Dungeon doors . . .
“And there’s another door, don’t you see, at the end,” cried Nils, “to bring the prisoners in by!”
At last it was clear, what the mice had never been able to discover, how the prisoners were got into their cells. (Small wonder, too, that the jailers weren’t aware of the River’s work. Until a new prisoner arrived, they had no reason to enter this corridor at all.) And as if to confirm all speculation, at that very moment sounded a jailer’s boots stamping overhead, accompanied by the clank of food pans. Nils and Bernard, by listening intently, could hear the grids creak up, one after the other, behind and above each iron door.
“All we need now,” said Nils, “is the key. I see it all!” he exclaimed excitedly. “We get hold of the key — drop it through the grid — jump down ourselves — and all escape together by the water gate! All we need now is the right key!”
In Bernard’s opinion this splendid plan had still a lot of loose ends. (How were they to get the key?) But he refrained from saying so. Indeed, it touched him to the heart to see Nils now run from sill to sill, attempting, in vain, to call beneath some Norwegian word of hope. The doors were set in solid rock, no voice of mouse could possibly penetrate. “Come on back, old fellow!” urged Bernard — not unsympathetically, just practically. “Now is the time, if there ever was one, for proper planning! Come on back to Miss Bianca, and let’s think!”
It was a desperate, perilous journey again: first down the steps to the water gate, then up and up the cliff, and up again over the castle walls. Again, the dauntless mice achieved it. (Bernard was as dauntless as Sir John Hunt, and Nils as Sir Edmund Hillary.) The thought of all they had to tell Miss Bianca spurred them on, and though they ached in every limb, they never paused once until they reached the little boss of rock from which they had first peered down. There they allowed themselves a brief rest, while they got their breath (and also discussed whether to have a breakfast first and lunch immediately afterwards, or lunch straight away). Then off they set again. They had still a long way to go, but, as Bernard said, the worst was over.
He was wrong.
Fatigue made them careless. When at last they regained the door of the Head Jailer’s sitting room, they hurried straight in without stopping to reconnoiter, and at that crucial moment, for the first time, met Mamelouk face to face. — Mamelouk was as surprised as they were, but he wasn’t tired. For just one instant they all three stood transfixed — Bernard and Nils foolishly huddled together — then out flashed a cruel black paw and pinned them both to the ground!
2.
At the same moment, Miss Bianca peeped out of the hole. She had been worrying all morning, ever since Bernard and Nils weren’t there for breakfast. As the hours passed, her anxiety grew; all morning she had been running to the door to look for their return. Now at the sight that met her eyes she almost fainted! But she had got out of the habit of fainting, and instead uttered but one piercing shriek of dismay.
Mamelouk looked around. He grinned with pleasure. From his point of view, the appearance of Miss Bianca was the one thing needed to make the fun complete.
“So these are your unsociable friends?” he purred. “Now I shall have sport indeed! Would you like to see me eat them up?”
The three mice exchanged agonized glances. “Whatever you do, lie still!” adjured the glance of Miss Bianca. What Nils and Bernard had to convey was far more complicated: each longed with all his might, before he died, to pass on to Miss Bianca all their discoveries about the River and the water gate and the dungeon doors. It was obviously impossible. She saw only that they had something to convey, and of terrific importance!
“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Mamelouk. “Come closer, little lady, and watch!”
He began to shake all over with cruel glee. (Nils and Bernard could feel it oozing from his very toes.) His grin stretched from ear to ear, revealing every one of his dreadfully sharp teeth, and even the wide red gullet behind; tears of mirth rolled down his whiskers and glistened in his fur like the spangles of a Demon King. Miss Bianca had never seen him so terrible as in this fiendish merriment — but she stepped bravely out towards him, summoning all her funds of wit, and resourcefulness, and feminine cunning.
“Which will you eat first?” inquired she. “You can’t swallow both at once, you know!”
“Oh, can’t I?” grinned Mamelouk. “You just watch me!”
