The Castle of Adventure Read online

  ‘Not very,’ said Philip. ‘He somehow got into the larder and gobbled up all Mother’s sausages. She wasn’t at all pleased. I can’t imagine how he can eat anything else at the moment. He must have eaten a pound and a half of sausages.’

  ‘Greedy pig,’ said Jack, giving Button half his ham sandwich. ‘You don’t deserve this but you’re so sweet I can’t help spoiling you.’

  ‘It’s a pity he smells so strong,’ said Dinah, wrinkling up her nose. ‘You won’t be able to keep him when he’s grown a bit more, Philip – he’ll smell too much.’

  ‘That’s all you know!’ said Philip. ‘I shall probably keep him till he dies of old age.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to wear a gas mask then,’ said Jack, grinning. ‘Another sandwich, please, Dinah. Golly, these are good.’

  ‘What sort of a night did you have, Jack?’ asked Lucy-Ann, who was sitting as close to Jack as she could.

  ‘Oh, very good,’ said Jack airily. ‘I woke up once and took some time to go to sleep again.’

  He was determined not to say anything about his alarms and fears in the night. They seemed so silly now, in the full sunshine with people all round him.

  ‘You should have seen the rabbits in the late evening,’ he said to Philip. ‘You’d have loved them. They wouldn’t come to me of course, but I daresay you’d have got them all over you! They seemed as tame as anything.’

  The four children stayed with Jack till after tea. Each crept into his hide to watch the eagles. They went up to the tower again, and Jack cautiously looked round to see if there was anything different about the tower – a cigarette end, a scrap of paper – but there was nothing at all.

  ‘Won’t you come back with us tonight, Jack?’ asked Lucy-Ann.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Jack, though secretly he felt that he would rather like to. ‘Is it likely, just as I’m certain that young eagle is going to learn to fly?’

  ‘All right,’ said Lucy-Ann, with a sigh, ‘I don’t know why I hate you being here alone in this horrid old castle, but I just do.’

  ‘It’s not a horrid castle,’ said Jack. ‘It’s just old and forgotten, but it’s not horrid.’

  ‘Well, I think it is,’ said Lucy-Ann. ‘I think horrid, wicked things have been done here in the past – and I think they might be done again in the future.’

  ‘You’re just dreaming,’ said Jack, ‘and you’re frightening poor Tassie. It’s only an old empty place, forgotten for years, with nobody in it at all except me and the eagles, bats and rabbits.’

  ‘It’s time to go,’ said Philip, getting up. ‘We brought you another rug, Jack, in case you felt cold. Coming to see us off at the window?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Jack, and they all went inside the castle, their footsteps echoing on the stone floor. They went to the room where the plank reached to the windowsill, and one by one they got across.

  Lucy-Ann called a farewell to Jack.

  ‘Thank you for waving your shirt to me last night!’ she called. ‘And oh, Jack, I saw you flashing your torch from the tower later on, too! I was in bed, but I was awake and I saw the flash of the torch three or four times. It was nice of you to do that. I was glad to see it and to know you were awake too!’

  ‘Come on, Lucy-Ann, for goodness’ sake!’ called Dinah. ‘You know Mother said we weren’t to be late tonight.’

  ‘All right, I’m coming,’ said Lucy-Ann, and slid down the creepers to the ground. Everyone called goodbye and then they were gone.

  But Jack was left feeling most puzzled and uncomfortable! So there had been someone in the tower last night flashing a torch! He hadn’t dreamt it or imagined it. It was true.

  ‘Lucy-Ann saw it, so that proves I wasn’t mistaken as I thought,’ said the boy to himself as he went back to the courtyard. ‘It’s terribly mysterious. That clanking I heard and the splashing must have been real too. There is someone else here – but who – and why?’

  He wished now that he had told the others the happenings in the night. But it was too late, they were gone. Jack now longed to be gone with them! Suppose he heard noises again and saw flashes? He didn’t like it. It was weird and eerie and altogether unpleasant.

