The Toyminator by Robert Rankin Page A

pressed the secret button beneath my counter when you entered my store. It connects by a piece of knotted string to the alarm board at the police station.”
    “Most unsporting,” said Eddie.
    “Which is why I engaged you in a lot of time-wasting toot,” said Smokey Joe, “to give the police time to appear.”
    “Then all that business about chickens?” Jack asked.
    “That
wasn’t
toot. You should fear those chickens. I know whereof I speak.”
    “You failed to mention that I should similarly fear the arrival of the constables.”
    “I kept that to myself. Now just you stand still, or I will be forced to take the law into my own hands and shoot you myself.”
    “For stealing one hundred cigars?” Jack threw up his hands. Smokey Joe cocked the pistol.
    “Easy, please,” said Jack, his hands miming “easy” motions and miming them rather well. “I will pay you for the cigars. There’s no need to go involving the police.”
    “But I never bought the cigars,” said Eddie. “It wasn’t me, Jack, honest.”
    “I know it wasn’t, Eddie.”
    “It was too,” said Smokey Joe. “And his soggy feet made puddles on my floor. I had to employ the services of a mop and bucket. And they don’t come cheap of an evening, I can tell you. They charged me double.”
    “I’ll pay you whatever you want,” said Jack.
    “With
what
?” whispered Eddie.
    “I’ll write you an IOU,” Jack told Smokey Joe. “I’m a prince, you know.”
    “Then why aren’t you wearing a crown?”
    “Actually, I am,” said Jack. “It’s under my fedora.”
    “It never is,” said Smokey Joe.
    “It never is, is it?” said Eddie.
    “In fact,” said Jack, “you can have the crown and all the jewels on it. Will that be payment enough?”
    “It must be a very small crown to fit under that hat,” said Smokey Joe, cocking his head in suspicion.
    “Would you mind doing that again?” asked Eddie.
    “Why?” said Smokey Joe.
    “Well, you did it rather well, and it’s not the sort of thing you see every day.”
    Smokey Joe obligingly did it again.
    “Even better the second time,” said Jack.
    “Thanks,” said Smokey Joe.
    “So, would you like to see the crown?”
    “More than anything else I can presently imagine.”
    “Right, then,” said Jack, and he swept off his hat with a flourish. It was a considerably flourish. A considerably hard and sweeping flourish. As flourishes went, this one was an award-winner. So hard and sweeping was this award-winning flourish that it knocked the pistol right out of Smokey Joe’s hand and sent it skidding across the store floor.
    “Run!” shouted Jack to Eddie. And both of them ran.
    Although they didn’t run far.
    They ran to the door and through the doorway and then they ran no further. They would have dearly liked to, of course. They would dearly have loved to have run to Bill’s car and then driven away in it at speed. But they did not. They came to a standstill on the pavement and there they halted and there they raised their hands.
    Because there to greet them outside the store were very many policemen. Some stood and some knelt. All of them pointed guns. They pointed guns as they stood or knelt and they laughed and grinned as they did so. For these were Toy City’s laughing policemen, though this was no laughing matter.
    A very large and rotund policeman, a chief of policemen in fact, leaned upon the bonnet of Bill’s splendid automobile. He was all perished rubber and he was smoking a large cigar. It wasn’t a Turquoise Torpedo, of course, but an inferior brand, but he puffed upon it nonetheless and seemed to enjoy this puffing. Presently he tapped away ash and shortly after he spoke.
    “Well, well, well,” said Chief Inspector Wellington Bellis, for it was none but himself. “Surely it is Eddie and Jack. Now what a surprise this is.”
    The “shaking down” and the “cuffing up” were uncomfortable enough. The “flinging into the police van” lacked also for