The Fantastic Family Whipple (29 page)

“Perfect!” exclaimed Rex Goldwin. “We’ll be looking forward to it, Mrs. Whipple.”

Just then, there was some commotion at the gate to their rear, and Arthur turned to see a now common sight: a rabid pack of reporters swarming around the latest member of the Goldwin family to break a world record against a Whipple. Flash bulbs glinted off Roland’s teeth as the penny-farthing champion smiled for the cameras.

“All right then,” Rex Goldwin announced. “More interviews to give, I’m afraid. But do enjoy the rest of your day—and good luck in your remaining events…. Shame we won’t be there to spur you on to your best anymore—but at least you’ll be able to
win
a few before you leave, eh?”

Mrs. Whipple managed a polite smile. Her husband did not.

As Rex and Rita turned to face the reporters, Arthur noticed Ruby standing near the gate, a few yards from her brothers and sisters. Detecting the boy’s gaze, she waved to him with an expression that seemed to say,
Sorry about your brother being shot with a misfired arrow and failing to win his event. Hope he’s all right.

Arthur appreciated her sentiment, but before he could wave back, a panting, gray-suited man scurried through the gate and approached his father.

“Mr. Whipple?” the man inquired, wiping his brow.

“Yes?”

“Benjamin Quivers—head of the Foot Archery Committee.
I came as soon as I heard. Please accept my sincere apologies regarding the stray arrow. Usually, when one gets away from us, it merely hits a wall or—at the very worst—a bystander, but to hit an athlete in the middle of his event…I am truly sorry.”

“It’s quite all right, Mr. Quivers. Though it certainly gave us a scare for a moment or two, Henry was able to turn the incident to his advantage and pull out a world record anyway.”

“Yes. That must have been quite a relief after being shut out all day by those Goldwins. At least
someone
in your family was able to break a record against them.”

Mr. Whipple clearly did not find this comforting—but Mr. Quivers did not seem to notice.

“Yep,” he added. “It’s a good thing your boy knows how to take an arrow properly—he really saved your necks today. To be honest, I’m shocked he wasn’t hurt any worse. You should’ve seen the size of this fellow who shot the arrow. Must’ve been nine feet tall…”

Arthur’s ears perked up as a chill ran down his spine.

“Really, it’s a wonder the arrow didn’t go straight
through
your boy.”

“Yes, we’re very lucky,” Mr. Whipple said curtly. “Thank you for your concern, Mr. Quivers, but I’d better get back to my family.”

“Oh, yes. Please do. Hope to see you next year—if you’re still competing in the world records game, of course.”

There was a slight hiccup in Mr. Whipple’s cordial
expression, but he quickly regained his composure, then turned and walked away—affording Arthur a moment alone with the committee head.

“Um—pardon me, sir?” the boy asked timidly.

“Yes?”

“The man who shot the arrow—he didn’t happen to be wearing any, um, unusual clothing, did he?”

“What exactly do you mean by
unusual
?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Like maybe a clown suit?”

“Nope. No clown suit.”

“Oh. Well…did you happen to get his name?”

“I’m afraid not, my boy. The incident occurred during warm-ups for the amateur speed-shooting challenge, and in the end, he declined to compete—before his name had even made the roster. The event’s just finished, I believe—but you might still catch him, if you’d like to have a chat with him about clown clothing. Last I saw him, he was hanging around with this really short fellow. Rather unpleasant looking chap. You really can’t miss them.”

Another chill met the boy’s spine.

As the man turned and walked away, Arthur glanced over at Ruby. She’d heard the whole thing—and seemed to know as well as he did what it meant. The dwarf and the giant were there—and apparently up to their old tricks.

Ruby gave Arthur a look that said,
What are you going to do?

As much as Arthur wanted to inform his parents of his suspicions, he had learned the hard way not to open his
mouth without the proof to back it up. Before he presented his case, he would have to do some investigating.

“Father,” the boy asked, making his way toward Mr. Whipple, “may I go watch the amateur foot archer speed-shooting challenge?”

“Hmm? Oh. Yes, that’s fine. But don’t be gone too long. Extreme croquet is coming up soon, you know.”

“Yes sir,” Arthur replied. “I won’t be long.”

Then, without so much as a word to each other, Arthur and Ruby walked side by side to the stairs that overlooked the Archery Area—and promptly began the descent.

Unfortunately, there was no sign of the oddly sized suspects at the foot archery field. Indeed, there was no sign of anyone. The participants and spectators of the recently concluded amateur speed-shooting challenge had all since dispersed, leaving behind only abandoned targets and concessions wrappers.

With a disgruntled sigh, Arthur set about scouring the area.

“Now, what exactly are we hoping to find here?” asked Ruby. “I mean, I thought we were after the clowns from the party—without the clown suits, apparently—but since they’re obviously not here, what is there to look for?”

“Clues,” replied Arthur, not looking up.

“Oh, right. Clues. Of course.”

Ruby began staring casually at the ground. “So—I mean, I hate to say I told you so—but now that they’ve
started shooting arrows at your family members, are you willing to admit that clowns might be just a little bit evil?”

“An isolated incident,” muttered Arthur. “Their chosen profession has nothing to do with it.”

“We’ll have to agree to disagree on that one,” said Ruby. “But I still say you should have told somebody about them.”

“Noted,” said Arthur.

