14. The Chase

Cordoba, Argentina – hola!! Riding and hunting on the pampas with gauchos – but a bit sticky after the mountains. Daddy perfecting his boleadoras technique in return for a bit of whispering. Mi querido muchacho, momia. 

(4g8t Auckland)

The boys underground heard a commotion which came echoing along the vaulted roof of the grand tunnel from the direction of the lift. Slipper glided along to the corner of the branch passageway and carefully peeked around the corner. What he saw was akin to what you might see upon lifting a large paving slab that had been in one place for a long time. Insects scurrying in every direction shocked and galvanised by their exposure to the light. Black and brown beetles and cockroaches - the Parks heavies and the henchmen; squirming larvae - the white lab-coated technicians; spindly and hefty hairy spiders, the woodlice and the ants carrying eggs larger than themselves - the criminal and technical drones of the Canes operation. As always at times like these someone was fetching piles of files and another was shredding them.

Slipper was taking all this in when Norton Canes appeared walking briskly from a branch on the opposite side of the tunnel halfway towards the lift. He was shouting back down the tunnel to two gorillas, “The boy, the boy. Fetch me the boy. To my office. Now.”

Slipper ran back to the room where DD and Bagpuize were hiding. They waited for Canes and the men to pass.

“He’s coming with us. He may give me some leverage,” they overheard.

Then with uncanny stealth, like some mutated three-legged race contestant, the boys, supporting DD between them, scuttled towards the tunnel. 

Canes had disappeared into his office while the two gorillas struggled to open the cell door. Slipper’s snagging gave the boys time to get out into the main drag. But one of the primates had obviously graduated from the same school as Slipper and realising the nature of the problem he soon released the lock. As they hurried away down the tunnel the boys heard the alarm being raised. 

DD was finding the brace more comfortable now so their pace accelerated and they hit a sort of syncopated rhythm. Without thinking they turned away from the noise and chaos of the uplifted slab but this direction took them further away from the branch through which Bagpuize and Slipper had entered. On the plus side the tunnel here was gloomy enough for them not to be noticed from the far end.

King Kong and Clyde were by now in pursuit but they turned back towards the lift, possibly because that was only way out they knew. 

DD breathless: “We’ve got to get out of this tunnel before they figure out they’re going the wrong way?”

Slipper: “This leads to a dead end. It’s been bricked up or blocked up or something the roof fell in or ...... there’s a kind of a gallery here, like the one we came along.” He glanced at Bagpuize. “If we can get up to it .... we can double back to the passage we came in on.” 

They could hear Canes now calling down curses and imprecations on the errant knuckle walkers. “Get after them. No. That way ... you Neanderthals.”

Laser like flash light beams started to play along the tunnel walls. It was only a matter of time before they were spotted. The boys quickened their step.

“There!” Slipper pointed. “We need to get up there.” He was pointing up to where the boys could see a metal handrail and was about to tell DD and Baggy to hide in a branch while he scouted forward for a way up when Bagpuize produced from his backpack a baton – thicker and heavier than a conductor’s baton, but about the same length with a marble on either end.

Flashlight beams were flickering around them in a bouncing movement as the two hulks were now plod jogging in their direction, stopping every now and then to check the branch passages they passed.

DD and Slipper looked at the object in Baggy’s hand, looked at each other, then looked at Bagpuize.

“You’ve heard of the ‘Door in a Jar’?” Bagpuize responded. “Well, I’m thinking of calling this my ‘Rope on a Rod’ or possibly ....” He looked pensive ...

“Oi! You little varmints.” They had been spotted. The lights of their pursuers were now held steadily upon them.

“Whatever it is,” DD urged, “Hurry up!!”

Holding the stick, Bagpuize’s arm arched back and then whipped forward over his shoulder like an angler casting a line. The marble flew off the end of the baton with a whizzing sound trailing behind it what appeared to be a shiny cord or heavy thread, their predators’ torch lights sparkling and glinting off it as it streamed away from them. 

“Don’t think you’re gonna get away from us,” they growled. “We’re gonna marmalise you, you perishing little critters ...”

Baggy’s aim was true and the marble spun around the handrail and just as it did so he pulled back on the stick as if he had got a bite thus causing the thread to fasten itself tight to the rail. Slipper wasted no time shinning up the cord like a trapeze artist as Bagpuize secured the other end around DD and under his arms before climbing up himself. 

As the growling grizzlies descended on DD and he could almost feel their hot breath upon him he was suddenly whisked off the ground by his friends up above. He was doing his best to pull himself on the rope but succeeded only in setting himself spinning. But his pirouetting was jerked to an abrupt halt by a Neolithic hand grabbing his foot and he found himself racked tight in a tug of war between his friends and his foes. The fetid smell of tobacco and halitosis from the specimen clutching his foot wafted up and over DD. Disoriented as he was and dizzy with the pain, DD eventually managed to land a devastating blow with his free foot, the one encased in Bagpuize’s splint, to his captors cheek. The thing squealed in pain as he recoiled and DD escaped like the proverbial bird from the fowler’s snare. 

Bagpuize caught DD by the back of his trouser belt and flipped him over the railing, landing him with a resounding clang on the metal walkway of the gallery. 

Bagpuize detached the thread from the railing and wafted the baton about causing the thread to retract and recoil itself around the stick. Later on he explained to his friends that the cord was made up of a myriad woven synthetic micro fibres he had developed and patented, working name lacry ©. These were elasticised, with an extremely high tensile strength and were woven around the stick maypole fashion. Thus the marble enabled it to be thrown and stretched and narrowed to form a tough rope or binding. He had thought it might be woven into sheets of material for clothing but the contacts he made with the rag trade through Charnock St Richards Commerce department were derisory in their assessment. Who on earth would want to wear something that would be skin tight?

ooooo

Back on the showground Frankley had stopped worrying about Canes and was now more concerned about how the boys underground were faring. He had called in for assistance and had been allocated men from each of the roadblocks who were now processing the detainees before transferring them to the local station. 

Slipper had earlier marked on a map all the points of entry to the warren of which he was aware and Frankley had deployed men to watch each of these with strict instructions to let him know as soon as the boys surfaced. But he had an anxious feeling in his gut compounded by the disappearance of Canes. 

Slipper had at that time also sketched out for Toddington a rough plan of the subterranean lair but on the condition that he did not share it with Frankley. He did not want his own nefarious activities exposed to the eyes of the law.

ooooo

The three friends gathered themselves together on the gantry, a little breathless but relieved to be clear of their pursuers.  They had only just started heading back towards the exit passageway when they were startled to see ahead of them lights bobbing up and down, followed by heavy footfalls on the grating. They had been cut off.