Being careful to keep their heads down (and their mouths closed, the foulness so thick one could drown in it) Crumpet-Hands Man and Detective Pilchard edged stealthily through the winding stank of the sewers. As though luring them, a stinky siren unseen, our heroes could hear splashing, hushed voices up ahead, and the nefarious tinkering of handiwork.

  “What be that strange tinkering?” Detective Pilchard wondered, leaning around the bend, cupping an eye towards those disturbances echoing from the far end of the pipeline. “What be it, say you?”

  “Chewing. Perhaps gnawing, I'd say” Crumpet-Hands Man sayed through his snorkel of sponge, all the while ignoring his partner's odd way of speaking. (It was probably the stank effecting his brain, our hero reckoned; that, and the dear detective was famously mental.) “Yes. Gnawing. Like a great big cow contesting a mass of rubbery cud.”

  “That's exactly what I thought,” the detective agreed, for minds, regardless of their lack of greatness (never mind substance) do indeed think alike.

  Keeping to the shadows, danger afoot (and asticky) our heroes edged closer still. The stifling stink-smog made identifying who or what was making said gnawing noise extremely difficult.

  As best our crouching duo could decipher, at the end of the pipeline there was a huddle of unseemly sewage workers: four in total, one significantly larger than the rest; and all of them, it appeared, up to no good.

  Similarly up to no good (having snuck to a unblocked section of sewer, it was right up to their waists) our heroes watched and waded with confoundment as the largest worker of the four chewed then spat great globules of sticky pink stuff into the awaiting hands of the other three; in a human conveyor belt of crime, these three workers began slapping said sticky stuff around the outer walls of the pipe as though applying slimy cholesterol around a concrete artery.

  “They're blocking up the pipes,” Detective Pilchard leaned close and whispered into his partner's ear, his prickly moustache causing the latter to flinch. “This, or they, must be the cause of the blockages! And whoever they are, by the looks of them,” the detective said, pointing to the pipe's pink constriction, “they've all-but completed the job.”

  “Not if I have anything to say about it,” Crumpet-Hands Man roared heroically from the filth, readying his palms for an unleashing of bready-bullets; yet, much to our hero's surprise, the shadowy figures at the end of the pipeline had seemingly pre-empted his intervention; before he could even cock his crumpet-wrists they'd turned and made good their escape. But how? Maybe these seedy blockaders were alerted by a miniscule rippling in the surface of the scummy waters? Perhaps they were possessed that sixth sense for approaching superheroes which all villains, in our kinda-super hero's experience, seemed to have?

  Or, more likely, the figures' ears were pricked when our clamorous catastrophe of a hero slipped on a doo-doo and splashed into the stagnant waters with all the quiet dignity of a one-man band taking a face-dive into steaming nappy. Gee, I guess we'll never know...

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  Regardless, our hero's slapstick discharging of bready-bullets were wide of their intended marks. By the time his spinning projectiles had ricocheted down the pipeline the four figures had long skedaddled – but not before the largest of the group had fired a shot in retaliation.

  Catching our heroes off guard, a cannonball-sized cannonball of gunk came whistling down the pipeline like a big pink bogey. (Or, to be more exact, like a cannonball.) This big 'ol gunk-ball clipped the rim of the ducking detective's fedora – spinning it around most amusingly – before crashing into the back wall and exploding with an almighty splat!

  “Crikey! That was close,” the detective gasped from his knees, his hat still spinning. “One inch lower and I would've been a goner.” Crumpet-Hands Man uttered a witty retort; unfortunately said witty retort was rendered unfathomable, seeing as our hero was still face down in the stagnant waters, his words coming out in a foam of stinky garble.

  “What's that?” asked the man with the still-spinning hat. Heaving his sodden head from the water, and untangling the equally as sodden cape from around it, our hero replied, “I said we may yet still be a goners, my dear detective, for I fear I do not know the limits of my crumpety strength.”

  At Crumpet-Hands Man's insistence, Detective Pilchard cast his ears towards the end of the pipeline; upon reeling them back in, he was delighted to have caught a four-pound salmon; yet a second casting of said ear-eyes returned a less palatable sight:

  The blockade of pink jelly had been breached with a several crumpet-sized holes – and umpteen gallons of pressurised filth were readying to spew-forth in the direction of our heroes...

  “And I would assume,” the mayor snorted from behind her desk later that day, her nose scrunched in disgust, contempt, scorn, but mainly disgust, “that neither of you were quick enough to repair said breach?” Since both our heroes were coated from head to toe and back again in a layer of the most wretched bum slime, neither of them thought it necessary to reply. (Neither did the mayor; since she had initiated the questioning, lest we forget, such a backward interaction would have made little sense, even in this nonsensical mess of a book. She nonetheless next spoke.)

  “And yet,” she said from a safe distance, screaming handkerchief to her mouth, “by more luck than judgement it seems that you have stumbled upon a conspiracy more troubling than I dared imagine. You say these figures blocking up the pipes were sewage workers of the very highest blah? Or at least dressed like them?”

  “Yes, madam mayor,” the filthy detective and crumpet confirmed. “Sewage workers.”

  The mayor frowned. “Then it is obvious... Our city's sewage department has been infiltrated by some unknown underground faction who are intent on constipating the city.”

  At the mere mention of constipation, our heroes' mucky cheeks cracked with a giggle. They shattered when the mayor slapped them.

  “As such,” she resumed, wiping her fingers on the now weeping handkerchief, “there is only one course of action to be taken.”

  “I'd like to take a shower first,” Detective Pilchard and his hat spun. “I promise I'll put it back.”

  “I'd prefer it if you put/hurled yourself in the city's reservoir,” the mayor suggested kindly. “From what I hear, it is overflowing due to the blockages.”

  The detective didn't like the sound of that; it sounded chilly on the willy. Perhaps the mayor had an alternate plan?

  “A midnight raid?” Crumpet-Hands Man jigged about the office excitedly. “Or a crumpet-airstrike? Oh do, do say a crumpet-airstrike!”

  “That will have to wait,” the mayor said grandly, clasping her hands behind her back. “Instead...” she addressed our heroes. “Detective, Crumpet, I am sending you both... Undercover!”