Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: The Magical Car

by Ian Fleming

  CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG leaped forward with an angry roar from her twin exhausts and swooped low at the other three gangsters, who just had time to throw themselves down on their faces or they would have been mown down, like Joe the Monster, by the charging wings. And then the great green aerocar, for that is what she had become, just cleared the top of the gangsters’ car and roared off towards the main road.

  Of course the gangsters were soon on their feet and all their guns spat bullets at the swooping green dragon, but Commander Pott zigzagged the wheel, and although there was one bang as a bullet hit the coachwork, the other bullets whistled harmlessly past and the spurting flames of the revolvers got smaller and smaller in the dusk.

  “Whew!” said Commander Pott. “That was a narrow shave.”

  The others made whewing noises and thanked heaven for the way their magical CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG had saved them from the gangsters’ terrible revenge.

  They got to the main road to Calais and Commander Pott eased CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG down on to the smooth surface. She gave a bump or two and then was going like the wind down the empty road, with the big headlamps lighting up the way to the distant glow of Calais and the huge feast of omelettes and roast chicken and ice-cream they were all looking forward to.

  They drew up in front of a nice-looking hotel called the Splendide (which, as you’ve guessed, is French for “splendid”) and Commander Pott ordered their rooms, and while they tidied up and had a good scrub (much needed by now, as you can guess!) he ordered the delicious dinner in the bright and cheerful dining-room and went out to look after CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG, because, as you know, you must always see that your car is cosy and happy for the night before you look after yourself.

  Commander Pott filled up the car with petrol and oil and water, checked the batteries and the tyres and drove the car into a comfortable garage beside the hotel. Once he had seen that she seemed contented and in good order, he decided to leave her washing and polishing for the morning, when all the family could help. Then he patted her on her rather hot nose and locked her up for the night and went back into the hotel, where the whole family sat down to their delicious dinner before going up to bed for a wonderful and, I’m sure you’ll agree, well-earned rest.

  BUT —

  BUT —

  BUT —

  And again BUT!

  Later that night, when they were all fast asleep, a long black car, with Joe the Monster at the wheel and Man-Mountain Fink and Soapy Sam and Blood-Money Banks crouching down in the body of the car, came creeping up to the Hotel Splendide in the darkness and hid itself amongst the shadows down a side turning.

  Joe the Monster and his gang, still bent on revenge, crept round the ground-floor windows of the sleeping hotel, looking for a way to break in and get at Commander Pott and his family.

  And once again Commander Caractacus Pott and Mimsie and Jeremy and Jemima were in mortal danger!

  The moon shone down on the Hotel Splendide where the Pott family, Commander Caractacus Pott, Mimsie, and the twins, Jeremy and Jemima, lay fast asleep after their terrific adventures of the last twenty-four hours. In the hotel garage CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG was also dozing comfortably, as her engine and crankshaft and brake linings cooled off after her exciting dash across the Channel to France.

  When Joe the Monster had seen the lights go out in the hotel and had noticed from the shadows on the blinds that Commander Pott and Mimsie were sleeping in one room, with Jeremy and Jemima in another room next door, he and his ruffians got swiftly to work.

  From the boot of the car they took out a number of burglarious instruments — a telescopic aluminium ladder for climbing the wall of the hotel, a jemmy (this is a burglar’s tool for opening windows and doors that looks rather like a very powerful tin-opener) and some rope. Joe the Monster whispered a series of commands, and in a trice the gang had run the ladder up the hotel wall to the room where Jeremy and Jemima lay fast asleep. Then, while Man-Mountain Fink, who was as strong and as big as he sounds, held the foot of the ladder, Soapy Sam, who was a very tiny man but a very strong one, crept softly up the ladder and after some quick work with the jemmy slipped over the window-sill into the room where the twins lay sleeping.

  He had had his orders. He went first to Jemima’s bed, whirled up the four corners of the sheet on which she was lying, and with her bundled up inside it, tied a knot out of the four corners so as to make her look like a bundle of washing. And almost before she could awake, he handed her softly out of the window and into the arms of Man-Mountain Fink.

  Jeremy had stirred in his sleep, but here again it only needed a few quick movements and he too was on his way out of the window, and then their clothes and shoes were hurled pell-mell after them.

