Bubble in the Bathtub (26 page)

“I agree,” Nilly said, sticking his finger in his ear and scratching a little in there, too, now that he'd gotten started scratching itches. “But you agree that it would be nice to have a little something to eat besides bananas and coconuts that we have to pick ourselves, don't you?”

Lisa didn't respond. She just rolled over onto her stomach and stared at the ocean. They'd been here for three days, and it had been great, but Nilly was right.
Out on the horizon a layer of blue-gray clouds had rolled in. Doctor Proctor's skinny, and still just as pale, body came wading back in as he emptied the water out of his motorcycle goggles.

He flopped down on the sand next to them.

“Well, my two best friends,” he said. “Everything okay over here?”

They nodded quietly.

“A little homesick, huh?”

They nodded quietly.

“Me too,” Doctor Proctor said. “So, did you find any restaurants, Nilly?”

“Nope,” Nilly said. “I walked around this whole island, but all I found was a couple of guys who'd just pulled ashore in a rowboat and asked where they were.”

“Oh? Who were they?”

“I don't know. Their English was even worse than mine, but I got that one of their names was Christopher
Co … Co … What's the name of that detective on TV again?”

“Columbo?” Lisa suggested.

“That's it!” Nilly said. “Or something like that. Anyway, I was kidding around with him and I told him this was India. And actually, come to think of it, it seemed like he believed me. At any rate, they jumped back into their rowboat and rowed super-fast back to a sailboat that's anchored off shore.”

“Hm.” Doctor Proctor stood up and glanced over at the three bathtubs that were half-buried in the sand under some palm trees. “I think it's about time to get you guys back home to Cannon Avenue before it gets crowded here.”

“What do you mean,
you guys
?” Nilly said. “Aren't you coming with us?”

“Juliette and I have to go to Paris and settle things with Claude Cliché.”

“Without us?” Lisa and Nilly chimed in unison.

“Yes,” Doctor Proctor said decisively. “I've exposed you kids to enough danger as it is. I'm a completely irresponsible adult. Didn't you know that?”

“We're quite aware of that,” Lisa said. “But you forgot one thing.”

“Right,” Nilly said.

“We're a team,” Lisa said.

“There you have it,” Nilly said. “We're a team. And we don't care if everyone else thinks we're a team of pathetic losers. Because we know something they don't know. We know … we know … uh …”

“We know,” Lisa took over, “that when friends promise to never stop helping each other, one plus one plus one is much more than three.”

Proctor looked at them for a long time. “That was very well put, almost the way I would have said it myself. But—”

“No
but
s about it!” Nilly said. “It
was
you who said it, and you know, that we know, that you know, that there
isn't anything you can do, to get us
not
to help you with Claude Cliché.”

The professor had to repeat Nilly's sentence silently to himself a couple of times before he understood what Nilly meant. Then he stared at first one of them and then the other, looking defeated. Finally he sighed with resignation. “You guys sure are a couple of stubborn friends.”

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Nilly asked. “I'm packed and ready. Lisa?”

Lisa nodded.

“Professor?”

Doctor Proctor nodded.

Nilly sat up on the trunk of the palm tree, balancing carefully and straddling it with his legs. Then he thumped his chest and shouted, “Claude Cliché, here comes the Nillinator!”

NILLY CAUTIOUSLY STOOD up in the tub and looked around. What in the greenest garden? There was no doubt that they were back in the bathroom at the Frainche-Fraille. There was the bathtub, there was the shelf under the mirror, and there was the toothbrush glass with Perry, the seven-legged
Peruvian sucking spider. But that awful sound …

“What in the demonic demolition?” whispered Lisa, who had just stood up in the other bathtub.

“There are enough vibrations in here for twenty jackhammers,” said a dripping wet Doctor Proctor.

“It's coming from out there,” said Joan, who was already standing over by the door, and about to open it as Juliette hissed, “Wait! I know what that is.”

The others looked at her.

“That's the sound of hippos snoring.”

“Hippos! …”

“Yes,” Juliette said. “But it's worse than that. Those are the snores of a guy I know much too well.”

“Oh no,” whispered Doctor Proctor.

“Claude,” whispered Lisa, even more softly.

“Cliché,” whispered Nilly so softly that no one other than him could hear it over the snoring. He darted over to the door, stretched up onto his tiptoes, and peered through the keyhole.

“What do you see?” Proctor asked.

“One … two … three guys,” Nilly said. “They're all sleeping sitting up in chairs. The one next to the radiator has a thin mustache, fat suspenders with industrial strength clips, and looks slipperier than an eel in a bucket of slime.”

“That would be Claude Cliché,” Doctor Proctor whispered. “What about the other two?”

“They look like … well, this might sound a little crazy, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say … wait for it …” Nilly turned to the others. “Hippopotamuses!”

But strangely enough, it didn't seem like anyone else was surprised by this information. Disappointed at how blasé his audience was, Nilly turned back to the keyhole.

“One is sitting by the window and one has his chair tilted back, propped up against the door to the hallway. In other words, it would be impossible to sneak out
without him noticing. And while we're on the topic of bad news, the two hippos each have shotguns in their laps.”

Juliette groaned. “They're just waiting for us to come back. And then … then …”

“That does it!” Doctor Proctor said. He wasn't whispering anymore; instead his voice was trembling with rage. “Step aside, Nilly. The time has come for me to have it out with that man….”

“No, Victor!” Juliette said, standing in front of him. “He's not just going to get you. Think of the children. And Joan. The hippos will fill their pockets with coins and chuck them in the Seine.”

Proctor stopped. Then he slid down against the side of the bathtub, holding his head in his hands and moaning in despair. “You're right. What are we going to do?”

“Hm,” Juliette said.

“Hm,” Lisa said.

