The Box of Delights Read online

  At that, he swung himself on to the mule, picked up his theatre with one hand, gathered the reins with the other, said, ‘Come, Toby,’ and at once rode off with Toby trotting under the mule, out of the room, up the mountain path, up, up, up, till the path was nothing more than a line in the faded painting, that was so dark upon the wall. Kay watched him till he was gone, and almost sobbed, ‘Oh, I do hope you’ll escape the wolves.’

  A very, very faint little voice floated down to him from the mountain tops. ‘You’ll see me again;’ then the mule-hoofs seemed to pass on to grass. They could be heard no more. ‘He has gone forever,’ Kay thought, as he watched.

  There came, as it were, a little gust of wind, blowing what looked like snowflakes from the mountain path. The snowflakes flew out into the room and fluttered about the ceiling, growing rapidly larger. They resolved themselves into shapes of coloured tissue paper, such as the caps and crowns sometimes found within crackers: there were also little paper balloons, in the shapes of cocks, horses, ships and aeroplanes: these floated and lifted and drifted down. Kay saw that there was one of a different shape and colour for each child there: and printed, too, with his or her name. Thus:

  For little Maria,

  from Cole Hawlings.

  Shoot Not, Shock Not.

  For Master Kay Harker,

  from Cole Hawlings.

  The Wolves are Running.

  For good Miss Jemima,

  from Cole Hawlings.

  Happy Is that Happy Makes.

  When the coloured papers had all floated to the floor, the lights seemed to grow dimmer. Caroline Louisa came into the study.

  ‘Kay,’ she said, ‘I am so very sorry to upset your holiday. My brother is very ill again, in London, with his recurrent fever: and there is nobody to look after him at all. I’m afraid I must go up to him by the seven train tonight. Celia has been cabled for and should be on her way to him now: I ought to be there until she comes. I hate to leave you on the first night of the holidays, but I hope it won’t be for more than just tonight, or perhaps tomorrow night as well.’

  ‘I say, I’m most awfully sorry,’ Kay said. ‘I do hope you’ll find your brother better. I say, can’t I drive you to the station?’

  ‘No, indeed, Kay, thanks,’ she said. ‘You will not drive any car for five years.’

  ‘Well, can’t I see you off?’

  ‘No, no, thank you. I’ve told Joe to take me. He’s putting on the chains now.’

  ‘I will see you off though,’ Kay said. ‘It’s an awful night. I hope your train won’t be snowed up.’

  ‘It’s not so bad as that,’ she said. ‘Now I must run and be ready. I shall telephone to you at ten tomorrow morning.’

  ‘You won’t,’ Kay said. ‘All the wires will be down from the snow.’

  While she ran to be ready, Kay slipped out of the front door to the garage, where he found Joe chaining the car-wheels to keep them from slipping in the snow.

  ‘Even with the chains her’ll slither in the drifts,’ Joe said.

  Indeed, when they started for the station a few minutes later her did slither in the drifts. Kay went to the station to see Caroline Louisa away, and much enjoyed the car’s skidding and the appearance of the engine of the express, glowing with fire and steaming, yet all hung with icicles from snow which had melted on the boiler and frozen as it dripped.

  Chapter III

  While Kay was out of the house and Caroline Louisa making ready to leave, the other children were in their rooms, dressing up as pirates, and giving themselves pirates’ moustaches with burnt cork. Just as the front door slammed and the car lurched away to the station, they came down to the study for a dress-parade. There they found the paper toys which had floated down from the mountain. They much enjoyed seeing their names in print.

  ‘Shoot not, shock not,’ said little Maria. ‘I like whoever it was’s cheek. I shall shoot and I shall shock as long as my name’s Maria. Now let’s toss up for who shall be Captain. One of you’s got to be a Merchantman and be taken and have to walk the plank.’

  ‘No, let’s be Christmas pirates,’ Jemima said, ‘and put all our treasure into poor people’s stockings and let nobody know who did it: let the people all go to bed in despair wanting money, and then find it in their stockings in the morning and be made happy.’

  ‘I say,’ Peter said, ‘of all the sickly sentiments . . .’

  ‘It’s a jolly good Christmas sentiment.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t dress up to be a pirate to have Christmas sentiment.’

