William The Conqueror Read online

  ‘There won’t be anyone in the dining-room,’ whispered Henry, ‘’cause everyone’s in watching the play.’

  ‘Well, go an’ get a lot of grub,’ ordered William in a sibilant commanding whisper. ‘Keep some for yourself an’ put some in a basket, an’ I’ll throw down a rope to draw it up.’

  This method of obtaining food appealed greatly to William’s romance-loving soul.

  The Outlaws departed and in a few minutes returned – very quickly.

  ‘William,’ said Ginger excitedly, ‘there’s a burglar in the dinin’-room.’

  ‘What!’ said William.

  ‘A burglar with his bag of tools an’ his bag of booty, an’ everything. He’s drinkin’ wine or somethin’ at the sideboard.’

  In less than a minute William had joined the Outlaws in the garden, and together they all went round to the dining-room window. Yes, there he was – a real burglar in dingy clothes and shabby necktie, a cap pulled low over his eyes, his bag of tools and a half-filled sack by him. He was standing at the sideboard drinking a whisky and soda.

  The Outlaws retired to the bushes to discuss their tactics.

  ‘We’d better go’n tell your father,’ said Douglas.

  ‘No, we wont,’ said William, ‘we’ll catch him ourselves. What’s the fun of findin’ a burglar an’ lettin’ someone else catch him?’

  Henry and Ginger agreed with him. William assumed the position of leader. There was an enormous curtain in a box upstairs. They’d used it for theatricals once. Robert and Ethel had got a new one for this year, but the old one would do nicely to catch the burglar in. It hadn’t many holes.

  ‘What’ll we do with him, then?’ said Ginger.

  ‘We’ll – we’ll lock him up somewhere,’ said William, as he went up to fetch the curtain.

  In less than a minute he returned with it. It was certainly voluminous enough. The Outlaws laid their plans. They crept into the dining-room silently and, stealing up behind him, enveloped their prey, just as he was in the act of pouring out some more whisky. He was taken completely by surprise. He lost his footing and fell forward into a dusky mass of all-enveloping green serge. He was not a big man or a strong man. He tried to regain his footing and failed. In his green serge covering he was being dragged somewhere. He shouted.

  It happened that in the morning-room (where the play was being held) Ethel, in her capacity of heroine, had just finished singing a song, which was greeted with frenzied applause by her loyal guests. The applause drowned the burglar’s shouts. Douglas flung open the French windows that led from the dining-room to the garden, and panting, tugging and perspiring the Outlaws dragged their victim out into the night across the lawn. Douglas opened the greenhouse door. They hoisted the large green curtain, which still contained its straggling inhabitant, into the greenhouse, shut the door and turned the key in the lock. Then, still panting and purple-faced, the Outlaws went back to the house.

  ‘Well, he was a weight!’ commented Douglas.

  ‘Shall we go an’ tell ’em now?’ said Ginger.

  But William was still rent by the pangs of hunger.

  ‘Oh, he’s all right for a bit,’ he said. ‘He can’t get out. Let’s take a bit of food upstairs first. We can tell ’em after.’

  The Outlaws approved of this. It was certainly a wise plan to make sure of the food. They returned to the dining-room, heaped several plates with dainties that particularly appealed to them, and crept silently upstairs to William’s bedroom. There they sat on the floor munching happily and discussing their capture. They were just deciding that it would be rather fun to be policemen when they grew up, when Ginger pricked up his ears.

  ‘Seems a sort of noise going on downstairs,’ he said.

  Very softly the Outlaws opened the door of William’s bedroom and crept on to the landing. There was most certainly a sort of noise going on downstairs. Everyone seemed to be bustling about, and talking excitedly.

  ‘Do be quiet a minute while I ring up his mother,’ said Ethel’s voice, distraught and tearful. ‘Hello – hello – Is that Mrs Langley? Has Harold come home? Hasn’t he? – No, he’s completely disappeared – No one knows where he is – we got to the point in the play where he comes on – just after my song, you know – and I waited and waited and he never came, and I had to leave the stage without finishing the scene. My nerves had absolutely all gone. I’m still trembling all over, and everyone was hunting and hunting for him – and we had to stop the play,’ tearfully; ‘we couldn’t go on without him. He was the burglar, you know – I do hope nothing awful’s happened – I mean, I hope he didn’t get so nervous he lost his memory, or – or – went out and had some awful accident or anything. We’re all so distressed – it’s quite spoilt the party, of course, and ruined the play. We only got to the song – I don’t know when I’ve felt so awful.’

