The Enchanted Castle · Chapter 8 (2/3)

“Oh, Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy!” Kathleen sobbed louder than before.

“He doesn’t know us,” Gerald owned, “or look here, Jimmy, y⁠—you aren’t kidding, are you? Because if you are it’s simply abject rot⁠—”

“My name is Mr. ⸻” said That-which-had-been-Jimmy, and gave the name correctly. By the way, it will perhaps be shorter to call this elderly stout person who was Jimmy grown rich by some simpler name than I have just used. Let us call him “That”⁠—short for “That-which-had-been Jimmy.”

“What are we to do?” whispered Mabel, awestruck; and aloud she said: “Oh, Mr. James, or whatever you call yourself, do give me the ring.” For on That’s finger the fatal ring showed plain.

“Certainly not,” said That firmly. “You appear to be a very grasping child.”

“But what are you going to do?” Gerald asked in the flat tones of complete hopelessness.

“Your interest is very flattering,” said That. “Will you tell me, or won’t you, the way to the nearest railway station?”

“No,” said Gerald, “we won’t.”

“Then,” said That, still politely, though quite plainly furious, “perhaps you’ll tell me the way to the nearest lunatic asylum?”

“Oh, no, no, no!” cried Kathleen. “You’re not so bad as that.”

“Perhaps not. But you are,” That retorted; “if you’re not lunatics you’re idiots. However, I see a gentleman ahead who is perhaps sane. In fact, I seem to recognize him.” A gentleman, indeed, was now to be seen approaching. It was the elderly Ugly-Wugly.

“Oh! don’t you remember Jerry?” Kathleen cried, “and Cathy, your own Cathy Puss Cat? Dear, dear Jimmy, don’t be so silly!”

“Little girl,” said That, looking at her crossly through his spectacles, “I am sorry you have not been better brought up.” And he walked stiffly towards the Ugly-Wugly. Two hats were raised, a few words were exchanged, and two elderly figures walked side by side down the green pine-walk, followed by three miserable children, horrified, bewildered, alarmed, and, what is really worse than anything, quite at their wits end.

“He wished to be rich, so of course he is,” said Gerald; “he’ll have money for tickets and everything.”

“And when the spell breaks⁠—it’s sure to break, isn’t it? he’ll find himself somewhere awful⁠—perhaps in a really good hotel⁠—and not know how he got there.”

“I wonder how long the Ugly-Wuglies lasted,” said Mabel.

“Yes,” Gerald answered, “that reminds me. You two must collect the coats and things. Hide them, anywhere you like, and we’ll carry them home tomorrow⁠—if there is any tomorrow⁠—” he added darkly.

“Oh, don’t!” said Kathleen, once more breathing heavily on the verge of tears: “you wouldn’t think everything could be so awful, and the sun shining like it does.”

“Look here,” said Gerald, “of course I must stick to Jimmy. You two must go home to Mademoiselle and tell her Jimmy and I have gone off in the train with a gentleman⁠—say he looked like an uncle. He does⁠—some kinds of uncle. There’ll be a beastly row afterwards, but it’s got to be done.”

“It all seems thick with lies,” said Kathleen; “you don’t seem to be able to get a word of truth in edgewise hardly.”

“Don’t you worry,” said her brother; “they aren’t lies⁠—they’re as true as anything else in this magic rot we’ve got mixed up in. It’s like telling lies in a dream; you can’t help it.”

“Well, all I know is I wish it would stop.”

“Lot of use your wishing that is,” said Gerald, exasperated. “So long. I’ve got to go, and you’ve got to stay. If it’s any comfort to you, I don’t believe any of it’s real: it can’t be; it’s too thick. Tell Mademoiselle Jimmy and I will be back to tea. If we don’t happen to be I can’t help it. I can’t help anything, except perhaps Jimmy.” He started to run, for the girls had lagged, and the Ugly-Wugly and That (late Jimmy) had quickened their pace.

The girls were left looking after them.

“We’ve got to find these clothes,” said Mabel, “simply got to. I used to want to be a heroine. It’s different when it really comes to being, isn’t it?”

“Yes, very,” said Kathleen. “Where shall we hide the clothes when we’ve got them? Not⁠—not that passage?”

“Never!” said Mabel firmly; “we’ll hide them inside the great stone dinosaurus. He’s hollow.”

“He comes alive⁠—in his stone,” said Kathleen.

“Not in the sunshine he doesn’t,” Mabel told her confidently, “and not without the ring.”

“There won’t be any apples and books today,” said Kathleen.

“No, but we’ll do the babiest thing we can do the minute we get home. We’ll have a dolls tea-party. That’ll make us feel as if there wasn’t really any magic.”

“It’ll have to be a very strong tea party, then,” said Kathleen doubtfully.

