Brush with Danger Read online

  It was deserted. There was nothing in the room except a chair in the corner and an empty safe in the wall.

  Wily went over to the safe and peered inside. Whatever had been kept in there had been removed.

  But then he felt something tickling his feet. He looked down and saw a white triangle of paper sticking out from between the floorboards. In their rush to empty the safe, Dimitri or his wolves must have dropped it on the floor. It had slid between the floorboards, leaving just a tiny corner poking out. Wily grabbed the triangle carefully with his finger and thumb. He pulled out not one, but three sheets of paper.

  The first read:

  The handwriting looked familiar. Wily knew he had seen it somewhere before. But where?

  The second scrap of paper was actually a photo. This was even more of a surprise.

  It was a photo taken in his final year at detective school, just before their exams. His friend Klara had taken it and given a copy to everyone there. Rudi Raccoon, Barry Badger, Hildegard Hamster and all his other classmates.

  But how had the photo turned up in Dimitri’s office? Was one of his friends from detective school helping the Russian bear? It didn’t make sense. Who would do this? And why?

  He glanced at the third scrap of paper.

  A delivery note. So there were other Kandogski paintings. But if Dimitri had sold this Kandogski to Gallery Nouvelle, why didn’t he want to sell another one to Suzie?

  Wily’s head was buzzing with all this new information. Then suddenly he heard a door slam and saw a shape rush past the window.

  The detective ran outside.

  A brown bear was ambling towards the Eiffel Tower, holding something that looked like a rolled-up painting tucked under his arm.

  Dimitri!

  Wily sprinted towards him, running as fast as he could.

  When the bear reached the Eiffel Tower, he glanced up and started to climb, pulling himself up the metal struts.

  Wily didn’t think twice. He climbed, too, bounding up the side of the tower in strong leaps.

  Soon a rumbling noise started to shake the tower. The bear looked up and saw a helicopter hovering above him. He waved it over.

  Wily didn’t have much time. He threw himself on Dimitri’s back. But the bear shook him off and kept climbing. Wily jumped again, grabbing Dimitri’s foot. This time, the bear lost his grip and fell, landing on Wily’s head. They scuffled and Wily grabbed the painting, but Dimitri snatched it back and kept on climbing.

  With one final, gigantic effort, Wily hurled himself at Dimitri, yanking the painting from under his arm. The painting unrolled, but it was blank except for the words:

  A rope ladder had been dropped from the helicopter and the bear was now reaching for it. In a rage, Wily jumped and grabbed Dimitri’s foot, but this time it fell off! Then Dimitri’s legs and back fell off, too, and Wily realized he was holding on to a very convincing bear costume.

  “Dimitri?” he asked.

  A wolf was clinging to the tower, holding a bear head in his hands. “Not me,” he laughed, pointing at the ground. “That is Dimitri.”

  Wily looked down and saw a bear, carrying a painting, climb into a taxi.

  The wolf leaped on to the rope ladder. “I should have killed you at the gallery,” he growled, “but then again, this way is much more fun.” He threw the bear head down at the detective, knocking Wily off the tower.

  Wily fell like a stone towards the ground.

  As he fell, watching the metal girders of the Eiffel Tower whizz past, Wily remembered something. Albert had adapted the Vespa so it would come when he whistled.

  Wily tried to whistle, but the air rushing past his mouth made his lips jiggle. He tried to whistle again, glancing down at the ground that was rapidly hurtling towards him. A tiny peep came out of his lips, but no Vespa appeared.

  In desperation, Wily put two fingers in his mouth and gave the loudest possible fox-whistle (like a wolf-whistle, but even more ear-piercing). In an alley fifty metres away, the Vespa’s rocket roared into life. It shot through the air and caught the fox just before he hit the ground. Wily lay back on the seat, gasping and shuddering, while the Vespa floated in mid-air, waiting for further instructions.

