William the Good (29 page)

‘How’re you goin’ to catch ’em?’ said William with interest.

Robert tore himself with an effort from a pleasant daydream in which Miss Julia Bellairs was saying, ‘But how
splendid
! How
wonderful
! How
brave
! . . . Weren’t
you afraid of being killed?’

And he was replying with a modest laugh: ‘Well, you know, I never thought of it. I never do when there’s any danger.’

‘Er – you said three o’clock, didn’t you?’ he said coldly to William.

He wished he’d discovered the thing himself. It spoilt it somehow to have William and Ginger and Hector in it. . . .

‘Yes,’ said William, ‘an’ they were goin’ to get their tools ready in the coach-house.’

‘Well,’ said Robert assuming a stern and superior air, as befitted a master detective, addressing one of his underlings, ‘I’ll see Hector and tell him what to
do.’

They were all in the coach-house of Latham House. It was five minutes to three, Robert had fixed up a very complicated erection – consisting of a lot of ropes and a pail
of water – over the door of the coach-house in such a way that anyone opening the door would receive the contents of the pail in full force upon their head. At least Robert hoped he would.
His band of underlings had proved disappointingly unaccommodating about that. He had urged them – or one of them – to go out by the window and enter by the door in order to see whether
the contrivance worked and all of them had refused. Robert rather hoped that Hector would offer. His pride as he gazed up at the elaborate erection was clouded only by the thought that no official
of Scotland Yard would see it. He felt that if any official in Scotland Yard were to see it, they would at once offer him a high salaried post on the staff. Robert had often thought that he would
make a good detective. . . .

Hector was bitterly resenting the airs that Robert was putting on over this. He was afraid that Miss Julia Bellairs would think that Robert’s share in the capture was more important than
it really was. He was indulging in a daydream in which the beloved was saying to him: ‘How
wonderful
! How
brave
! But weren’t you
afraid
?’

And he was saying nonchalantly:

‘Oh, no. Not a bit. I never am, you know. I’d really as soon have done it without Robert, but the poor boy was very anxious to help and I didn’t like to refuse him.’

‘It’s nearly three,’ said William hopefully.

William was feeling that if he could just live to see that pail of water overturning on to somebody he didn’t mind how soon he died after it.

‘Quick,’ said Robert. ‘We’d better hide! They mustn’t see us through the window.’

‘Hide quickly,’ said Hector, in order to prove to himself that he was giving orders, not taking them from Robert.

They retired to the shadowy corner of the room – only just in time. Almost at once two figures were seen to pass the window walking furtively in single file. The windows were smeared and
dusty, but it was clear that the figures were those of a man and a woman. They stopped at the door. Very cautiously they opened it and entered.

Robert’s contrivance acted. It acted even more effectively than he had intended it to act. Not only did the bucket discharge its contents upon the couple as they entered. It discharged
itself as well, completely enveloping both of them. The four amateur Sherlock Holmes’ came out of their hiding-places to behold the amazing spectacle of two drenched forms – one a man
and the other a woman – sitting back to back, the upper portion of both their forms completely enveloped by a tin bucket which had very neatly caught them both. Muffled screams and shouts
came from beneath the bucket. With admirable presence of mind Robert darted forward and firmly held down the extinguisher.

‘Get the rope quick, Hector,’ he said.

Even as he said it he was mentally composing an account of the affair for Miss Julia Bellairs.

‘At once I held down the bucket quite firmly despite their struggling and called to Hector to get the rope for me to tie them up.’

How he wished she were here to see him. . . .

The two were firmly bound together and then Robert with a flourish removed the extinguisher.

It revealed the bedraggled upper portions of Miss Julia Bellairs and her cousin.

There followed a scene that baffles description.

William and Ginger crept unostentatiously away before it had even reached its climax, but before they departed they had gathered that Miss Julia Bellairs and her cousin were not burglars, but
that they were engaged in the production of a little souvenir booklet of the village to be presented to every guest at a garden party they were giving the next month. The booklet was to contain a
photograph of the house of every guest but this was to be a surprise – hence the mystery surrounding the taking of the photographs.

