William Read online

  ‘There are four boys in your drawing-room.’

  ‘Four b—’ said her hostess. ‘There can’t be, dear.’

  ‘But there are,’ said the stout lady. ‘Unless, of course, I’m seeing spirit visitants.’

  ‘You must be, dear,’ said the hostess, ‘because there certainly aren’t any boys in my drawing-room.’ She turned to the earnest lady and said, ‘We had a most interesting discussion on that last month. Spirit visitants, you know, and that sort of thing. Most interesting.’

  ‘How marvellous!’ said the earnest lady earnestly.

  ‘Can you still see them?’ said the hostess.

  ‘Yes,’ said the stout lady, still staring at the Outlaws. ‘I can still see them quite plainly.’

  ‘Do they remind you of any dear ones of yours who have passed over?’

  ‘N-no,’ said the stout lady, still gazing with frowning concentration at the Outlaws. ‘N-no. Not strongly. My father had a brother that died when he was a boy. One of them may be him.’

  ‘Does any of them remind you of your father?’

  ‘Not strongly,’ said the stout lady. ‘He was supposed to have been a beautiful child and these are all very plain.’

  ‘Surely, dear,’ said the hostess reproachfully, ‘surely they have a sort of spiritual beauty.’

  ‘N-no, I don’t think they have,’ said the stout lady.

  ‘Toto isn’t with them, is he?’ said Toto’s mistress anxiously.

  ‘No,’ replied the seer, ‘I don’t see Toto anywhere. Just the four boys.’

  ‘No . . . I’m sure,’ said Toto’s mistress in a quivering voice, ‘that if Toto had passed over it would be to me he’d have paid a spirit visit. He was always my little friend and comrade, you know. Always.’ The voice broke upon a high note.

  ‘I’m so glad that we’ve got someone with psychic vision,’ said the hostess complacently. ‘Mrs Merton interprets dreams marvellously and Mrs Barmer has a wonderful gift for trimming hats and Mrs Franklin recites like – like Shakespeare himself, but I’ve always thought that we needed someone with psychic vision to make our little circle complete . . . Can you still see them?’ she said to the stout lady.

  The stout lady’s gaze was still fixed upon the Outlaws, who returned it, rooted in horror to the spots on which they stood.

  ‘Yes,’ said the stout lady, ‘I can still see them.’

  ‘Do they seem to grow fainter or plainer,’ said the hostess with interest. ‘I’d go to get a note-book but I’m afraid that if I moved it might disturb the – the waves, you know, and they’d vanish.’

  ‘They seem to stay just about the same,’ said the stout lady, keeping an unblinking stare upon the Outlaws, and added, ‘or perhaps they get a bit plainer.’

  ‘I’m sure that Toto was psychic,’ said Toto’s mistress tearfully; ‘I’m sure he was. Somehow he used to snap and bark for no reason at all. I’m sure he saw things.’

  The stout lady took her eyes off the Outlaws to gaze with interest at Toto’s mistress, and they took advantage of that moment to take a hasty step backwards.

  ‘Are they still there?’ said the hostess.

  The seer looked again.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘they’ve vanished.’

  ‘Something must have disturbed the waves,’ said the hostess.

  But unfortunately at that minute the Outlaws, trying to get farther away from her range of vision, knocked a table over. At the sound the stout lady craned her head into the room.

  ‘I can see them again,’ she said, ‘and they’re real boys. They must be. They’ve just knocked a table over.’

  ‘Real boys!’ said the hostess in horror. ‘How annoying! Who can they be? Oh, perhaps they’re the boys we sent to the seaside. I told them to come here as soon as they were able and tell us all about it. They must have come today and the maid must have forgotten to tell me . . .’

  She went to the French window and flung it wide.

  ‘Come out here, boys,’ she said. ‘How stupid of you to stay in there without saying anything. And pick up that table. How clumsy you are. I didn’t want you today, but now that you’ve come you’d better tell us about your treat. Come along.’

  She motioned them on to the verandah. They stood and gazed at her in helpless bewilderment. They had caught only fragments of the conversation and did not know whom she took them for, nor what she expected of them.

  ‘Come along,’ she said sharply to William, rightly taking him for the leader. ‘Tell us about the treat you had last Saturday.’

