The Danger Gang and the Isle of Feral Beasts! Read online

  “I was just making small talk,” I replied. “I wanted to see if we had similar interests.”

  “No,” Julianne said as we followed the buzzing crowd down the theater aisle, “you wanted her to say that you’re more adventurous than Josh.”

  I shrugged. “Well . . . that would be a similar interest.”

  Brigand sat down in the middle seat of the middle row. There was a spot reserved for Julianne on his left and one for me on his right.

  “This is so exciting!” Julianne gushed as we sidestepped to our seats. “Josh, you must be thrilled!”

  “And a pinch nervous,” the movie star confessed, rubbing his hands together. “I put everything into this film. What if the crowd doesn’t laugh in the funny parts or cry in the sad parts, or fall in love with the brave hero?”

  “Very possible,” I said, only half listening. “They could hate it . . . or worse yet, ignore it all together.”

  Julianne shot me a look. “Don’t listen to him, Josh. I’m sure it’s great. And I’m so flattered you added my idea about the fruit-throwing orangutans!”

  The actor chewed his lip silently. A few seconds later, the lights dimmed and the red velvet curtains pulled back to reveal a wide shot of a jungle.

  Everyone in the theater clapped as giant letters flashed across the screen:

  CAPSTONE PICTURES PRESENTS

  BUCCANEERS OF THE SOUTH SEAS

  Written by . . . JOSH BRIGAND

  Directed by . . . JOSH BRIGAND

  Starring . . . JOSH BRIGAND

  The jungle slowly dissolved into a man standing at the helm of a ship.

  “So we meet again, Cannonball Island,” said the man on-screen (who was also the man sitting beside me).

  The camera pulled back to reveal a parrot pacing on a nearby perch. The captain rubbed his chin and gazed into the distance.

  “The last time I saw your shores I left a piece of my heart behind.”

  The parrot squawked. “Akkk—Princess Esmeralda—­Gaaak.”

  “It’s Queen Esmeralda now,” the man corrected. “The rose of my heart’s garden. The diamond of my eye.”

  “Sounds painful,” I muttered.

  “Shhhhhh,” Julianne hissed.

  Brigand sat with his fingers gripping his knees, leaning forward, mouthing every word. I could pretty quickly deduce that I’d need sustenance to power through this drivel. I reached across the actor for some popcorn, but Julianne swatted my hand away.

  “How long is this movie?” I asked.

  “Capstone wanted me to cut it,” Brigand said in a hushed voice. “But I stayed true to my creative vision.”

  “Meaning?”

  “It’s three and a half hours.”

  I sunk in my seat. On-screen, the swashbuckler and his parrot recited a love poem together.

  FACT: It was going to be a long night.

  Before Ronald even gets into his thoughts on Buccaneers of the South Seas, let me just come right out and say: it could have been better.

  Okay, fine. It stunk.

  Watching Josh talk to a parrot for the first hour was . . . ​slow. Then there were chase scenes and swordfights, but it was all just sort of a blur.

  I’d been excited to see the actress playing Queen Esmeralda, because I read in a newspaper that she did her own stunts, but all those parts must have been cut. Instead, she just sort of appeared at the very end and I hate it when characters just show up like that.

  For Josh’s sake, I hoped other people would love his movie, but by the time the credits rolled, the theater was half-empty. I jumped up to give a standing ovation as the lights hummed to life.

  Julianne’s clapping jolted me awake. I shook out my stiff legs and looked at the movie star seated beside me. His skin was slightly green, and his teeth didn’t gleam quite as white as usual.

  “What’s the matter, Brickman?” I asked.

  “They hated it,” the actor cried. “My heart and soul are in every frame of that movie, and they hated it!”

  I gave him the sort of skeptical look Jeeves gave me, back when I tried to dig a secret tunnel under his bedroom.

  “Your heart and soul are in every frame?” I asked. “Even the scene where the drunken buccaneer confused a sea cow with a mermaid?”

  “It was supposed to be funny! Didn’t you think it was funny?”