  But of course the children were quickly awake, and even before they could be bundled into the back of the black car, they had started to struggle and squeak.

  But, alas, not loud enough!

  Mimsie woke up and said sleepily to Commander Pott, “Did you hear that squeaking? It sounded sort of muffled. I suppose it wasn’t the children.”

  But Commander Pott only gave a sleepy grunt and said, “I expect it was bats or mice,” and went firmly off to sleep again. And neither of them paid any attention to the sound of the black car starting up and softly driving away.

  Fortunately CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG had smelt trouble. Heaven knows how, but there it is. There was much about this magical car that even Commander Pott couldn’t understand. All I can say is that, as the gangsters’ low black roadster stole away down the moonlit streets, perhaps its movement jolted something or made some electrical connection in the mysterious insides of CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG, but anyway there was the tiny soft whirr of machinery, hardly louder than the buzz of a mosquito, and behind the ornament on the bonnet, a small antenna, like a wireless aerial, rose softly, and the small oval bit of wire mesh in miniature, rather like what you see on top of the big radar towers on airports, began to swivel until it was directly pointing after the gangsters’ car, which was now hurtling up the great main road towards Paris.

  And all through the night, while Commander Pott and Mimsie were asleep and while the twins were being bumped about in the back of the gangsters’ car, CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG’s Radar Eye was following every twist and turn of Joe the Monster, hunched over the wheel of his black tourer.

  Now Joe the Monster was in fact head of an international gang of robbers and ruffians and he was known in France as Joe le Monstre (I hope this isn’t the first French word you’ve learnt!). And when things got too hot for him in England, he moved his gang over to France and vice versa.

  As soon as they got out of the town of Calais, he ordered the knots on top of the sheet bundles which contained Jeremy and Jemima to be undone by Soapy Sam and Blood-Money Banks, between whom the twins were wedged on the back seat. For although he was a monster in the eyes of the law, neither he nor his gang of crooks were so monstrous as to want Jeremy and Jemima to suffocate.

  The two children were too startled to know really what was happening to them. They both knew it wasn’t something good, but being children of rather adventurous parents, they weren’t easily frightened.

  Joe the Monster leant back from the wheel and said over his shoulder, in a voice that was meant to be sugary, “Now then, duckies, everything’s quite all right. Your dear pa and ma have asked us to take you for a little night drive to see something of the French countryside by moonlight.” He turned to Man-Mountain Fink, who sat beside him. “Ain’t that right, Man-Mountain?”

  “Absolutely-one-hundred-per-cent-right-and-cross-my-heart-and-wish-to-die,” said the big man all in one breath.

  “Hear that, my duckies?” called Joe the Monster above the rushing of the wind. “You’re in good hands, the very best. You just go off to bye-byes, and when you wakey-wakey, there’ll be a delicious brekky waiting for you.”

  Now, if there is one thing the twins, and most other children of their age, hate, it is being t
alked to in baby language. Certainly as far as Jeremy was concerned, he would prefer Joe to be monstrous rather than niminy-piminy. At least you know where you are with grown-ups who behave like grown-ups, but no child likes a grown-up to talk like a baby.

  But truth to tell, both Jeremy and Jemima were too sleepy from the previous day’s adventures to care very much what was happening to them, so they snuggled up together and Jemima was soon fast asleep. But before Jeremy dozed off, he heard snatches of conversation between Joe the Monster and Man-Mountain Fink drifting back from the front seat.

  And the snatches of conversation were something like this:

  “Just what we want for the Bon-Bon job . . . innocent pair of monkeys . . . shove ’em in just before closing . . . five thousand francs . . . keys of the safe are in the till . . . when the old geezer goes for the change . . . then Soapy can use the jelly.”

  Trying to make head or tail out of these mysterious sentences, Jeremy snuggled up alongside Jemima, and lulled by the speed of the car and the rush of wind, and knowing, as children always do know, that their father and mother would soon rescue them, he too went fast asleep.

  It had been three o’clock in the morning when the children had been kidnapped from the Hotel Splendide, and it was eight o’clock when the gangsters’ car drew up outside a deserted warehouse owned by Joe the Monster in the suburbs of Paris, over 150 miles away from Calais.

