The Wind on the Moon (27 page)

‘And sardines,' said Dorinda, ‘and I'm going to wear my corduroy trousers, and we ought to take our winter overcoats because it may be cold in the dungeon.'

‘We don't mean to stay in the dungeon,' said Dinah.

‘No, but we may have to,' said Dorinda.

‘Then we ought to take some more books,' said Dinah, ‘and some cushions to sit on.'

‘I hope Professor Bultek leaves plenty of room for us in the furniture van.'

‘We do seem to be taking rather a lot, but even so we've probably forgotten some of the most important things of all. Let's go over the list and see.'

‘Sugar,' said Dorinda, ‘and spoons.'

‘Towels,' said Dinah.

‘Won't the sheet do for towels?'

‘It might. But we ought to have a map.'

‘And a file,' said Dorinda.

‘What do you want a file for?'

‘There may be a window in the dungeon with bars over it.'

‘That's a
very
good idea,' said Dinah. ‘And we must take an electric torch, and some matches in case it doesn't work.'

‘And some cheese.'

‘I'm not very fond of cheese.'

‘Neither am I, but there are sure to be mice in the dungeon, and we can use the cheese to tame them and make pets of them, in case we get in and can't get out again.'

‘We shan't be making pets in the dungeon,' said Dinah. ‘We'll be making plans. Plans to get out of it.'

‘We can't spend all our time making plans, or we'd have so many we wouldn't know which one to choose.'

‘Oh, well,' said Dinah, ‘if you want to tame mice, I suppose you must. But when we're going to Gliedermannheim simply to rescue Father from a dungeon, I don't feel it's the proper thing to be making preparations to enjoy ourselves.'

‘Then why are you taking so many books?'

‘You can learn about all sorts of things from books.'

‘And you can learn a lot from animals too, and mice are animals, aren't they?'

‘Very little ones.'

‘The biggest animal in the zoo,' said Dorinda, ‘was Mr. Parker. And he was really the stupidest. So it's silly to despise things for being small.'

‘You're quite right,' said Dinah.

‘Well,' said Dorinda, ‘I shall tame some mice if I want to.' And she took the pencil from Dinah and wrote:

A quarter of a pound of cheese

Then both were silent for several minutes, for neither could think of anything else, and at last Dinah said, ‘That's enough for the present. Let's take the list and show it to Mr. Corvo.'

Mr. Corvo was looking worried. He also had been trying to make a list of necessary stores, but all he had written was:

‘What is the olive oil for?' asked Dinah.

‘It is very good for cooking things in,' said Mr. Corvo.

‘But what are you going to cook in it?' asked Dorinda.

‘I do not know,' said Mr. Corvo. ‘I am not a good housekeeper, and I cannot imagine what I shall want to eat in a furniture van.'

‘We have a list of things here,' said Dinah, and showed him what she had written.

‘But this is magnificent!' said Mr. Corvo. ‘You have thought of everything. How clever you both are! I have been thinking all day, but to no more purpose than you see—slippers and olive oil are very useful, but we shall need something more on a journey of three days—and now you come with the complete and perfect catalogue of all we can possibly require. Brilliant and charming Dinah! Exquisite and accomplished Dorinda! I admire you, I am devoted to you, I salute you!'

And raising first Dinah's hand, then Dorinda's, to his lips, Mr. Corvo kissed them in turn with the utmost courtesy.

‘It's going to be rather difficult,' said Dinah, ‘to collect all our stores and pack them properly. A lot of them, of course, we can get at home, but others we shall have to buy. And how shall we take them to the furniture van? We don't even know where it is.'

‘The furniture vans,' said Mr. Corvo, ‘will be at Starveling Hall, the Duke's house, where some are already being loaded under the supervision of my friend Bultek. Do not worry about the packing and transport of our stores. I shall provide everything and have them sent in good time to Starveling Hall. Then, if you will come here on Wednesday afternoon, there will be a motor-car waiting, and we shall follow them to Starveling and embark upon our journey. Ah, Gliedermannheim, my poor city, I shall see you again! It is so beautiful a city, it will break my heart—and Count Hulagu Bloot is so villainous a tyrant, he may break my neck! Courage, my children, we must be brave and cunning and very resolute! Go now, and I shall practise fencing with my swordstick for an hour.'

‘What sort of clothes should we wear?' asked Dinah.

‘Clothes that have not many buttons,' said Mr. Corvo. ‘It is a great nuisance when buttons come off.'

Mr. Corvo, who had already begun to fence, was clearly not interested in the subject of their travelling clothes, so they said good-bye and went home.

The Falcon came to their window at bedtime and asked what their news was. They told him of the arrangements they had made, and then he said, ‘I too shall come to Bombardy. I had intended, very soon, to return to Greenland, but I do not like to let you and the Puma go on such an adventure without me. No, do not thank me. I owe you my liberty, and that is a boon I can never repay. Nor is it difficult for me to travel wherever I wish, and it will be good to see yet another country. I shall have many tales to tell my own people, who are not numerous, when at last I go home.'

A little while later he asked, ‘What shall I tell the Puma?'

‘Tell her,' said Dinah, ‘to be at the cross-roads on the other side of Midmeddlecum, where the long row of beeches begins, at six o'clock on Wednesday. Mr. Corvo is taking us to Starveling Hall in a motorcar. We'll stop at the cross-roads and pick her up.'

‘You will not see her till then,' said the Falcon. ‘She is leaving the Forest, and for the next few days will be hunting far to the west. I found some wilder country where there are sheep in plenty, and I think she can eat her fill there without being harried by the farmers. But truly this country of yours is too small both for her and me. It is a pleasant land, but there are too many people for hunters such as we are, and too little room. And now good-night. Sleep well, and dream of your father's freedom.'

