‘Wait,’ the Pouncer said. ‘Fill the box up with coal.’
‘My Sylvia, what an inspiration,’ the foxy-faced man said. ‘Never was your equal born.’
Nimbly he placed some big lumps of coal from the scuttle inside the deed-box; he then carefully muffled their jolting with a towel and a tablecloth.
‘My dear Charles, you think of everything,’ the Pouncer said.
‘Who would not, inspired by Sylvia,’ he answered, taking up the keys. ‘Now, swift . . . there it is, locked . . . there is the chain . . . and there, finally, the padlock. Beautiful and no traces left.’
‘And now, away, my Charles,’ the Pouncer said.
‘Wait yet, my Sylvia,’ the foxy-faced man answered. ‘He has put old Joe in one of the dungeons. We must set old Joe free first. Did you ever see his Zoo?’
‘I never did,’ the Pouncer said.
‘You shall now,’ the foxy-faced man said. ‘We’ll have time before the Police are here.’
Kay saw them work the mechanism of the lift and disappear within it. As soon as they were gone, he crawled out of the grate, which was unpleasantly hot. He was half stunned by his fall into the grate, and half choked by the ashes. He was too miserable at the loss of the Box to mind these things. All that he could think was, ‘Now I shall be tiny, like this, unable to help those people, who will all be drowned; and for my own part I shall be burned when he sets fire to the house.’
He was crouching in a corner of the room when he heard the lift drawing near. Sylvia, Charles and Joe came out. Sylvia was wearing nine diamond necklaces. Kay saw that the suitcase had gone. Joe carried a small bag; Charles had a big dressing-case. ‘They have been repacking for their journey,’ Kay thought.
‘There’s the box that he’d packed the boodle in,’ Charles said, pointing to the deed-box.
‘I’ll boodle him, the beauty,’ Joe said. ‘What can I do against him, I wonder.’
‘Oh come along, Joe,’ Charles said.
‘I’ll put my boot through his window first,’ Joe said. He kicked through each pane: snow came driving in in a cloud.
Sylvia Pouncer peered into the fireplace. ‘Didn’t you throw away a bit of chamois, Charles?’ she asked. ‘I’d like it now, if you could find it, to give my diamonds a rub with.’
Charles peered into the grate beside her. ‘It was just a bit of dirty chamois,’ he said. ‘Like a little rag, what? I’m afraid it went into the fire and got burned. It doesn’t seem to be there now. Perhaps we’d better come along now. Come along, Joe.’
‘No, wait just one minute,’ the Pouncer said, ‘for perhaps it didn’t go into the grate, but beside the fireplace here. I thought I saw it, to tell the truth.’
She poked about quite close to Kay, but luckily didn’t see him.
‘If it’s chamois leather that you want,’ Joe said, ‘you’ll find a piece in the kit-box in the aeroplane; if that would do.’
‘Yes, that would do,’ Charles said. ‘We had really better go.’
They stole out of the room and were gone.
‘I shall never find the Box again now,’ Kay said to himself. ‘If it’s in the deed-box, Abner will find it, as The Boy said he would. If it isn’t in the deed-box, it is probably in one of those bags which they are carrying; they’ve been sharing the spoils evidently. There is just a chance that it has been spilled out on to the floor here . . . Oh, I do hope it has.’
He looked, with a beating heart, but could not see it. While he was looking, the door of the room opened: Abner came in.
‘Confound this window,’ he said. ‘The snow’s drifted in all over the place again and broken the window, too.
‘Where on earth has the Pouncer got to? Well, I must get going, and leave that deed undone.’
He picked up the deed-box. As he did so, Kay clutched Abner’s shoelace and swung himself once more into the turned-up trouser-end. Abner did not notice him doing this. He took the lift down to the gallery and walked swiftly to Cole’s cage. Near the cage, all muttering, snarling and snapping, was a pack of little aeroplanes and motor cars, each headed like a wolf, plainly ordered by Abner to be guards and annoyances to Cole. Abner stopped, put down the box, sat upon it and spoke:
‘Now, Ramon, or Cole, my merry old soul,’ he said. ‘I have only one thing to say to you: I want your Elixir. How about it?’
‘No,’ Cole said, ‘nothing that you can offer shall buy the Elixir from me. You are unfit to possess it.’