“I meant, without spoiling your appetite for the midnight feast,” explained Miss Bianca hastily. “It is tonight, isn’t it?” she added. “The great feast when you eat more than anyone else, and everyone is so astonished at you? Dear me, they’ll be astonished in a different way, if you’re so full of Nils and Bernard you can’t manage a bite!” said Miss Bianca, carelessly.
She was being very clever, both in disguising her true feelings and in thus playing on Mamelouk’s vanity. It wouldn’t be half so much fun for him to eat her friends before her eyes if she didn’t seem to care about them, while his reputation as Mamelouk the Iron-tummed was his greatest pride. — He looked uneasily at the mice under his paw. After their months of good living, both Nils and Bernard had put on weight. Either one would have made a square cat-meal, and in point of fact Mamelouk was accustomed to eat nothing whatever all that day . . .
“Perhaps you’re right,” he admitted. “I’ll just break their necks and have ’em tomorrow.”
“Dear me!” said Miss Bianca again. “I thought you considered yourself quite a gourmet! My Persian friend, whom I may have mentioned to you, always told me mice shouldn’t be hung even an hour! But I suppose you’re forced to live coarsely.”
Mamelouk was stung.
“I don’t live coarsely!” he shouted. “I live on the fat of the land!”
“It’s so nice to hear you take that view,” said Miss Bianca blandly. “It shows a truly humble nature. My Persian friend, now —”
“Nor’s my nature humble!” shouted Mamelouk.
“— my Persian friend,” continued Miss Bianca, “had quite a little witticism on the subject. ‘Fresh-killed mouse, caviar,’ he used to say. ‘One day old, ants’ eggs!’ Of course if you don’t mind eating ants’ eggs — which at the Embassy we fed to goldfish — I’ve really no advice to give,” said Miss Bianca kindly. “You must do just as you think best.”
Mamelouk was by now thoroughly confused. He didn’t want to spoil his appetite for the feast, he didn’t want to let Nils and Bernard go, and Miss Bianca had somehow made it seem that if he killed and saved them up, he would be regarded as a goldfish! For a cat with two plump mice under his paw, the situation was really extraordinary.
The uncertainty in his mind began to transfer itself to his muscles. Very slightly, the grip of his paw slackened. Bernard and Nils looked at each other, hardly daring to hope.
“Or if I might make a suggestion,” added Miss Bianca impulsively, “do, as you’re dining out, pay a little attention to your coat. You might begin with your back.”
“What’s wrong with my back?” growled Mamelouk — confused afresh by this sudden change of subject.
“Just look!” said Miss Bianca.
Vain Mamelouk looked. Actually there was nothing wrong with his back coat at all, he’d groomed himself rather specially — but he couldn’t help looking.
Over his shoulder.
Away from the mice.
“Now!” shrieked Miss Bianca.
With one instant’s terrific effort Nils and Bernard wrenched themselves free and streaked like lightning for the hole. Miss Bianca skimmed in just ahead of them, and Mamelouk was left fuming outside . . .
3.
Lunch was sausage and sauté potatoes, followed by treacle sponge, followed by cheese and biscuits. (Nils and Bernard decided to cut breakfast after all and just have twice as much of everything.) With so much to tell Miss Bianca, they had to talk with their mouths full. She for her part was alternately so enthralled by their discoveries, and so alarmed at the dangers they had run, she could bare
ly nibble a crumb.
“What heroism, and enterprise!” she murmured. “Dear Bernard, dear Nils, how warmly I congratulate you!”
“It is you who are the heroine,” said Bernard soberly. “Without your wonderful coolness and resource, we should neither of us be here now.”
“That’s right,” agreed Nils. “We’d be in Mamelouk’s famous tum!”
Miss Bianca shuddered.
“Pray don’t speak of it!” she begged. “Or I really shall faint! Indeed,” she added gravely, “we must now have no more thoughts of ourselves, or of anything else, until the prisoner is free. It is positively New Year’s Day tomorrow, and how much still remains to be decided! How many obstacles loom still in our way! — Oh, dear,” suddenly, uncontrollably wept Miss Bianca (a prey to delayed nervous shock, and no wonder), “that dreadful, dreadful River!”