  ‘Shall I go after the others and join them?’ he thought. ‘No, I won’t. I’ll wait and try and find out who’s here. Fancy Lucy-Ann seeing those flashes! I am glad she told me!’

  15

  The hidden room

  Jack wandered back to his hide. He felt safe there. He was sure no one would ever think of looking in the very middle of a prickly, thick gorse bush for anyone. As evening fell he felt sleepy. Should he try and go to sleep now, and keep awake later on? Could he possibly go to sleep in the hollow gorse bush?

  He curled up in the thickest rug and made a pillow of another one. Kiki crawled in beside him and perched uncomfortably on his knees, her head bent to avoid a prickly bit of gorse. The eagles were not to be seen. The young one was down in the nest. Anyway, the light was now too bad to bother about photographs.

  Jack managed to fall asleep. He snored a little, for he had his head in an uncomfortable position. Kiki imitated the snore perfectly for a little while, and then, as Jack made no remark about it to her, put her head under her wing and slept too.

  Jack slept till midnight. Then he awoke suddenly, feeling dreadfully uncomfortable. He stretched out, wondering where he was, and was immediately and painfully pricked by the gorse. He drew his legs in again hastily.

  ‘I’m in the gorse bush, of course,’ he said to himself. ‘I must have been asleep for ages. What’s the time?’

  He looked at the phosphorescent hands of his watch and saw that it was ten past midnight.

  ‘Hm,’ said Jack, ‘Just about the time that someone in the castle starts to wake up! I suppose, if I am going to do any tracking, I’d better get out of here and watch and listen.’

  He crept painfully out of the bush, disturbing Kiki, who protested loudly till he made her be silent. ‘I’ll leave you behind if you make a row like that!’ whispered Jack furiously. Kiki fell silent. She always knew when Jack wanted her to be quiet.

  Now he was out of the bush, climbing silently down the crag, glad of the faint light of the moon, now a little bigger than the night before. He came into the yard and stood listening.

  There was no sound to be heard except the wind blowing fairly hard. And then Jack thought he heard the far off sound of water splashing again – and the clank of the pump handle!

  He stood listening. After a while he felt sure he heard quiet footsteps on stone somewhere – was it someone walking on the castle wall – going to the tower to flash a torch again?

  ‘Well, if he’s gone to the tower, he’s safely out of the castle,’ thought Jack. ‘I’ll go in and see if I can discover any signs of him – where he hides, for instance. He must live somewhere! But it didn’t look as if anyone had gone into any of those furnished rooms in the castle. So where in the world does he hide? And what about food? Gosh, it’s a mystery!’

  The boy stole quietly into the castle, Kiki on his shoulder. He was too excited to feel frightened tonight. Now that he was certain someone else was in the castle besides himself he was too anxious to find out about them to feel any real fears.

  He went into the hall of the castle – and at once something struck him with surprise – there was a light coming from somewhere! A dim light certainly, but a light. Jack stared round him, puzzled.

  Then he saw where it came from. It came from the floor – or rather, underneath the floor of the hall! The boy stepped forward cautiously. He came to a hole in the floor of the hall – there was no trap-door; it looked exactly like a hole, and yet Jack was sure it had never been there before – and up from this hole came the light.

  Jack looked down. Stone steps went down into whatever was below – cellar or dungeon, he didn’t know. He ran swiftly to the front entrance of the castle to see if anyone was in the tower. If there was, there would be time for him to slip down the steps and expl
ore.

  He saw a flash from the tower. Good. Whoever was there was signalling again. It would be a minute or two before they came back. There would be time to explore this curious opening. In a flash Jack was down the stone steps and then looked around him in the very greatest surprise.

  He seemed to be in a kind of museum! He was in a large, underground room, with tapestries on the stone walls, and a thick covering on the floor. Round the room stood suits of armour, just as there often are in a museum. Old heavy chairs stood here and there, and a long narrow table, with crockery and glass on it, ran the length of the room.

  Jack stared round in the utmost astonishment. Everything was old – but it was plain that this room was not neglected and deserted as the other furnished rooms were. There were no cobwebs here, no dust.

