by J. P. Martin
CONTENTS
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Some of the Characters
1 Tea on the Lawn
2 A Visit to Whitebeard’s
3 Uncle’s Treasury
4 They Visit Wizard Blenkinsop
5 The Big Casting
6 They Visit the Fish-Frying Academy
7 In the Library
8 They Call at Cadcoon’s Store
9 Cadcoon’s Sale
10 They Go to Lost Clinkers
11 They Set Out for the Dwarfs’ Drinking Fountains
12 They Reach the Fountains
13 Skinner’s Hotel
14 On the Underground
15 Office of the Badfort News
16 The Sinking Parade
17 Little Liz
18 Uncle’s Museum
19 The Great Sale
20 The Rescue
About the Author
Also by J. P. Martin
Copyright
About the Book
It is a time of rejoicing at Homeward, the Labyrinthine castle-city that is as magical as Oz and as full of wonders as Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Uncle, the wise, kind, generous, and fabulously rich elephant who rules over Homeward, has joined with his many friends to celebrate their triumph over the ruffians in neighbouring Badfort.
Still, there’s plenty of cleaning up to do in Homeward: the waterworks are tainted with vinegar, housing is scarce, and the Dwarftown Railway is terribly overcrowded – meanwhile the Badfort crowd has devised its most diabolical plan yet. Uncle will need all the help he can get from his faithful assistant Old Monkey and from Goodman the literate cat – and possibly a wizard’s spell – to get through this mess.
To
Stella, Grace,
John and Hal
Some of the Characters
Uncle’s Followers
The Old Monkey
The One-Armed Badger
Goodman
Butterskin Mute
Cloutman
Gubbins
Cowgill
Noddy Ninety
Oldeboy
Mig
Don Guzman
Whitebeard
Captain Walrus
The Respectable Horses
The King of the Badgers
Wizard Blenkinsop
Will Shudder
Mr Benskin
Joseph Cadcoon
Wisdom Sage
Needler
The Badfort Crowd
Beaver Hateman
Nailrod Hateman (Sen.)
Nailrod Hateman (Jun.)
Filljug Hateman
Sigismund Hateman
Flabskin
Hitmouse
Oily Joe
Hootman
Jellytussle
Abdullah the Clothes-Peg Merchant
The Wooden-Legged Donkey
Wizard Snipehazer
Laurence Goatsby
Professor Gandleweaver
Gasparado
Simon Eggman
Others
Sir Ben Bandit
Mrs Pointer
Miss Jezebel Pointer
Mr Richard Pointer
Mr Friendship Pointer
Mr T. Smiggs Pointer
Tom Fullglass
Mrs Smallweed
Rugbo
Your Syd
Ivan Koff
Len Footganger
Thomas Glot
Walter Meal
Badgers
Wolves
Leopards
Etc., etc.
Hated by Both Sides
Old Whitebeard
ONE
Tea on the Lawn
AFTER UNCLE’S VICTORY over the Badfort crowd he felt he could look forward to a peaceful summer.
“I really think we’ve dealt with them this time,” he said, but the Old Monkey, his faithful friend and helper, was not so sure.
It had been a great victory. Uncle and his supporters had driven off Beaver Hateman and his gang after a fierce fight.
Now it was a time of celebration – of fireworks and banquets and messages of congratulation. Letters, telephone calls and greetings telegrams poured in. And so many visitors came to see Uncle that for a time he behaved with extra politeness and did a good deal of entertaining.
One fine afternoon he asked several important neighbours to tea on the lawn outside his immense castle of Homeward.
“Let’s do the thing properly,” Uncle said to the Old Monkey. “What about some of those big striped umbrellas? They’d look very festive set up along the edge of the moat.”
“Oh yes, sir,” agreed the Old Monkey, “and Cheapman has a good stock at a halfpenny each.”
Cheapman’s Store is in Badgertown. It is a delightful shop where you can get all sorts of splendid things for a halfpenny.
