The Circus of Adventure Read online

  ‘What’s the matter?’ said Pedro, looking at him curiously. ‘You seem excited about something.’

  ‘Well – I could get hold of my friend, but only with help,’ said Jack. ‘He’s – well, he’s not really very far away.’

  ‘Really? Why didn’t you tell me?’ said Pedro. ‘Where is he?’

  Jack hesitated. Could he trust Pedro? He asked him a question. ‘Pedro – tell me truthfully – are you on anybody’s side in this business about the King and the Prince Aloysius? I mean – what do you think about it?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Pedro, promptly. ‘I don’t care which of them is King. Let them get on with it! The only thing I don’t want is civil war here – we’d have to clear out of the country quickly then. Circuses and war don’t go together! Why do you ask me that?’

  ‘I might tell you later on,’ said Jack, suddenly feeling that he had told Pedro too much. ‘But I’ll just say this – if I could get my friend here – with his friends too – we’d prevent civil war – Fank’s bears would soon be under control and . . .’

  ‘What rubbish you talk!’ said Pedro, looking astonished. ‘Stop pulling my leg. I don’t believe a word of it.’

  Jack said no more. But, as the day wore on, and Fank got no better, and the bears’ behaviour got much worse, he felt inclined to tell Pedro a good deal more. It would be really marvellous if he could get Philip and the rest into the circus – what a wonderful hiding place for them all! Gussy would be too noticeable, of course. How could they disguise him?

  ‘Of course! With that long hair of his and those thick eyelashes and big eyes, he could be dressed as a girl!’ thought Jack. ‘What a brainwave! I think I will tell Pedro everything. I’ll tell him after the show tonight.’

  The circus gave its first show at Borken that evening. It opened with the usual fanfare of trumpets and drums and the people of the town streamed up excitedly.

  The bears, of course, were not on show, but otherwise everything went well. There was a good deal of grumbling from the townsfolk about the bears, because they had been well advertised, and some people demanded their money back.

  ‘We must get those bears going somehow,’ grumbled the Boss. ‘We must pull Fank out of bed! We must get somebody else in. We must do this, we must do that! Where is Fank? Those bears will maul each other to death soon!’

  After supper Jack spoke to Pedro. ‘I want to tell you a lot of things,’ he said. ‘I want to get your help, Pedro. Will you listen? It is very important – very important indeed!’

  ‘I am listening,’ said Pedro, looking startled. ‘Tell me all you want to. I will help you, Jack – I promise you that!’

  21

  A daring plan

  ‘Where shall we go?’ said Jack. ‘In your van? Nobody can overhear us there, can they?’

  They went inside the little van and shut the door. Pedro looked puzzled – what was all this about?

  Jack began to tell him. He told him about Gussy staying with them at Quarry Cottage and how he turned out to be the Prince. Pedro’s eyes almost fell out of his head at that! He told him of the kidnapping, and how he, Jack, had stowed away first at the back of the car, and then in the aeroplane, in order to follow the others.

  ‘You’re a wonder, you are!’ said Pedro, staring at Jack in the greatest admiration. ‘You’re . . .’

  Jack wouldn’t let him say any more. He went on rapidly with his story, and brought it right up to date, telling Pedro of his adventure of the night before.

  ‘I never heard anything like this in my life!’ said Pedro, amazed. ‘Why didn’t you ask me to come with you? You knew I would. It was a dangerous thing you did, all by yourself.’

  ‘Well – I’m used to adventures,’ said Jack. ‘I just had to find out about my sister, anyway – and the others too, of course. Now, Pedro – this is where I want your help. I MUST rescue the four of them before the King is kidnapped or killed, and Gussy is put on the throne. You see, if Gussy is missing, there wouldn’t be much point in doing away with his uncle. They must have Gussy to put in his place, because they want a kid there, so that they can make him rule as they like. Count Paritolen and his sister, Madame Tatiosa, and the Prime Minister will be in power then. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, I understand,’ said Pedro. ‘But I’m not used to seeing history happening before my eyes like this. I can’t think it’s real, somehow’

  ‘It is real,’ said Jack, urgently. ‘Very very real. And, Pedro, if we can get Philip here, in the circus, he could manage those bears as easily as Fank. I tell you, he’s a wizard with animals – it doesn’t matter what they are. Why, once, in an adventure we had, a crowd of Alsatian dogs chased us – we thought they were wolves, actually – and Philip turned them all into his friends as soon as they came up to him!’

