by Matthew Ward
From the inside of his jacket, Greenley retrieved a large Manila envelope—out of which he produced a small stack of official-looking documents. “Namely, these birth certificates here,” he said. “Now—I asked myself—why should anyone want to forge their children’s birth certificates? At first, I figured it was simply to cheat on various age-based world records or some other petty offense. You can imagine my surprise, then, to discover that the dates on these certificates correspond to the birth dates of nine missing children, each of whom was abducted from a different hospital shortly after birth.”
Rita Goldwin’s face went white.
“And that’s when it struck me,” declared Greenley. “The couple I’d been investigating for a simple bit of forgery were in fact the infamous Maternity Ward Marauders, whom law enforcement agencies across the world have been struggling to apprehend for the past seventeen years.”
The crowd gasped.
The faces of the Goldwin children filled with confusion.
“No . . .” murmured their mother.
“According to these certificates, madam,” the detective continued, “it would seem that nine of your twelve children are not your children at all. And so, it should come as no surprise to hear the following: Rita Anne Goldwin, in collaboration with your husband, Reginald Richard Goldwin, you are under arrest for the kidnapping of . . .” Holding up the certificates, the detective called off each birth name as he flipped through the stack. “. . . Johan Maarten Van der Meer . . . Astrid Oda Skoglund . . . Francois Louis Moreau . . . Sally Jane Peterson . . . Vladimir Pavlovich Ivanov . . . Jurgen Lukas Müller . . . Kasper Marek Jankowski . . . Dominique Marie Dubois . . . and Nigel Thomas Winterbottom.”
“No, please,” cried Rita Goldwin. “My babies!”
“I’m sorry, ma’am—but they were never yours to keep. They have been terribly missed, these children you’ve stolen. Think of all the misery their parents have been made to suffer these past years.”
“Those people never deserved them!” Rita snarled. “These children would have been nothing without us! You’re so worried about their parents’ misery—but what about their own? Rupert would have been a turnip farmer if we hadn’t saved him; Roland would have been forced to take over the family cabinetmaking business; and Rowena was destined to become a schoolteacher! Now that is misery! You can’t subject them to such a cruel fate—I won’t let you!”
Rita lunged at Sergeant Greenley with her fingernails—but was easily restrained by the officers. Her spirit broken, she collapsed in their grasp and began to sob.
Greenley offered Rita his handkerchief, then turned to the officers and said, “Take her to the car, lads.”
The Goldwin children looked to one another in shock and disbelief as the men carried the woman they called “mother” from the theater.
Ruby stepped forward.
“Sergeant Greenley,” she said with wide eyes, “does one of those birth certificates belong to me?”
The detective placed a hand on Ruby’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, luv,” he said. “I’m afraid yours is the real thing. Yours—and those of your two brothers: Rayford and Royston. It would appear the three of you are in fact the only actual children of Rex and Rita Goldwin.”
Ruby’s eyes dimmed. “I see.”
Arthur stepped up beside her and put his hand on her other shoulder.
Rex sneered. “Don’t look so disappointed, Daughter.”
Rayford pulled against Wilhelm’s grip and blurted, “I told you we were the special ones, Sis! You should have believed me! We would have been unstoppable!”
“Oh, I almost forgot,” said Greenley, turning to the dwarf. “Rayford Goldwin, I am arresting you for multiple counts of attempted murder, sabotage, conspiracy, and kidnapping. Looks as though prison is to be quite the family affair.”
One of the officers took the dwarf from the butler, handcuffed him, and proceeded to escort him outside.
“I’d do it all again, Father,” Rayford cried over his shoulder, “if only to hear I’d made you proud!”
Rex Goldwin said nothing.
The lobby doors swung shut.
D.S. Greenley turned to the giant. “Royston, though it pains me to do so after what you did for your sister, I’m afraid I’ve no choice but to arrest you on the same grounds as your brother.”
