by E. Nesbit
“Was it you give the warning, and they sent for the police?” Johnson was leaning eagerly forward, a hand on each knee.
“Yes, that was me. You can let them think it was you, if you like. You were off duty, weren’t you?”
“I was,” said Johnson, “in the arms of Murphy—”
“Well, the police didn’t come quick enough. But I was there—a lonely detective. And I followed them.”
“You did?”
“And I saw them hide the booty and I know the other stuff from Houghton’s Court’s in the same place, and I heard them arrange about when to take it away.”
“Come and show me where,” said Johnson, jumping up so quickly that his Windsor arm-chair fell over backwards, with a crack, on the red-brick floor.
“Not so,” said Gerald calmly; “if you go near the spot before the appointed time you’ll find the silver, but you’ll never catch the thieves.”
“You’re right there.” The policeman picked up his chair and sat down in it again. “Well?”
“Well, there’s to be a motor to meet them in the lane beyond the boat-house by Sadler’s Rents at one o clock tonight. They’ll get the things out at half-past twelve and take them along in a boat. So now’s your chance to fill your pockets with chink and cover yourself with honour and glory.”
“So help me!”—Johnson was pensive and doubtful still—“So help me! you couldn’t have made all this up out of your head.”
“Oh yes, I could. But I didn’t. Now look here. It’s the chance of your lifetime, Johnson! A quid for me, and a still tongue for you, and the job’s done. Do you agree?”
“Oh, I agree right enough,” said Johnson. “I agree. But if you’re coming any of your larks—”
“Can’t you see he isn’t?” Kathleen put in impatiently. “He’s not a liar—we none of us are.”
“If you’re not on, say so,” said Gerald, “and I’ll find another policeman with more sense.”
“I could split about you being out all night,” said Johnson.
“But you wouldn’t be so ungentlemanly,” said Mabel brightly. “Don’t you be so unbelieving, when we’re trying to do you a good turn.”
“If I were you,” Gerald advised, “I’d go to the place where the silver is, with two other men. You could make a nice little ambush in the wood-yard—it’s close there. And I’d have two or three more men up trees in the lane to wait for the motor-car.”
“You ought to have been in the force, you ought,” said Johnson admiringly; “but s’pose it was a hoax!”
“Well, then you’d have made an ass of yourself—I don’t suppose it ’ud be the first time,” said Jimmy.
“Are you on?” said Gerald in haste. “Hold your jaw, Jimmy, you idiot!”
“Yes,” said Johnson.
“Then when you’re on duty you go down to the wood-yard, and the place where you see me blow my nose is the place. The sacks are tied with string to the posts under the water. You just stalk by in your dignified beauty and make a note of the spot. That’s where glory waits you, and when Fame elates you and you’re a sergeant, please remember me.”
Johnson said he was blessed. He said it more than once, and then remarked that he was on, and added that he must be off that instant minute.
Johnson’s cottage lies just out of the town beyond the blacksmith’s forge and the children had come to it through the wood. They went back the same way, and then down through the town, and through its narrow, unsavoury streets to the towing-path by the timber yard. Here they ran along the trunks of the big trees, peeped into the saw-pit, and—the men were away at dinner and this was a favourite play place of every boy within miles—made themselves a see-saw with a fresh cut, sweet-smelling pine plank and an elm-root.
“What a ripping place!” said Mabel, breathless on the seesaw’s end. “I believe I like this better than pretending games or even magic.”
“So do I,” said Jimmy. “Jerry, don’t keep sniffing so you’ll have no nose left.”
“I can’t help it,” Gerald answered; “I daren’t use my hankey for fear Johnson’s on the lookout somewhere unseen. I wish I’d thought of some other signal.” Sniff! “No, nor I shouldn’t want to now if I hadn’t got not to. That’s what’s so rum. The moment I got down here and remembered what I’d said about the signal I began to have a cold—and— Thank goodness! Here he is.”
The children, with a fine air of unconcern, abandoned the see-saw. “Follow my leader!” Gerald cried, and ran along a barked oak trunk, the others following. In and out and round about ran the file of children, over heaps of logs, under the jutting ends of piled planks, and just as the policeman’s heavy boots trod the towing-path Gerald halted at the end of a little landing-stage of rotten boards, with a rickety handrail, cried “Pax!” and blew his nose with loud fervour.
“Morning,” he said immediately.
“Morning,” said Johnson. “Got a cold, ain’t you?”
“Ah! I shouldn’t have a cold if I’d got boots like yours,” returned Gerald admiringly. “Look at them. Anyone ’ud know your fairy footstep a mile off. How do you ever get near enough to anyone to arrest them?” He skipped off the landing-stage, whispered as he passed Johnson, “Courage, promptitude, and dispatch. That’s the place,” and was off again, the active leader of an active procession.
* * * *
“We’ve brought a friend home to dinner,” said Kathleen, when Eliza opened the door. “Where’s Mademoiselle?”
“Gone to see Yalding Towers. Today’s show day, you know. An just you hurry over your dinners. It’s my afternoon out, and my gentleman friend don’t like it if he’s kept waiting.”
