Casper Candlewacks in the Attack of the Brainiacs! (13 page)

“Hullo, Mister Snail. I've brought my mum,” nodded Lamp, “because she's my mum, and I'm me. That's both of us, including my mum, of course.”

Jean-Claude dragged impatiently on his cigarette. “
Alors
, if you follow me, zis table, she is for two.”

He beckoned the boys through the restaurant;
each table was stuffed with hungry geniuses, gabbling incomprehensibly about quadratic equations or the philosophy of Aristotle. By the look of it, the whole village had got even cleverer since yesterday. Mayor Rattsbulge was always too lazy to use a knife and fork, but now he'd invented a solution – a robotic arm attached to his mayor hat that shovelled food into his mouth. Clemmie Answorth had a battery pack strapped round her body that would harness the energy produced in falling off her chair to keep the food warm. Betty Woons, at the age of 107, had developed enough mental power to bend spoons, much to the irritation of the villagers on the surrounding tables, who were now unable to eat their puddings.

The food itself was a wonder to behold – plates of whizzing, crackling, floating delights, the
colours and smells bombarding Casper's nostrils like yummy fireworks. At this rate, Julius couldn't even compete come Friday. Casper knew he had to get inside Jean-Claude's kitchen to see how it was done.

Jean-Claude stopped at a small table in the far corner and pulled back a chair for Casper. “
Madame
,” he growled.

Casper nodded, averting his eyes.

While Lamp pored eagerly over the menu, oohing and aahing at every item, Casper pulled the straw hat further down over his head and retreated into his corner.

Moments later Jean-Claude was back with two plates full of yellow stuff. “Your
apéritif
,
madame et monsieur
.”

“Yippee!” Lamp jiggled in his chair.

“Oh!” Casper's squeak cracked so he pretended to do a lady-sized sneeze. “But we didn't order this.”

Jean-Claude lips curled at the edges. “My special omelette wiz special
'erbs de Provence
, she is free. For everyone.” He waved his arm across the room revealing sweat patches under his jacket. Casper noticed similar plates on almost every table.

Jean-Claude shuffled off, leaving the boys in peace.

“Lamp,” Casper rasped, “why's he still got your omelette gun?”

“I don't need it back,” shrugged Lamp, “not when Mavis and Bessie aren't laying any eggs.”

This was ridiculous. “But you're helping him!
Again!
”

“I'm not cooking them for him. If he wants
omlits he's got to shoot them. And if you don't want yours, I'll have it,” said Lamp, tucking into a forkful of his omelette. “Ich ruvvry.”

I can't win
, Casper thought.
Not without locking Lamp in my basement or something. The problem's with the scheming Jean-Claude, not him.
He inspected his omelette with a fork. It did look delicious – steaming hot, flecked with fresh herbs and black pepper, with a beautifully light aroma that drew his nose closer to the plate.
No, Casper
, his mind scorned,
you're supposed to be spying, not eating. Just get on with the job
. He shook his gaze free and tried to ignore the omelette, but a moment later his attention was drawn once again towards the plate.
Just one bite – surely that can't do any harm? And it does smell so blooming gorgeous. Let's see what all the fuss is about
. Casper's fork
hovered over a crispy corner and then cut through its soft flesh, releasing a rich dribble of juice on to the plate. He lifted the forkful, floating it temptingly before his eyes. His mouth salivated as it drew closer. The intoxicating scent flooded his nostrils. This was it. Casper closed his eyes to receive the mouthful, parted his lips, and…
SPLAT
!

Casper's teeth clashed on empty air.

What? Where'd it gone?
Casper snapped open his eyes and gasped as if waking from a bad dream. Judging by the omelette dripping down the front of his dress and the horribly bent fork in his hand, Betty Woons had moved on from bending spoons.

“What was I doing?” he whispered, inspecting his hand as if it was someone else's. “This food…”

Lamp slurped noisily and swapped his empty
plate with Casper's, digging into the second omelette with relish (tomato relish).

Just on cue, or about thirty seconds after cue if you're going to split hairs, Julius trampled through the front door. His eyes locked with Casper's for a second, but they flicked away as if he hadn't seen him.

