The Big Six: A Novel

by Arthur Ransome

  “I meant the swallows,” said Dick, but came back to earth in time to see Pete mount Dot’s bicycle, again in his own way, and ride off with Tom and Bill.

  Joe watched them till they turned the corner by the inn.

  “See you again,” he said, and Dick and Dot standing in the road by the staithe watched him jump on Dick’s bicycle and go off at a tremendous pace on his way past Dr. Dudgeon’s to the Ferry.

  “Hullo. Are you left behind?” Mrs. Barrable, followed by the stout pug-dog, William, came up to them carrying her painting things. “I’ve just met Tom and two of his friends bicycling as if their lives depended on it.”

  “Everything does,” said Dorothea. “Have you seen the notice?”

  They took her to the notice-board. She read the notice carefully through.

  “Somehow I can’t believe they did it,” she said.

  “Of course they didn’t,” said Dorothea. “Don’t you see, Admiral, it’s like this….”

  “Well, I hope you’re right,” said Mrs. Barrable. “But where are they off to in such a hurry?”

  “Far and wide,” said Dorothea. “Scotland Yard’s begun to cast its net. You see if we can only find who did do it, everything’ll be all right. And if boats have been cast off when they weren’t anywhere near people’ll begin to see it wasn’t them. And if any more boats get cast off we want to start detecting right away. There may be a clue for William to work on….”

  “William!” exclaimed Mrs. Barrable.

  William looked up at her and grunted.

  “He’s our bloodhound,” said Dorothea.

  “I’d never have thought it of him,” said Mrs. Barrable. “But I’m sure he’ll do his best. What are you going to do with the rest of the day? Aren’t you bicycling too?”

  “It wasn’t any good our going,” said Dorothea. “You see we don’t know the Coots they’ve gone to see. We’ve lent them our bicycles. We’re in charge of Scotland Yard and the Death and Glory.”

  “I wonder if they’d like a picture of their Death and Glory,” said Mrs. Barrable.

  “They’d simply love it,” said Dorothea. “They were awfully pleased with Dick’s photograph. And if you’re going to paint I can get on with The Outlaw. I left Volume Five there last night.”

  DETECTIVES ON THEIR WAY

  “What about Dick?”

  “There are sure to be some birds in the Wilderness,” said Dick.

  The three of them strolled through the village with William. Mrs. Barrable looked in at Dr. Dudgeon’s and had a word with the Doctor’s wife while Dick and Dorothea visited Scotland Yard and had a look at yesterday’s clues and notes. Then they crossed the Coot Club dyke by the drawbridge (which in these days was never raised) and went through the Farland’s garden and so along the bank of the river to the dyke in the Wilderness where the Death and Glory lay hid.

  “She makes a lovely picture in there among the willows,” said Mrs. Barrable. “And if I plant myself here those reflections give a patch of colour just where I want it.” The Admiral took her folding stool from Dick and prepared to settle down. “But I wish those boys were on board.”

  “Would it do if I sat in the cockpit?” asked Dorothea. “I’ll be keeping still anyhow writing. I’ll just slip into the cabin to get the book.”

  She climbed aboard, and jumped down into the cockpit. This was just the place to write The Outlaw, afloat in the old boat. She turned the handle of the cabin door. It would not open. She rattled it, and looked at the keyhole. There was no key there, but the door was locked.

  “Oh, bother!” said Dorothea.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Dick.

  “I can’t get in.”

  Dick came aboard and tried the door.

  “What’s the matter?” asked the Admiral.

  “They’ve locked us out,” said Dick.

  “Oh rubbish,” said the Admiral. She too came along and tried the door. She, too, failed to open it. And then, as people do when they cannot get into an empty house, they looked in through the windows. And there, on the opposite bunk, lay Volume Five of The Outlaw of the Broads where Pete had put it, meaning to bring it to Scotland Yard.

  “What am I to do?” said Dorothea. “I can’t do any detecting till the others come back, and I’ve got a bit of the Outlaw all ready to write.”

  “What about the book you had with you after breakfast?” asked the Admiral.

