by Andrew Cope
‘Did we do it?’ asked Darren. ‘Did we save Cupcake?’
Lara peered into the trousers.
‘What on earth are you gawping at, mongrel?’ yapped Cupcake. ‘For goodness’ sake get me out of this cage! And these ridiculous troll’s trousers.’
Lara smiled. No need to thank me, little mutt. All in a day’s work for a Spy Dog!
Princess Pretty watched with delight as the carriage crashed down from the rails. The ground shook, a tree toppled and pieces of metal whizzed over her head. A huge cloud of dust mushroomed into the air, which was filled with the sound of screaming steel.
She was disappointed to see the small crowd of passengers huddled high up on the track. ‘I guess you can’t have everything,’ she cursed. ‘But at least I have the cash. Hollywood, here I come!’
Lara looked up at the whirring helicopter. A ladder was dangling and she could see Sophie clinging on. Ben gave her a thumbs up. Phew! she thought as Darren opened the cage and gently lifted Cupcake out. Looks like everyone’s being rescued. Now for Princess Potty!
Lara stood up and looked around. She spotted a figure in a pink dress standing on top of a small hill. Got you. No getting away this time – I have a troll on my side! She looked at Darren and pointed to the hill.
‘I see her,’ said Darren, tucking Cupcake firmly under his arm. ‘Let’s go!’
‘Put me down!’ wailed Cupcake as Darren and Lara raced towards the hill.
‘Sorry, Cupcake,’ woofed Lara as Princess Pretty turned and ran. ‘We have a baddie to catch!’
‘She’s heading for the theme park,’ panted Darren.
They burst out of the forest just as Princess Pretty reached the edge of the park. The baddie ran full pelt into the crowd, knocking over a small child and punching a woman in the face as she went. ‘Out of my way!’ she screamed.
Princess Pratface doesn’t care who she hurts, does she? thought Lara. Left! She’s gone left! she noted as she spotted the pink dress bobbing through the crowds.
They sprinted after her and burst out on to the pedestrian street next to the log flume. Lara skidded to a halt, looking for a pink dress. There she goes! And she’s got the rucksack with her.
Princess Pretty was forcing her way up the steps to the log flume, pushing people out of her way. She reached the wooden quayside where the logs were moored.
‘Ticket?’ asked the attendant, holding out his hand.
Princess Pretty whacked him with the money bag and he fell into the water. She leapt on to a waiting log.
Darren sprinted away down the hill, with Cupcake still howling under his arm.
He’s heading for the end of the flume ride, thought Lara. Good! Pincer movement! I’ll stick with Princess – if I can make it in time! She noticed a high fence with ‘Wild West Log Ride’ nailed to it. Short cut! She clawed her way to the top of the fence, cat-style, and launched herself. ‘Geronimo!’ barked Lara as she disappeared over the top of the fence. She thumped into an empty log. Perfect landing! Now for the chase. The current picked them up and they were swirled into a downhill torrent of water. Lara swished her paws through the water, paddling hard.
Princess Pretty looked round. Her face twisted into a snarl of fury when she spotted Lara in the log behind.
They swirled round a few corners and through a dark tunnel, all the time Lara gaining on Princess Pretty and the ransom money. The ride was almost at an end when Lara decided to go for it. It’s now or never! She crouched at the front of the log and sprang, just as the flume plunged downwards in its final splash. A camera flashed, there was a mini tidal wave and the ride ended with Lara sitting on top of the evil baddie, money bag safely in her jaws. Darren cheered. Lara bowed.
All the fight had gone out of Princess Pretty, but Lara sat on her until the security guards arrived, just in case. As Darren was explaining the situation, a Land Rover pulled up and Summer Rayne jumped out, followed by the Cooks and Mr Cartwright.
‘Cupcake!’ cried Summer, running straight past the backpack of money to scoop the little dog up in her arms. The crowd began to take photographs.
‘No pictures!’ squeaked Cupcake, for the first time in her life. Summer opened her shoulder bag and the little dog dived gratefully inside.
‘I’m so sorry, Mr Cartwright,’ cried Darren. ‘I’ve been a fool! I had no idea she was planning this!’ He burst into tears.
Lara felt sorry for Darren. He was just a big stupid lump who had fallen in love with the wrong woman.
‘I believe you, son,’ said Mr Cartwright. ‘She had us all fooled.’
Huh! Speak for yourself, thought Lara.
‘It wasn’t me – it was him!’ screamed Princess Pretty, pointing at Darren. ‘He did it all! And no one can prove otherwise!’
In response, Lara stuck her nose into Summer’s bag and detached the bottom part of the camera locket on Cupcake’s collar with her teeth. She trotted over to Mr Cartwright and dropped the plug-in memory stick into his hand.
