holding a metal baton.
It wasn’t long before Wily was standing outside the department store, along with the tourists, street performers and market traders. He secretly took pictures as he waited.
Just ten minutes later, Wily saw Rou walking towards the store. She must have flown back from Chengdu and arrived just after him. She walked past the entrance and down the street that ran along the side of her store.
Wily followed. She went into a blue door marked “RRP Laboratories”. There was a security camera just above it and a keypad beneath the door handle.
Wily needed to think fast. Rou had the hai lee niffi flowers. She had the recipe. She was going to work in her laboratory right now. Wily swore that he could smell perfume – a beautiful perfume – the most beautiful smell he had ever smelled…
He pulled out his metal torch and breathed fire on the security camera, melting it instantly. Then he breathed fire on the keypad, turning it into a blob of molten metal, and pushed open the door. It would probably trigger an alarm, but he’d get a minute, maybe more, to explore.
Wily ran down a long white corridor. He turned a corner and saw a bare laboratory with a workbench covered in empty vials and test tubes. He kept on running until he reached a door at the end of another long corridor. A sign above it read:
This must be it.
Wily opened the door. There was nobody there. But the room was full of Bunsen burners and metal stands holding wiggly plastic tubes full of bubbling liquid. He glanced around, looking for the purple flowers. He breathed in, trying to smell them. Instead all he could detect was red panda. Which was not surprising because, at that moment, Rou was flying through the air towards him. With a deafening “Hiii-ya!” she booted Wily in the side with her outstretched leg.
Wily landed on his bottom with a crunch.
“Got you!” she exclaimed. “Now don’t move – I am a master at kung-fu.” Wily tried to get up, but Rou whacked him on the head with the side of her hand. “I said, don’t move,” she continued. “The police will be here any second.”
“The p-police?” stammered Wily. “You’ve called the police?”
“Of course I have,” said Rou. “You’re going to prison. You stole my best equipment this morning and now you’re back for the rest.”
“Hang on,” said Wily. “I’ve done nothing. You took Adolfo’s recipe. You picked the hai lee niffi flowers from Jade Dragon Snow Mountain.”
Rou looked genuinely stunned. “I didn’t take Adolfo’s recipe or the flowers,” she said. “Oh good, here are the police.”
Wily turned round and there in the doorway stood Julius Hound and Sybil Squirrel.
“Wily Fox,” growled Julius. “Just as I thought.”
“Julius!” exclaimed Wily. “What are you doing in China? Last time we met, you’d just blown up the Leaning Tower of Pisa.”
“That had NOTHING to do with me,” Julius huffed, going red. “Besides, I’m the one asking questions here. Why have you broken into this young panda’s laboratory?”
“Because of the case I’m investigating. The perfume one I told you about,” said Wily.
“Well, we’re in China because of the case we’re investigating. The one where banks get robbed. And I think you can tell us something about that, too,” said Julius.
“Look,” said Rou, “are you going to arrest him, or not? Because somebody stole my equipment this morning. And he looks pretty guilty to me.”
“He certainly does,” said Julius. “You’re up to your eyeballs in it, Fox. Here we are in China, investigating our best lead yet in the Black Paw Gang case, and – guess what – we intercept a text message from the gang leader that mentions you. Then five minutes later we hear on the police radio that a fox has been caught breaking into a perfume lab. And – what a coincidence – it’s you.”
“Hang on – a text message? What are you talking about?” said Wily.
“Show him, Sybil,” barked Julius. Sybil Squirrel handed Wily a slip of paper.
“But this is gibberish,” said Wily.
“That’s what I thought,” said Julius.
“Until I deciphered the code.”
Sybil cleared her throat loudly.
“OK, Sybil might have helped me a bit,” growled Julius. “Read the first initials.”
Wily went back to the message and read the first letter of each word:
Wily blinked. “But … but…”
“Sorry, old friend, it does look a bit suspicious,” said Sybil, clipping a pair of handcuffs round Wily’s wrists.
“You’re coming with us to Beijing Central Police Station and you’re going to tell us everything you know,” snarled Julius, hustling Wily out of the room. He raised his hat to Rou. “Thank you for helping us to catch this notorious criminal.”
Julius pushed Wily out into the alley and bundled him into the back of a police van. Sybil got inside with him and then Julius drove off.
Wily sat thinking, not saying anything. Then something wafted up his nose.
“What’s that horrible smell?” he whispered.
“Do you mean this?” Sybil pulled a phone out of her pocket. “It was left behind at the last bank robbery we investigated. It smells way better than it used to.”
Wily sniffed and sniffed. It was foul, revolting, loathsome – he felt like passing out. Where had he smelled it before?
Then everything clicked into place. It made sense all of a sudden!
It was the same smell that had nearly knocked him out at the Smellissimo launch – when the bottles had been switched. When the Utopia recipe had been stolen.
“Sybil, our cases … are the same case…” Wily mumbled.
“I told you that in Pisa,” said Sybil.
“Yes, but I think I’ve cracked it,” said Wily. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. Or smell it before.”
“What do you mean?”
“That horrible stinky liquid they put in the Smellissimo bottle. I got rotten eggs and cowpats and … and … this.” Wily held up the smelly phone. “Skunk,” he said.