  William sent his mind searching into the recesses of the past and remembered that an aunt had taken him to the Zoo last Saturday.

  ‘Now,’ said the hostess more kindly, ‘tell us what was the first thing you saw when you got there.’

  ‘Lions,’ said William.

  ‘Nonsense!’ said the lady sharply.

  ‘Oh no,’ said William, ‘we saw elephants first.’

  ‘You untruthful little boy,’ said the hostess sternly, ‘how dare you say such a thing.’

  ‘Where were those elephants you say you saw?’ said the earnest lady with the air of a famous K.C. cross-examining a prisoner.

  ‘Walkin’ about all over the place,’ said William. ‘Camels, too.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ put in the hostess. ‘How can you expect us to believe such wicked stories?’

  ‘What did you see next?’ said the earnest lady, still with an air of judicial cunning.

  ‘Tigers,’ said William, ‘an’ bears an’ wolves an’ hyenas an’ snakes.’

  ‘COME ALONG,’ SAID THE HOSTESS. ‘TELL US ABOUT THE TREAT YOU HAD LAST SATURDAY. NOW, WHAT WAS THE FIRST THING YOU SAW?’

  ‘Perhaps he’s psychic,’ said the stout lady suddenly. ‘Perhaps he sees places as they were before the prehistoric animals were driven out. Perhaps they were spirit animals.’

  ‘You didn’t see a dear little dog among them, did you?’ said Toto’s mistress anxiously.

  ‘LIONS,’ SAID WILLIAM. ‘OH, NO; WE SAW ELEPHANTS FIRST. WALKIN’ ABOUT ALL OVER THE PLACE!’

  ‘You’re a wicked, untruthful boy,’ said the hostess severely. ‘I know for a fact that there isn’t a single lion in Belton-on-Sea.’

  ‘I didn’t go to Belton-on-Sea,’ said William. ‘I went to the Zoo.’

  The look of severity on the hostess’s face deepened so much that William did what he had been longing to do ever since he entered the house – dashed down the drive to the gate in precipitous flight, followed by his gallant band.

  In the road, seeing that they were not being pursued, they stopped to draw breath.

  ‘Crumbs!’ said Ginger faintly, ‘what a norful time.’

  ‘Yes, an’ think of all the time we’ve wasted when we might’ve been makin’ money,’ said William.

  ‘Wonder what the ole lady meant,’ said Douglas thoughtfully, ‘wonder if she jus’ made a mistake an’ meant first house on the left or somethin’ like that.’

  ‘Yes, I wonder,’ said Henry.

  But they didn’t wonder long. They retraced their steps to the refreshment stall and found it emptied of buns and lemonade. Only their notice was left, turned upside down with something written on the other side. There was no sign of the hospitable old lady. Wide-eyed with horror they approached and read the notice:

  ‘Many thanks for buns and lemonade –

  ‘Hubert Lane.

  ‘P.S. Aren’t I a nice old lady!’

  ‘It was him!’ cried the Outlaws with mingled fury and despair. ‘It was him! He’s done it again. What’re we goin’ to do now?’

  But nobody answered, for nobody knew. They stood, a drooping, disconsolate group around their empty stall.

  ‘We can’t even fight ’em,’ said Ginger mournfully, ‘’cause they’ll take jolly good care not to come out of their garden gates.’

  ‘An’ I don’t see how we can get ten pounds now,’ said Douglas. ‘It’s after tea-time an’ he wants the money in tonight to read out at p
rayers tomorrow mornin’.’

  ‘An’ we haven’t even had any tea,’ said Henry, ‘an’ I’m feelin’ jolly hungry.’

  ‘Well, there doesn’t seem anythin’ to stay here for,’ said William, eyeing the empty stall distastefully. ‘I votes we go home to tea anyway. It’s no good goin’ without tea on top of everything else.’

  They set off down the road, walking slowly, dejectedly and in silence. Suddenly Ginger, who was walking at the side of the road, said:

  ‘I think there’s a rat in the ditch. I saw something move.’

  Even their dejection, great as it was, was not proof against that. They brightened and hung over the ditch, peering down.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘There! It moved again.’