  “That’s for Scotland Yard,” said Dorothea. “Evidence and reports from scouts and all that. And I’m in the middle of a chapter in Volume Five.” She looked dolefully through the cabin window at Volume Five lying in a patch of sunlight on the bunk.

  “I can give you a bit of paper,” said the Admiral. “Write on that and copy it out afterwards. Lots of authors never work any other way. Like sketching, you know, before doing a picture.”

  “Yes, I could do that,” said Dorothea. “It’s a bit of dialogue and I’ve got to get it just right.”

  The morning passed peacefully away. Dorothea with pencil and paper worked in the cockpit of the Death and Glory, trying to keep her mind on The Outlaw and not to let it go wandering off after the four detectives. Dick lay in the grass and watched a water-hen. Mrs. Barrable painted. William explored, coming back to them now and then to make sure that he was not really alone.

  Once William stiffened and barked. For a moment they thought they heard someone moving in the bushes at the head of the dyke, and Dorothea started up, thinking that one of the others had come back. But, if there was anyone there, he went away and William barked no more.

  Towards one o’clock they went home to Mrs. Barrable’s for lunch and in the afternoon Dick and Dorothea borrowed the bloodhound and came back to Scotland Yard to wait for the return of the detectives.

  CHAPTER XVII

  NEWS FROM THE OUTPOSTS

  “WHAT’S happened to the sun?” said Dorothea. “I can look straight at it without blinking.”

  Dick and Dorothea were standing outside Scotland Yard. William was lying down. It is hard work training a pug-dog to be a bloodhound, hard work for everybody.

  “It’s like that day when we got stuck in the fog on Breydon,” said Dick.

  “I wish they’d hurry up,” said Dorothea and as she said it they heard the ring of a bicycle bell.

  “Pete!” exclaimed Dorothea. “That’s my bell.”

  Gravel scrunched under wheels suddenly braked, and, a moment later, Pete, pushing Dorothea’s bicycle, came round the corner of the house. He looked a little wobbly at the knees and was very out of breath.

  “Ain’t biked for a long time,” he said.

  “Well?” said Dorothea. “What happened? Come on. Let’s go in. I ought to write down your report.”

  “Nothing to report,” said Pete. “’Cept we’ve lost a member.”

  “How?”

  “We hadn’t only one in Wroxham and that was young Tim and now he’s out. His Dad come raging up when I were talking to him, and he tell me to get further and he say he won’t have his Tim mix up with any gang like the Coot Club and if he’d have knowed what Tom Dudgeon was up to he never would have let his Tim join us. ‘Bird Protection!’ he say. ‘Getting into gaol more like.’”

  “They’ll be sorry some day,” said Dorothea.

  “They’re all the same,” said Pete. “There’s Rodley’s. They was friends of ours after we salve that Margoletta for ’em, but now they was as bad as Tim’s Dad. I go along there and ask if anybody been casting off boats at Wroxham, like you said, and they start laughing at me. ‘Come to the wrong place you have’ say that fat foreman. ‘Ain’t no Coot Club at Wroxham. You better go to Horning and ask there.’”

  “But didn’t you find out?” said Dorothea. They had gone into Scotland Yard and Dorothea, pen in hand, was at the table looking at a page on which she had written “District Reports”. She had divided the page into four columns headed “Place”, “Boats cast off”, “Date”, and “Where D & Gs were at the time”.

>   “None cast off at Wroxham,” said Pete. “I’d got that out of Tim before his Dad came along. I only ask at Rodley’s to make sure. But there ain’t none been cast off. Tim’d have know if there was.”

  Dorothea wrote “Wroxham … None”, and said, “But, of course some may be any day.”

  “We won’t know,” said Pete. “Who’s to tell us with Tim out?”

  “What about higher up the river?” said Dorothea. “What’s that other place?”

  “Coltishall,” said Dick, who was looking at the map.

  “Nothing cast off there,” said Pete. “But they hear about boats cast off at Horning and Potter, and about them shackles being stole. They ask me who done it, and I say we was working to find out.”

  “That’s right,” said Dorothea. “They always say that. Scotland Yard is following up a clue and an arrest is expected shortly.”