“All right, we’ll eat like lightning,” Gerald promised. “Set another place, there’s an angel.”
They kept their word. The dinner—it was minced veal and potatoes and rice-pudding, perhaps the dullest food in the world—was over in a quarter of an hour.
“And now,” said Mabel, when Eliza and a jug of hot water had disappeared up the stairs together, “where’s the ring? I ought to put it back.”
“I haven’t had a turn yet,” said Jimmy. “When we find it Cathy and I ought to have turns same as you and Gerald did.”
“When you find it—?” Mabel’s pale face turned paler between her dark locks.
“I’m very sorry—we’re all very sorry,” began Kathleen, and then the story of the losing had to be told.
“You couldn’t have looked properly,” Mabel protested. “It can’t have vanished.”
“You don’t know what it can do—no more do we. It’s no use getting your quills up, fair lady. Perhaps vanishing itself is just what it does do. You see, it came off my hand in the bed. We looked everywhere.”
“Would you mind if I looked?” Mabel’s eyes implored her little hostess. “You see, if it’s lost it’s my fault. It’s almost the same as stealing. That Johnson would say it was just the same. I know he would.”
“Let’s all look again,” said Cathy, jumping up. “We were rather in a hurry this morning.”
So they looked, and they looked. In the bed, under the bed, under the carpet, under the furniture. They shook the curtains, they explored the corners, and found dust and flue, but no ring. They looked, and they looked. Everywhere they looked. Jimmy even looked fixedly at the ceiling, as though he thought the ring might have bounced up there and stuck. But it hadn’t.
“Then,” said Mabel at last, “your housemaid must have stolen it. That’s all. I shall tell her I think so.”
And she would have done it too, but at that moment the front door banged and they knew that Eliza had gone forth in all the glory of her best things to meet her “gentleman friend.”
“It’s no use,” —Mabel was almost in tears; “look here—will you leave me alone? Perhaps you
others looking distracts me. And I’ll go over every inch of the room by myself.”
“Respecting the emotion of their guest, the kindly charcoal-burners withdrew,” said Gerald. And they closed the door softly from the outside on Mabel and her search.
They waited for her of course—politeness demanded it, and besides, they had to stay at home to let Mademoiselle in; though it was a dazzling day, and Jimmy had just remembered that Gerald’s pockets were full of the money earned at the fair, and that nothing had yet been bought with that money, except a few buns in which he had had no share. And of course they waited impatiently.
It seemed about an hour, and was really quite ten minutes, before they heard the bedroom door open and Mabel’s feet on the stairs.
“She hasn’t found it,” Gerald said.
“How do you know?” Jimmy asked.
“The way she walks,” said Gerald. You can, in fact, almost always tell whether the thing has been found that people have gone to look for by the sound of their feet as they return. Mabel’s feet said “No go” as plain as they could speak. And her face confirmed the cheerless news.
A sudden and violent knocking at the back door prevented anyone from having to be polite about how sorry they were, or fanciful about being sure the ring would turn up soon.
All the servants except Eliza were away on their holidays, so the children went together to open the door, because, as Gerald said, if it was the baker they could buy a cake from him and eat it for dessert. “That kind of dinner sort of needs dessert,” he said.
But it was not the baker, When they opened the door they saw in the paved court where the pump is, and the dust-bin, and the water-butt, a young man, with his hat very much on one side, his mouth open under his fair bristly mustache, and his eyes as nearly round as human eyes can be. He wore a suit of a bright mustard colour, a blue necktie, and a goldish watch-chain across his waistcoat. His body was thrown back and his right arm stretched out towards the door, and his expression was that of a person who is being dragged somewhere against his will. He looked so strange that Kathleen tried to shut the door in his face, murmuring, “Escaped insane.” But the door would not close. There was something in the way.
“Leave go of me!” said the young man.
“Ho yus! I’ll leave go of you!” It was the voice of Eliza but no Eliza could be seen.
“Who’s got hold of you?” asked Kathleen.
“She has, miss,” replied the unhappy stranger.
“Who’s she?” asked Kathleen, to gain time, as she afterwards explained, for she now knew well enough that what was keeping the door open was Eliza’s unseen foot.
“My fyongsay, miss. At least it sounds like her voice, and it feels like her bones, but something’s come over me, miss, an I can’t see her.”
“That’s what he keeps on saying,” said Eliza’s voice. “’E’s my gentleman friend; is ’e gone dotty, or is it me?”
“Both, I shouldn’t wonder,” said Jimmy.
“Now,” said Eliza, “you call yourself a man; you look me in the face and say you can’t see me.”
“Well I can’t,” said the wretched gentleman friend.
“If I’d stolen a ring,” said Gerald, looking at the sky, “I should go indoors and be quiet, not stand at the back door and make an exhibition of myself.”
“Not much exhibition about her,” whispered Jimmy; “good old ring!”
“I haven’t stolen anything,” said the gentleman friend. “Here, you leave me be. It’s my eyes has gone wrong. Leave go of me, d’ye hear?”