  I was saved by a skinny teenager in a crimson uniform at the end of our row.

  “Excuse me,” he called, “can I ask a favor?”

  Brigand’s face softened a little. “What can I get you, young fellow? An autograph for your favorite chum? A publicity photo signed to your sweetheart?”

  The theater employee looked away, scuffing his toe against the carpet. “Oh . . . ​I was just going to . . . ​I have to sweep this row.”

  The actor’s whole body sagged and he started trudging up the aisle and out of the theater. The crowd of photographers was long gone. So were the fans and the studio executives.

  We neared the glass doors of the theater, when a voice came from behind.

  “MISTER BRIGAND! MISTER BRIGAND!” It was the chirpy candy girl we’d seen before the show. She was holding a silver platter and rushing toward us. “I was supposed to give you this when the movie let out!”

  We all looked down at the platter:

  “Look!” Julianne said. “An award from GASP! That should cheer you up!”

  The actor hung his head, running a finger across the engraved lettering. “I . . . I sort of . . . invented the Guild of Actors and Show People. To build buzz.”

  FACT: Creating a fake organization just to impress people sounded like my type of idea.

  “Well done,” I said, stroking my upper lip. “Maybe I should start a club and name myself Adventurer of the Year. Or better yet, Adventurer of the Decade!”

  Julianne rolled her eyes and spun away. “Let’s just get some ice cream.”

  Josh trudged toward the street holding his platter. I could see that the concert hall across the street had closed up already, but there was a light on in the tea shop two doors down.

  I started toward it. “I’ll get Jeeves!”

  “Wait, I want to talk to you again really quick,” Julianne said. “Josh, you okay?”

  Brigand had plopped down in the middle of the red carpet and was using the silver award to inspect the lines around his eyes. Julianne pulled me back inside the theater lobby.

  “Ronald,” my adventure partner said, “could you be a little nicer to Josh? He’s had a rough night.”

  I glanced sideways at her.

  “And call him by his real name?”

  “Fine,” I said. “But you have to admit that movie was absolute—”

  “LET GO OF ME, YOU BRUTE!”

  It was Brigand’s voice, echoing behind us. We turned to see him being dragged, kicking and screaming, off the curb by a gang of thugs in bandit masks. They shoved him into the back seat of a black sedan.

  “STOP!” the actor yelled. “HELP!”

  Julianne raced toward him, and I bounded after her. The driver’s side window of the sedan rolled down, revealing a familiar-looking man with a square jaw and overgrown eyebrows. He held up a stun gun, crackling with electric pulses.

  “Not another step, kiddos.”

  We skidded to a stop in the middle of the red carpet.

  “Sorry, Ronald Zupan,” he said in a flat, thudding voice, “we’re kidnapping your beloved butler.”

  “That’s not my beloved butler!” I yelled back. “That’s just some world-famous movie star!”

  “LET HIM GO!” Julianne yelled. “JOSH!”

  The driver of the car glanced into the back seat. “Of course it’s your butler. He has a tuxedo! And he’s carrying a platter—probably for holding cocktails and appetizers!”

  “My butler is British! . . . And bald!”

  The villain glowered right at me, then sneered. I recognized those teeth immediately.

  “I know you!” I said. “You’re the FIB
rogue with the terrible breath!”

  “Breath? What?” the man said. “No! I’m Deadly Dirk Grimple—the one with the cool sunglasses!”

  “The breath was more memorable,” I said.

  Dirk Grimple squeezed the stun gun again, and the blue electric pulses crackled with energy.

  “See you later, Zupan,” he said, “if you can find us!”

  With that, he rolled up the tinted window and jammed on the gas. The car’s wheels smoked and screeched as the devilish fiends raced away.

  Seconds after Grimple and his FIB goons sped away from the movie theater, vowing that I’d never see my beloved butler again, I saw my beloved butler again. He’d left the tea shop and was loping toward us.

  “What’s all the commotion?” Jeeves asked.

  “The FIB kidnapped Josh Brigand!” Julianne said.

  Jeeves tilted his head and frowned. “Why?”