For a moment they all of them thought about the River.
“There we’ll have to swim for it,” said Nils hardily. “It’s The Barrens on the other side,” he added, “that bother me . . .”
For a moment they all thought about The Barrens.
“There we’ll have to march for it,” said Bernard.
Then they all thought about the prisoner, and their courage was renewed.
They began to plan in detail what had never been planned before — or, if planned, had never succeeded: the liberation of a prisoner from the Black Castle.
12.
The Great Enterprise
IT was determined in the first place to act on New Year’s Day. (Tomorrow.)
This really went without saying. New Year’s morning, with the jailer on duty, also Mamelouk, too bilious to be efficient, offered the mice their one and only chance of entering the corridor above the dungeons.
“Or may we not assume it a certainty?” proposed Miss Bianca.
“Seconded,” said Bernard.
For such a momentous discussion they were having an extra, special meeting of the Prisoners’ Aid Society, Black Castle Branch. They just cleared lunch away first.
“Call it a certainty,” said Nils.
“Carried unanimously,” said Miss Bianca, from the Chair. “We all three, then,” she proceeded, “enter the corridor —”
“Question,” said Bernard. “I suggest Madam Chairwoman join us below at the water gate, thus bypassing at least some of the peril.”
“I certainly won’t!” cried Miss Bianca. “To venture alone down to a River,” she added, more formally, “without other members to assist and guide, is something no Chairwoman should be asked even to contemplate. We all enter the corridor together. Nils then makes contact with the prisoner —”
“Trust me for that!” shouted Nils.
“I’m sure we do,” said Miss Bianca. “Nils next, through the grid, throws down the right key —”
She paused.
“How do we get the right key?” asked Miss Bianca.
“The jailer will have it on his belt,” said Nils, “along with all the rest. Bernard and I have seen ’em. I throw down the whole bunch, and the prisoner will sort out which is his.”
“But how do we get the keys from the jailer?” persisted Miss Bianca.
“By force,” said Nils.
Miss Bianca had an uneasy feeling that the point wasn’t really settled. How exactly did one use force on a jailer, if one happened to be a mouse? But she didn’t want to undermine the meeting’s confidence; also she recalled a saying of the great Duke of Wellington’s, to the effect that whereas his enemies made plans of wire, he made his of string — that is, he always left something to the inspiration of the moment. Frail and pliable as string, yet in the end strong as a rope ladder, Miss Bianca trusted their plans might prove! — and passed on to the next step.
“Thank you, Nils,” she said, “for your excellent idea. “You then jump down yourself — Oh, dear!” added Miss Bianca, now losing a trifle of her own confidence. “How do I get down?”
Nils and Bernard went into committee for a moment.
“I will jump second,” reported Bernard, when they came out, “and between us we will stretch my handkerchief like firemen. Then you jump into it. It won’t be half so dangerous as saving us from Mamelouk.”
“I suppose I can,” murmured Miss Bianca — and returned to her role as Madam Chairwoman. “Next, we induce the prisoner to place his confidence in us —”
“Trust me for that too!” shouted Nils.
“— and conduct him, he having unlocked his cell with the key provided, to the River bank. There have been far too many interruptions from the floor,” added Madam Chairwoman Miss Bianca severely, “and I don’t want to hear anyone say, ‘Then we’ll have to swim for it.’ The Meeting knows it will have to swim for it.”
“And then march for it,” muttered Bernard.
“And then march for it,” agreed Miss Bianca. (She ought really to have called Bernard to order too, but somehow she didn’t.) “It thus appears,” she continued, “that until the jailer goes his round tomorrow morning, there is nothing we can usefully do. Our best course is to get as much sleep as possible, in order to recruit our strength; though I must say I should like to leave things tidy!”
