"I MUST GO HOME—NOW—THIS MINUTE.""I MUST GO HOME—NOW—THIS MINUTE."
"So you see I must go," Mabel ended.
And Kathleen agreed that she must.
But Jimmy said he didn't see what good it would do. "Because the key's inside the door, anyhow."
"Shewillbe cross," said Mabel sadly. "She'll have to get the gardeners to get a ladder and——"
"Hooray!" said Gerald. "Here's me! Nobler and more secret than gardeners or ladders was the invisible Jerry. I'll climb in at the window—it's all ivy, I know I could—and shut the window and the shutters all sereno, put the key back on the nail, and slip out unperceived the back way, threading my way through the maze of unconscious retainers. There'll be plenty of time. I don't suppose burglars begin their fell work until the night is far advanced."
"Won't you be afraid?" Mabel asked. "Will it be safe—suppose you were caught?"
"As houses. I can't be," Gerald answered, and wondered that the question came from Mabel and not from Kathleen, who was usually inclined to fuss a little annoyingly about the danger and folly of adventures.
But all Kathleen said was, "Well, goodbye: we'll come and see you to-morrow, Mabel. The floral temple at half-past ten. I hope you won't get into an awful row about the motor-car lady."
"Let's detect our supper now," said Jimmy.
"All right," said Gerald a little bitterly. It is hard to enter on an adventure like thisand to find the sympathetic interest of years suddenly cut off at the meter, as it were. Gerald felt that he ought, at a time like this, to have been the centre of interest. And he wasn't. They could actually talk about supper. Well, let them. He didn't care! He spoke with sharp sternness: "Leave the pantry window undone for me to get in by when I've done my detecting. Come on, Mabel." He caught her hand. "Bags I the buns, though," he added, by a happy afterthought, and snatching the bag, pressed it on Mabel, and the sound of four boots echoed on the pavement of the High Street as the outlines of the running Mabel grew small with distance.
Mademoiselle was in the drawing-room. She was sitting by the window in the waning light reading letters.
"Ah,vous voici!" she said unintelligibly. "You are again late; and my little Gerald, where is he?"
This was an awful moment. Jimmy's detective scheme had not included any answer to this inevitable question. The silence was unbroken till Jimmy spoke.
"Hesaidhe was going to bed because he had a headache." And this, of course, was true.
"This poor Gerald!" said Mademoiselle. "Is it that I should mount him some supper?"
"He never eats anything when he's got one of his headaches," Kathleen said. And this also was the truth.
Jimmy and Kathleen went to bed, wholly untroubled by anxiety about their brother, and Mademoiselle pulled out the bundle of letters and read them amid the ruins of the simple supper.
"It is ripping being out late like this," said Gerald through the soft summer dusk.
"Yes," said Mabel, a solitary-looking figure plodding along the high-road. "I do hope auntie won't beveryfurious."
"Have another bun," suggested Gerald kindly, and a sociable munching followed.
It was the aunt herself who opened to a very pale and trembling Mabel the door which is appointed for the entrances and exits of the domestic staff at Yalding Towers. She looked over Mabel's head first, as if she expected to see some one taller. Then a very small voice said:—
"Aunt!"
The aunt started back, then made a step towards Mabel.
"You naughty, naughty girl!" she cried angrily; "how could you give me such a fright? I've a good mind to keep you in bed for a week for this, miss. Oh, Mabel, thank Heaven you're safe!" And with that the aunt's arms went round Mabel and Mabel's round the aunt in such a hug as they had never met in before.
"But you didn't seem to care a bit this morning," said Mabel, when she had realisedthat her aunt really had been anxious, really was glad to have her safe home again.
"How do you know?"
"I was there listening. Don't be angry, auntie."
"I feel as if I never could be angry with you again, now I've got you safe," said the aunt surprisingly.
"But how was it?" Mabel asked.
"My dear," said the aunt impressively, "I've been in a sort of trance. I think I must be going to be ill. I've always been fond of you, but I didn't want to spoil you. But yesterday, about half-past three, I was talking about you to Mr. Lewson, at the fair, and quite suddenly I felt as if you didn't matter at all. And I felt the same when I got your letter and when those children came. And to-day in the middle of tea I suddenly woke up and realised that you were gone. It was awful. I think I must be going to be ill. Oh, Mabel, why did you do it?"