  “They thought he was you,” I said.

  The butler peered down the hill, toward Bay City Harbor. “And why would they want to kidnap me?”

  “They must be headed to their secret hideout,” Julianne said, pacing along the curb, popping her knuckles. “But even Helen and Francisco haven’t been able to find it.”

  Jeeves nodded, still stunned.

  “They drove toward the harbor,” Julianne went on. “So they’re probably traveling by boat.” She looked over at me. “Hello? Any ideas? This is clearly a job for the Danger Gang.”

  “Or the police,” Jeeves offered. “Police would be good.”

  I hesitated. “I . . . ​actually agree with Jeeves. I’m sure the Bay City police can—”

  “You what?” Julianne yelled. “What are you talking about!”

  I chewed my lower lip. “Well . . . ​If we rescue Josh, then that will be our second adventure. And we already solved a kidnapping. You saw my dad’s list about the second-adventure slump. It’s not supposed to feel familiar.”

  “I don’t care,” Julianne said, flagging down a taxicab that was idling down the block. “Josh needs us.” She looked at Jeeves. “Can you talk sense into him . . . please!?”

  The butler’s face tightened as he stared down the street in the direction the villains had gone.

  “Hurry!” Julianne yelled.

  “Oh, blast it all,” Jeeves said. “Ronald, I suppose we’d better go after Josh.”

  A yellow-and-green taxi rumbled to a halt, and my adventure partner dove inside. Jeeves motioned me to follow her.

  I gaped at him. “But the second-adventure slum—”

  “It’s not your second adventure,” he said, pushing me toward the open door. “It’s just a . . . ​side adventure. Like in cricket, when the bowler causes a ‘super over’ in a test match after the seventh tea break and—”

  “They’re getting away!” Julianne cried, slapping the fake-leather seat.

  “Side adventure, eh?” I asked, rubbing my chin as Jeeves guided me toward the open door. “Like it’s still connected to the first one?”

  “That’s exactly it,” Jeeves said. “Your parents go on them all the time, I promise.”

  I wavered, half in the car. “Seems like my parents could come up with a more dashing name. It could be called an ‘Add-On Exploit’ or—”

  Jeeves gave me a final shove and we tumbled into the cab together.

  “Follow that car!” Julianne yelled, pointing the cabby in the direction the FIB had gone.

  “We’re on a side adventure!” I added.

  You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding. Me.

  Side adventure? Add-On Exploit? First of all, the whole idea is crazy. I could tell Jeeves was making it up. Second of all, if you had to come up with a better name, it should be a “Follow-Up Feat.”

  The cabdriver looked like the great-uncle of someone’s great-uncle.

  “What’s that about a car?” he asked, digging a pinkie deep into his ear. “I don’t see anyone.”

  “Because they’re getting away!” Julianne said.

  “But I can’t see where they went to follow them.”

  “To the harbor! The harbor, good man!” I called.

  The cabdriver ground his gears twice before we finally sputtered off down the road.

  FACT: The Danger Gang was on the case!

  I would have been even madder at Ronald for all the second-adventure slump talk, but I was distracted by something. A small red coupe was creeping down the road in our direction.

  It struck me as strange. A tiny voice in the back of my brain wondered, “Why does that car have its lights off?” When our taxi finally started moving, I looked back again.

  Sure enough, the car was following us.

  By the time we puttered down to the Bay City wharf, there was no sign of Josh Brigand or the rogues who kidnapped him, just a few fishermen loading wire crab traps onto a dingy-looking boat. Julianne, Jeeves, and I dove out of the taxi and bolted up to the men.

  “Hello, rugged crabbers,” I said. “Have you seen any suspicious activity this evening?”

  “Like what?” a rough-looking man grunted. He flung a crab trap onto a pile and mopped his oily face with his sleeve. His fingers were thick and blunt, and his nose looked like a tulip bulb.

  “Like a movie star getting kidnapped against his will,” Julianne said. “Kicking and screaming as a crew of villains dragged him away.”

