12 A Happy Ending

Outside the Governor’s Mansion a huge pile of furniture sat on the road. “This is great!” Boasted Keith. “We should have started using our own brains years ago!”

“I’m never going to go to another séance again!” Grumbled Miss Polewidth bitterly, from beneath a three-seater sofa that Keith had ordered her and Mrs Potbelly to carry out to the road. “It certainly seems to be a more physical experience than I was expecting.” Huffed Mrs Potbelly from her end of the sofa.

“Silence!” Said Ernest. “Less chit-chat, more lifting, Prisoners.”

“Shall we take the grandfather clock out?” Asked Keith.

“No.” Said Ernest. “It’ll just make Cauldron think he’s smart. Don’t put any clocks on the road at all. What a twerp, thinking clocks would make a good roadblock.”

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Of course, Cauldron wasn’t thinking clocks would make a good roadblock at all. He was hoping that the scent of clockwork would work as a decoy for Gamaliel. He glanced in his rearview mirror and saw with astonishment Gamaliel had turned around and was running in the opposite direction.

“Thank goodness for that!” Snarled Cauldron, zooming along at an increasingly illegal speed. It didn’t occur to Cauldron to wonder why Gamaliel had stopped chasing him. Cauldron was like that. The minute something stopped effecting him, he lost interest in it.

He shot along the road into Berrima and hooned up the hill towards the Governor’s Mansion. He drove faster and faster still. He was driving far too fast for normal conditions. And there was nothing normal about the furniture roadblock that was waiting for him. Cauldron’s car went ploughing into the stack of furniture at 150 km/h. Chairs and tables went flying. A big screen TV went whizzing across the road towards Wopplepop’s Fudge Emporium. All the lights in the village snapped on and somewhere in the distance a police siren started to scream.

Cauldron, somehow unhurt, scrambled out of his car that had rocketed over the low stone wall into the gaol grounds and crashed into a rose garden.

“IDIOTS! FOOLS!” He shouted as he ran towards the Governor’s Mansion. “I told you to put clocks on the road, not all the furniture!”

The flashing blue lights of a police car lit up the night. Cauldron hastily rushed into the mansion and slammed and locked the door. “We’ll have to get out the back way,” he shouted.

“But the truck and the artwork is out the front!” Objected Keith.

Cauldron’s eyes flicked around in a nasty way. They landed on Debbie, Miss Polewidth and Mrs Potbelly. “Thank goodness we’ve got them.” He said in a horrible voice. “That should give us some time to get away! If the police don’t do exactly what we tell them too, then those three are going to get it!”

“We can feed them to a tiger at the fair!” squawked Jezebel excitedly. “Especially that one!” She waved at Miss Polewidth. Jezebel hadn’t forgotten about Cauldron flirting with Miss Polewidth in the guise of Professor Snot.

Miss Polewidth was gazing at Cauldron with interest. “You have a strong resemblance to an academic of my acquaintance.” She said.

“Shut up.” Said Cauldron.

“Yeah, shut up!” Screeched Jezebel.

“You shut up too!” Shouted Cauldron at Jezebel.

Jezebel was about to kick Cauldron in his other shin when Ernest, who was looking out the window said, “they’ve got the house surrounded and they’ve got dogs!”

“DOGS?” Yelled Cauldron. “I hate dogs, get out there and create a diversion while I make a run for it!”

“But we might get bitten!”

“That would be a great diversion! Any dog that is biting you, can’t bite me. And that is a good thing.”

Keith glared at Cauldron. “It doesn’t sound like a good thing for us.”

“I am your glorious leader!” Shouted Cauldron angrily. “I come up with all the best ideas and I have all the international contacts to pull off grand crimes! You should feel honoured to go out there and get bitten and arrested for my sake!”

“We don’t want too.” Said Ernest simply.

Cauldron looked at Ernest and Keith silently. They both still held their guns. Cauldron did not have a gun.

“This is the police!” Boomed a megaphone from outside. “Come out with your hands up!”

Cauldron pulled back the curtain. The sun was creeping up and it was just light enough to make out people’s faces.

