Pablo scanned through the next couple of pages. “Here’s the next entry about Gustavo,” he said. “Gustavo and I have argued. He keeps asking me questions about my life back in New York. I keep saying that I don’t want to talk about it, I’m not going back until my research is complete. But he keeps asking and asking. Why? My underpants are full of custard… Ah, he is using an Ulbuti saying there, it means ‘I am confused’.”

  “Any other mentions?” asked Wily.

  Pablo skimmed forwards. “Just this one,” he said. “This is the day before the bandits came. Gustavo has gone. I finally gave up and told him a few details about my family. He looked happy at last. But this morning, his hammock was empty. He didn’t take any of his own clothes, but one of my suits is missing and he has taken my watch and my passport. Even stranger: I sheared my wool yesterday because of the heat and left it underneath my hammock. That’s gone, too. What possible use could he have for my old wool?”

  Wily’s mind was racing. A clear picture was starting to form. Maxwell had become Gustavo and then Simon. He could have fooled Wily’s DNA detector by making a coat out of Simon’s sheared wool.

  Only three things bothered him.

  Firstly: Maxwell may have put on a woolly coat, but how had he managed to fool Simon’s grandmother? Goats and sheep looked similar, but not THAT similar.

  Secondly: how had Maxwell managed to get out of the country with the whole of PSSST looking for him?

  Thirdly and most importantly: what had Maxwell done with Simon?

  Wily couldn’t go back to New York and confront Maxwell. Not yet. Not without more evidence. He turned to face the guinea pigs.

  “I need to find Simon,” he said. “Have you any idea what happened to him?”

  The guinea pigs looked at one another.

  “Only the bandits can tell you that,” said Maria.

  “Then I need to find the bandits,” said Wily.

  “They will kill you, señor,” said Pablo. “Shoot you with their poison arrows.”

  “Their what?”

  “They use poison arrows to defend themselves,” said Pablo.

  Wily remembered the poison dart that had nearly killed him at the Sheep residence. Were the bandits and Maxwell working together?

  “OK, now I really need to find them,” said Wily. “Where’s their hideout?”

  “Somewhere in the mountains,” said Julio. “But they’re never in it. They’re all on the same ridiculous quest.”

  “What quest?” asked Wily. “What are you talking about?”

  At that point, there was a rustling in the bushes. Julio spun round and aimed his catapult at the noise. A few seconds later, Albert emerged holding a large sheet of paper.

  “Wily!” he exclaimed. “Fancy going on a treasure hunt?”

  Albert walked towards Wily, holding what looked like a treasure map in his hands.

  “Don’t look at it, señor,” whispered Maria.

  “No good comes to anyone who tries to find the Lost Treasure of Tunza-Dosh,” warned Julio. “It’s cursed.”

  “Lost treasure?” said Wily.

  “I’ve read about this,” said Albert, “but I thought it was just a legend.”

  “No, it’s real,” said Julio. “The treasure is hidden in the jungle. Only fools look for it.”

  “Fools,” said Maria, “and bandits.”

  “The road to the jungle passes through our town,” said Julio. “The bandits stopped to steal our money and possessions. One of them must have dropped that map.”

  “So that’s where they’ll be,” said Wily. “On the road to Tunza-Dosh. If we find them, we’ll find out what happened to Simon.”

  Albert laid the treasure map on the ground and flattened it out.

  “That’s the main square,” said Julio.

  “Are there ferns growing up here?” asked Wily.

  “There never used to be,” said Julio, “but things change fast in the jungle. Let’s go and look.”

  Wily retrieved his sky sticks – the workbench slid into a ditch with a thud – and followed Julio through the trees.

  As they walked, Wily told Albert what he’d discovered in the hut and his theory about Maxwell. A few minutes later, they were standing on the edge of town, looking at a narrow track that led into a dark patch of palm trees.

  “There, Wily, there!” cried Albert.

