Emil and the Detectives (8 page)

T
HE WINDOWS OF ROOM
61
FACED
N
OLLENDORF
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QUARE
. And as Mr. Groundsnow was combing his hair the next morning, he looked out and noticed the crowd of children hanging around down below. There were at least two dozen children playing kickball in front of the bushes across the street. Another division was posted on Kleist Street. Children were standing at the entrance to the subway.

“Must be on vacation,” he growled, irritated, as he fastened his tie.

Meanwhile the Professor was running a party convention, ranting and raving at the delegates. “So here we are, burning the midnight oil, figuring out how to catch the guy, while you bunglers are out rousing the whole city! You think we need an audience? You think we're making a movie or something? If that guy slips away, it'll be your fault, you busybodies!”

The others stood there in a circle and listened patiently, but hardly seemed to be suffering any pangs of conscience. Maybe a few pinpricks. Gerold said, “Don't get worked up, Professor. We'll catch the robber either way.”

“Get on out there, you numbskulls! And order your squads to keep a low profile, at least so the hotel doesn't notice them. Got it? Now move!”

The boys took off. Only the detectives were left in the courtyard.

“I borrowed ten marks from the porter,” Emil reported. “So if the man cuts loose, we'll have enough money to follow him.”

“Just tell all those kids outside to go home,” Crumbagel suggested.

“You really think they'll go? They'd stay put even if Nollendorf Square exploded,” said the Professor.

“There's only one solution,” said Emil. “We have to change plans. Instead of trailing him with spies, we'll just have to circle him. So he knows he's trapped. All of us, on all sides.”

“That's just what I was thinking,” said the Professor. “We should simply change our strategy, keep pushing him until he gives himself up.”

“Excellent!” shouted Gerold.

“I'm sure he'd rather cough up the money than have a hundred kids jumping and shouting after him until the whole city comes out and the police nab him,” Emil added.

The others all nodded sagely. Then a bell rang out on the sidewalk, and a radiant Pony the Hat pedaled into the courtyard. “Morning, cowboys!” she called out, jumped off her bike, shook hands with Emil, the Professor, and the others, then fetched a little basket that she'd tied to the handlebars. “I brought you some coffee,” she announced, “and a few English muffins! I even have a clean cup. Oh no, the handle broke off! Darn it!”

The boys had all had breakfast already. Even Emil, in Hotel Kreid. But no one wanted to dampen the little girl's enthusiasm. So they all drank the coffee from the cup without a handle and ate the English muffins like they hadn't eaten for weeks.

“Well, doesn't that hit the spot!” said Crumbagel.

“These muffins sure are crispy!” murmured the Professor as he chewed.

“Aren't they?” asked Pony. “Well, there's nothing like having a woman around the house!”

“Around the courtyard, you mean,” said Gerold.

“How are things on Schumann Street?” asked Emil.

“Everyone's fine, thanks. Grandma sends her love. You better come soon, though, otherwise they'll make you eat fish for dinner every day.”

“Yuck!” said Emil under his breath and made a face.

“Why yuck?” asked Middleday Junior. “Fish is good for you.” Everyone looked at him in surprise, because he normally never said anything. He immediately turned red as a beet and sneaked off behind his older brother.

“Emil can't stand fish. Every time he tries it, he has to rush out of the room,” Pony the Hat explained.

They continued bantering, and everyone seemed to be in a good mood. The boys were remarkably attentive. The Professor held Pony's bicycle for her. Crumbagel went and washed out the thermos and the cup. Middleday Senior cleanly folded the bag that the English muffins came in. Emil tied the basket back to the handlebars. Gerold checked the air in the tires. And Pony the Hat hopped around the courtyard, sang a little song, and chatted about this and that.

“Wait!” she shouted all of a sudden and stood still on one leg. “There's something I wanted to ask you! What is that huge crowd of kids doing on Nollendorf Square? It looks like summer camp out there!”

“They heard we were chasing a thief, and now they want to join in,” explained the Professor.

Just at that moment, Gus came running into the courtyard, honked his horn, and shouted, “Come on! He's coming!” They all leapt to their feet.

“Attention everyone!” shouted the Professor. “We're going to form a circle around him. There'll be kids behind him, in front of him, to his left and to his right! Got that? You'll get further orders later on. Hup, two, three, four!”

They ran off, falling all over themselves on the way out. Pony the Hat stayed behind, a little miffed. Then she swung herself up on her little nickel-plated bicycle, murmuring, just like her grandmother, “I don't like the looks of it. I just don't like the looks of it!” and pedaled off after the boys.

