William The Outlaw (4 page)

‘An’ no one what’s run after us has caught us – not once,’ ended William proudly and added, ‘I bet we c’n run faster’n anyone else in the
world.’

Joan smiled upon him fondly. She firmly believed that William could do anything in the world better than any one else in it.

‘And what are you going to do today?’ she said with interest.

That
, the expressions of the Outlaws gave her to understand, was the question. The Outlaws had no idea what they were going to do today. They were obviously ready for any suggestion from
the gentleman who, moralists inform us, specialises in providing occupation for the unoccupied.

‘Let’s make another motor boat,’ said Henry feebly, but his suggestion was treated with well-deserved contempt. The Outlaws were not in the habit of repeating their effects.
Moreover, the motor boat experiment had not been so successful as to warrant its repetition.

Suddenly Ginger’s face lit up.

‘I know!’ he said, ‘let’s show Joan
him . . .
you know, him what we saw last night – with the dead body—’

Joan’s eyes grew round with horror.

‘It
wasn’t
a dead body,’ said Douglas impatiently, ‘it was a skeleton.’

‘That’s the same as a dead body,’ said Ginger pugnaciously, ‘it was a
body
, wasn’t it? an’ now it’s dead.’

‘Yes, but it’s
bones
,’ protested Douglas.

‘Well, a body’s bones, isn’t it?’ said Ginger.

But here Joan interrupted. ‘Oh, what
is
it,
where
is it?’ she said, clasping her hands, ‘it sounds
awful.
’

Her horror satisfied them completely. With Joan you could always be so pleasantly sure that your effects would come off.

‘Come on,’ said William briskly assuming his air of Master of the Ceremonies, ‘we’ll show him you. We c’n get through the hole in the hedge ’n creep up to the
window through the bushes without him seein’ us at all.’

They got through the hole in the hedge and crept up to the window through the bushes. William, as Master of the Ceremonies, had an uneasy suspicion that in the cold morning
light both man and room might look perfectly normal, that the ghostly effect of the night before might have vanished completely. But the suspicions proved to be groundless. The room looked, if
possible, even more uncanny than it had done. And Mr Galileo Simpkins still pottered about it happily in his black dressing gown and skull cap (it was a costume in which he rather fancied himself).
Mr Galileo Simpkins liked his nice large downstairs lab and felt very happy in it. As he stirred an experiment in a little crucible he sang softly to himself from sheer good spirits. He was quite
unaware of the Outlaws watching his every movement with eager interest from the bushes outside the window. It was Ginger who saw and pointed out to the others the shelf at the back of the room on
which stood a row of bottles containing wizened frogs in some sort of liquid.

Aghast, they crept away.

‘Well, I’m
cert’n
that’s what he’s goin’ to do,’ said Douglas as soon as they reached the road, ‘he’s goin’ to blow up all the
world. He’s jus’ mixin’ up the stuff to do it with.’

‘Well, I
still
think he might be jus’ an ornery sort of man doin’ ornery chemistry,’ said Henry.

‘What about the dead body, then?’ said Ginger.

‘An’ what about frogs an’ things shut up in bottles an’ things?’ said William.

Then Joan spoke.

‘He’s a wizard,’ she said, ‘of
course
he’s a wizard.’

William treated this suggestion with derision.

‘A wizard,’ he said contemptuously. ‘Soppy fairytale stuff!
Course
he’s not. There
aren’t
any!’

But Joan was not crushed.

‘There
are
, William,’ she said solemnly, ‘I
know
there are.’

‘
How
d’you know there are?’ said William incredulously.

‘And what about the dead body?’ said Ginger with the air of one bringing forward an unanswerable objection.

‘The skeleton,’ corrected Douglas.

‘It’s someone he’s
turned
into a skeleton, of course,’ said Joan firmly.

‘Soppy fairy-tale stuff,’ commented William again with scorn. Joan bore his reproof meekly but clung to her point with feminine pertinacity.

‘It’s
not
, William. It’s
true.
I
know
it’s true.’

There was certainly something convincing about her earnestness though the Outlaws were determined not to be convinced by it.

‘No,’ said Douglas very firmly. ‘He’s a blower up, that’s what he is. He’s goin’ to blow up all the world.’

‘What about the frogs in bottles?’ said Henry.

