Micky interrupted her. “Don’t be silly, Matilda. I told you this can’t be Lily’s house. This isn’t a house, it’s a shop. Oh, Matilda, we’re lost. I want my mum!”
The unsuspecting doorman looked down.
“Hey, little fella, don’t worry, this
“Oh, fanks!” said Micky, smiling up sweetly at the guard. “Does Lily have sweets here?”
The guard laughed and ushered the kids through. “Should think so, knowing Miss Lily!” He chuckled. He pointed into the casino. “Walk straight over there and around that corner, and her room is the second on the left.”
“Okay, thanks, mister!”
Molly and Micky walked through the revolving door.
“Brilliant, Micky,” Molly said, smiling. “You’ve got talent.”
And so the children padded into the casino. Only seven steps inside, and they felt as though they were in a twilight world—a place of neither day nor night. For the casino was windowless and void of natural light. Instead it glittered with golden lamps and imitation candlelight. The floor’s green carpet was filled with a copper-threaded coin pattern that gave the impression that money had been strewn all over the ground. The walls were a pale green, decorated in the trompe l’oeil fashion: An artist had painted fake columns with plants on top of them and views of a garden behind. These views were executed to look three-dimensional so that it really seemed that the casino was set in a weird paradise.
Gamblers of all nationalities sat concentrating on their card games. And shiny silver balls clattered on spinning roulette wheels before they found resting places. Molly and Micky walked silently by them, along the side passage that ajoined the gambling room.
“Looks fun!” said Micky. “Pity we can’t have a go.”
“Come on, Micky. Cameras are everywhere. We don’t want Mr. Black spotting us.”
She pulled him behind a slot machine. “Some people call these machines one-arm bandits,” she said, discreetly pulling out the casino map Miss Hunroe had given her, “because the handle you pull is like an arm, and like a bandit, the machines steal your money.” She quickly looked at the map. “So we need to go over there.” Molly gestured toward the corner of the casino. “That’s where the vent grille is. Once inside that we can crawl through the vent to his office. She smiled at Micky. “No locks, no guards.”
“What if Black’s already seen us via one of the casino cameras?” Micky whispered, his voice now wobbling slightly with worry.
“If he has, we are in trouble,” said Molly. “So let’s get this thing done quickly.”
The children both took a deep breath and began to cross the casino floor, walking swiftly from slot machine to slot machine toward the corner of the room. However, when they got there, to their horror, another guard, shorter and brawnier than the door guard, stepped from behind a pillar to obstruct their way.
“Hello, you two. Come to see Miss Lily?” he asked.
“Erm, yes,” Micky said. “The man at the door told us her room is round that corner.”
The guard shook his head. “Not exactly. But I will take you to her. First, though, you have to say good afternoon to Mr. Black.”
Molly gulped. Micky’s eyes widened. Molly saw that her hypnotism was needed. She only hoped that Mr. Black hadn’t hypnotized this man so that he was
“And will Mr. Black give us some sweets?” Micky asked, buying Molly time.
Molly looked at the man and considered his frowning forehead, his muscley body, and his officialness. Feeling what it was like to be him, she found it easy to stare up at him and tune into him. Then Molly turned her green eyes on. At once, their hypnotic power shot toward him straight into his eyeballs. His eyes widened. Molly felt him bridle. There was some resistance there. But now she’d started, she couldn’t give up.
Micky watched as Molly’s eyes strained and as the skin between her eyebrows furrowed.
He saw her jaw clench as she bit her teeth together, trying to concentrate.
Molly could feel a slight weakness in the man, as though the instructions that he’d been given, of not to be hypnotized, weren’t 100 percent firm. Black had obviously thought that the quality of his hypnotism would be enough to bar Miss Hunroe or her friends from controlling his guard. But Black hadn’t reckoned on Molly. Perhaps he hadn’t come across a hypnotist with Molly’s power before. She hoped Black’s instructions weren’t locked in.
As far as the guard was concerned, Molly’s green, closely set eyes were like alluring green beacons that he could neither ignore nor resist. Like super magnets, they pulled him in. Their green, throbbing pulse seemed to match the speed of his own heartbeat and fix him to the spot.
Molly felt the fusion feeling warm her body.
“Brilliant. The fusion feeling,” she said under her breath.
“The what?” Micky whispered.
“It’s a feeling I get, a kind of warm tingling feeling all over my body that makes me know that I’ve managed to hypnotize someone. You’ll get it too when you learn. I’m looking forward to teaching you how.”
“So is he hypnotized?”
“Yup. Cooked.”
Whatever this messy-haired girl suggested, the guard had to agree with her. He wanted to treat her like a princess and her friend like a prince.
“Yes, certainly,” he found himself saying. “Lots of sweets. Toffees, truffles, hard candy. I can get them for you now.”
“Don’t worry about the sweets,” Molly said, keeping her eyes firmly on him. “Micky, tell him what we want him to do.”
Micky’s eyes widened, for he hadn’t expected this. “What, like hypnotic instructions?” he asked. Molly nodded.
“Make it quick.”
“Um, okay. Right. Um, so, mister, listen to this. We are going to climb through a ventilator shaft. We want you to take the cover off it, then to stand guard and put it back on when we come back through. And once we are out of your sight, you will forget that you ever saw us here; you will forget that you were hypnotized.”
The man nodded obediently.
“Nice.” Molly smiled encouragingly at Micky. Then, without batting an eye, the guard led Molly and Micky to the wall where their chosen vent was. Soon he was tugging at its cover and pulling off the metal grating. Hurriedly the twins climbed in. The space was only just big enough for them. Micky pulled the vent cover in behind him and placed it on the inside floor of the tiny passage, so that the opening was unobstructed for their return. Outside the vent, the guard resumed his position.
“Don’t kick my face,” Micky said as he crawled with Molly’s sneakers almost hitting his nose. “I can’t believe we’re in here. It smells.” Micky sneezed.
“Shh,” Molly whispered. “Sound travels in these pipes.”
The vent duct was dark now, but ahead was a glow where another grille brought in light from the casino. And so the twins began to crawl toward this. When they reached it, Molly stopped, and since the vent went in two directions, she and Micky were able to sit side by side.
Molly pointed through the vent to a roulette table below, where three rich Chinese people sat. Two smartly dressed businessmen and their velvet-suited lady friend sat on smooth-backed stools with piles of betting chips stacked on the green baize table before them.
“Look! That chip’s worth a thousand pounds!” Molly observed. “And she’s got about fifty of them.”
“And,” Micky noticed, “if the ball lands on a black number, she’ll win quite a few more.”
The croupier, a man in a dark waistcoat and a starched shirt and black trousers, stood calm and official behind the spinning roulette wheel. The little silver ball tittled and tattled, as though gossiping with the numbers on the roulette wheel as it spun. Then it stopped. For a few seconds it was impossible to see what color it had landed on, for the wheel was still a rotating blur.
“Red, fifty-two,” the croupier announced. Without a glimmer of emotion, he swept all the gambling chips off the numbered felt toward a slit in the table’s surface, through which the chips disappeared.
