I Don't Believe It, Archie! Read online

  ‘Me too,’ said a voice.

  ‘And me!’ said another. And the crowd swept forward until they were all standing in a great circle in front of Archie.

  The man with the pointy nose looked as if he was about to say something, but then changed his mind.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ he muttered. ‘All right, I give up. You can keep your stupid library!’ and he stomped off.

  Watching him go, everyone started cheering.

  ‘Where did all these people come from?’ asked the old lady, peering over Archie through the gap in the doors.

  ‘They came to support the protest,’ Archie told her.

  ‘Really?’ The old lady looked pleased. ‘I’d better hurry up and take my clothes off then …’

  ‘I don’t think that’ll be necessary,’ said Cyd. ‘Not now. Not ever. I think your library’s been saved.’

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ The old lady beamed with pleasure. ‘Has it really?’

  Soon after, when Cyd’s mother had arrived and unglued Archie from the door handles, there was more cheering from the crowd, and they were still singing ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’ as he began walking home.

  ‘I still can’t believe it,’ said Cyd as she walked beside him. ‘Yesterday it was the dog, the day before that the piano, and today … you save a library! It’s amazing, isn’t it!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Archie. ‘I suppose it is.’

  ‘I mean, something odd really does happen to you every day, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Archie.

  ‘Your life is just so … exciting, isn’t it!’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Archie. ‘Very exciting.’

  He did not say so, but there were times when he would have preferred life to be rather less exciting. But, he thought, if you did have to find yourself glued to the library doors with a man threatening to cut your hands off, it was a lot better to do it with someone like Cyd beside you, calling for help and getting people to come and unglue you.

  ‘If you’re going anywhere tomorrow,’ said Cyd, ‘can I come with you?’

  ‘Definitely,’ said Archie. ‘I’d like that.’

  And Cyd looked rather pleased.

  Archie’s mother, however, was not at all pleased when he got home. How anyone could spend two hours down at the library and come back at the end of it with exactly the same books was, she said, beyond her.

  ‘Honestly,’ she muttered as she strode off to the kitchen. ‘I don’t believe it, Archie!’

  On Thursday, Archie had arranged to meet Cyd by the lake in the park. Cyd had told him she needed to go into town first, to buy a new swimming costume for when she went on holiday, and Archie said he would wait for her by the lake.

  He had set off with a bag containing a Frisbee, two tennis rackets and some balls, but, when he got to the lake, all those things were gone and instead his bag was full of neatly-bundled piles of fifty-pound notes.

  When Cyd arrived, Archie showed her the money and she worked out that, as there were a hundred notes in each bundle, and fifty bundles altogether, this meant there was a total of a quarter of a million pounds.

  ‘Why would anyone put a quarter of a million pounds in my bag?’ said Archie. ‘And what have they done with my Frisbee?’

  ‘Are you sure it is your bag?’ said Cyd. ‘I know it looks like your bag, but … did you put it down or anything on your way here?’

  And Archie remembered that he had put his bag down on a bench, when he arrived at the park, so he could have a drink at the water fountain.

  Thinking about it, he also remembered that the bag had not been on the bench when he picked it up, but underneath.

  ‘I reckon,’ said Cyd, ‘someone’s taken your bag by mistake and left theirs behind.’ She looked around the park. ‘They’re probably looking for it right now.’

  They probably were, Archie thought. If he had lost a quarter of a million pounds by picking up the wrong bag, he would definitely be looking for the right one.

  ‘How about,’ said Cyd, ‘we walk round and see if there’s anyone with a bag like yours? If you go that way, and I go this way …’ – she pointed in the two directions – ‘… and we meet over there by the main gates, one of us is bound to see them.’

  Archie agreed. They both set off, and he was about halfway to the gates when a tall man in a dark suit came running towards him.

  ‘Archie?’ the man called. ‘Archie, are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine, thank you,’ said Archie politely. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Rawlings,’ said the tall man. ‘Head of Security. I’m in charge of making sure you get home safely.’

