Read Gideon the Cutpurse for Free Online

straightforward case--but then, if there was one thing Inspector Wheeler relished, it was a challenge.
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    "Did you see what happened to my hair?" asked Kate.

"So I didn't dream it!" exclaimed Peter, whose muzzy head was finally beginning to clear. He told Kate as much as he could remember about the Tar Man and their conversation.

"He was going to sell my hair?" she repeated incredulously. "And what did this machine contraption thingy look like, then?"

"I didn't get a good look at it. I only saw it on the back of the cart when the horse was galloping away. Could have been anything. Sort of cube-shaped. Well, a cube that's taller than it is wide."

"A cuboid, you mean," said Kate.

Peter shrugged his shoulders. "If you say so."

"Could it have been Tim's antigravity machine?"

"Maybe..."

"What's the last thing you can remember before waking up here?" Kate asked.

"Chasing your dog down the corridor. You were in front of me. I guess someone must have hit me on the head. What do you remember?"

"Chasing after Molly, like you. She was headed for Tim's lab. And I've got a picture of spirals, floating spirals of light. Perhaps I was hit on the head too." She felt her head, searching for lumps.

Peter and Kate fell silent and stood in the ever darkening valley, lost in their own thoughts, trying to understand their puzzling predicament. Both were tired and shaky and in need of food, especially Peter, whose face was gray with exhaustion. Yet they could not bring themselves to sit down, because both of them were waiting. Waiting to jump up and down and wave their arms about when the rescue helicopter or the police car arrived. After all, it was just a matter of time, wasn't it?

Kate stooped to pick a silky red poppy and a blue cornflower. Just how can it have been nearly Christmas at lunchtime and midsummer by late afternoon? And what godforsaken place was this? She was used to living in the countryside but had never been anywhere this isolated: no distant rumble of traffic, no electricity pylons, no roads, not even a hint of a vapor trail left in the sky by an airplane. And why, infuriatingly, could she not remember what had happened whilst chasing Molly down the corridor? Why, when she tried to recall what had happened next, did these shapes keep forming in her mind--long, loose, luminous spirals that seemed to pass right through her? And who precisely was this Tar Man person?

She looked over at Peter, who was kicking clods of earth high into the air. He had plunged his hands deep into his trouser pockets, and his head was drooping miserably. I wonder how much help bean sprout over there is going to be, Kate thought.

"You know what I think?" said Kate.

"What?"

"I think we must have both been hit over the head by thieves. The machine--I think they must have stolen it from the laboratory and had to take us with them because we were witnesses. I think we've been taken to Australia."

"Australia! You're not serious!"

"Or maybe New Zealand...Well, you explain why it's suddenly summer, then. Do you think it's more likely that we've been unconscious for six months?"

Peter scratched his head. "Mmm...but if they stole the machine, why did they dump it here for the Tar Man to find?"

"Well, I don't know," replied Kate. "Perhaps they couldn't carry everything. Or they were disturbed."

"And why bring us all the way here just to dump us? If they knocked us over the head, why didn't they just leave us at your dad's lab?" asked Peter.

"All right. I don't know. But I do think we're in Australia. And I definitely think we should stay here until they come to rescue us. They'll be searching everywhere for us."

Peter nodded. "They'd better be.... You don't have anything to drink, do you?"

"Don't you think I would have offered you some if I had? What sort of person do you think I am?"

Peter did not reply.

They both fell silent again.

"Maybe we should shout for help," suggested Kate after a while. "After all, the Tar Man must be long