  Pedro listened to all this with a solemn face. He was much impressed. He had guessed, of course, that there was something unusual about Jack – but the story he had to tell was so extraordinary that he could hardly believe it all. He did believe it, though. He was sure that Jack would never lie about anything.

  ‘Well – what do you want me to do?’ he asked at last. ‘I’ll do anything, of course. But honestly, Jack, I don’t see how we can rescue your four friends from the tower room of Borken Castle – locked in, with a sentry at the foot of the stairs! It’s impossible!’

  Jack sat and frowned. He was beginning to think it was impossible too. Plans had gone round and round in his head for hours – but none of them was any good.

  He couldn’t get in through that window over the wash house again, he was sure. The ladder would have been discovered by now, and taken away. Also – even if he did get in that way, how could he let Philip and the others out of that locked room? He didn’t even know where the key was!

  ‘And to go in the other way wouldn’t be any good either,’ he thought. ‘Down that trap door and all through those passages – I’d only come up against the back of that big picture, and I’ve no idea how to make it move away from its place! And then again I’m no better off if I do – I still don’t know where the key to that tower room is!’

  Pedro sat and frowned too. To think that he and Jack could perhaps save the starting-up of a horrible civil war – and they couldn’t think of even one sensible thing to do!

  ‘Jack,’ he said at last, ‘do you mind if we tell someone else about this? My two best friends here are Toni and Bingo, the acrobats – they might be able to think of some plan. It’s their job to think of good ideas!’

  Jack looked doubtful. ‘Would they give my secrets away, though?’ he said. ‘It’s important that nobody else should know what we know – once the Count suspected that anyone was trying to rescue the four prisoners he holds, he would spirit them away somewhere else, and probably hurry his plans on so that we couldn’t possibly stop them.’

  ‘You needn’t worry about Toni and Bingo,’ said Pedro. ‘They’re the best pals I ever had, and ready for anything. This is the kind of job they’d jump at – it’s right up their street. I’ll go and fetch them now.’

  He went off across the field, and Jack sat and worried. He wasn’t happy about telling anyone else. Soon the van door opened and in came Pedro with Toni and Bingo. They didn’t look in the least like acrobats, in their ordinary clothes. They were slim, lithe young men, with shocks of hair and cheerful faces.

  ‘What for you want us?’ said Toni, the rope-walker, in broken English. ‘It is trouble with the Boss?’

  ‘No,’ said Pedro. ‘Look here, Jack – shall I tell them? – I can speak to them in Italian, which they know best, and it’ll be quicker.’

  ‘Right,’ said Jack, wishing that he could use half a dozen languages as easily as this much-travelled circus boy.

  He didn’t understand a word of what followed. Pedro spoke rapidly, using his hands excitedly just as all the Spaniards, French and Italian people did in the circus. Bingo and Toni listened, their eyes almost falling out of their heads. What a story!


  Then they too began to chatter in excitement, and Jack could hardly contain himself in his impatience to find out what they were saying. Pedro turned to him at last, grinning broadly.

  ‘I have told them everything,’ he said. ‘And it pleases them! They have an idea for rescue – a surprising idea, Jack – but a very very good one!’

  ‘What?’ asked Jack, thrilled. ‘Not too impossible a one, I hope!’

  ‘Shall I tell him?’ said Pedro, turning to Toni, ‘I can tell him more quickly than you.’

  ‘Tell him,’ said Toni, nodding his head.

  ‘Well,’ said Pedro, ‘they got the idea when I told them how you escaped out of that trap door in the tall bell tower. I told them it was exactly opposite the window of the tower room – and they said it would be easy to throw a rope across from the top of the tower, to the window!’

  ‘Yes – but I don’t see what good that would be,’ said Jack, puzzled. ‘I mean – the others couldn’t get across it – they’d fall.’