“I understand, sir,” said the giant. He lowered his head and held out his hands.
“Very well then,” Greenley replied. “Royston Goldwin, I am placing you under arrest for multiple counts of attempted murder, sabotage, conspiracy, and kidnapping.”
Two policemen stepped forward to flank the giant. Royston nodded to Ruby, then turned and walked with them up the aisle.
Ruby watched her brother until he disappeared into the lobby.
The Goldwin children stirred restlessly.
“Is it really true, Dad?” asked Rosalind. “Are we adopted?”
Rex stared at the floor.
“Come on, Dad,” said Roland, “tell me those two aren’t really Rayford and Royston. This is all just some sort of joke, right?”
Rex, whose head had sunk lower and lower with every moment since his arrest, now looked up from under his brow and glared at the detective. “Bravo, Sergeant. You have succeeded in destroying everything I have ever created. How does it feel to break up the World’s Most Perfect Family?”
He turned to his children and sighed. “Yes, children—I’m afraid it’s true. But I promise you, everything I did was for the sake of our family. I only wanted to make ours the very best in all the world. That’s hardly a crime, is it?” Rex’s attempt at a sympathetic expression came off as merely pathetic. “When Rita first gave birth to those two mutants,” he continued, gesturing to the lobby doors, “we could hardly take them out in public with us, now could we? Yes, we wanted to be a record-breaking family—but not like that. And of course, we couldn’t risk having any more freakish children, so we simply selected a few perfect specimens and then took you off the hands of your unremarkable, undeserving parents. And look what we made of you! We should have just kept going, but after we’d successfully adopted Roland, Rosalind, Rupert, and Roxy, Rita got the bright idea we should try to have another ‘natural’ child. This time we were blessed with a fourteen-toed misfit.” He nodded at Ruby. “Of course, she wasn’t quite as bad as the first two—at least we could keep those hideous feet covered up—but that was the last time I was going to leave the fate of my children up to ‘nature.’ Rita went back to wearing her collection of false pregnant bellies as we waited to bring our next child home. . . .”
Arthur looked to Ruby. “Guess those weren’t clown costumes after all,” he whispered.
“Guess not,” she said. “Who’d have thought the real explanation could be weirder than that?”
Rex sighed. “We kept collecting until we figured we had enough record breakers to dethrone the ‘legendary’ Whipples. My only regret is not collecting a few more of you. . . . Well, that—and not murdering every last Whipple when I had the chance.”
Rupert Goldwin groaned with impatience. “So what’s to happen to us then?” he demanded. “Hold on,” he added excitedly, “does this mean we’ll get the house to ourselves?”
Greenley gave a reassuring smile. “Not to worry, lad—we’ll make certain you won’t have to live alone. At this very moment, agents from the ASRCAI are waiting outside the theater. They’ll have each of you reunited with your respective birth families in no time—just as soon as you complete the mandatory ninety-day deprogramming camp. Just think, Rupert—before you know it, you’ll be back on your family’s turnip farm, gearing up for your first harvest!”
The full weight of Rupert’s situation seemed to strike him for the first time. The hopeful expression drained from his face.
Just then, a large piece of the set crashed to the stage behind them. Though the
stage’s sprinkler system had doused most of the fire by now, several sections of the structure still appeared dangerously unstable.
“Come on then,” said Greenley. “Let’s get ourselves outside, shall we? Nobody’s going to get to enjoy their new turnip farm if the roof comes down on our heads.”
• • •
The Goldwin children made their way through the crowd of shell-shocked patrons and out to the street, where uniformed agents wrapped them with woolen blankets and ushered them into a van marked AGENCY FOR THE SAFE-KEEPING AND RESTORATION OF CHILDREN ABDUCTED AS INFANTS.
Arthur watched as Rupert (aka Francois Louis Moreau) took one last look around him, hung his head, and climbed through the van door. Even after all the torment the Goldwin boy had made him suffer, Arthur couldn’t help but feel just a little bit sorry for him.