The two continued their search in silence. But the more Arthur thought about it, the less he could focus on finding clues. Just who did this girl think she was, anyway? Telling him what he should and shouldn’t do.
She
didn’t have the pressure of trying to belong in
her
family.
She
already was a world-record holder—and she didn’t even seem to appreciate it. After several seconds of stewing, he could no longer hide his indignation.

“You know, you’ve got a lot of—”

“Wait, Arthur—look at this!” Ruby cried, pointing at the ground in front of her.

As Arthur hunched over for a closer look, he forgot all about his intended tirade. There in the mud was an enormous shoeprint.

The two exchanged dumbstruck glances, then crouched down to examine their find more closely. The impression was over twenty inches in length and nearly eight inches across.

“Do you think this counts as a clue?” whispered Ruby.

“Well, I’ve never really found one before,” Arthur admitted. “But yes, I’m pretty sure this counts.”

Upon further inspection, it became clear that the print was not simply an orphan. Every five feet or so, the children found another matching shoeprint, so that a traceable path in the mud was soon revealed. If there had been any doubt as to who had left the prints, the children’s next discovery instantly confirmed their suspicions.

“Whoa—look at these,” Arthur gawked.

Running alongside the first set of prints was a barely noticeable second set, made up of shoeprints so tiny and so faint that they could only have been left by a toddler—or a very small dwarf.

“So, what now?” asked the girl.

“I guess we try to follow the footprints and see if they lead us to our suspects,” replied Arthur.

“And after we track down this nine-foot giant assassin and his stealthy sidekick, then what?”

Arthur shrugged. “We apprehend them?”

Ruby shot the boy a skeptical look.

“I don’t know,” said Arthur. “I’m still pretty new at this detective stuff. We’ll figure that out when we get there, I guess. But for now, I think the proper detective thing to do is to just follow the clues where they lead.”

“So we’re detectives now, are we?”

Arthur suddenly felt immensely embarrassed for saying that part out loud. He had forgotten that his junior detective credentials were mostly in his head.

“I just thought…I mean, if you don’t want—”

“No, no—‘detectives’ is good,” Ruby cut him off.
“As long as I get to be the hard-boiled private eye who’s addicted to the job almost as much as he’s addicted to the bottle. Oh, and at some point, I get to wear a trench coat.”

“Uh…sure,” said Arthur, surprisingly encouraged. She seemed even more into this than he was.

“All right,” Ruby declared, “so what are we waiting for? Lead the way, Detective Whipple!”

A
rthur and Ruby followed
the trail nearly fifty yards, until it disappeared into the dense grove that divided the Archery Area from the extreme croquet lawn. Halting just outside the trees, Arthur stared into the gloomy woodland, then glanced to his partner for encouragement—or, preferably, restraint. But Ruby would not be so easily intimidated.

“After you,” she smiled.

Upon entering the grove, the duo found the tracks increasingly difficult to follow. While fallen leaves obscured the ground underfoot, the canopy overhead blocked out the fading daylight—as well as whatever slight warmth it had provided.

“This must be how they avoided unnecessary attention,” Arthur suggested, breathing into his hands and rubbing
them together. “These trees are the only things tall enough around here to provide cover for a giant.”

“True,” said Ruby, “or it could be a trap. They could be hiding in here still, knowing no one will be around to stop them from brutally murdering us.”

The sound of leaves crunching beneath Arthur’s feet suddenly took on a rather ominous quality. “I suppose that’s another possibility,” he admitted, hoping the girl didn’t notice his sudden increase in pace.

When Arthur glanced up to gain his bearings a short while later, he was relieved to see light poking through the thinning trees ahead of them. Only a hundred feet left to go amongst the trees, and they’d be able to continue tracking in the open again—where there was far less chance of being ambushed by vicious off-duty clowns. Things were looking up.

At that moment, it began to rain.

Soon the children’s ears were filled with what sounded like the World’s Largest Batch of Popcorn being popped directly over their heads. Arthur felt a cold pinprick on the back of his neck. And then another. And another—until there were too many to distinguish one from the next. He was quickly becoming drenched.

Looking back at Ruby, he couldn’t help but smile at their ridiculous circumstances—but as he returned his gaze to the ground, he noticed the water pooling up in one of the giant shoeprints.

A terrible thought struck him. Soon the tracks would be
completely washed away—and with them, their first and only lead.

“Run!” cried Ruby, apparently arriving at a similar conclusion.

Arthur spun back around and charged forward, doing his best to follow the dissolving trail of muddy shoeprints through the undergrowth. But soon, there was nothing left to track.

In their haste, the children had failed to notice the trail veer sharply to the right and curve behind an enormous oak tree. As a result, they also failed to notice the two pairs of eyes—one unusually large, the other unusually small—peering out at them through the crook of a tree branch. Had they noticed this, of course, more than just their mission might have ended right then and there.

Unaware of their recent brush with death, Arthur and Ruby scrambled onward. Moments later, they burst out of the trees and onto a swampy stretch of lawn.

“Wow,” said Ruby, rain pouring off her nose. “Good work keeping to the trail through all that. I lost it a long time ago.”

“Well, actually,” said Arthur, “so did I.”

“Oh,” said Ruby.

“I thought I’d be able to pick it up again once we were out of the trees,” Arthur gasped, rainwater spilling down his face, “but it seems it’s been completely washed away—and now we’ve lost our one chance at finding the clowns and setting things right.”