The man in the bowler hat was walking out the front door of the hotel. Slowly he made his way down the steps, then turned right, toward Kleist Street. The Professor, Emil, and Gus goaded their messengers back and forth through the various groups of kids. And three minutes later, Mr. Groundsnow was surrounded.

He looked around on all sides, completely baffled. The boys were talking, laughing, and poking each other, all the while keeping pace with him. A few of them stared at the man until he got embarrassed and looked straight ahead again.

Whooosh! A ball flew by, grazing his head. He flinched, then walked faster. He tried darting into a side street. But there was already another troop of kids there coming at him.

“Man, look at his face,” yelled Gus. “He always looks like he's about to sneeze.”

“Walk a little in front of me,” said Emil. “He doesn't need to see me just yet. He'll figure it out soon enough.” Gus puffed out his chest, bulking up in front of Emil like a boxer too musclebound to walk. And Pony the Hat rode her bike alongside the procession, cheerfully ringing the bell.

The man in the bowler hat became visibly nervous. He had a vague idea of what lay in store for him and began loping forward with long strides. But it was pointless. There was no getting away from his enemies.

Suddenly he stopped and stood stock-still. Then he spun around on his heels and walked back down the street in the opposite direction. The children all turned around, too, and began marching in reverse formation.

Then a boy—it was Crumbagel—ran in front of the man and made him stumble.

“What's your problem, you little brat?” he screamed. “I'll call the cops!”

“Oh yeah, call the cops!” Crumbagel shouted. “That's just what we've been waiting for. Go ahead, mister, call 'em!”

Mr. Groundsnow had no intention of calling the police, on the contrary. The whole situation was getting very spooky. He became truly afraid and no longer knew what to do. People were looking out their windows. Salesclerks and customers were coming out of the stores, asking what was going on. If the police showed up now, he was done for.

Then the thief had an idea. He noticed a bank on the corner. He broke through the chain of children, rushed to the door of the bank, and vanished inside.

The Professor bounded to the door and shouted, “Gus and I will go in after him! Emil will stay here until it's time. Wait for Gus to honk his horn. Then, Emil, you come in with ten other boys. Pick out the right ones now. This is going to be tricky!”

The Professor and Gus disappeared through the door.

Emil's heart was beating wildly. This was it! He called over Crumbagel, Gerold, the Middleday brothers, and a few others, and instructed everyone else, the army of kids, to scatter.

The children walked away from the bank building, but not very far. No way were they were going to miss what happened next.

Pony the Hat asked a boy to hold her bicycle and went over to Emil.

“I'm here,” she said. “Chin up, Emil. This is it. My God, are my nerves ever shot.”

“And you think mine aren't?” asked Emil.

G
US AND THE
P
ROFESSOR WALKED INTO THE BANK AND SAW
the man in the bowler already standing at a counter marked “Deposits and Withdrawals.” He was waiting impatiently for the teller to get off the phone.

The Professor went and stood next to the thief and watched him like a Pointer. Gus stood behind him with one hand in his pants pocket, ready to honk the horn.

The teller came to the window and asked the Professor what he could do for him. The Professor answered, “I'm sorry, but this gentleman here was before me.”

“Yes?” the teller asked Mr. Groundsnow.

“Would you please change this hundred-mark bill into two fifties,” he asked, digging into his pocket, “and give me the forty marks in one- and five-mark coins?” He laid a hundred-mark bill and two twenty-mark bills on the counter.

The teller took the three bills and walked over to the safe.

“Just a moment!” the Professor shouted. “That money is stolen!”

“Whaaat?” the teller asked, astonished, and turned around. His coworkers, who were sitting and crunching numbers in the other departments, jumped out their seats as if a snake had bitten them.

“That money doesn't belong to this man. He stole it from a friend of mine, and now he wants to change it so that no one can prove it,” the Professor explained.

“Never in my life have I witnessed such insolence!” said Mr. Groundsnow. “Please excuse me,” he said to the teller, then turned to the Professor and smacked him on the head.

“That won't change anything,” said the Professor and slugged Groundsnow in the stomach so hard that the man had to hold onto the counter. And now Gus honked his horn three times as loud as he could. The curious bank employees all jumped up and ran to see what was happening.

The bank manager stormed out of his office like a hornet.

