The Mystery of the Rogues' Reunion - Marc Brandel [22]
He pointed to the large movie screen that had been set up on one side of the stage, facing the audience.
“And the contestants will watch them only once – on this one.”
Jupe glanced at the screen facing him and Footsie and the others. He felt pretty good. If he had been able to choose any category in the world, he couldn’t have thought of one better suited to his abilities than this one. With his exceptional memory and powers of observation, he didn’t see how he could miss a single question. The thing to do, he decided, was to volunteer as often and as quickly as possible whenever anyone else came out with a wrong answer.
He looked at the contestants sitting beside him: Footsie and then Peggy, Bonehead, and Bloodhound. Only Bonehead was smiling.
“So on with the show,” Milton Glass was saying. “Let’s all watch the Wee Rogues and see what they’re up to.”
He took his seat at the desk under the electronic scoreboard. Jupe concentrated on the screen as the film began.
There was no story to it. It had been put together out of bits and pieces taken from several of the old comedies. The action kept cutting from one scene to another.
Bonehead and Bloodhound poured gunpowder into the flour that Pretty Peggy was using to make a cake. The black kid, Flapjack, with his spiky hair like a porcupine’s quills, let the air out of the tyres of Footsie’s bicycle. A middle-aged stranger, played by a
character actor who had appeared now and then in the series, gave the Wee Rogues a dollar to watch his car, which was full of stolen radios. Baby Fatso was kidnapped and tied to a tree by the other kids, who were planning to ransom him for a box of candy bars. Bonehead, the drooping lobes of his ears wiggling with mischief, persuaded Flapjack to dig for buried treasure in a patch of poison ivy while the others watched and giggled. Pretty Peggy rescued Baby Fatso, untying the knots that bound him to the tree… .
After exactly two minutes the film came to an end. The lights on the stage and in the audience were turned up again.
The audience, who had been laughing appreciatively while the film was being shown, clapped and then settled down. The cameras moved in on Milton Glass as he swivelled around in his chair to face the competitors.
Peggy was given the first question.
“Who let the air out of the tyres of a motorbike?” Glass asked her with his most disarming smile.
“No one.” Peggy didn’t smile back. Jupe was struck by her frowning determination. It obviously meant a lot to her to win the quiz. He remembered what she had said about needing money to put herself through college.
“It wasn’t a motorbike,” she went on. “It was an ordinary bicycle, and it was Flapjack who deflated the tyres.”
“Right.” The audience applauded. Milton Glass rang up five points for Peggy on the electronic scoreboard.
Bonehead was next. He was asked what colour the bicycle was, and he got it right without a second’s hesitation.
“Green.”
Again the audience clapped.
It was Bloodhound’s turn.
“What side of the handlebars was the three-speed gear on?”
Bloodhound hesitated. “On the right?” he suggested doubtfully.
A dismayed murmur came from the onlookers.
Jupe’s hand shot up an instant before Bonehead’s. He waited while Milton Glass told Bloodhound how sorry he was that he had come up with the wrong answer.
“We’ve got two volunteers to answer that question,” Glass went on, beaming at both of them. Then he pointed to Jupe.
“It didn’t have a three-speed