  A few seconds passed. Two pigeons hovered next to the detective’s head.

  “Look, Pierre,” one of the pigeons quipped. “A flying fox.”

  “Hilarious,” Wily growled and sat up. He flew the Vespa through the legs of the Eiffel Tower and parked.

  He looked up at the sky. The helicopter was gone. He looked at the street. The taxi – with Dimitri and the painting – was gone.

  But he was still alive. And now he realized he was something else, too.

  Annoyed. Very annoyed.

  Wily tapped the screen and Albert appeared. Behind him was a gigantic shelf of books.

  “Albert,” said Wily, “where are you?”

  “In the library,” said Albert. “I can’t find a single reference to Kandogski. Or a single painting by him, either.”

  “Hmm, interesting… And there’s something else,” said Wily. “I think an old friend of mine might be behind all this.”

  He showed the photograph he’d found in Dimitri’s office to Albert and explained that the animals were his classmates at detective school.

  “Albert,” said Wily, “I need you to crossreference all the people in this photo to the handwriting up here. Where it says, ‘This one’s Wily Fox’.”

  “OK,” said the mole. “Slide it across the face of the screen.”

  Wily did this, and an exact copy emerged from the side of the tablet that Albert was holding.

  “Find out which one of these animals wrote that message,” said Wily.

  “Will do,” said Albert.

  “And now I need to find out why they wrote it,” said Wily.

  “Be careful, Wily,” said Albert.

  The screen went black.

  Wily pulled out the third piece of paper he had found in Dimitri’s office.

  “I think it’s time to pay Gallery Nouvelle a visit,” Wily said aloud.

  He drove to the old docks, taking back streets and side roads, so he would know if he was being followed.

  When he got there, a sign pointed right to Gallery Nouvelle.

  But shortly after Wily turned right, a strange thing happened – the road ran out.

  Wily looked in front of him. Gallery Nouvelle seemed to be on an island linked to the mainland by a moveable bridge. The bridge was up and a gruff-looking goat was standing in front of it.

  Who would want to stop anyone getting to their gallery? Wily thought to himself.

  He considered swimming across to the island, but the water looked murky and the current seemed strong. Then he glanced down at his Vespa and remembered – it couldn’t just fly…

  The goat heard the splash and glanced round. But Wily and his Vespa had already vanished. As soon as it hit the water, a Perspex bubble shot out of the front, the screen on the handlebars flipped over and a giant propeller popped out of the back. The Vespa had become a submarine.

  Wily steered it carefully towards the island. When he got close, he pressed a blue button on the dashboard and a periscope whirred up from the handlebars.

  It was early evening now. As Wily peered through the periscope, he could see no signs of life in the gallery. All the lights were off, and all the doors and windows were closed.

  He drove the Vespa towards the edge of the island and, just before he hit dry land, he pressed a button. The Vespa crunched and clanked, rising up through the water, and Wily emerged riding a scooter again, as if he’d never been underwater at all.

  The detective took a torch out of the Vespa’s top box and walked towards the gallery. He glanced around, looking for security guards. There didn’t seem to be any – just a high fence with barbed wire along the top.

  Wily bit through the fencing with one huge chomp of his sharp teeth and crawled through the hole he had made. Then he slunk across to
the gallery.

  The door was locked but, with the help of a hairpin from his inside pocket, he picked the lock in less than three seconds.

  “A personal best,” he muttered.

  Once inside, Wily turned on his torch. He could see square shapes on each of the walls. He guessed they were paintings. He could see weird objects in the middle of the floor. He guessed they were pieces of sculpture.

  Now all he had to do was find the Kandogski. Wily moved across to the nearest wall and shone his torch on the first square shape. Strange. It wasn’t a painting at all. In fact, it seemed to be a signed photograph of the French football team. He shone his torch on the next square. But that wasn’t a painting, either. It was a calendar with a different racing car for each month. The next square was a list of names on a whiteboard.