Mr Cartwright hurried over to the control cubicle of the flume ride and plugged in the memory stick. A few seconds later, the big screens all over Enchanted Towers Theme Park were showing images of Princess Pretty’s snarling face as she roped Cupcake’s cage to the rollercoaster.
‘Well, she got what she wanted,’ woofed Lara. ‘She’s the star of the big screen!’
Princess Pretty let out an off-key wail and Darren screwed up his face at the noise. ‘I’ve been wanting to tell you this for ages,’ he said. ‘You can’t sing, Princess. You can’t sing for toffee!’
‘Oh, I recognize you now!’ said Summer Rayne, staring at Princess Pretty’s wide open mouth. ‘You’re the chorus girl from my first musical!’
‘Yes!’ hissed Princess Pretty. ‘And you stopped the director from giving me the star role!’
Summer Rayne looked bewildered. ‘Actually, I persuaded him to give you a place in the chorus.’
‘Rubbish! He told me he’d never heard anything like my singing!’
‘He meant it too,’ said Summer. ‘He said that when you sang, you honked like a goose!’
Princess Pretty wailed even more loudly as she was led away to the police van, forcing everyone to stuff their fingers in their ears.
‘Honks like a goose? I think that’s an insult to our feathered friends,’ woofed Lara.
The flume ride manager presented Lara with her official ride photo, taken at the top of the final drop. It had captured her sailing through the air towards Princess Pretty. ‘One for your scrapbook,’ he suggested.
Lara puffed out her chest. A Spy Dog always gets her baddie!
The pups were curled up together, gently snoring. Star was twitching, dreaming of her rollercoaster brush with death. Spud wore a satisfied smile, his belly heaving up and down, swollen with his chicken curry reward.
‘Check this out, Lara,’ said Ben, pointing at the news. ‘It’s us!’ And sure enough, there were the Cooks, waving to the TV helicopter. ‘Our job is to tell the news,’ said the reporter. ‘It’s not often we get to make the news,’ he grinned. ‘And it’s not every day that we get to rescue a pop star from a rollercoaster catastrophe. I guess it was a case of right place, right time.’
Lara whistled softly as she watched the footage of the news helicopter winching the survivors aboard. ‘These were today’s dramatic scenes as pop star Summer Rayne was rescued from the mangled wreckage of the world’s fastest fairground ride.’ Summer’s face lit up the TV as she beamed at her rescuers. ‘How’s that for a rock and rollercoaster!’ grimaced the news reader, wishing he didn’t have to read out other people’s scripts.
Cool ending, thought Lara.
Ben looked across at his pet dog and grinned. ‘You, Mrs Retired Spy Dog, caught her red-handed. Plus the video evidence from Cupcake’s collar means the police have a watertight case!’
Lara stretched with pride, her bullet-holed ear standing proud.
‘And Cupcake?’ asked Ollie. ‘The cute little hound. Is she OK?’<
br />
Lara cast a disapproving look at Ollie. Little maybe, she thought. But cute? Never. And the worst doggie attitude ever!
‘She’s been temporarily rehoused,’ explained Sophie. ‘On a farm in Wales. Summer’s going on tour and she thinks Cupcake needs to recuperate after her fall.
Lara grinned a huge doggie grin on the inside that showed as a lolloping tongue on the outside. Her eyes sparkled as she considered Cupcake’s new surroundings. Imagine the mud! And the sheep dogs! Maybe she’ll learn some manners?
Lara lay down and put her head between her paws. Rescuing people from crashed rollercoasters and catching baddies on log flumes is exhausting work! Her eyes were already half closed. She cast one more look at Ben, Sophie and Ollie. Adventure is great, she thought. But families are better!
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, Block D, Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North, Gauteng 2193, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
puffinbooks.com
First published 2012
Text copyright © Andrew Cope and Ann Coburn, 2012
Illustrations copyright © James de la Rue, 2012
Cover illustrations by Andrew Farley
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted
Typeset by Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk, Stirlingshire
ISBN: 978-0-141-97026-4
Turn over the page to get your paws on a sneaky peek at the first chapter of
1. The Mask with Two Faces
‘Follow me, folks!’ the museum guide called.‘You’re about to see one of the most important pieces of art in the whole world – and we’re proud to have it on display in our very own Metropolitan Museum of Art, right here in New York!’
A crowd of tourists and a teacher with a party of schoolchildren followed the guide through a narrow tunnel into a round, windowless room. A circle in the middle of the room was roped off, leaving a strip of open floor around the edge. As the crowd shuffled in and lined up behind the rope barrier, two men in dark suits slipped into the room and stood behind the crowd, one on either side of the tunnel.
If anyone had looked at the pair, they would have had a shock. The two men were identical in every detail, except that one had a mole on his right cheek and the other had exactly the same mole on his left cheek. Nobody did look, though; they were all too busy peering at the shadowy object roped off in the middle of the room.