So the tables were set out under the gay umbrellas. The many-coloured towers of Homeward, with switchback railways and chutes strung almost like glittering necklaces between them, looked magnificent in the sunshine. A little distance across the moat lay Badfort, the home of Beaver Hateman, Uncle’s enemy. The sight of this huge dingy fortress, always in need of new glass for broken windows, was a constant annoyance to the inhabitants of Homeward. However, the Old Monkey and Cowgill, Uncle’s engineer, had placed the umbrellas so that the party would face the massive drawbridge that spanned the blue waters of the moat – a much more pleasant view.
“Pity the King of the Badgers can’t come,” said Uncle. The King of the Badgers is one of Uncle’s best friends and neighbours, but he was away arranging a loan from a foreign banker.
Unfortunately, Uncle’s brother, Rudolf, the big-game hunter and traveller, could not be at the party either. After giving valuable help to Uncle in his great fight with Beaver Hateman and the Bads, he had gone back to his exploration of the Lester-Lester Mountains.
“We’ll ask Ivan Koff and Len Footganger,” said Uncle.
Ivan Koff comes of a noble Polish family. He has splendid manners, and looks well when he is dressed up, but he is rather touchy. For instance, if he sees someone with a slightly larger egg than he has, he thinks nothing of throwing a teapot at that person’s head.
Len Footganger appears to know all sorts of important people. He dresses well, but a funny thing about him is that though he wears a well-cut morning coat he wears no shirt with it. Still, this doesn’t matter as he spreads his tie over his chest and wears a lot of medals. They are made of rather thin tin, but he explains that he has left his real ones at home. He always carries a great book, The House of Zillagicci, which he says is a history of some near relatives.
Uncle also asked a very respectable person, Thomas Glot, who lives in a little hut that juts out over a waterfall.
Several of Uncle’s supporters were asked to meet these notabilities.
Don Guzman, who looks after Uncle’s oil lake at the base of a distant tower in Homeward, was asked. He says he has a huge estate in Andalusia.
Alonzo S. Whitebeard, who is a friend of Uncle’s in spite of being rather miserly, was allowed to come on condition that he combed his beard and put on a clean shirt; he agreed, because there is nothing he likes so much as a free tea.
And, of course, Butterskin Mute, Uncle’s gardener, who grows such large cabbages and lettuces, came as well. Uncle had asked him to leave his rake behind and not to wear his smock. Without these things he looked rather uncomfortable as he wears nothing underneath except a pair of maroon-coloured trousers and a frightful singlet with brown marks on it. The fact is that Mute is not much of a person for dress, but the moment he smiles you forget this! In any case the Old Monkey lent him a frogged coat with brass butt
ons on it, so he looked fairly well.
Altogether they made a very smart group. Uncle’s purple dressing-gown, and, of course, an elephant’s dressing-gown is very big, added a splendid touch of colour. The Old Monkey makes a good waiter and the tea-party looked like being a great success.
They had thin bread and butter with eggs and jam, and some very small cress sandwiches. Some of the guests found Uncle’s egg-shell china difficult to manage, but Uncle had no trouble as he was able to lift cups with a little tip at the end of his trunk. Still, he found the cress sandwiches rather a trial. There seemed to be nothing in them, and an egg was not much use to him either. He doesn’t like teaspoons, which is understandable, and in fact he was secretly wishing for one of his solid meals of ham, buckets of cocoa and nets full of cabbages.
Thomas Glot ate cress sandwiches in a dignified way, taking very small bites, and between each bite uttering well-balanced remarks about the weather and the state of the crops.
Footganger also ate very elegantly, but I must say he ate a great deal. An egg was soon gone, and, as for cress sandwiches, his fingers hovered over them like butterflies, and in no time, it seemed, the plate of sandwiches was empty. The Old Monkey kept bringing him more, but he had hardly put down a fresh plateful when there was Footganger languidly looking at the empty plate and lifting to his lips another cup of tea.