  The crabber sized up my adventure partner and offered a slow nod. “Yep. We saw something like that.”

  “Tell us everything,” I said.

  “It was just what the girl described,” the crabber replied. “A man kicking and screaming with a bunch of other people dragging him along.”

  “And did you note where they went?” Jeeves asked.

  The man blinked a few times. “Due west. Straight toward the horizon.”

  We all looked to the west. It was dark and we couldn’t see anything. Then the blue-black sky was torn in half by a jagged lightning bolt.

  “Summer storm brewing,” another crabber piped up. “Wind whipping up a gale.”

  The lead fisherman spun to grab another crab trap, but Julianne stepped in front of him. “Anything else you remember?”

  The man wet his cracked lips. Between the fishermen and the taxi driver, none of the odd characters we’d met on this side adventure seemed to move any faster than a sloth after a sleeping pill.

  “They were all in a boat,” he said, “but then someone saw a red seaplane tied up and called to the others. There was arguing. Finally, the one who was kicking and screaming got dragged over to the plane. Half the crew flew, and the other half sped away in the boat.”

  My stomach sank. I turned to look down the wharf, but there was no need.

  FACT: Through some bit of clever trickery, the scoundrels had stolen our seaplane.

  Do you get to call it “clever trickery” when the keys were left in the ignition? I don’t think so. Ronald even said, “That’s Francisco and Helen’s plane. No one would dare to touch it unless they were thieves, villains, or cheats.”

  But guess what? The men who took Josh were all three, and now we had no way to chase them.

  I turned back to the lead fisherman. He’d started tying slick strands of fish gut into the traps.

  “Sir,” I said, “we’re going to need to commandeer this vessel.”

  “What?”

  “We’d like to borrow your boat,” Jeeves said.

  All the crabbers stiffened and looked toward the bow. We turned to see a square shack, built right onto the deck. There was one smoky window facing our direction, and through it we could spy the light of a flickering lantern.

  “If you want the boat,” the lead crabber said, “you’ll have to talk to Cap.”

  Thunder crashed in the distance as Julianne, Jeeves, and I crossed the deck. When we reached the cabin door, I glanced back at the crabbers—they were slack-jawed, staring at us.

  I raised my hand to knock when a voice cut through the night.

  “What. Is. It?”
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  The voice clearly belonged to a woman, and it punched a hole in the thick air.

  “Ahoy, dear captain,” I called, “we’re the Danger Gang, and we need a—”

  “I don’t do favors!”

  I glanced at Julianne for some help.

  “A band of criminals just kidnapped the movie star Josh Brigand,” she called through the door. “Your crew says they—”

  “Don’t. Do. Favors!” the voice repeated. Then, after a pause, the woman added. “Brigand? He made that movie five years back, Cannonade on the Spanish Main, right?”

  Julianne saw her chance. “Yes! And tonight he was abducted after the premiere of his newest movie. If you help us rescue him, he’d probably—”

  “Cannonade on the Spanish Main was trash!” the captain shouted. “He made us seafaring folk look like fools!”

  Another jagged streak of lightning lit the sky. The thunder rattled the walls of the cabin, and the first drops of rain splatted down on us.

  Jeeves peered through the smoky window, his nose practically touching the pane. Inside was a small table with a chessboard. It looked like someone had paused midgame.

  “A storm is coming and we have a lot of sea to cover!” the captain bellowed. “You three need to—”

  “You’re working on the Budapest Gambit,” Jeeves interrupted.

  Julianne and I stared at him. Behind us, one of the crabbers gasped.

  There was an electric pause, then the good butler spoke again. “I’d say it’s time to bring out your rook.”

  “Who said that?” the captain demanded. Her voice had shifted a little; it carried a hint of curiosity.

  The rain flattened Jeeves’s last wisps of hair. “My name is Tom Halladay.”

  “Play chess, Halladay?”

  “My employers prefer Scorpion Poker,” Jeeves said, “but chess is my first love. I’m familiar with the Budapest Gambit.”

  There was another pause.

  “Come in,” the captain said in a low voice. “Alone.”