And then—ten boys came running in through the front door, Emil at their helm, and surrounded the man in the bowler hat.

“What on earth are these kids doing here?” shouted the manager.

“These little delinquents claim that the money I just asked your teller to change for me was stolen, by me, from one of them!” Mr. Groundsnow explained, trembling with anger.

“It's true!” yelled Emil and ran up to the counter. “He stole a hundred-mark bill and two twenties from me. Yesterday afternoon. In the train on the way from New Town to Berlin! While I was sleeping!”

“Sure, but can you prove it?” asked the teller.

“I've been in Berlin for a week and yesterday I was in the city from morning to night,” said the thief with a polite smile.

“That's a lie!” shouted Emil, practically in tears with anger.

“Can you prove that this man was on the train with you?” asked the bank manager.

“Of course he can't,” said the thief nonchalantly.

“If you were sitting alone with him in the train, then there can't have been any witnesses,” one of the bank employees pointed out. Emil's friends looked shocked.

“But there were!” shouted Emil, “I do have a witness! Mrs. Jacob from Great Greenow. She was in the same compartment with us, then she got out. She asked me to say hello to Mr. Squatneck from New Town.”

“It seems you'll have to supply an alibi,” said the bank manager to the thief. “Can you do that?”

“Of course,” he said. “I'm staying across the way in Hotel Kreid…”

“But he only checked in there last night,” said Gus. “I've been working undercover as a bellhop there. I know.”

The bank employees all chuckled and became even more curious about the boys.

“I think it's best if we hold onto the money here for the moment, Mr …?” said the manager and tore off a sheet of paper from a notepad in order to write down the name and address.

“Mr. Groundsnow!” shouted Emil.

The man in the bowler hat laughed out loud and said, “There, you see, the boy has mistaken me for someone else. My name is Mueller.”

“That's a baldfaced lie! He told me in the train his name was Groundsnow,” Emil shouted furiously.

“Do you have an I.D.?” asked the teller.

“Unfortunately not on me,” said the thief. “But if you don't mind waiting a few minutes, I'll go and get it from the hotel.”

“The guy's a pathological liar! And it's my money. And I need to have it back,” shouted Emil.

“Well, even if that's true, young man,” the teller explained, “it's not so simple. How can you prove that the money is yours? Is your name written on it? Or did you happen to write down the serial numbers?”

“Of course not,” said Emil. “Do you leave the house expecting to get robbed? But it's still my money. Don't you understand? My mother gave it to me to give to my grandmother, who lives at 15 Schumann Street.”

“Was there anything strange about the bills themselves? One of the corners ripped off, for example?”

“No. I really don't know.”

“Gentlemen, I give you my word. The money really does belong to me. I am certainly not one to rip off little kids.”

“Wait!” Emil shouted suddenly and jumped into the air, he was so relieved. “Wait! In the train, I pinned the money to the inside of my jacket. So there should be pinholes in the three bills!”

The teller held the money up to the light. The thief's breath caught in his throat.

He took a step back. The bank director nervously drummed his fingers on the counter.

“The boy is right!” cried the teller, pale with excitement. “There really are pinholes in all three bills!”

“And here's the pin that made them,” said Emil, and proudly laid the pin on the counter. “I even pricked myself with it.”

At that the thief spun around on his heels, shoved, then pushed over, the boys on either side of him, ran across the room, threw open the door, and was gone.

“After him!” shouted the bank director.

Everyone ran to the door.

When they got to the street, the thief was there, surrounded on all sides by at least twenty boys. They clutched his legs. They hung from his arms. They tore at his jacket. He waved his arms around like mad, but the boys wouldn't let go.

Then a police officer came running to the scene. Pony the Hat had gone on her little bike to fetch him. The bank manager insisted that he arrest the man, whose name was either Groundsnow or Mueller or both, since he was, in all likelihood, a train robber.

The teller took the rest of the day off, grabbed the money and the pin, and joined them. Well, it sure was some procession! The policeman and the bank manager, with the thief in between them, and behind them ninety to a hundred kids! Walking all together to the police station.

Pony the Hat rode her little nickel-plated bicycle alongside them. She nodded at her overjoyed cousin Emil and shouted, “Emil, good on you! I'm riding back home to tell them the whole story!”

The boy nodded back at her and said, “I'll be home for lunch! Say hello to everyone!”

Then Pony the Hat shouted one more thing: “You know what you all look like? Like a whole school on a field trip!” And with a loud ring of her bell she turned the corner.