1997 - The Chocolate Money Mystery (2 page)

“I think I’ve got an idea,” he said after a while. “I think I know what to do. Tell me, Maddy, why do you think these dogs are robbing banks?”

Maddy scratched her head. “Because they’re bad,” she suggested. “Because they’re bad dogs?”

Max shook his head. “No,” he said. “Bad dogs chase cars and cats. They don’t rob banks. The only reason why a dog would rob a bank is because it’s been taught to do it. Somebody has trained these dogs to do their dirty work. Somebody has decided that the safest way of stealing money from the bank is to get your dog to do it! As long as the dog can slip away, you’re never going to get caught. Nobody will see you, nobody will know who you are. You just wait round the corner and take the money from the dog’s mouth. Then you bundle the dog into a van and off you go.”

Maddy thought for a moment. It sounded very strange, but it must be true. So what were they going to do about it?

Max looked at his sister and smiled. “I’ve got a plan,” he said. “I’ll tell you about it a bit later. The first thing we have to do is to get a St Bernard dog for ourselves. Then the next thing to do is to put an advertisement in the newspaper!”

Maddy felt very puzzled, but she knew that her brother’s plans were usually very good ones, and she was sure that this would be a good one too. But what could he possibly want with a St Bernard dog? She was soon to find out.

St Bernard Dog Seeks Home

“A St Bernard dog?” exclaimed Mr Huffendorf. “
You
want
me
to get you a St Bernard dog?”

“Yes, please,” said Max. “And we’d like a very obedient one, if possible.”

Mr Huffendorf scratched his head. “Well, I suppose I can do that,” he said. “I think my brother knows a man who has a cousin whose friend’s aunt breeds these dogs. Should I ask him to ask him to ask her to ask him to ask her?”

It was agreed that Mr Huffendorf should try as soon as possible to borrow the dog and to bring it to the house. He went off to do this, while Max and Maddy went out into the garden, which was deep in snow, to throw snowballs and build a large snow dog.

A few hours later, they saw Mr Huffendorf’s car winding back up the road to the house. The driver was in the front, and in the back seat sat Mr Huffendorf and the largest dog the children had ever seen. The car stopped outside the front door and Mr Huffendorf got out, followed by the dog. The dog looked around, sniffed at the air, and gave an enthusiastic bark. Then it followed Mr Huffendorf into the house to be introduced to Max and Maddy.

“This is Rudolf,” said Mr Huffendorf, and as he spoke the dog held out a paw to be shaken.

It was a splendid dog, and like all Swiss dogs it was extremely obedient and well-mannered. It sat politely on the floor, and stood up when asked. When you called out, “Come here!” it trotted over to sit at your side, and when you said, “Lie down!” it lay down exactly where it was standing at the time, with no questions asked.

After they had spent a while getting to know Rudolf, Mr Huffendorf asked Max to explain his plan.

“It’s quite simple,” said Max. “One of the best rules for being a good private detective is this:
It’s much easier to get the crooks to come to you than for you to go to them!
So, if we put an advertisement in the newspapers saying that the best-trained St Bernard dog in Switzerland is looking for a home, that might just be very interesting to the bank robbers. After all, their robberies are going so well that they’ll be needing more dogs to help them.”

Mr Huffendorf looked doubtful. “Perhaps,” he said, and then, “Well, we can at least try. But do remember that we have to give Rudolf back. His owner is very fond of him. He won’t come to any harm, will he?”

“I hope not,” said Max.

At this, Rudolf gave a loud bark, as if he had understood everything that had been said. He was clearly a very intelligent dog, and it was just possible that he had picked up some of the plan. Dogs, after all, understand much more than they would like us to believe, and Rudolf perhaps had heard and taken in the word ‘robbers’.
Yes
, he thought.
Robbers! You’ve picked just the right dog to help you! Oh, yes! Grrr! Just let me at them!

The advertisement appeared in the newspaper the next day:

EXCELLENT ST BERNARD DOG SEEKS HOME.

Rudolf, our beloved St Bernard, is a hard-working dog who is also very obedient. But St Bernards are very big, and we are moving to a very small house. So could some kind person please look after him?