"It was—a joke," said Mabel feebly. And then the two went in and the door was shut.
"That's most uncommon odd," said Gerald, outside; "looks like more magic to me. I don't feel as if we'd got to the bottom of this yet, by any manner of means. There's more about this castle than meets the eye."
There certainly was. For this castle happened to be—but it would not be fair to Gerald to tell you more about it than he knew on that night when he went alone and invisible through theshadowy great grounds of it to look for the open window of the panelled room. He knew that night no more than I have told you; but as he went along the dewy lawns and through the groups of shrubs and trees, where pools lay like giant looking-glasses reflecting the quiet stars, and the white limbs of statues gleamed against a background of shadow, he began to feel—well, not excited, not surprised, not anxious, but—different.
The incident of the invisible Princess had surprised, the incident of the conjuring had excited, and the sudden decision to be a detective had brought its own anxieties; but all these happenings, though wonderful and unusual, had seemed to be, after all, inside the circle of possible things—wonderful as the chemical experiments are where two liquids poured together make fire, surprising as legerdemain, thrilling as a juggler's display, but nothing more. Only now a new feeling came to him as he walked through those gardens; by day those gardens were like dreams, at night they were like visions. He could not see his feet as he walked, but he saw the movement of the dewy grass-blades that his feet displaced. And he had that extraordinary feeling so difficult to describe, and yet so real and sounforgettable—the feeling that he was in another world, that had covered up and hidden the old world as a carpet covers a floor. The floor was there all right, underneath, but what he walked on was the carpet that covered it—and thatcarpet was drenched in magic, as the turf was drenched in dew.
The feeling was very wonderful; perhaps you will feel it some day. There are still some places in the world where it can be felt, but they grow fewer every year.
The enchantment of the garden held him.
"I'll not go in yet," he told himself; "it's too early. And perhaps I shall never be here at night again. I suppose itisthe night that makes everything look so different."
Something white moved under a weeping willow; white hands parted the long, rustling leaves. A white figure came out, a creature with horns and goat's legs and the head and arms of a boy. And Gerald was not afraid. That was the most wonderful thing of all, though he would never have owned it. The white thing stretched its limbs, rolled on the grass, righted itself, and frisked away across the lawn. Still something white gleamed under the willow; three steps nearer and Gerald saw that it was the pedestal of a statue—empty.
"They come alive," he said; and another white shape came out of the Temple of Flora and disappeared in the laurels. "The statues come alive."
THE MOVING STONE BEAST.THE MOVING STONE BEAST.
There was a crunching of the little stones in the gravel of the drive. Something enormously long and darkly grey came crawling towards him, slowly, heavily. The moon came out just in time to show its shape. It was one of those great lizards that you see at the Crystal Palace,made in stone, of the same awful size which they were millions of years ago when they were masters of the world, before Man was.
"It can't see me," said Gerald. "I am not afraid.It'scome to life, too."
As it writhed past him he reached out a hand and touched the side of its gigantic tail. It was of stone. It had not "come alive," as he had fancied, butwasalive in its stone. It turned, however, at the touch; but Gerald also had turned, and was running with all his speed towards the house. Because at that stony touch Fear had come into the garden and almost caught him. It was Fear that he ran from, and not the moving stone beast.
He stood panting under the fifth window; when he had climbed to the window-ledge by the twisted ivy that clung to the wall, he looked back over the grey slope—there was a splashing at the fish-pool that had mirrored the stars—the shape of the great stone beast was wallowing in the shallows among the lily-pads.
Once inside the room, Gerald turned for another look. The fish-pond lay still and dark, reflecting the moon. Through a gap in the drooping willow the moonlight fell on a statue that stood calm and motionless on its pedestal. Everything was in its place now in the garden. Nothing moved or stirred.
"How extraordinarily rum!" said Gerald. "I shouldn't have thought youcouldgo to sleep walking through a garden and dream—like that."
