Olly pulled a cord. Heaps of cold eggs, bacon, oatmeal, and bagels showered Bosso. Maple syrup dripped from above, covering him. Assuming this was part of the show, the crowd roared with laughter. Bosso’s face turned red under all the oatmeal. He glanced toward the Walrus and the Spider-Lady, but they were too busy looking around the auditorium for another way out.
Olly leaned toward the crowd and bit his finger. “Oops! What a perfectly dreadful waste of a good meal!”
“Looks like someone has egg on their face,” Izzy added.
“That’s our cue,” Carter said to the others behind the curtain. “Are you ready?”
Ridley, Theo, and Leila nodded.
Theo, in his tuxedo, escorted Leila and Ridley—both in beautiful matching silver-sequined dresses—out onto the stage. They tiptoed and wheeled around the spilled breakfast (and Bosso) to the front of the stage. Theo produced his violin from his jacket and a bow from his pocket. (Not his magic bow but a regular one.) “I’d like to play a tune of thanks for our hero, B. B. Bosso.” Theo’s jaunty melody filled the air as Leila grabbed Olly and Izzy and began a line dance. They tried to get Bosso to dance with them, but he refused, fuming. The twins spun Leila off to the side of the stage, where she rolled into the curtain, wrapping herself in it like a mummy. But when her form unrolled, it was no longer Leila—it was Carter.
Ridley held up a sign that said: APPLAUSE! The audience obliged again.
“Where am I?” Carter asked the audience. He stumbled away from the curtain in his own magician’s suit, top hat, and cape. The audience clapped and laughed in response. “I’m on stage? But I have terrible stage fright!” He gave a sly wink to the enormous villain.
“You!” Bosso growled.
“Me!” Carter smirked, directing his performance toward the audience. “Bosso and I are old friends, you see. He once offered to take me under his wing. Such a generous man!”
Bosso’s face was the color of angry strawberries. The Walrus and the Spider-Lady had tried to sneak away, but Olly and Izzy guided them back to center stage with Bosso.
“I’m going to murder you,” Bosso whispered so only Carter could hear.
“Did you hear that, folks?” Carter shouted. “Bosso wants to make me vanish like he did the diamond! He should know by now: Vanishing is my skill.”
Carter climbed onto the glass podium and bowed for the audience. When he took off his top hat, two white doves flew over the crowd. Ridley tossed the purple sheet into the air, letting it drape over Carter. By the time the sheet touched the podium, Carter was gone.
How did Carter vanish? Simple. The same way Bosso made the diamond vanish, using a drop mechanism hidden within the glass podium. When Carter stepped onto the podium, he activated its lever and fell through a secret chute. Like a superfast elevator, he moved from the stage to below the stage, with the sheet hiding his escape.
As soon as Carter found his footing, he saw the Tattooed Baby at the master light switch and the Pock-Pickets with the real Star of Africa.
“Put the diamond down!” Carter said.
“Back for more we see, we see.
You cannot escape; you cannot flee!
It’s that kid! It’s that brat!
Let’s trap him like a rat!” the singers sang.
“Did you prepare that verse just in case I showed up?” Carter shivered. “That is pretty creepy.”
The Pock-Pickets snarled. As the thieving quartet ran at Carter, he pulled a handful of marbles from his pockets and threw them on the floor. The Pock-Pickets slipped and slid, slamming into one another as they flipped into the air.
As soon as they hit the ground, Carter leapt on top of them. He pulled four sets of handcuffs from his jacket. With his fast hands, he locked one singer’s wrist to another’s ankle, over and over, until the barbershop quartet couldn’t move.
“We’re supposed to guard Bosso’s treasure,
and now we’ll be the source of his displeasure,” they sang.
“Let us goooooooooooooo!”
“How about nooooooo?” Carter sang back.
The Tattooed Baby pulled off his shirt and flexed his muscles. He ran at Carter. Carter stepped to the side at the last moment and let the baby run straight into the wall, knocking himself out. “Baby needed a nap,” Carter quipped, proud of himself.
Carter grabbed the diamond and hid it in his top hat. Then he hopped on the elevator mechanism and hit the lever to shoot him back up to the stage.
A flash of fire and a poof of smoke hid his reentry. Carter now stood on the podium. Olly and Izzy were dancing in circles around a fuming Bosso as Theo played his violin for the audience.
Ridley again held up her sign saying: APPLAUSE!
Carter bowed for the audience, who cheered and whistled. Then he turned, bowing just for Bosso. When he did, he took off his top hat, letting Bosso see what he had inside.
“Want the real Star of Africa?” Carter whispered so only Bosso could hear. “Come and get it.”
Then he ran to the curtain, wrapped himself up in it, and as the form uncurled, Leila popped out.
“Hello again!” she said.
“After that boy!” Bosso roared, waving for his sideshow goons to follow.
Carter was backstage. As the villains closed in on him, he pulled a sword out of his sleeve. He hooked his foot into the loop of two ropes marked with a pink bow. He cut the second rope, and as several sandbags sped down, Carter flew up.
“Ta-ta.” He waved to the villains.
“Get him!” Bosso growled, climbing up the nearest ladder. The Walrus went after him, but the Spider-Lady climbed straight up the rope. They all careened across the catwalks. The Spider-Lady nearly had Carter. But he pulled two decks of cards from his pocket and shot all 104 cards at her. When she tried to run after him, she slipped on the cards and nearly tumbled over the railing. The Walrus pulled her upright, then lunged forward, but Carter dodged, leaping to another platform.
Rounding a corner, Bosso reached out and snatched Carter’s top hat.
When he looked inside, it was empty.
“Now you see it…” Carter said, holding up the diamond in one hand. “Now you don’t!” With his other hand, he made it disappear.
Bosso, the Walrus, and the Spider-Lady had convened on Carter’s catwalk. They bolted at him, hands outstretched, ready to grab him, but Carter clasped another rope that carried him gently down to the backstage below. Bosso screamed in fury, “After him!”
As Carter ran, he could hear his friends at the front of the stage, putting on what sounded like a fantastic show. Theo’s music, Olly’s and Izzy’s dancing, and the audience’s laughter buoyed his heart. “This has to work,” he whispered to himself.
Now backstage, Bosso and his goons were sliding down poles from above. The Walrus landed in front of Carter, with Bosso behind him. Carter ran to the side, through another layer of curtains, and another, and another.
He jumped through a canvas painted to look like a brick wall, then ran into a real wall. Bosso was almost on him. Carter turned, ran down a short hall that made a left turn, then another left turn, then a left turn again. He came to a dead end. He turned to the side and ran through a door. It was a props closet, and there was nowhere else to go. “No!” Carter shouted.
He was trapped.
TWENTY