  She was interrupted by Mrs Brown’s voice, high and hysterical. ‘Oh, Ethel, do fetch your father. It’s too dark to see anything – but there’s the most awful commotion going on in the garden. Someone’s breaking all the glass in the greenhouse.’

  The entire party sallied out excitedly into the garden. They were not there long, but during their absence two things happened. The Outlaws, acting with great presence of mind, seized their share of the food and fled like so many flashes of streaked lightning to their several homes. And William got into bed and went to sleep. He went to sleep with almost incredible rapidity. When his family entered his bedroom a few minutes later, demanding explanation, William lay red and breathless, but determinedly and unwakably asleep. The grimly set lines of his mouth and the frown on his brow testified to the intense and concentrated nature of his sleep.

  ‘Oh, don’t wake him,’ pleaded Mrs Brown. ‘It’s so bad for children to be startled out of sleep.’

  ‘Sleep!’ said Robert sarcastically. ‘Well, I don’t mind. It can wait till tomorrow for all I care. The party’s ruined, anyway.’

  Fortunately, they did not look under the bed, or they would have seen a large plate piled with appetising dainties. They went away with threatening murmurs in which the word ‘tomorrow’ figured largely.

  When they had gone William got out of bed with great caution and sat in the darkness munching iced cakes. That sleep idea had been jolly good. Of course, he knew it couldn’t go on indefinitely. He couldn’t go on sleeping for a month. He’d have to wake up tomorrow, but tomorrow was tomorrow, and when tonight holds an entire plate of iced cakes (many of them with layers of real cream inside), tomorrow is hardly worth serious consideration.

  CHAPTER 13

  REVENGE IS SWEET

  THE Outlaws were agog with excitement, for the day of Hubert Lane’s party was drawing near. This may sound as though the Outlaws were to be honoured guests at Hubert Lane’s party, were to join in the cracker-pulling and cake-eating and dancing and parlour games that were being laboriously prepared for it by the Lane parents.

  Far from it. For between the Outlaws and the Hubert Lanites a deadly feud waged, and tradition demanded that they should treat each other’s parties with indifference and contempt. It was the Hubert Lanites who had broken that tradition. They had deliberately wrecked William’s party the week before Christmas. They had gathered round the windows to jeer at the Outlaws disporting themselves within, and had dispersed miraculously in the darkness whenever a sally had been made from the house against them. They had, moreover, substituted a deceased cat (which Hubert had found in a ditch) for the rabbit which the conjuror had brought with him and which was to appear miraculously from his hat.

  Even the adult relations of the Outlaws had resented this outrage. But they had told the Outlaws that little gentlemen would regard the matter as beneath contempt. The Outlaws, however, did not regard the matter as beneath contempt. They were not out to prove themselves little gentlemen. They were out for revenge.

  They were determined to wreck Hubert Lane’s party as Hubert Lane had wrecked theirs. They wisely hid their resolve, however, fr
om their elders and betters. Their elders and betters fondly imagined that the Outlaws had accepted the insult like little gentlemen.

  But the Outlaws with silent determination were only biding their time. They were awaiting the day of Hubert Lane’s party.

  The news that Mr and Mrs Lane would be away for the party and that Hubert’s Aunt Emmy would preside heartened the Outlaws considerably. Mr and Mrs Lane had flown to the sick bed of an aunt of Mr Lane’s, of whom he had ‘expectations’, and against those ‘expectations’ the success of Hubert’s party seemed a negligible matter. The Outlaws felt that Providence was on their side. The conviction was strengthened when they heard later that at sight of her nephew the sick aunt completely recovered and did not even offer to pay his railway fare.

  Of course, Aunt Emmy in command simplified matters considerably for the Outlaws. The Outlaws had met Aunt Emmy. Anything vaguer, kinder, more shortsighted, and more devastatingly well-meaning than Aunt Emmy could scarcely be imagined. Aunt Emmy should not be difficult to deal with in any crisis.

