The Box of Delights (7 page)

‘You’d have thought him a carol-singer, just as we did,’ a man growled.

‘Would I?’ the silky voice said. ‘Would I, my gentle Joe, my far-seeing friend? But come on, now. The Wolves are Running. Get on to Tatchester. There seems no doubt that
he’s gone there, but he may slip off by the way. Overtake that motor bus, if you can. If not, find out where he’s got to in Tatchester, and get the goods off him.’

‘Won’t you come, Chief?’ the man called Joe asked. ‘We’re willing hands, maybe, but where are we without your great brain? Ha-ha, as our friend says,
what?’

‘You might well ask where you are without me,’ the silky voice said. ‘Are you going to start to Tatchester? Get to Tatchester, will you?’

All the silkiness fell from the voice at a breath: the men jumped as though they’d been kicked. ‘All right, Chief,’ the man called Joe said. ‘We’re going. I only
asked, won’t you?’

‘I’ve got a report coming to me here,’ the Chief said. ‘Report to me at the inn in Number Three Code. My thundering sky, are you ever going to shift?’

Kay thought, from the voice, that he would strike them. The men hurried out of the ruin, going away from Kay, who was now pressed into the ivy on the wall. He heard the men clumping at a trot
along the Seekings garden fence: presently he heard their car start off, taking the Tatchester road. Just before the car door slammed he heard a waif sentence from the foxy-faced man:

‘Little Abner’s in his little tantrums, ha-ha, what?’ The others laughed.

‘He’ll tantrum you pretty soon,’ the man growled from within the ruin.

‘So it’s Abner Brown and his gang again,’ Kay muttered. ‘I am up against Magic, then, as well as Crime. What report can he have coming to him here? I daren’t move
until he’s gone from here. And if anybody comes here with a report he’s almost bound to see me. Oh dear, Oh, dear.’

Kay was standing pressed against the ivy outside. Under the vaulted roof inside the ruin Abner stamped his feet and flogged with his arms. Kay had not waited a minute after the starting of the
car before he heard a sort of scuttering, scraping noise coming from somewhere below. There were also little splashes and snarls. He knew that under the ruins there were many queer underground
ways. Someone was coming up by one of them into the ruin where Abner was.

‘Is that you, Rat?’ Abner asked.

‘Ah, it’s me,’ a surly voice answered, ‘and what’s the good of being me? Up in the attic and down in the cellar, all weathers, all hours, for one who’d sell
his mother, if he had one, for what she’d fetch as old bones. And what do I get by it? Bacon fat, you might say, or the green of that cheese the dog won’t eat, or the haggie that made
the hens swoon. But I don’t, my Christian friend. I get rheumatics; that, and the dog sickt at me. That’s what.’

‘As a matter of fact, I’ve got some green-looking cheese for you,’ Abner said. ‘Look here.’

There was the scratch of a match; Abner lit a candle-end. Kay found that he could see through a hole in the wall right into the ruin. There, blinking at the light, was a disreputable Rat whom he
had known in the past but had not seen for years. He was now much more disreputable than ever before. Kay had heard that everybody had dropped him, and that he had gone pirating. But there he was
again; and a sickening object he looked.

‘Ah,’ Rat said, taking the cheese, which Kay could smell even in that cold weather. ‘And you wouldn’t give me this if you could sell it to a Tourists’
Rest.’

‘You’re right,’ Abner said. ‘I wouldn’t.’

‘I understand you, Abner, and you understand me,’ Rat said. He was eating the cheese with a sort of sideways wrench, while his little beady eyes stared at Abner.

‘That man Joe, you’d better look out for, Abner,’ Rat said. ‘He’s putting in for chief: likewise the “ha-ha, what?” man.’

‘What d’you mean?’ Abner asked.

‘That’s what,’ Rat said. Here he dropped his cheese on the floor; he picked it up and ate it without wiping it. ‘Ah, that’s what,’ he repeated.

‘What’s your report?’ Abner said.

‘Him what you wot of,’ Rat said, ‘is a getting rid of his Dog this evening.’

‘That’s nothing,’ Abner said.

‘A lady friend will take the Dog. There’s many a Dog as I’ve loved more than that one now lies in a watery tomb with a stone round his neck. But some who claim to be friends
never take a hint. That’s what . . .

‘Ah, and there’s to be dark doings. You’ve scared ’em, Abner: and I beheld their scare.’

‘Well, this is news at last,’ Abner said. ‘What did you see?’

