Arabel and Mortimer (11 page)

Mortimer drew himself up and looked immensely proud that a song had been written about him. Arabel sucked her finger and leaned against an apple tree.

Inside the house, Uncle Urk suddenly thought, "What if Arabel was right about those men being giraffe thieves? Ben says she's mostly a sensible little thing. I'd look silly if she'd a-warned me, and I didn't do anything, and they really
was
thieves."

So, after thinking about it for a while, he rang up Sam Heyward, the night watchman, on the zoo's internal telephone. "Sam," he said, "I got a kind of feeling there might be a bit o' trouble tonight, so why don't you let old Noah loose? It's months since he had a night out. You never know, if there's any miscreants about, he might put a spoke in their wheel."

"Okay, Urk, if you say so," said Sam. "Anyways, old Noah might catch a few rabbits; there's a sight too many rabbits about in the park just now, eating up all the wildebeest food."

Sam left his night watchman's hut to let out Noah the boa, who was very pleased to have the freedom of the park again, and slithered quietly away through the grass. When Sam returned to his hut, he didn't notice that a small tube had been slipped under the door, in the crack at the hinge end. As soon as he shut the door, a sweet-smelling gas began to dribble in through the tube. By slow degrees Sam became drowsier and drowsier until, after about half an hour, he toppled right off his stool and lay on the matting
fast asleep, dreaming that he had put ten pounds on a horse in the Derby called Horseradish, and that it had been on the point of winning when Noah the boa, who could travel at a terrific speed when he chose to, suddenly shot under the tape just ahead of Horseradish and won the race.

Meanwhile, in Uncle Urk's garden Chris sang,

"Arabel's raven is perfectly hollow,
What he can't chew up he'll manage to
swallow—
Furniture—fire escapes—fencing—and
phones—
All are digested by Mortimer Jones."

Mortimer looked even prouder.

Chris sang,

"When the ice cream disappears from the cones,
When you are deafened by shrieks or by moans,
When the fur's flying, or the air's full of stones,
You can be certain—"

Just at this moment Aunt Effie came home. As soon as she was through the gate, she said, "Chris! Fetch out that meat safe!"

Looking rather startled, Chris laid down his guitar and did as he was told. He placed the meat safe under the apple tree.

Instantly, Aunt Effie grabbed Mortimer, thrust him into the safe (which he completely filled), shut the door, and slammed home the catch.

A fearful cry came from inside.

"There!" said Aunt Effie. "Now, you go up to bed, Arabel Jones, and I don't want to hear a
single sound
out of you, or out of that bird, till morning—do you hear me?"

Since Mortimer, inside the meat safe, was making a noise like a troop of roller skaters crossing a tin bridge and shouting, "Nevermore!" at the top of his lungs, it was quite hard for Arabel to hear what Aunt Effie said, but she could easily understand what her aunt meant.

Arabel went quietly and sadly up to bed, but she had not the least intention of leaving Mortimer to pass the night inside the meat safe. "He hasn't done anything bad in Aunt Effie's house," Arabel thought, "so why should he be punished by being shut inside the meat safe? It isn't fair. Besides, Mortimer can't
stand
being shut up."

Indeed, the noise from the meat safe could be heard for two hundred yards around Uncle Urk's house. But Aunt Effie went indoors and turned up the volume of the television very loud in order to drown Mortimer's yells and bangs.

"When he learns who's master he'll soon settle down," she said grimly.

Arabel always did exactly as she was told. Aunt Effie had said, "I don't want to hear a single sound out of you," so, as soon as it was dark, and Aunt Effie and Uncle Urk had gone to bed, Arabel put on her dressing gown and slippers and went very softly down the stairs and out through the front door, which she had to unlock. She did not make a single sound.

Mortimer had quieted down just a little inside the
meat safe, but he was very far from asleep. He was making a miserable mumbling, groaning sound to himself, and kicking and scratching with his claws. Arabel softly undid the catch.

"Hush, Mortimer!" she whispered. "We don't want to wake them."

They could hear Uncle Urk's snores coming out through the bedroom window. The sound was like somebody grinding a bunch of rusty wires along a section of corrugated iron, ending with a tremendous rattle.

Mortimer was so glad to see Arabel that he went quite silently. She lifted him out of the meat safe and held him tight, flattening his feathers, which were all endways and ruffled. Then she carried him back up the stairs to her bedroom.

Mortimer did not usually like sleeping on a bed; he preferred a bread bin or a coal scuttle or the
bathroom cupboard; but he had been so horrified by the meat safe that he was happy to share Arabel's eiderdown, though he did peck a hole in it so that most of the feathers came out. Either because of all the feathers flying around or because of the excitements of the day, neither Arabel nor Mortimer slept very well.

