The Castle of Adventure

  Both men heard the click of the camera, and looked puzzled. Then, as the female eagle came at them again, they hurriedly descended the crag and ran down into the courtyard. They were not going to explore up there any more. In any case they both decided that nobody could possibly hide up there with fierce birds like that around!

  Jack waited in the bush, watching the eagles, who had been much upset by the visit of the two men. Soon it was plain to Jack that they meant to take the young bird away from the nest. It must learn to fly! It could no longer be left in safety if two-legged creatures came right up to the nest.

  The boy forgot his fears in his interest at the efforts of the two eagles to make the young one fly. They persuaded it to the edge of the nest, and then, with a push, dislodged it on to the ledge on which the nest was built. The young bird tried to get back again, but the female eagle flew round and round it, yelping, trying to tell it in all the eagle words she knew that it must go with her. The young one listened, or seemed to listen, then turned its head away, bored.

  Then, for no reason that Jack could see, it suddenly spread out its wings. They were enormous. The boy had been taking snap after snap, and now he took a splendid picture of the young eagle trying out his wings.

  The youngster flapped his wings so hard that he danced about on tiptoe – and then, most superbly, he took off from the ledge, and rose into the air, with his parents screaming on either side of him. He could fly!

  ‘Marvellous!’ said Jack, and cautiously took the roll of film from his camera. ‘I wonder if they’ll come back. It doesn’t matter much if they don’t, because I’ve got the most wonderful set of pictures now. Better than any anyone else has ever got!’

  As he slipped a new roll of film into his camera, he heard the voices of the other children. He was very glad – but where were those men?

  He crept out from the bush, hardly feeling the prickles, and climbed down to join them. They saw by his face that he had news for them. Lucy-Ann ran to him.

  ‘Has anything happened, Jack? You look very serious! What do you think! We’ve come up with piles of things, because Mrs Mannering says we can stay for two or three days! She’s got to go to Dinah’s Aunt Polly, who has been taken ill again, but she’ll be back soon.’

  ‘And she thought we might as well join you up here if we wanted to!’ said Dinah. ‘But you don’t look very thrilled about it, Jack!’

  ‘Well, listen,’ said Jack. ‘There’s something odd here. Really odd. I don’t know if you ought to come. In fact, as I’ve really taken all the snaps I need to take of the eagles, I honestly think it would be better if we all went home.’

  ‘Go back to Spring Cottage!’ said Philip, in surprise. ‘But why? Quick, tell us everything, Jack.’

  ‘All right. But first, where’s Tassie?’ said Jack, looking round for the little gypsy girl.

  ‘Her mother wouldn’t let her come,’ said Lucy-Ann. ‘When Tassie told her we were all going to stay up at the castle with you, her mother nearly had a fit. She’s like the villagers, you know – thinks there’s something bad and creepy up here. She absolutely refused to let Tassie come. So we had to leave her behind.’

  ‘She was in an awful temper with her mother,’ said Philip; ‘worse than any Dinah gets into. She flew at her mother and banged her hard. And her mother took hold of her and shook her like a rat. I think Tassie’s got an awful mother. Anyway, she can’t come. But go on – tell your story.’

  ‘I suppose – I suppose you didn’t by any chance meet anyone coming down the hill, did you?’ said Jack suddenly, thinking that perhaps the two men had gone.

  ‘We saw what looked like three men in the distance,’ said Philip. ‘Why?’

  ‘What were they like? Did one have a black beard?’ asked Jack.

  ‘We couldn’t possibly see what they were like, they were too far away, going down another path altogether,’ said Philip. ‘They might have been shepherds or anything. That’s what we thought they were, anyway.’

  ‘ Three men,’ said Jack thoughtfully. ‘That looks as if the hidden man went too, then.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ cried Dinah impatiently.

  Jack began his story. The others listened in astonishment. When he described the hidden underground room, Lucy-Ann’s eyes nearly fell out of her head!