  Wily shone his torch round the entire room and realized that this wasn’t an art gallery. The shapes he had seen were not paintings and sculptures. They were car engines and noticeboards and workbenches and spanners and screwdrivers and tyres.

  This was a garage.

  Why would anyone send a painting to a garage? And why was this garage on an island behind a barbed-wire fence?

  Wily looked around for other clues. He shone his torch on the workbench and saw a note. It was written in the same handwriting that he had seen on the photo of his old classmates:

  “You have the first two,” Wily murmured. “That must mean the first two paintings. So they’re here. Somewhere.”

  The detective looked around the garage again and saw a large shape under a brown cloth.

  He crossed the room and lifted up the cloth. There were two paintings underneath. They were in the same unusual style as Suzie La Pooch’s Kandogski.

  Wily quickly took a photo and emailed it to Albert. He needed to think. He needed to think hard. Instead, the phone went.

  The detective froze. Mounted on the wall was a large red telephone. He glanced round – was there a guard on duty? Was someone going to emerge, half asleep, from a side room?

  After five rings, nobody had appeared.

  Wily went over and picked up the phone. He held his mobile against the receiver, so he could record the whole conversation.

  There was silence on the other end of the line.

  Putting on his best French accent, Wily said, “Bonjour!”

  There was more silence. Then a voice said, “Paris will not work.”

  The voice had been put through a scrambler – it was impossible to work out the age or gender of who was talking.

  There was a click and the line went dead.

  Wily put the phone back on the hook. This case was becoming stranger by the second. Then his mobile buzzed. It was Suzie.

  “Wily,” she said. “I’ve just been arrested.”

  “OK, Suzie,” said Wily, “tell me exactly what happened.”

  “It’s that Julius Hound,” said Suzie. “He says he’s contacted the Russian branch of PSSST. And he says Kandogski’s not a real painter.”

  “Er, that’s probably true, I’m afraid,” said Wily.

  “Of course he’s real,” said Suzie. “I mean, the painting’s real, isn’t it? If not, who painted it? A machine?”

  That made Wily pause and think for a second. Then he said, “Even if Kandogski isn’t real, why should Julius arrest you?”

  “He claims I knew all along,” said Suzie. “That I bought the painting so I could give Dimitri lots of money. He thinks I’m smuggling something, or hiding something, or who knows what. He keeps saying, ‘Tell me everything’. But there’s nothing to tell. And now I’m in this ghastly prison cell.”

  “I’m going to get you out, Suzie,” said Wily. “But first I have to go to Moscow.”

  “Moscow?”

  “I’m in a garage down by the old docks. There’s a note here that says a fourth painting was coming from Moscow tonight. That’s also where Dimitri’s going. So that’s where I’m heading.”

  “Oh no, you’re not,” said a voice behind him.

  The lights came on. Wily turned round slowly and put his phone back in his pocket. The gruff-looking goat from the bridge and a sinister-looking weasel were standing in front of him. They were both holding truncheons.

  Wily had to think fast. “At last!” he exclaimed. “Some service! I’ve been waiting here for SIX HOURS!”

  The goat and the weasel looked at each other. “Nice try, pal,” said the weasel.

  “I brought in my scooter for a service TWO WEEKS AGO. And you said it would be ready the NEXT DAY. So, where is it?” Wily demanded.

  “Er, this is not a regular garage, Monsieur,” said the goat.

  “You’re telling me!” said Wily. “I left my scooter out there on the grass. And I bet it’s still there! I bet you haven’t even moved it – let alone fixed it!”

  He marched out of the door, pushing the goat and the weasel out of the way.

  “Hold it one second,” said the weasel suspiciously.

  Wily reached the fence, pushed open the gate and strode over to where he had left the Vespa. The goat and the weasel scuttled along behind him, muttering to each other.

  “Just as I told you,” said Wily, pointing to the scooter. “And I bet it’s still broken!”

