The Wind on the Moon (9 page)

Mr. Parker was waiting for them. ‘Follow me,' he muttered, and led the way to some willow-trees that grew beside the river. No other animals were near them there.

Mr. Parker looked at them very sternly and said, ‘Tell me why you are disguised as kangaroos.'

So Dinah told him about Mrs. Grimble and the magic draught, but Mr. Parker interrupted her and said, ‘I don't believe in magic.'

‘Then how did we become kangaroos?' asked Dorinda.

‘A baffling question,' said Mr. Parker. ‘Very baffling indeed. I have often wondered how I became a giraffe.'

‘Weren't you a giraffe when you were born?' asked Dinah.

‘Indeed I wasn't,' said Mr. Parker indignantly. ‘I was one of the most beautiful babies in England. I took first prize at a Baby Show! Then I grew up and became a detective. I was one of the best detectives in the world. I used to capture murderers by the dozen, forgers by the score, and hundreds of burglars. But one day when I was trying to look over a very high wall—craning up and up, stretching my legs and stretching my neck—a strange thing happened. Suddenly I found that I could see over it quite easily. I had become enormously tall! And there, on the other side of the wall, there was a burglar burying a lot of silver plate in a flower-bed. ‘I arrest you!' I shouted, but my voice sounded strange, and when the burglar looked up he uttered an exclamation of intense surprise.'

‘You had become a giraffe,' said Dinah.

‘I had,' said Mr. Parker sadly.

‘What happened then?' asked Dorinda.

‘The burglar, who was a bold and quick-witted man, came out and stroked me,' said Mr. Parker. ‘I was quite astonished, because, as probably you know, it is most unusual for a detective to be stroked by a burglar. I moved slightly away from him, and happened, at the same moment, to catch sight of my legs. I looked round and saw my back. I was bewildered by the change in my appearance, and the burglar, taking advantage of my perplexity, led me away and finally sold me to Sir Lankester Lemon for fifty pounds.'

‘I arrest you!'

‘It must have been magic that turned you into a giraffe,' said Dinah.

‘I don't believe in magic,' said Mr. Parker stubbornly.

‘Then how did it happen?' asked Dorinda.

‘I don't know,' said Mr. Parker, ‘but people often get what they want, if they want it long enough. Think of all the people who say, ‘All I want is peace and quiet.' And sooner or later they die, and what could be quieter than that? And I, you see, had always wanted to look over walls.'

‘Do you think that many of the animals here were people to begin with?' asked Dorinda.

‘Well!' said Mr. Parker, his big eyes bulging with astonishment. ‘Well, that
is
a disturbing thought! It never occurred to me that any of the others might not be the genuine article. I thought I was quite, quite different from everyone else.'

‘Don't forget us,' said Dinah.

‘I hope you didn't forget to bring your notebook,' said Mr. Parker severely.

‘What are you going to do with it?'

‘Write down all my notes on The Case of the Missing Ostrich Eggs,' said Mr. Parker. ‘It is one of the most baffling mysteries that I have ever known. And when I have solved it, I shall at once begin to investigate the private life of every animal here. Half of them, I now believe, may be human beings in disguise! Even our nearest neighbour, Bendigo the Grizzly Bear, may really be a man!'

‘I expect he is,' said Dorinda. ‘Last night we saw\??\—'

‘Never mind that,' said Dinah sharply. ‘That's not a bit important. What we have to do, without wasting any more time, is to help Mr. Parker find the missing eggs.'

‘How right you are!' said Mr. Parker. ‘One thing at a time, and first things first. That's how to go about it. Now if you'll write down what I dictate—have you got a pencil? Good. If I dictate my notes, and you write them down, we'll get a much clearer view of this difficult case than we have at present.'

So Dinah took out her note-book and pencil, and this is what she wrote:

‘There,' said Mr. Parker. ‘That makes it a lot clearer, doesn't it?'

