‘Meow, meow, meow!’
‘It’s a pity he can’t talk,’ Mrs Cheddar said. ‘I’ve got a feeling he might be.’
‘Meow, meow, meow!’
‘Maybe he’s just hungry,’ said Mrs Tucker. She offered him a parcel of fish and chips.
Atticus gave up. Even the brightest humans could be very dim sometimes. He tucked into his fish and chips. There was only one way to stop the Tofflys from stealing Howard Toffly’s journal, he decided; and that was to steal it himself.
That night when everyone had gone to bed Atticus let himself out of the cat flap at number 2 Blossom Crescent into the back garden. He made his way round the side of the house to the road. From there he trotted briskly along the pavement until he reached the cats’ home. Checking carefully to make sure there was no sign of the Tofflys he darted across the lawn towards the shed.
Atticus withdrew a long kirby grip, which he had borrowed from Callie’s dressing table, from the folds of his neckerchief and raised himself up on his back legs. With one front paw he held the shed door handle; with the other he wriggled the kirby grip into the lock and twisted it to and fro. Click! The shed door creaked open.
‘What are you doing?’
Atticus nearly jumped out of his skin. It was Thomas. The kitten was standing right behind him. He must have crept up while he was picking the lock.
‘None of your business,’ Atticus said gruffly. ‘Go back to bed.’
‘No,’ said Thomas.
No? Atticus felt exasperated. That was the sort of thing he would have said when he was a kitten. ‘If you must know, I’m trying to stop the Tofflys from stealing Howard Toffly’s journal about the lost treasure of the jaguar gods,’ he said crossly. ‘Inspector Cheddar told them about it at the car boot sale.’ He explained briefly what had happened. ‘Now will you go back to bed?’
Thomas shook his head. ‘No,’ he said stubbornly. ‘I want to help.’
‘Oh, all right, then!’ Atticus didn’t have time to argue. ‘Get in!’
Thomas scampered into the shed. Atticus followed him inside and shut the door carefully behind them. The shed was almost as cluttered as Nellie Smellie’s attic had been. As well as gardening equipment it was bursting with boxes of firewood, bits of old carpet and what looked like several tons of cat litter in large paper sacks. An old broomstick stood in the corner. Atticus tried not to look at it. The more he thought about Nellie and her witchiness, the more it freaked him out.
‘It’s up there,’ said Thomas.
Three shelves ran along one wall of the shed. Howard Toffly’s wooden chest was on the middle one, wedged in beside a number of terracotta pots and a bag of compost.
‘I’ll get it.’ Before Atticus could stop him, the kitten had scrambled up the broomstick and jumped lightly on to the shelf.
Atticus was impressed in spite of himself. Thomas was a natural when it came to cat burgling. He watched the kitten edge along the shelf to the chest and raise the lid. Thomas’s top half disappeared inside the chest. It reappeared a minute later. The journal was hooked around Thomas’s front paw by the string.
‘Good work,’ Atticus said.
Just then he heard a familiar sound. It was coming from the trees behind the shed.
‘Chaka-chaka-chaka-chaka-chaka!’
The magpies! Atticus’s hackles rose. He hadn’t expected Jimmy and his gang to show up. ‘Thomas,’ he hissed, ‘it’s the magpies. You need to get out of sight. Throw me the journal, then close the lid so they don’t suspect anything. Hurry!’
‘Okay.’ Thomas dropped the journal on to a bag of cat litter. He lowered the lid of the chest then slithered down the broomstick and landed on the floor next to Atticus.
Atticus grabbed the string in his teeth and led the way behind the lawnmower. He slid the journal under the grass box and waited.
TAP! TAP! TAP! TAP! TAP! TAP!
The magpies were trying to break in through the window.
‘Put your back into it, Thug. We haven’t got all night.’
Atticus flattened his ears. It was his old enemy, Jimmy Magpie.
‘I don’t want to cut my beak.’ Thug’s plaintive voice drifted down.
‘I’ve got a better idea,’ Slasher chattered. ‘Get out of the way, Thug.’
SMASH!
A stone hurtled through the window, making a hole just big enough for a magpie to squeeze through. Jimmy appeared first. Then Slasher, then Thug.
‘Ow!’ yelped Thug. ‘Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!’ His rear end was bigger than the others’. Several black-and-white feathers floated to the floor.
‘Shut up, Thug,’ Jimmy said sharply. ‘We don’t want any of the stray cats to hear us. Now, where’s the chest?’