  And it was precisely at this moment, when the gangsters were carrying the bundled-up children into the building, that the miniature radar on the bonnet of CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG held steady, as if she knew that this was the end of their journey. Then, perhaps because of a short circuit or perhaps for some other reason quite beyond my understanding, CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG’s powerful klaxon began to go “GA-GOO-GA, GA-GOO-GA, GA-GOO-GA” and just went on doing it, making the most horrendous din you could imagine.

  Commander Pott and Mimsie were instantly awake, and with, I am sorry to say, a very powerful swear word (it was “Dash my wig and whiskers,” if you want to know), Commander Pott leapt out of his bed, pulled on some clothes, and dashed downstairs and round to the garage to find what the electrical fault was and stop it before they had the whole population of Calais, led by the police and the fire-brigade, charging round to find out who was responsible for the horrendous din. You can imagine his astonishment when directly he tore open the garage doors and stood face to face with CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG, there was one last “GOO-GA” and then dead silence.

  “Now, what the devil’s the matter with you?” said Commander Pott. And as if in reply, the giant headlamps suddenly blazed on and off in one gigantic wink of warning.

  Commander Pott was even more puzzled. “There must be something terribly wrong with your electrical system,” he said sympathetically. “Let’s see what the matter is,” and he went to open the bonnet. But then, for the first time, he caught sight of the thin little radar antenna sticking up in front of the wind-shield, and he stopped in his tracks. “What in heaven’s name . . .” he had just begun, when Mimsie came dashing across from the hotel.

  “The children,” she cried desperately, “they’re gone! And their clothes too! There are the marks of a ladder on the window-sill and somebody’s been at the window breaking in! They’ve been kidnapped, I know it, by those awful men we ran into yesterday! For heaven’s sake, Jack,” (which she always used as short for Caractacus) “what are we to do?”

  Commander Pott didn’t argue, or say “Are you sure?” or “How do you know?” or even go to see the evidence for himself. He knew that Jeremy and Jemima would never have left the hotel of their own accord — and certainly not, he added realistically to himself, without having had any breakfast. He looked from the tearful Mimsie to CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG, and suddenly he knew, he knew absolutely for sure, that that was the meaning of the radar device, and that the magical car had sounded her own horn both to wake them up and because she knew where the twins had gone.

  “Here, darling,” he said urgently. “Here’s some money. Be a good girl and run over and get the rest of my clothes and pay the bill. CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG knows where they’ve gone. Don’t ask me how, but I know it for sure, and we’ll get after them.”

  As Mimsie ran off, glad to have something to take her mind away from her fears, Commander Pott jumped into the driving-seat and pressed the self-starter, and at once the great car, with her usual “CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG,” leapt into life, and Commander Pott steered her out and across the street just as Mimsie came running out of the hotel.

  She jumped in beside him and they were off, slowly at first so that Commander Pott could watch the movement of the little radar scanner on the bonnet just in front of him. At first it pointed left down the main street and then corrected itself just like a compass when it had got on the right course, and then at the big turning towards Paris it swivelled to the right, and Commander Pott obediently whirled the wheel and they were off on the huge main road which said TO PARIS.

  Now Commander Pott really trod hard down on the accelerator and the speedometer climbed up and hung around a hundred miles an hour, as the great green car, its supercharger screaming like a banshee, positively ate up the kilometres, which, instead of miles, is how they measure distances on the Continent. As each fork or turning in the road came up, he followed the direction indicated by the radar scanner, and with CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG going lickety-split, lickety-split, lickety-split, they hurtled on towards the gangster hide-out, where Jeremy and Jemima had been locked into a bare, cell-like room at the back of the deserted warehouse.

  Jeremy’s and Jemima’s clothes had been thrown in with them, and they now dressed quickly and began, in whispers just in case anybody might be listening at the door, to wonder where they were and what was going to happen to them — and above all, when somebody was going to bring them their breakfast.

  Jeremy was just telling Jemima about the mysterious words of Joe the Monster, “doing the Bon-Bon job” and “Soapy using the jelly,” when the door was unlocked and Joe the Monster himself came in, beaming (as far as, with his ugly mug, he could beam), while behind him Soapy Sam followed with a tray that he put down on the floor beside the children (there was no furniture in the room — not a stick of it).

