The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 1

by Roy MacGregor

  They began moving very quietly down the hallway when Travis thought he heard a thumping. Was it his heart coming right through his chest? He signalled for them all to stop, and listened. There it was again.

  “Let’s check this out first,” he said, turning.

  The three Screech Owls headed back down the hall, and the thumping grew louder. Further on, they could see a door almost closed. The thumping continued, then stopped.

  “Let’s get outta here!” said Nish.

  Travis forced himself to tip-toe closer.

  He crept up to the door and peered into the small room. There were two security guards inside, both tied up and gagged! One of them must have been pounding his feet on the floor.

  Travis’s first instinct was to untie them, but then he realized that one of them had to be the guard who’d let the robbers in.

  Had they double-crossed him? Or what if he’d been tied up as part of the plan? So no one would suspect him? Maybe he was still with the robbers?

  And which one was he?

  Travis raced back to Andy and Nish.

  “What is it?” Nish hissed.

  “They tied up two guards,” Travis told him.

  “Shouldn’t we untie them?” asked Andy.

  “Maybe one of them’s working with the robbers–we can’t take the chance.”

  Andy and Nish thought about it for a second and then realized the dilemma.

  “We’re going to have to pull this off ourselves,” Travis said.

  Travis’s first inclination was to head for the elevator, the same way he and Nish had gone when they first bumped into the robbers. But elevators make noise. Besides, it was already up a floor, having taken the two thieves up.

  “We’ve got to use the stairs,” Travis whispered.

  Neither questioned him. In the dim security lights, he could see both Nish and Andy nod.

  “Keep your heads down and go fast, and not a sound,” Travis said.

  Travis went first, low and scrambling up along the side of the stairs. From the top he could see the Great Hall where the trophies were. The elevator was to his right, down the short corridor where they had first encountered the robbers.

  Nish came up, then Andy, each crouching low. He could hear them breathing. Travis had them all wait a moment until they calmed down.

  They could hear noise from the vault area. The big doors were still open, and the robbers were talking.

  “You think somebody’s really going to pay a million bucks ransom for a piece of old tin like this?” It was the darker one with the scar.

  “This hockey-mad country?” the ponytail said. “You could get whatever you asked.”

  “Can’t you hurry it up?”

  “Just relax, okay. We move too fast, we trigger the secondary alarms. It’s gonna take twenty minutes to do this right.”

  A power tool started up. A saw? A drill? It was difficult to say. Travis turned and looked at Andy and Nish. They looked back at him, waiting for instructions.

  Travis felt a strange sensation. He thought he might actually know what to do.

  “Follow me,” he whispered, and ducked back down the stairs.

  At the bottom they caught their breath again. Nish and Andy waited for Travis to talk.

  “We’re going to block the elevator,” said Travis.

  “How? It’s already up there,” said Nish.

  “We’ll block it with a hockey stick,” Travis said. “Get a good straight one out of a display case. You can handle that part, Nish. Bring the stick over and call down the elevator–I don’t think they’ll hear it with all the noise they’re making–and then jam the door open.”

  “What good will that do?”

  “If the door can’t close, they won’t be able to call it up again and they’ll have to use the stairs.”

  Both Nish and Andy thought about it a moment, then nodded.

  “Get going,” Travis said, and Nish ducked away, still staying low to the ground.

  “C’mon with me,” Travis said to Andy.

  He scooted in the same direction Nish had gone, with Andy right behind him. When they came to the minivan, Travis stopped.

  “Very quietly open the doors–we’re taking Mom and Dad.”

  Andy glanced at him, not understanding, but said nothing. Travis seemed to know what he was doing and Travis was in charge.

  The dummies were strapped in, but pulled out fairly easily, and Travis, with Mom over his shoulder, turned and scurried back toward the stairs. Andy, carrying Dad, hurried along behind.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Travis stopped and listened. He could still hear the whir of power tools. He looked over toward the elevator and saw Nish, with a hockey stick in one hand, pushing the button to call the elevator.

