Enchanted Castle and Five Children and It (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (39 page)

 

The men were taking silver out of two great chests

“Hurry up!” Gerald heard. “You needn’t take all night over it.”

The silver rattled slightly. “You’re a rattling of them trays like bloomin’ castanets,” said the gruffest voice. Gerald turned and went away, very carefully and very quickly. And it is a most curious thing that, though he couldn’t find the way to the servants’ wing when he had nothing else to think of, yet now, with his mind full, so to speak, of silver forks and silver cups, and the question of who might be coming after him down those twisting passages, he went straight as an arrow to the door that led from the hall to the place he wanted to get to.

As he went the happenings took words in his mind.

“The fortunate detective,” he told himself, “having succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, himself left the spot in search of assistance.”

But what assistance? There were, no doubt, men in the house, also the aunt; but he could not warn them. He was too hopelessly invisible to carry any weight with strangers. The assistance of Mabel would not be of much value. The police? Before they could be got—and the getting of them presented difficulties—the burglars would have cleared away with their sacks of silver.

Gerald stopped and thought hard; he held his head with both hands to do it. You know the way—the same as you sometimes do for simple equations or the dates of the battles of the Civil War.

Then with pencil, note-book, a window-ledge, and all the cleverness he could find at the moment, he wrote:

He hesitated a moment, and ended—

 

This letter, tied tightly round a stone by means of a shoelace, thundered through the window of the room where Mabel and her aunt, in the ardour of reunion, were enjoying a supper of unusual charm—stewed plums, cream, spongecakes, custard in cups, and cold bread-and-butter pudding.

Gerald, in hungry invisibility, looked wistfully at the supper before he threw the stone. He waited till the shrieks had died away, saw the stone picked up, the warning letter read.

“Nonsense!” said the aunt, growing calmer. “How wicked! Of course it’s a hoax.”

“Oh! do send for the police, like he says,” wailed Mabel.

“Like who says?” snapped the aunt.

“Whoever it is,” Mabel moaned.

“Send for the police at once,” said Gerald, outside, in the manliest voice he could find. “You’ll only blame yourself if you don’t. I can’t do any more for you.”

“I—I’ll set the dogs on you!” cried the aunt.

“Oh, auntie,
don’t!”
Mabel was dancing with agitation. “It’s true—I know it’s true. Do—do wake Bates!”

“I don’t believe a word of it,” said the aunt. No more did Bates when, owing to Mabel’s persistent worryings, he was awakened. But when he had seen the paper, and had to choose whether he’d go to the strong-room and see that there really wasn’t anything to believe or go for the police on his bicycle, he chose the latter course.

When the police arrived the strong-room door stood ajar, and the silver, or as much of it as the three men could carry, was gone.

Gerald’s note-book and pencil came into play again later on that night. It was five in the morning before he crept into bed, tired out and cold as a stone.

 

“Master Gerald! ”—it was Eliza’s voice in his ears—“it’s seven o’clock and another fine day, and there’s been another burglary—My cats alive!” she screamed, as she drew up the blind and turned towards the bed; “look at his bed, all crocked
^dk
with black, and him not there! Oh, Jimminy!” It was a scream this time. Kathleen came running from her room; Jimmy sat up in his bed and rubbed his eyes.

“Whatever is it?” Kathleen cried.

“I dunno when I ’ad such a turn.” Eliza sat down heavily on a box as she spoke. “First thing his bed all empty and black as the chimley
^dl
back, and him not in it, and then when I looks again he is in it all the time. I must be going silly. I thought as much when I heard them haunting angel voices yesterday morning. But I’ll tell Mam’selle of you, my lad, with your tricks, you may rely on that. Blacking yourself all over and crocking up your clean sheets and pillow-cases. It’s going back of beyond, this is.”

“Look here,” said Gerald slowly; “I’m going to tell you something.”

Eliza simply snorted, and that was rude of her; but then, she had had a shock and had not got over it.

“Can you keep a secret?” asked Gerald, very earnest through the grey of his partly rubbed-off blacklead.

“Yes,” said Eliza.

“Then keep it and I’ll give you two bob.”

“But what was you going to tell me?”

“That. About the two bob and the secret. And you keep your mouth shut.”

“I didn’t ought to take it,” said Eliza, holding out her hand eagerly. “Now you get up, and mind you wash all the corners, Master Gerald.”

“Oh, I’m so glad you’re safe,” said Kathleen, when Eliza had gone.

“You didn’t seem to care much last night,” said Gerald coldly.

“I can’t think how I let you go. I didn’t care last night. But when I woke this morning and remembered!”

“There, that’ll do—it’ll come off on you,” said Gerald through the reckless hugging of his sister.

“How did you get visible?” Jimmy asked.

“It just happened when she called me—the ring came off.”

“Tell us all about everything,” said Kathleen.

“Not yet,” said Gerald mysteriously.

 

“Where’s the ring?” Jimmy asked after breakfast. “I want to have a try now

“I—I forgot it,” said Gerald; “I expect it’s in the bed somewhere.”

But it wasn’t. Eliza had made the bed.

“I’ll swear there ain’t no ring there,” she said. “I should ‘a’ seen it if there had ’a’ been.”