‘Over here, Boss,’ Slasher said.
Atticus watched the three magpies flutter over and perch on the edge of the shelf.
Thug nearly fell off. ‘I keep losing me balance,’ he wept. ‘I can barely fly.’
‘Don’t worry, mate,’ Slasher said. ‘With all that lost treasure we’re gonna find, you can get a tail extension.’
So they did know about the treasure. The magpies must have been eavesdropping in Nellie’s garden, Atticus guessed.
‘Aren’t you going to arrest them?’ Thomas whispered.
Atticus frowned. Now Thomas was telling him what to do instead of the other way around! ‘I will in a minute,’ he replied stiffly. He spied a ladder propped up against the wall beside the shelves. ‘Wait here.’ He tiptoed towards the ladder. Luckily the magpies were too engrossed in their task to notice him.
‘Open the lid,’ Jimmy said.
Thug and Slasher heaved open the lid of the wooden chest with their wings.
Atticus put his paw on the bottom rung of the ladder and began to climb.
The three magpies peered into the chest. ‘Where’s the book?’ Jimmy demanded.
‘It must be under them masks,’ said Thug.
‘Climb in there and get it out, then,’ Jimmy told him.
Thug hung back. ‘I don’t want to,’ he whimpered. ‘It’s scary.’
‘Too bad.’ Jimmy grabbed him by what was left of his tail and tipped him in.
‘Chaka-chaka-chaka-chaka-chaka!’ Thug’s cries of protest went unheeded.
Atticus stepped off the ladder on to the top of the three shelves. He was relieved to see that it was less cluttered than the other two. He didn’t want to alert the magpies to his presence by knocking something over. One paw at a time, he crept stealthily along the shelf until he was directly above the magpies. The shelves were full of splits and knots. Atticus put his eye to one of the holes. The empty eyes of the bird mask stared back at him. Thug was somewhere underneath it.
‘I can’t find it,’ said Thug in a muffled voice.
‘Go and help him,’ Jimmy told Slasher.
Slasher jumped into the chest. The two birds poked about under the masks.
‘It’s not here, Boss,’ Slasher said.
‘What do you mean, it’s not there?’ Jimmy’s voice was menacing. ‘You told me you’d seen it!’
‘We did!’ Slasher said. ‘Honest! Someone must have taken it out.’
Jimmy leant over the chest to get a better look.
Atticus tensed. Now was his chance. Digging the claws of his back paws into the rough wood of the shelf to anchor himself, he swung the top half of his body over the edge and gave Jimmy a strong shove.
Jimmy was taken unawares. He toppled into the chest.
‘CHAKA-CHAKA-CHAKA-CHAKA-CHAKA!’
‘Surprise!’ said Atticus.
The three magpies just had time to glimpse Atticus’s upside-down face grinning at them before the lid banged closed, trapping them inside.
Atticus locked the chest with the kirby grip so they couldn’t escape. The magpies could breathe through the keyhole. They would be all right for a little while – until he raised the alarm, anyway.
Atticus padded back towards the ladder feeling pleased with himself. He hoped T
homas was impressed! Suddenly the shed door flew open.
‘Quick, Antonia, turn on the torch!’ a gruff voice said.
The Tofflys! Atticus had forgotten all about them! He crouched as low as he could on the shelf. A beam of light swept round the shed, narrowly missing Atticus. Instead it fell upon Howard Toffly’s wooden chest.
‘There it is,’ Lord Toffly said. ‘You hold the torch, Antonia, I’ll get it.’ His progress across the shed was accompanied by a great deal of crashing and swearing.
‘Be quiet, Roderick!’ Lady Toffly snapped. ‘Someone will hear you!’ The torch beam wobbled about.
‘Keep it still, Antonia!’ Lord Toffly hissed. He took the chest down from the shelf, grunting and puffing with the effort.
Atticus could feel Lord Toffly’s breath on his tail. It was all he could do not to twitch it.
‘Get the journal,’ ordered Lady Toffly. ‘We don’t need the chest.’
‘It’s locked.’ Lord Toffly rattled the lid.
‘Use a spoon, then!’ Lady Toffly withdrew one from her pocket and threw it at her husband. It was a poor throw. The spoon clattered on to the floor. ‘Darn it, just take the lot!’ Lady Toffly told him. ‘And hurry up! You’ve woken the stray cats!’
A cat-cophony of meowing was coming from the direction of Nellie Smellie’s house.