  “Bring Dad over here,” Travis said.

  Andy dumped him beside Mom.

  “Can you bring both kids now?” Travis asked.

  He nodded and hurried away, back to the van.

  Travis sat down, breathing hard.

  What now?

  Before Andy came back with the two smaller dummies, Travis was well into his plan. He’d taken one of the rolls of shin-pad tape out of Nish’s bag and was putting it across the stairs about three-quarters of the way down and low to the ground. The cloudy tape did not show up in the dim light from the distant entrance way.

  “It’s done,” whispered Nish, who came back just as Andy emerged from the darkness with the two kid dummies and plunked them down beside their parents.

  Nish gave Travis a puzzled look.

  “You’ll see,” said Travis. “You think you could get jackets and caps from the security guards? Maybe flashlights?”

  Nish swallowed hard. “Alone?”

  Travis looked at him, waiting.

  Nish swallowed again. “I’ll try.”

  He hurried off, past the minivan, past the Richard exhibit where he’d found the perfectly straight Love & Bennett stick, and on to the partially closed door to the room where they had found the guards.

  He stopped to gather his courage. He breathed in twice, deeply, then gritted his teeth, stepped up to the door, and pulled it open.

  The two security guards were sitting on the floor. Their feet and hands were tied and tape was plastered over their mouths. All he could see was their eyes: wondering, frightened, puzzled, anxious.

  He couldn’t help himself. “Sorry, boys–looking for the Tie Domi exhibit.”

  The two security guards looked at him as if he’d just dropped in from outer space. They had just started their evening snack when the robbers had come in. Luckily for Nish, both had removed their uniform jackets and placed them over the backs of folding chairs. One hat was hanging up, the other on the floor. He grabbed the hats and jackets and looked around for flashlights.

  There was a small cupboard at the back of the room. He opened it. Inside were several big, silver flashlights and a bullhorn, just like the ones used on television for armed stand-offs. Perfect.

  It was hard to carry everything. He had to put one cap on his head, then he looped the jackets over one shoulder and gathered up two flashlights and the bullhorn. The only way he could carry the second cap was to put the hard plastic peak in his mouth and bite down.

  He pulled the cap out of his mouth for a moment. “I’ll try not to slobber,” he told the guards, who were still looking at him as if he were crazy. He bit down again, and with his arms and hands and mouth full, waddled quickly back to where Travis and Andy were finishing up the tape job on the stairs. When the other boys saw what Nish was bringing, they grinned. “Perfect,” said Andy.

  Travis looked around. The angle was just right; anything seen from the stairs would have the dim light in the corridor behind it and only show up as a silhouette.

  “Get the jackets and caps on Mom and Dad,” Travis said.

  The two other boys struggled to put the jackets on, then the caps. Nish had to pound one cap down onto Dad. “Fathead,” he whispered.

  T
hey moved Mom and Dad, now “Police” Officers Mom and Dad, out into the light of the corridor. Then Travis took the two kid dummies–whom they had named Data and Sister–and placed them behind a low exhibit on the opposite side. Again, with dim light behind them and nothing but a sweeping flashlight in front, they might appear to be crouching officers, waiting. Travis hoped so.

  “Nish,” Travis said, “you and I’ll have to work the dummies. Andy–we want your deepest voice for the loudspeaker.”

  Andy looked shocked. “What’ll I say?”

  “You’ll know. Just make it convincing.”

  The whining of the power tool came to an abrupt stop. The silence was overwhelming–more frightening than anything Travis had experienced this scary evening.

  The boys waited for several minutes, breathless, but there was nothing. No sound. No movement.

  Travis could not understand what was happening. Were the robbers already gone? Was there another way out? He hadn’t considered that possibility. The boys’ whole plan depended on the crooks having to come back down the stairs when they discovered the elevator wasn’t working.

  “Pssst!” Travis called to Nish, and signalled for him to follow.

  The two Screech Owls stepped carefully over the tape and ran quickly to the top of the stairs, where they crouched, waiting.

