by Ian Fleming
So, inch by inch, the family, working in the bright glare from CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG’S headlights, began examining what seemed to be a solid wall of chalk blocking the cave—just as if the original cave diggers had decided they couldn’t be bothered to burrow any farther. The only clue, which Commander Pott found very early on, was that there was the tiniest crack that wandered, zigzagging, down the middle of the wall. It might have been natural, just a fault in the chalk surface, but again it might not, because through the crack a sharp draft was blowing from the other side.
Jemima had chosen to grub about in the right-hand corner where the wall met the side-wall of the cave. There were a lot of bits of flint embedded in the chalk. (There had been the whole way along the walls and roof of the cave, just like you find in the chalk of any chalk cliff. Some of them are fossils. It’s often worth digging them out to see.) Jemima found a jagged piece of flint almost as big as a football. Some instinct made her tug at it and go on tugging until it suddenly came away in her hand so that she almost fell over backward. She bent down and peered into the hole the flint had left in the chalk and at once she gave a squawk .of excitement and called, “Daddy, come quickly!” And when Commander Pott knelt down beside her, he saw what she had seen—AN ELECTRIC LIGHT SWITCH!
“By golly, you’re a clever girl, Jemima! I do believe you’ve found the secret.” He called to the other two, “Stand back everyone. I’m going to press down this switch. Heaven only knows what’ll happen. Ready?” And he pressed down the switch.
From somewhere inside the walls of the cave, there came a deep rumbling and grinding of machinery as, very slowly, the jagged zigzag crack in the solid wall widened and widened and widened until the two halves of what was really a secret door slid sideways into deep slots in the side walls of the cave. And what do you think CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG’S lights showed through the opening? A huge, vaulted room, quite as big as the inside of your village church, and all round the sides were cases and boxes and barrels and sacks neatly stacked up against the walls. It was an underground warehouse—a very secret warehouse for secret things. What could these things be? And who owned them? And why did the owners want to keep them secret? And why did they want a very private cave leading down through the cliff to the sea? And where were the owners? And, since it all smelled so strongly of secrecy, and therefore probably of unlawfulness, how nasty could these owners be?
These questions and many others ran through all their minds, and Commander Pott put their thoughts in a nutshell when he put his hands on his hips and declared, “Ho hum! I smell dirty work! Now then everyone, switch on the brains! Full power! What do we do next?”
Mimsie, who was, like all mothers, worried about the children, said at once, “Darling, let’s close the secret door again and reverse quietly back down the way we came. I don’t like the look of this at all.”
But Jeremy and Jemima just wouldn’t agree to this. They were both the tiniest bit trembly about the way the adventure was going, but they had inherited some of their father’s exploring bug and they were terribly eager to discover the secrets of the big underground vault. “Oh, please, Mimsie,” they both pleaded together, “do let’s find out what it’s all about.”
Commander Pott reflected and said, “Well, Mimsie, after all, no one’s going to eat us. And the children don’t seem worried. I vote we see the adventure through. It would be ghastly reversing CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG the whole way back now over a mile of cave to the sea. Besides we’ve been climbing ali the way and we can’t be far from the top of the cliff. The cave obviously goes on out of this vault on the other side and leads on to the top. Come on, we’ll drive the car up on to the level floor of the vault and give her a rest and then have a good explore. After all, this is pretty thrilling and we really must get to the bottom of this secret.”
“All right, darling,” said Mimsie rather reluctantly. “You know I’m just as keen as you are to find out what this is all about. But if you ask me, there’s something pretty fishy about all—this something, well, something criminal. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we hadn’t come upon a nest of crooks and gangsters. I only hope none of them appear while we’re looking into their secret hoard!”
“Oh, well,” said Commander Pott cheerfully, “have to take the rough with the smooth. You never get real adventures without a bit of risk somewhere. Come on!” And they all piled back into CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG and crept up the last bit of slope
until they were parked slap in the middle of the huge secret vault.
While the others piled out and began carefully sniffing about round the edge of the bales and barrels and packages, Commander Pott went back and found the switch on their side of the secret door and, with a grind and a hum of machinery, the two halves came together again. Then he came back and they all systematically began to pry and peer into the secret stocks that were piled up round the walls of the big echoing vault.
Jeremy was the first. “Machine guns,” he cried excitedly, “packed in grease paper. They’re in sections ready to be assembled!”
Mimsie said, “Oh, heavens! Boxes and boxes of bombs and hand grenades!”
“Daggers,” called Jemima, “all kinds of them. And bayonets with rifles to go with them!”
“Well, I’m dashed,” said Commander Pott, “dynamite in these cases, and yards and yards of fuse. And gelignite the stuff burglars use to blast open safes and vaults.”
“Revolvers,” called out Jeremy, “automatic pistols. Big ones and small ones—every kind. With boxes and boxes of cartridges.”
Mimsie called out anxiously, “Now don’t touch anything, children. You can look, but not touch. Something might go off.” (Mothers are always thinking something is going to go off—on Guy Fawkes’ day, for instance, with the fireworks. And very often mothers are right about this. I must admit that Jeremy and Jemima knew this through one bitter experience with a box of firecrackers, and they were very careful about the way they peered into the boxes and bales.)