‘You realise the alternative,’ Abner said. ‘If I am not to have the Elixir, be sure that you will not profit from it. You see this iron wheel in the rock-face? It works sluices by which I can flood these cellars at will. I think the Elixir would hardly preserve you from twenty feet of water, chained as you are.’
‘Whether it will preserve me or not,’ Cole answered, ‘will be known later. But my secret shall not preserve you from anything through any weakness of mine.’
‘So?’ Abner said, ‘you remember of course that I am offering to bargain . . . Your Box for your Elixir . . . It is a fair exchange.’
‘You have nothing with which to bargain,’ Cole answered. ‘You say that you have my Box, or will have it. You are wrong: you will not have it. But I most absolutely refuse to bargain with you in any way whatsoever. I defy you.’
‘Very good then,’ Abner said. ‘In any case, there is no need to continue the conversation.’ He walked over to the wheel in the rock and cast loose its safety-catch . . . ‘You still refuse?’ he asked.
‘I do,’ Cole said, ‘I most absolutely refuse to bargain with you in any way.’
‘Very good then,’ Abner said. ‘The water shall come in.’ He took the wheel and was about to swing it round, when a thought seemed to strike him; he turned again to Cole. ‘Wait one moment,’ Abner said. ‘I confess I do set a little store by your Elixir of Life. You are not ignorant of Magic. If you see my Helper, you will hear from him that your Box of Delights will be mine before midnight. That may convince you.’
He lifted his hand in the familiar way. There came a noise of dripping, mixed with a limping, hobbling, shuffling step, difficult to describe. In the corridor appeared that boy whom Abner had smitten with the timetable. The creature’s head was still deep within his chest, his legs were still telescoped into his body; but his sulkiness and pertness were gone. He was dripping wet. Dead leaves and bits of sodden twig were stuck about him. He came limping, hobbling, shuffling up to Abner, where he stood and dripped and whimpered.
‘So,’ Abner said, ‘the waterfall has taken some of the insolence from you, it would seem. Now, tell this gentleman the truth. The Box that I search for, shall I not have it by midnight?’
‘No,’ The Boy whimpered.
‘You told me that I should have it,’ Abner said.
‘I didn’t,’ The Boy said. ‘I said you’d have it under your hand and you’ve had it under your hand. You’ve had it under your hand for something like an hour this afternoon and you didn’t know. Now, it isn’t under your hand and it won’t be under your hand again, and you don’t know where it is and you’ll never know where it is.’
‘Tell me instantly where it is,’ Abner said.
‘I won’t tell you another thing more,’ The Boy said. ‘You can peg me under the waterfall, or melt me in the fire, or bury me, or blow me through the winds, yet I’ll never tell you another thing, except that you had the Box and didn’t know it and now won’t have it again, ever. So that’s what I call Squish to you.’
Abner smote The Boy on the top of his neck and Kay saw him telescope up under the blow: this time his legs went right through his body, and out at the shoulders.
‘Get you back to your waterfall,’ Abner said; ‘and you will stay there for seven years.’
At this moment, Kay saw Cole Hawlings in the cage lifting his right hand in spite of his irons. As he did so, The Boy slowly began to untelescope: the legs went down; the body rose up from the legs; the neck and head rose up from his chest, till there h
e was, a boy again, looking, Kay thought, rather less bony and unpleasant than he had looked in Abner’s study.
‘Well, I shan’t,’ The Boy said to Abner. ‘I shan’t be pegged under the waterfall, for I’ve been set free, see, from you and yours. You had the Box under your hand and didn’t know it and now you’ll never get it again. A jolly good Squish to you – Squish, Abner!’ At this he suddenly became fainter and disappeared upwards.
‘You see,’ Cole Hawlings said, ‘you have deceived yourself. The Box will not be yours, nor shall my secret be yours, whatever happens to myself.’
‘Very well,’ Abner said. ‘I have other Helpers beyond any power of yours. I am not to have your Elixir, it seems, and I am not to have your Box. Very well; but I shall have something, and that’s revenge on you. D’you know what this river and lake are famous for?’
‘I know what they are infamous for,’ Cole answered – ‘a very ugly scoundrel.’