  He got on to the Vespa, flicked on the turbo thrusters, put it in flight mode and revved the engine.

  A grin spread across his face. “You have fixed it!” he whooped.

  Wily whizzed up into the air and within a few seconds the pair were just specks below him. A minute later, he was zooming across the French capital.

  Wily looked at the Vespa’s petrol gauge. Enough to get him to Moscow. More or less. He brought Albert up on the screen.

  “Ah, Wily,” said Albert. He was surrounded by pots of ink. “Glad you phoned. Made some progress. Analyzed the handwriting on that photo you sent. But couldn’t find writing samples of everyone in the picture.”

  “That doesn’t sound like progress,” said Wily, steering the Vespa gently to the left.

  “Yes, but looking at the stroke, length, angle and slant of the handwriting, I was able to reconstruct the paw of the animal that wrote it. It’s definitely a fox.”

  “A fox? Are you sure?”

  “Positive,” said Albert.

  Wily took out the photo and a pen and crossed off everyone that wasn’t a fox.

  It left three animals – Frankie Furlong, Vicky Vixen and Sandy Swift-Fox. None of them had seemed like potential criminals back in detective school.

  “OK,” said Wily, “I’m sending you a sound file. Scrambled. It’s the person who’s behind all this. See if you can find out anything about them.”

  “Will do,” said Albert.

  Wily thanked Albert and flipped the screen over, revealing the Vespa’s control panel. He pressed the “Autopilot” button.

  A message appeared on screen:

  Wily entered:

  The Vespa’s controls jerked out of Wily’s hand and the vehicle began to fly itself. Wily’s seat whirred backwards and turned into a bed, a roof popped out and a blanket appeared from a compartment. The detective lay back and started thinking.

  What was really going on with this case? Three paintings by a painter that didn’t appear to exist. A Russian art dealer sending paintings to a garage. And controlling it all, a fox – a fox who seemed to have a connection to Wily.

  A name popped into Wily’s head, but before he could remember it clearly, he fell fast asleep.

  Wily was jolted awake three hours later by a spluttering noise. The detective sat bolt upright and saw that the petrol gauge was flashing. He peered through the glass and saw Moscow beneath him.

  The Vespa was trying to regain height, but it kept jerking downwards. There was only one thing for it – Wily had to bail out.

  He opened the top box of the Vespa – quickly trying to work out what to take with him. He packed his notepad, his magnifying glass and his night-vision goggles. Then he saw a tuft of brown fur poking out from unde
r the first-aid box.

  Wily remembered his race up the Eiffel Tower. He had chased the wolf and pulled off his bear costume. Without thinking, he must have hung on to the costume as he fell through the air. And, here it was, still in the Vespa.

  The detective put it on. It fitted him perfectly.

  The Vespa juddered and lurched. Wily tapped a blue button on the control panel. A message appeared:

  The Vespa lurched and then started to drop through the sky.

  Wily tapped the YES button.

  The seat rocketed out of the top of the Vespa. After shooting a hundred metres through the air, a parachute mushroomed out.

  Slowly, steadily, Wily glided down towards Moscow.

  But he didn’t look like Wily. As far as Russia was concerned, Dimitri Gottabottomitch was back in town. There was only one problem – now there would be two Dimitris in the capital.

  “This town ain’t big enough for the both of us,” Wily murmured.

  Wily landed in the middle of Red Square. He looked around and saw ice glinting and twinkling. Then he realized it wasn’t ice. It was steel. Thirty soldiers were surrounding him, pointing rifles at his nose.

  The detective stood up and brushed the snow from his bear costume. He tried to remember the Russian he had learned three years ago when he had gone undercover in the Russian Mafia and solved “The Case of the Kidnapped Cosmonaut”.

  A Russian phrase popped into his head. “Don’t you know who I am?” he said.

  The soldiers glanced at each other but didn’t move.