  He pointed at a row of ferns that were growing along the side of the track. They appeared at regular two-metre intervals, as if they’d been planted that way deliberately.

  “The quest begins!” said Wily, stepping forwards boldly.

  But Julio and his fellow guinea pigs didn’t move.

  “We told you. The treasure is cursed,” Julio said.

  Albert also looked unsure. “I don’t believe in curses,” he said, “but I do believe in bandits. Shouldn’t we find out more about these animals first, Wily? I mean, they wore cloaks, right? They could be anything.”

  “I saw no faces under their hoods,” whispered Maria. “I believe they were zombies.”

  “Curses, zombies, lost treasure!” exclaimed Wily. “It’s just a bunch of criminals trying to find some stolen gold.”

  “We should contact PSSST and get help,” said Albert, folding his arms.

  Wily sighed. “OK,” he said. “You get back on the motorbike. Find PSSST. But don’t tell them that Maxwell Mirage is probably in New York. We need more evidence first.”

  “Take my map,” said Albert, folding it up. “You won’t get any reception on your phone out there.”

  Wily smiled and took the map.

  “And take this, too,” Albert said, handing Wily an umbrella.

  “It’s OK, I’ve got a jacket,” said Wily.

  “This is a rainforest,” said Albert. “When it rains, it really rains. And the umbrella is made of reinforced tungsten. So it’s bulletproof, bombproof, everything proof. But – here’s the best thing – it’s also as light as a feather.” He pressed a button on the end and the umbrella collapsed down to a small black tube.

  “That’s pretty cool,” said Wily. “Thanks, Albert.”

  He put the map and the umbrella in his jacket pocket.

  The guinea pigs stepped forwards and each shook Wily’s hand.

  “Goodbye, señor,” Julio said, “I will miss you when you are dead.”

  “Thanks, Julio.”

  Wily smiled at them all and headed off alone.

  The ferns led Wily further and further out of the town, and deeper and deeper into the jungle. Every now and then there would be a gap in the ferns and Wily would be lost for a moment, but then he’d spot another and pick up the trail again.

  Wily began to climb a hill. There was a strange track mark in the mud in front of him. Not quite a footprint, more like a series of tiny slashes.

  Did bandits leave this trail, Wily thought, and if so, what kind of animal are they?

  Wily considered what he knew about his enemy. They wore cloaks to hide their identities. They were bigger than guinea pigs. Their chosen weapon was a poison arrow. What could they be? If he was going to get Simon back, Wily would need to work out who the bandits were – and how to beat them.

  The ferns eventually stopped at a cave. Wily peered inside. He couldn’t see anything, so he sniffed instead. There were no animal scents – just a very slight hint of burnt wood. He turned on his phone torch and edged inside.

  In the centre of the cave, Wily found the remnants of a campfire. He inspected a couple of the charred sticks and guessed that the fire was around two months old. The timescales matched – Julio had said the bandits raided Pebas two months ago.

  Wily shone his torch around the rest of the cave. Nothing else had been left behind, but something in the far corner caught his eye. A mark on the wall. He moved closer and saw that it was a message, written in tiny letters with the tip of a burnt stick:

  What did that mean?

  Wily was reminded of the Case of the Fishy Philosopher, where he’d had to solve fifty riddles in fifty minutes to stop a bomb going off. But those riddles had been easy compared to this one.

  Wily sat down and glanced around the cave.

  This will be a pretty good shelter for the night, he thought.

  He created a spark by rubbing two of the sticks together and pretty soon the campfire was blazing again.

  As the cave grew warmer and cosier, Wily drifted off to sleep.

  Soon he was dreaming. He saw giant animals wearing cloaks diving into huge piles of gold. He dreamed of being caught in a huge spider’s web while a goat dressed as a sheep fired at him with poison arrows.

  When he woke up with a start, the fire was out and light was shining in from the cave entrance. It was morning.