“Free books!” he shouted. “Free textbooks with every meal at The Battered Cod!”

The villagers squealed with excitement and rose from their chairs, very much used to this coming and going by now.

“That's right,” Julius said encouragingly. “Thick books, long books, not a picture in sight.”

“Ooh, that's my favourite!” shrieked Clemmie Answorth, launching at Julius, missing and toppling over a chair.

Julius disappeared out of the door and the villagers pursued, breathless at the prospect of free books. Lamp moved to follow, but Casper grabbed hold of his sleeve and tugged him back.

“Hey!” Lamp moaned. “What about my book?”

“There is no book,” whispered Casper. “Anyway, I need you.”

“Ze pig, he is lying!” roared Jean-Claude, charging out after the villagers, his stubby fingers waving. “Stay wiz me! We can do ze sums!” The door slammed behind him and the boys were alone in the restaurant.

“Perfect,” said Casper. “Now, where's the kitchen?”

Lit by stark white strip lights, Jean-Claude's kitchen was stacked with high-tech cooking machines that whirred and popped with activity, piping out soup or layering pastry with fruit and cream using long, skeletal robot arms. In the corner, Lamp's omelette gun had finished its work, a pile of herby omelettes slipping down
the opposite wall.

“Just look at all this stuff!” gasped Casper. “They're the sort of things you'd invent.”

“That's not a surprise,” grinned Lamp. “I
did
invent them.”

Casper felt like his head had been dunked underwater. He spun round to face Lamp, eyes wide. “
What?
”

“
I
invented them, didn't I. That's my
Brûlée
Burner,” Lamp said proudly, pointing at a snare drum fitted with six inward-facing blowtorches. “Made that this afternoon. And next to it is my dishwasher.” A wooden hutch contained three hungry-looking guinea pigs, licking at one of the dozen or so plates slowly moving along a conveyor belt. “Aren't you proud of me, Casper?”

All Casper could manage was a breathy
splutter. Of all the things Lamp had done to help Jean-Claude, this was the absolute worst. This was
treason
. This was
heresy
. This was double-crossing of the first degree. How could Lamp stand there grinning like a cosy imp when he'd just served Jean-Claude victory on a plate? “How… how
could you
?”

“How could I what?”

“You've sided with him again and again, and now I find this?
You've invented Jean-Claude a whole automatic kitchen!
”

“I haven't!”

Casper laughed bitterly. “Look around yourself and say that again.”

“What, these?” Lamp giggled. “I didn't invent them for Jean-Claude. He just gave me the ideas. ‘Ooh, Lamp, I bet you can't invent a omlit maker,' he said to me.” Lamp's French accent was just a normal accent, but with his head wiggling about. “‘I bet you can't build a machine to pipe the choclit into pastries.' Well, I'm not one to turn down a challenge, Casper.”

Bile filled Casper's throat. His head throbbed. He took off his hat and scratched his sweating
scalp. “He's tricked you, Lamp. Don't you see what you've done?”

“Ooh,” Lamp clapped. “Have I won?”

“No. But Jean-Claude has.”

“Is that bad?”

“It means I have to leave Corne-on-the-Kobb on Friday. So, yeah. Bad.”

Lamp sucked his lip. To draw attention away from the awkward pause, he opened the fridge. “Cor, Casper, look at all this!”

The most exquisite array of gourmet foods lined the fridge shelves, from asparagus tips to juicy pomegranates, Audrey Snugglepuss's cakes, a stack of pretty green bottles marked Lager McMassive and many, many, many, many eggs. In fact, half the fridge was taken up with the little yellow fellows.

“Ooh!” squealed Lamp, stuffing a couple of the eggs into his boiler-suit pocket. “Save them for later.”

Casper recognised half of the stuff in Jean-Claude's fridge from yesterday's bin-bag run. “Lamp, it's not just you Jean-Claude's using. It's everyone. The combination of the whole village's cleverness has stocked this kitchen – your machines, Sandy's vegetables, Betty's jelly beans…”

“'Allo, boy.”

