The Great Gold Robbery by Jo Nesbø Read Free Book Online Page A

Nilly said, darting into the bedroom.
    “Hey, you guys,” Lisa said. “We’ve got to get over to Madame Tourette’s Wax Museum. There might be a line to get in, and we have to be on time.”
    “Nag, nag, nag,” Nilly called from the bedroom, where he’d spent a little time jumping on one of the beds before moving over to the other one and doing a little jumping there,
too. “This one is sproingier,” he announced. “Is it okay if I take the bed by the window, Lisa?”
    “Yeah, sure. But what would you have done if I said no?” Lisa said with a sigh.
    “Then obviously you could have had the bed by the wall,” Nilly said. “I’m not unreasonable. Hey, I can touch the ceiling!”
    “Come on!” Lisa urged.
    “I just have to change,” Nilly said.
    “Nilly! If we want to make it there—”
    “I’m ready!”
    Lisa and Doctor Proctor stared. Nilly was standing in the doorway wearing a tweed jacket and a tweed deerstalker cap, which looked at least as ridiculous as the Secret Gourd horsetail-duster
hats.
    “What’s wrong?” Nilly said. “Real detectives need disguises and secret code names, right? So from now on you guys can call me Sherl.” Nilly stuck a curved pipe into
his mouth. “And Lisa, you can be Ockolmes. And Doctor, you can be . . .”
    “Doctor Mitten?” Lisa suggested.
    Nilly scratched his sideburn. “No, it has to be something Scottish. Doctor MacKaroni.”
    “Macaroni?” Lisa said. “Isn’t that Italian?”
    “Yeah, about as Italian as MacElangelo or MacO’Polo,” Nilly said. “And it tastes a lot better.”
    “Are you guys ready, Sherl? Ockolmes?” Doctor MacKaroni asked. “Because we’ve got to go now.”
    SURE ENOUGH, THERE was a line of tourists waiting to get into Madame Tourette’s.
    After they bought their tickets, our three friends entered the wax museum. They elbowed their way through the crowd of people and life-sized wax celebrities, with Doctor Proctor pointing out
Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, John F. Kennedy, and Winston Churchill.
    “Hey, I was that guy once!” Nilly said, pointing to a short figure in a uniform and tricorne hat.
    “That’s right, it’s Napoléon,” Doctor Proctor said.
    “Ugh,” Lisa said with a shudder. “It’s impossible to tell who’s alive and who’s made of wax in here.”
    “Oh, look over there!” Nilly said, pointing. “It’s Ibranaldovez!”
    They stopped in front of a wax figurine in a soccer uniform.
    “Are you sure?” Lisa asked. “The face doesn’t look that much like Ibranaldovez.”
    “No, but
that
looks a lot like him,” Nilly said, pointing to the wax figure’s hand, whose fingers were all clenched into a fist except for the middle one, which was
sticking straight up.
    “Here’s the Michael Jackson figure,” Doctor Proctor said. He stopped and scanned the room, but neither he nor Lisa could spot the secret informant. Nilly wasn’t looking
around at all; he was too preoccupied studying this strange wax figure. The man was wearing a short sequined jacket. One of the figure’s hands was positioned over its crotch, exactly like
soccer players forming a wall for a free kick. He was holding his hat with his other hand, which was wearing a silver glove.
    “Is that an aiming glove?” Nilly asked, squinting. “Why is he standing in that weird position?”
    “Silly,” Lisa said. “That glove was his signature. He’s moonwalking.”
    “Oh, right,” Nilly said, and turned to the crowd, which was streaming past them. “But if this meeting is supposed to be so secret, why are we meeting somewhere that’s as
crowded as a Tokyo escalator?”
    “Because you can hide in a crowd, the way fish hide in a school,” the Michael Jackson figure said. “No one notices who you’re talking to, and there’s so much noise
that no one can hear what you’re saying.”
    “I wasn’t talking to you, Michael,” Nilly said.
    “What?” Lisa said.
    “I said, I wasn’t talking to him,” Nilly said, pointing