‘Here we go,’ said the guide. ‘Feast your eyes on the Janus mask!’ He flicked a switch and a powerful spotlight snapped on.
The crowd gasped. The mask in the centre of the room was made of pure beaten gold; it gleamed softly as it turned on its pedestal. It had two identical faces, one at the front and one at the back.
‘Can I try it on?’ asked a small girl.
‘Sorry, sweetie,’ said the guide. ‘This isn’t a fancy dress mask. It’s priceless! It dates back to early Roman times and it’s the only one of its kind.’
A boy raised his hand. ‘Why does it have two faces?’
‘Good question, son,’ said the guide. ‘Janus was a Roman god who could see both forward into the future and backward into the past, so the mask-maker gave him two faces. You could say Janus had eyes in the back of his head, just like your teacher here!’
The schoolchildren giggled.
‘Yes, I do,’ agreed the teacher. ‘That’s how I know some of you are eating candy right now, even though I told you no food in the museum!’
The children stopped giggling and there was a rustling as sweets were reluctantly pushed back into pockets. The adults in the crowd chuckled and then everyone turned back to studying the golden mask.
Everyone except the two dark-suited men. They were busy checking out the museum security instead. Their cold blue eyes took in the lasers, the security cameras and the pressure pad under the mask. Finally, they both focused on a thin steel ring set into the floor around the pedestal. They frowned. The steel ring was something new. What was it for? What did it do? Their eyes met and they both gave the slightest of shrugs.
Just then a boy in front of the men eased a bag of jelly babies back out of his pocket. The pair shared a smile and then bent down, one on each side of the boy.
‘Teacher said no candy, kid!’ hissed one of the men.
The boy jumped and, at the same time, the other man nudged his arm. A jelly baby flew from the bag, sailed over the rope barrier and bounced on to the floor beside the steel ring. The two men watched with interest to see what would happen next.
The jelly baby was instantly sliced in half as a cylinder shot up out of the steel ring. The cylinder zoomed upwards with a metallic hiss and locked into a groove in the roof, sealing the Janus mask behind a pillar of steel.
In the moment of stunned silence that followed, one of the dark-suited men plucked the remaining jelly babies from the boy’s hand. The boy began to cry.
‘Simon!’ roared the teacher. ‘Was that your jelly baby?’
‘It wasn’t my fault! It was those nasty men!’
Simon turned and pointed behind him, but there was nobody there. The men had slipped away.
‘Jelly baby, Brad?’
‘Thanks, Chad. Don’t mind if I do.’
Brad and Chad Onkers strolled away from the museum into Central Park, chewing on Simon’s jelly babies. They found a quiet bench and sat down side by side.
‘We must,’ began Brad.
‘Have that mask,’ finished Chad.
‘It’s us!’ began Brad.
‘In gold!’ finished Chad.
The Onkers twins turned on the bench so that they were back to back, and posed as the Janus mask. It was a spooky sight. Their spiky blond hair was exactly the same length and thickness, their noses had identical bumps across the bridge, and their chins both had a cleft down the middle which made them look like tiny bums. The only way to tell them apart was their moles.
‘So. It’s agreed. We steal,’ began Chad.
‘The Janus mask,’ finished Brad.
‘In time for,’ began Chad.
‘Our birthday next week,’ finished Brad.
‘Better than any cake!’ they said together.
‘But how,’ asked Brad.
‘Do we do it?’ finished Chad.
‘It’ll be our toughest job yet,’ said Brad.
‘Let’s think on it,’ said Chad.
They sat on the bench until they had finished Simon’s jelly babies, then they both shook their heads and stood up.
‘Nothing yet,’ said Chad.
‘Me neither,’ admitted Brad. ‘We’ll figure it out. We always do. Meanwhile, I gotta get to work.’ He pulled an FBI badge from his pocket and hung it round his neck. The badge had his photograph on one side, and the words SPECIAL AGENT B. ONKERS on the other.
‘I gotta get to work too,’ said Chad, pulling a set of skeleton keys from his pocket and running them through his fingers.
‘What’s the heist this time?’ asked Brad.
‘Those two Picasso paintings in the mansion you were protecting a few months back.
’
Brad’s blue eyes gleamed greedily. ‘They’ll look lovely hanging on our wall. You got the codes for the burglar alarm?’
Chad nodded and tapped the side of his head. ‘It’s all in here. The layout of the mansion – everything. That night I spent there posing as you was very useful. You know, Brad, every art thief should have a twin working in the FBI!’
‘And every FBI agent should have a twin working as an art thief!
‘Two heads are better than one,’ said Chad.
‘Or two faces,’ said Brad.
The Onkers twins leant their identical faces together and gave an identical evil laugh.