  The Outlaws had made no definite plans. They had simply decided that somehow or other they must gain admittance to the Hubert Lane mansion on the night of the party and then let things take their own course. William, the head of the Outlaws, like all the best generals, preferred not to draw up his own plan of action till he had ascertained the enemy’s.

  The party was to begin at seven. At half-past six, ten boys in single file might have been observed creeping through a hole in the fence that bordered the Lane garden. At the head crept William, his freckled face contorted into a scowl expressive of determination to do or die. Behind him came Ginger, behind him Henry and behind him Douglas, and behind Douglas came six anti-Lanites and supporters of the Outlaws.

  A pear tree grew conveniently up the side of the Lane mansion, and it was possible with a certain amount of danger to life and limb (which it was beneath the Outlaws’ dignity to consider) to climb up the pear tree and in at an attic window.

  William led the way. The others followed with a puffing and panting and a rustling and a cracking of twigs and muttered imprecations such as ‘Coo!’ and ‘Crumbs!’ and ‘Golly!’ which on a more normal night might have attracted the attention of the whole household. But tonight was not a normal night.

  Hubert was in his bedroom at the other side of the house anxiously arraying himself in an Eton suit and shining pumps. The maids were in the kitchen giving the final touches to mountains of sandwiches and trifles and creams and cakes and jellies and blancmanges. Mr and Mrs Lane, whose bedroom was on the direct path of the pear tree, were at the bedside of the exasperatingly recuperative aunt, and Aunt Emmy was in the kitchen with the maids driving them to distraction by her well-meant efforts to ‘help’.

  She had already sprinkled salt over a trifle under the impression that it was sugar, and made a jug of ‘coffee’ out of knife powder, because she was too shortsighted to read the labels on the tins.

  So there was no one to oppose or even notice the Outlaws as one by one they climbed up the perilous branches of the pear tree and in at the open attic window. There were a few minor casualties of the march, of course. Ginger, whose foot became firmly wedged in a fork of the branches, with great presence of mind undid his shoe and performed the rest of his journey without it. A small boy christened ‘Marmaduke’ by his parents and re-named ‘Jam’ by his contemporaries, who had insisted on joining the expedition, lost his footing and nerve just as he was about to leave the pear tree and clamber into the attic window, and uttered a yell that might have been heard a mile away, but William grabbed the youthful climber by his ear, Ginger grabbed him by the hair, and together they hauled him into safety.

  Then they sat on the floor and looked at each other – collars and ties awry, jackets torn, knees scratched and dirty, trousers plentifully adorned with some white material that had evidently been used in a vain endeavour to beautify the Lane attic window-sills. Then William drew a deep breath and said: ‘Coo! That was a climb and a half.’

  ‘Yes,’ panted Douglas, ‘I went to a film thing on Mount Everest, and it jolly well wasn’t half as steep as this ole pear tree.’

  ‘Jam’ was glowering at his rescuers. ‘You needn’t ’ve tore my ear’n hair out by the roots,’ he muttered malevolently, nursing the injured organs with both hands. But no one listened to his lamentation. The army of bravos was busy by this time inspecting their eyrie. The Lane attics proved to consist of three fair-sized rooms packed with boxes of rubbish of all kinds, water cisterns, spiders’ webs, and mysterious pipes. On the tiny landing outside was a small window leading straight out on to the roof. It was a boyhood’s paradise.

  The eyes of the Outlaws gleamed as they explored it. It said much for the general futility of Hubert Lane and his satellites that they never utilised this heavensent playground, but regarded it merely as an ordinary room in an ordinary house.

  ‘I say, let’s play robbers!’ said Ginger in a hoarse whisper.

  ‘No, let’s be shipwrecked on a desert island,’ said Henry, his eye roving about the scene and already picking out the outstanding features of the scene – the sea, the shore, the rock, the octopus, the log hut, the lagoon, the—

  But William called the attention of his band to the immediate object of the expedition.

  ‘We’ve not come here to play!’ he hissed fiercely.

  Henry had opened the little window and ventured out upon the roof. Two other daring explorers had climbed up to the water cistern. Others were balancing themselves upon pipes or clambering upon packing cases or rummaging inquisitively through huge boxes of rubbish.