  Jeremy got stoutly to his feet and said, in as firm a voice as he could muster, “Where are we and what are you doing with us? You’ll get into bad trouble if you don’t take us back to our parents straight away. You’ll have the police after you any moment now.” And he glared as big a glare as he could glare into the black-bearded face of the huge man who towered above him.

  “Ha, ha, that’s good, that’s real good! Hear that, Soapy? The young ’un says the cops will be after me.” He turned back to Jeremy and leered hideously down at him. “Why, my little man, the cops have been after me since I was smaller than you. Think of that now, all these years they’ve been hunting after me and my pals and they ain’t caught up yet. Often been sniffing at me heels, mark you, even offered ten thousand pounds for what they are pleased to call ‘information leading to my apprehension,’ which, in English, means how to catch me. And now you expect me to quake in my shoes because of a little English family called Pott! Haw, haw, haw!” And he positively shook with demonic laughter.

  Jeremy said angrily, “We’re not so little as all that. My father was a commander in the Navy and he is a famous inventor and explorer, and anyway, besides us there’s CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG.”

  “And who might he be?”

  “It’s not a ‘he.’ It’s a ‘she,’ and she’s a car, the most wonderful car in the world, she’s ma . . .” Jeremy was going to say “magical,” but he shut his mouth just in time. Better keep that a secret!

  “Oh, you mean that old green rattletrap of yours?” sneered Joe the Monster. “I’ll give you that it’s certainly a rum old bus — the way it took to the air last evening when we had you cornered. I suppose your inventor pa has found some way to make a car fly. That right?” Joe the M
onster’s small, pig-like eyes became smaller and craftier than ever. “I suppose you’ve got something there. That invention might be worth a lot of money in the right hands. Now, if you’d like to tell your old pal Joe how it’s done, maybe I can take out some patents and give your dad a piece of the money I’d get for sellin’ ’em. What about it, young feller? You and me go into partnership, sort of?”

  Jeremy said bluntly, “I don’t know how it works and I wouldn’t tell you if I did know.”

  “Oh, well,” said Joe the Monster, “I guess I’m not all that keen to go into the motor-car business. Now then, let’s get down to brass tacks and then you two youngsters can tuck in to that scrumptious brekky Soapy’s brewed up for you. Now then”— he looked at them both craftily —“just you both listen to me, and if you do what you’re told, you’ll come to no harm, and even earn yourself a bit of pocket-money into the bargain. And when it’s over, I’ll see you’re both put on a train and sent back to your precious dad and mum in that hotel in Calais.”

  Jeremy opened his mouth to speak, but Joe the Monster held up a big hairy fist. “Now, don’t you argue with me, young ’un, and I don’t want any more of your lip. Just listen carefully to what you have to do.” He paused and spoke slowly, looking from one to the other of them to see that they were paying attention. “Now, all I’m telling you both to do is to go and buy yourselves a big box of chocolates. How would you like that? Just kind of a reward for being such a jolly couple of kids, see? I like kids, I really luv ’em.” (Joe the Monster tried to put a sweet, fatherly expression on his face, but all that he could manage was a kind of ape-like grimace.) “Now then, not far away from here, twenty minutes’ ride, is the most famous chocolate-shop in the world. It’s called Le Bon-Bon, which, in case you don’t know it, is French for ‘sweet,’ and it’s run by an old geezer called Monsieur Bon-Bon. He’s been in it for fifty years, and his dad before him and his grandad before that, and he makes the finest sweets and chocolates in the world, get me? Absolutely the top lollies. Now, this here old geezer’s a funny old guy and he only opens up his shop for four hours in the middle of the day. Can’t be bothered to keep it open any longer because he and his parents have made so much money that he doesn’t have to work too hard, see? So he keeps the shop open from ten to twelve in the morning and from two to four in the afternoon. At twelve o’clock this morning, me and my pals are going to drive you round there and give you a pocketful of money, and all you’ve got to do is what I tell you. You walk into the shop and ask for a box of chocolates costing four thousand francs, that’s about three English pounds in the old francs, which are the only kind I understand, so you can see it’s a fine box of chocolates, eh?” And he looked inquiringly from one to the other.