  “Well we got lots of clues,” said Pete. “It’s the following up’s the job.”

  Dorothea wrote “Coltishall … None”. She looked regretfully at the little heap of black flags on pins that she had been hoping to stick into the map to show that boats had been cast off where the Coots could not have had a hand in it. “Oh well,” she said. “The other places are much further away, and the further away the better the proof. Who’ll be back next?”

  “Let’s go out in the road and see if anyone’s in sight,” said Dick.

  “Let’s go along to the Death and Glory,” said Dorothea. “I’ve left The Outlaw there and I’ve got something to write in it. I could see it through the window, but I couldn’t get in.”

  “You can’t now neither,” said Pete. “With that Tedder about, Joe he take the key.”

  There was nothing to be done but wait.

  “Oh well,” said Dorothea. “Somebody always has to do a lot of waiting while detectives are making inquiries. At the real Scotland Yard people are waiting about day and night.”

  *

  Bill was the next detective to return.

  “They know about us right away at Stalham,” he said, as he leaned his dusty bicycle against the shed. “The way that talk do fly. Jimmy Pellacote at Stalham he ask me where we sell them shackles. I tell him we ain’t got no shackles, nor never cast off no boats, but he say everybody know better’n that. And I go for to teach him different but he run off home and me after him and his Mum come out to me and tell me to leave him alone and there’s no more bird protecting for any son of her’n if that’s what it come to, and what do my Dad think of me? And how do I dare show my face, and on and on she go getting hotter while she talk.”

  “What did you say?” asked Dorothea, hurrying in and sitting down at the table.

  “She don’t give me no chance to say nothing,” said Bill. “She push that Jimmy in behind her and slam her door and I come away. But there ain’t no boats been cast off at Stalham. I ask a lot of chaps.”

  “Bother,” said Dorothea, and added “Stalham … None” to her list.

  “Did you see Tommy at Irstead?” asked Pete.

  “Is he a Coot too?” asked Dorothea.

  “He ain’t a Coot not really,” said Bill. “He ain’t got a head on him no better’n a squashed frog. I see him all right but he don’t know nothing. Fishing he were on the gravel reach.”

  “Catching anything?” asked Pete, who, detective or no detective, was still a fisherman.

  “Perch,” said Bill.

  “Oh, never mind the fish,” said Dorothea. “Had any boats been cast off?”

  “He tell me to keep my shadow off the water,” said Bill. “So I creep up and give him one of my sandwiches and when I ask if any boats been cast off, why Tommy he say, ‘How do you know?’”

  “Go on. Go on,” said Dorothea, reaching out for one of the little black paper flags all ready on its pin.

  “I say I don’t know but I want to know and Tommy he say it weren’t his fault and I say when were it and what boat and Tommy he said it were his Dad’s row-boat and he give it Tommy to tie up and Tommy he tie it to a stick what broke and he have to go in swimming to catch it.”

  There was a groan from Dorothea. “That doesn’t count,” she said and wrote “Irstead … None”.

  “Nothing at Barton neither,” said Bill, and Dorothea wrote again.

  “Never mind, Dot,” said Dick. “Tom may have found some more have been cast off at Potter Heigham. And Joe’s not back yet either.”

  *

  It was already late in the afternoon when Tom rode round the corner of the house and vaulted off his bicycle by the door of Scotland Yard.

  “None at all?” said Dorothea, who knew the moment she saw his face that he was not bringing good news.

  “Not a boat,” said Tom. “Either at Potter or Hickling. And the boatmen at Sonning’s were rather beastly. They’re all dead sure the Death and Glories did it and they said if they catch one of them they’ll make him sorry for it, police or no police.”

  “They won’t catch us here,” said Pete. “And if they try anything my Dad’ll …”

  “Oh yes, Tom,” said Dorothea. “But …”

  “There’s never been any boats adrift at Potter except just that one night when they were there. It’s awfully unlucky.”

  “It was done on purpose that night,” said Dorothea. “I’m surer than ever.”

  “Well they all think it was the Death and Glories,” said Tom. “And young Bob Curten ran away the moment he saw me and I had to catch him and then he said he wasn’t going to be a Coot any more.”

