Читать книгу Mr Humperdinck's Mysterious Manuscript - Wynand Louw - Страница 6

Maggie Kisses a Stranger

The doorbell tinkled and whistled a tune when Pete entered the bicycle shop on the ground floor of Paradise Mansions that evening. It was an old-fashioned copper bell, fastened to the door with a spring.

“The shop is closed for renovations!” someone said from the darkness behind the shelves. “Please close the door on your way out.”

“It’s Pete, you fool!” yelled the doorbell. “How many times do I have to tell you that when I whistle ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ it means Pete! ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ means it’s one of the other neighbours, and ‘Jingle Bells’ means it’s a customer!”

“You should know by now that the Snowman is completely tone deaf,” said a little white mouse on the windowsill. “You’ll have to find some other sort of signal!”

The Snowman, who was a big white tomcat, leaped from a shelf and landed on the counter. “There’s nothing wrong with my hearing.” He glared menacingly at the mouse, who ducked behind a dusty bicycle pump. “I can tell what you ate last week just by listening from across the room to the rumblings of your large bowel.” He turned to Pete. “If I had not promised Mr Humperdinck otherwise, he would have been mouse lasagne long ago.”

“Oh, stop it,” said Pete. “I know you like Squeak.”

The cat seemed to mellow a bit. “Yes. Actually I do like Squeak … soup. And Squeak pie. And Squeak pizza should be good.”

Pete opened his mouth to say something, but then he saw someone standing in the darkness behind the counter. “Who’s this?”

The Snowman walked across the counter and switched the lights on. “Pete, I would like you to meet my new shop assistant, Sticks.”

Pete stared at the young man, who stood as still as a statue. “But … it’s Elvis Presley!”

The cat sat down, obviously disappointed about something. “Damn!” he said, swishing his tail.

“I told you everyone would notice,” said Squeak.

Pete walked to the supposedly dead rock and roll star. “Hi. I’m Pete.”

Elvis, or Sticks, said nothing.

“He got the head from the wax museum. I told him to take an unknown face, like Jack the Ripper or someone,” said Squeak. “He wouldn’t listen.”

The cat drew his ears back just a little. “Would you like Jack the Ripper to work in your shop, Pete? I hire only the best!”

“It’s a doll?” asked Pete.

“An automaton,” corrected the Snowman. He picked a small but elaborate contraption full of spinning wheels and gears from the counter and strapped it to his head. The whole thing was engraved with arcane symbols. “Watch this.”

A tiny propeller on the device started to whirr, and a green gem lit up inside it.

Sticks suddenly came to life. “Good evening. How may I help you?” Its voice sounded suspiciously like the Snowman’s.

“Go on, Pete. Greet him,” said Squeak.

Pete held his hand out to the automaton. It grabbed his hand with a gloved hand and shook it vigorously.

“I am pleased to meet you,” it said and walked over to one of the shelves, like a puppet with tangled strings. “Would you like to buy a bicycle?”

Pete glanced at the Snowman. The cat was moving in a charade of the automaton’s walk.

“It’s like a remote-controlled robot!” he exclaimed.

The cat took the thing off his head, and Sticks immediately froze in its tracks. “It works by magic. See this whatsit? It’s a thaumaturgic neuroteleactuator. I think, and the automaton moves and speaks. This automaton’s only a test model though. It’s made of broomsticks. I’ll build a more permanent body when I have the time.”

A “whatsit” was an object charged with magic. Pete was impressed. “You made that?”

For a moment it seemed as if the cat tried to look humble. “Well, I …”

“The Snowman built it from a blueprint he found among Mr Humperdinck’s notes,” said Squeak. “The old man invented it even before he started to work on the animal speech whatsit.”

Mr Humperdinck had altered Squeak and the Snowman’s brains to make them capable of human speech, with the aid of a magical device – his wonderful whatsit. Unfortunately, the thief who had stolen his research notes (a crooked policeman named Grimsby) had also murdered him.

“I did assemble it from scratch.”

“But what do you want to do with him?” asked Pete. “Why don’t you just hire somebody?”

“Look,” said the cat, obviously annoyed, “I inherited this business from Mr Humperdinck, and I am not about to let some human throw his weight around here. How many humans do you know who would take orders from a cat?”

“Lots,” said Squeak, snorting. “Mew, feed me! Feed me!”

The Snowman glared at the little mouse. “You are a whisker’s breadth away from feeding me,” he warned.

The doorbell tinkled again and played ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’. Maggie walked in. She was slim and blonde, and owned Maggie’s Health Food and Fitness Emporium next door. The Snowman grabbed the whatsit and disappeared somewhere into a shadow.

“Hi Pete!” she said. “I saw the lights were on, and thought I should meet the new owner.”

Pete glanced at the automaton that stood frozen by the shelf.

“Oh, isn’t he delicious,” Maggie whispered to Pete when she saw it. She raised her hand and said loudly, “Hello, neighbour!”

The automaton did not move so much as a hair.

Maggie tried again. “Hi!”