Lord Toffly crashed towards the door. Lady Toffly turned off the torch.
Atticus heard the shed door bang shut and the sound of a moped revving up and puttering away down the road, pursued by a large number of yowling cats. He made his way down the ladder to where Thomas was waiting.
‘Wow!’ said the kitten. ‘That was really, really, really cool! I want to be a police cat when I grow up, just like you!’
Back at the caravan park the Tofflys examined their haul. It consisted, as we know, of two hideous masks, one carved wooden chest and three magpies, none of which they particularly wanted. The one thing they did want wasn’t there.
‘More curses!’ Lady Toffly exclaimed. ‘The journal’s missing. Where the heck could it have gone?’
‘Nellie Smellie and her pals must have taken it out,’ said Lord Toffly. He put the kettle on and threw a teabag into a mug. ‘The double-crossing dirt-bags.’
‘Chaka-chaka-chaka-chaka-chaka!’ chattered the magpies.
‘Be quiet!’ Lady Toffly fastened each of their beaks with a clothes peg and threw them into the laundry basket. ‘Don’t think I haven’t worked out that you ruffians were after it too,’ she said threateningly. She put the lid on the basket so the magpies couldn’t escape and turned to her husband. ‘So now what?’ she said.
‘We’ll have to wait until Smellie and her gang take the book to the British Museum,’ Lord Toffly said. He poured some milk into his tea and stirred in two crusty spoons of sugar from the packet. ‘We’ll steal it from there.’
Lady Toffly watched her husband with distaste. ‘That place is like a fortress,’ she complained. ‘We’ll never get past the security guards.’
‘Have you got a better idea?’ Lord Toffly took a noisy slurp of tea.
‘Roderick, get a grip on yourself!’ Lady Toffly swiped the mug from his grasp. ‘Since when do we Tofflys use mugs? Where’s the bone-china tea set?’
‘We had to sell it to pay for the spoon cleaner,’ Lord Toffly said.
Lady Toffly pulled a horrible face. ‘It’s too bad I didn’t manage to skin that wretched police cat,’ she said. ‘This is all his fault.’
‘I say, Antonia, you don’t suppose he took the journal, do you?’ Lord Toffly said.
The awful reality of what had happened dawned on Lady Toffly for the first time. ‘Of course he did!’ she wailed. ‘I knew he was on to us at the car boot sale. This is his twisted idea of revenge.’
Lord Toffly gasped. ‘What if he finds the spoon in the shed? He won’t arrest us, will he?’
‘Let him try,’ Lady Toffly said recklessly. All of a sudden she burst into tears. ‘I hate living in a caravan, Roderick!’ she wept. ‘I hate it! I hate it! I hate it! We’re part of the aristocracy, for goodness’ sake. We should be living at Toffly Hall and driving a Rolls-Royce, not going to car boot sales and sharing a moped. I shall go mad if I have to polish another spoon.’ She flung a tin of spoon cleaner at the laundry basket.
‘How about we try to sell these?’ Lord Toffly said, fingering the masks. ‘Tide us over until we can have another crack at stealing the journal? You never know, Antonia, they might be worth something.’
‘Well …’ Lady Toffly sniffed. ‘I suppose we could.’
Lord Toffly crossed his fingers behind his back and took a deep breath. ‘Why don’t we ask Benjamin if he can help?’ he said in a wheedling tone.
Lady Toffly’s eyes narrowed. Her lips pressed into a thin line. She seemed to be going through some deep inner struggle. ‘Oh, very well,’ she agreed eventually. ‘Get Ribena on the computer.’
Ribena was Lord and Lady Toffly’s grown-up daughter. She was married to an ambassador and lived abroad. And by an extraordinary coincidence the Ambassador to whom she was married was none other than Benjamin Posh-Scoundrel, the British Ambassador to Nicaragua (or Knicker-agua, as Thug called it).
Lady Toffly turned on the computer and tapped a few keys.
‘Hello!’ a distant voice brayed. It was Ribena.
‘You talk to her, Roderick,’ Lady Toffly hissed. ‘You know how I feel about her marrying Benjamin!’
Lord Toffly ground his teeth. As far as he was concerned, most normal parents (by which he meant him) would think that Benjamin Posh-Scoundrel was a good match for their daughter, especially if they were as ugly as Ribena. Benjamin Posh-Scoundrel wasn’t just the British Ambassador to Nicaragua; he had a first-class degree in Ancient History; spoke four hundred languages (including three hundred which were extinct); and had won an Olympic gold medal for rowing. He was also a jolly good shot, like Lord Toffly. But it still wasn’t enough for Lady Toffly. She had never got over the fact that Ribena hadn’t married a lord.