  While he was speaking, the man had been tapping at a phone which he now held to his face. ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘I’ve found him … He says he’s fine … Yes, yes, of course …’ He held out the phone to Archie. ‘Your mother wants to talk to you,’ he said.

  Archie took the phone.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Oh, Archie!’ The voice on the other end was sobbing with relief. ‘It’s so wonderful to hear you. Are you sure you’re all right?’

  ‘I’m fine …’ said Archie. ‘But—’

  ‘I’m on my way to get you!’ the voice interrupted. ‘We should be there in a minute or so. Stay with Mr Rawlings. He’ll keep you safe. Oh, darling, I’m so happy!’

  It was good to know the woman on the other end of the phone was happy, Archie thought, but he couldn’t help wondering who she was. She certainly wasn’t his mother. But before he could say anything she had hung up.

  ‘I’m a bit confused,’ he said, as he handed the phone back to the tall man. ‘That woman wasn’t—’

  ‘Don’t worry about it!’ The tall man patted Archie reassuringly on the shoulder. ‘Things are bound to seem a bit strange at first. The important thing is that you’re safe!’ He knelt down so that his face was on a level with Archie’s. ‘But if there’s anything you can tell us, anything you can remember, we really need to know.’

  ‘About what?’ asked Archie.

  ‘About where you’ve been, where they took you, how many men there were – everything that’s happened since you were kidnapped.’ The tall man smiled, encouragingly.

  ‘I was kidnapped?’ said Archie.

  The tall man gave him an odd look. ‘On Friday. You don’t remember?’

  ‘No,’ said Archie. ‘No, I don’t.’ And he had begun to say the man must be confusing him with someone else when his words were drowned out by the noise of a helicopter hovering overhead. It was flying very low, and, to Archie’s surprise, it actually landed on the grass right in front of them.

  The tall man wasn’t surprised at all. In fact, he waved to the pilot and then at a woman in a smart pink skirt who was climbing out the door and running, as fast as she could, towards Archie.

  ‘Oh, Archie!’ She swept him up in her arms and held him very close. ‘Thank goodness we’ve found you!’ She pulled away and held Archie at arm’s length. ‘You poor boy! Look at these awful clothes they’ve made you wear!’ She turned to the tall man. ‘You’re sure they didn’t hurt him? What’s he told you?’

  ‘Nothing yet,’ said the tall man. ‘He says he can’t remember.’

  ‘He can’t remember?’

  ‘They probably drugged him.’ Another man had climbed out of the helicopter and was standing beside the woman. He had a doctor’s bag with him that he placed on the ground before stepping in front of Archie.

  ‘Now, let’s have a look at you,’ he said.

  Archie backed away.

  ‘It’s all right, darling!’ said the woman, soothingly. ‘He’s not going to hurt you. This is Doctor Matthews, remember?’

  ‘No, I don’t remember,’ said Archie. ‘I don’t remember any of you, because I’ve never seen any of you before in my life.’

  The people around him all looked rather startled, and the woman looked particularly upset. ‘Oh, Archie,’ she said sadly. ‘What have they done to you?’
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  ‘Nobody’s done anything to me,’ said Archie, ‘because I am not your son and I have not been kidnapped. My name is Archie Coates. I live in Garfield Crescent, and I came to the park this morning to play Frisbee with a friend.’

  ‘It’s probably the shock,’ said the doctor, thoughtfully. ‘It’s upset his mind and he’s blanked out everything that happened. I’ll give him something to calm him down.’ He reached into his bag and took out a syringe.

  Archie’s father had always told him it was important to do whatever the doctor said, but he really didn’t like the idea of being given an injection by someone he didn’t know. However, when he tried to run away he found himself firmly in the grip of the tall man.

  ‘It’s all right, Archie,’ the man was saying. ‘You’ll feel much better in a minute …’

  At the last moment, to his great relief, Archie saw Cyd coming across the grass towards him.