  They dived down to investigate. It was not a rat. It was Toto – Toto, most minute of minute toy dogs. Toto, jaunty, abandoned and debauched-looking, making his rollicking way homewards through the ditch after his night out.

  Ginger held it up by the scruff of its neck.

  ‘It’s a dog,’ he said doubtfully.

  Toto leered at them and emitted a sound like a snigger.

  ‘It’s got a name on its collar,’ said William. ‘See what it is.’

  Ginger read it out.

  ‘It’s the house jus’ up the hill,’ he said. ‘P’raps it’s that woman that was carryin’ on at tea.’

  And it was. It was a large, rich-looking house with a large, rich-looking garden and a large, rich-looking door was opened by a large, rich-looking butler, and the Outlaws were shown into a large, rich-looking room. The lady was there, still wearing the red hat. She had just come in. She screamed when she saw Toto, and then, holding him to her breast, went into hysterics, till Toto brought her out of them by biting her ear.

  Then she held out both hands to the Outlaws.

  ‘My dear, dear boys!’ she said and kissed them. They blushed with shame to their very souls.

  Then she went to a writing-table and brought them a sheet of paper on which something was written.

  ‘Read that!’ she said dramatically.

  But the writing was so wild that they couldn’t read anything but the word ‘Reward’. Then she took an envelope and thrust it into their hands. On it was written ‘For Toto’s Finder’.

  ‘I’ve had it ready and waiting,’ she said, ‘ever since I sent that notice to the papers, and it’s yours by right, dear boys. Yours by right. Toto is worth hundreds of pounds to anyone but to me he’s worth millions because he’s my dear little friend and comrade.’

  Bewildered, they went out to the road.

  There they opened the envelope she had given them.

  In it was a ten-pound note.

  It was the next morning. The school was assembled in the big hall. The headmaster began to read out the sums earned by the various groups for the new wing.

  The youngest boy in the school – aged seven – had alone and unaided collected ten shillings. He had gone round to his friends and relations asking them in all good faith for money for new wings for the headmaster and so had met with a better response than he probably would have done had he had a clearer conception of the object of the fund.

  The headmaster read the list slowly and impressively. He came to the group of names headed by ‘Hubert Lane’ and he read ‘Five Pounds.’ There was a faint burst of applause. Then he came to the group of names headed by ‘William Brown’.

  The Hubert Laneites turned round to the Outlaws with jeering grins of anticipated triumph.

  The headmaster read out ‘Ten Pounds.’ The applause was the more deafening because the Outlaws were popular and the Hubert Laneites were not. The mouths of the Hubert Laneites dropped open weakly. The Outlaws stared in front of them with looks of calm and superior aloofness.

  But the best was yet to come. The Outlaws and the Hubert Laneites met face to face on the playground.

  ‘We didn’t half pull your leg,’ said William, ‘pretendin’ not to know who you were yesterday. We were laughin’ fit to burst inside all the time.’

  And whatever inflation had been left in the Hubert Laneites departed.

  CHAPTER 7

  FIREWORKS STRICTLY PROHIBITED

  ‘We’ve got to have fireworks this year,’ said William in his most Napoleonic manner, ‘we’ve simply got to.’

  In previous Novembers the pyrotechnical attempts of the Outlaws had been doomed to frustration by various unkind strokes of fate. On several occasions they had had all their fireworks confiscated on the very Fifth itself in retribution for what the Outlaws considered trifling misdemeanours. On one occasion Douglas, who was carrying them to the scene of the display, had fallen into the stream while executing a dance of anticipatory exultation on the plank that served as a bridge. The other Outlaws had immediately concentrated all their energy on rescuing the fireworks, leaving Douglas to his fate, but all the virtue had gone out of them when rescued, and though the Outlaws used upon them half a dozen boxes of matches (‘borrowed’ from Ginger’s mother’s store cupboard) they refused to function.

  But last year had been the most glorious fiasco of all. Last year, inspired by a chapter in a book called Things a Boy Can Do, that someone had given to Henry, they had decided to make their own fireworks. They had managed to secure some gunpowder, and though they persisted that they had followed most faithfully the directions given in the book, the shed in which they were manufacturing them had been completely wrecked, and the Outlaws themselves had narrowly escaped with their lives.

