by Edith Nesbit
“Aunt!”
The aunt started back, then made a step towards Mabel.
“You naughty, naughty girl!” she cried angrily; “how could you give me such a fright? I’ve a good mind to keep you in bed for a week for this, miss. Oh, Mabel, thank Heaven you’re safe!” And with that the aunt’s arms went round Mabel and Mabel’s round the aunt in such a hug as they had never met in before.
“But you didn’t seem to care a bit this morning,” said Mabel, when she had realised that her aunt really had been anxious, really was glad to have her safe home again.
“How do you know?”
“I was there listening. Don’t be angry, auntie.”
“I feel as if I never could be angry with you again, now I’ve got you safe,” said the aunt surprisingly.
“But how was it?” Mabel asked.
“My dear,” said the aunt impressively, “I’ve been in a sort of trance. I think I must be going to be ill. I’ve always been fond of you, but I didn’t want to spoil you. But yesterday, about half-past three, I was talking about you to Mr. Lewson, at the fair, and quite suddenly I felt as if you didn’t matter at all. And I felt the same when I got your letter and when those children came. And to-day in the middle of tea I suddenly woke up and realised that you were gone. It was awful. I think I must be going to be ill. Oh, Mabel, why did you do it?”
“It was — a joke,” said Mabel feebly. And then the two went in and the door was shut.
“That’s most uncommon odd,” said Gerald, outside; “looks like more magic to me. I don’t feel as if we’d got to the bottom of this yet, by any manner of means. There’s more about this castle than meets the eye.”
There certainly was. For this castle happened to be — but it would not be fair to Gerald to tell you more about it than he knew on that night when he went alone and invisible through the shadowy great grounds of it to look for the open window of the panelled room. He knew that night no more than I have told you; but as he went along the dewy lawns and through the groups of shrubs and trees, where pools lay like giant looking-glasses reflecting the quiet stars, and the white limbs of statues gleamed against a background of shadow, he began to feel — well, not excited, not surprised, not anxious, but — different.
The incident of the invisible Princess had surprised, the incident of the conjuring had excited, and the sudden decision to be a detective had brought its own anxieties; but all these happenings, though wonderful and unusual, had seemed to be, after all, inside the circle of possible things — wonderful as the chemical experiments are where two liquids poured together make fire, surprising as legerdemain, thrilling as a juggler’s display, but nothing more. Only now a new feeling came to him as he walked through those gardens; by day those gardens were like dreams, at night they were like visions. He could not see his feet as he walked, but he saw the movement of the dewy grass-blades that his feet displaced. And he had that extraordinary feeling so difficult to describe, and yet so real and so unforgettable — the feeling that he was in another world, that had covered up and hidden the old world as a carpet covers a floor. The floor was there all right, underneath, but what he walked on was the carpet that covered it — and that carpet was drenched in magic, as the turf was drenched in dew.
The feeling was very wonderful; perhaps you will feel it some day. There are still some places in the world where it can be felt, but they grow fewer every year.
The enchantment of the garden held him.
“I’ll not go in yet,” he told himself; “it’s too early. And perhaps I shall never be here at night again. I suppose it is the night that makes everything look so different.”
Something white moved under a weeping willow; white hands parted the long, rustling leaves. A white figure came out, a creature with horns and goat’s legs and the head and arms of a boy. And Gerald was not afraid. That was the most wonderful thing of all, though he would never have owned it. The white thing stretched its limbs, rolled on the grass, righted itself, and frisked away across the lawn. Still something white gleamed under the willow; three steps nearer and Gerald saw that it was the pedestal of a statue — empty.
“They come alive,” he said; and another white shape came out of the Temple of Flora and disappeared in the laurels. “The statues come alive.”
THE MOVING STONE BEAST.
There was a crunching of the little stones in the gravel of the drive. Something enormously long and darkly grey came crawling towards him, slowly, heavily. The moon came out just in time to show its shape. It was one of those great lizards that you see at the Crystal Palace, made in stone, of the same awful size which they were millions of years ago when they were masters of the world, before Man was.
