The Midnight Folk Read online

“Queek, queek,” the Bat said, in his shrill way. But lo, it wasn’t the Bat that said queek, queek. Kay was sitting up in his bed in full daylight. The curtain-rings were saying queek, queek as they clinked in the wind.

  “A very good morning,” somebody was saying, “for a dance round the Liberty Tree.” There was nobody there. The Bat, the heap of stones and the four dog-tired companions were all gone; yet somebody had said those words . . .“dance round the Liberty Tree.”

  “I don’t know about dance,” Kay said. “But I’ll go to the Liberty Tree. I’ll take a measuring tape, I’ll see if there are three big yews, and I’ll have a trowel to dig with, in case.”

  ☆

  It did not take him long to reach the Liberty Tree in Corselay dead Wood. As Ellen had said, “There was Liberty cut on it,” though the bark had almost overgrown the cuts. Sure enough, a hundred yards south from the Liberty Tree brought him to the centre of a space between three big yew trees. Ten minutes of trowelling there brought him to . . . There in the earth among the yew roots was a roll of something much decayed and worm-eaten, containing something heavy. It was a mildewed, rotted leather, wrapped round mildewed, rotted tarpaulin, wrapped round something that had once been wood. Inside the wood was more leather, which might once have been a money-bag. Inside this was a tin box about the size of the saddle soap-box in the harness-room of the stable. Inside this was something done up in an old silk handkerchief. Inside this was something of a sort that he had seen in the clockmaker’s shop, an old gold watch fatter than the governess’s table clock. It was very big; it had a dial for the seconds as well as for the hours; there was an engraved inscription on the back:

  Presented to Sir Hassle Gassle, Bart., by the members of the Condicote Hunt, as a small tribute to his manly Probity and truly British Sportsmanship, in which the Virtues of the Citizen and the Cheerfulness of the Companion have been signally united. April 17th, 1810. God Save the King.

  “I know what it is then,” Kay said. “Of course, this is Benjamin’s treasure. This is the repeater watch which he took from Sir Hassle Gassle, ‘that Sir Hassle mourned to his dying day,’ as Ellen said. I’ll take it at once to the present Sir Hassle.”

  The church clock was chiming for nine o’clock when he passed beneath the baronet’s arms upon the gateway. The arms were three hassles gasslees, muzzly, and the supporters two gassles showing their teeth. Kay’s heart sank when he heard the chimes; he would be at least an hour late for breakfast. Still, he was not going to be bullied by any governess who was really a witch. “I know what I’ll say,” he thought, “if I tell the Rector about you, he’ll very likely have you burned. That’ll shut her up,” he thought.

  He crossed the flagged courtyard to the door, where a long bell handle of twisted iron, when vigorously pulled, made a faint ting to sound in the east wing of the house far away. Presently, after he had rung half a dozen times, a footman opened the door, and told him that there was no need to have rung so often, since people weren’t deaf, and what did he want, ringing like that? Kay recognised the footman as Roper Bilges’s brother, who had been at the ducking of Blackmalkin.

  “Please,” Kay said, “I was afraid the bell wasn’t working properly. I want to see Sir Hassle Gassle on very important business.”

  “Sir Hassle is at breakfast. What is your business?”

  “It’s private.”

  “You’d best write to Sir Hassle, then,” the man said, “and make an appointment when to see him. That’s the rule with private business, you ought to know that.” He was about to close the door, when young Lady Gassle, dressed for riding, crossed the hall on her way to breakfast. She was a very beautiful young woman, with eyes so bright and teeth so white that she always seemed more alive than anybody in the room with her.

  “Why, it’s little Kay Harker,” she said. “Don’t shut the door, Bilges. What is it, Kay? Do you come to see me?”

  “No, please, Lady Gassle. I wanted to speak to Sir Hassle.”

  “Well, come in,” she said. “We’re breakfasting. Have you breakfasted?”

  “No, not yet, Lady Gassle.”

  “Come in, then, and breakfast. What a pickle you’re in, though. Have you been taking a toss? Let me just mop you up a little and get some of the earth off.”