  ‘Cyd!’ he said. ‘Could you tell these people who I am? The woman thinks I’m her son and I’ve been kidnapped, and she wants the doctor to give me an injection so she can take me away in her helicopter.’

  ‘Ah!’ Cyd nodded. ‘I thought it must be something like that!’ She turned to the woman. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but this is not your son.’

  ‘Yes, it is!’ The woman put her arms round Archie’s shoulders and pulled him close. ‘You think I wouldn’t recognize my own child?’

  ‘I know he looks like your son,’ said Cyd, ‘but this is Archie Coates. He lives at thirteen Garfield Crescent. With his mother and father.’

  ‘I … I don’t believe it!’ said the woman, still holding on to Archie.

  ‘The person you’re looking for,’ continued Cyd, ‘is sitting over there.’ She pointed over to the far side of the park where a sad little figure could be seen, with his back to them, slumped on a bench. ‘He’s a bit dazed. I think he may have been drugged.’

  The tall man was running across the grass even before Cyd had finished talking, and the woman was right behind him.

  ‘He looks just like you,’ said Cyd to Archie, ‘except for the clothes. In fact, I thought he was you at first. But when I said “hi”, he didn’t know who I was. He said he’d been told to wait on the bench until someone came to pick him up. Then I saw all the fuss going on here and came over.’

  A moment later, the woman and the tall man were walking back towards them with a boy who looked exactly like Archie. It was, Archie thought, a bit like looking in a mirror. The other Archie was the same height, had the same face, even the same shaped ears.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said the woman in the pink trouser suit. ‘You must have thought we were mad …’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Archie. ‘No harm done.’

  ‘Could I ask,’ said Cyd, ‘if you had to pay a ransom to get your son back?’

  ‘I did,’ said the woman in the smart pink skirt. ‘But it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters as long as Archie’s all right.’

  ‘Was the ransom,’ said Cyd, ‘supposed to be left in a black bag on a bench by the water fountain over there? And was it, by any chance, a quarter of a million pounds?’

  ‘Yes! Yes, it was!’ The woman looked at Cyd in astonishment. ‘But how could you possibly know that?’

  ‘Show them, Archie,’ said Cyd.

  And Archie took the bag from his back and opened the top to reveal the neatly-piled stacks of fifty-pound notes.

  Everyone stared at the money.

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ said the woman.

  It was almost an hour before the woman, the doctor and the other Archie took off in the helicopter.

  The woman tried to get Archie to keep one of the bundles of fifty-pound notes as a reward, but he said he wouldn’t, thank you, as he hadn’t really done anything. The woman did, however, insist on sending the tall man into town to get a replacement bag, a new Frisbee and two new tennis rackets and balls for him. Then, before she left, she gave him a card with her telephone number on it.

  ‘If there’s ever anything I can do for you,’ she said, ‘anything at all, you call that number, all right?’

  Cyd and Archie watched the helicopter disappear into the sky with a roar of noise and wind.

  ‘Well!’ said Cyd, when it had gone. ‘You come to the park for a game of Frisbee, find a bag full of money, get mistaken for someone who’s been kidnapped, a helicopter comes to take you away … I mean, how cool is all that!’ She stopped. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m going home,’ said Archie, heading towards the park entrance, ‘before anything else happens.’

  He did not say so, but he had found being grabbed in the park by people he didn’t know who wanted to give him an injection and take him away in a helicopter was quite enough excitement for one day.

  So he and Cyd walked home and spent the rest of the afternoon up in Archie’s room playing draughts.

  Archie’s mother couldn’t understand it.

  ‘How can you stay indoors on a lovely, sunny day like this,’ she said, ‘when you could be outside playing in the park? Honestly, Archie! I don’t believe it!’

  On Friday, Archie’s mother asked if he would mind going out to look for the toy lion his little sister had lost.

  ‘It’s her favourite toy,’ she said, ‘and we can’t find it anywhere. She must have dropped it when we went down to the shops this morning. Could you go and look?’