  ‘You’ll have ’em all up,’ said William angrily, ‘an’ then what’ll you do?’

  ‘Fight ’em,’ responded ‘Jam’, who had by this time recovered his nerve and warlike spirit, and had fixed an old wicker plant pot upon his head in lieu of a helmet and was brandishing a bamboo curtain pole that he had found lying on the floor. ‘Fight ’em!’ he repeated, drunk with valour.

  But William’s words had recalled his followers to a sense of the realities of life. They descended from pipes and packing cases and water cisterns and clustered round him.

  William dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

  ‘We’ve gotter creep out an’ see what’s happ’nin’ first of all,’ he said hoarsely, ‘an’ then – an’ then we’ll think what to do.’

  Very creakingly on tiptoe the Outlaws crept out after him and hung over the banisters of the attic staircase.

  Aunt Emmy’s voice, dear and flute-like, arose from the hall.

  ‘That’s right, Hubert, darling. You look very nice, my cherub, very nice indeed. Quite a little man. Now I’m sure you know how to be a little host, don’t you darling, and look after your little guests? You must think always of their pleasure and not your own.’

  ‘Your hair’s coming down, auntie,’ said Hubert.

  ‘Little boys mustn’t make personal remarks, darling,’ said Aunt Emmy.

  The Outlaws were listening with silent rapture to this. William, with frowning concentration, was storing up every word of the conversation in his mind for future use.

  There came the sound of wheels on the gravel outside the front door, and the sound of the front door bell.

  ‘The first guest, darling,’ said Aunt Emmy. ‘I’ll open the door and you’d better stand just there to receive them – smile a little, darling, and remember to say “How d’you do?” nicely.’

  Then came the sound of the arrival of fat Bertie Franks, the most odious of the Hubert Lanites next to Hubert himself. Arrivals followed fast and furious after that. The Hubert Lanites all bore a curious physical resemblance to Hubert, their leader. They were all pale and they were all fat. They rallied round Hubert chiefly because of his unlimited pocket-money, and, like Hubert, when anyone annoyed them, they told their fathers and their fathers wrote notes about it to the fathers of those who had annoyed them. The guests hung up coats and hats in the hall and changed i
nto pumps and drifted into the drawing-room. A dismal, very-first-beginning-of-the-party silence reigned.

  ‘Now, what shall we play at first?’ said Aunt Emmy, with overdone brightness. ‘Puss in the Corner?’

  This suggestion was met with chilly silence.

  ‘Postman’s Knock?’ went on Aunt Emmy, her brightness, becoming almost hysterical.

  Silence again – something almost ominous in it this time.

  ‘Hunt the Slipper?’ quavered Aunt Emmy.

  The silence this time was suggestive of fury.

  ‘S-s-s-supper?’ said Aunt Emmy, striving vainly after her first fine careless rapture of brightness.

  She hadn’t meant to have supper till much later, but she’d come to the end of all her other suggestions.

  A murmur signified qualified approval.

  One of the guests took the matter into his own hands.

  ‘What about a game of Hide and Seek an’ then supper?’

  ‘Hide and Seek—’ quavered Aunt Emmy; ‘that’s rather a rough game, isn’t it?’

  They assured her that it wasn’t, and drew lots for who should be ‘It’. The Outlaws, craning necks and ears over the attic staircase, gathered that Hubert was ‘It’. The guests, led by Bertie Franks, swarmed upstairs in search of hiding places. They swarmed up the first floor and the second floor and began to swarm up to the attic. Meekly and devoid of initiative they simply followed Bertie Franks. The Outlaws withdrew hastily to their lair.

  ‘Here’s a little window,’ squeaked a Hubert Lanite, ‘goin’ out on the roof. Let’s go’n hide on the roof.’

  ‘No,’ said Bertie Franks earnestly. ‘’S dangerous. We don’t want to go anywhere dangerous. We might hurt ourselves.’

  ‘And we don’t want to do anythin’ to get our best clothes dirty,’ said another Lanite.

  They entered the attic opposite to the one where the Outlaws were concealed.

  ‘We could all hide here,’ said a Lanite, ‘behind boxes an’ things,’