He shut the window, lit a match, and closed the shutters. Another match showed him the door. He turned the key, went out, locked the door again, hung the key on its usual nail, and crept to the end of the passage. Here he waited, safe in his invisibility, till the dazzle of the matches should have gone from his eyes, and he be once more able to find his way by the moonlight that fell in bright patches on the floor through the barred, unshuttered windows of the hall.
"Wonder where the kitchen is," said Gerald. He had quite forgotten that he was a detective. He was only anxious to get home and tell the others about that extraordinarily odd dream that he had had in the gardens. "I suppose it doesn't matterwhatdoors I open. I'm invisible all right still, I suppose? Yes; can't see my hand before my face." He held up a hand for the purpose. "Here goes!"
He opened many doors, wandered into long rooms with furniture dressed in brown holland covers that looked white in that strange light, rooms with chandeliers hanging in big bags from the high ceilings, rooms whose walls were alive with pictures, rooms whose walls were deadened with rows on rows of old books, state bedrooms in whose great plumed four-posters Queen Elizabeth had no doubt slept. (That Queen, by the way, must have been very little at home, for she seems to have slept in every old house in England.) But he could not find the kitchen. At last a door opened on stone steps that wentup—there was a narrow stone passage—steps that went down—a door with a light under it. It was, somehow, difficult to put out one's hand to that door and open it.
"Nonsense!" Gerald told himself; "don't be an ass! Are you invisible, or aren't you?"
Then he opened the door, and some one inside said something in a sudden rough growl.
Gerald stood back, flattened against the wall, as a man sprang to the doorway and flashed a lantern into the passage.
"All right," said the man, with almost a sob of relief. "It was only the door swung open, it's that heavy—that's all."
"Blow the door!" said another growling voice; "blessed if I didn't think it was a fair cop that time."
They closed the door again. Gerald did not mind. In fact, he rather preferred that it should be so. He didn't like the look of those men. There was an air of threat about them. In their presence even invisibility seemed too thin a disguise. And Gerald had seen as much as he wanted to see. He had seen that he had been right about the gang. By wonderful luck—beginner's luck, a card-player would have told him—he had discovered a burglary on the very first night of his detective career. The men were taking silver out of two great chests, wrapping it in rags, and packing it in baize sacks. The door of the room was of iron six inches thick. It was, in fact, the strong-room, and these men had picked the lock. The tools they had done itwith lay on the floor, on a neat cloth roll, such as wood-carvers keep their chisels in.
"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.
THE MEN WERE TAKING SILVER OUT OF TWO GREAT CHESTS.THE MEN WERE TAKING SILVER OUT OF TWO GREAT CHESTS.
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 simpleequations 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:—
"You know the room where the silver is. Burglars are burgling it, the thick door is picked. Send a man for police. I will follow the burglars if they get away ere police arrive on the spot."
"You know the room where the silver is. Burglars are burgling it, the thick door is picked. Send a man for police. I will follow the burglars if they get away ere police arrive on the spot."
He hesitated a moment, and ended—
"From a Friend—this is not a sell."
"From a Friend—this is not a sell."
This letter, tied tightly round a stone by means of a shoe-lace, 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, sponge-cakes, 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, hechosethe latter course.
When the police arrived the strong-room door stood ajar, and the silver, or as much of it as 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 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 satdown heavily on a box as she spoke. "First thing his bed all empty and black as the chimley back, and him not in it, and then when I looks again heisin 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 like a dirty nigger 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 carelast 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. "Iwant 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 aint no ring there," she said. "I should 'a' seen it if there had 'a' been."
"Searchand 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 muchyouknow. 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," till Kathleen could have pinched him.
Jimmy turned coldly away, remarking, "When you've quite done."
But Gerald went on singing—
"'Where the lips of Johnson smile,There's the land of Cherry Isle.Other fish, other fish,Fish I fry.Stately Johnson, come and buy!'"
"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.
"Oh, come to some island where no one can hear,And beware of the keyhole that's glued to an ear,"
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 thestatues 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 fulness 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 isreal?" 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. Havingleft 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—andIsaw 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.
"Inever saw them come alive," she said, "and I've been in the gardens in the evening as often as often."