  In the corner was a big old four-poster bed, hung with heavy tapestries. Jack went over to it. It had obviously been slept in, for the pillows were dented, and the sheets hurriedly thrown back as if someone had leapt out in a hurry.

  There was a pitcher of ice-cold water on the table. ‘Got from the pump, I suppose!’ thought Jack. ‘So that’s why there are always puddles on the floor there. Someone goes for water each night.’

  Kiki flew to a suit of armour and stood on the helmet, looking in through the visor as if she expected to glimpse someone inside. Jack giggled a little. Evidently Kiki thought the suits of armour were real people and couldn’t understand them at all.

  At this moment he thought he heard a noise, and in sudden fright he darted up the stone steps to the top, taking Kiki with him. He hopped out just in time, and fled to the dark shadows at the back of the hall. Then, fearing that the person whose footsteps he heard might see him by the light of the torch he was using, he went into one of the furnished rooms – the old drawing-room.

  But in going inside he fell over a stool and came to the ground. The footsteps outside stopped suddenly. The torchlight went out. Evidently the person was standing perfectly still and listening hard. He had heard the noise.

  With his heart beating fast Jack slipped round the corner of an old couch, and knelt there, with Kiki on his shoulder. Both were as quiet as they could be, but Jack couldn’t help feeling certain that the man who was listening must be able to hear the beating of his heart!

  The boy heard a cautious footstep coming into the room. Then there was silence again. Then another footstep sounded, a little nearer. Jack’s hair began to prickle on his scalp and stand up straight. If the man came round the couch and switched on his torch, he would be bound to see Jack.

  The boy’s heart pounded away, and his forehead felt suddenly wet. Kiki clung to his shoulder, feeling the fright of her master. She couldn’t bear it any longer.

  She suddenly rose into the air and flew at the head of the unseen man, giving one of the yelping screams she had picked up from the eagles. He uttered a startled exclamation, and tried to beat off the bird. His torch clattered to the floor. Jack hoped fervently that it was broken.

  Kiki screeched again, this time like an express train, and the man lashed out at her. He caught a feather and ripped it out. Kiki found Jack once more, and perched on the crouching boy, growling like a dog.

  ‘Good heavens, this place is full of birds and dogs!’ said someone, in a disgusted voice, deep and hoarse. The man felt over the floor for his torch and at last found it.

  ‘Broken!’ he said and Jack heard the click as he tried to switch it on. ‘One of those eagles, I suppose. What does it want to come indoors for?’

  Muttering, the man went out. Jack heard a curious grating sound and then there was complete silence. He did not dare to get up for a long time, but crouched behind the enormous old sofa. Kiki appeared to have gone fast asleep on his shoulder.

  At last he got cautiously up and tiptoed to the door, glad of his rubber shoes. He peeped out. There was now no light to be seen shining up dimly from underground. All was darkness and silence. Jack stared at the back of the hall. Somewhere over there had been a strange opening, leading to a hidden room – an old room, so full of strange things that it looked like a museum. Maybe it was the very room where the wicked old man had hidden his guests and starved them so that they were never heard of again! Jack didn’t like the thought at all.

  Without trying to see what had happened to the curious opening, he ran into the courtyard and made his way back to the old gorse bush. He felt safe there. He crawled in, accompanied by groans and protestations from Kiki, and tried to settle down to go to sleep again.

  But he couldn’t. His mind was full of that strange room, and he kept shuddering when he remembered how nearly he had been caught. If it hadn’t been for old Kiki he would certainly have been discovered. Another step or two and the man, whoever he was, would almost have trodden on him!

  He wished that the others were with him. He longed to tell them. Well, they would be up tomorrow, so he must wait in patience. There didn’t seem any likelihood of the hidden man coming out in the daytime. He was keeping well hidden for some reason. He wouldn’t expose his hiding-place by day and come out.

  ‘How does he get food?’ Jack wondered. It was easy to get water from the pump. But what about food? Well, perhaps that was what he signalled about from the tower. His torch sent messages to friends. In that case other people might come. How in the world did they get in?