  Wily stepped outside and looked for the trail of ferns. But there was a problem. The trail of ferns led into the cave, but that’s where it ended. Did that mean the treasure was in the cave? Wily checked the walls again, but there were no holes, no gaps, no secret passages.

  He came back to the riddle: The ground drops away soon, but don’t jump till noon.

  Was that a clue for the treasure trail? It was time to explore.

  Wily got out his sky sticks and shot one into a nearby tree. He pulled himself up and swung across into a higher tree so he could have a proper look around.

  The cave was on the side of a hill. At the bottom, Wily could just about make out the roofs of Pebas. At the top, he couldn’t see anything. The trees just vanished.

  Wily swung his way up the hillside and then, when he got to the last tree, he stopped just in time. The ground fell away and Wily found himself staring into a deep ravine. He leaned carefully over the edge of the canyon.

  The ravine was hundreds of metres deep and hundreds of metres wide.

  How am I going to get across? he thought to himself. Do I even need to get across?

  The words of the message echoed again: The ground drops away soon…

  That suggested he was on the right trail.

  But don’t jump till noon.

  That was crazy. Nobody could jump across a huge canyon.

  Wily looked at his sky sticks. Albert had said they could reach to about two-hundred metres. He looked over at the other side.

  “Worth a try,” he said out loud.

  He aimed at a tiny shape – it looked like a boulder of some kind – and fired. The ribbon shot forwards, traced an arc through the air and then dropped into the abyss. It hadn’t even got halfway across. He needed another plan.

  Glancing up and down his side of the canyon, Wily looked for signs of bridges or walkways. He couldn’t see any, but he did spot a small group of opossums looking at the other side of the ravine and then looking up at the sun and then looking down into the ravine. What were they doing?

  A few minutes later, they were joined by a family of porcupines. They all glanced at the sun and then down into the ravine.

  Wily too looked up at the sun: it was right in the middle of the sky. Almost noon.

  He wanted to call out to the other animals and ask them what they were doing. But just as he was about to speak, they all stepped forwards and jumped off the edge of the canyon.

  Wily had a split second to think.

  These animals knew something he didn’t. They couldn’t be jumping to their deaths. He ran forwards and jumped into the ravine.

  As he fell, he pulled out his sky sticks. If he fell by more than two-hundred metres, he wouldn’t be able to fire a ribbon and pull himself out. He was plummeting like a stone, twenty metres, forty metres, sixty metres. Had he just made a huge mistake?

  Another second flashed by.

  He must have fallen over a hundred metres. It was time to shoot a sky stick before it was too late. As his thumb hovered on the button, he felt a rush of wind underneath him.

  The rush of wind became a hot blast. Then a vast gale of fizzing air catapulted him back up. He heard shrieks of laughter in the distance as the porcupines and opossums were sent flying up into the sky, too.

  Wily looked down below him and saw steam everywhere. There were geysers and hot springs spouting up from the bottom of the canyon! He’d heard about such things, but never seen anything like it.

  Wily glanced across and saw that the porcupines and opossums were riding on the gusts of steam, propelling themselves forwards. Wily did the same, flinging himself from one vent to the next.

  Within a couple of minutes, he was nearly at the other side.

  Then he felt the air underneath him start to subside. He looked up and saw that the opossums and porcupines were on the other side already. They spotted him and made beckoning gestures, urging him to hurry up.

  Oh no, Wily thought. The geysers only spout for a few minutes.

  As Wily began to fall, he aimed his sky sticks at the far side of the canyon and released them. One missed, but the other went taut.

  The geysers had stopped now, and Wily was hanging from the sky stick, swinging over the deadly drop beneath him.

  Then he felt one end of his sky stick being tugged. When he got to the top of the canyon, he saw that two of the porcupines were holding the other end of the ribbon.

  “Thanks,” said Wily. “You helped me out of a hole.”

  The porcupines smiled. “Don’t believe everything you hear about porcupines,” one said. “Some of us are friendly.”