‘They’re people he’s
turned
into frogs,’ said Joan.

The frogs certainly seemed to fit into Joan’s theory better than they fitted into Douglas’s. Joan pursued her advantage. ‘And didn’t you hear him sort of singing as he
mixed the things? He was making spells over them.’

The Outlaws were, outwardly at least, still sceptical.

‘Soppy fairy-tale stuff,’ said William once more with masculine superiority. ‘I tell you there
aren’t
any.’

But there was a fascination about the sight and they were loth to go far from it.

‘Let’s go back an’ see what he’s doin’ now,’ said Ginger, and eagerly they accepted the proposal. The hole in the hedge was conveniently large, the bushes by
the window afforded a convenient shelter and all would have gone well had not Mr Galileo Simpkins been engaged on the simple task of washing out some test tubes in a cupboard just outside the
Outlaws’ line of vision. This was more than they could endure.

‘What’s he
doin
’?’ said William in a voice of agonised suspense.

But none of them could see what he was doing.

‘I’ll go out,’ said Ginger with a heroic air. ‘I bet he won’t see me.’

So Ginger crept out of the shelter of the bushes and advanced boldly to the window. Too boldly – for Mr Galileo Simpkins, turning suddenly, saw, to his great surprise and indignation, a
small boy with an exceedingly impertinent face standing in his garden and staring rudely at him through his window. Mr Galileo Simpkins hated small boys, especially small boys with impertinent
faces. With an unexpected agility he leapt to the window and threw it open. Ginger fled in terror to the gate. Mr Galileo Simpkins shook his fist after him.

‘All right, you
wait
, my boy, you
wait
!’ he called.

By this time he wanted the boy with the impertinent face to understand that he was going to find out who he was and tell his father. He was going to put a stop to that sort of thing once and for
all. He wasn’t going to have boys with impertinent faces wandering about his garden and looking through his windows. He’d frighten them off now – at once. ‘You
wait
!’ he shouted again with vague but terrible menace in his voice.

Then he returned to his lab well pleased with himself.

The Outlaws crept back through the hole in the hedge and met Ginger in the road. They looked at Ginger as one might look at someone who has returned from the jaws of death. Ginger, now that the
danger was over, rather enjoyed his position.

‘
Well
,’ he said with satisfaction, ‘did you
see
him an’
hear
him? I bet he’d’ve
killed
me if he’d caught me.’

‘Blown you up,’ said Douglas.

‘Turned you into something,’ said Joan.

‘Wonder what he meant by saying ‘Wait’ like that?’ said William meditatively.

‘He meant that he was goin’ to put a spell on you,’ said Joan composedly.

Ginger went rather pale.

‘Soppy fairy-tale stuff,’ said William.

‘All right,’ said Joan, ‘just you wait and see.’

So they waited and they saw.

It was, of course, a coincidence that that night Ginger’s mother’s cook had made trifle for supper and that Ginger ate of this not wisely, but too well, and was the next morning
confined to bed with what the doctor called ‘slight gastric trouble’.

The Outlaws called for him the next morning and were curtly informed by the housemaid (who, like Mr Galileo Simpkins, hated all boys on principle) that Ginger was ill in bed and would not be
getting up that day.

They walked away in silence.

‘
Well
,’ said Joan in triumph, ‘what do you think about him being a magician
now?
’

This time William did not say ‘Soppy fairy-tale stuff.’

Ginger returned to them, somewhat pale and wobbly, the next day. Like them he preferred to lay the blame of his enforced retirement on to Mr Galileo Simpkins, rather than upon
the trifle.

‘Yes, that’s what he said,’ agreed Ginger earnestly. ‘He said, ‘you wait,’ an’ then jus’ about an hour after that I began to feel orful pains.
An’ I hadn’t had hardly any of that ole trifle . . . well, not much, anyway; well, not
too
much . . . well, not as much as I often have of things . . . an’ I had most
orful
pains an’—’

‘He must have made a little image of you in wax, Ginger,’ said Joan with an air of deep wisdom, ‘and stuck pins into it. That’s what they do . . . I expect he thinks
you’re dead now. That’s why he said “You wait”!’

They did not scoff at her any longer.

‘Well, I was nearly dead yesterday all right,’ said Ginger. ‘I’ve never had such
orful
pains. Jus’
like
pins running into me.’