‘Daddy, is that you?’ the voice bellowed.
‘Ribena!’ her father shouted. ‘How’s Nicaragua?’
Ribena’s face came into focus. She looked like a cross between a hippopotamus and a warthog, except she didn’t have tusks.
‘Hot,’ Ribena complained.
‘Is Benjamin around?’
‘He’s here somewhere,’ Ribena said. ‘He’s got some frightful new parrot he’s trying to train. How are things with you?’
‘Could be better, Ribena old bean,’ Lord Toffly admitted. ‘We’re a bit short of cash.’
‘No luck on getting Toffly Hall back from those awful Tuckers, then?’ Ribena asked.
‘Not yet,’ said Lord Toffly, ‘but we did … er … come across these beauties.’ He held up the masks. ‘Howard brought them back from one of his expeditions.’
‘What, Great-Great-Great-Uncle Howard, the famous explorer?’
‘Yes. We thought Benjamin might know if they are worth something.’
‘Hang on a minute. I’ll get him. BENJAMIN!’ Ribena shouted. ‘BENJAMIN! Ah, there you are. Daddy wants to talk to you.’ There was a deal of scuffling and a loud squawk as Ribena made space for her husband in front of the computer. ‘Do you have to bring that detestable parrot with you everywhere?’ she complained. ‘Its droppings are like superglue.’
Benjamin Posh-Scoundrel appeared on the screen. He was a very large man with a very big head and very wide shoulders upon one of which sat an enormous green parrot.
‘Gosh!’ said Lord Toffly. ‘What happened to that bird?’
‘It was flattened by a large pig.’ Benjamin Posh-Scoundrel also had a very loud voice. ‘The vet at Her Majesty’s Prison for Bad Birds managed to reinflate it with a bicycle pump. That’s why it looks like a balloon. Rather clever, don’t you think?’
‘Remarkable,’ Lord Toffly agreed. ‘What’s it doing with you?’
‘It’s staying here until it’s ready to be released b
ack into the wild,’ Benjamin said.
‘Ha, ha!’ said Lord Toffly. ‘Then you can shoot it.’
‘Shut your gob,’ said the parrot.
‘Well said, Pam!’ It was Benjamin Posh-Scoundrel’s turn to roar with laughter. ‘Now, what can I do for you, Roderick?’
‘We want to know how much these are worth.’ Lord Toffly showed him the masks.
Benjamin Posh-Scoundrel’s jaw dropped. ‘Where did you get them from?’ he demanded.
‘A car boot sale,’ Lord Toffly lied. ‘They were in this.’ He held up the wooden chest for his son-in-law to view.
‘They belonged to Great-Great-Great-Uncle Howard, Benjamin,’ Ribena’s voice cut in from somewhere behind Pam. ‘He brought them back from one of his expeditions.’
Benjamin Posh-Scoundrel whistled. ‘Was there anything else in the chest?’ he asked.
‘Funny you should ask, old chap,’ Lord Toffly said. ‘There was a journal of Howard’s; it was about some lost treasure. Something to do with jaguars.’
‘Not the lost treasure of the jaguar gods?’ Benjamin Posh-Scoundrel exclaimed.
‘That’s it!’ said Lord Toffly. ‘Why, have you heard of it?’
‘Heard of it?’ his son-in-law echoed. ‘Of course I’ve heard of it, Roderick. It’s one of the world’s greatest undiscovered archaeological treasures. Where’s that journal now?’
‘That’s the trouble,’ Lord Toffly replied. ‘Someone took it. We think it might be the work of a local police cat known as Atticus Claw …’
Pam let out a loud squawk. ‘CAT! CAT! CAT! CAT! CAT!’ she shrieked.
‘Shhhh!’ Benjamin Posh-Scoundrel shut her up with a large slice of mango. ‘Go on, Roderick,’ he said.
‘Claw and his do-gooding friends are planning to take the journal to Professor Verry-Clever at the British Museum. I thought we might have a go at – er – getting hold of it, only the security’s pretty tight there, you know,’ Lord Toffly said.
‘You mean steal it from the museum?’ Benjamin Posh-Scoundrel sounded affronted at the idea.
Atticus Claw Hears a Roar Page 3