She made for the door.
A flash of lightning lit up the clearing outside. Nancy was gone.
*
Nancy raced, splashing, down the path. There was a moon behind the clouds, but it was very dark. She had dried in the hut, but the heavy thunder rain soaked her again in a moment. Bother that thunder. There was no time to lose. In thunder, she knew, you could not count on Peggy. Another flash of lightning lit up the dripping trees. A crash of thunder sent her stumbling. She fell, picked herself up and raced on.
Bother that thunder. Even though it did mean that the weather would clear. If only it could have waited till she was back. Almost she could hear Peggy’s squeak, the noise of her bare feet on the bedroom floor. She tried to remember if the Great Aunt had ever been with them when there was thunder. Did she know about Peggy? Giminy, what if she did know, had been waked by the thunder and had come across the landing to lecture Peggy on the foolishness of being afraid of it? Foolish it was, of course, but it was Peggy’s one weakness, and Nancy, even when a pirate, knew there was nothing to be done about it. The only thing was, to be there. And there she wasn’t.
Down on the road she could run faster. Another flash of lightning lit up the lawn as she hurried round the corner of the house. Quietly now, on tiptoe, she slipped along the gravel path, found the trellis and began to climb. Another flash came and another roll of thunder. She thought she heard Peggy’s voice. Her hand was on the window-sill. She tumbled head foremost into the room.
“Nancy! Nancy!” whispered Peggy.
“All right, you thundering galoot,” hissed Nancy, peeling off her bathing dress. She wrung it out, rolled up her bathing cap in it, and left the sodden lump on a corner of the window-sill.
At that moment she heard the opening of the door of the spare room. She pushed her wet sandshoes under a cupboard, grabbed a dressing-gown that she had left on the back of a chair, rolled it round her wet body and shot under the bed-clothes.
“Nancy … I’m coming into your bed.”
“Shut up for a minute.”
Someone was turning the handle of the door.
“Ruth … Margaret.” It was the voice of Aunt Maria. They heard her trying the locked door.
“You go and let her in quick … I can’t.”
Peggy, dithering as much because of the thunder as because of the Great Aunt, got up, unlocked the door and slipped back to bed. The Great Aunt came in with a lighted candle. The flame nearly blew out in the draught from the window.
“You ought never to lock your door at night,” said the Great Aunt. “I must take away the key. Well, Margaret, I expected to find you hiding from the thunder in Ruth’s bed. Is Ruth asleep?”
“No,” said Nancy as sleepily as she could, keeping all but her nose under the bedclothes.
“When there is thunder and rain, you should always close your window,” said the Great Aunt. “There is quite a lake on the floor.”
She went, with guttering candle, to the window. Nancy waited, moment by moment, to hear her find the bundle on the sill. If a flash of lightning were to come now. … But none came. She heard the window close. She heard the Great Aunt take the key from the door.
“You should never lock your door at night. Think what might happen if there were a fire and the key jammed and you were trapped up here on the upper storey.”
Nancy stopped herself just in time from telling her that with the rose trellis outside there was no danger of that.
“Good night,” said the Great Aunt. “I remember hearing that Margaret always had to sleep with someone else when there was thunder. I am glad to see that she is growing up. Good night!”
She was gone.
White light suddenly filled the room again. There was another crash much nearer than the last. Peggy was out of bed in a moment and burrowing in with Nancy.
“It was awful,” she whispered.
“It jolly well was,” said Nancy. “She must have been within an inch of my wet bathing things.”
CHAPTER XIX
“WE’VE NEVER BEEN BURGLARS BEFORE”
DICK and Dorothea found it hard to remember afterwards anything that had happened between Nancy’s running out into the thunderstorm and the moment late next night when the rising moon told them it was time for them to start.
They went to bed soon after Nancy had gone, but lay in their hammocks thinking of what they had to do. They heard the thunder die slowly away. They heard the rain stop. They woke to find bright sunshine and Jacky grinning from the doorway with the milk. They told him they had cooked the rabbit, and he tasted a bit and told them they ought to have given it more salt. “You’ve tried trout and you’ve tried rabbit,” said Jacky. “What you want to be doing is putting a nightline down for eels. You come to t’bridge today and I’ll show you.” They told him they couldn’t, but were almost afraid to say anything at all lest they should somehow let out that something serious was planned. Dick baled Scarab in the morning and dried her sail in the sun. At two o’clock, after eating what was left of the rabbit, they were both down at the harbour. Nancy and Peggy joined them there, but only for a few moments, just to make sure that everything was understood. They were to wait for moonrise, so as not to have to use a torch out of doors or to risk stumbling without one. The window would be open. “We could come down the trellis and help, but it would be silly, really. The more people are moving about the more chance there is of being heard. Nobody but Dick must come in.” “But if he’s caught?” “We’ll be lying awake ready for a rescue. But he won’t be caught. You’ve only got to do it quietly and nothing can possibly go wrong,” said Nancy, and then she and Peggy, who were in their white frocks, not in comfortables, had gone straight back to read aloud to the Great Aunt. Dick and Dorothea had got through the afternoon somehow. Dick had tried to look at birds. Dorothea had tried to read her cookery book. Both had failed. Dorothea had thought of going to sleep in their hammocks to make up for last night and to be sure of not being sleepy later on. But it was no good. They had their supper and Dorothea made it a good one, hotting up a steak-and-kidney pie. And then, when the sun had gone down and night had come, Dick took the three-legged stool to the door of the hut, and sat there, listening to owls, and watching for the rising of the moon.