Casper screamed, wheeled round and found himself face to grizzled face with Jean-Claude D'Escargot.

The dress without the hat wasn't enough to disguise Casper. He'd been foiled. “Ah. Hi. I can explain.”

“Zere will be being no need.” Jean-Claude clamped his grubby fingers round Casper's ear and twisted.

“AACK!” He tried to wheel free, but the chef twisted harder.

“And you too?” He snatched a clump of Lamp's hair, prompting a million squeals from Lamp's tame nits. “I thought you were better zan zat. Ah well, you have helped me enough already. Come wiz me.”

Casper didn't have much choice. If he didn't care so much about his ear, he could have broken away without it, but he'd grown quite attached to the little thing over the years and his other ear would get terribly lonely without it.

So Jean-Claude tugged Casper's ear and Lamp's hair through a door at the back of the kitchen and
the boys followed reluctantly, down a flight of crooked stairs, through a thick hardwood doorway and into a pitch-dark cellar. The wind shot out of Casper's lungs as he clattered to the stone floor. Lamp soared past Casper's head and made very good friends with a wall at the other end of the cellar.

“You LOSE!” Jean-Claude bellowed from the doorway. “You lose and I win! On ze Friday, Julius, he is ruined. And you,” – he broke into a dirty, tobacco-blackened laugh – “you cannot do nussing. HA HA HA H—”

“Actually, that's a double negative,” interrupted Lamp, clambering to a sitting position. “What you meant was we can't do
anything
.”

“SHUT UP, SHUT UP!” The door slammed, the lock clunked shut and Jean-Claude thumped
back up the stairs.

Casper let his head sag. “Mission accomplished?” he murmured. “Not even close.”

“Are we in heaven?” muttered Lamp.

“What?” said Casper, annoyed. “No, we're in a cellar. Just give it a rest.”

“No, we must be in heaven. Look around you!”

Casper really didn't want to lift his eyes. But he did so, if a little doubtfully, and there they were. Stacked high on every surface, covering every shelf and piled high in every corner, were hundreds and hundreds of fresh spotty eggs. More than in the fridge – way more. “Why?” Casper's mind spun furiously, but no answers popped out.

“To make omelettes!” cheered Lamp, licking his lips. “One thousand, three hundred and
seventy-eight of them, if I've counted correctly, which I have, because I just counted again to check. Well, at least we won't go hungry.”

“But why so many?”

“You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs,” Lamp chanted. “And anyway, Jean-Claude has to make bazillions of omelettes. It's his special starter, isn't it.”

“Still strange, though. They aren't even in egg boxes – just sitting there on the shelf.”

“Maybe he used the egg boxes to make a castle,” said Lamp. “I always do that. But not any more because Mavis and Bessie don't lay eggs in boxes like the chickens at the shop must do. Phew.” Lamp collapsed on to the floor. “Tell you what, Casper, pretending you're my mum works up quite an appetite. Lucky there's eggs.”

Casper grimaced. “I hope there's more than just eggs.”

A quick sweep of the room told Casper what else there was to eat – a cardboard box with a tap that had the words House Red Wine. Muck – for customers only scrawled on its side, six tins of peaches (the sort with ring pulls, luckily) and a nervous woodlouse.

“PAH!” Casper coughed a mouthful of wine back out on to the floor. “It tastes off! How can people drink that?”

“My real mum says wine's made of grapes and Jesus. That's why they drink it at church.”

“Well, grapes and Jesus taste horrible.” Casper put the wine back in the corner and opened a tin of peaches. The boys sat cross-legged in the middle of the floor, Casper drinking peach syrup from the
tin, Lamp slurping noisily on his finger and then dunking it back in an egg.

“This is fun,” said Lamp. “It's like camping, but we don't even need a tent.”

“Bed time, then,” said Casper.

“I forgot my sleeping bag,” said Lamp. “I'll just pop home and… Oh.”

“No sleeping bags this time.” Casper patted Lamp's back.

“And I need a wee.”

“You'll have to wait until we go home.”

“When can we go home?”

“I don't know. Guess we'll have to wait and see what happens tomorrow.”