  ‘How’re we goin’ to get any?’ said Henry.

  ‘Let’s save up,’ suggested Ginger. ‘Let’s start savin’ up at once.’

  This suggestion roused very little enthusiasm. Henry’s pocket-money had been stopped indefinitely to pay for a broken window. Douglas was, under strict parental supervision, saving up to buy a birthday present for his godmother (his resentment at this was made more bitter by the fact that his godmother’s last birthday present to him had been a copy of Pilgrim’s Progress). Robert, William’s elder brother, was receiving weekly so large a proportion of William’s pocket-money in payment for a pocket compass of his that William had ‘borrowed’ and lost that it didn’t seem worth while to do anything with the residuum but spend it on sweets. And Ginger, despite his suggestion of saving, was one of those unfortunates who never have any money. It didn’t matter whether he received his pocket-money or not. He never had any money. Near to the front gate of his house there was a little shop where lollipops and darts and squibs and toy pistols were sold, and if there was any money at all in his pocket Ginger could never pass this shop without going in.

  Hence the lack of enthusiasm with which his suggestion was received.

  ‘What about makin’ some?’ he said tentatively.

  ‘We tried that last year,’ said William gloomily, ‘don’ you remember?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ginger slowly, ‘I remember. They said that when they heard the bang they thought we were all killed an’ you’d’ve thought by the way they went on at us when they found we weren’t that they’d wanted us to be.’

  ‘We’d better not do it again,’ said Henry. ‘It was fun, but it was such a trouble gettin’ the gunpowder an’ it wasn’t the right sort when we got it. It can’t’ve been the right sort, ’cause we did it jus’ like it said to do it in the book, and it oughtn’t to have gone off like that.’

  ‘No, we’ve jus’ got to either get some money to buy them or get them given us,’ said Douglas.

  ‘Who’d give ’em us?’ asked Ginger simply.

  ‘Let’s ask people,’ said William hopefully, ‘let’s ask our fathers. I bet they used to have ’em when they were our age.’

  ‘I jolly well bet they did,’ said Ginger, ‘though I bet they’ll say they didn’t if we ask ’em. If they’d reelly been the sort of boys like what they pretend they were they must’ve been jolly funny, that’s all I can say, an’ I’m jolly glad I didn’t go to the same school as them.’

  ‘We
’ll ask ’em anyway,’ said Douglas and added, ‘I wonder why it’s called Guy Fawkes Day.’

  ‘’Cause a man called Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the House of Commons,’ said Henry. Henry was always the best informed of the Outlaws.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘’Cause he di’n’ like ’em, I s’pose.’

  ‘Why di’n’ he like ’em?’

  ‘People don’t like ’em. You should hear my father goin’ on about ’em. I bet he’d blow ’em up if he knew how to.’

  ‘Why di’n’ this man – this Guy whoever he was – blow ’em up?’

  ‘Dunno. I expect they sold him the wrong sort of gunpowder, same as they sold us. The sort that goes off too soon.’

  ‘Well, anyway, I don’t see why people have fireworks every year jus’ ’cause he di’n’ blow up the House of Commons.’

  Henry thought this over for some minutes in silence. Henry never liked to own himself at a loss.

  ‘I know,’ he said at last. ‘They felt so sick at him not doin’ it. You see it’d’ve been such a jolly good sort of thing to watch. The House of Commons shootin’ right up into the air like that. So they started havin’ fireworks to sort of comfort themselves with. You know – tryin’ to see a bit what it’d’ve been like if he hadn’t made a mess of it. An’’ – with a rush of inspiration – ‘that’s why they burn him. ’Cause they’re so fed up with him makin’ such a mess of it.’

  ‘I see,’ said William, completely satisfied with the explanation. ‘Course we’ll have to have a guy too. We mustn’t forget a guy.’

  ‘Who’ll we have?’ said Ginger.

  ‘We’ll wait to see nearer the time who’s been worst to us,’ said William with an air of calm, judicial impartiality.

  William approached his requests for fireworks with over-elaborate tact.

  He went into the morning-room after lunch when his father was there alone reading the paper, and sat down in an arm-chair opposite him on the other side of the fireplace.