  ‘Hold on a minute,’ Maria said. ‘I believe there’s someone just outside that window.’

  ‘I expect it was only snow falling.’

  ‘No, somebody coughed: it’s carol-singers again. Well, I’ll tell them to sing and then we’ll get on with Pirates.’

  ‘Let them ring the doorbell,’ Jemima said, ‘then somebody will attend to them.’

  ‘Not a bit,’ Maria said. ‘They’re probably a lot of foul little boys trying to peep in at the window. I’m going to open this window to them here.’

  With that she flung back the curtain, unlocked the French window, and opened it into the night. There, directly outside in the snow, was the figure of a man. ‘Good evening, my young friends,’ he said in a gentle, silky voice. ‘I could not make anybody hear. This is the house called Seekings House, is it not?’

  ‘Did you want Caroline Louisa?’ Jemima asked.

  ‘I am afraid you will think that what I want is very absurd,’ he said. ‘I was given to understand that a man called Hollings, or Hawlings, a Punch and Judy showman, is here.’

  ‘There was a Punch and Judy showman,’ Maria said, ‘but he has gone.’

  ‘Gone?’ the man said. ‘How long has he been gone?’

  Although he had not been invited to come in out of the snow, he had come in, and had closed the French window behind him, and was shaking the snow from himself on to the mat.

  Maria answered in good faith, believing that what she said was true, and little guessing what trouble her answer was to cause to others.

  ‘He went away with the Tatchester Choir,’ she said.

  ‘D’you mean the party with the Japanese lanterns?’ the man asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Maria said, ‘they had a lot of Japanese lanterns.’

  ‘That went off,’ the man asked, ‘in a motor bus to Tatchester?’

  ‘I don’t know how they went off,’ Maria said.

  They saw that the man was dressed as a clergyman underneath his greatcoat.

  ‘And so, I miss him once more,’ he said. ‘How very vexatious! I am interested, I should tell you, in the various forms of the Punch and Judy show, and this man is the son, and grandson of Punch and Judy men, who were on the roads many years ago. This man is known to have versions of the play which they played, and other versions still older, which are not played, and I do most earnestly want to meet him, and now he is off to this wild life of the roads in weather like this, where a touch of pneumonia, or a passing van, may wipe out his knowledge for ever.’

  ‘You would get him at Tatchester,’ Peter said. ‘The Bishop asked him to give a performance there tomorrow.’

  ‘Ah!’ the man said. ‘So that fixes him to Tatchester.’ He looked at Peter curiously. ‘May I ask,’ he said, ‘if you are the gentleman known as young Mister Harker?’

  ‘No,’ Peter said. ‘I don’t know where he is at the moment: probably upstairs somewhere, dressing up.’

  The man looked at little Maria. ‘And this little friend is your sister, I take it?’

  ‘I may be little, but I am not a friend of yours,’ Maria said, ‘and you may take it, or leave it.’

  ‘Indeed!’ the man said. ‘But I interrupt your Christmas gambols, and if the man is gone I must go too. Good night, my little Maria.’ He slipped out, and closed the French window behind him.

  ‘I say, Maria,’ Peter said, ‘you ought not to speak to people like that.’

  ‘I’ll speak t
o people as I like,’ she said.

  ‘But he was a clergyman.’

  ‘I’ll bet he wasn’t. What would a clergyman be doing spying in at the window?’

  ‘He wasn’t spying in at the window.’

  ‘Well, he was trying to, anyhow. As to his saying that he had been trying to make people hear, that’s all bunk. If he had rung the bell, or knocked, we’d have heard him. He was creeping round, spying. What clergyman would come round hunting for a Punch and Judy man on a night like this? Any real clergyman would be going round carol-singing, or doing choir-practice, or visiting the sick or the poor. I vote we all go out and snowball that villain down his false neck.’

  ‘Oh, chuck it, Maria,’ Peter said. ‘Now, come on and play Pirates. Where on earth is Kay?’

  At that moment, Kay was driving home from the station. On his way through the market-square he asked Joe to stop the car. ‘You go home alone, Joe,’ he said. ‘I must do some Christmas shopping. I shall be back in a minute by the short cut.’