“It can’t see me,” said Gerald. “I am not afraid. It’s come to life, too.”
As it writhed past him he reached out a hand and touched the side of its gigantic tail. It was of stone. It had not “come alive,” as he had fancied, but was alive in its stone. It turned, however, at the touch; but Gerald also had turned, and was running with all his speed towards the house. Because at that stony touch Fear had come into the garden and almost caught him. It was Fear that he ran from, and not the moving stone beast.
He stood panting under the fifth window; when he had climbed to the window-ledge by the twisted ivy that clung to the wall, he looked back over the grey slope — there was a splashing at the fish-pool that had mirrored the stars — the shape of the great stone beast was wallowing in the shallows among the lily-pads.
Once inside the room, Gerald turned for another look. The fish-pond lay still and dark, reflecting the moon. Through a gap in the drooping willow the moonlight fell on a statue that stood calm and motionless on its pedestal. Everything was in its place now in the garden. Nothing moved or stirred.
“How extraordinarily rum!” said Gerald. “I shouldn’t have thought you could go to sleep walking through a garden and dream — like that.”
He shut the window, lit a match, and closed the shutters. Another match showed him the door. He turned the key, went out, locked the door again, hung the key on its usual nail, and crept to the end of the passage. Here he waited, safe in his invisibility, till the dazzle of the matches should have gone from his eyes, and he be once more able to find his way by the moonlight that fell in bright patches on the floor through the barred, unshuttered windows of the hall.
“Wonder where the kitchen is,” said Gerald. He had quite forgotten that he was a detective. He was only anxious to get home and tell the others about that extraordinarily odd dream that he had had in the gardens. “I suppose it doesn’t matter what doors I open. I’m invisible all right still, I suppose? Yes; can’t see my hand before my face.” He held up a hand for the purpose. “Here goes!”
He opened many doors, wandered into long rooms with furniture dressed in brown holland covers that looked white in that strange light, rooms with chandeliers hanging in big bags from the high ceilings, rooms whose walls were alive with pictures, rooms whose walls were deadened with rows on rows of old books, state bedrooms in whose great plumed four-posters Queen Elizabeth had no doubt slept. (That Queen, by the way, must have been very little at home, for she seems to have slept in every old house in England.) But he could not find the kitchen. At last a door opened on stone steps that went up — there was a narrow stone passage — steps that went down — a door with a light under it. It was, somehow, difficult to put out one’s hand to that door and open it.
“Nonsense!” Gerald told himself; “don’t be an ass! Are you invisible, or aren’t you?”
Then he opened the door, and some one inside said something in a sudden rough growl.
Gerald stood back, flattened against the wall, as a man sprang to the doorway and flashed a lantern into the passage.
“All right,” said the man, with almost a sob of relief. “It was only the door swung open, it’s that heavy — that’s all.”
“Blow the door!” said another growling voice; “blessed if I didn�
��t think it was a fair cop that time.”
They closed the door again. Gerald did not mind. In fact, he rather preferred that it should be so. He didn’t like the look of those men. There was an air of threat about them. In their presence even invisibility seemed too thin a disguise. And Gerald had seen as much as he wanted to see. He had seen that he had been right about the gang. By wonderful luck — beginner’s luck, a card-player would have told him — he had discovered a burglary on the very first night of his detective career. The men were taking silver out of two great chests, wrapping it in rags, and packing it in baize sacks. The door of the room was of iron six inches thick. It was, in fact, the strong-room, and these men had picked the lock. The tools they had done it with lay on the floor, on a neat cloth roll, such as wood-carvers keep their chisels in.
“Hurry up!” Gerald heard. “You needn’t take all night over it.”