*
Ages went slowly by before at last the watcher in the doorway saw the tops of the great hills touched with a ghostly light. “It’s coming up now,” he said, looking over his shoulder into the hut where Dorothea was writing something by firelight in the later pages of the exercise-book that had been given up to housekeeping.
“We won’t start till the moon’s really high,” said Dorothea.
“There won’t be much here anyhow,” said Dick, “because of being this side of the hill and there being all those trees. But there’ll be moonlight on Beckfoot almost at once.”
“It’s an awful risk,” said Dorothea. “I wish we hadn’t got to.”
“It won’t take me a minute if Nancy’s left the window open.”
“What if she’s forgotten?”
“She won’t. But even if she has we know which their bedroom is. We’ll have to throw earth till we wake her.”
“But you’re no good at throwing,” said Dorothea.
“I know.”
“Neither am I. And if she has to get up she’s sure to wake everybody else opening the window. She said it couldn’t be done without making a noise.”
“She won’t have forgotten,” said Dick, who was trying the electric torches. “Dot, I think your battery’s better than mine.”
“You’d better take it. I say, Dick, there’s one thing. We’ll know what it feels like to be burglars.”
“It isn’t burgling,” said Dick. “Captain Flint wants Timothy to have the things.”
“It will be burgling if we get caught.”
“We can explain.”
“But that’s just what we can’t,” said Dorothea.
The moon was rising all the time. There was
more and more light in the sky, and looking down over the trees they could see the long lines of the stone walls dividing the fields beyond the river.
“We’ll do it now,” said Dick, picking up his suitcase, that had been emptied for the carrying of the booty.
“I’m ready,” said Dorothea. “I’ll just put a few more logs on, to keep the fire going till we come back.”
They set out across the clearing. Dick heard Dorothea murmur to herself … “Stealthily, holding his breath, alert for the dread footsteps of the law …”
“Oh, look here, Dot. Captain Flint asked Timothy to use those things.”
“Real burglars wouldn’t be thinking of that.”
Carefully, not for fear of the law but because it was not easy walking in the uncertain light, they went down the path through the wood. A day of hot sunshine had lowered the beck and it was no longer overflowing, but they had to watch their feet so as not to step in the little pools that were left. They came to the road. Moonlight was pouring down on Beckfoot and its sheltering trees. At the gate, they were startled by a bright gleam from a window, and were afraid that someone was still awake, till they saw that it was only the moon reflected from the glass.
They listened. There was not a sound from the house.
“Keep close under the trees this side,” said Dick, and they slipped quietly through the shadows and round to the edge of the lawn. The moon lit up the whole of that side of the house, and they saw at once that the corner window nearest to them on the ground floor was wide open at the bottom.
“She hasn’t forgotten,” said Dorothea. “Don’t make a noise on the gravel.”
“Stop … Stop!” whispered Dorothea. “I’m sure I heard something.”
“They’ve all gone to bed long ago,” whispered Dick.
He tiptoed across from the trees and stood under the open window. He reached in, felt along the curtains till he found where they met in the middle, and pulled one of them an inch or two aside. Yes. Everything was dark behind it. He felt Dorothea’s fingers on his arm.
“I’ll leave the suitcase here,” he whispered. “I’ll pass the things out and you can put them in. Put them so that when we’re carrying it the bottles’ll be the right way up.”
“Be careful about getting in,” whispered Dorothea.
“Let me put one hand on your shoulder … That’s right … Keep still …” The next moment he was kneeling on the window-sill. The moment after that he had swung his feet inside and was feeling for the floor. He found it and pushed through the curtains, which closed behind him. He was standing in black darkness. He felt for his torch and, breathless in spite of himself, switched it on and looked anxiously round.
Yes. Everything in Captain Flint’s study was as he remembered it, the high bookshelves, the glass-fronted cases, the shelves of chemical apparatus, the savage weapons on the walls, the jawbone of a huge and long-dead fish. Even in that nervous moment, the burglar smiled as his torch lit up the big hutch they had made for Captain Flint’s expected armadillo, and, seeing the name TIMOTHY, where Titty had painted it on the door, he remembered that Captain Flint was using the hutch as a boot cupboard, and smiled again as he thought of Timothy, for whom it had been designed. Then he pulled out of his pocket the scrap of paper Timothy had sent, with the list of things he wanted. He threw the light of his torch on it and read, though he almost knew the list by heart.
“Acids: hydrochloric, nitric and sulphuric.”
He knew where they were, went straight to them, ticked them off on the list, took them to the window one at a time, and handed them through to Dorothea.
“Don’t show your t-t-torch,” whispered Dorothea, whose teeth were chattering, though it was a warm August night.