Don Guzman did not worry over the unsubstantial provisions because he was narrating a terrific story about his estate in Andalusia, to which he hoped to retire very soon and where, it appeared, he kept no less than ninety boarhounds.
Uncle can’t bear long stories of any kind, and he was beginning to feel bored by Don Guzman when the Old Monkey, hurrying up with a fresh plate of sandwiches, whispered in his ear:
“Oh, sir, look across the moat! See who’s coming!”
Uncle turned to look towards the dusty unmade road which led to Badfort. The Old Monkey was right. Two shabby carts were making their way towards the moat.
The first cart, pulled by the Wooden-Legged Donkey, held Beaver Hateman, who was wearing a particularly ragged sack suit and a battered silk hat with a flag sticking out of the top. This cart also carried a rickety old table and chairs with some legs missing, and a collection of torn black umbrellas. Hitmouse, a wretched little person who is the chief reporter on the Badfort News and who lives in a Nissen hut outside Badfort, was sitting by Hateman. He was bristling, as usual, with skewers, and writing in a hating book. The back of the cart seemed filled with a large jelly of a bluish colour, and this, of course, was Jellytussle, a most spiteful character.
The second cart was driven by Nailrod Hateman, while Sigismund and Filljug Hateman crouched among a number of rusty tea-urns and cardboard boxes of food.
Hootman, a kind of ghost, who spends his time plotting against Uncle, was wafting himself along somewhere between the two carts.
“Take no notice of them,” said Uncle. “Don’t flatter the miscreants by giving them your attention.”
But as the Badfort party set up their tables just across the moat it was impossible to ignore them altogether, especially as Uncle was getting tired of the smallness of his repast, and the Badfort crowd had got together from some source or other quite a solid feast. They had large hams, loaves of bread and buckets of tea, and soon began to eat these things in hideous imitation of the polite party so near to them.
Beaver Hateman took a well-cooked ham between his fingers and thumb, and said in a high-pitched voice as he passed it to Nailrod:
“Have another sandwich, Count!”
“No, thank you, but won’t you take one of these little cakes?” replied Nailrod, balancing a whole loaf on a very small egg-cup. “They’re so light!”
Hitmouse brought Filljug a plum-cake on an imitation lace mat torn out of newspaper.
“I’m such a small eater,” said Filljug in a high squeaky voice. “It always takes about twenty bites for me to eat a macaroon.”
Uncle was getting very hot. There was no doubt that the Hateman gang were deliberately insulting him.
Then Beaver Hateman took a whole bucket of tea, and in some mysterious way held it in the crook of his little finger.
“I’m so glad I’ve got this little attachment on the end of my trunk. It’s so handy for holding egg-shell china!” he said in a loud offensive voice.
Still Uncle controlled himself, and went on eating, though with a faint heart, the cress sandwiches that were set before him.
All at once Thomas Glot threw down his cup of egg-shell china, and shouted:
“This is a rotten show! Those chaps over there know how to do a tea much better than you!”
Uncle was surprised and hurt, but he was still more upset when Footganger suddenly yelled:
“I’ve been here two hours, and hardly had a bite!”
This was most unfair, for they had devoured twenty eggs and nineteen platefuls of sandwiches, besides emptying six three-tiered cakestands of their contents.
“Besides,” Footganger went on, “it’s so jolly slow! Look, I’ll show you a bit of life and action!”
Footganger rose, and balanced a silver teapot on the end of his toe. Then, with a skilful movement, he jerked it on to his forehead, and dipped his head so that tea began to pour out of the spout into his mouth. It was frightfully hot, but he didn’t appear to mind that. Then he began to spin the sugar basin on the heel of his boot.
Thomas Glot could juggle too, for he took a plate of sandwiches and threw them into the air, in such an artful way that they came down in a stream, and he stood underneath and snapped them up as they fell.
Meanwhile Beaver Hateman, made bold by the remarks of the visitors, snatched a large fish that was swimming by in the moat, and threw it at Uncle. It hit him on the side of his head with a slack wet noise.