  ‘An underground room – with someone living there! Oh, I know what Tassie would say – she’d say it was that wicked old man still there!’ cried Lucy-Ann. ‘She’d say he would like to catch us and imprison us, so that no one ever heard of us again!’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Jack. ‘The thing is – something is going on here, and we ought to find out what. I wish old Bill Smugs was here. He’d know what to do.’

  ‘We don’t even know his address,’ said Philip. ‘All we know is that he’s in a town twenty miles away. And now Mother is away too, so we can’t ask her advice either.’

  ‘Well, whether she is away or not, I think we ought to go back to Spring Cottage,’ said Jack soberly. ‘We have dealt with dangerous men before, and it wasn’t pleasant. I don’t want to be mixed up in anything dangerous like that again. We’d better all go back.’

  ‘Right,’ said Philip. ‘I agree with you. But, seeing that you think all three men are out of the way, what about having a squint at that hidden room? We might find something there to tell us who uses it and why.’

  ‘All right,’ said Jack. ‘Come on. Kiki, come along too. Where’s Button, Philip?’

  ‘I left him with Tassie, to comfort her for not coming with us,’ said Philip. ‘She was so miserable. Anyway, she’ll be pleased to see us back again so soon.’

  They all went into the vast hall, and the boys switched on their torches. Sure that there was no one but themselves in the castle, they made no effort to be quiet, but talked and laughed in their usual way. Jack led them to the back of the hall, and looked at the floor.

  There was no hole to be seen at all. It had gone completely. The children looked about for a trap-door in the floor, but there was none. Philip began to wonder if Jack had dreamt it all.

  Then his sharp eyes saw a spike made of iron set deeply in the wall at the back of the hall. It shone as if it had been much handled. Philip took hold of it.

  ‘Here’s something strange!’ he began, and pulled hard. The spike moved smoothly in some sort of groove, and suddenly there was a grating noise at Lucy-Ann’s feet. She leapt back with a startled cry.

  The ground was opening at her feet! A big stone there was disappearing downwards in some mysterious fashion, and then swung itself smoothly to one side, exposing a short flight of stone steps, leading down into the hidden room that Jack had seen the night before. The children gasped.

  ‘It reminds me of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves or Aladdin and his cave!’ said Dinah. ‘Shall we go down? Do let’s! This is most exciting.’

  There was an oil lamp left burning on the long narrow table below, and by the light of this the children saw the room. Philip, Lucy-Ann and Dinah went eagerly down the steps to examine everything. They saw the tapestries on the walls, depicting old hunting scenes, they saw the old suits of armour standing round the room, and the big, heavy chairs that looked as if they were made for giants, not men.

  ‘Where’s Jack?’ said Philip.

  ‘Gone to get Kiki,’ said Dinah. ‘Oh, look, Philip, here’s another spike in the wall, just like the one upstairs. What happens when you pull it?’

  She pulled it – and with a grating noise the stone swung up and into place, imprisoning the three children down below!

  17

  Things go on happening

  The three children watched the great stone slide into place like magic. It was an extraordinary sight. But Philip suddenly felt worried.

  ‘Dinah! Let me have that spike. Move away. I hope to goodness it will move the stone back again!’

  The boy pulled at it, but it remained fixed. He tried to move it the other way. He jerked it. It would not move at all.
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  ‘It closes the hole in the floor, but it doesn’t open it,’ he said. He looked round for another spike or lever or handle – anything that he thought might open the hole to allow them to get out – but he could see nothing.

  ‘There must be something!’ he said, ‘or the man that hides here wouldn’t be able to come out at night. There must be something!’

  The two girls were scared. They didn’t like being shut up like this in an underground room. Lucy-Ann felt as if all the suits of armour were watching her and enjoying her fright. She didn’t like them.

  ‘Well, Philip, Jack will be along soon,’ said Dinah, ‘and he’ll see the hole is shut and will work the spike upstairs in the hall to open it again. We needn’t worry.’

  ‘I suppose he will,’ said Philip, looking relieved. ‘You are an idiot, Dinah, messing about with things before you know what they do.’

  ‘Well, you’d have done the same thing yourself,’ retorted Dinah.