"Isaw 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'reinvisible—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 ishowand 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.
They caught Johnson in his own back-yard washing at a bench against his own back-door.
"Look here, Johnson," Gerald said, "what'll you give me if I put you up to winning that fifty pounds reward?"
"Halves," said Johnson promptly, "and a clout 'longside your head if you was coming any of your nonsense over me."
"It'snotnonsense," said Gerald very impressively. "If you'll let us in I'll tell you all about it. And when you've caught the burglars and got the swag back you just give me a quid for luck. I won't ask for more."
"Come along in, then," said Johnson, "if the young ladies'll excuse the towel. But I bet youdowant something more off of me. Else why not claim the reward yourself?"
"Great is the wisdom of Johnson—he speaks winged words." The children were all in the cottage now, and the door was shut. "I want you never to let on who told you. Let them think it was your own unaided pluck and farsightedness."
"Sit you down," said Johnson, "and if you're kidding you'd best send the little gells home afore I begin on you."
"LOOK HERE, JOHNSON," GERALD SAID, "WHAT'LL YOU GIVE ME IF I PUT YOU UP TO WINNING THAT FIFTY POUNDS REWARD?""LOOK HERE, JOHNSON," GERALD SAID, "WHAT'LL YOU GIVE ME IF I PUT YOU UP TO WINNING THAT FIFTY POUNDS REWARD?"
"I am not kidding," replied Gerald loftily, "never less. And any one but a policeman would see why I don't want any one to know it was me. I found it out at dead of night, in a place where I wasn't supposed to be; and there'd be a beastly row if they found out at home aboutme being out nearly all night.Nowdo you see, my bright-eyed daisy?"
Johnson was now too interested, as Jimmy said afterwards, to mind what silly names he was called. He said he did see—and asked to see more.
"Well, don't you ask any questions, then. I'll tell you all it's good for you to know. Last night about eleven I was at Yalding Towers. No—it doesn't matter how I got there or what I got there for—and there was a window open and I got in, and there was a light. And it was in the strong-room, and there were three men, putting silver in a bag."
"Was it you give the warning, and they sent for the police?" Johnson was leaning eagerly forward, a hand on each knee.
"Yes, that was me. You can let them think it was you, if you like. You were off duty, weren't you?"
"I was," said Johnson, "in the arms of Murphy——"
"Well, the police didn't come quick enough. ButIwas there—a lonely detective. And I followed them."
"You did?"
"And I saw them hide the booty and I know the other stuff from Houghton Court's in the same place, and I heard them arrange about when to take it away."
"Come and show me where," said Johnson, jumping up so quickly that his Windsor arm-chair fell over backwards, with a crack, on the red-brick floor.
"Not so," said Gerald calmly; "if you go near the spot before the appointed time you'll find the silver, but you'll never catch the thieves."
"You're right there." The policeman picked up his chair and sat down in it again. "Well?"
"Well, there's to be a motor to meet them in the lane beyond the boat-house by Sadler's Rents at one o'clock to-night. They'll get the things out at half-past twelve and take them along in a boat. So now's your chance to fill your pockets with chink and cover yourself with honour and glory."
"So help me!"—Johnson was pensive and doubtful still—"so help me! youcouldn'thave made all this up out of your head."
"Oh yes, I could. But I didn't. Now look here. It's the chance of your lifetime, Johnson! A quid for me, and a still tongue for you, and the job's done. Do you agree?"
"Oh,Iagree right enough," said Johnson. "Iagree. But if you're coming any of your larks——"
"Can't youseehe isn't?" Kathleen put in impatiently. "He's not a liar—we none of us are."
"If you're not on, say so," said Gerald, "and I'll find another policeman with more sense."
"I could split about you being out all night," said Johnson.
"But you wouldn't be so ungentlemanly," said Mabel brightly. "Don't you be so unbelieving,when we're trying to do you a good turn."
"If I were you," Gerald advised, "I'd go to the place where the silver is, with two other men. You could make a nice little ambush in the wood-yard—it's close there. And I'd have two or three more men up trees in the lane to wait for the motor-car."