But neither Dinah nor Dorinda found it easy to sleep, that night or the following nights, till Wednesday came; and every day Miss Serendip's ill-temper grew worse, for they paid no attention to any lesson except geography, and all the geography they wanted to learn was that of Bombardy.

Their mother, by good fortune, remained in London, so they had less need to worry about going away without saying good-bye. On Wednesday afternoon they wrote her a letter and left it on the dressing-table in her bedroom. It said:
Dear Mother, we are going to Bombardy to rescue Father. We thought you would like us to, because he is now in prison. You need not worry about us, we are very good at rescuing people. With love from Dinah and Dorinda
.

Then they went to Mr. Corvo's house and found a motor-car waiting, but Mr. Corvo was still packing. He had a very small suitcase into which he was trying to squeeze four loaves of bread, three shirts, three pairs of socks, an alarm-clock, a canvas bucket, a jar of raspberry jam, a yellow waistcoat, a large railway time-table, and an omelette-pan.

‘All these things are things we may need,' he said. ‘Now if you will sit upon the lid, perhaps I can close it. Sit tight! Good. There it is! And now—off we go!'

They stopped at the cross-roads, and while Dorinda occupied the attention of the driver by offering him a piece of toffee, Dinah opened a door and let in the Puma. She had been hiding in a ditch, and looked very well-fed after her hunting in the west country. Mr. Corvo, though a little nervous when introduced to her, quickly became friendly, and they had a pleasant journey to Starveling Hall.

There they met Professor Bultek. He was a fat little man with broad shoulders, a short face, a flat nose, and no neck. He had little eyes, an enormous mouth, a greenish complexion, and as Mr. Corvo had said, he looked uncommonly like a frog, though he wore a purple suit. He spoke English fairly well but seldom more than two or three words at a time, and these he usually repeated.

When Dinah and Dorinda were introduced to him, he bowed and said, ‘Honoured, honoured. Your father's children, father's children. Father my friend. Glad to help, glad to help.'

Then he looked at his watch and exclaimed, ‘Late, late. Come quick. Van there, van there.'

Five enormous furniture vans stood in a row before the front door of Starveling Hall. The drivers and the men who had loaded them were having their tea, and there was no one about but the prospective travellers. Professor Bultek gave a little scream when he saw the Puma and began to run away, but Mr. Corvo called him back and told him that the Puma was a friend of the family. The Professor was only partly reassured, and walked on tiptoe so as not to attract the Puma's attention. He was frightened again, and gave another little scream when the Falcon came suddenly falling from the sky and settled on the roof of the van that Dinah and Dorinda were to travel in.

‘He also is a friend of the family,' said Mr. Corvo.

Professor Bultek said something in his own language that Dinah and Dorinda could not understand, but it sounded as though he were angry. He opened the door of the van, however, and pointed to a little tunnel through the mass of furniture that filled it from floor to roof.

‘Go in, go in,' he said. ‘Hands and knees, hands and knees. Straight through.'

Mr. Corvo led the way, Dorinda followed him, then came the Puma, and then Dinah. And no sooner was Dinah in the tunnel, which was no broader nor higher than the inside of a barrel, than Professor Bultek closed the door behind her, and swung a long iron bar into position to hold it more firmly, and locked a great padlock on the bar.

Now, thought Dinah, listening to the banging of the door and the clattering of the iron bar, now we must go to Bombardy whether we like it or not, for there's no escape. There's no escape!

Oh dear, she said to herself, why ever did we think of doing something so horribly dangerous, and fearfully difficult, and dreadfully uncomfortable as this?

‘It all comes,' she muttered, ‘of the wind on the moon that made us naughty for a year. Because there's no denying that it's very naughty indeed to leave home without Mother's permission, or anyone's permission, and the police, I suppose, would consider it really wicked to smuggle yourself into a foreign country in a furniture van. And yet if we do rescue Father and bring him home again, that will be a good thing. But where naughtiness ends and goodness begins, I don't know. I wonder if anyone knows?'

Then she heard Dorinda calling, ‘Dinah, Dinah! Where are you?'

‘I'm coming,' she answered, and crawling a little farther found herself in a very small room whose walls were made of chairs and tables and packing-cases and a wardrobe and an empty bookcase. It was just long enough to hold a sofa, and it was lighted by an oil lamp that hung from a hook in the roof of the van.

‘This is Mr. Corvo's room,' said Dorinda. ‘Ours is farther on. Do come and see it.'

Crawling through another narrow tunnel she led the way to a room not unlike Mr. Corvo's, but slightly bigger. One of its walls was the forward end of the furniture van. The left-hand wall was an enormous oil-painting, in a heavy gold frame, of the third Duke of Starveling in the handsome robes of a Knight of the Garter; and the right-hand wall consisted of a gigantic mahogany wardrobe. The rear wall, through which they had entered the room, was made of two high chests of drawers, or tallboys. There was a carpet on the floor, there were some cushions, a small table, and two sofas.

‘And we've got a real window,' said Dorinda. She pulled out the drawers of one of the tallboys so as to make a flight of steps, and, climbing up, opened a small trap-door in the roof of the van. ‘We can get in and out if we want to, and if the nights are fine we can sit on the roof and talk to the Falcon.'

‘Where is the Puma going to sleep?'

‘In the wardrobe,' said Dorinda. ‘There are two rugs in it, so she'll be quite all right, and you and I will have the sofas. Professor Bultek has unpacked all the food and things and put them in that other chest of drawers. Wasn't it tidy of him? And isn't it a perfectly adorable room, Dinah?'

‘I think we're going to be far more comfortable than I expected.'

‘Our journey has begun!' exclaimed Mr. Corvo. ‘Listen!'

They heard the slight noise of a motor throbbing, and the walls trembled.