  Archie said he would, and he called in at Cyd’s house on the way to ask if she would help. Cyd agreed – and in fact she was the one who first saw the missing lion. It was in a bush in the garden of a large house in Wigmore Street.

  ‘Your sister must have thrown it out of her buggy,’ she said, and she was about to jump over the wall to get it when Archie held her back.

  ‘I think we should ask permission first,’ he said. His father had told him you should always ask permission before you went into someone else’s garden.

  So the two of them walked up the path, and knocked on the front door. It was answered by an elderly man with a bald head.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ said Archie politely, ‘but there’s a lion in your garden and I wondered—’

  ‘A lion!’ The old man looked rather alarmed. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘It’s in that bush,’ said Cyd, pointing across the grass. ‘We could see it from the pavement and we thought—’

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ muttered the old man. ‘All right! Inside, both of you. Come on! Quick as you can!’ And before Archie could speak, he had pulled both children into the house and slammed the door.

  ‘You!’ The old man pointed to Cyd. ‘Call the police and tell them what you saw. Say it’s an emergency!’ As he spoke, he was fumbling with a holster hanging on the coat rack, and taking out what looked like a gun.

  ‘I don’t think we need to call the police,’ said Cyd. ‘It’s not a real lion and—’

  ‘I know,’ said the old man briskly. ‘Technically, it’s a cougar. But it can still be dangerous. Now, please. Do as I say!’

  ‘No,’ said Archie firmly. ‘She is not calling the police because of a toy that my sister threw out of her buggy. All we need is permission to go in your garden and get it back.’

  The old man looked at him. ‘A toy?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Archie. ‘It’s a toy lion. Called Bingo.’ He was beginning to wish he had let Cyd jump over the wall and just take it.

  ‘Wait here!’ The old man crossed the hall, opened a door leading off to the right and peered cautiously inside. A moment later, he closed the door and turned to the children with a huge smile of relief. ‘You’re quite right! Panic over. He’s still in there!’

  ‘You … you mean you have a real lion in the house?’ asked Cyd.

  ‘I know we’re not supposed to.’ The old man looked rather embarrassed. ‘It was an emergency, you see. Kevin had to put him somewhere while …’ He stopped and stared at the door on the opposite side of the hall. ‘Oh, no!’ His voice dropped to a whisp
er. ‘I don’t believe it!’

  ‘What?’ asked Archie. ‘What is it?’

  The door on the left side of the hall stood slightly open and the children watched as the old man walked across, put his head round and looked inside.

  ‘She’s gone!’ He turned to face the children, and flung open the door. ‘Look! She’s not here!’

  With the door wide open, the children could see that, apart from a dining table and some chairs, the room was indeed quite empty.

  ‘Who’s not here?’ asked Archie.

  ‘The leopard!’ said the old man. He looked nervously round the hall.

  ‘You have a leopard in your house as well as a lion?’ said Cyd.

  ‘If she’s got out,’ muttered the old man, ‘we could be in real trouble!’ He was backing into the dining room as he spoke. ‘You’d better come in here with me.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Archie.

  ‘Because there’s a leopard somewhere in the house,’ said the old man, ‘and this is the one place I know it isn’t.’

  Archie was about to say that the only place he was going was back outside, when he saw a leopard standing at the top of the stairs. It was making a sort of rasping noise as it breathed. You might have thought it was purring if you didn’t know that leopards don’t purr.

  ‘Let’s get into the dining room, Archie,’ said Cyd, and, moving very quickly, they both stepped inside and the old man closed the door.

  ‘What do we do now?’ asked Archie.

  ‘I … I’m not sure!’ The old man was sweating slightly. ‘My son’s the one who knows about animals, you see.’

  ‘And where’s he?’ asked Cyd.

  ‘He’s gone down to the garage to get the van.’ The old man mopped at his face with a handkerchief. ‘He said he’d only be a few minutes. We just have to wait till he gets back.’