  Wily looked confused. “I haven’t heard anything about porcupines…”

  But the porcupines had curled up into balls and rolled off, leaving a few needles behind.

  Wily took his bearings. He was on the edge of a ravine in the middle of the Amazon jungle with no idea which way to go next. He had been following a trail of ferns in the hope of finding either a lost treasure trove, a troupe of bandits, Simon Sheep or all three. But now there were no more clues. Which way was Tunza-Dosh?

  He looked around for markings or signs or secret entrances. There was nothing. Just trees and puddles and spiders’ webs and anthills. He looked for paw prints, he sniffed the air for a scent of sheep. He was getting nowhere. Perhaps it was time to turn back. But he couldn’t go back across the ravine till noon the following day when the geysers started spouting again.

  Wily sat down on a rock and sighed. This was a much trickier case than he’d expected. He heard a fluttering overhead and glanced up idly – there, suspended in a spider’s web, was a piece of paper.

  Quick as a flash, Wily shinned up the tree trunk and grabbed it. It was yellow and slightly soggy, but the message was still readable. It was written in the same ink as the clue about following the ferns.

  It was puzzling. Wily’s first thought was to call Albert. He checked his phone, but there was no signal. Albert had warned him that would happen.

  Then he remembered that Albert had given him a map of the jungle. He pulled it out and tried to work out where he was. He found the canyon and traced it along the centre of the map. Then he looked at his phone again – it had a compass on it – and figured out his exact location. He seemed to be several miles away from any village or town. So where was this note telling him to go?

  Wily looked again at the symbols on the note. The first one seemed to be pointing west. “Go west to…” Rain? Arrows of rain? Was someone going to shoot a poison arrow at him again? And did he have to jump off another ravine?

  The second row of symbols didn’t make much sense either. Was that a hand? And a picture of someone crying and someone talking.

  Wily folded up the note. He decided to head west and inspect anything on the route that looked like a bow and arrow or a giant hand.

  He began to fight his way through the undergrowth, squeezing under branches and hopping over roots. He thought about using his sky sticks to move faster, but he didn’t want to miss the next clue.

  Then it started to rain. Hard.

  There was a picture of rain on the note, but surely that was a coincidence. Unless there was always rain in this part of the jungle?

  Do I have to pass through the rain and find … some arrows … pointing somewhere…? he thought to himself.

  The rain was now coming down in buckets. It was soaking his coat and dripping off his bushy tail. Wily took out his umbrella and put it up. But although this kept him dry, it didn’t stop the earth underneath his feet getting softer and softer.

  A few seconds later, the ground gave way and Wily found himself slithering downhill in a river of mud. He fumbled for his sky sticks, but he was moving too fast. He felt more earth giving way underneath him. He tried to grab something – anything – with his right paw, but everything was moving. In the end he just gave up and lay back, letting himself be carried through the trees on a thundering torrent of earth and water.

  As he was being swept along and rolled around, his mind was turning, too. The pictures in the notes became words.

  Go West. To. Rain. Bow. Falls.

  Wily remembered the map. There was a huge waterfall on its western edge – could that be Rainbow Falls? The only problem was, the landslide was taking him in the opposite direction.

  Albert had said the umbrella was extremely strong. Wily flipped it upside down and jumped inside. He stuck his left leg out behind him like a rudder on a boat, and steered the umbrella left and right, looking for a way out of the muddy stream.

  Then he saw his chance. A huge tree was teetering on the edge of the landslide. Wily steered towards it and hooked the umbrella handle on to one of its branches. The branch started to bend back, but Wily didn’t let go. He saw a rock tumbling past and grabbed it with his feet. He tucked a bigger rock under his spare arm. The branch bent back even further.

  When it couldn’t bend back any more, Wily let go of the rocks. The branch whipped forwards, flinging him into the sky at great speed. He hurtled across the landslide, over a mountain and through a strip of forest. Then he started to fall.

 

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