Suddenly his hand dropped and he staggered back against the water-butt. Eliza had “left go” of him. She pushed past the children, shoving them aside with her invisible elbows. Gerald caught her by the arm with one hand, felt for her ear with the other, and whispered, “You stand still and don’t say a word. If you do well, what’s to stop me from sending for the police?”
Eliza did not know what there was to stop him. So she did as she was told, and stood invisible and silent, save for a sort of blowing, snorting noise peculiar to her when she was out of breath.
The mustard-coloured young man had recovered his balance, and stood looking at the children with eyes, if possible, rounder than before.
“What is it?” he gasped feebly. “What’s up? What’s it all about?”
“If you don’t know, I’m afraid we can’t tell you,” said Gerald politely.
“Have I been talking very strange-like?” he asked, taking off his hat and passing his hand over his forehead.
“Very,” said Mabel.
“I hope I haven’t said anything that wasn’t good manners,” he said anxiously.
“Not at all,” said Kathleen. “You only said your fiancée had hold of your hand, and that you couldn’t see her.”
“No more I can.”
“No more can we,” said Mabel.
“But I couldn’t have dreamed it, and then come along here making a penny show of myself like this, could I?”
“You know best,” said Gerald courteously.
“But,” the mustard-coloured victim almost screamed, “do you mean to tell me…”
“I don’t mean to tell you anything,” said Gerald quite truly, “but I’ll give you a bit of advice. You go home and lie down a bit and put a wet rag on your head. You’ll be all right tomorrow.”
“But I haven’t—”
“I should,” said Mabel; “the sun’s very hot, you know.”
“I feel all right now,” he said, “but—well, I can only say I’m sorry, that’s all I can say. I’ve never been taken like this before, miss. I’m not subject to it don’t you think that. But I could have sworn Eliza— Ain’t she gone out to meet me?”
“Eliza’s indoors,” said Mabel. “She can’t come out to meet anybody today.”
“You won’t tell her about me carrying on this way, will you, miss? It might set her against me if she thought I was liable to fits, which I never was from a child.”
“We won’t tell Eliza anything about you.”
“And you’ll overlook the liberty?”
“Of course. We know you couldn’t help it,” said Kathleen. “You go home and lie down. I’m sure you must need it. Good afternoon.”
“Good afternoon, I’m sure, miss,” he said dreamily. “All the same I can feel the print of her finger-bones on my hand while I’m saying it. And you won’t let it get round to my boss my employer I mean? Fits of all sorts are against a man in any trade.”
“No, no, no, it’s all right—good-bye,” said everyone. And a silence fell as he went slowly round the water-butt and the green yard-gate shut behind him. The silence was broken by Eliza.
“Give me up!” she said. “Give me up to break my heart in a prison cell!”
There was a sudden splash, and a round wet drop lay on the doorstep.
“Thunder shower,” said Jimmy; but it was a tear from Eliza.
“Give me up,” she went on, “give me up—” splash “—but don’t let me be took here in the town where I’m known and respected—” splash. “—I’ll walk ten miles to be took by a strange police—not Johnson as keeps company with my own cousin—” splash. “But I do thank you for one thing. You didn’t tell Elf as I’d stolen the ring. And I didn’t—” splash “—I only sort of borrowed it, it being my day out, and my gentleman friend such a toff, like you can see for yourselves.”
The children had watched, spellbound, the interesting tears that became visible as they rolled off the invisible nose of the miserable Eliza. Now Gerald roused himself, and spoke.
“It’s no use your talking,” he said. “We can’t see you!”
“That’s what he said,” said Eliza’s voice, “but—”
“You can’t see yourself,” Gerald went on. �
�Where’s your hand?”
Eliza, no doubt, tried to see it, and of course failed; for instantly, with a shriek that might have brought the police if there had been any about, she went into a violent fit of hysterics. The children did what they could, everything that they had read of in books as suitable to such occasions, but it is extremely difficult to do the right thing with an invisible housemaid in strong hysterics and her best clothes. That was why the best hat was found, later on, to be completely ruined, and why the best blue dress was never quite itself again. And as they were burning bits of the feather dusting-brush as nearly under Eliza’s nose as they could guess, a sudden spurt of flame and a horrible smell, as the flame died between the quick hands of Gerald, showed but too plainly that Eliza’s feather boa had tried to help.
It did help. Eliza “came to” with a deep sob and said, “Don’t burn me real ostrich stole; I’m better now.”
They helped her up and she sat down on the bottom step, and the children explained to her very carefully and quite kindly that she really was invisible, and that if you steal—or even borrow—rings you can never be sure what will happen to you.
“But ’ave I got to go on stopping like this,” she moaned, when they had fetched the little mahogany looking-glass from its nail over the kitchen sink and convinced her that she was really invisible, “for ever and ever? An we was to ’a’ bin married come Easter. No one won’t marry a gell as ’e can’t see. It ain’t likely.”
“No, not for ever and ever,” said Mabel kindly, “but you’ve got to go through with it—like measles. I expect you’ll be all right tomorrow.”
“Tonight, I think,” said Gerald.
“We’ll help you all we can, and not tell anyone,” said Kathleen.