Uncle flushed, and lashed himself thoughtfully with his trunk. He hesitated to begin again the old weary battle with the Badfort crowd. Yet action seemed almost thrust upon him.
“I am a person of peace and order,” he began.
“Shut up!” shouted Beaver Hateman. “We don’t want to hear the old bike-thief!”
That decided the matter.
Uncle had been extremely patient, but this allusion to an incident of his University days was too much. Once, in his hurry to get to an examination, he had borrowed a bicycle without permission and, being very heavy, broken it. The Badfort crowd never forget this and never let Uncle forget it either. It irritates Uncle more than anything else.
Uncle noticed that the Old Monkey had propped up one of the table legs with a large stone club. It is not usual to take weapons to a tea-party in your own garden, and Uncle had come quite unprepared. Now, ready to his hand, lay the means of delivering a swift answer to these continued insults.
Uncle stooped, picked up the stone club, and hurled it at Beaver Hateman.
It took him by surprise. The first sign the miscreant had that Uncle was in action again was something like an earthquake in the region of his right ear.
This prompt and vigorous action revived Uncle. He was at once his old autocratic self, and turned his back on the Badfort crowd. He even smiled graciously as he watched Footganger balancing chairs on his nose. Then Thomas Glot carried along a table on his back without spilling a drop of tea or milk. As Glot was on his hands and knees under it, the table seemed to run along the ground and up the steps into the hall of Homeward. It was an amusing sight.
Soon Beaver Hateman pulled himself together again.
“You big bully!” he shouted. “I’ve done nothing to you, and you’ve injured me badly – maybe mortally! ”
This did not seem to be true, for he paused and drank off the contents of a jug of iced soup while he was getting his breath.
“I suppose you don’t call throwing a flat-fish at your neighbour during a party an injury?” inquired Uncle in masterful tones.
“No, I don’t,” said Beaver Hateman. “And let me tell you, that I’m going to attack you soon in a v
ery unusual manner. I’ve been doing a little quiet inspection while you’ve been giving parties and I’ve ‘acquired’ – note that word – a copy of your book on the secret passages of Homeward. My friend Hootman has done a bit of nosing around, and we’ve found passages leading into your old castle that you’ve never dreamed of! Ha, ha, you’ll soon find out what we’re up to!”
Uncle ducked, but not quickly enough to avoid a teapot that Beaver Hateman flung at him with a lightning movement. By the time that he had got the fluid out of his eyes, the scoundrels were well on their way to Badfort.
Uncle went into Homeward in a thoroughly bad temper. However, he found in the hall a letter that cheered him up. It read as follows:
FLINT, FLINT, FLINT, BURROUGHS, FLINT,
MACKINTOSH, COATES & STAINER, GOBBLE COURT
Dear Sir,
We beg to inform you that our esteemed client Mr Laurence Goatsby was so impressed by your conduct in dealing with certain bandits that he has decided to make over to you the sum of £1,000,000 (One Million Pounds) to be used for any good purpose you may have in mind.
He wishes, however, to make two small conditions:
(1) The name of the foundation to be The Laurence Goatsby Benefit.
(2) A small statue of Mr Goatsby, which our client will dispatch in advance, to be placed in the hall of your residence Homeward.
If you agree to these terms Mr Goatsby will himself in due course bring you the cash in gold ingots.
Yours Faithfully,
FLINT, FLINT, FLINT etc.
Uncle read this letter to the Old Monkey.
“We’ll have to think this over,” he said. Then he added, “This has not been a bad day after all, but I’m getting a bit tired of these polite tea-parties, so we’ll have meals as usual in future.”
TWO
A Visit to Whitebeard’s
UNCLE WAS NOT long in sending a reply to the lawyers, and a few days later he had a telephone message from them. The Old Monkey took the message.
“Mr Goatsby is coming at eleven this morning,” he reported to Uncle, “and bringing the statue with him.”