‘They
were
pins running into you, Ginger,’ said Joan simply. ‘We’d better keep
right
away from him now or he’ll be turning us into
something.’

‘Like to turn
him
into something,’ said Ginger who was still feeling vindictive towards the supposed author of his gastric trouble.

But Joan shook her head. ‘No,’ said Joan, ‘we must keep
right
out of his way. You don’t know what they can do – magicians and people like that.’

‘
I
do,’ groaned Ginger.

So they went for a walk and held races and played Red Indians and sailed boats on the pond and climbed trees – but there was little zest in any of these pursuits. Their thoughts were with
Mr Galileo Simpkins the magician as he stirred his concoctions and uttered his spells and gazed upon his bottled victims and stuck pins into the waxen images of his foes.

‘Let’s jus’ go ’n look at him again,’ said William, when they met in the afternoon. ‘We won’t go near enough for him to
see
us but – but
let’s jus’ go ’n see what he’s
doin’!
’

‘
You
can,’ said Ginger bitterly. ‘He’s not stuck pins into you an’ given you
orful
pains. Why, I’m
still
feelin’ ill with it. We
had trifle again for lunch an’ I can’t eat more’n three helpin’s of it.’

‘No, we’d better not go near him again,’ said Joan shaking her head, her eyes wide.

But William did not agree with them.

‘I only want jus’ to look at him again an’ see what he’s
doin’. I’m
goin’, anyway.’

So they all went.

They had decided to creep down through the field behind the Red House to the road and thence through the hole in the hedge to the sheltering cluster of bushes that commanded
the magician’s room, but they had not so far to go before they saw him. It was a fine afternoon and Mr Galileo Simpkins had taken his detective novel and gone into the field just behind his
house. And there he was when the Outlaws stopped at the gate of the field, lying on the bank in the shade, reading. He was feeling at peace with all the world. He did not see the five faces that
gazed at him over the gate of the field and then disappeared. He went on dozing happily over his novel. He’d had a very happy morning. Though none of his experiments had come out still
he’d much enjoyed doing them. He’d thought once of that boy with the impertinent face and felt glad that he’d frightened him away so successfully. He’d seen no signs of him
since. That was what you had to do with boys – scare them off, or you got no peace at all . . . Very nice warm sun . . . very exciting novel . . .

Meanwhile the Outlaws crept past the field and were standing talking excitedly in the road.

‘Did you
see
?’ gasped Ginger, ‘jus’ sittin’ an’ readin’ ornery jus’ as if he hadn’t been stickin’ pins into me all last
night.’

‘Let’s go home,’ pleaded Joan. ‘You – you don’t know
what
he’ll do.’

‘No,’ said William, ‘now he’s all right readin’ in that field let’s go into his room an’ look at his things.’

There was a murmur of dissent.

‘All right,’ said William, ‘you needn’t.
I’m
jolly well goin’.’

So they all went.

It was certainly thrilling to creep through the window and stand in the terrible room with the knowledge that at any minute the Magician might return, change them into frogs
and cork them up in bottles.

‘Wonder if I can find the wax thing of me he was sticking pins into last night,’ said Ginger looking round the bench.

‘Let’s make a wax thing of
him
’n stick pins into it,’ suggested Henry.

‘No, let’s
turn
him into something,’ said Douglas.

Joan clapped her hands.

‘Oh
yes
,’ she said, ‘
let’s!
That
would
be fun! His spells and things must be all over the place.’

Ginger took up a pestle and mortar.

‘This is what he was stirring today,’ he said, ‘wonder what this changes folks into.’

‘Prob’ly depends what sort of a spell you say when you stir it,’ said Joan.

‘Well, let’s try it,’ said William.

‘What’ll we turn him into?’ said Ginger.

‘A donkey,’ suggested William.

‘Well, who’ll do it?’

‘Let me try,’ said Joan who had a certain prestige as originator of the now generally accepted magician theory.

Ginger handed her the crucible. ‘I think,’ said Joan importantly, ‘that I ought to have a circle of chalk drawn round me.’

They couldn’t find any chalk so they made a little circle of test tubes around her and watched her with interest. Joan shut her eyes, stirred up the mixture in the crucible and
chanted: