The Box of Delights (12 page)

‘It was about that Kay Harker, Master Abner,’ Rat said.

‘What about him?’ Abner said. ‘Let your nephew speak for himself. What have you got to say about this Kay Harker?’

‘Well, nothing much, sir,’ the nephew said, ‘except that he ought to have his head sawed off.’

‘What for?’ Abner asked.

‘’Acos he’s going to have a dog give him for Christmas,’ the nephew said.

‘You infernal young lout!’ Abner said. ‘What d’you mean, Rat, by bringing your nephew here to repeat your folly to me? Get out, the two of you! Get back to your sewer and
have a bath. You’ve got to bring someone, Nine; show these dolts out as you go. No, not by the way they came. I won’t have them listening behind the skirting-board. Kick them both out
of the back door.’

Joe and the foxy-faced man, who seemed to be ‘Nine,’ took the two rats out through the inn.

‘Two infernal fools!’ Abner said. ‘They don’t seem to have a very high opinion of your ancient pupil, my dear,’ he said, turning to the lady.

‘I don’t wonder,’ Sylvia Daisy Pouncer said placidly. ‘He was a child for whom I had the utmost detestation and contempt: a thoroughly morbid, dreamy, idle muff with a
low instinct for the turf, which will be his undoing later in life.’

‘Well, now,’ Abner said, ‘the question resolves itself into this: what did that man do with the Box when those fellows let him get past them at Seekings House?’

‘I felt, too late,’ his wife replied, ‘that we ought to have been there and not trusted it to those people. However, it is too late now to cry over the spilt milk.’

‘It’s not too late to make the spillers cry,’ Abner said, angrily. ‘Of all the blithering fools that I have ever had to deal with Joe and those two are the most
blithering. He got away right under their noses.’

‘As for Cole,’ Sylvia Pouncer Brown replied sweetly, ‘if he hid the Box he must have done one of two things: either hidden it on one of the bookshelves in the study at Seekings
– there are old books there hardly ever disturbed; or, possibly, in the old cupboard in the hall there, underneath the stairs. He did not go upstairs, that I know. I have been over to
Seekings in the last twenty minutes and talked to two of the little girls. They told me everything. Cole gave a marvellous conjuring performance and did not leave the library until the Tatchester
Choir interrupted the party; then, apparently, he went into the hall and from the hall went out with the Choir. Therefore, if he hid the Box it must have been in the library or in the
hall.’

‘Not necessarily, my Brightness,’ Abner said. ‘While the party was singing carols in the hall he could have slipped upstairs and hidden the Box there.’

‘I grant that he could have, my Astuteness,’ Sylvia said, ‘but the little girls said he didn’t.’

‘Whatever they said, my Inspiration, the point will have to be eliminated as a matter of routine,’ Abner said. ‘Besides, he may not have hidden it; he may have handed it to
somebody. Who were there? These Jones children and this boy, Kay Harker, your ancient pupil. I think, my Ideal, and hope that you may agree, that he would not have trusted a treasure so great to
any child whom he had not seen before that afternoon.’

‘Well then, there remains the guardian,’ Sylvia said: ‘this Caroline Louisa.’

‘Cole would have regarded her as the mistress of the house, certainly,’ Abner said, ‘and as a woman to be trusted. He must have been close to her in the hall. He could have
handed it to her and whispered to her to keep it for him.’

‘Your imagination is quite Shakespearean,’ Sylvia Daisy said.

‘Therefore,’ Abner said, ‘we shall have to take steps about Madam Caroline Louisa.’

‘May a weak woman make a suggestion, my starlike Abner?’ Sylvia said. ‘Is it not more likely that he handed it to the Bishop, the Precentor, the Archdeacon or one of the
Canons? You see, he was really in luck. There he was, unexpectedly in the midst of the most respectable company in the county, every one of which could be trusted to any amount.’

‘It is only too likely, my Empress,’ Abner said. ‘Those three fools have let us in for a perplexing time. Supposing the Box is not hidden . . . and supposing he didn’t
give it to this Caroline Louisa, he’d have handed it, probably, to the Bishop. Whichever of the Cathedral staff had it would have called in all the others. He’d have called in the Dean,
the Treasurer, the Seneschal and these other fellows in the Cathedral, and they’d have put the Box in the Cathedral treasure vaults. And you know what kind of vaults those are: Guy Fawkes and
his powder wouldn’t get through those, as we know from bitter experience. That’s where the Box is now, depend upon it.’