As the ASRCAI van pulled away, Greenley opened the rear door of an awaiting squad car and loaded Rex Goldwin inside.
The rage in Rex’s eyes had now been replaced by a heavily glazed stare.
“There was only ever room for one of us at the top, wasn’t there, Charlie?” he muttered. “And why shouldn’t it have been me? All I’ve ever wanted is absolute perfection—is that too much to ask? Surely, it’s no less than I deserve. Have you any idea how difficult it is to succeed when you’re constantly surrounded by lesser individuals? And yet, look how close I came to winning it all. . . .” He snorted and turned to Arthur. “Who’d have thought your little failure of a son would be the one to ruin all my years of hard work?”
“Now now, Rex,” Mr. Whipple replied. “Surely, even you can see there’s only one failure here now—and it’s certainly not any member of my family. Let’s see here: you’ve failed as a world-record breaker, you’ve failed as a kidnapper, you’ve failed as a murderer—and you’ve failed as a father. I wonder what the Ardmore Association will think about so much failure in their one perfect champion? I should say you’re due for a rather drastic demotion after this. But I guess you won’t have to worry much about that where you’re going, will you, Mr. Goldwin?”
Arthur’s father paused.
“Or should I call you . . . the Treasurer?”
Rex’s eyes snapped toward him.
Mr. Whipple smiled. “What ever did happen to the Treasurer before you, Rex? Did you do the same to your predecessor as you tried to do to me?”
Rex Goldwin’s ever-deepening scowl suddenly melted away. “Well, well, Charlie,” he said with a sly grin. “You’ve really figured it all out, haven’t you? The Association’s board of directors was crazy to ever go up against you; they just never had a chance, did they?”
There was something unnerving in Rex’s tone. Something that made his capture seem somehow like less of an accomplishment.
But before Mr. Whipple could inquire further, Rex simply said, “Oh well. Have a nice life, Charlie.” He gave a smug final salute with his fettered right hand, then slid to the far side of the seat and stared out the opposite window.
The group stepped away from the car, and Arthur’s father turned to the detective with a long sigh of relief.
“Well, Sergeant,” he said, “I really can’t thank you enough for all you’ve done here. If not for you, we should still be at the mercy of that madman.”
“Just doing my duty, sir. If you’d like to thank somebody, thank your boy and his mate Ruby there. They’re the ones who brought the clues to my attention and set the whole thing in motion. Surely, there’d have been no case without them.”
“Indeed, Sergeant,” agreed Mr. Whipple. “I owe them more than I can say.” He looked to the two children and smiled. “I only hope I may yet prove it to them.”
Just then, a shrill voice at their backs caused the group to whirl around.
The Goldwin twins, Rayford and Royston, approached the curb with a trio of policemen and stood waiting for transport.
The dwarf did not appear happy.
“This is all your fault, Roy!” he shrieked up at this brother. “If not for your repeated failures, we’d be holding the Championship Cup ourselves now, instead of being hauled off to jail! How is it possible that someone with such elite training can make so many idiotic blunders!”
The giant opened his mouth to speak—but the dwarf cut him off before he could say the first word.
“Oh, save it, Roy,” Rayford snapped. “What makes you think anyone wants to hear what you’ve got to say? You’ve made a mess of every single task you’ve been given since the day we left our secret bunker on the Compound! First, it was the birthday party, where—despite having a doctorate in Explosives Rigging—you couldn’t manage to get a few oversized birthday candles to actually fall at the same time. Then, it was the Unsafe Sports Showdown. There you are, a certified Deadshot in foot archery—and yet, the moment you’re called on to take out one defenseless boy, you can’t be bothered to hit a single lousy organ! And tell me—what did happen the night of the Komodo plot? The plan was to release Ridgely as soon as one of the Whipples passed by—but by the time you’d let go of his tail, the girl had already spotted him, run to a nearby Sim-o-Tree and begun to climb it! Did you suddenly forget everything we’d ever learned in Animal Assassins 201? Professor Wilde would be mortified; you were his star pupil, for crying out loud!”