‘The
Drop of Dew
, upper room, the Lion and the Rose chamber as they call it.

‘There’s passages pretty near all under and round this city, to them who knows them. I’ve gone a dark stravage into pretty near every one first and last. They’d a meeting
in the Lion and the Rose at the
Drop of Dew
. One what you wot of will be trying to get out of your ring at dawn tomorrow, by Arthur’s Camp, across Bottler’s Down, to Seven
Barrows.’

‘But Cole is at Tatchester,’ Abner said.

‘Well, one of what you wot of will be trying.’

‘Will he have the goods on him?’

‘Ah,’ Rat said, ‘that’s what.’

‘Well, will he? And which of them is it?’

‘I been a cellarman, I have,’ Rat said, ‘and I’ve gone marine cellarman. And I’ve been a poor man, living in the dark, though others live in the light, with a
haggie every day, and grudge a poor man so much as a old fish-bone; yes, they do. You says to me: “Find out what they decide.” Them was your words to me. “Find out” . . .
you says . . . “what they decide.” There I’ve been in those dark dwellings in danger of Dog, and found out what they decided. Now you says, “Will he?” and “Which
of them is it?” You didn’t tell me about that.’

‘No, but you heard,’ Abner said.

‘I found out what they decided,’ Rat said.

Abner seemed ready to box Rat’s ears, for his stupidity; he seemed to gulp down his wrath and said very sweetly:

‘So you don’t know?’

‘I know what they decided,’ Rat said. ‘And why? Because I found it out. And how? By going the dark ways, and being in danger of Dog. What your words was to me, that I done,
although in danger of Dog.’

‘And you did well,’ Abner said. ‘My brave Rat, you did superbly.’

‘That’s what,’ Rat said.

There was a pause; Abner said nothing, Rat seemed to expect something. At last he said, ‘You said I was to have a bacon-rind, over and above the cheese.’

‘So you shall have, my brave Rat,’ Abner said. ‘I’ll bring you one tomorrow.’

‘That’s the bacon-rind to bring the plump on a man,’ the Rat said, ‘bacon-rind-tomorrow. That and marrow-bone-the-day-after proper makes your fur shine. Is there any
little dark job you want done then, Master Abner, or shall I go now?’

‘I want you to report at eleven tomorrow at the usual place, in case there should be anything.’

‘Will I have the bacon-rind, then?’

‘Yes.’

‘That Kay Harker, what you wot of,’ Rat said, ‘if you was to saw his head off you’d do a good deed. He’s to have a Dog give him at Christmas. That’s
what.’

‘He won’t bite you,’ Abner said.

‘Ah,’ the Rat said, ‘I hate him, and I hate Dogs.’

‘Why?’

‘Acos he’s going to have a Dog give him.’

After this Rat smeared his paw across his nose and lurched off sideways to the candle-end. He blew out the light and took the candle-end: Kay judged that he bit the still soft tallow at the end.
He moved off into the underground passage singing, with his mouth full of tallow, a song to his one tune of ‘Sally in our Alley’:

Presently, the words died away underground. Abner took a few paces to and fro within the ruin. Kay could hear a few muttered words: ‘Putting in for Captain, are they?
We’ll see. So Kay Harker is to have a Dog at Christmas. If that fool Rat would only choose the things that interest me, instead of what interests himself, he might be really useful. As for
that intolerable child, Maria, at the house here, I wonder if she would be useful?’ He seemed to reflect for a while. ‘What did that fool of a Rat mean?’ he muttered. ‘Who
is to get out of the ring by Arthur’s Camp at dawn tomorrow? Could Cole double back from Tatchester and try it, or would it be one of the others? Going to Seven Barrows, too; what would they
hope to do there? Well, the chances are that the Box will be on the man who tries to get out of the ring that way. Bottler’s Down, eh? As nice a quiet place for a scrobbling as ever was made.
We’ll stop whoever it is. And, of course, it may be Cole, Box and all. I believe it will be. It probably will be . . .

‘Rat, if it be, you shall have three rancid kippers and a haggis.

‘Come now, I must telephone.’

So saying he flashed a torch on the broken stones of the floor, and walked briskly away, passing within two yards of Kay. When he had gone, Kay slipped from his hiding-place and returned to
Seekings.

‘Well,’ he thought, ‘they always say that “Listeners hear no good of themselves,” but I never thought that old Rat in the old days would want to saw my head off.
And who is going to give me a dog? I’ll find out from Ellen.