‘My dear,’ his wife said, ‘I think you look a little too much on the gloomy side of things. I do not doubt that in a normal season the Bishop, or whoever it was, would have
acted as you suggest, but this isn’t a normal season. At this time, so near to Christmas-time, the whole Cathedral staff is working overtime, and normal procedures are in abeyance. I think it
very likely, my dear, that the Bishop, or whoever it was, when he got home to the Palace or the Deanery or the Canonry, put the Box into a drawer in his dressing-table among his collars and
handkerchiefs and thought no more about it.’

Abner shook his head. ‘My priceless Pearl,’ he said, ‘my blue and my yellow Sapphire, if I may call you so, I wish I could think it. But if Cole didn’t hide it, he gave
it to someone, that’s sure; that’s the first point to settle, and Our Routine will soon find out which . . .’

‘Will you ask The Boy?’ Sylvia asked, making a sign with her hand.

‘I can’t till I get home,’ he answered. ‘With luck we ought to know before then. Look here, Sylvia, I’m tempted to get rid of Charles, with his infernal
“Ha-ha, what.”’

‘Oh no, my Emerald,’ she said. ‘He is one of our most precious workers. Get rid of Charles? Never. Whatever for?’

‘He was in charge of Joe and the other,’ Abner said, ‘specially charged to nobble and scrobble Cole. He knew that Cole had a Punch and Judy show. He let Cole go right past him
with the goods on him, with his Toby Dog in his pocket and the Punch and Judy show on his shoulder. Could a Prize Imbecile have been blinder or sillier, I ask you?’

‘My Abner,’ Sylvia said, ‘you are unjust to our Charles. The terrier may have been in Cole’s pocket: many terriers are very small. No doubt the show was also folded up
very tight and not to be seen. Of course it was. How unjust of you to blame poor Charles. You must never, never think of getting rid of Charles. I repeat, my Emerald, never think of it. He did his
duty well in a terrible night of storm and was deceived by a ruse. Get your Routine to work by all means, but then get home and ask The Boy.’

‘The Routine is all at work,’ he said. ‘As to Charles, I shall follow my own judgement.’

‘My Topaz and Diamond,’ Sylvia said, ‘your judgement is necessarily now mine. Can you not see that Charles is our only buffer against the stupidity and the craft of Joe? Can
you not see that Charles is the only friend we have? But enough, my Idol, you do see; I see you see. Now as to this child, Maria Jones, whose ways you like. I admit, she sounds most promising.
Remember that Cole
may
have given the Box to her.’

‘I remember that,’ Abner said, ‘but even so, that would be a point in her favour. I think you’ll agree, that she would be an acquisition. She must be here with Nine, now,
Nine and Charles. Shall I ring for them to bring her?’

‘Do, my own Abbey,’ Sylvia said.

Kay saw Abner stretch out his left hand and press a button in the middle of the table. An electric bell rang somewhere below in the house. Almost immediately the foxy-faced man and another
curate, whom Kay had never before seen, entered with little Maria.

‘Ah, Miss Maria,’ Abner said, ‘good morning. It was most kind of you to come over in answer to our message. Somebody was saying that you were very much interested in stained
glass. We were making up a little party to go over to St Griswold’s this morning, lunching there, looking at the glass and being back at Seekings before tea. Would you care to come along? Oh,
by the way, you haven’t been introduced: this lady is Mrs Brown.’

‘Oh, thanks very much,’ Maria said, nodding at Mrs Brown, ‘I’ll be delighted. It’s rather a mouldy lot of glass, isn’t it, at St Griswold’s?’

‘In the main church, yes,’ the foxy-faced man said. ‘Nothing a day earlier than fifteenth century; but in the Lady Chapel there is some of the very best that ever was
done.’

‘It’s a pretty mouldy thing, English glass, if you ask me,’ Maria said.

‘Well, I think you will find that this isn’t English glass,’ the foxy-faced man said.

‘Well, my dear,’ Mrs Brown said, ‘before we start would you like to run back to Seekings and get some thick wraps?’

‘No, I’ll come as I am,’ Maria said, ‘thanks.’

‘Would you like to leave word,’ Mrs Brown said, ‘that you will be out until teatime?’

‘Oh no,’ Maria said, ‘thanks. They know that I can look after myself. They won’t bother about me. I’ve generally got a pistol or two on me and I’m a dead shot
with both hands.’

‘How you must enjoy the quiet atmosphere of school,’ Abner said.

‘School!’ Maria said. ‘They know better than to try that game on me. I’ve been expelled from three and the headmistresses still swoon when they hear my name breathed.
I’m Maria Jones, I am: somewhat talked of in school circles, if you take the trouble to enquire.’