“Listen, Ray,” said the giant. “I wasn’t—”
“Listen Ray nothing!” screeched the dwarf. “You’ve lost the privilege to even address me! Because despite all your prior ineptitudes, none of them can even begin to compare with the utter incompetence you’ve demonstrated today! This morning, you were charged with the simple task of locking two kids in a cage—and yet, somehow, they were able to escape without so much as one self-severed limb! I wonder—did you even bother to lock the lock? It’s a good thing I sent you for the car while I emptied the Lizard Lounge into the tunnel, or your blundering would surely have made it even easier for them!”
With that, he turned to Arthur and Ruby.
“Just look at those two,” he sneered. “Does it not make you sick to see them here now—happy and free—cheating Mother and Father out of their rightful victory and splitting our family apart? But then, it’s difficult to tell if you care about this family at all, when you’re told to guard the rear exits to prevent our enemies from escaping—and you end up assaulting our own dear father instead! Honestly, Roy—what sort of son and henchman are you, anyway? All I can say is: you’d better watch your back, Brother. I’ve got friends on the inside; I’ll be leader of the Dwarven Brotherhood in no time. And don’t think the GGDG will protect you; I’ve got half the board in my pocket! Oh, you’ll pay for your failures, Brother. You’ll pay dear—”
But before Rayford could finish this last word, the giant simply cocked back his leg and kicked the dwarf through the open door of the awaiting squad car.
Arthur and Ruby couldn’t help but giggle.
Rayford collided with his handcuffed father on the car’s far side, before landing flat on his back in the empty seat beside him.
“Watch yourself, you little mutant!” snarled Rex.
“So sorry, Father,” the dwarf whimpered as he struggled to right himself. “I hope I haven’t hurt you. Oh, do forgive me.”
Back on the pavement, the giant tilted his head to face his little sister and the two locked eyes for a moment. Slowly, Royston’s mouth revealed a faint smile, but his eyes remained sad as he looked back at the outraged dwarf now sitting upright in the back of the squad car.
“How dare you!” Rayford screeched at him. “You’ve just crossed the wrong dwarf, Brother! You’re a dead man! Do you hear me, Royston? You’re—”
Just then, the attending officer snapped the door shut in Rayford’s face and climbed into the driving seat. A moment later, the car started up and lurched forward into the street.
As Arthur and the others watched the car pull away from the theater, they co
uld see the enraged dwarf jumping up and down in the rear window, shouting back at them at the top of his lungs—his screeches heard by no one but his father and the poor policeman tasked with transporting the two villains to jail.
Shortly after the car disappeared from view, the van arrived that would convey Rayford’s giant brother to a similar destination.
“All right then, Royston,” sighed Greenley. “That’ll be your ride, I’m afraid.”
The giant nodded. He stepped forward, then turned back to face Mr. Whipple.
“I am sorry, sir,” the giant said in a deep but clear voice, “for the terrible harm I have inflicted on your family. I knew it was wrong what we were doing; I wanted to stop it. I should have found my voice sooner. They—they were all the family I had. But I should have stood up to them.” He shifted his gaze to the ground. “For all my size, I’m afraid—I just wasn’t big enough.”
Mr. Whipple looked up into the giant’s face.
“Your crimes are serious indeed,” he sighed, “there is no question. Many of those I love have suffered dearly at your hand. And yet, today, that same hand has saved your sister from a brutal beating—and saved me from a second bullet. I cannot say for certain, but I imagine that counts for something. It’s up to you to decide the sort of work your hands will do from now on. Will it be of the former sort—or of the latter?” Mr. Whipple took in a deep breath, then slowly exhaled. “Indeed Royston, it seems today may prove to be a turning point for more than one of us.”