S
earch and research proving vain,” said Gerald, when every corner of the bedroom had been turned out and the ring had not been found, ”the noble detective hero of our tale remarked that he would have other fish to fry in half a jiff, and if the rest of you want to hear about last night ...”

“Let’s keep it till we get to Mabel,” said Kathleen heroically.

“The assignation was ten-thirty, wasn’t it? Why shouldn’t Gerald gas as we go along? I don’t suppose anything very much happened, anyhow.” This, of course, was Jimmy.

“That shows,” remarked Gerald sweetly, “how much you know. The melancholy Mabel will await the tryst without success, as far as this one is concerned. ‘Fish, fish, other fish—other fish I fry!’ ” he warbled to the tune of “Cherry Ripe,”
⁵
till Kathleen could have pinched him.

Jimmy turned coldly away, remarking, “When you’ve quite done.”

But Gerald went on singing—

“How can you,” asked Kathleen, “be so aggravating?”

“I don’t know,” said Gerald, returning to prose. “Want of sleep or intoxication—of success, I mean. Come where no one can hear us.

he whispered, opened the door suddenly, and there, sure enough, was Eliza, stooping without. She flicked feebly at the wainscot with a duster, but concealment was vain.

“You know what listeners never hear,” said Jimmy severely.

“I didn’t, then—so there!” said Eliza, whose listening ears were crimson. So they passed out, and up the High Street, to sit on the churchyard wall and dangle their legs. And all the way Gerald’s lips were shut into a thin, obstinate line.

“Now,” said Kathleen. “Oh, Jerry, don’t be a goat! I’m simply dying to hear what happened.”

“That’s better,” said Gerald, and he told his story. As he told it some of the white mystery and magic of the moonlit gardens got into his voice and his words, so that when he told of the statues that came alive, and the great beast that was alive through all its stone, Kathleen thrilled responsive, clutching his arm, and even Jimmy ceased to kick the wall with his boot heels, and listened open-mouthed.

Then came the thrilling tale of the burglars, and the warning letter flung into the peaceful company of Mabel, her aunt, and the bread-and-butter pudding. Gerald told the story with the greatest enjoyment and such fullness of detail that the church clock chimed half-past eleven as he said, “Having done all that human agency could do, and further help being despaired of, our gallant young detective—Hullo, there’s Mabel!”

There was. The tail-board of a cart shed her almost at their feet.

“I couldn’t wait any longer,” she explained, “when you didn’t come. And I got a lift. Has anything more happened? The burglars had gone when Bates got to the strong-room.”

“You don’t mean to say all that wheeze is real?” Jimmy asked.

“Of course it’s real,” said Kathleen. “Go on, Jerry. He’s just got to where he threw the stone into your bread-and-butter pudding, Mabel. Go on.”

Mabel climbed on to the wall. “You’ve got visible again quicker than I did,” she said.

Gerald nodded and resumed:

“Our story must be told in as few words as possible, owing to the fish-frying taking place at twelve, and it’s past the half-hour now. Having left his missive to do its warning work, Gerald de Sherlock Holmes sped back, wrapped in invisibility, to the spot where by the light of their dark-lanterns the burglars were still—still burgling with the utmost punctuality and despatch. I didn’t see any sense in running into danger, so I just waited outside the passage where the steps are—you know?”

Mabel nodded.

“Presently they came out, very cautiously, of course, and looked about them. They didn’t see me—so deeming themselves unobserved they passed in silent Indian file along the passage—one of the sacks of silver grazed my front part—and out into the night.”

“But which way?”

“Through the little looking-glass room where you looked at yourself when you were invisible. The hero followed swiftly on his invisible tennis-shoes. The three miscreants instantly sought the shelter of the groves and passed stealthily among the rhododendrons and across the park, and”—his voice dropped and he looked straight before him at the pinky convolvulus netting a heap of stones beyond the white dust of the road—“the stone things that come alive, they kept looking out from between bushes and under trees—and I saw them all right, but they didn’t see me. They saw the burglars though, right enough; but the burglars couldn’t see them. Rum, wasn’t it?”

“The stone things?” Mabel had to have them explained to her.

“I never saw them come alive,” she said, “and I’ve been in the gardens in the evening as often as often.”

“I saw them,” said Gerald stiffly.

“I know, I know,” Mabel hastened to put herself right with him; “what I mean to say is I shouldn’t wonder if they’re only visible when you’re invisible—the liveness of them, I mean, not the stoniness.”

Gerald understood, and I’m sure I hope you do.

“I shouldn’t wonder if you’re right,” he said. “The castle garden’s enchanted right enough; but what I should like to know is how and why. I say, come on, I’ve got to catch Johnson before twelve. We’ll walk as far as the market and then we’ll have to run for it.”

“But go on with the adventure,” said Mabel. “You can talk as we go. Oh, do—it is so awfully thrilling!”

This pleased Gerald, of course.

“Well, I just followed, you know, like in a dream, and they got out the cavy way—you know, where we got in—and I jolly well thought I’d lost them; I had to wait till they’d moved off down the road so that they shouldn’t hear me rattling the stones, and I had to tear to catch them up. I took my shoes off—I expect my stockings are done for. And I followed and followed and followed and they went through the place where the poor people live, and right down to the river. And—I say, we must run for it.”

So the story stopped and the running began.