  He had drawn some money from Caroline Louisa. He bought a little scissor-case for Jemima, and a sheath-knife for Peter, at the ironmonger’s. Then he went into Bob’s shop, which was almost next door, and bought a bottle of acid drops for Maria and a box of chocolates for Susan. After stuffing these into his pockets, he turned for home up the Haunted Lane.

  Near the most haunted part of the lane, there was a short cut into Seekings garden across a derelict place known as Monk’s Piece. There were still some stub ends of monkish building there, with the hollow of their fishpond, now dry, and the vaults of some of their cellars, often full of water.

  No one much liked the place after dark, but Kay liked it better than Haunted Lane, and in this night of snow it was a real short cut.

  As he climbed the ruined wall into Monk’s Piece, he saw an electric torch flash in the main ruin: several men were there. He had been told that the ghosts of monks always gathered there at Christmas time to sing carols, but ghosts of monks do not use electric torches. One of the men lit a cigarette with a pocket-lighter, another bent over a lighted match sucking at a pipe.

  Kay would have slipped past without pausing, but:

  ‘So he was among the Bishop’s Choir and we never noticed, ha-ha, what?’ a familiar voice said.

  ‘Yes,’ a silky voice answered (and the silky voice was familiar to Kay, too). ‘And you never noticed. Do you notice anything, I sometimes wonder?’

  Kay pressed close in to the ivy on the ruined wall.

  ‘A clever dodge, though, what, to get in with the Choir,’ the foxy-faced man said.

  ‘No doubt it seems so to you,’ the silky voice replied. ‘I should have thought it the obvious dodge that you might have expected. Now he has got right through our ring again. Those fools let him trick them at Musborough. Then by sheer luck we got his message that he would be here. Just as we learn his disguise and where he is, you let him go right through you, with the goods on him. Oh, if I’d only not been tricked to the Drop of Dew for him I’d have been here and I’d have had him.’

  ‘You’d have thought him a carol-singer, just as we did,’ a man growled.

  ‘Would I?’ the silky voice said. ‘Would I, my gentle Joe, my far-seeing friend? But come on, now. The Wolves are Running. Get on to Tatchester. There seems no doubt that he’s gone there, but he may slip off by the way. Overtake that motor bus, if you can. If not, find out where he’s got to in Tatchester, and get the goods off him.’

  ‘Won’t you come, Chief?’ the man called Joe asked. ‘We’re willing hands, maybe, but where are we without your great brain? Ha-ha, as our friend says, what?’

  ‘You might well ask where you are without me,’ the silky voice said. ‘Are you going to start to Tatchester? Get to Tatchester, will you?’

  All the silkiness fell from the voice at a breath: the men jumped as though they’d been kicked. ‘All right, Chief,’ the man called Joe said. ‘We’re going. I only asked, won’t you?’

  ‘I’ve got a report coming to me here,’ the Chief said. ‘Report to me at the inn in Number Three Code. My thundering sky, are you ever going to shift?’

  Kay thought, from the voice, that he would strike them. The men hurried out of the ruin, going away from Kay, who was now pressed into the ivy on the wall. He heard the men clumping at a trot along the Seekings garden fence: presently he heard their car start off, taking the Tatchester road. Just before the car door slammed he heard a waif sentence from the foxy-faced man:

  ‘Little Abner’s in his little tantrums, ha-ha, what?’ The others laughed.

  ‘He’ll tantrum you pretty soon,’ the man growled from within the ruin.

  ‘So it’s Abner Brown and his gang again,’ Kay muttered. ‘I am up against Magic, then, as well as Crime. What report can he have coming to him here? I daren’t move until he’s gone from here. And if anybody comes here with a report he’s almost bound to see me. Oh dear, Oh, dear.’

  Kay was standing pressed against the ivy outside. Under the vaulted roof inside the ruin Abner stamped his feet and flogged with his arms. Kay had not waited a minute after the starting of the car before he heard a sort of scuttering, scraping noise coming from somewhere below. There were also little splashes and snarls. He knew that under the ruins there were many queer underground ways. Someone was coming up by one of them into the ruin where Abner was.

  ‘Is that you, Rat?’ Abner asked.

