1997 - The Chocolate Money Mystery Read Free Page B

to be a small farm, with a house, a barn, and one or two sheds, all perched on the mountainside.
    “We’ll have to be careful,” said Max. “If we climb up a bit, we could get into those trees just behind the house and have a look at the place from there.”
    Maddy thought this was a good idea and they quickly made their way across the mountainside to the shelter of the trees. Then, creeping forward in the snow, they peered down at the buildings beneath them. And at that exact moment, two things happened, one after the other, which made them realise that they had been right all along.
    The first thing was that there was suddenly a loud barking from one of the sheds. This was interesting, as it was not just one dog that was barking, but four or five, and they were all deep barks, exactly like the barks made by a St Bernard dog.
    But the second thing was even more important. As the dogs started to bark, a man came out of the back door of the farmhouse. It was not the man who had brought Rudolf, but somebody quite different. He was looking down at the ground first, but then he suddenly looked up, and for a moment Max and Maddy got a good view of his face. It was not a face they had ever seen before—in the flesh, at least—but it was still a face they knew very well from a photograph which their father had showed them. It was none other than Professor Claude Sardine!
    The children stayed absolutely still, hardly daring to breathe in case the white clouds of their breath should give them away. But Professor Sardine had not seen them, and he went over to the shed where the dogs were barking. He opened the door, and five dogs rushed out, cavorting in the snow, all eager for some exercise. Professor Sardine reached down to pat one of them and then apparently changed his mind—and gave it a sharp kick!
    “Did you see that!” whispered Maddy indignantly.
    “Typical of him!” her brother replied under his breath. “That’s just the sort of man he is.”
    The two detectives watched while Professor Sardine exercised the dogs.
    He did this in a very unkind way. He tied a large bone to a string and he then threw the bone into the snow. The dogs raced after it, hoping to have a chew on the delicious morsel, but it was always snatched away from them before they reached it. Then Professor Sardine would throw it in the opposite direction, and laugh cruelly when the poor dogs were tricked again. After a while, though, he tired of all this and he shut the dogs back in the shed. Then he returned to the farmhouse, slamming the door behind him.
    “So it’s Professor Sardine who’s behind the robberies,” said Max quietly. “We might have known!”
    “Yes,” agreed Maddy. “And this is such a good place for his headquarters, high up on the mountain, where there’s nobody to get suspicious.”
    Max thought for a moment. “We could go right back and tell Mr Huffendorf,” he said. “Or we could try to sort things out ourselves.”
    Maddy shivered, not from cold, but from fear. Max always wanted to sort things out himself, and sometimes she thought it was a little bit safer to let other people do that.
    “What could we do?” she asked.
    Max smiled. A plan was forming in his mind, and it seemed to him that it would be rather good fun—as long as it went well. If it didn’t go well, though…er, perhaps it was best not to think about that.
    “Let’s try to find the money,” he said. “Then we’ll free the dogs and take them with us. In tbat way, we’ll rescue the dogs, get Mr Huffendorfs money back for him, and stop Professor Sardine right in his tracks!”
    Maddy’s mouth dropped open. It sounded so simple the way Max had put it, but surely it would be terribly dangerous. What if they were caught? What would Professor Sardine do with them? It was bound to be something awful. Perhaps he would push them down a glacier or something like that.
    Max, though, seemed to have his mind made up.
    “Now listen, Maddy,” he