  When she had tidied him a little, she took him into the big, bright breakfast-room, which had a red and blue Axminster carpet on the floor, shining red mahogany furniture, six big paintings of thoroughbred hunters, a gleaming globe of the world, and Sir Hassle at breakfast, with The Times propped against the coffee pot.

  “You owe me that gold watch and chain, my Polly,” he said. “Kem is in for the Grasslands.”

  “What majority?”

  “Sixty-seven, a very near thing. Hullo. Who’s this? Kay Harker? Coming to breakfast? Right. Are you a pork-pie man or just an egg man?”

  “Please, a pork-pie man; and, if you please, I’ve found your grandfather’s gold watch, that Benjamin, the highwayman, took.”

  “Well, I’m blest,” Sir Hassle said.

  “That will just do for the gold watch and chain I owe you over the election,” his wife said.

  “Of all the things I ever knew happen,” Sir Hassle said, when he had examined the watch, “this is just about the neatest. It’s the thing my grandfather worried over till he died; and it worried my father, too, and it’s a great pleasure to me to get it back. And all the Hunt will be delighted, too. It has been well very preserved, too; it will be possible to get it to go again. I shall owe you a big debt, Kay. What can I do for you? You must think, and let me know.”

  “Please,” Kay said, “when you go hunting, will you please not hunt a fox, who is a good fox, really, and very nice, who may live somewhere down not far from where the old mill once stood.”

  “Well, if he’s a good fox and very nice and a friend of yours,” Sir Hassle said, “and you tell him not to go goosing and henning among the farms down there, I dare say we shall be able to do without him.”

  It was now half-past ten, an hour after lesson-time. He could not imagine what she would do to him. Lady Gassle guessed that he might be wanted for lessons. She asked her husband to take Kay in front of him on his hack, which he did. Kay rode all the way, and learned a lot about horses, how this one was called Old Joe, and how they remembered everything, and how clever they are and how nervy.

  “But if you’re so fond of horses,” Sir Hassle said, “you ought to come up on Wednesdays and Saturdays, at eleven, and ride with my little boy, Bill. Would you like that?”

  “Oh, I should think I should.”

  “Well, come along then on Saturday.”

  “Please, I don’t think I should be allowed.”

  “That’s all my eye and Betty Martin, you won’t be allowed. I’ll get my wife to write about it.”

  ☆

  When they reached Seekings House, Ellen was in a fine taking. “Whatever have you been doing, Master Kay, going out like this without your breakfast and never a word?”

  “He’s been breakfasting with me,” Sir Hassle said. This was excuse enough for the moment, but when the Hassle Gassles had ridden away she turned on him again.

  “It’s lucky for you that your governess had to go off to Russell’s Dene again,” she said. “They sent the carriage for her just before breakfast, so she doesn’t know about you; otherwise I don’t know what she’d have said. And whatever have you done to your pyjama coat to get it all over fish scales?”

  This came from wearing otter-skin, Kay thought, but before he could answer, Ellen went on: “I couldn’t let you wear it again in that state, I’ve had to wash it. And then, another thing, poor little Nibbins is missing; he wasn’t in last night and he hasn’t been in all morning. Jane and I think that Bilges the keeper has shot him, for he always shoots cats, though he’s got no business to. And I don’t know what we’ll do without little Nibbins.”

  ☆

  “Yes,” Kay thought, “Abner has sent for her because he has found s
ome clue. And the fish scales on the pyjamas show that last night wasn’t a dream, but real. And the treasure is down in the cave by the mill, and poor little Nibs and old Bitem are down in the cave and can’t get out, unless they try swimming and get drowned. And if Abner has got a clue by incantation, and goes to the cave for the treasure, he’ll find them both there and shoot them. What am I to do?”

  “Ah, that’s what,” said a voice behind him. Rat, the cellarman, was standing there, smearing his mouth with his paw. He looked much more seedy than formerly, having newly come from the dustbin.

  “Well,” he said sourly, “and what are you looking at me for? I ain’t done nothing; I never didn’t; not never. It wasn’t never Rat done it. You thinks acos I don’t wear no pyjamas all over fish scales as I larders and I sculleries, but I don’t; I only dustbins; except sometimes I rubbish heaps. And what’s dustbins? Glass bottles, mostly, what’s empty. What’s dust heaps? Old tins what’s been under the tap. And what’s life? That’s what.”