"You ought to have been in the force, you ought," said Johnson admiringly; "but s'pose itwasa hoax!"
"Well, then you'd have made an ass of yourself—I don't suppose it ud be the first time," said Jimmy.
"Are you on?" said Gerald in haste. "Hold your jaw, Jimmy, you idiot!"
"Yes," said Johnson.
"Then when you're on duty you go down to the wood-yard, and the place where you see me blow my nose istheplace. The sacks are tied with string to the posts under the water. You just stalk by in your dignified beauty and make a note of the spot. That's where glory waits you, and when Fame elates you and you're a sergeant, please remember me."
Johnson said he was blessed. He said it more than once, and then remarked that he was on, and added that he must be off that instant minute.
Johnson's cottage lies just out of the town beyond the blacksmith's forge and the children had come to it through the wood.They went back the same way, and then down through the town, and through its narrow, unsavoury streets to the towing-path by the timber yard. Here they ran along the trunks of the big trees, peeped into the saw-pit, and—the men were away at dinner and this was a favourite play place of every boy within miles—made themselves a see-saw with a fresh cut, sweet-smelling pine plank and an elm-root.
"What a ripping place!" said Mabel, breathless on the see-saw's end. "I believe I like this better than pretending games or even magic."
"So do I," said Jimmy. "Jerry, don't keep sniffing so—you'll have no nose left."
"I can't help it," Gerald answered: "I daren't use my hankey for fear Johnson's on the look-out somewhere unseen. I wish I'd thought of some other signal." Sniff! "No, nor I shouldn't want to now if I hadn't got not to. That's what's so rum. The moment I got down here and remembered what I'd said about the signal I began to have a cold—and—— Thank goodness! here he is."
The children, with a fine air of unconcern, abandoned the see-saw.
"Follow my leader!" Gerald cried, and ran along a barked oak trunk, the others following. In and out and round about ran the file of children, over heaps of logs, under the jutting ends of piled planks, and just as the policeman's heavy boots trod the towing-path Gerald halted at the end of a little landing-stage of rottenboards, with a rickety handrail, cried "Pax!" and blew his nose with loud fervour.
"Morning," he said immediately.
"Morning," said Johnson. "Got a cold, aint you?"
"Ah! I shouldn't have a cold if I'd got boots like yours," returned Gerald admiringly. "Look at them. Any one ud know your fairy footstep a mile off. How do you ever get near enough to any one to arrest them?" He skipped off the landing-stage, whispered as he passed Johnson, "Courage, promptitude, and despatch. That's the place," and was off again, the active leader of an active procession.
"We've brought a friend home to dinner," said Kathleen, when Eliza opened the door. "Where's Mademoiselle?"
"Gone to see Yalding Towers. To-day's show day, you know. An' just you hurry over your dinners. It's my afternoon out, and my gentleman friend don't like it if he's kept waiting."
"All right, we'll eat like lightning," Gerald promised. "Set another place, there's an angel."
They kept their word. The dinner—it was minced veal and potatoes and rice-pudding, perhaps the dullest food in the world—was over in a quarter of an hour.
"And now," said Mabel, when Eliza and a jug of hot water had disappeared up the stairs together, "where's the ring? I ought to put it back."
GERALD HALTED AT THE END OF A LITTLE LANDING-STAGE OF ROTTEN BOARDS.GERALD HALTED AT THE END OF A LITTLE LANDING-STAGE OF ROTTEN BOARDS.
"I haven't had a turn yet," said Jimmy."When we find it Cathy and I ought to have turns same as you and Gerald did."
"When you find it——?" Mabel's pale face turned paler between her dark locks.
"I'm very sorry—we're all very sorry," began Kathleen, and then the story of the losing had to be told.
"You couldn't have looked properly," Mabel protested. "It can't have vanished."
"You don't know what it can do—no more do we. It's no use getting your quills up, fair lady. Perhaps vanishing itself is just what it does do. You see, it came off my hand in the bed. We looked everywhere."
"Would you mind ifIlooked?" Mabel's eyes implored her little hostess. "You see, if it's lost it's my fault. It's almost the same as stealing. That Johnson would say it was just the same. I know he would."