‘They are famous for crayfish,’ Abner answered, ‘little freshwater lobsters, excellent with mayonnaise. Before midnight some of them will have begun upon you: for I am going to drown you, Cole Hawlings, like a rat in a trap.’
He seized the wheel and spun it round. Kay heard a distant clattering noise, a thud, and then a great, fierce but still distant roaring rush of water.
‘You hear,’ Abner said. ‘The sluice is working beautifully. I love the noise of running water. As one of the poets says:
“Beauty born of murmuring sound,
Does pass into my face.”
You feel that draught of air rush past? That’s air driven out by the water. There’s a great head of water in the lake: thirty feet of dammed-back flood water is coming after you. It won’t take very long to reach you. And now I shall set off with my little earnings to a place of rest and beauty.’
‘You will not set off,’ Cole answered. ‘All the exits to this place are now guarded by Police.’
‘No Police can guard the exit by which I shall go,’ Abner answered. ‘Goodbye. My last act before I leave will be to drop a wreath down the sluice for you and your clerical friends. Sleep well, Cole.’
He kissed his hand to his victim and turned to walk away. As he turned, Kay slipped from the folded trouser edge; he had had enough of Abner.
Abner whistled to his guard of little wolves that were yapping and snarling. They came to heel with their little headlights glaring like radiant eyes. One of the little motor cars snapped at Kay and almost got him. They passed rapidly along, following Abner like a pack of dogs at the heel of their master.
From far away Kay heard something give way at the intake of the water. The rush of the flood water increased suddenly threefold.
‘Mr Hawlings,’ Kay said. ‘Mr Hawlings.’
‘Ah, is that you, Master Harker?’ Cole said, leaning towards the bars of his cage. ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t keep that size, Master Harker.’
‘Mr Hawlings,’ Kay said, ‘I have lost your Box: I had it: it was shaken out of my pocket somewhere, and now I can’t get back to my proper size.’
‘That’s a pity,’ Cole said. ‘You are not much bigger than my thumb.’
‘Yes, and the water’s roaring in,’ Kay said; ‘and he’s got you all chained up here in these caves. How can I help?’
‘I told you, Master Harker,’ Cole said, ‘that the Wolves were coming very close and now they are here.’
‘Could you suggest something, Mr Cole, please,’ Kay said, ‘that I could do to help?’
‘It is not so easy, is it?’ Cole said: ‘hard rock floor, hard rock ceiling, and thick iron bars in the walls. From the sound of the water, too,’ Cole said, ‘the lower cellars are pretty nearly full up already. There’s a lot of water coming in. And it is nearly here, mark me; the air hasn’t been coming past in such a draught for some minutes. Do you remember the time, Master Harker,’ Cole said, ‘when the Wolves came very close at Seekings, yet I got away?’
‘I do, indeed,’ Kay said. ‘Could you do something of that sort now?’
‘Why, I am not so sure, Master Kay,’ Cole said. ‘Have you such a thing as a pencil and a bit of paper?’
‘No, I have not,’ Kay said.
‘That’s a pity,’ Cole answered; ‘but if you’d come up into my cell here through the bars . . . That’s the style: well climbed indeed, sir. Now you see in the corner there, my coat that they took from me: I can’t reach it: I am chained. If you can rummage in the pockets you should find a bit of paper and a pencil.’
Kay went to the corner of the cell. There was Cole’s coat tossed in the corner. To such a tiny being as himself it looked like the mainsail of a line-of-battle ship. Sticking from one of the pockets was a piece of timber, which looked like a bridge pile sharpened for driving or a newly cut larch sapling. Near it was a pocketbook some four times bigger than himself.
‘I can’t use these,’ Kay said. ‘I can’t lift the pencil nor open the pocketbook.’
‘Get down into the pocket, Master Harker,’ Cole said, ‘for inside, if you grope, you may find a bit of lead that was broken off, and a crumpled sheet or two.’
Kay crept into the pocket. It was rather like going into a coalmine. There were some crumbs, so dry that they were now rough and sharp, like lumps of rock; further down, beside a penknife bigger than himself, and a spectacle case that might have been a coffin for him, he found a piece of lead, in weight and shape like a poker; near it was a piece of folded paper. He dragged these out into the light.