‘What is an alibi?' asked Dorinda.

‘Well,' said Mr. Parker, ‘if I were to say to you, “Were you in Birmingham on the night of the crime?“ you would have to answer, “No, but I was in Blackpool.“ And that's an alibi.'

‘It's like playing Happy Families,' said Dorinda.

‘In a way it is,' said Mr. Parker doubtfully, ‘but in another way it isn't, if you see what I mean.—Hush! What's that?'

They all stood up. They were not very far from Sir Lankester's house, and from the lawn in front of it they could hear angry voices. There was a woman's voice, and a curious noise that was half a scream and half a choke. Then they saw Sir Bobadil running towards them, and Lady Lemon chasing him with a croquet mallet. But she was a long way behind, and soon, being short of breath, she gave up the pursuit.

‘Come,' said Mr. Parker. ‘Come quickly. This may be important. It may be a Clue!'

So they hurried to meet Sir Bobadil, who appeared to be somewhat ashamed of himself.

‘What have you been doing?' asked Mr. Parker sternly.

‘Oh, nothing much,' said Sir Bobadil, and turned aside to cough.

‘There's something in your throat,' said Mr. Parker, and bent his head to examine more closely a large round lump in the very middle of Sir Bobadil's neck.

‘Merely a crumb,' said Sir Bobadil, and choked as he said it.

‘It looks more like a cake than a crumb,' said Dinah.

‘It's a ball,' said Dorinda.

‘A croquet ball!' exclaimed Dinah. ‘It's just about the right size, and it was a croquet mallet that Lady Lemon was chasing him with.'

‘They do play croquet sometimes,' said Mr. Parker thoughtfully. Then, with a sudden appearance of anger, he bent and whispered to her, ‘I say, that wasn't fair! I'm the detective, not you. You should have let me guess first.'

‘I'm sorry,' said Dinah. ‘I was only trying to help.'

‘Well, you shouldn't help so quickly,' said Mr. Parker.

Sir Bobadil, in the meantime, had been gulping and swallowing, and the lump was gradually moving down his neck. It disappeared completely just as Mr. Parker turned again to question him.

‘Why was Lady Lemon chasing you?' asked Mr. Parker.

‘It's her idea of fun,' said Sir Bobadil.

‘You stole her croquet ball,' said Mr. Parker.

‘Nonsense,' said Sir Bobadil. ‘Where's your evidence?' And proudly he stretched his long neck to show how smooth and thin it was.

‘Aha!' said Mr. Parker. ‘You've swallowed it.'

‘Swallowed what?' asked Sir Bobadil.

‘The evidence,' said Mr. Parker.

‘How do you know it wasn't a potato?' asked Sir Bobadil, and with a loud hoarse laugh he walked slowly away.

‘Quickly,' whispered Mr. Parker to Dinah. ‘Take this down in your note-book. Quickly, quickly. Ready?—Clue Number One: Sir Bobadil has eaten a croquet ball.—Have you written that? Then leave me. I must work alone now. I am going to shadow him!'

Walking softly and slowly, on the tip of his hooves, Mr. Parker began to follow Sir Bobadil, who was by now some eighty yards away, and Dinah and Dorinda were left alone.

‘Do you think it was Sir Bobadil who stole the eggs?' asked Dorinda.

‘If he can swallow a croquet ball, I suppose he can swallow an ostrich egg,' said Dinah.

‘He must be terribly wicked if he ate an egg that his own wife had laid,' said Dorinda.

‘He looks quite wicked on one side of his face,' said Dinah.

‘It's a most exciting case,' said Dorinda.

‘And it's very interesting to meet a real detective,' said Dinah, ‘even though he is a giraffe.'

They had been walking towards another part of the zoo, and now, in one of two cages set apart from the others, they saw a lovely animal, gleaming like gold, moving swiftly out of shadow into sunlight, out of sunlight into shadow. It was the Golden Puma.