And now we see Gerald, a small but quite determined figure, paddling along in the soft white dust of the sunny road, in the wake of two elderly gentlemen. His hand, in his trousers pocket, buries itself with a feeling of satisfaction in the heavy mixed coinage that is his share of the profits of his conjuring at the fair. His noiseless tennis-shoes bear him to the station, where, unobserved, he listens at the ticket office to the voice of That-which-was-James. “One first London,” it says and Gerald, waiting till That and the Ugly-Wugly have strolled on to the platform, politely conversing of politics and the Kaffir market, takes a third return to London. The train strides in, squeaking and puffing. The watched take their seats in a carriage blue-lined. The watcher springs into a yellow wooden compartment. A whistle sounds, a flag is waved. The train pulls itself together, strains, jerks, and starts.

“I don’t understand,” says Gerald, alone in his third-class carriage, “how railway trains and magic can go on at the same time.”

And yet they do.

Mabel and Kathleen, nervously peering among the rhododendron bushes and the bracken and the fancy fir-trees, find six several heaps of coats, hats, skirts, gloves, golf-clubs, hockey-sticks, broom-handles. They carry them, panting and damp, for the midday sun is pitiless, up the hill to where the stone dinosaurus looms immense among a forest of larches. The dinosaurus has a hole in his stomach. Kathleen shows Mabel how to “make a back” and climbs up on it into the cold, stony inside of the monster. Mabel hands up the clothes and the sticks.

“There’s lots of room,” says Kathleen; “its tail goes down into the ground. It’s like a secret passage.”

“Suppose something comes out of it and jumps out at you,” says Mabel, and Kathleen hurriedly descends.

The explanations to Mademoiselle promise to be difficult, but, as Kathleen said afterwards, any little thing is enough to take a grownup’s attention off. A figure passes the window just as they are explaining that it really did look exactly like an uncle that the boys have gone to London with.

“Who’s that?” says Mademoiselle suddenly, pointing, too, which everyone knows is not manners.

It is the bailiff coming back from the doctor’s with antiseptic plaster on that nasty cut that took so long a-bathing this morning. They tell her it is the bailiff at Yalding Towers, and she says, “Ciel!” and asks no more awkward questions about the boys. Lunch⁠—very late⁠—is a silent meal. After lunch Mademoiselle goes out, in a hat with many pink roses, carrying a rose-lined parasol. The girls, in dead silence, organize a dolls’ tea-party, with real tea. At the second cup Kathleen bursts into tears. Mabel, also weeping, embraces her.

“I wish,” sobs Kathleen, “oh, I do wish I knew where the boys were! It would be such a comfort.”

Gerald knew where the boys were, and it was no comfort to him at all. If you come to think of it, he was the only person who could know where they were, because Jimmy didn’t know that he was a boy⁠—and indeed he wasn’t really⁠—and the Ugly-Wugly couldn’t be expected to know anything real, such as where boys were. At the moment when the second cup of dolls’ tea⁠—very strong, but not strong enough to drown care in⁠—was being poured out by the trembling hand of Kathleen, Gerald was lurking⁠—there really is no other word for it⁠—on the staircase of Aldermanbury Buildings, Old Broad Street. On the floor below him was a door bearing the legend “Mr. U. W. Ugli, Stock and Share Broker (and at the Stock Exchange)” and on the floor above was another door, on which was the name of Gerald’s little brother, now grown suddenly rich in so magic and tragic a way. There were no explaining words under Jimmy’s name. Gerald could not guess what walk in life it was to which That (which had been Jimmy) owed its affluence. He had seen, when the door opened to admit his brother, a tangle of clerks and mahogany desks. Evidently That had a large business.

What was Gerald to do? What could he do?

It is almost impossible, especially for one so young as Gerald, to enter a large London office and explain that the elderly and respected head of it is not what he seems, but is really your little brother, who has been suddenly advanced to age and wealth by a tricky wishing ring. If you think it’s a possible thing, try it, that’s all. Nor could he knock at the door of Mr. U. W. Ugli, Stock and Share Broker (and at the Stock Exchange), and inform his clerks that their chief was really nothing but old clothes that had accidentally come alive, and by some magic, which he couldn’t attempt to explain, become real during a night spent at a really good hotel which had no existence.

The situation bristled, as you see, with difficulties. And it was so long past Gerald’s proper dinnertime that his increasing hunger was rapidly growing to seem the most important difficulty of all. It is quite possible to starve to death on the staircase of a London building if the people you are watching for only stay long enough in their offices. The truth of this came home to Gerald more and more painfully.

A boy with hair like a new front door mat came whistling up the stairs. He had a dark blue bag in his hands.

“I’ll give you a tanner for yourself if you’ll get me a tanner’s worth of buns,” said Gerald, with that prompt decision common to all great commanders.

“Show us yer tanners,” the boy rejoined with at least equal promptness. Gerald showed them. “All right; hand over.”

“Payment on delivery,” said Gerald, using words from the drapers which he had never thought to use.

The boy grinned admiringly.

“Knows ’is wy abaht,” he said; “ain’t no flies on ’im.”

“Not many,” Gerald owned with modest pride. “Cut along, there’s a good chap. I’ve got to wait here. I’ll take care of your bag if you like.”

“Nor yet there ain’t no flies on me neither,” remarked the boy, shouldering it. “I been up to the confidence trick for years⁠—ever since I was your age.”