“What’s Octavius doing out of jail?” He demanded.

The megaphone boomed. “We know you’re in there, Cauldron Bubble! Come out now!”

Cauldron glared at his collaborates. “I can’t believe none of you are willing to sacrifice yourself to save me.” Seeing them remain completely unmoved by this, a cunning look came onto his face. “We may be here for some time. Ernest and Keith, go into the kitchen and make us a pot of tea. You can leave your guns with me for safe keeping.”

“Why can’t the prisoners do it?” Demanded Keith, pointing at Debbie, Miss Polewidth and Mrs Potbelly.

“They might poison the tea.” Said Cauldron sneakily. “They might put something very nasty in the tea pot that makes us all die a fearsome, horrible death.”

“Then get Jezebel to make it!” Glowered Ernest. “Making tea is a girl’s job.”

“If you try and make me make you a pot of tea,” screeched Jezebel. “I’ll beat you up even worse than I did when you called me your housekeeper back at Octavius’s place!”

“AHA!” Miss Polewidth’s face lit up with a ray of dim intelligence. “I thought I’d seen you two before! You were calling yourself Professor Snot this evening and---” her face froze in horror as she looked at Jezebel. “You’re just a housekeeper who can’t speak to dead people at all! You’re just a lying opportunist with too much makeup and a posh alias. I bet that’s not even a real turban you’re wearing!” She leapt forward and yanked the edge of the towel turban off of Jezebel’s head. “Look at this!” Screamed Miss Polewidth reading the tag on the towel with rage. “BETTER BATHROOMS! Oh you FRUAD!”

“I am a great clairvoyant!” Yelled Jezebel. “I’m sick of being Cauldron’s sidekick girlfriend. I have hopes and dreams too! I didn’t see why I shouldn’t build a career for myself this summer! Why should I just be a delivery girl with my caravan! Why must I just join a carnival to collect Cauldron’s bits of art and hang stupid balloons on the golf course? I’m sick of this! I’m going to tell the police everything I know!” She unlocked the door and ran screaming out onto the porch, “it’s all Cauldron’s fault! He made me do it! He’s the worst boyfriend I ever had! I’ll cooperate fully!”

Keith and Ernest looked at each other. Then they threw down their guns and ran out after their sister. “Save us from the terrible Cauldron Bubble! It’s all his fault! We didn’t want to be criminals! He forced us to do it by threatening to not make us millionaires if we didn’t!”

Cauldron grabbed the guns discarded by Keith and Ernest and began to yell wildly at Debbie and the two women. “Get into the kitchen, now!” He screamed.

Debbie and the two women hastily obeyed him and backed up against the wall. Miss Polewidth crashed into Debbie. Debbie felt a crunching in her pocket.

 Cauldron came in after them. “Now I shall have to—” he began. But no one ever found out what he had to do.

 Sitting on the kitchen bench, was the spider that David had caught and put into a marmite jar on the day that Cauldron had taken over Uncle Octavius’s house. As Cauldron passed the bench, his flapping arm caught the jar and sent it flying. The lid, sat loosely on top of the jar (David had been worried that the spider wouldn’t have enough air if he screwed it down) tumbled off and the daddy-long-legs stumbled out.

“SPIDER!” Screamed Cauldron in a panic.

Suddenly, Debbie realized what the crunching in her pocket had been. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of broken glass and glittery purple powder. She could still make out the words on the torn label, Grapus Magnus Variation 47. Sentient Possibilities. Untested. Results predicted to be unstable.

An idea hit her! She threw the glittery purple powder at the spider.

For a moment, it seemed like nothing was going to happen. Then there was a loud POP!

The small daddy-long-legs exploded into a huge, enormous daddy-long-legs! He filled the kitchen with all his spidery legs and his spidery eyes rolled around like eight awful bowling balls.

Cauldron began to scream at the top of his lungs. Really, this was very unwise. The Spider had been wondering who to attack and Cauldron’s loud shrieks were just what he needed to orientate himself. Debbie, seizing the moment, unlocked the door out into the garden. The spider was chasing Cauldron back into the main part of the house. “Come on!” Yelled Debbie to Miss Polewidth and Mrs Potbelly.