  “Same as Jimmy at Stalham,” said Bill.

  “And young Tim at Wroxham,” said Pete.

  “There’s going to be no Coot Club left,” said Tom. “What about boats at Stalham and Wroxham?”

  Dorothea showed him her melancholy list.

  “None cast off anywhere,” said Tom. “Joe back from Acle?”

  “Not yet,” said Bill.

  Dick was at the door, looking up at the tops of the trees over the dyke. “I say, Tom,” he said. “Does fog always come with an east wind?”

  Dorothea looked anxiously at Tom. People didn’t always understand the way Dick’s mind wandered off. But Tom was quite glad to think for a moment of something other than the troubles of the Coots. The sea’s over there,” he said. “So it usually does.”

  “It did that day when we were on Breydon with the Admiral,” said Dick. “And it’s coming up now. Look at it drifting through those trees.”

  Tom put his head out. “Just a sea roke,” he said. “Doesn’t look like a bad one. Nothing to worry Joe. Gosh, I do hope he’s found something down at Acle.”

  “Likely enough place,” said Bill. “There’s always boats tied up above the bridge or below. But who’d go casting them off?”

  “Well, I wish he’d hurry up,” said Dorothea. “The Outlaw’s locked up in the Death and Glory and Joe’s got the key, and I’ve got nearly half a chapter to copy in.”

  “Things look pretty bad,” said Tom.

  “It’ll be all right in the end,” said Dorothea. “Scotland Yard always wins.”

  Steps sounded outside. “Well, I’m sure it deserves to,” said Mrs. Dudgeon at the door. “If you would like your tea in here, you must come and fetch it.”

  “We’ll be having supper when Joe come back,” said Pete. “We can’t get aboard till he do.”

  “Nothing against having tea here as well,” said Mrs. Dudgeon. “Come along, Bill. Can I trust you to carry the jug? And Tom can bring the tray. It’s all ready.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Bill.

  “That biking do parch you,” said Pete.

  “Have you all been bicycling?” asked Mrs. Dudgeon.

  “Four of us,” said Dorothea. “Far and wide. They’re all back except Joe. He’s gone to Acle.”

  “Acle!” exclaimed Mrs. Dudgeon.

  “And Tom’s been to Potter Heigham and Hickling. And Bill’s been to Stalham. And Pete’s been to Wroxham and that other place.”

  “
Whatever for?” said Mrs. Dudgeon.

  “Looking for evidence.”

  “And did they get any?”

  “Joe may have done,” said Dorothea, but even she said it without much hope.

  *

  Tea in Scotland Yard turned into something very like a feast. Of tea itself there was a bedroom jug full. There were two loaves of bread, white and brown, and butter and strawberry jam and marmalade, and when Bill caught sight of the pile of sausage rolls that Mrs. Dudgeon had provided he said they were enough to sink a ship.

  The detectives set to work at once, being careful to set aside one sausage roll for Joe for each round of rolls they ate, so that he should have his fair share. William, the bloodhound, liked sausage rolls better than bread and jam, but he was not allowed so many as the others, and after he had eaten three Dick and Dorothea agreed that he ought not to have any more, because Mrs. Barrable had said that he was quite fat enough, considering how little exercise he took.

  “No more rolls, William,” said Dorothea, “but you shall have your share of chocolate later on.”

  Joe’s pile of sausage rolls grew and grew, but still there was no sign of him. Two or three times Pete, who could not help fearing that Joe might have got into trouble at Ranworth, went out into the road to see if he was in sight. Finally Tom went out too and came back to say that the mist was thickening into a regular roke. “Not that it’ll matter to Joe … but I do wish he’d come.”

  “He’s the last hope,” said Dorothea. “If no boats have been cast off except the ones we know about then it’s no wonder people think the Coots did it.”

  Time went on. The evening began to close in and Dorothea began to worry about getting home. “It doesn’t matter being a wee bit late, but we’ve got to be back by dark, and I can’t get The Outlaw out of the Death and Glory till Joe turns up with the key.” She looked at Joe’s pile of sausage rolls and down into the jug. “And the tea we’ve left for him must be stone cold,” she added.