Mortimer was dreaming about giraffes. Arabel was dreaming about Noah the boa.

After an hour or so, Mortimer suddenly shot bolt upright in bed.

"What is it, Mortimer?" whispered Arabel. She knew that Mortimer's ears were very keen, like those of an owl; he could hear a potato crisp fall onto a carpeted floor half a mile away.

Mortimer turned his head, intently listening. Now even Arabel thought she could hear something, past Uncle Urk's snores—a soft series of muffled thumps.

"Oh my goodness, Mortimer! Do you think those men are stealing Lord Donisthorpe's giraffes?"

Mortimer did think so. His boot-button black eyes gleamed with pleasure at the thought. Arabel could see this because the moon was shining brightly through the window.

"I had better wake up Uncle Urk," said Arabel. "Though Aunt Effie will be cross, because she said she didn't want to hear me."

She went and tapped on Uncle Urk's door and
said in a soft, polite voice, so as not to disturb Aunt Effie, "Uncle Urk. Would you come out, please? We believe that thieves are stealing your giraffes."

But the noise made by Uncle Urk as he snored was so tremendous that neither he nor Effie (who was snoring a bit on her own account) could possibly hear Arabel's polite tones.

"Oh dear, Mortimer," said Arabel then. "I wonder what we had better do."

Mortimer plainly thought that they ought to let well enough alone. His expression suggested that if every giraffe in the zoo were hijacked, he, personally, would not raise any objection.

"Perhaps we could wake up Lord Donisthorpe," Arabel said, and she went downstairs and into the garden, with Mortimer sitting on her shoulder.

But when they were close to it, Lord Donisthorpe's castle looked very difficult to enter. There was a moat, and a drawbridge, which was raised, and a massive wooden door, which was shut.

Then Arabel remembered that Chris slept in a wooden hut near the ostrich enclosure.

"We'll wake Chris," she told Mortimer. "He'll know what to do."

Mortimer was greatly enjoying the trip through the moonlit zoo. He did not mind where they went, or what they did, as long as they did not go back to bed too soon.

Arabel walked quietly over the grass in her bedroom slippers. "Chris sleeps in the hut with red geraniums in the window boxes," she said. "He showed it to me while the doughnuts were cooking."

"Kaaark," said Mortimer, thinking about doughnuts.

Arabel walked up to the hut with the red geraniums and banged on the door.

"Chris!" she called softly. "It's me—Arabel! Will you open the door, please?"

It took a long time to wake Chris. Nobody had pumped any gas under his door; he was just naturally a very heavy sleeper. But at last he woke and came stumbling and yawning to open the door. He was very surprised to see Arabel.

"Arabel! And Mortimer! Whatever are you doing up at this time of night? Your aunt Effie would blow her top!"

"Shhh!" said Arabel. "Chris, Mortimer and I think there are thieves in the zoo. Can't you hear a kind of thumping and bumping coming from the zebra house?"

Chris listened and thought he could. "I'd best set off the alarm," he said. "Lord Donisthorpe always tells us, 'Better ten false alarms than lose one animal.'"

He pressed the alarm button, which ought to have let off tremendously loud sirens at different points all over the park, but nothing happened.

"That's funny," Chris said, scratching his head and yawning some more. Then his eyes and his mouth opened wide, and he said, "Blimey! It
must
be thieves. They must have cut the wire. I'd best go on my bike and rouse Lord Donisthorpe. I know a back way into the castle, and then he can phone the police.
You'd
better stop here, Arabel, until I get back; you shouldn't be running about the zoo in your slippers if there's thieves around."

Chris started off on his bike toward Lord Donisthorpe's castle. Arabel would have stayed in his hut, as he asked her, but Mortimer had other ideas. He hoisted himself off Arabel's shoulder and began flapping heavily along the ground in the direction of the giraffe house.

"Mortimer!" called Arabel. "Come back!"

But Mortimer took no notice, and so Arabel started in pursuit of him.

To Arabel's horror, as she went after Mortimer, she saw a truck parked outside the zebra house. Men with black bowler hats, crammed so far down over their heads that their faces were invisible, stood by the truck, packing in limp zebras which seemed to be fast asleep.

"Oh, how awful!" said Arabel. "Mortimer, stop! The thieves are stealing the zebras!"

But Mortimer was not interested in zebra thieves. He had only one idea in his head and that was to get to the doughnut machine near the giraffe house. The thieves did not notice Arabel and Mortimer pass by, and Arabel caught up with Mortimer just as he perched on the machine.

"Kaaark!" he said, giving the machine a hopeful kick.

"If I get you a doughnut, Mortimer, will you come back with me quietly to Chris's hut?" said Arabel.
She had the tenpenny piece that Lord Donisthorpe had given her in her dressing-gown pocket.