  ‘All right, all right,’ said Philip. He began to look all round the peculiar room. The suits of armour interested him. He wished he could put one on, just for fun!

  An idea came to him. ‘I say, I’ll play a trick on Jack!’ he said. ‘I’ll get inside one of these suits of armour, and hide. Then when Jack opens the hole and comes down don’t you tell him where I am – and I’ll suddenly step off one of these pedestals the armour is on, with a frightful clanging noise, and scare him stiff!’

  The girls laughed. All right,’ said Lucy-Ann. ‘Hurry up. Do you know how to get into one?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve tried one before, when we had one at school to examine,’ said Philip. ‘It’s quite easy when you know how. You can help me.’

  Before long Philip was in the suit of armour. He had the helmet on his head, and the visor over his face. He could see quite well through the visor, but nobody would know there was anyone inside the armoured suit! He got back on the pedestal with a lot of clanking. The girls giggled.

  ‘Won’t Jack get an awful shock! I wish he’d come,’ said Lucy-Ann.

  ‘Are you comfortable, Philip?’ asked Dinah, looking at her armoured brother standing quite still on his wooden pedestal, looking for all the world exactly like the others around.

  ‘Fairly,’ said Philip. ‘But golly, I wouldn’t much like to go to war in this – I’d never be able to walk more than a few yards! How they fought in them, those old-time soldiers, I really don’t know!’

  The girls wandered round the room. They looked at the tapestry scenes. They sat in the enormous old chairs. They fingered the ancient weapons that were arranged here and there. It certainly was a curious room.

  ‘What is Jack doing?’ said Lucy-Ann, at last, beginning to feel anxious. ‘He’s been simply ages. Oh, Dinah – you don’t think those men have come back, do you – and captured him?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Dinah, also beginning to feel worried. ‘I can’t imagine what he’s doing. After all, he’d only got to call Kiki, wait for her to come to him and then follow us!’

  ‘You know,’ said a hollow voice from inside the suit of armour, ‘you know, I don’t believe those men we saw were the men from the castle. I’ve suddenly thought – they couldn’t be!’

  ‘What do you mean?’ cried both girls, staring in dismay at the place where Philip’s face was behind the visor.

  ‘Well, think where we saw them,’ said Philip. ‘We saw them a good way down the hill, just above the farm, didn’t we? We know there’s no path up to the castle there. And now I think the matter over carefully, I’m pretty certain they were men belonging to the farm. One was that enormously tall fellow we sometimes see when we fetch eggs.’

  The girls thought hard. Yes, that was where the men had been seen – just above the old farm.

  ‘I believe you’re right, Philip,’ said Lucy-Ann, scared. ‘And anyway, if they didn’t want to be seen, it would be silly to take the farm path, wouldn’t it? All the farm dogs would bark at them, and the farmer would look out.’

  ‘Yes – and the dogs were not barking, or we would have heard them,’ said Philip. ‘So that rather proves our point. Dash! I don’t believe those were Jack’s men, after all. It’s quite likely they never left the castle, and are still somewhere about.’

  ‘I do wonder what Jack is doing,’ said Dinah. ‘I do wish he’d come.’

  Jack was certainly a long time coming – but he couldn’t help it! He had gone after Kiki, who had flown into the furnished room in which they had both hidden the night before – and suddenly, from the window, he had seen the three men in a corner of the yard!

  ‘Golly!’ thought the boy, ‘Philip was wrong – the men he saw weren’t the ones from the castle! They must have been farm workers seeing to the sheep or something. My word, I hope they’re not going to that hidden room!’

  The boy darted back into the hall, and went to the place where the hole should be. But it was gone, and a stone now covered the entrance to the room. He was surprised. He had no idea, of course, that Dinah had found the lever below and used it, closing the entrance.

  He debated what to do. Should he open the hole and see if the others were down there? Would the men come into the hall just as he was doing it? He could hear their voices quite clearly now.

