“I’M GOING TO ask you one more time, Khatchadorian.”

The bald man sitting across the desk from me stroked the fluffy white cat on his lap. It was a well-known fact that all evil villains love fluffy white cats. Don’t ask me why, they just do. And Principal Winton aka Dr. McNasty aka The Velociraptor aka Ivor Bigbuttski, top-secret criminal mastermind and head of M.U.M. (the Mungonian Ultra-nasty Minions) was no exception.

“Admit your part in this ant outrage, and Mr. Huggleberry and I will show mercy. Your end will be swift and painless. Resist or deny, and things will be rather unpleasant, I can assure you.”

I was in Dr. McNasty’s secret underground lair—fiendishly disguised as an ordinary school principal’s office and (even more fiendishly) not underground. It was a masterstroke. No wonder MI9 had not been able to track him down. They had concentrated their efforts on finding McNasty’s lair in all the usual places—volcanoes, Swiss clinics, abandoned power stations, and so on.

“I’ll never talk, McNasty,” I snarled, struggling against the ropes that held me in place, directly over a pit of bubbling lava. “You’ve got nothing to connect me to the ants! Nothing!”

Dr. McNasty gave Mr. Huggleberry a tickle under his chin and the cat purred. “That’s where you’re quite mistaken, Mr. Khatchadorian.” McNasty nodded to his henchperson, Mrs. Fitzpatrick aka Mustache—famous throughout the henchperson world for her deadly mustache-whipping skills. “Send in the informant!”

Mustache opened the door, and my archnemesis, Coldly Tiptoe-Burp, walked in.

“You!” I gasped.

Tiptoe-Burp bowed in front of McNasty.

“Show Mr. Khatchadorian what you showed me earlier, Mr. Tiptoe-Burp,” McNasty said.

“Of course, Your Nastiness.” Tiptoe-Burp bowed so low his nose scraped the carpet. He pulled a remote from his pocket and pointed it at the large TV on the wall. Tiptoe-Burp clicked and a video clip filled the screen. It was grainy and wobbly but still clear enough to show Kasey and myself collecting the bull ants.

“I realized the prisoner was up to no good,” Tiptoe-Burp said. “So I followed him.”

“That doesn’t prove anything,” I argued, fighting against my restraints. “We could have been collecting them for a … a … science project! That doesn’t prove we put the ants in Principal Winton’s budgie smugglers.”

Tiptoe-Burp moved on to another clip. Filmed through one of the dressing-room locker doors, it showed me and Kasey putting the ants in Principal Winton’s swimmers.

My head slumped.

“That will be all, Mr. Tiptoe-Burp,” Dr. McNasty said.

I watched the stoolpigeon leave.

“Now,” McNasty said, “all that remains is for me to decide your punishment.”

“I love this bit!” Mustache yelled.

Everything went black.