‘And what a world to come home to. Abner Brown and a gang, all dressed up as clergymen, and all after something that the Punch and Judy man has. I wonder what it can be. The Punch and Judy
man is a wizard, if ever there was one, so it’s probably some magic thing that he carries about with him. Why should Abner say that he has gone to Tatchester? I suppose he has heard that the
Bishop asked him to come to Tatchester. Those spies at the window might have heard that. He might have been one of the spies himself for that matter.

‘Then who are Cole Hawlings and the other two with the “Longways crosses” on their fingers?

‘Well, when Caroline Louisa comes back tomorrow, I will tell her the whole story and ask her advice.

‘Now what can I get for Caroline Louisa’s Christmas present?’

By this time, he had reached Seekings. He shook the snow from him and went in.

‘I say, Kay, wherever have you been?’ Peter said: ‘We’ve been waiting simply ages for you, and you aren’t dressed, or anything, and we were just going to play
Pirates, and there has been a clergyman sort of chap here asking for the Punch and Judy man.’

‘What did you tell him?’ Kay asked.

‘Oh,’ Maria said, ‘I told him he had gone with the Tatchester Choir.’

‘So that’s how he thought that,’ Kay thought to himself.

‘What did he say?’ Kay asked.

‘I rather thought he was going on to Tatchester after him. But don’t think for a moment that he was a clergyman. He was a burglar of the deepest dye. However, he didn’t get
much change out of us.’

‘What did he want the Punch and Judy man for?’ Kay asked.

‘Oh, he had got some cock-and-bull story that he wanted some old versions of the Punch and Judy play. I’ll bet that wasn’t his real reason. I’ll bet the Punch and Judy
man is a member of a gang of burglars, and this clergyman is a member of a rival gang.’

‘Oh, you’ve got gangs on the brain,’ Peter said.

‘If I have got gangs on the brain,’ Maria said, ‘whose brain is right as a general rule, may I ask? I’ve got a good deal more knowledge of life than you have, although
you are so old and so wise, and go to a public school, and have to say “Sir” to the Masters. I’d “Sir” them, if it was me.’

‘Well,’ Kay said, ‘he has gone on to Tatchester, you say?’

‘Yes,’ Peter said. ‘I told him that the Bishop had engaged him to play tomorrow.’

‘Come on then,’ Kay said, ‘let’s play Pirates. I’ll go up and dress.’

‘Oh, no you won’t,’ Maria said. ‘We’re not going to wait any longer. We’ve been waiting simply hours, as it is. You’ve had your chance of being a pirate
and you haven’t taken it, and now you’ll be a merchantman, and you’ll be captured and tortured, and then you’ll have to walk the plank, and Peter and I are going to be the
sharks that will eat you.’

After they had played Pirates, they had supper. After supper, they sat round the fire and toasted chestnuts. Then, they told a chain ghost story, each telling a little piece and passing it on to
the next one. Then presently, it was time for all the children to go up to bed. Kay and Peter were the last to go up. They got into their beds, and talked to each other across the room about what
they would do in the holidays.

It was very snug in their room, for Ellen had built up the fire. Peter had just said that he thought he would be getting off to sleep, when Kay was thoroughly startled by the whining cry of the
wind in the chimney. Often, on snowy nights, he had heard that cry of the wind in the chimney, but tonight there was something in the shriek that was very awful.

‘I say, Peter,’ he said, ‘did you hear that? It was just like wolves howling.’

‘Wolves are extinct,’ Peter muttered, half asleep. Kay thought that he would turn off to sleep, and was just on the brink of sleep, when the wind again howled.

‘It was wolves,’ Kay said. ‘It was what the old man said, “The Wolves are Running”.’

Kay could not have been long asleep when he woke up feeling certain that there was something very important to be done at King Arthur’s Camp. He rolled over, thinking,
‘Well, it isn’t likely that anything is to be done there at this time of night,’ and was very soon asleep again. However, his dreams turned to King Arthur’s Camp. He saw the
place, half woke, then slept and saw it again. At this, he woke up wide awake, convinced that he must go there at once. He sat up in bed, struck a light and lit a candle. Peter woke up very
grumpily. ‘What on earth are you lighting a candle for?’ he said.

‘I’m going out to Arthur’s Camp,’ Kay said; ‘will you come along?’

‘Arthur’s Camp?’ Peter said; ‘it’s miles away. Whatever are you going there for?’