7 The Important Phone Call

“Thank goodness we bet Professor Snot home,” David felt under the door mat and pulled out the key.

“We better hurry, he can’t be far behind us.” Debbie started to run for the stairs.

Suddenly the phone rang.

They looked at the phone. “Should we pick it up? It might be Professor Snot!”

“It might not be either, you pick it up.”

Debbie picked up the phone, “Hello?” she said cautiously. David hovered close enough to hear.

“Is that you Debbie? It’s Uncle Octavius here. I can’t talk long but I must tell you, Professor Snot is not who he says he is. I’ve been turning things around in my mind (jail gives you a lot of time to think) and I think I know him. I used to go to school with a ghastly toad of a boy, he was called Caudron, but his last name wasn’t Snot. It was Bubble. I never really liked him, he was always throwing stones at dogs and not sharing his lollypops. But it all came to an ugly head at the local junior inventor’s fair. Caudron was too lazy to come up with his own idea, so he tried to steal my invention. I had invented a Doughnut Duplicator. You put a normal doughnut in one end, punched in the number of doughnuts you wanted to come out and suddenly you had doughnuts galore. Of course, Cauldron couldn’t come up with anything as good as that. He thought he was a genius, but he couldn’t even spell the word. Always spelt it J E A N Y I Z. The night before the fair, he snuck into the garage where I was keeping the Doughnut Duplicator. He left me his pathetic attempt at a toilet paper role periscope. But I had suspected Cauldron would try something like that. I had programmed the Doughnut Duplicator with a self-destructing feature that would come into effect if the incorrect password was punched in during the start up phase. Well, there we were at the fair. I had just endured a scathing dressing down from the judge over Cauldron’s awful toilet paper roll periscope. It was terribly annoying. But I put up with it because I knew for a fact Caudron wouldn’t be taking home any prize himself. The self-destructing feature surpassed my wildest hopes! To this day I’m prouder of what happened next than I am of the duplicating aspect of my invention! It exploded! It blew cream and jam and powdered sugar everywhere! It was glorious! It set off all the fire alarms! Eight fire engines came and when the firemen found nothing but an exploded doughnut duplicator, they were furious! They called the police and Cauldron was hauled away for questioning! As the siren screamed and the lights whirled, Cauldron leaned out the car window and he bellowed, “I’ll get you for that, Montgomery! One day, I’ll take one of your inventions and I’ll use it in a horrible crime and then everyone in the whole world will hate you!” I dare say he would have said more, but the policeman pulled him back into the car. At the time, I thought it was hilarious. I laughed so hard my ribs hurt for five days after. But now, I do not think it so funny. In fact, I think it is very worrying. I can only conclude somehow, he has heard about Gamaliel. Now, whatever happens children, you must not let Cauldron Bubble get his hands on my clockwork giant! I don’t know what horrible crime he’s planning, but if he ever gets his hands on my clockwork giant….”

“A car’s coming up the driveway!” said Debbie.

“It’s the fake Professor Snot,” gulped David.

“Hide!” ordered Uncle Octavius from the phone. “Don’t let him catch you. He was a very savage boy; I can’t imagine he’s any better as a grown up!”

The line went dead.

There was the sound of a car stopping and a door opening. David and Debbie looked frantically about for a place to hide. “Quick, the boot cupboard,” said David. They rushed towards it. It was built into the entrance of the house, and it was just big enough for them to both squeeze into. They made it without a minute to spare.

The front door opened, and the fake professor came in. He was not alone.

“I’m sure those horrible children had something to do with Claudine vanishing from the golf course,” he was saying. “I ought to have come here at once, but I had a meeting with our, err, contact.”

A woman’s loud shrill voice answered. “There you go, keeping secrets from me again! Won’t even tell me what the contact’s name is. Don’t trust me, you don’t.”

“You’re right, I don’t,” sneered Cauldron Bubble. “Not after that stupid stunt you played, renaming yourself Claudine, after we all agreed that Claudine was the best book to use to blend into this town. I didn’t expect you to go slapping the name all over garish circus posters.”

“Well how am I supposed to become a big star with a name like Jezebel Plank? I needed something with a bit more sizzle. Of course…. (her tone became speculative), I suppose Jezebel Bubble sounds quite nice, doesn’t it?”

“We’re not discussing that,” said Cauldron hastily.

A quick rapping on the front door made him jump. “Hide,” he hissed at Jezebel. She darted into the library.

Cauldron strode towards the door and threw it open.

“Oh, Professor Snot!” wailed Miss Polewidth. “I’ve lost those ghastly children. I lost them before I could take them down a dark tunnel to look at graffiti! Oh, this is terrible. What will my psychic say? What will the stars say? I have failed to cooperate with my horoscope and now the balance of the cosmos is in jeopardy. I was hoping you might know where they were!”

Cauldon looked at Miss Polewidth for a long time with slitty eyes. “How well do you know Octavius Montgomery?” he asked.

“Too well!” said Miss Polewidth, moving on from the jeopardized cosmos and the lost children with lightning speed. “He’s an awful man. He ruined the Southern Highlands Garden tour last year by growing some foul stinking weed instead of tulips. He didn’t bother to tell the committee about the change and the first thing we knew about it, we had a busload of politicians and press vomiting all over each other. It put them in the most awful mood. All the press went home and wrote nasty articles about our town and the politicians raised our taxes.”

“He sounds like a dangerous man,” said Cauldron smoothly.