There were one or two telephone calls that morning. One of them was from a lady who wanted Rudolf to pull a dog cart for her. Another was from a man who wanted him to scare cats out of his garden. Neither of these sounded like a bank robber though, and Mr Huffendorf thanked them politely and said that he would have to think about it. Then the doorbell rang, and this time it was a rather suspicious-looking man.

“Where’s the dog?” he said rudely. “I’d like to see him.”

Mr Huffendorf invited him in while Max and Maddy went to fetch Rudolf.

“Rather a scruffy-looking dog,” said the man, with a sneer. “I’ve seen much better.”

Max shot Maddy a glance. As detectives they could tell that this was the man. When you looked at him, his eyes slid away and his nose twitched ever so slightly. That was always a sign.

“He’s a very obedient dog,” said Maddy. “Look, if I tell him to lie down he’ll do so immediately.”

The man watched as Rudolf went through his paces.

“I suppose I can take him,” he said at the end of it all. “Over here, dog. You’re coming with me.”

Rudolf seemed unwilling to go off with his new owner, but with a little encouragement from Max he eventually allowed the man to fit a lead on to his collar and to drag him out of the door.

The man walked down the road, with a rather miserable-looking Rudolf walking beside him, glancing backwards from time to time to see if his new friends were coming with him. They were, of course, but they remembered everything they had read in their parents’ book
How to Follow People without Being Seen—Ever
and Rudolf would never have noticed them. When he looked behind him, as he did from time to time, did he think that there was something odd about that bush on the edge of the road—the one with the branches that seemed to be moving ever so slightly? Of course he did not. And when he saw that very tall person with a long coat and a hat pulled right down over his eyes, did he think that it was really a girl perched on a boy’s shoulders? Not for a moment.

There was a small station at the end of the road and it is here that the man went, pulling Rudolf behind him. Max and Maddy waited, crouching behind a snowdrift at the edge of the railway line. When the train came, they would be able to slip into one of the carriages without being seen by the man or Rudolf.

“I hope we don’t lose Rudolf,” whispered Maddy. “We’ve promised to bring him back.”

“Don’t worry,” said Max. “We won’t lose him.”

When the train came, the two children were ready. While the man mounted the steps with Rudolph, they quickly shot into the next carriage, and were safely seated by the time the engine driver blew his whistle. Then they were off, with the little Swiss train pulling bravely up the line as it wound its way further into the mountains.

At the first stop, they watched carefully out of their window to see if the man got off. He did not. Nor did he get off at the next stop, but at the one after that they saw the carriage door open and the man stepped out, closely followed by Rudolf.

Max and Maddy slipped off the train, and took shelter behind a newspaper stand. Then, making sure to keep their distance, they followed the man down the street, sidling into doorways whenever it looked as if he might stop or turn round.

The cable car left from the end of the village. Supported on towering metal posts, the cable ran up the side of the mountain, to disappear into the clouds. It was mainly for skiers, but it was also very useful for people who lived in the houses which dotted the higher slopes.

Max and Maddy watched as the man put Rudolf into a cable car and then climbed in himself. They waited for a while, until they were quite sure they would not be seen, then they quickly bought a ticket and took the next car that came along. Max did not like heights—they made him feel dizzy—so he closed his eyes as the car swung away from the cable station. Maddy was fine. She liked looking down at the tops of the pine trees beneath them and at the great banks of snow.

“Oh, look!” she shouted. “Skiers down below us.”

“I can’t look,” said Max miserably. “Oh, Maddy, when are we going to get there?”

Maddy looked ahead. There was still a long way to go and the ground was even further away below them.

“Quite a long way,” she said, thinking,
I wonder what would happen if the cable broke? Would the snow break our fall?

Max was thinking exactly the same thing, and the thought made him turn a little bit green. He was also thinking about how they would have to come down again, which would probably be even worse.

“If only we hadn’t come to Switzerland in the first place,” he said under his breath. “If only we’d gone somewhere flat, with no mountains—like Holland, or Texas, or somewhere like that!”

