The Enchanted Castle, E. Nesbit [books to read fiction .txt] 📗

me! you couldn’t have 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, I agree right enough,” said Johnson. “I agree. But if you’re coming any of your larks⁠—”

“Can’t you see he 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 motorcar.”

“You ought to have been in the force, you ought,” said Johnson admiringly; “but s’pose it was a 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 is the place. 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 seesaw with a fresh cut, sweet-smelling pine plank and an elm-root.

“What a ripping place!” said Mabel, breathless on the seesaw’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 lookout 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 seesaw.

“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 rotten boards, with a rickety handrail, cried “Pax!” and blew his nose with loud fervour.

“Morning,” he said immediately.

“Morning,” said Johnson. “Got a cold, ain’t you?”

“Ah! I shouldn’t have a cold if I’d got boots like yours,” returned Gerald admiringly. “Look at them. Anyone ’ud know your fairy footstep a mile off. How do you ever get near enough to anyone to arrest them?” He skipped off the landing-stage, whispered as he passed Johnson, “Courage, promptitude, and dispatch. 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. Today’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.”

“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 if I looked?” 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 Cathy, jumping up. “We were rather 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