The silver rattled slightly. “You’re a rattling of them trays like bloomin’ castanets,” said the gruffest voice. Gerald turned and went away, very carefully and very quickly. And it is a most curious thing that, though he couldn’t find the way to the servants’ wing when he had nothing else to think of, yet now, with his mind full, so to speak, of silver forks and silver cups, and the question of who might be coming after him down those twisting passages, he went straight as an arrow to the door that led from the hall to the place he wanted to get to.
As he went the happenings took words in his mind.
“The fortunate detective,” he told himself, “having succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, himself left the spot in search of assistance.”
But what assistance? There were, no doubt, men in the house, also the aunt; but he could not warn them. He was too hopelessly invisible to carry any weight with strangers. The assistance of Mabel would not be of much value. The police? Before they could be got — and the getting of them presented difficulties — the burglars would have cleared away with their sacks of silver.
THE MEN WERE TAKING SILVER OUT OF TWO GREAT CHESTS.
Gerald stopped and thought hard; he held his head with both hands to do it. You know the way — the same as you sometimes do for simple equations or the dates of the battles of the Civil War.
Then with pencil, note-book, a window-ledge, and all the cleverness he could find at the moment, he wrote: —
“You know the room where the silver is. Burglars are burgling it, the thick door is picked. Send a man for police. I will follow the burglars if they get away ere police arrive on the spot.”
He hesitated a moment, and ended —
“From a Friend — this is not a sell.”
This letter, tied tightly round a stone by means of a shoe-lace, thundered through the window of the room where Mabel and her aunt, in the ardour of reunion, were enjoying a supper of unusual charm — stewed plums, cream, sponge-cakes, custard in cups, and cold bread-and-butter pudding.
Gerald, in hungry invisibility, looked wistfully at the supper before he threw the stone. He waited till the shrieks had died away, saw the stone picked up, the warning letter read.
“Nonsense!” said the aunt, growing calmer. “How wicked! Of course it’s a hoax.”
“Oh! do send for the police, like he says,” wailed Mabel.
“Like who says?” snapped the aunt.
“Whoever it is,” Mabel moaned.
“Send for the police at once,” said Gerald, outside, in the manliest voice he could find.
“You’ll only blame yourself if you don’t. I can’t do any more for you.”
“I — I’ll set the dogs on you!” cried the aunt.
“Oh, auntie, don’t!” Mabel was dancing with agitation. “It’s true — I know it’s true. Do — do wake Bates!”
“I don’t believe a word of it,” said the aunt. No more did Bates when, owing to Mabel’s persistent worryings, he was awakened. But when he had seen the paper, and had to choose whether he’d go to the strong-room and see that there really wasn’t anything to believe or go for the police on his bicycle, he chose the latter course.
When the police arrived the strong-room door stood ajar, and the silver, or as much of it as three men could carry, was gone.
Gerald’s note-book and pencil came into play again later on that night. It was five in the morning before he crept into bed, tired out and cold as a stone.
“Master Gerald!” — it was Eliza’s voice in his ears—”it’s seven o’clock and another fine day, and there’s been another burglary —— My cats alive!” she screamed, as she drew up the blind and turned towards the bed; “look at his bed, all crocked with black, and him not there! Oh, Jimminy!” It was a scream this time. Kathleen came running from her room; Jimmy sat up in his bed and rubbed his eyes.
“Whatever is it?” Kathleen cried.
“I dunno when I ‘ad such a turn.” Eliza sat down heavily on a box as she spoke. “First thing his bed all empty and black as the chimley back, and him not in it, and then when I looks again he is in it all the time. I must be going silly. I thought as much when I heard them haunting angel voices yesterday morning. But I’ll tell Mam’selle of you, my lad, with your tricks, you may rely on that. Blacking yourself all over like a dirty nigger and crocking up your clean sheets and pillow-cases. It’s going back of beyond, this is.”
“Look here,” said Gerald slowly; “I’m going to tell you something.”
Eliza simply snorted, and that was rude of her; but then, she had had a shock and had not got over it.
“Can you keep a secret?” asked Gerald, very earnest through the grey of his partly rubbed-off blacklead.