  “I’ve saved a bit of bacon-rind for you,” Kay said. “It’s here, in my soap-dish.”

  Rat took the bacon-rind without joy and without thanks; he ate it in a greasy sideways sort of way, with a good deal of bolting. However, when it was down he was a different being.

  “As neat a bit of rind,” he said, “as ever I stummikked. He put me in mind of a bit of rind as maybe you, what lives on such, may have forgotten, but what a pore cellarman, what don’t get, no not the smell of rind, not twist in a year, does dwell on down in the dark, ah, many a long day. He wasn’t thrown out on no dustbin, but took to the hens, and the sun cooked him beautiful, ah, he was a rind, he was. But what I says is a cellar’s a cellar, ain’t it, and a friend’s a friend, ain’t he?”

  “Yes,” Kay said, “certainly.”

  “Ah, you admits it now,” Rat said, “and nicely you shows it. You ain’t stirred neither paw nor tooth for your friends, though you’ve been back hours. Here’s Bat come digging at me, saying, ‘You go and see if he’s gone to help them, acos they’re down there and can’t get out, unless they gets drownded trying.’ So I says, ‘But if he knows they’re here, he’ll help them.’ ‘No,’ Bat says. ‘He mayn’t. He may be took by such. And I can’t go,’ Bat says, ‘acos I can’t see in this here flaming daylight that is my distraction. But Nibbins and Bitem,’ he said, ‘is down there in agonies, and what’ll help ’em if Kay don’t?’ That’s what.”

  “But how can I help them,” Kay asked.

  Rat didn’t answer this, but walked to the door and beckoned to him to follow. Just outside the door, he shoved back the tread of a stair, and motioned to him to enter the opening. Kay found it fairly light inside. In the darker corners some bats hung, fast asleep.

  “Them’s them as bacon-rind is flung away on,” Rat said. “They thinks scorn of rind. Gnats is their joy, and they’re partial to a midge. But here’s what. . .”

  He had opened a panel in the wainscoting of a little room which Kay recognised at once. It was Mrs. Pouncer’s cupboard; there were the magical books, the gums and unguents; the cloaks, masks and hats had been removed. “They will be doing magic in them,” Kay thought.

  “That’s what,” Rat whispered.

  “Of course it is,” Kay said.

  He saw at once what to do; he took down from the shelf a pair of one league shoes, the magic lantern, a ladder, a rope and an extra pair of spectacles.

  “And him,” Rat said, pointing to one of the baskets.

  “You mean, to carry the things in?” Kay asked.

  “No, I don’t mean,” Rat said.

  “What then?”

  “Acos,” Rat said, “I seen her one time say to one of them, ‘Goose,’ and in come a cold goose with sassingers. Then she said, ‘Rabbit pie,’ and in come a rabbit pie. And if you was to say, ‘Raw goose’ and ‘raw rabbit,’ when down there with your two friends, it might be the saving of their pore lives.”

  “I’ll certainly do that,” Kay said.

  “Ah,” Rat said. “Yet I notice you never stop to think what you might say so as to rejoice a pore cellarman what toils in dustbins for a living he don’t get.”

  “What can I say for you?” Kay asked.

  “There was a thing come here once in the summer,” Rat said. “He come done up so as he wouldn’t burst, but he did burst; and he was to have come quick, but he didn’t come quick, and so the sun got at him. And he was very baggy and people called him a Naggy. And he made folk go very white at dinner time, so you flung him away; but I didn’t fling him away. No, I put him away and wished he was more. Now you just come into this little passage and hold that basket; then, if you will say Naggy, perhaps he’ll come for you.”

  “I know what you mean,” Kay said. “The haggis. . .” He went into the passage, held the basket, and said, “Haggis.”

  Instantly there came a puddingy flump in the basket; a cold, bulging, blobby thing had fallen into it. “Here you are, Rat,” he said, “take it, will you?”

  “Ah, that’s what,” Rat said, taking it. “Now you put on your shoes in here. You can get out at that jackdaw’s place at the end.” As Kay sat down to put on the shoes, he heard Rat passing along the passage to the cellars singing a song:

  “Of all the foods as good as tart,

  There’s none like pretty Naggy;

  He warms the cockles of my heart,

  Though he is so cold and baggy.

