Meanwhile, Tommy could hear the ragged breathing of the young man inside the schoolroom. He figured it would be safe now to tiptoe in. When Tommy appeared, the poor man tied to the chair nearly toppled it over in fright.

‘It’s OK!’ Tommy whispered. ‘I’m going to set you free.’

He fumbled around in the dark. If only Martin was there, with his phone to provide some light! At last he loosened the ropes and freed the shivering teenager from the chair. They stumbled out of the schoolroom and sat on the steps, where the moonlight cast its glow upon them.

At first the young man was too upset to speak; he sat rubbing his wrists and panting.

‘I’m Tommy Bell,’ said Tommy. ‘Who are you?’

The young man breathed deeply to steady himself. ‘Ludwig,’ he replied after a while. ‘Ludwig Bruun. I’m the manager of the bank.’

This was surprising. In Tommy’s experience, bank managers were old and bald and wore thick glasses and badly cut suits.

‘Excuse me, but aren’t you kind of young to be a bank manager?’

‘I’m seventeen,’ Ludwig replied proudly, ‘… and a half.’

Tommy thought about it. ‘Like I said,’ he began, and Ludwig snorted. Apparently, in colonial times, it was OK to be a bank manager when you were only seventeen and a half. Cool! Tommy wondered what he would be doing by seventeen and a half if he was living in colonial times. Would he be a bank manager? He didn’t think so. A teacher? No way. I’d be a farmer, he thought. I’d own a hundred horses.

‘So, what were you doing at the bank so late at night?’ Tommy asked. Even bank managers went home to bed at night – or so Tommy believed.

‘I sleep at the bank,’ Ludwig replied, with a slight roll of the eyes, as if Tommy was an idiot – as if everyone knew that bank managers slept over at the bank at night. ‘I was out at my friend’s place for dinner – James Simpson, the schoolteacher,’ Ludwig went on, ‘and I was coming home for the night. What is this, anyway: an interrogation? I’m the victim here, remember?’

‘Just curious,’ said Tommy. What strange times these were, when teenagers became bank managers and slept over at work and got robbed at gunpoint by masked men in the deep of the night!

‘Who was that man?’ Tommy wondered.

To Tommy’s surprise, Ludwig answered: ‘I know who he was.’ He folded his arms with a frown. ‘He used to be a friend of mine.’

‘Some friend!’ Tommy marvelled.

‘He thought I wouldn’t know who he was with that stupid neckerchief over his face. But I’d know that Irish accent anywhere. And that limp. That was George all right. That was Andrew George Scott.’

Irish accent! Of course; that’s the accent that Tommy had heard. Tommy remembered that the gunman had forced Ludwig to write a note, and then taken the pen and written something himself.

‘What was that note-writing business all about?’ Tommy asked. Ludwig snorted again.

‘He reckons he was doing me a favour. He said that the police would think that I stole the money from the bank. So he made me write that note, telling the police that he did it himself and that I wasn’t to blame. Then he signed the note – but he didn’t sign his real name, of course.’

‘What name did he sign, then?’ Tommy asked.

‘He signed it: Captain Moonlite,’ Ludwig replied. ‘But get this: he spelled it wrongly. He spelled it M-O-O-N-L-I-T-E. George is a clever man. He knows how to spell. Why would he have spelled it that way?’

‘Maybe he was just stressed,’ Tommy suggested. He knew that he often made mistakes in spelling tests. It was the stress, he’d tell himself. In any case, it was only a spelling error. Big deal!

‘No,’ Ludwig said, and shook his head. ‘No, I think he wanted me to think that my attacker was someone uneducated – someone who couldn’t spell. He didn’t want me to know it was him. That’s what I think.’

‘But why would your friend do that to you?’ Tommy asked. He couldn’t imagine ever pointing a gun at Francis or Martin, no matter how annoying they were at times.

‘We fell out,’ Ludwig replied angrily. ‘He’s a bad man. A lying, cheating, greedy so-and-so. And he calls himself a preacher!’

‘No!’ Tommy was shocked. The world seemed to have turned upside down. What a strange world it was, where seventeen-and-a-half-year-olds were bank managers and preachers became armed robbers!

‘Oh yes,’ Ludwig nodded. ‘He’s a lay preacher for the Church of England. But they haven’t paid him yet and he’s short of money. So I guess he thought he’d just help himself to the bank’s gold.’

‘Will you get into trouble from your boss?’ Tommy asked.

‘Surely not!’ Ludwig said, but he looked worried. ‘I’d better go and talk to the police.’

‘Do you want me to come?’

‘No, I’ll be OK, thanks,’ Ludwig replied. ‘You’ve done enough for me tonight. No need to get caught up any more in this.’ Then he looked at Tommy curiously. ‘Anyway, shouldn’t you be at home? What’s a young boy doing out at this time of night?’

‘I’ll be off, then,’ Tommy cut in quickly. He didn’t want to explain how he happened to be there. No one would ever believe him! Ludwig Bruun shook Tommy’s hand and thanked him, and trotted back down the road to the police station. Soon the teenager had disappeared into the darkness. Tommy was eager to get back to Martin and tell him all about the evening’s adventures, but something about this whole business made him uneasy. He was worried for Ludwig, who was seventeen and a half, and a bank manager, but who seemed as frail as a child. Tommy decided to stick around until morning.