Free Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by Ian Fleming Page A

street just as Mimsie came running out of the hotel.
    She jumped in beside him and they were off, slowly at first, so that Commander Pott could watch the movement of the little radar scanner on the hood just in front of him. At first it pointed left down the main street and then corrected itself just like a compass when it had got on the right course, and then at the big turning toward Paris it swiveled to the right and Commander Pott obediently whirled the wheel and they were off on the huge main road which said "TO PARIS."
    Now Commander Pott really trod down hard on the accelerator and the speedometer climbed up and hung around a hundred miles an hour as the great green car, its supercharger screaming like a banshee, positively ate up the kilometers, which, instead of miles, is how they measure distances on the Continent. As each fork or turning in the road came up, he followed the direction indicated by the radar scanner, and with CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG going lickety-split, lickety-split, lickety-split, they hurtled on toward the gangster hideout where Jeremy and Jemima had been locked into a bare, cell-like room at the back of the deserted warehouse.
    Jeremy and Jemima's clothes had been thrown in with them and they now dressed quickly and began, in whispers, just in case anybody might be listening at the door, to wonder where they were and what was going to happen to them and, above all, when somebody was going to bring their breakfast.
    Jeremy was just telling Jemima about the mysterious words of Joe the Monster, "doing the Bon-Bon job" and "Soapy using the jelly," when the door was unlocked and Joe the Monster himself came in, beaming (as far as, with his ugly mug, he could beam), while behind him Soapy Sam followed with a tray that he put down on the floor beside the children (there was no furniture in the room—not a stick of it).
    Jeremy got stoutly to his feet and said, in as firm a voice as he could muster, "Where are we and what are you doing with us? You'll get into bad trouble if you don't take us back to our parents straight away. You'll have the police after you any moment now." And he glared as big a glare as he could glare into the black-bearded face of the huge man who towered above him.
    "Ha, ha, that's good, that's real good! Hear that, Soapy? The young 'un says the cops will be after me." He turned back to Jeremy and leered hideously down at him. "Why, my little man, the cops have been after me since I was smaller than you. Think of that now, all these years they've been hunting after me and my pals and they ain't caught up yet. Often been sniffing at me heels, mark you, even offered ten thousand pounds for what they are pleased to call 'information leading to my apprehension," which, in English means information on how to catch me. And now you expect me to quake in my shoes because of a little English family called POTT! Haw, haw, haw," and he positively shook with demoniac laughter.
    Jeremy said angrily, "We're not so little as all that. My father was a Commander in the Navy and he is a famous inventor and explorer, and anyway, besides us, there's CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG."
    "And who might he be?"
    "It's not a 'he' it's a 'she' and she's a car, the most wonderful car in the world, she's ma ..." Jeremy was going to say "magical," but he shut his mouth just in time. Better keep that a secret!
    "Oh, you mean that old green rattletrap of yours?" sneered Joe the Monster. "I'll give you that it's certainly a rum old bus—the way it took to the air last evening when we had you cornered. I suppose your inventor Pa has found some way to make a car fly. That right?" Joe the Monster's small piglike eyes became smaller and craftier than ever. "I suppose you've got something there. That invention might be worth a lot of money in the right hands. Now, if you'd like to tell your old pal Joe how it's done, maybe I can take out some patents and give your dad a piece of the money I'd get for sellin' 'em. What about