With this parting shot he went, and returned in due course bun-laden. Gerald gave the sixpence and took the buns. When the boy, a minute later, emerged from the door of Mr. U. W. Ugli, Stock and Share Broker (and at the Stock Exchange), Gerald stopped him.

“What sort of chap’s that?” he asked, pointing the question with a jerk of an explaining thumb.

“Awful big pot,” said the boy; “up to his eyes in oof. Motor and all that.”

“Know anything about the one on the next landing?”

“He’s bigger than what this one is. Very old firm⁠—special cellar in the Bank of England to put his chink in⁠—all in bins like against the wall at the corn-chandler’s. Jimminy, I wouldn’t mind ’alf an hour in there, and the doors open and the police away at a beano. Not much! Neither. You’ll bust if you eat all them buns.”

“Have one?” Gerald responded, and held out the bag.

“They say in our office,” said the boy, paying for the bun honourably with unasked information, “as these two is all for cutting each other’s throats⁠—oh, only in the way of business⁠—been at it for years.”

Gerald wildly wondered what magic and how much had been needed to give history and a past to these two things of yesterday, the rich Jimmy and the Ugly-Wugly. If he could get them away would all memory of them fade⁠—in this boy’s mind, for instance, in the minds of all the people who did business with them in the City? Would the mahogany-and-clerk-furnished offices fade away? Were the clerks real? Was the mahogany? Was he himself real? Was the boy?

“Can you keep a secret?” he asked the other boy. “Are you on for a lark?”

“I ought to be getting back to the office,” said the boy.

“Get then!” said Gerald.

“Don’t you get stuffy,” said the boy. “I was just a-going to say it didn’t matter. I know how to make my nose bleed if I’m a bit late.”

Gerald congratulated him on this accomplishment, at once so useful and so graceful, and then said:

“Look here. I’ll give you five bob⁠—honest.”

“What for?” was the boy’s natural question.

“If you’ll help me.⁠—”

“Fire ahead.”

“I’m a private inquiry,” said Gerald.

“ ’Tec? You don’t look it.”

“What’s the good of being one if you look it?” Gerald asked impatiently, beginning on another bun. “That old chap on the floor above⁠—he’s wanted.”

“Police?” asked the boy with fine carelessness.

“No⁠—sorrowing relations.”

“ ‘Return to,’ ” said the boy; “ ‘all forgotten and forgiven.’ I see.”

“And I’ve got to get him to them, somehow. Now, if you could go in and give him a message from someone who wanted to meet him on business⁠—”

“Hold on!” said the boy. “I know a trick worth two of that. You go in and see old Ugli. He’d give his ears to have the old boy out of the way for a day or two. They were saying so in our office only this morning.”

“Let me think,” said Gerald, laying down the last bun on his knee expressly to hold his head in his hands.

“Don’t you forget to think about my five bob,” said the boy.

Then there was a silence on the stairs, broken only by the cough of a clerk in That’s office, and the clickety-clack of a typewriter in the office of Mr. U. W. Ugli.

Then Gerald rose up and finished the bun.

“You’re right,” he said. “I’ll chance it. Here’s your five bob.”

He brushed the bun crumbs from his front, cleared his throat, and knocked at the door of Mr. U. W. Ugli. It opened and he entered.

The doormat boy lingered, secure in his power to account for his long absence by means of his well-trained nose, and his waiting was rewarded. He went down a few steps, round the bend of the stairs, and heard the voice of Mr. U. W. Ugli, so well known on that staircase (and on the Stock Exchange) say in soft, cautious accents:

“Then I’ll ask him to let me look at the ring⁠—and I’ll drop it. You pick it up. But remember, it’s a pure accident, and you don’t know me. I can’t have my name mixed up in a thing like this. You’re sure he’s really unhinged?”

“Quite,” said Gerald; “he’s quite mad about that ring. He’ll follow it anywhere. I know he will. And think of his sorrowing relations.”

“I do⁠—I do,” said Mr. Ugli kindly; “that’s all I do think of, of course.”

He went up the stairs to the other office, and Gerald heard the voice of That telling his clerks that he was going out to lunch. Then the horrible Ugly-Wugly and Jimmy, hardly less horrible in the eyes of Gerald, passed down the stairs where, in the dusk of the lower landing, two boys were making themselves as undistinguishable as possible, and so out into the street, talking of stocks and shares, bears and bulls. The two boys followed.

“I say,” the doormat-headed boy whispered admiringly, “whatever are you up to?”

“You’ll see,” said Gerald recklessly. “Come on!”

“You tell me. I must be getting back.”

“Well, I’ll tell you, but you won’t believe me. That old gentleman’s not really old at all⁠—he’s my young brother suddenly turned into what you see. The other’s not real at all. He’s only just old clothes and nothing inside.”

“He looks it, I must say,” the boy admitted; “but I say⁠—you do stick it on, don’t you?”

“Well, my brother was turned like that by a magic ring.”

“There ain’t no such thing as magic,” said the boy. “I learnt that at school.”

“All right,” said Gerald. “Goodbye.”

“Oh, go ahead!” said the boy; “you do stick it on, though.”