ROBERT, WITH A FLOURISH, REMOVED THE BUCKET. ‘JULIA!’ HE GASPED.

As William said: ‘With a cracked idea like that they couldn’t
expect
anythin’ but trouble.’

It was that evening.

William and Ginger walked slowly and sadly down the road.

‘Then there’s that parrot,’ said Ginger gloomily.

‘Yes. I’d been quite forgetting the parrot,’ said William.

‘It started it all,’ said Ginger yet more gloomily.

‘I s’pose so,’ said William, ‘but she doesn’t know you let it out. She’s not been to see your father about it yet, has she?’

‘No, but she might any time – an’ on the top of the
other
—’

‘Let’s g’n’ see what she’s doin’ about it,’ said William, who never could resist the temptation to revisit the scene of a crime.

They approached Ginger’s aunt’s house and once more crept cautiously up to the drawing-room window.

The first sight that met their eyes was the reassuring one of Ginger’s Aunt’s parrot hanging as usual in the cage and swinging to and fro on his perch.

Further investigation revealed the figure of Ginger’s aunt and a friend sitting over a tea table.

Their conversation reached the watchers through the open window.

‘Oh, yes, he’s a
very
clever bird,’ Ginger’s aunt was saying proudly. ‘Why, do you know what he did this morning? Some one must have left the window open and
he opened his cage door
himself
and got out. Right out of the window. I was
distracted
when I came home and found him gone. And then just when I was in the middle of ringing up the
police about it he came back. Simply came in again through the window and went back into his cage.’

The two Outlaws crept back to the road.

‘Well,
that’s
all right!’ said William.

‘Yes,’ admitted Ginger, ‘that’s cert’nly
one
thing all right. . . . What’re you goin’ to do now?’

‘I’m not quite sure,’ said William. ‘Only,’ very firmly, ‘I’m not goin’ home jus’ yet. Robert’s goin’ out at six o’clock
an’ I’m not goin’ home till after that.’

‘I’m not either,’ said Ginger. ‘Hector’s goin’ out about then an’ I’m not goin’ home till after that . . . you’d think they’d be
grateful to us, wouldn’t you? It made them friends again.’

‘Yes, but they aren’t grateful to us,’ said William, ‘and, of course, it made Robert madder still to find that the burglars had been to our house while he’d been
out tryin’ to catch ’em at Latham House.’

‘Yes, and the way they make it all out
our
faults—’ said Ginger bitterly.

‘They always do that,’ said William.

‘She said she’d never speak to ’em again,’ said Ginger meditatively, ‘but she said some jolly fine things to ’em first. Before she said that.’

‘So did he,’ said William.

With reminiscent appreciative smiles on their countenances they walked on slowly down the road.

Richmal Crompton was born in Lancashire in 1890. The first story about William Brown appeared in
Home
magazine in 1919, and the first collection of William stories was
published in book form three years later. In all, thirty-eight William books were published, the last one in 1970, after Richmal Crompton’s death.

‘Probably the funniest, toughest children’s books ever written’

Sunday Times
on the Just William series

‘Richmal Crompton’s creation [has] been famed for his cavalier attitude to life and those who would seek to circumscribe his enjoyment of it ever since he first
appeared’

Guardian

Books available in the Just William series

Just William

More William

William Again

William the Fourth

Still William

William the Conqueror

William the Outlaw

William in Trouble

William the Good

William at War

First published 1928
This selection first published 1984 by Macmillan Children’s Books
This edition published 2011 by Macmillan Children’s Books

This electronic edition published 2011 by Macmillan Children’s Books
a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-1-4472-1000-9 EPUB

All stories copyright © Richmal C. Ashbee
This selection copyright © 1984 Richmal C. Ashbee
Foreword copyright © Daniel Roche 2011
Illustrations copyright © Thomas Henry Fisher Estate

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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