  What though the wise eat mutton pies,

  Or pasties made of staggy,

  To all the wise I makes replies,

  Give me my pretty Naggy.

  Oh let my jaw lay down and gnaw

  Until my teeth are jaggy,

  Both cooked and raw the Scots whae ha

  My ain braw sonsie Naggy.”

  Kay was not sure of the last lines, because, when Rat was singing them, he was whisking through the jackdaw’s place under the eaves, holding his laden basket. He had slipped on the one league shoes, which were like scarlet goloshes of soft leather, then he had stamped one foot down, to make his shoe fit into it, and lo, away he had whisked, through the hole, over the garden, over the hill, over the wood, across Mile Meadow, which was said to be the best grass for milk in the seven counties, then along Yell Brook, across Foxpits, then down, quite out of breath, at the third milestone. He had just time to say: “That makes one league,” when he was off again. This time it was fun, because he was up among a company of rooks, who were changing their pasture. He had always longed to be among rooks.

  “Hurraw,” they said “Hyaw’s Kaw,” meaning “Hurray, here’s Kay.” But in an instant, Kay was past them and coming down by Seven Springs to Condicote Old Mill, to the ruined lime-kiln where the entrance was. Luckily, no one was about.

  He slipped off the red goloshes, lest they should take him further, then he put on his fox-eye spectacles, then he tied the basket round his neck, then he took out the lantern and examined the entrance. It seemed to him that no one had been there since he had left with Bat. He crept into the old cellar or stable from which Nibbins and Bitem had fallen. He peered down through the gap in the floor, and called: “Nibs, Nibs, Nibs.”

  “Is that you, Kay?”

  “Yes, are you all right?”

  “Well, we’re feeling rather lost, as we couldn’t face the look of the river when Otter showed it to us, and didn’t quite know that you’d be able to help. But don’t speak quite so loud, if you don’t mind; we’ll explain why presently.”

  “I’ll come down,” Kay said.

  He was pulling out the rope-ladder to a proper length, when he began to puzzle how to secure the end. “I wish,” he said, “I wish I had somebody here to tie the ends to the rocks so that they won’t slip.” Instantly an invisible someone took the ladder from his hands, secured it to the rocks near him, went down it, secured the lower ends below, came back up it, said, “Ladder-ends tied securely” (in a tinny, clicky voice, like a biscuit-tin lid being put onto the tin), and disappeared; that was one of th
e results of having a Wish Basket.

  Kay went down the ladder. Bitem and Nibbins were overjoyed to see him. Neither Bitem nor Nibbins was hungry, as Otter had given them a trout. He heard a noise as though a pickaxe were being plied against the wall of the cave from somewhere on the other side. He heard the click of the pick and the falling of stones after each blow.

  “That is why I said don’t speak quite so loud,” Nibbins said. “They’ve been at it ever since daylight. They’re digging into the wall from some other cave. If you come over here you will hear them.”

  Kay went quietly to the wall of the cave. There the noise was so clear that it was possible to hear the voices of the workers when they stopped working. Whoever they were, they were not Edward and the Guards. Kay could make out that there were always two pickaxes working at the same time, for five minutes at a spell; then there came a pause, during which the broken stone was shovelled away; then the picking began again.

  “They’ve a lot of people there,” Nibbins said, “and they’re making as little noise as possible; you’ll notice that they don’t sing; and they’re getting within the last yard. Those picks will soon be through.”

  “They will,” Otter said; “they will be through in no time, and that will mean another way into my place where I’ve been so snug. It may seem very selfish of me, but do you think, Kay, that you could block up the hole you made into my den, so that it won’t be noticed?”

  “I’ll try,” Kay said. “You go back into your den, and I will wish.”

  He had no sooner wished, than invisible someones came silently, blocked up the approach to Otter’s lair, tinnily reported, “Entrance blocked securely,” and disappeared.

  “That’s your third wish,” Nibbins said. “You’ll get nothing more out of that basket this time until you’ve gone a league and crossed running water; that’s how those things work.”

  “Nibs,” Kay whispered, “do you think that the diggers there are the Pouncer Seven?”