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

stairs, broken only by the cough of a clerk in That’s office, and the clickety-clack of a typewriter in the office of Mr. U. W. Ugli.

Then Gerald rose up and finished the bun.

“You’re right,” he said. “I’ll chance it. Here’s your five bob.”

He brushed the bun crumbs from his front, cleared his throat, and knocked at the door of Mr. U. W. Ugli. It opened and he entered.

The doormat boy lingered, secure in his power to account for his long absence by means of his well-trained nose, and his waiting was rewarded. He went down a few steps, round the bend of the stairs, and heard the voice of Mr. U. W. Ugli, so well known on that staircase (and on the Stock Exchange) say in soft, cautious accents:

“Then I’ll ask him to let me look at the ring⁠—and I’ll drop it. You pick it up. But remember, it’s a pure accident, and you don’t know me. I can’t have my name mixed up in a thing like this. You’re sure he’s really unhinged?”

“Quite,” said Gerald; “he’s quite mad about that ring. He’ll follow it anywhere. I know he will. And think of his sorrowing relations.”

“I do⁠—I do,” said Mr. Ugli kindly; “that’s all I do think of, of course.”

He went up the stairs to the other office, and Gerald heard the voice of That telling his clerks that he was going out to lunch. Then the horrible Ugly-Wugly and Jimmy, hardly less horrible in the eyes of Gerald, passed down the stairs where, in the dusk of the lower landing, two boys were making themselves as undistinguishable as possible, and so out into the street, talking of stocks and shares, bears and bulls. The two boys followed.

“I say,” the doormat-headed boy whispered admiringly, “whatever are you up to?”

“You’ll see,” said Gerald recklessly. “Come on!”

“You tell me. I must be getting back.”

“Well, I’ll tell you, but you won’t believe me. That old gentleman’s not really old at all⁠—he’s my young brother suddenly turned into what you see. The other’s not real at all. He’s only just old clothes and nothing inside.”

“He looks it, I must say,” the boy admitted; “but I say⁠—you do stick it on, don’t you?”

“Well, my brother was turned like that by a magic ring.”

“There ain’t no such thing as magic,” said the boy. “I learnt that at school.”

“All right,” said Gerald. “Goodbye.”

“Oh, go ahead!” said the boy; “you do stick it on, though.”

“Well, that magic ring. If I can get hold of it I shall just wish we were all in a certain place. And we shall be. And then I can deal with both of them.”

“Deal?”

“Yes, the ring won’t unwish anything you’ve wished. That undoes itself with time, like a spring uncoiling. But it’ll give you a brand-new wish⁠—I’m almost certain of it. Anyhow, I’m going to chance it.”

“You are a rotter, aren’t you?” said the boy respectfully.

“You wait and see,” Gerald repeated.

“I say, you aren’t going into this swell place! You can’t?”

The boy paused, appalled at the majesty of Pym’s.

“Yes, I am⁠—they can’t turn us out as long as we behave. You come along, too. I’ll stand lunch.”

I don’t know why Gerald clung so to this boy. He wasn’t a very nice boy. Perhaps it was because he was the only person Gerald knew in London to speak to⁠—except That-which-had-been-Jimmy and the Ugly-Wugly; and he did not want to talk to either of them.

What happened next happened so quickly that, as Gerald said later, it was “just like magic.” The restaurant was crowded⁠—busy men were hastily bolting the food hurriedly brought by busy waitresses. There was a clink of forks and plates, the gurgle of beer from bottles, the hum of talk, and the smell of many good things to eat.

“Two chops, please,” Gerald had just said, playing with a plainly shown handful of money, so as to leave no doubt of his honourable intentions. Then at the next table he heard the words, “Ah, yes, curious old family heirloom,” the ring was drawn off the finger of That, and Mr. U. W. Ugli, murmuring something about a unique curio, reached his impossible hand out for it. The doormat-headed boy was watching breathlessly.

“There’s a ring right enough,” he owned. And then the ring slipped from the hand of Mr. U. W. Ugli and skidded along the floor. Gerald pounced on it like a greyhound on a hare. He thrust the dull circlet on his finger and cried out aloud in that crowded place:

“I wish Jimmy and I were inside that door behind the statue of Flora.”

It was the only safe place he could think of.

The lights and sounds and scents of the restaurant died away as a wax-drop dies in fire a raindrop in water. I don’t know, and Gerald never knew, what happened in that restaurant. There was nothing about it in the papers, though Gerald looked anxiously for “Extraordinary Disappearance of well-known City Man.” What the doormat-headed boy did or thought I don’t know either. No more does Gerald. But he would like to know, whereas I don’t care tuppence. The world went on all right, anyhow, whatever he thought or did. The lights and the sounds and the scents of Pym’s died out. In place of the light there was darkness; in place of the sounds there was silence; and in place of the scent of beef, pork, mutton, fish, veal, cabbage, onions, carrots, beer, and tobacco there was the musty, damp scent of a place underground that has been long shut up.

Gerald felt sick and giddy, and there was something at the back of his mind that he knew would make him feel sicker and giddier as soon as he should have the sense to remember what it was. Meantime it was important to think of proper words to soothe the City man that had once been Jimmy⁠—to keep him quiet till Time, like a spring uncoiling, should bring the reversal of the spell⁠—make all things as they were and as