"Let's all look again," said Mabel, jumping up. "Wewererather in a hurry this morning."
So they looked, and they looked. In the bed, under the bed, under the carpet, under the furniture. They shook the curtains, they explored the corners, and found dust and flue, but no ring. They looked, and they looked. Everywhere they looked. Jimmy even looked fixedly at the ceiling, as though he thought the ring might have bounced up there and stuck. But it hadn't.
"Then," said Mabel at last, "your housemaid must have stolen it. That's all. I shall tell her I think so."
And she would have done it too, but at that moment the front door banged and they knew that Eliza had gone forth in all the glory of her best things to meet her "gentleman friend."
"It's no use"—Mabel was almost in tears; "look here—will you leave me alone? Perhaps you others looking distracts me. And I'll go over every inch of the room by myself."
"Respecting the emotion of their guest, the kindly charcoal-burners withdrew," said Gerald. And they closed the door softly from the outside on Mabel and her search.
They waited for her, of course—politeness demanded it, and besides, they had to stay at home to let Mademoiselle in; though it was a dazzling day, and Jimmy had just remembered that Gerald's pockets were full of the money earned at the fair, and that nothing had yet been bought with that money, except a few buns in which he had had no share. And of course they waited impatiently.
It seemed about an hour, and was really quite ten minutes, before they heard the bedroom door open and Mabel's feet on the stairs.
"She hasn't found it," Gerald said.
"How do you know?" Jimmy asked.
"The way she walks," said Gerald. You can, in fact, almost always tell whether the thing has been found that people have gone to look for by the sound of their feet as they return. Mabel's feet said "No go," as plain as they could speak. And her face confirmed the cheerless news.
A sudden and violent knocking at the back door prevented any one from having to be polite about how sorry they were, or fanciful about being sure the ring would turn up soon.
All the servants except Eliza were away on their holidays, so the children went together to open the door, because, as Gerald said, if it was the baker they could buy a cake from him and eat it for dessert. "That kind of dinner sort ofneedsdessert," he said.
But it was not the baker. When they opened the door they saw in the paved court where the pump is, and the dust-bin, and the water-butt, a young man, with his hat very much on one side, his mouth open under his fair bristly moustache, and his eyes as nearly round as human eyes can be. He wore a suit of a bright mustard colour, a blue necktie, and a goldish watch-chain across his waistcoat. His body was thrown back and his right arm stretched out towards the door, and his expression was that of a person who is being dragged somewhere against his will. He looked so strange that Kathleen tried to shut the door in his face, murmuring, "Escaped insane." But the door would not close. There was something in the way.
"Leave go of me!" said the young man.
"Ho yus! I'll leave go of you!" It was the voice of Eliza—but no Eliza could be seen.
"Who's got hold of you?" asked Kathleen.
"Shehas, miss," replied the unhappy stranger.
"Who's she?" asked Kathleen, to gain time, as she afterwards explained, for she now knewwell enough that what was keeping the door open was Eliza's unseen foot.
"My fyongsay, miss. At least it sounds like her voice, and it feels like her bones, but something's come over me, miss, an' I can't see her."
"That's what he keeps on saying," said Eliza's voice. "E's my gentleman friend; is 'e gone dotty, or is it me?"
"Both, I shouldn't wonder," said Jimmy.
"Now," said Eliza, "you call yourself a man; you look me in the face and say you can't see me."
"Well—I can't," said the wretched gentleman friend.
"IfI'dstolen a ring," said Gerald, looking at the sky, "I should go indoors and be quiet, not stand at the back door and make an exhibition of myself."
"Not much exhibition about her," whispered Jimmy; "good old ring!"
"I haven't stolenanything," said the gentleman friend. "Here, you leave me be. It's my eyes has gone wrong. Leave go of me, d'ye hear?"
Suddenly his hand dropped and he staggered back against the water-butt. Eliza had "left go" of him. She pushed past the children, shoving them aside with her invisible elbows. Gerald caught her by the arm with one hand, felt for her ear with the other, and whispered. "You stand still and don't say a word. If you do——well, what's to stop me from sending for the police?"