So the search went on. And there was no doubt about it, the family had come upon a great secret arsenal of weapons that certainly hadn’t been hidden down in the vault except for some secret and probably criminal purpose.
Finally they all came together again in the middle of the vault and they looked at their father to see what he was going to say about this extraordinary and rather frightening discovery.
Commander Pott had a scruffy bit of paper in his hand and he said, “You know what I think all this stuff is for? In one of the boxes, full of blackjacks and clubs and brass knuckles, there was this scrap of paper that says ‘SPECIAL ORDER FOR JOE THE MONSTER, 453 BASHERSTREET, SOHO, LONDON.’ Now he’s the man I’ve read about from time to time as being responsible for most of the bank robberies and holdups in England that the papers are always full of. But the police have never been able to catch him and they’ve never even been able to find out where he gets his weapons from. Well, there’s no doubt about it. This is his secret arms dump, and I bet my bottom dollar he smuggles what he wants from time to time over the Channel on foggy nights by speedboat. Now,” Commander Pott scratched his head, “what do we do next?”
“I know, I know, I know!” cried Jeremy excitedly. “BLOW IT ALL UP!!!”
“Don’t be silly, darling,” said Mimsie. “What about us and CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG? Do you want to blow us up too?”
“Well,” said Commander Pott thoughtfully, “it would be rather fun, wouldn’t it? But first of all we must find the way out of here. The cave must go on to the top of the cliff, or Joe the Monster and his gang couldn’t have got all this stuff down here. Now, I’ve noticed that the draft we’ve been feeling all the way up the cave is coming from over there.” He pointed to the back of the vault. “From behind those huge packing cases. Let’s just have a look.”
He went over to the packing cases and hauled on the front one and, instead of weighing a ton as they had all expected, it moved easily aside, and so did the next one and the next one.
And when he moved the fourth, with the help of the family all tugging and panting, there was the continuation of their cave sloping upwards and, in the distance, there was a pale glimmer of light.
“By golly!” cried Commander Pott. “That must be the top. Now then, we’ll get CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG through the opening and go on up until we get out of here, and then I’ll run back and lay a fuse down the cave to the dynamite and we’ll get as far away as possible before the fireworks display.” He looked at his watch. “It’s after eight, so it’ll be dark enough to get the most out of our fireworks. But I’m famished and I know all of you must be, so after the big bang, we’ll go off to the nearest town and find somewhere for dinner and bed. We’ll certainly all have earned it after this evening’s work—if all goes well. And I don’t see why it shouldn’t.”
So they piled back into CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG and she started up with her two sneezes and two small explosions and they motored between the packing cases and up the slope and out of the secret vault with its huge hoard of explosives and guns that belonged to the biggest crook in England—JOE THE MONSTER!
Outside the vault, Commander Pott stopped the car and went back while the twins watched through the entrance to see what he did. He took a long roll of fuse out of one of the boxes (it looks like stiff thin rope and it’s stuffed with magnesium powder or some other quick-burning explosive, rather like the fuse you light when you want to set off a firecracker) and he attached one end to the stacks of dynamite (that comes in oblong sticks) and piled all the gelignite (that’s a stiff putty stuff) on top of the dynamite and then he unrolled the length of fuse and came back to the car after blocking up the entrance again with the big crates so that the explosion, when it came, wouldn’t chase them up the cave. Then he gave Jeremy the big roll of fuse to unwind as they. went along and off went CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG up the sloping cave toward the distant glimmer of light that was in the entrance.
The entrance was hidden behind a big clump of bushes in an old unused quarry, but CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG nosed her way through and they bumped and banged across the rough floor of the quarry until they came to a cart track that led away across the fields to one of the French main roads about ten miles away.
It was getting dusky by now, and far away across the fields they could see the side lights of a car that seemed to be coming toward them along the same cart track as they were on. “I expect it’s some farmer,” said Commander Pott. “Come on, we’d better light the fuse and get away quick or we, and perhaps the farmer too, may get a lump of chalk on our heads. There’s a terrific load of explosive down there inside the cave, and heaven knows how much of the cliff we’re going to blow up when the fuse gets to the dynamite.”
Commander Pott got out of the car, took the rest of the roll of fuse from Jeremy, cut off the end, and threw the rest of the coil into the back of the car. Then he knelt down and put a match to the end of the fuse.
Well, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a real fuse on fire, but the flame runs almost as fast as you can run, and with a tiny bang and a splutter, the little yellow flame darted off across the floor of the quarry back toward the bush which hid the mouth of the cave, and Commander Pott dived for the driver’s seat and got CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG quickly through the gears and racing off along the cart track away from the danger area. When he had gone a good two hundred yards away from lhe edge of the quarry, he stopped the car and they all looked back and waited, and I must confess that Mimsie and Jeremy and Jemima all had their hands firmly clamped over their ears.