  ‘Listen!’ said Pedro. ‘You have seen the trapeze swings that Toni and Bingo use in their acrobatic tricks, haven’t you? Well, those swings can be attached to the wire rope by pulley wheels, and run to and fro. Would your friends agree to sit on a swing in turn, and be pulled across, hanging from the wire rope? It would be easy!’

  ‘Good gracious!’ said Jack, startled. ‘My word! What an idea! It’s not workable!’

  ‘Si, si! It is wukkable!’ said Toni, excitedly. ‘We go up the bell tower. We get rope across to your friends – I walk across – easy! I pull swing behind me, hanging on rope. I place each boy or girl safe on swing – and I run back on rope dragging swing by wire – one, two, three, four times, and everyone is safe! Good idea, no?’

  ‘Is it really possible?’ said Jack. ‘It sounds very dangerous.’

  ‘Ah, no, no – it is simple, this way,’ said Toni. ‘I do it all, I, Toni!’

  Bingo nodded his head. He apparently agreed with Toni that it was a good and perfectly possible idea. It would certainly only have been thought of by wire walkers or acrobats, Jack was sure.

  ‘And then, zis boy – how you call him – Feelip – he will take Fank’s bears and make them good?’ said Toni. ‘Everybody plizzed!’

  ‘Everybody pleased,’ agreed Jack, getting excited too. After all – these acrobats were used to things of this kind. It seemed nothing to them – though to ordinary people it appeared to be a very dangerous and quite impossible feat.

  ‘Tonight we go,’ said Toni. ‘We have all things ready. We tell the Boss – no?’

  ‘No – not yet,’ said Pedro, considering. ‘And not very much, when we do tell him. Nothing about the Prince or anything like that – only just that we’ve got a friend of Jack’s to help with the bears. I’ll have to think up some way of explaining the other three – but I’m not worrying about that yet.’

  Toni and Bingo went off to their van, talking nineteen to the dozen. This was evidently something they were going to enjoy very much!

  Jack could hardly keep still now. He kept on and on thinking about Toni’s plan. Would it be all right? Would Lucy-Ann be too afraid to swing across on a trapeze-perch, and be caught at the other end of the rope by Bingo? What about Gussy? His hair would stand on end! And yet what better way was there? There wasn’t any other way at all!

  The circus opened as usual, and again there were grumbles about the non-appearance of the bears. Fank tried to get up, but it was no use. He couldn’t even stand. The bears, hearing the circus beginning, and the shouts of the side-shows, became restless and excited. They had allowed no one in their cage that day, not even to clean it, and their food had been hurriedly poked between the bars.

  They wouldn’t even eat that! It lay in their cage untouched. They padded up and down the floor, heads down, grunting and growling all the time.

  The show was over at last, and the townsfolk went

  back to Borken, chattering and laughing. Jack helped Pedro to clear up the litter, pick up the fallen benches, and sweep the big circus ring.

  ‘Thinking about tonight?’ whispered Pedro as he passed him. ‘I bet Toni and Bingo are! I saw Toni taking one of the trapeze swings out to shorten the rope, so that he could use it tonight.’

  They had a late supper, and then Ma yawned. ‘Bed!’ she said, and creaked up into her caravan. The two boys went into theirs, and sat waiting for the acrobats to come and say they were ready.

  There came a tap at the door. Pedro opened it. ‘Come!’ said Toni’s voice, and Pedro and Jack slipped like shadows out of their van. The four of them made their way in the darkness up the slope of the hill. Above them towered the great castle, its shadowy bulk looking sinister and mysterious.

  They came to the bell tower. Toni and Bingo had already had a good look at it in the daylight. ‘In we go,’ said Pedro, in a low voice. He flashed on his torch as soon as they were safely inside.

  The torch lighted up the strong wire rope that Bingo carried, and the trapeze swing that Toni held. They all looked up into the roof of the bell tower. How were they to get up by the great bell?

  ‘There are iron rungs up the wall,’ said Toni. ‘I go first! Follow me!’

  22

  Escape!

  It was not difficult to climb up the iron rungs. Toni was soon up in the roof of the tower. Kiki was first though! She flew up from Jack’s shoulder, and perched on the big bell, making a slight clanging noise that startled her considerably!