A Familiar Face

At long last they reached the top of the cable. Maddy pushed back the door and Max opened his eyes slowly, just to make sure that they were no longer halfway up the mountain.

There was no sign of the man at first, but after a few moments they saw him walking off in the direction of a group of trees in the snow. Rudolf was plodding along beside him. Like all St Bernard dogs, he felt quite at home in the snow, and had large, padded feet to stop him from sinking in.

They waited until the man was out of sight before they set off. It was easy to find his tracks in the snow and to follow him through the wood and into a ravine that ran down the mountainside.

“There it is,” said Maddy, pointing to a small group of buildings in the distance. “That’s where he’s going.”

Max looked in the direction in which his sister was pointing. It seemed to be a small farm, with a house, a barn, and one or two sheds, all perched on the mountainside.

“We’ll have to be careful,” said Max. “If we climb up a bit, we could get into those trees just behind the house and have a look at the place from there.”

Maddy thought this was a good idea and they quickly made their way across the mountainside to the shelter of the trees. Then, creeping forward in the snow, they peered down at the buildings beneath them. And at that exact moment, two things happened, one after the other, which made them realise that they had been right all along.

The first thing was that there was suddenly a loud barking from one of the sheds. This was interesting, as it was not just one dog that was barking, but four or five, and they were all deep barks, exactly like the barks made by a St Bernard dog.

But the second thing was even more important. As the dogs started to bark, a man came out of the back door of the farmhouse. It was not the man who had brought Rudolf, but somebody quite different. He was looking down at the ground first, but then he suddenly looked up, and for a moment Max and Maddy got a good view of his face. It was not a face they had ever seen before—in the flesh, at least—but it was still a face they knew very well from a photograph which their father had showed them. It was none other than Professor Claude Sardine!

The children stayed absolutely still, hardly daring to breathe in case the white clouds of their breath should give them away. But Professor Sardine had not seen them, and he went over to the shed where the dogs were barking. He opened the door, and five dogs rushed out, cavorting in the snow, all eager for some exercise. Professor Sardine reached down to pat one of them and then apparently changed his mind—and gave it a sharp kick!

“Did you see that!” whispered Maddy indignantly.

“Typical of him!” her brother replied under his breath. “That’s just the sort of man he is.”

The two detectives watched while Professor Sardine exercised the dogs.

He did this in a very unkind way. He tied a large bone to a string and he then threw the bone into the snow. The dogs raced after it, hoping to have a chew on the delicious morsel, but it was always snatched away from them before they reached it. Then Professor Sardine would throw it in the opposite direction, and laugh cruelly when the poor dogs were tricked again. After a while, though, he tired of all this and he shut the dogs back in the shed. Then he returned to the farmhouse, slamming the door behind him.

“So it’s Professor Sardine who’s behind the robberies,” said Max quietly. “We might have known!”

“Yes,” agreed Maddy. “And this is such a good place for his headquarters, high up on the mountain, where there’s nobody to get suspicious.”

Max thought for a moment. “We could go right back and tell Mr Huffendorf,” he said. “Or we could try to sort things out ourselves.”

Maddy shivered, not from cold, but from fear. Max always wanted to sort things out himself, and sometimes she thought it was a little bit safer to let other people do that.

“What could we do?” she asked.

Max smiled. A plan was forming in his mind, and it seemed to him that it would be rather good fun—as long as it went well. If it didn’t go well, though…er, perhaps it was best not to think about that.

“Let’s try to find the money,” he said. “Then we’ll free the dogs and take them with us. In tbat way, we’ll rescue the dogs, get Mr Huffendorfs money back for him, and stop Professor Sardine right in his tracks!”

Maddy’s mouth dropped open. It sounded so simple the way Max had put it, but surely it would be terribly dangerous. What if they were caught? What would Professor Sardine do with them? It was bound to be something awful. Perhaps he would push them down a glacier or something like that.

Max, though, seemed to have his mind made up.

“Now listen, Maddy,” he whispered. “Here’s the plan.”

She listened with her heart in her mouth. It was very dangerous indeed, and she was convinced that it would fail.