“Hm,” Joan said.

There was a little
plop
and then Nilly's voice said, “Relax, people! I have a plan.”

They stared at Nilly, who studied his index finger with fascination before rubbing it with satisfaction against his pants leg. “A plan that is as simple as it is ingenious.” Nilly unbuttoned his uniform jacket and stuck his hand inside. First he pulled out Marcel's trumpet and set it down, then he stuck his hand in again. “It's already starting to get light outside the window, and it's about time those sleepyheads got a wakeup they won't soon forget. This plan has already been tested on a certain Mr. Napoléon and simply involves pouring a certain powder into the open mouths of the … of the …” Nilly's facial expression changed as his hand searched around frantically inside his uniform.

“What is it?” Proctor asked. “Did you lose something?”

“There's been a tiny little change in plans, people,” Nilly said, smiling stiffly with all of his teeth. “Looks like the bag of fartonaut powder got left behind in Rouen in 1111. But don't worry, Nilly has everything under control. We will simply switch to plan B.”

“Which is …?” Lisa asked skeptically.

“For you to trust me.”

The other three looked at Nilly, but he didn't say anything else, just spun around on his heels, smiling that weird, crooked smile.

Finally Lisa asked, “Is that the whole plan?”

“Yes,” Nilly said, grabbing the tube of Doctor Proctor's Fast Acting Superglue from the shelf. “Well, that and that I was thinking about playing a little morning reveille. After that I'm going to impofrise.”

Lisa slowly shook her head.

“What does ‘impofrise' mean, Nilly?” Joan asked.

Nilly flashed her his biggest smile. “That, my dear Joan, means that I, Sergeant Nilly, will come up with
new things as soon as the things I already came up with fail.”

“We just call that the Nilly Method,” Lisa mumbled as Nilly basked in Joan's look of admiration.

“Run out the door when you hear the trumpet signal,” Nilly said, grabbing the trumpet and pushing on the door handle.

“Wait—” Proctor began, but Nilly was already gone.

“What is he doing?” the professor moaned to Lisa, who was holding the door ajar and watching Nilly.

“He's standing in front of one of the hippos, he's squeezing the tube of glue…. He's smearing glue on the shotgun and the guy's lap. Now he's doing the same thing to the other hippo….”

“Go Nilly!” Joan whispered.

“He … he's walking behind Claude Cliché's back,” Lisa continued. “And … and undoing his suspenders from the back of his pants … and … and Claude stopped snoring….”

“Oh no!”

“Oh yes. And now … Claude is turning over … and now …”

“Now? What now?”

“Now he's snoring again.”

A collective sigh of relief was heard in the bathroom.

“Nilly is tying the ends of his suspenders to the radiator,” Lisa whispered. “There. And now he's climbing up onto the windowsill…. He's taking a deep breath. He's … he's …”

The trumpet reveille sliced like a knife through the thunderous snoring, which stopped immediately. Nilly lowered his trumpet and saw three pairs of bulging eyes staring at him.

“Ten hut!” Nilly screamed. “All eyes on me, all feet on deck! Pronto!”

As if on command—which ironically it was—the three men in the room all stood up.

“Get him!” yelled the guy in the suspenders with the super skinny mustache.

“Aye, aye, Mr. Cliché!” growled one of the hippos as he tried to pull his shotgun off his pant legs.

“Uh, my gun's stuck!”

“Well then just grab him! He's just a tiny little kid!”

As the hippos lumbered toward him, Nilly saw the bathroom door slide open and his four friends slip out.

“Come and get me, oh you ponderous giants of Dark Continent rivers!” Nilly sang, leaping from the windowsill to the desk chair as the hippos snatched after him. One of them flung himself at the chair, but Nilly hopped up onto the desk.

Furniture was toppled and the lamp smashed during the hippos' waddling quest to nab the red-haired impertinent micro-pipsqueak. Nilly had just made sure that his friends had made it safely out the door to the hallway when both hippos came tromping toward him, causing the floor to rock and the light fixture to start swinging.
Nilly got a running start, jumped and stretched his arms up toward the ceiling light. If he could just grab it, then he could just swing himself over to the open door and, voilà, he would be safe! He was in midair, laughing to himself. This wouldn't be that hard, he'd seen it done on TV and in movies a zillion times, where the hero just swung through the air like a trapeze artist. The problem was only that Nilly's arms … well, they were a smidge shorter than most heroes' arms. And the ceiling light was unfortunately hung a little higher than the chandeliers they usually used for this sort of thing in movies.

Nilly's arms spun around, but all his hands came in contact with was air. Everything that goes up must unfortunately come down, and the floor was approaching at high speed.

“Cannonball …,” Nilly managed to mumble before that little snub-nose of his hit the wood flooring with a crunching sound.

“We've got him,” he heard Cliché's voice hiss from the chair by the radiator.

Nilly rolled over and looked up. The two hippos were standing over him.

He heard the jangling of coins.

“Fill his pockets,” Cliché's voice hissed. “And toss him out the window.”

Nilly saw the hippo feet approaching. He closed his eyes and felt a hand brush down his side. And then a jerk as the hand found his saber and yanked it out of its scabbard.

“Get your paws off Nilly, you cud-chewers!”

Nilly opened his eyes. Joan was standing over him with the saber ready to chop, eyes trained on the hippos.

“You came back,” Nilly said.

“I couldn't leave you in the lurch, Nilly,” she said calmly. “I mean, I am Joan of Arc, the greatest female warrior in history.”

“Joan of Arc? Ha!” They heard Cliché scoff loudly
from his seat behind the hippos. “Any idiot knows that she was burned at the stake in 1431. You don't even look like her! Joan of Arc wore lipstick and had a wooden leg and a perm.”