  Travis thought he could hear something! A rustle. A grunt. The boys edged silently closer until they could peek into the vault.

  Nish let out a slight gasp.

  The robbers had only just got the Stanley Cup off its stand. The ponytail was holding a sack open and the smaller robber was lowering it in. They’d be leaving any moment!

  Travis and Nish hurried back down the stairs, careful to step over the shin-pad tape once more. Travis gave Andy the thumbs-up to let him know everything was okay and to get ready. Nish scooted back to his post.

  The robbers were moving along the upper hall now. The boys went silent. Nish held onto the dad dummy for dear life for fear the figure would fall and the flashlight clatter across the floor. Travis was afraid to breathe.

  They could hear the robbers, angry.

  “What the hell’s going on?”

  They had obviously pushed the elevator button and nothing had happened. Travis could hear the propped-open elevator door bouncing lightly back and forth as it tried to close, but the stick was holding it. The elevator was going nowhere.

  “C’mon, we’ll use the stairs.”

  Good, Travis thought, exactly what we want.

  Travis’s heart could have accompanied a rock band. It was pounding so hard he thought it might be echoing off the walls. He thought maybe he could hear Nish’s heart as well. And Andy’s.

  In fact Nish was so afraid of making a sound his heart wasn’t even beating. He was hugging the dad dummy and holding onto the flashlight, and he had shut his eyes so tight he swore he could hear his eyelids squeak. He imagined the robbers suddenly coming to a halt, one of them holding up his hand and saying to the other: “Did you hear that? Sounded like a kid’s eyelid, didn’t it?”

  Andy was crouched down behind an exhibit, his thumb about to flick the switch on the bullhorn. He was praying the robbers would knock themselves out on the stairs after they hit the tape–anything so long as he didn’t have to go through with Travis’s plan. He imagined flicking the switch and standing up and nothing whatsoever coming out of his mouth. Either nothing at all or some high-pitched squeak as if he were still in kindergarten: “Put your hands up, Mr. Bad Guy, or I’ll tell the teacher on you!”

  But there was no more time for wild imaginings. The robbers were on the stairs. The big one, the one with the ponytail, had the bulging sack over his back. The little one with the scar had a black bag–the power tools.

  They came down quicker than Travis expected. A quarter of the way. Half way. Three quarters of the way, and they hit the tape together.

  “Aaaaarrrrghhhhhhhhh!!!” the ponytail shouted.

  “Geeeez!!” screamed the scar-face.

  The sound was like an explosion. Travis forgot all about his heart. He jumped up as the two robbers hit the tape. They fell face-first, the power tools clattering, the Stanley Cup ringing as it hit the hard floor of the lower hall.

  The robbers rolled a couple of times before settling in a heap at the bottom. Both seemed out cold–for a moment. Then they started swearing–worse than Travis had ever heard on a hockey rink–and began moving.

  “FACE DOWN ON THE FLOOR!” a huge voice boomed. “NNNNOOOOWWW!!”

  Travis spun around, thinking for a moment that the police actually had come. But it was Andy–his voice as deep and powerful and commanding as Travis had ever heard in his life. He almost hit the floor face-first himself.

  A big beam of impossibly bright light swept over the two bewildered, swearing robbers. It blinded them, then bounced about the room, sweeping quickly over the two kid dummies so it appeared, just for a fraction of a second, that there were more “cops” present than just the two standing in the entrance hall.

  Nish was very effective with his flashlight. He used it to make it seem that there was movement and to show that there were people there, but never let it linger. Every time he bounced it away from the robbers he turned it quickly back on them again, straight into their eyes, so all they could see was what must have looked like one big car headlight coming at them. Travis started to do the same with his light.

  “I SAID ON YOUR FACE. MOVE IT!!”

  Both robbers did exactly as they were told. They rolled, groaning and swearing, over onto their stomachs, faces down toward the floor but still straining to look up.

  All they saw was the blinding flashlights.