‘I have got them,’ he said.
‘Good, Master Harker,’ Cole said. ‘And now, perhaps, it may just be that the wind will set a little in the favour of a travelling man. Now are you a good hand at drawing, Master Harker?’
‘No, I am not very good,’ Kay said, ‘except at horses going from right to left.’
‘Well, I am not very good at drawing,’ Cole said, ‘with two hundredweight of chain on each wrist, but can you unfold that paper, Master Harker, and draw on it two men with hammers and cold chisels, smiting off these irons?’
‘I’m afraid I’m not very good at drawing men,’ Kay said. ‘I can draw horses going from right to left, and trains going a bit the other way.’
‘Well, suppose you draw horses, Master Harker,’ Cole said, ‘coming to bite these chains in two.’
Kay opened the folded sheet of paper, which was Mr Hawlings’s bill at the Drop of Dew by Henry Cockfarthings.
He had never before realised how troublesome a sheet of paper can be when it is rather bigger than a blanket, naturally of a stiff quality, and already crumpled from some days in a pocket. As he drew it out, opened it and bent back the crumpled corners, he became suddenly aware that the Wolves were Running with a little whirring snarl. Little motor cars with wolf heads rushed at him from different points of the cave, and snapped at him.
‘Don’t heed those, Master Kay,’ Cole Hawlings said.
It was not so easy not to heed them, for they came at him with such malice that the snapping of their bonnets was very terrifying. Any bonnet of them all was big and strong enough to snap him down into the engines, where he would have been champed up in no time.
For about half a minute he wrestled with the paper, trying to get it flat. The little motor cars snapped at him all the time. Snap, snap. One of them would run behind him and snap at his ankles, while another darted at him to bite his toes. Then he realised that though they snapped very near, they never really bit him; he himself was in some way safe, they could only annoy and hinder. Presently, he straightened out one corner of the paper; instantly, one of these snapping motor cars rushed over it and crushed it back.
‘Hit them with the pencil, Master Kay,’ Cole Hawlings said. This was very much like saying, ‘Hit them with the lamppost’, or, ‘Whack them with the telegraph pole’.
‘I don’t think I can lift the pencil,’ Kay said; ‘it’s too heavy.’
‘Well, try now,’ Cole said.
Kay tried, and to his great delight found that he could lif
t this great fir tree of a pencil. For a moment he felt like one of those heroes at the Scottish Games tossing the fir tree for a haggis. As the motor car came at him once more, trying to force the paper from under him, he smote the bonnet a lusty blow. The car at once upset and rolled over and over and over with a puncture in all four wheels. A little whimper of pain came from its klaxon, and the other little wolf motor cars drew to one side and clashed their bonnets at Kay, snap, snap.
‘Now draw, Master Harker,’ Cole Hawlings said, ‘two horses coming to bite the chains in two.’
‘D’you mean coming head-on?’ Kay said. ‘I don’t think I have ever drawn horses coming head-on. I always make them look so like cows.’
‘Well, try it, Master,’ Cole said.
Kay went at it with the piece of lead like a poker on the crumpled paper big as a blanket which kept rolling up and hitting him. Somehow it seemed to him that what he drew was (for once) rather like a horse. Then, suddenly, at him out of the air, with a whirring yap, came little aeroplanes with heads like wolves. They snapped their propellers at him and tried to knock the lead from his hand. This was very much worse than being attacked by hornets, and, while he was dodging their attacks, the wolf motor cars began again.
‘Bat them with the pencil, Master Harker,’ Cole said.
Kay put down the lead and seized the pencil, but the creatures were as cunning as wolves; they skipped away. When he put down the pencil they were at him again: the motors snapping at his heels, the aeroplanes all round him. Kay lifted the lead with which he was drawing and smote with it on the propeller of one of the aeroplanes. The propeller snapped, the aeroplane crashed into two others, they spun round and round in flames and set fire to one of the motor cars, which exploded.
‘That’s the way, Master Harker,’ Cole said. ‘Now the other horse.’ The Wolves stood aside while Kay finished the second horse. ‘There you are, Master Kay,’ Cole Hawlings said. ‘You come over to my side now a moment, and stand that paper up on its end so that we may take a good look at it.’
The Box of Delights Page 24