They plunged out into the back garden and tore around the side of the house to where the police were arresting Jezebel, Keith and Ernest.

“Uncle Octavius!” Sobbed Debbie, flinging herself into his arms. “How did you get out of jail?”

“Thanks to this very intelligent policeman!” Said Uncle Octavius, pointing to Constable Cuffs. “Apparently, someone gave him a tip that Professor Snot was really Cauldron Bubble! It turns out Cauldron Bubble was stealing one piece of art from each great master that ever lived. He was planning to fuse MY clockwork giant with some horrible thing called Artificial Intelligence (I don’t really know what that is but it reeks of ugly modernity) and have him steal and replace all the great pieces of art in the world with fakes! Then he was going to reveal it to the world and make ME take the blame!”

Constable Cuffs came up and looked at Debbie. “Aren’t you one of the kids who tipped me off that Cauldron was forging disability parking permeants for himself?” He asked. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. After my date, (Constable Cuffs went a bit red), I had a more careful look at that permit and I realized that you were right. And when someone at the gallery told me that they’d had a burglary at the Artificial Intelligence display, I put two and two together and followed Mr Bubble down here.”

“And when Constable Cuffs came back to the police station to ask the local police some questions, I was able to give him more information on Cauldron Bubble.” Said Uncle Octavius excitedly. “The police let me out of jail, and I let them into my home, and we found Cauldron’s diary. He had the whole dastardly plot laid out in there.”

From inside the house a loud scream rang out.

Debbie handed her uncle the piece of paper that read Grapus Magnus Variation 47. “I thought it was glitter.” She said. “Then I chucked it on a spider, and it got huge.”

“Good heavens!” Exclaimed Uncle Octavius. “I can hardly believe my own genius! This is marvellous news. How big did the spider get, Debbie?”

But Debbie never got to answer. The front door burst open, and Cauldron came tearing out. Behind him, looking decidedly hungry, scurried the enormous spider.

“AHA!” Cried Uncle Octavius dancing about with pride. “I am greater than Einstein! This is even more satisfying than the explosion of my doughnut duplicator! He he, look at him run! I shall sell my giant spider for thousands and thousands of dollars to the zoo!”

“If that is your spider, Mr Mongomery,” snapped Officer Toggle. “Then you’d better call him off. It is illegal to allow giant spiders to eat people in Australia. Even people as odious as Mr Bubble.”

“Ha! Show me the law!” Yelled Uncle Octavius gleefully. “I bet it’s not on the books!”

“If your spider eats Mr Bubble,” said Sargent Toggle snippily. “I’m sure the law will be put on the books. Do you really want to go back to jail?”

“Oh, very well,” said Uncle Octavius crossly. He started running after the spider. Debbie wasn’t sure what he was going to do when he caught the spider, but it wasn’t a problem. Grapus Magnus Variation 47 was a very unstable concoction. There was another loud POP and the spider shrivelled down to an ordinary daddy-long-legs again. He scurried off into a ditch with his terrible tale, where he became a controversial figure in the bug community. To some insects he was an inspiration, to others, a brazen liar.

“Oh no!” Wailed Uncle Octavius. “I would have won the Nobel Peace Prize for that miracle of science! But now my proof is gone!”

“Don’t let Cauldron get away!” Yelled the police, charging up behind Uncle Octavius.

“Really, what’s the point of all my genius if I can never prove it?” Bawled Uncle Octavius, sitting down on the road and flinging his hands towards heaven. “This is the saddest day of my life!”

He was useless.

Cauldron increased his speed.

“He’s getting away!” Screamed Constable Cuffs.

But he wasn’t. A loud ticking, like the biggest clock you ever heard in your life filled the air. Coming towards Cauldron was David, standing on the top of Uncle Octavius’s Daimler, driving Gamaliel like a horse pulling a chariot.