  “BEND YOUR FEET UP!! HANDS BEHIND THE BACK!! RIGHT NOW, MISTER! MOVE!”

  This was Travis’s signal. His heart skipped as he moved out from the shadow of the stairs and approached the robbers from behind.

  “FACES DOWN!!” Andy shouted in his deepest voice. His voice was filling the room. It frightened even Travis, who knew where it was coming from.

  “DIG YOUR NOSES INTO THE FLOOR, AND NOWWW!!”

  The robbers, still cursing, did as they were told. Travis, careful to stay directly behind them so they couldn’t see, quickly taped their hands and feet together with a roll of shin-pad tape. He went through two rolls before the ponytailed one turned and caught a glimpse of him.

  “What the hell?! It’s a kid!!”

  The scar-face also twisted to see, his eyes bulging. “Ehhh?! What the…?”

  When they realized the person doing the tying-up was Travis Lindsay, captain of the Screech Owls, not Chief of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Force, they began twisting like fish at the bottom of a boat. Neither could move his hands or feet, but they could still scream.

  “You little…”

  “You take this tape off right now, you little jerk–or else!!”

  Nish came running up now, suddenly brave. He had the security officer’s cap on and was waving the flashlight. He had Dad over his shoulder. He tossed him toward the robbers.

  “Stay with them, Officer Dummy!” Nish ordered.

  When the two robbers saw they had been fooled by a dummy, they began twisting and cursing even more.

  Andy came running out from his hiding place holding the loudspeaker.

  “NO SWEARING!” Andy ordered. That only made them curse all the more.

  “Such mouths!” Nish said, shaking his head in a disapproving manner.

  “Trav,” he called. “You got any of that tape left?”

  Travis nodded, pulled half-a-roll out of his pocket, and tossed it to Nish. Nish put down the flashlight and went over to the ponytail. Standing behind him, he pulled out a length of the tape and tried to fit it over the robber’s screaming mouth.

  “Now, now, now,” Nish said in his best teacher’s voice. “This is for your own good.”

  It took him several tries, but finally he hit the robber’s mouth and the screaming and swearing was partly muffed. H
e continued to loop the tape around the robber’s head, careful not to cover his nose, and soon he was silent, but still furiously squirming.

  Nish moved over and did the same to the scar-face. Soon there was only the sound of the tape coming off the roll. The sound, Travis thought, of a hockey dressing room. How appropriate!

  The two robbers were trussed and ready for pick-up. All they needed was the police to come–but Nish wasn’t through. He was scrambling after the sack. He picked up his big flashlight and threw it to Travis.

  “Work the spotlight!” he shouted.

  Travis hadn’t a clue what Nish meant.

  Nish reached into the sack and pulled out the Stanley Cup. He checked it. A new dent, perhaps, but nothing more. He lifted it up and kissed it, just like the victorious NHL players do.

  He then hoisted the Stanley Cup high over his head and began pretending he was skating about the hall with it. “My spotlight!” he yelled out. Travis turned on the flashlight and shone it on Nish. It was just like a spotlight!

  Nish completed a circuit of the hall, blowing kisses into the stands, blowing kisses at the two squirming robbers, bowing, kissing the Stanley Cup.

  He then took the cup and, very carefully, set it on the step behind the taped-up robbers. He kissed it one more time.

  “Let’s get outta here!” Nish said.

  Travis had two more things to do. With Nish’s flashlight, they went back down the hall to where the two security officers were still tied up and taped silent. They stared and made muffed sounds as the boys came in, but the three had no intention of loosening them, even if one was totally innocent.

  Travis rooted around the room until he found a piece of cardboard and a black felt pen. Then he made a quick sign:

  ONE OF THESE GUARDS WAS

  WORKING FOR THE ROBBERS.

  He turned and showed it to the guards. One looked fiercely at him, the other looked surprised at the other guard. Travis was pretty sure he knew which one was guilty, but he still couldn’t take a chance. He propped up the sign on a chair and they left the room.