“Sorry,” said Dick.
“Tincture of ammonia.”
He found that and took it to the window, remembering this time to switch off his torch before reaching out through the curtains. Dorothea took hold of his wrist and pulled.
GETTING IN
“There’s someone awake upstairs,” she whispered. “I’m sure I heard something.”
“Probably Nancy,” whispered Dick. “I’m being as quick as I can.”
He lit his torch again and went on, working steadily through his list, so as to be sure of missing nothing. Test-tubes. He found a rack of a dozen and decided he had better take the lot. He put them on the table. He found the little crucibles. There was only one pipette, and Timothy had asked for two. Spirit lamp. He put that on the table, too. Good. It would be an awful nuisance if they had to heat test-tubes over a Primus. Filter. Filter papers. He put the little book of litmus paper in his pocket. Then, after a look round for the chemical scales, he put his torch on the table, facing towards the inside of the room, so as to give him a little light and show none outside, and one after another he took the things from the table to the window and passed them out through the curtains to Dorothea.
“Have you nearly done?” she whispered.
“I’ve got everything except the scales and the book.”
He went back, took up his torch and began hunting for the scales. The trouble was that he had never seen them. He knew what they would be like, of course, and he searched all through the glass case of chemical apparatus. They were not there. He looked on the shelves with the bottles. He began moving round the room, looking on the tops of the bookshelves. At this point the burglar, who had so far done so well, made his first mistake. The same misfortune might have happened to a professional. Perhaps, in a hurry, he moved too fast. Perhaps the armadillo’s hutch was wider than he had thought. The toe of his shoe came hard against the end of it, and the big, almost empty packing case sounded like a drum.
“Bother,” said Dick, and moved quickly on, running the light of his torch this way and that, looking for the little brass bar, the tiny chains, the glass dishes of the scales. There would be weights too.
Suddenly the light of his torch fell on Dorothea’s hand waving between the curtains.
Dick went to the window. “What is it?”
“Come out, quick,” whispered Dorothea. “Someone’s lit a light upstairs.”
“If it’s Nancy, I wish she’d come down,” said Dick. “I can’t find the scales.”
“It’s not their room. It’s the spare room,” whispered Dorothea.
“All right,” said Dick. “We’ve got almost everything. There’s only the scales and the book about quantitative analysis. I can take them in my hands. I’ll bolt if anyone comes. You get back to the trees with the suitcase. Don’t let the bottles rattle. I’ll come in one minute … Remember the gravel. …”
He was back again, hunting for the scales, and found them at once, a little flat, polished wooden box on the corner of the mantelshelf, under a measuring glass that was full of pipe-cleaners. He was cross with himself for not thinking at first that he would find them in a box, weights and all. He put the box on the table, and began his last hunt, for the chemistry book, Duncan’s Quantitative Analysis, Vol. II. If only Timothy had said what colour it was.
He had run his torch along three shelves and found four other books on analysis but not the right one, when he heard the stairs creak. Someone was coming down. Dorothea had been right. He must bolt. But with three shelves already searched, he was sure he could find that book in a minute. And Timothy would not have asked for it if they were not going to need it. He searched desperately on.
Suddenly he heard steps crossing the hall … Steps going to the kitchen … the dining-room … the drawing-room … they would be coming to the study next … Should he bolt through the curtains, wait in the garden and come back later for the book? But if someone not Nancy came into the room, and found the window open, he might come back and find himself shut out. No. He must hide in the room. Under the table? There wasn’t even a tablecloth to hang down and keep him hidden. His eye fell on the armadillo’s cage. He was close by it. He opened the door with TIMOTHY on it, and shone his torch in. Boots and shoes, but not very
many. Quietly, quickly, he shifted some of them, sat on the floor, and worked his way in, feet first. He pulled the door to after him, switched off his torch and waited in the dark.
Someone was trying the study door. No time now to wish he had bolted through the window instead. Someone was turning the key. Someone was standing in the open doorway. Through a chink in his hiding place he could see that there was light in the room. He heard steps cross the floor. They were not Nancy’s steps. He heard that small impatient noise that some people make with their tongues and the roofs of their mouths when they think that someone else is to blame for something. He heard a faint rattle of curtain rings, then a crash as the window was pulled down, then the click of its metal fastener. The steps crossed the floor once more. The light was gone. The door was shut. A key turned in the lock. The steps went off across the hall and up the creaking stairs.
Dick took a long breath, the first, it seemed to him, that he had taken for an hour. He lay, listening. There was a touch of cramp in his left leg. There was no room to stretch, and anyhow he dared not move for fear of making a noise with the boots and shoes whose cupboard he was sharing. Even keeping as still as he could, lying there in the dark, he could not stop two of the boots or shoes or whatever they were rubbing against each other with the sticky scrape of leather on leather every time he breathed. He waited, clenched his teeth because of the cramp, for several minutes after the creaking of the stairs had come to an end. What a good thing it was he had sent Dorothea off with the suitcase and things. That must have been the Great Aunt herself in the room, and when she opened the curtains she would have looked straight out into Dorothea’s face if she had been waiting outside the window in the moonlight.