Initially, David had been terrified to see Gamaliel charging towards him. But then he realized that the giant was just what he needed. Quickly, he fashioned a lasso from the ropes he had taken from the clockwork engine.

He had thrown it around Gamaliel and once Gamaliel was caught, he proved to be sulkily cooperative. He remembered David and he did not fancy having another flowerpot thrown at himself.

After that, it was easy to tie the car to Gamaliel and have him pull it to Berrima.

But at the sight of Cauldron, Gamaliel became enraged. He tore off the ropes and went charging at Cauldron. Within minutes he had caught him.

It took a lot of work to convince Gamaliel to give him back.

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“I can hardly express my admiration for your children.” Uncle Octavius was saying into the telephone. “They saved me from a terrible plot, rescued our town from a disaster and solved a puzzling mystery.”

David and Debbie, who had just come in from collecting some giant grapes looked at each other. “He must be talking to Mum and Dad!” Said Debbie excitedly.

Uncle Octavius’s voice continued. “I am sorry I didn’t believe them when they told me they had seen a ghost. It turns out that that horrible woman Jezebel was dancing around in bedsheets up at the gaol to drum up business for herself as a clairvoyant. Her brothers oversaw collecting the art from someone in Sydney and delivering it down here. She was stationed with the fair as a cover for moving the art around Australia and Cauldron was looking for an opportunity to get into my house and steal my clockwork giant. He was going to frame me in a horrible crime, and it would have worked too, if it hadn’t been for your brilliant children.”

There was a knock on the door. “Please hold on a minute,” said Uncle Octavius. He put the phone down and opened the door.

Parked in the driveway was the wonderful red and black spotted house truck from the fair. Debbie and David recognized it instantly as the caravan that the fake Madam Claudine had lived in.

In front of the house truck stood Miss Polewidth, Mrs Potbelly, Sargent Toggle, Sargent Potts and Constable Cuffs. They were all smiling.

Miss Polewidth stepped forward. “I am not usually fond of children,” She began. “But Debbie and David, you have done a very brave thing. You probably saved our lives and you certainly saved the reputation of the Southern Highlands.”

“We would have been known as the crime capital of Australia if you two hadn’t done what you did.” Said Mrs Potbelly gratefully. “And that is not a good vibe!”

“So we pooled our money and brought you this house truck as a thank you present at the Police Auction. It was confiscated from Jezebel during the investigation.” Finished Constable Cuffs.

“Hello? Hello?” Said the telephone. David darted back inside and picked it up. “Hello Mum? We’ve had the most AMAZING adventure!” He said. “Isn’t that right, Debbie?”

“Oh yes!” Said Debbie.

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It was evening and early Autumn. A long cord ran from the brightly lit house truck into Uncle Octavius’s house. In the laboratory, Gamaliel lay in pieces on the big table. Uncle Octavius was still trying to take the bad out of him. Every now and then, Uncle Octavius would mutter, “I deserve a Nobel Peace prize, but no one will ever believe my giant spider story. Grapes yes, spiders no.”

And in the house truck, drinking delicious hot cocoa with fluffy marshmallows, David and Debbie were taking turns reading from the book that Cauldron had left behind.

“Claudine was a ladybug who wanted more than anything to live in Paris.”

Debbie looked up from the book. “Gosh David, didn’t we have an interesting summer?”

“Not boring at all!” Agreed David. “But get on with the story. I want to hear the bit about the scary parrot. Claudine is a jolly good book, isn’t it?”

“Jolly good,” agreed Debbie. She read on, “Surely she belonged there. Her red and black ensemble….”

Somewhere in the night an owl hooted.

And across town, silent and solid, sat Berrima Gaol. No chains clanked and no mysterious lights hovered.

No one was looking for ghosts there anymore. And as Uncle Octavius says, “people only find the ghosts they’re looking for.”

Thank you all so much for reading my story! I hope to be back in the new year with new stories for you to enjoy. Follow me on Facebook and Instagram at Ruth Marie Hamilton to never miss a post!

The photograph of the clockwork parts is courtesy of Pixabay. The writing and the designs belong to R.M. Hamilton.