“Dennis!” shouted Samantha and Nipper at the same time.

The pug sailed through the open doorway and slammed into the angry woman, knocking her backward. She hit the floor, and her helmet went flying. Her hair was a wild jungle of bright colors.

“It’s the Rainbow Thief!” shouted the detective.

The angry woman with rainbow hair scrambled to her feet and glared at Samantha with fury.

She raised her boomerang above her head.

The French detective pulled the badge from his chest and flung it at the boomerang, knocking it out of the woman’s hand.

“Whoa,” said Nipper.

Immediately the man unlocked the handcuffs on Samantha and Nipper.

Snap-snap!

He locked both of the woman’s hands behind her back.

“I’m in really big trouble, aren’t I?” she asked the detective.

“That…is a very good question!” he said cheerfully.

“And that’s not an answer,” she muttered.

The man looked at Nipper, who shrank away from him.

“It’s okay, young American boy,” said the man. “You are free to go.”

He looked at Samantha.

“You may go, too,” he said. “That woman is an international jewelry thief. I will hand her to the Australian authorities. Then I will return to Paris—as a triumphant crime stopper!”

Samantha wasn’t one hundred percent sure what all this was about. But it didn’t matter. She had found her brother, and with some help from Dennis, she had saved him. It was time to go home.

She nodded at the tall Frenchman.

“Follow me,” she told Nipper. “I bet there’s a way out of here without going back through the…Dennis!”

By her feet, the hero pug was busy sniffing at a patch of chocolate. He was trying to lick it, but his cone kept his tongue from reaching the floor.

“No, boy,” she said, grabbing him by the collar behind the back of his neck and pulling him away from the goo. She picked him up and cradled him. He sniffed at her a few times; then he tried to lick the chocolate-covered rim of his cone. He couldn’t reach.

As Samantha watched the pug trying to lick the chocolate, she looked up. All around, the men and women in the jumpsuits stood watching her. Their clothes and faces were splattered with chocolate, but they were all staring right at her. They seemed to be waiting for her to give them directions or something.

She shook her head at them; then she looked at the French detective again. He hummed to himself cheerfully as he went back and forth between adjusting his badge and keeping an eye on his new captured criminal. The song reminded Samantha of music she had heard playing by the entrance to the Eiffel Tower.

Standing beside him, the woman was busy trying to clean smudges of chocolate from her weird rainbow hair. Each time she wiped a lock against her jumpsuit, she just made it worse. Her hair had become a snarl of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet…and brown.

“Let’s get out of here, Nipper,” she said. “This place has chocolate and candy…and way too many nuts.”

Together, they walked through the secret doorway and started to search for another way out. They’d all had enough stroomdrogers for one day.