Gideon the Cutpurse Read Online Free PDF Page B

bared her teeth and snarled at him as if he were a stranger. Alarmed and fearful, he left her there and ran out into the icy sunshine.

"Kate! Peter!" he cried over and over again until he grew hoarse. But the only sound was the wind in the pine trees. He rushed back to Tim's laboratory, where Molly was now howling in a way that Dr. Dyer had never heard before--the animal's unearthly cries chilled him more than the wind. What could possibly have happened to provoke Molly's heartrending howls of despair?

After half an hour Dr. Dyer decided that he had better call his wife. He did his best to disguise the growing panic that he felt, but Mrs. Dyer picked up on it immediately. When she arrived at the laboratory barely ten minutes later and saw the look on her husband's face, her blood turned to ice.

"Oh, no," she said in a small, thin voice. "Oh, no."

After another fruitless search the security guards contacted the police. Kate's parents sat side by side in the guards' room with more sickening fear in the pit of their stomachs than they would have believed possible to bear. And what could they say to Peter's father? The boy had been in their care.... They did not speak and they could not cry. Every time a pager bleeped or a telephone rang, they both leaped to their feet only to sink back down again when it was a false alarm.
    * * *
    It took the police two hours to track down Peter's father. It took another few minutes for what they were telling him to sink in, and then he got straight into his car and drove from central London to Derbyshire without stopping. He told himself that Peter would be there, safe and sound, when he reached the Dyers' farm. But what if he wasn't? How he wished he had taken Peter on his birthday treat instead of going to that useless meeting. How he wished Peter's last words to him that morning hadn't been "I hate you!"
    * * *
    The police arrived in force at the NCRDM laboratories at a quarter to three. Flashing orange lights illuminated fat flakes of snow before the flakes settled on the roofs of a line of police cars. Six uniformed police officers made a thorough search of the laboratories and grounds and questioned all the staff, but they found no trace of Peter or Kate and no clue as to where they might be.

When Mr. Schock arrived at half past five and was informed that Peter had not yet been found, he telephoned his wife in California, where she was still sleeping, and broke the awful news to her. She wanted to catch the first plane back, but her husband stopped her--after all, it was quite likely that as soon as he put the receiver down, Peter would turn up, right as rain.... She agreed to delay returning for three hours but no longer.

Meanwhile a policewoman had driven Mrs. Dyer back to the farm, and Dr. Dyer was taken to the police station at Bakewell, where he remained for the next three hours. The national and local media were alerted, and by six o'clock a senior police officer had been assigned to the case.

Detective Inspector Wheeler was a Scotsman by birth and was now close to retirement. He had been in charge of numerous high-profile investigations in his time, including several cases of missing persons, all of which he had seen through to their happy or tragic conclusions. He was well respected. He was also notorious for his bad temper, his dogged obstinacy, and his dedication to the job.

When Dr. Tim Williamson confirmed that the prototype for an antigravity machine that he was designing as part of a NASA-funded project had gone missing, it was suggested that the children might have been abducted when they came across thieves attempting to steal the equipment. Dr. Williamson argued that his machine was worthless--why would anyone want to steal a device that was barely at the testing stage? Detective Inspector Wheeler secretly formed the opinion that there was more to this machine than Dr. Williamson was prepared to admit. All his instincts told him that this was not going to be a