In fact, after sleeping all the rest of the day (while Mamelouk watched fruitlessly outside), they spring-cleaned half the night. There was no real reason for it, probably no mouse would ever take that hole again, yet Miss Bianca’s instinct was right too: there is nothing like housework for calming the nerves. Mamelouk went off to the party shortly before twelve, so they could put all the furniture outside, then for hours all was peaceful domestic activity. Faintly, as Nils and Bernard took the carpet up, they heard the songs and shouts of the jailers’ midnight feast; faintly, as Bernard and Nils cleaned the wallpaper with dry bread crumbs, they heard a last burst of merriment die away. As dawn broke, Miss Bianca, sweeping out a last pan of rubbish through the lobby, saw Mamelouk the Iron-tummed totter back and collapse before the hearth; by which time the nerves of all three mice were as calm as could be.
It was pleasant, too, as after a sustaining breakfast they took a last look round, to see everything so neat and clean.
“It wasn’t such a bad hole after all,” admitted Nils, as he got into his sea boots and buckled on his cutlass.
Cudgel in hand, Bernard nodded silently. He couldn’t trust himself to speak. In spite of all the terrible circumstances, the hours he spent hanging wallpaper for Miss Bianca had been among the happiest of his life.
He was glad to hear her give the hole a kind word too.
“Adieu, dear hole!” murmured Miss Bianca softly. “Dear hole, adieu!”
Bernard picked up her valise. Nils looked out first, to see if the coast was clear. It was. Beside the stove, Mamelouk still snored and tossed in queasy dreams. For the last time, they picked their way among the cigar butts and the matchboxes and the chewing-gum wrappers. Miss Bianca cast a last compassionate glance towards the poor butterflies on the walls. But they were none of them sorry to see the last of the Head Jailer’s sitting room.
2.
Along the corridor they hurried, down some stairs, along a corridor and down more stairs again. It was all strange territory to Miss Bianca, but Nils and Bernard, after their explorations, ran on unhesitatingly. Not a soul besides themselves was about. Empty stretched the corridors, unguarded the stairs: all jailers save one, as Mamelouk had foretold, lay still abed, quite unable to lift head from pillow . . .
But where was that one?
As the mice approached the corridor above the dungeons, they began to take more care. At the last flight of steps Nils crept on in advance, while Bernard and Miss Bianca waited halfway down. “I hope he won’t be long!” whispered Miss Bianca — for now that even their own footsteps were stilled the silence was frightening; the whole weight of the Castle seemed to press down on them like an enormous, million-times-magnified paw . . .
Then back Nils called in triumph, they hurried after, and beheld inert against an iron door — h
olding it open, like a doorstop — the jailer with the food pans!
He had got just so far before collapsing. The pans and their contents lay scattered all about. To Miss Bianca’s extreme relief there was obviously no need to use force on him, for he was sound asleep.
What a moment that should have been! — What a half-moment, indeed, it was! But scarcely had the mice savored their triumph when they perceived something they hadn’t bargained for.
There was no bunch of keys at the fat jailer’s belt. The key ring dangled far out of reach overhead, where he had left it in the lock of the smooth, iron door.
No mouse can run up smooth iron.
“Now what do we do?” muttered Nils desperately.
“Think!” said Bernard. “We can’t be beaten now!”
Enormous above them, like a mountain, loomed the bulk of the big fat jailer. — Like a mountain! Bernard had been mountaineering with Nils half the previous day; and the top of the jailer’s head lolled only an inch below the lock . . .
“Stand ready to catch!” cried Bernard recklessly.
The Duke of Wellington would have been proud of him, as Bernard now acted on the inspiration of the moment. So was Miss Bianca proud of him, as Bernard without the slightest hesitation leaped up onto the jailer’s out-stretched foot, and ran up his leg, and then across his big heaving stomach — it heaved like an earthquake — and then up onto his shoulder. “Oh, pray take care!” called Miss Bianca — almost too far below to be heard! Bernard waved back, and mountaineered on. Across the jailer’s face was a traverse to dismay the most expert; where beard stubble gave place to bare flesh it was like traversing polished rock. Bernard only just managed it — and only just in time. The mountain turned volcano, as the jailer sneezed; but Bernard, his foot at the roots of bushy hair, had plenty to hang on to.
The Rescuers Page 7