‘I count it a great honour,’ Abner said, ‘to entertain so distinguished an ornament of her sex. Then, we will start, shall we? We will have a look at the glass in the morning
light. We will get to the
Bear’s Paw
at Tatchester for lunch: the place still famous for duck patty. Then we will glance at the western window while it has the light behind it and
bring you safely back to Seekings in good time for tea.’

They moved out from the room, Mrs Brown with her hand on Maria’s shoulder. Kay, crouched at the spyhole, tried to cry out, ‘Don’t go with them, Maria: they’re up to no
good. They are the gang,’ but being tiny as he was his voice made a little reedy squeak, like the buzzing of a fly.

‘Back now,’ he said to the Mouse, ‘back now to Seekings as fast as ever we can go.’

At this instant round the corner of the corridor in which they were, came a party of the Wolves of the Gulf. They had been drinking more rum since Kay had passed them and there they were,
pot-valiant, swinging lighted lanterns in their left hands and brandishing cutlasses in their right. Kay heard one of them say, ‘There are their footsteps in the dust – two of them: a
mouse and another – and we’ll grind their bones to make our bread.’

‘Yes,’ another said, ‘it’s the cold-blooded cheek of it: coming past us when we were taking our ease round the bowl. We’ll cut ’em into little collops. There
they are!’

‘Where?’ said another. ‘I’ll eat their livers fried.’

‘Up there,’ the first one said, ‘up there, where they can’t escape.’

‘Come on now,’ they cried to Kay, ‘come on. We’ll mince you into collops and we’ll eat your livers fried.’

Kay saw their gleaming teeth, their red eyes and their flashing cutlass edges. ‘Give me your hand, Mouse,’ he said. Quickly he caught the Mouse’s hand and with his other hand
twiddled the knob on the magic box that he might go swiftly, and, instantly, the two of them were plucked up into the air and whirled past the Wolves of the Gulf back to Seekings. He dropped his
weapons in the Mouse’s armoury, went back into his room and resumed his shape.

‘Kay,’ Susan was saying from the other side of the door, ‘d’you know where Jemima is?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘What d’you want Jemima for?’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I was out in the street buying Christmas presents and Maria went into a car with some total strangers at the
Rupert’s Arms
, and she has gone off
with them, and she knows she is absolutely forbidden to go into cars with total strangers.’

‘What sort of a car was it?’ Peter asked.

‘Oh, it was a big, rather old, dark car. I didn’t like the look of the strangers at all, though two of them were dressed like curates.’

‘I expect it will be all right,’ Kay said. He didn’t think that it would be all right: he was very much worried.

Kay did not know what to do; he wished that Caroline Louisa was there. As he went downstairs, Ellen met him.

‘Oh, Master Kay,’ she said, ‘I didn’t hear you come in. There has been a message from your guardian. She’ll be here tonight by the eight-seven, she says, while
you’re all at Tatchester at the Punch and Judy show.’

‘Oh, good; I am glad,’ he said. ‘Is her brother well, then?’

‘Much better, she said, Master Kay.’

‘Oh splendid.’

He called the others into the study and told them how Maria had gone with Abner and the gangsters.

‘She’ll be all right,’ Peter said. ‘Maria can look after herself.’

‘It is like Maria,’ Jemima said, ‘to go plunging off with any scoundrels who come along with a suggestion.’

‘I say, it’s rather sport,’ Susan said. ‘Supposing they say “Miss Maria Jones, you will either join our gang or go down the oubliette for ever.”’

‘I pity any gangster who talks like that to Maria,’ Peter said.

‘Supposing she joins the gang,’ Susan said. ‘We might not see her again for years. Then, presently, when we are all old and frightfully hard up, suddenly a mysterious lady,
covered with diamonds, will drive up in a Rolls, and say, “I’m your long-lost sister, Maria, came back. I’m the Queen of the Gang now and all your troubles are at an
end.”’

‘She’ll be Queen of the Gang, all right,’ Kay said; but he felt uneasy, and wished that he knew what to do.

He went round to the
Rupert’s Arms
to speak to the proprietress, Mrs Calamine.

‘Could you tell me, please, who the clergymen were who were here this morning?’

‘Those, Master Kay?’ she said. ‘That was the Reverend Doctor Boddledale, with his wife and chaplain and private secretaries. He is the Head of the Missionary and Theological
Training College at Chesters, in the Chester Hills.’

‘I thought he was named Mr Brown.’