  ‘I believe this is an adventure!’ said Jack suddenly, and a funny feeling crept up his body. ‘Yes, it is. It’s the same feeling I had last year – when we sailed away to the Isle of Gloom, the Island of Adventure, where so many things happened to us. Golly, what will the others say when I tell them we’ve jumped straight into the middle of an adventure again! The Castle of Adventure! Philip was right when he called it that.’

  After an hour or two of thinking and wondering, Jack at last fell asleep again. He awoke to find little fingers of sunlight coming through the gorse bush, and was glad that the day had come. He remembered the nighttime happenings, and wondered if that curious museum-like room could have been real.

  ‘Well, I certainly couldn’t have dreamt a room like that,’ thought Jack, tickling Kiki to wake her. ‘It would be impossible!’

  He crawled out of the bush and breakfasted on biscuits and plums, which the others had brought to him the day before. He sat and looked thoughtfully at the castle. Who was hiding there?

  Suddenly he went stiff and looked in amazement at two men walking through the courtyard. They were going towards the castle. How in the world had they got in? There simply must be some way in – or had the men keys to one of the big gates or doors?

  The men went into the castle. Evidently unlike the hidden man, they did not fear being seen in daylight. ‘Will the hidden man tell them he thought there was someone about last night?’ thought Jack in a panic. ‘Will they come and look for me?’

  16

  Things begin to happen

  Jack crawled hurriedly back into the bush again, not waiting to wrap himself up in the rug, and getting terribly scratched. When he was inside he remembered that he had left some paper bags in the courtyard below, with some apple cores in them.

  ‘Dash!’ he thought. ‘If those are found they’ll know there’s someone here besides themselves.’

  He waited in the bush for an hour or so, taking peeps at the eagles’ nest now and again. He didn’t know whether to hope the others would come soon, so that he would no longer be alone, or whether to hope that they would be late, to give the men a chance to go off again without seeing them.

  ‘If they’ve chosen this for a safe hiding-place for somebody, they won’t be too pleased to know that we are here,’ thought Jack uneasily. ‘I suppose we really oughtn’t to have come to the castle at all. I suppose it does belong to someone – those men perhaps!’

  He heard the sound of voices and peeped between the prickly branches to see who it was. It was the two men again. The hidden man was evidently not going to risk coming out of his hiding-place.

  Jack peeped at the
m. They were great hulking men, one of them with a black beard. He didn’t like their faces at all. As they came near he tried to hear what they said, but they were not talking any language he knew. That somehow made things all the stranger.

  Suddenly they stopped, and with an exclamation the bearded man picked up Jack’s paper bags. He saw the apple cores inside, and showed the other man. The cores were still moist, and Jack guessed that the men knew they had not been there very long! He squeezed himself hard into the hollow of the gorse bush, glad that it was so thick.

  The men then separated and began to make a thorough search of the castle, the towers, the walls and the courtyard. Jack watched them through a chink in the bush. Kiki was absolutely quiet.

  Then the men joined up and came across to the crag where the eagles nested. It was plain they were going to climb up to explore that place too, in case anyone was hiding there.

  Jack crouched as still as a mouse when an owl is near. His heart began to beat painfully again. The men came right up the crag, and gave a cry of amazement when they saw the eagles’ nest with the young one in.

  Evidently they did not know the ways of eagles, for they went quite near to the nest and one of the men put out his hand.

  There was a whirr of mighty wings and the female eagle seemed to drop like a stone from the sky on to the man’s head. He turned away, whilst the other man beat off the angry bird. The attacked man put his arms across the top of his head to protect himself, and looked up at the male bird, scared, for that too was dropping quickly downwards.

  Jack could see all this, and an idea came to him. He had a marvellous view of the first man the eagle had attacked – he was still looking up, showing the whole of his face, and his neck in an open-collared shirt. Jack pressed his camera release. Click! The man’s photograph was taken, though unfortunately the other man was by then looking away, and his face was hidden.