“He is a dangerous man. My friend, Mrs Potbelly works as the deputy editor at Glorious Living. She wrote an article about his awful clockwork giant.”

Inside the cupboard, David and Debbie stiffened.

“I may have read that,” said Cauldron in a cunning manner. “Didn’t it go rampaging about the town causing a lot of damage?”  

“It was terrible! It was a thieving sort of giant. It roared about the town stealing anything mechanical that it fancied to upgrade itself. I have no idea what happened to it. Probably it’s hidden in one of the secret hiding places this weird old house is full of.”

“The house is full of secret hiding spots?” asked Cauldron. But he had overplayed himself.

“That’s hardly any concern of yours,” snapped Miss Polewidth. “And I must say, for their caregiver, you don’t seem too concerned about those children.”

“Forgive me,” said Cauldron. “I forget myself. It’s just, you’re so beautiful that my mouth ran away with me. Won’t you come in and have a cup of tea? My housekeeper will make some. Miss Plank, would you come here please?”

Jezabel Plank, who had not enjoyed hearing Cauldron Bubble tell Miss Polewidth she was ‘so beautiful’ came storming out. “Yeah, what do you want?” she snarled.

“We would like some tea and crumpets,” said Cauldron. “Toast the crumpets please and be sure to use a lot of butter.”

Jezabel opened her mouth and then shut it. Then she opened it again and said a rude word.

“Well, really,” said Miss Polewidth. “How uncouth.” She narrowed her eyes at Jezebel. “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”

Jezebel looked like she was about to say a lot more rude words when Cauldron hastily hustled her into the library and slammed the door. He reopened it again to quickly say to Miss Polewidth, “excuse me, my staff needs managing,” before he slammed it again.

The library was behind the entrance boot cupboard. David and Debbie could hear the angry, whispery conversation quite clearly.

“Staff? So, I’m staff now? Is that all I mean to you, Caldron?”

“Shut up, can’t you see I need to do this? That short fool clearly knows something about this house. It’s so typical that sneaky Octavius would have a house with hidden rooms in it. But we can’t waste time looking for those rooms. I need to get the information out of her. The giant is probably hidden in a secret room somewhere. So, get with the programme and make us some tea and crumpets.”

“You said she was beautiful!”

“That was just part of my cunning ruse!”

“It didn’t sound like a cunning ruse to me! It sounded like you meant it!”
Cauldron groaned. For the first time since the children had met him, Cauldron seemed to be getting the worst of it.

“Be my housekeeper for this one evening and I’ll make it up to you!”

“Will you endorse my psychic show at the Berrima gaol?”

“YOUR WHAT?” Cauldron forgot to whisper.

“My psychic show at the gaol. I’m taking a tour and a Paranormal TV show through the gaol next week. We’re going to commune with dead convicts. It will be most uplifting.”

“YOU’RE TAKING A TV SHOW THROUGH THE GAOL?”

“I’ve already told you, Cauldron, that my career is just as important as yours. Now that I think about it, it’s much more important.”

Out in the entrance, Miss Polewidth was becoming restive. “I think I’d better go,” she called.

“No!” boomed Cauldron in a bossy voice. Then he added, “I can’t bare to see you leave, my love!”

Jezabel glared at him. Then she kicked him in the shin. “Make your own tea and crumpets! She shouted. Then she stormed out of the library through the French windows into the garden.

Cauldron adjusted his tie and limped out to where Miss Polewidth stood impatiently tapping her foot. ‘Well, Professor?” she asked.

“My housekeeper assaulted me and quit,” said Cauldron. He looked like he expected sympathy. He was disappointed.

“Can’t you make your own tea and crumpets?” asked Miss Polewidth sternly. “This is Australia. I don’t think it’s quite nice for you to have servants. It sounds all rather, feudal.”

“Of course, I can make my own tea and crumpets,” said Cauldron crossly. “But as a highly intelligent, very err, rich professor, sometimes I become so absorbed in my work I forget to eat. I am devoted to my research of course, but a bachelor’s life is a lonely lot.”

“You poor man,” said Miss Polewidth, hastily dropping her cold voice. “I’ll make you your tea. Come into the kitchen and I’ll tell you some of the history of this house. It was built by an eccentric businessman who went entirely mad reading Agatha Christie novels. They say this house is riddled with sliding panels, secret staircases, and hidden tunnels.”

Their voices drifted off into the kitchen. Ten minutes later they came back into the library. “Of course, I don’t know many of the house’s secrets,” Miss Polewidth continued. But I went to school with a girl who knew a girl whose father worked as a gardener here. She said that there was a fat little angel carved on the mantle piece and if you pushed it, something would open. Shall we try and find the angel, Professor? Wouldn’t that be fun?”

But Professor Snot didn’t think it would be fun. He suddenly discovered he had a pressing piece of research to do, and she would have to leave.

“Oh, but Professor, we were getting on so well! And what about those children lost in Sydney?”

“I’m sure they’re fine,” said Cauldron as he almost shoved her out the door. “Children are hardy creatures. They can eat something from a rubbish bin and sleep in a Moreton Bay fig tree. What an adventure. Goodbye.”

And he slammed the door. Caudron was very rough with doors. He never shut them if he could slam them.

Then with gleaming eyes, he began to stomp towards the library, in search of a fat angel that if you pushed it, something would open.

Come back next week to find out what happens next! Follow me on Facebook and Instagram at Ruth Marie Hamilton to never miss an instalment.

The photographs of the desk and the telephone are courtesy of Pixabay. The writing and the designs belong to R.M. Hamilton.