  ‘Ah, it’s me,’ a surly voice answered, ‘and what’s the good of being me? Up in the attic and down in the cellar, all weathers, all hours, for one who’d sell his mother, if he had one, for what she’d fetch as old bones. And what do I get by it? Bacon fat, you might say, or the green of that cheese the dog won’t eat, or the haggie that made the hens swoon. But I don’t, my Christian friend. I get rheumatics; that, and the dog sickt at me. That’s what.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve got some green-looking cheese for you,’ Abner said. ‘Look here.’

  There was the scratch of a match; Abner lit a candle-end. Kay found that he could see through a hole in the wall right into the ruin. There, blinking at the light, was a disreputable Rat whom he had known in the past but had not seen for years. He was now much more disreputable than ever before. Kay had heard that everybody had dropped him, and that he had gone pirating. But there he was again; and a sickening object he looked.

  ‘Ah,’ Rat said, taking the cheese, which Kay could smell even in that cold weather. ‘And you wouldn’t give me this if you could sell it to a Tourists’ Rest.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Abner said. ‘I wouldn’t.’

  ‘I understand you, Abner, and you understand me,’ Rat said. He was eating the cheese with a sort of sideways wrench, while his little beady eyes stared at Abner.

  ‘That man Joe, you’d better look out for, Abner,’ Rat said. ‘He’s putting in for chief: likewise the “ha-ha, what?” man.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ Abner asked.

  ‘That’s what,’ Rat said. Here he dropped his cheese on the floor; he picked it up and ate it without wiping it. ‘Ah, that’s what,’ he repeated.

  ‘What’s your report?’ Abner said.

  ‘Him what you wot of,’ Rat said, ‘is a getting rid of his Dog this evening.’

  ‘That’s nothing,’ Abner said.

  ‘A lady friend will take the Dog. There’s many a Dog as I’ve loved more than that one now lies in a watery tomb with a stone round his neck. But some who claim to be friends never take a hint. That’s what . . .

  ‘Ah, and there’s to be dark doings. You’ve scared ’em, Abner: and I beheld their scare.’

  ‘Well, this is news at last,’ Abner said. ‘What did you see?’

  ‘The Drop of Dew, upper room, the Lion and the Rose chamber as they call it.

  ‘There’s passages pretty near all under and round this city, to them who knows them. I’ve gone a dark stravage into pretty near every one first and last. They’d a meeting in the Lion and the Rose at the Drop of Dew. One w
hat you wot of will be trying to get out of your ring at dawn tomorrow, by Arthur’s Camp, across Bottler’s Down, to Seven Barrows.’

  ‘But Cole is at Tatchester,’ Abner said.

  ‘Well, one of what you wot of will be trying.’

  ‘Will he have the goods on him?’

  ‘Ah,’ Rat said, ‘that’s what.’

  ‘Well, will he? And which of them is it?’

  ‘I been a cellarman, I have,’ Rat said, ‘and I’ve gone marine cellarman. And I’ve been a poor man, living in the dark, though others live in the light, with a haggie every day, and grudge a poor man so much as a old fish-bone; yes, they do. You says to me: “Find out what they decide.” Them was your words to me. “Find out” . . . you says . . . “what they decide.” There I’ve been in those dark dwellings in danger of Dog, and found out what they decided. Now you says, “Will he?” and “Which of them is it?” You didn’t tell me about that.’

  ‘No, but you heard,’ Abner said.

  ‘I found out what they decided,’ Rat said.

  Abner seemed ready to box Rat’s ears, for his stupidity; he seemed to gulp down his wrath and said very sweetly:

  ‘So you don’t know?’

  ‘I know what they decided,’ Rat said. ‘And why? Because I found it out. And how? By going the dark ways, and being in danger of Dog. What your words was to me, that I done, although in danger of Dog.’

  ‘And you did well,’ Abner said. ‘My brave Rat, you did superbly.’

  ‘That’s what,’ Rat said.

  There was a pause; Abner said nothing, Rat seemed to expect something. At last he said, ‘You said I was to have a bacon-rind, over and above the cheese.’

  ‘So you shall have, my brave Rat,’ Abner said. ‘I’ll bring you one tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s the bacon-rind to bring the plump on a man,’ the Rat said, ‘bacon-rind-tomorrow. That and marrow-bone-the-day-after proper makes your fur shine. Is there any little dark job you want done then, Master Abner, or shall I go now?’

  ‘I want you to report at eleven tomorrow at the usual place, in case there should be anything.’