“It must be close now,” cried Commander Pott excitedly, and even as he said “now” there came a deep rumbling roar from right down inside the cliff, the ground shook, a great yellow jet of flame shot out of the quarry they had just left, and from the edge of the cliff there came a distant flash and a deep boom, and a pillar of smoke rose slowly into the air as the force of the explosion rushed down the long cave and burst out down by the edge of the sea. Then there came a series of smaller underground explosions and crackles as the ammunition boxes blew up one by one and the bombs and cartridges caught fire, and then there came one last terrific roar and whoosh of flame out of the quarry and to seaward and there was a cracking and rumbling noise in the ground and the cliff top above the cave split open and smoke and flame came out, like a mixture between a volcano and an earthquake. And then the smoking crack in the ground closed again leaving a big dent in the grass where the inside of the cliff had collapsed filling in the underground vault and the remains of the cave.
And then there was silence!
They all let their breath out with a whoosh.
“By golly!!!” (Jemima).
“Gee whiz!!!” (Jeremy).
“Well I never!!!” (Mimsie).
Commander Pott said, “That’s the biggest bang I’ve ever heard. Now come on! We’d better get away quick from here before we have to do any explaining. There’s that farmer’s car still coming and people will have heard that bang as far away as Calais. They’ll even have heard it right across the Channel in England. We’d better steal quietly away and when we get back to England, I’ll go and explain things to Scotland Yard. I bet they won’t make a fuss. Probably even give us all medals! It’s getting dark, and I bet you’re all starving. I know I am.” And he put CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG into gear and she roared along the cart track just as if she was as hungry and thirsty as all of them.
But. But. But!
And again, but!
As they approached what they thought had been a farmer’s car, they saw it was a big black open tourer, a very powerful looking car indeed. It had drawn itself right across the track so as not to let them pass, and four men had got out and were standing, or rather crouching down, and they all had revolvers in their hands. One of them, a huge unshaven giant of a man with shoulders as big as a gorilla, came slowly toward where Commander Pott had been forced to pull up. He looked as if he would burst with rage and his eyes were red with fury and his lips were drawn back from his big yellow teeth in a snarl.
Commander Pott whispered, “I regret to have to announce that that’s Joe the Monster. I’ve seen pictures of him outside Police Stations. And the other three are his gang—Man-Mountain Fink, who’s escaped from heaven knows how many prisons—he must be on the run now—Soapy Sam, he’s their explosives expert for opening safes (’soap’ is the crooks’ name for gelignite), and Blood-Money Banks, the blackmailer. Watch out! This is going to be tricky!”
Joe the Monster came up to the car. In his most threatening manner, he growled. “And who might you all be? And what might you all know about that there explosion what’s just taken place?”
Commander Pott said innocently. “Explosion? Explosion?” He turned to the children. “Anyone hear an explosion round here?”
Jeremy said brightly, “There was a bit of a pop just now, Daddy. Over by the cliff. You must have missed it.”
“Bit of a pop!” Joe the Monster almost exploded himself. He turned round. “Hear that, mates?” He said in a mincing voice, “They think they may have heard a bit of a pop.” He turned back threateningly. “Bit of a pop!!! Call that whopping volcano a bit of a pop? Why it sounded like the end of the world!” Now his voice was an angry growl. “I saw you folks drive up out of the quarry and I happen, I just happen like, to see a roll of fuse beside those little rascals in the back seat.” (Oh dear! thought Jeremy and Jemima together. We ought to have sat on it!) “So do you know what I’m going to do with you and this saucy-looking bus of yours?” He gave a great cackle of cruel laughter. “Why, in exchange for you having blown up my belongings, I’m going to blow up yours and you all with it. See? I’m going to light the end of that fuse and put the lighted end in the gas tank of your fancy motorcar and up you’ll all go! How do you like the thought of that, aye, my fine little family of meddlers in other people’s business?” He turned to the other gangsters. “Get your guns ready, men, and if any of these rascals try to escape, shoot them down like rabbits. Get it?�
�� The dreadful gangsters cackled with joy at the thought of the sport they were going to have, and the Pott family heard the click of the safety catches going back.
“Now then, you golliwog in the back there, hand over that length of fuse or it’ll be the worse for you.” And he pointed his revolver straight at Jeremy.
“I won’t,” said Jeremy stoutly, “and if I’m a golliwog, you’re the ugliest ape outside the London Zoo.” And he took the roll of fuse and sat on it.
“Ho-ho!” Joe the Monster grimaced with fury at the insult. “You young whipper-snapper. I’ll teach you to do what you’re told,” and he took a big blackjack out of his pocket and walked purposefully toward the car.
Jeremy had butterflies in his tummy at the sight, but out of the corner of his eye he saw Commander Pott’s hand steal across to the little lever that worked the wing mechanism, and, as Joe the Monster drew level with the car, Commander Pott pulled the lever sharply down and CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG’S big green mudguards swung sharply out into their wing-shape. The right-hand wing caught Joe the Monster slap in his tummy and sent him flying head over heels.
“Hang On,” shouted Commander Pott. “And keep your heads down.” And he rammed the accelerator down into the floor boards.
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 toward 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.