  Jack darted back into the furnished room and, accidentally touching a chair as he went, raised a cloud of dust at once. He ran to the wide window and hid behind a long tapestry curtain there. He did not dare to touch it, because he felt sure it would fall to pieces in his hands.

  The men were evidently still worried about the bag of apple cores. It was obvious that they knew someone was there besides themselves – and then, to Jack’s dismay, he saw that they had found the pile of things the others had brought up with them that morning!

  They had brought them from the courtyard and had spread them out at the entrance to the castle, looking through them carefully. Jack caught one or two words, but he couldn’t understand them.

  ‘We shall have to get out of here the very first moment possible,’ thought the boy. ‘We may get into serious trouble. If only I could get everyone up into the room with the plank!’

  Two of the men now separated and went off into the castle, evidently to make another good search. The third man stood at the great doorway, puffing at a cigarette and apparently keeping a watch over the courtyard.

  It was impossible for Jack to open the way to the hidden room, for the man at the doorway would see and hear him. There was nothing to do but wait, and hope for a chance to do it before any of the men did it themselves.

  So the boy stood behind the curtain, watching and waiting. He wished Bill Smugs was there! Bill always knew what to do when things were awkward – but then Bill was a grown-up and grown-ups knew how to handle things in the right way, somehow.

  The man at the doorway finished his cigarette. He did not throw the end away but carefully stubbed it out against a coin he took from his pocket, and put it into a little tin box. Evidently he was not going to leave any signs about that would tell anyone he was living there.

  He turned and came into the hall. Jack heard his feet echoing, and held his breath. Was he going back to the hidden room?

  He was! He walked to the back of the hall, and felt about in the wall there for the spike. Jack, fearing that he was doing this, crept to the door of the room he was hiding in, and peered through the crack. From there he could see what happened.

  The man pulled at the spike, and the stone moved with a grating sound, first downwards and then to the side. It was a marvellous piece of mechanism, very old, but still in perfect working order.

  Jack’s heart almost stood still. Now what was going to happen? What would the man say when he saw the other three?

  Dinah and Lucy-Ann heard the grating noise of the stone as it moved, and looked up. Philip peered through his visor, hoping Jack was coming at last. But to their horror a man stood on the steps, looking at them in the greatest astonishment and anger!

  He co
uld only see Dinah and Lucy-Ann, of course. The two girls stared at him and trembled. His face was not a pleasant one. He had an enormous nose, narrow eyes, and the thinnest lips imaginable. Shaggy eyebrows hung over his eyes, almost like a sheepdog’s hair.

  ‘So!’ said the man, and narrowed his eyes still more. ‘So! You come here, and you go to my room. What is the meaning of this?’

  The girls were terrified, and Lucy-Ann began to sob. Jack, listening, longed to push the man down the steps and break his neck! ‘Hateful fellow, frightening poor Lucy-Ann like that!’ thought the boy angrily, wishing he dared to show himself and comfort her.

  Then he heard the footsteps of the other two men returning from their hunt. The first man heard them too and went back up the stairs to the top. He called to the others in a language Jack did not understand, evidently telling them to come and see what he had found.

  Philip, still hidden in the suit of armour, took the opportunity of whispering instructions to the girls. ‘Don’t be frightened. They’ll probably only think you’re two girls visiting the old castle. You tell them that. Don’t say a word about me or Jack, or we shan’t be able to help you. Jack’s up there somewhere, we know, and he’ll look out for you and get you away. I’ll stay down here till I can escape myself. They won’t know I’m in the armour.’

  He couldn’t say any more, because all three men now came down the steps and into the hidden room. One man had a dense black beard, the other was clean-shaven, but the man the girls had already seen was the ugliest of a really ugly trio.

  Lucy-Ann began to cry again. Dinah was very scared, but she would not cry.

  ‘What are you here for?’ asked the shaggy-browed man. ‘Now – you tell us everything – or you may be very very sorry!’

  18

  Prisoners in the castle

  ‘We only came to have a look at the castle,’ said Dinah, trying to keep her voice from trembling. ‘Does it belong to you? We didn’t know.’