Pete heard a bump behind the counter and the cat swearing under his breath.

Maggie walked over to Sticks, looked at it, and waved her hand in front of its face. “Is he okay?”

“I think he’s in shock,” said Pete. “He has just had some bad news …”

There was another bump behind the counter, and the automaton suddenly came to life. It blinked and looked straight into Maggie’s eyes.

Then she recognised him, and for a moment it seemed as though she would faint.

“Oh my! I knew it. I knew you were still alive! Wow! Pete, he’s alive! Mr Presley … Are you okay?”

The automaton smiled and extended its hand to Maggie. “Never been better,” it said.

“But I thought … Pete said that …”

“Pete said what?”

“The bad news, remember?” said Pete. It was obvious that the Snowman had not heard that part.

“Oh yes, that,” said Sticks. “The bad news is that I cannot allow anybody into the shop right now. I am very busy. Please leave.”

“Mr Presley, do you like celery? I sell fresh celery in my shop next door,” Maggie said quickly. “And broccoli.”

The automaton steered her to the door. It nearly tripped over its own feet in the process. “And I am not Elvis Presley. A most unfortunate resemblance. I plan to sue him for copying my looks.”

“If you feel like some spinach, Mr Presley, you know where to find me!” Maggie smiled and disappeared out of the door.

Sticks froze again, and the cat jumped onto the counter. “As much as I love and respect that woman …”

“You mean you love and respect that woman’s tuna,” said Squeak.

Maggie was under the impression that the Snowman belonged to her, because she fed him a can of tuna every day. She called him Here Kitty Kitty.

The Snowman ignored the mouse, pacing the countertop. “As much as I love and respect that woman, I cannot allow her into my shop. She is a walking disaster. She ate Mr Humperdinck’s best whatsit. She discharges magic; she changes things into butterflies. There is no limit to the damage she can do!”

Pete sighed. The Snowman was right. Unfortunately, Maggie had eaten the animal speech whatsit a few months before. Since then, she discharged magic when she touched things she loved – food, mainly – and changed it into butterflies. It was a bit like touching a door handle when you are charged with static electricity. “It’s not her fault, you know.”

“Please! You must help me to keep her out of the shop,” said the cat.

Pete nodded. “Sure, but I also need a favour.” He told the Snowman about the dictaphone.

The Snowman leaped onto the nearest shelf. Like all the other shelves in the shop, it was filled with the weirdest and most wonderful junk anyone could imagine, from all over the world. He jumped from shelf to shelf, searching for a dictaphone.

Suddenly the lights flickered and went out.

The cat stopped. He crouched and peered at the wall behind one of the shelves. His fur bristled. A soft growl escaped from his throat. “Pete, Squeak, do as I say,” he said urgently.

Pete froze. Squeak ran up his arm and hid inside his shirt.

The Snowman backed up a step. “Move to the door. Slowly.”

Pete started to move.

The cat howled, and then it was as if a hurricane hit the shop with a sudden, hellish fury.

Black shadows raced along the walls, ceiling and floor. Where they moved past shelves, things exploded and the shelves toppled over like dominoes.

Pete’s legs wouldn’t carry him to the door. He tried to dodge a shadow that sped towards him across the floor, but it fell across his body before he could move. It felt like an avalanche had hit him, a glacier that knocked the life out of him with deadly frost.

And then it was all over as suddenly as it had begun.

The door opened and Maggie came in. She switched on the lights. A battlefield of broken shelves and merchandise was revealed, ash drifting down and settling everywhere. For a moment she was too shocked to speak. Then she said, “Pete, are you okay?”

Pete could feel life slowly seeping back into his paralysed limbs. He groaned. “I think … I think something exploded.” He sat up.

Squeak moved somewhere in his shirt. At least the mouse was alive.

Maggie uttered a little cry. “Mr Presley!” She ran to the automaton, which lay pinned under a fallen shelf. She knelt down and put her forefinger on the wax throat. “There’s no pulse! We’ve got to do CPR!”

She hit the automaton in its cardboard chest with her fist. “Live!” she said under her breath as she bent over and put her red lips over the wax rock star mouth.

Eternity was poured into the briefest moment. Pete could sense the gentlest discharge, the smallest flux of magical energy pass from flesh to wax.

Sticks opened his eyes and blinked. Pete turned his head. The thauma-thing, the whatsit, still lay on the floor next to the counter.

And then the moment was over. The Snowman emerged from a cardboard box, spitting and cursing under his breath. When he saw Maggie, he cursed again, grabbed the whatsit and disappeared behind the counter.

Pete thought he could hear the faint whirring of the whatsit’s propeller.

Sticks sat up and extracted himself from under the shelf. He frowned at Maggie. “I thought I told you not to come into my shop. Now see what you have done!” he said in the Snowman’s voice.

Maggie’s face went white. She started to say something, but instead burst into tears and fled from the shop.

“Women!” exclaimed the Snowman as he removed the whatsit from his head.

Sticks froze again, but a faint flicker of life lingered in his glass eyes.