  The iron ladder went right above the bell, which hung from a great beam. Above it was a stone platform, with an opening in it at one side for the iron ladder to pass through. Toni climbed up to the bell, and then through the opening above it, and passed on to the stone platform. Jack came next and then Pedro. Bingo was last.

  There were arched openings like windows in the top of the tower opening off the stone platform, one arch facing each way – north, south, east and west. Toni peered out of the arch that faced the window in the castle opposite.

  He considered the distance carefully. Jack peered out too. It seemed a long way to him in the darkness! He shivered. He didn’t at all want to go on with this idea, now that he was up so high, and could see what a drop it was to the ground.

  But Toni and Bingo treated it in a very casual, matter-of-fact manner. They talked to one another, and discussed it very thoroughly and with great interest. They apparently had no doubt at all but that they could do what they had planned.

  Toni said something to Pedro, and he repeated it to Jack in English. ‘Toni says he is ready. He says how can we attract the attention of your friends in the room opposite? They will have to help at the beginning.’

  ‘If we flash a torch on and off – or perhaps hoot like an owl – Philip will come,’ said Jack.

  ‘We try the owl,’ said Toni, and Jack put his cupped hands to his mouth and blew virogously between his two thumbs.

  ‘Hooo! Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!’ came quaveringly on the night air. Jack hooted again.

  They waited, their eyes on the shadowy window opposite. Then, from the window, a light flashed on and off.

  ‘Philip’s there,’ said Jack, joyfully, and flashed his own torch. ‘Philip!’ he called, in a low voice. ‘Can you hear me?’

  ‘Yes! Where are you? Not over there, surely!’ said Philip, in an amazed voice.

  ‘Tell him Toni is coming over on a rope,’ said Pedro. ‘But we’ve got to get the rope across first – so will he look out for a stone, tied on to a bit of string – and pull on it, so that the thicker rope can come across?’

  ‘I know a better way than that!’ said Jack, suddenly excited. ‘Let Kiki take the rope across – not the thick heavy wire one, of course – but the first rope – the one that’s fixed to the wire! She can take it in her beak.’

  ‘Ah – that is good!’ said Toni, understanding and approving at once. ‘It will save time.’

  ‘Philip – Kiki’s coming across with a rope,’ called Jack, cautiously. ‘Look out for her. Take the ro
pe and pull hard. It will bring across a wire rope. Can you find something to loop it to? It has a strong ring at the end – see that it is made fast.’

  ‘Right. But how will . . . I say, I don’t understand,’ said Philip, bewildered.

  ‘Call Kiki!’ said Jack. Kiki had now been given the end of the rope in her beak. She was pulling at it with interest. ‘Take it to Philip,’ said Jack.

  ‘Kiki!’ called Philip. ‘Kiki!’

  Kiki flew straight across to him, carrying the end of the rope in her strong beak. She knew she had to take it to Philip, of course, but she had no idea that behind her came a whole length, paid out quickly by Toni!

  She landed on Philip’s shoulder, and let go the rope to nibble his ear. Philip just caught it in time. He wasted no time, but pulled on it hard. More and more rope came in – and then, joined to the ordinary rope, came the strong wire rope, heavy but flexible.

  Philip hauled on that too until a tug warned him to stop. Now he had to fasten it securely to something. But what?

  He had a lamp in his room and he lighted it, to see better. He kept it turned low, and held it up to see where he could fasten the ring that was on the end of the wire rope.

  His bed had strong iron feet. Philip dragged the bed to the window, waking Gussy up with a jump as he did so, and then slipped the iron ring under one foot, pulling it up about twelve inches.

  Now it should be held fast! The bed was by the window, the iron foot against the stone wall. Neither bed nor foot could move. The rope should be safe for anyone to use!

  ‘What is it? What’s happening?’ said Gussy, sitting up in bed in surprise, unable to see much in the dim light of the lamp.

  ‘Be quiet,’ said Philip, who was now almost too excited to speak. ‘Jack’s out there. Go and wake the girls – but for goodness’ sake don’t make a noise!’

  Over in the bell tower Toni pulled on his end of the wire rope. He pulled as hard as he could, and Bingo pulled with him. Was the other end quite fast – safe enough for Toni to walk across on it? He had to be quite certain of that before he tried to walk the rope.