In a very high cage, a few yards away, there was a pinnacle of rock between two trees, and on top of the rock sat a marvellous bird as white as snow. It was the Greenland Falcon, but in the zoo it was generally called the Silver Falcon.

They were both so beautiful that Dinah and Dorinda stood between their cages and could not decide which to look at first.

‘Good afternoon,' said the Puma.

‘Hail!' cried the Falcon.

‘How do you do?' said Dinah and Dorinda.

‘I think I ought to tell you,' said Dinah, ‘that we aren't genuine kangaroos. We are really human children who have been turned into kangaroos by a magic draught.'

‘How interesting!' said the Golden Puma.

‘It's very honest of you,' said the Silver Falcon, ‘to admit such a lowly origin.'

‘A
lowly
origin?' said Dinah. ‘I never thought of it like that. Do you despise human beings?'

‘Well,' said the Falcon, ‘you can hardly expect me to admire them. In Greenland, of course, where I used to live, there weren't very many human people, but I saw enough to form a pretty accurate opinion, I think. There were some Eskimos, and trappers, and traders, and fishermen, and people of that sort, and I don't deny that they were very enterprising creatures. They tried to do a lot of things, but they couldn't do anything properly. They could see a little, hear a little, run a little, swim a little, but they couldn't do anything really well.'

‘I like human beings,' said the Puma. ‘I like the sound of their voices, and the way they can laugh or look sad. I often wanted to make a friend of one.'

‘And that didn't do you any good,' said the Falcon. ‘That's what put you in a zoo.'

‘I know,' said the Puma in a melancholy voice. ‘I was very foolish. I didn't realise that human beings could be treacherous.'

‘Don't you like being in a zoo?' asked Dorinda. The Puma's cage looked very comfortable, and behind it there was an outrun with bushes and a bare stony rise and a little brook.

The Puma was silent for a while, and then she said, ‘I used to live in a forest in Brazil, and in every part of the forest there was something new to look at. Every tree had a different shape, and some were smooth as a young leaf, and some were rough and deeply crinkled. Their branches made pictures against the sky, and at night they became a fishing-net and caught the stars like a shoal of little fishes. Flowers like trumpets grew upon the trees, sweet-smelling, and among the huts of an Indian village were small brown children playing in the sun. There were long winding paths in the forest, I could run for fifty miles. There was a river, sometimes brown and swirly, sometimes clear and smooth. I used to lie on a branch above the water and look at my reflection in a greenish pool. And when I was hungry I went hunting, and that's the loveliest thing in life, to go hunting in the moonlight, and feel your blood like quicksilver in your veins. Not a bird wakes but you hear it. Not a leaf closes but you see the edge turn in. Nothing moves but you smell the wind of its movement. And you go like a shadow through the trees, and even your skin and your claws are laughing and alive.'

‘I suppose a Brazilian forest is good in its own way,' said the Falcon, ‘but I wish you could see Greenland. There's nothing in the world so beautiful as that enormous tableland, covered with snow, peaked and shining in the sun, cut by great ravines, and patched with blue shadow. I used to ride upon a breeze, a mile above it, in air like crystal, and on either side I could see a hundred miles of snow and sea, and icebergs shipwrecked on the beach, and the pack-ice moving, and the Eskimos in their kayaks, fishing. Then I would close my wings and dive like a bullet through the diamond sky, down to the little bushes and the glinting rocks, the heather and dwarf-willow getting bigger and bigger, yellow poppies rising like bursts of fire to meet me, and the quartz in the granite boulders like pinpricks of light. Headlong down, the thin air screaming, then
crash
—wings out, head up, and halt two feet from the heather—when I struck stiffly, straight-legged, at a fine fat ptarmigan, too slow to escape, and dashed him to the ground. Ha! the delight, the swiftness, and the freedom!'

‘Freedom!' sighed the Puma. ‘Life without freedom is a poor, poor thing.'