“Yes,” said Eliza.
“Then keep it and I’ll give you two bob.”
“But what was you going to tell me?”
“That. About the two bob and the secret. And you keep your mouth shut.”
“I didn’t ought to take it,” said Eliza, holding out her hand eagerly. “Now you get up, and mind you wash all the corners, Master Gerald.”
“Oh, I’m so glad you’re safe,” said Kathleen, when Eliza had gone.
“You didn’t seem to care much last night,” said Gerald coldly.
“I can’t think how I let you go. I didn’t care last night. But when I woke this morning and remembered!”
“There, that’ll do — it’ll come off on you,” said Gerald through the reckless hugging of his sister.
“How did you get visible?” Jimmy asked.
“It just happened when she called me — the ring came off.”
“Tell us all about everything,” said Kathleen.
“Not yet,” said Gerald mysteriously.
“Where’s the ring?” Jimmy asked after breakfast. “I want to have a try now.”
“I — I forgot it,” said Gerald; “I expect it’s in the bed somewhere.”
But it wasn’t. Eliza had made the bed.
“I’ll swear there aint no ring there,” she said. “I should ‘a’ seen it if there had ‘a’ been.”
CHAPTER V
“Search and research proving vain,” said Gerald, when every corner of the bedroom had been turned out and the ring had not been found, “the noble detective hero of our tale remarked that he would have other fish to fry in half a jiff, and if the rest of you want to hear about last night....”
“Let’s keep it till we get to Mabel,” said Kathleen heroically.
“The assignation was ten-thirty, wasn’t it? Why shouldn’t Gerald gas as we go along? I don’t suppose anything very much happened, anyhow.” This, of course, was Jimmy.
“That shows,” remarked Gerald sweetly, “how much you know. The melancholy Mabel will await the tryst without success, as far as this one is concerned. ‘Fish, fish, other fish — other fish I fry!’” he warbled to the tune of “Cherry Ripe,” till Kathleen could have pinched him.
Jimmy turned coldly away, remarking, “When you’ve quite done.”
But Gerald went on singing —
“‘Where the lips of Johnson smile,
There’s the land of Cherry Isle.
Other fish, other fish,
Fish I fry.
Stately Johnson, come and buy!’”
“How can you,” asked Kathleen, “be so aggravating?”
“I don’t know,” said Gerald, returning to prose. “Want of sleep or intoxication — of success, I mean. Come where no one can hear us.
“Oh, come to some island where no one can hear,
And beware of the keyhole that’s glued to an ear,”
he whispered, opened the door suddenly, and there, sure enough, was Eliza, stooping without. She flicked feebly at the wainscot with a duster, but concealment was vain.
“You know what listeners never hear,” said Jimmy severely.
“I didn’t, then — so there!” said Eliza, whose listening ears were crimson. So they passed out, and up the High Street, to sit on the churchyard wall and dangle their legs. And all the way Gerald’s lips were shut into a thin, obstinate line.
“Now,” said Kathleen. “Oh, Jerry, don’t be a goat! I’m simply dying to hear what happened.”
“That’s better,” said Gerald, and he told his story. As he told it some of the white mystery and magic of the moonlit gardens got into his voice and his words, so that when he told of the statues that came alive, and the great beast that was alive through all its stone, Kathleen thrilled responsive, clutching his arm, and even Jimmy ceased to kick the wall with his boot heels, and listened open-mouthed.
Then came the thrilling tale of the burglars, and the warning letter flung into the peaceful company of Mabel, her aunt, and the bread-and-butter pudding. Gerald told the story with the greatest enjoyment and such fulness of detail that the church clock chimed half-past eleven as he said, “Having done all that human agency could do, and further help being despaired of, our gallant young detective —— Hullo, there’s Mabel!”
There was. The tail-board of a cart shed her almost at their feet.
“I couldn’t wait any longer,” she explained, “when you didn’t come. And I got a lift. Has anything more happened? The burglars had gone when Bates got to the strong-room.”