THE difficulty was not only that Gerald had got the ring on and couldn't
get it off, and was therefore invisible, but that Mabel, who had been
invisible and therefore possible to be smuggled into the house, was now
plain to be seen and impossible for smuggling purposes.
The children would have not only to account for the apparent absence of
one of themselves, but for the obvious presence of a perfect stranger.
"I can't go back to aunt. I can't and I won't," said Mabel firmly, "not
if I was visible twenty times over."
"She'd smell a rat if you did." Gerald owned--"about the motor-car, I
mean, and the adopting lady. And what we're to say to Mademoiselle about
you----!" He tugged at the ring.
"Suppose you told the truth," said Mabel meaningly.
"She wouldn't believe it," said Cathy; "or, if she did, she'd go stark,
staring, raving mad."
"No," said Gerald's voice, "we daren't _tell_ her. But she's really
rather decent. Let's ask her to let you stay the night because it's too
late for you to get home."
"That's all right," said Jimmy, "but what about you?"
"I shall go to bed," said Gerald, "with a bad headache. Oh, _that's_ not
a lie! I've got one right enough. It's the sun, I think. I know
blacklead attracts the concentration of the sun."
"More likely the pears and the gingerbread," said Jimmy unkindly. "Well,
let's get along. I wish it was me was invisible. I'd do something
different from going to bed with a silly headache, I know that."
"What would you do?" asked the voice of Gerald just behind him.
"Do keep in one place, you silly cuckoo!" said Jimmy. "You make me feel
all jumpy." He had indeed jumped rather violently. "Here, walk between
Cathy and me."
"What _would_ you do?" repeated Gerald, from that apparently unoccupied
position.
"I'd be a burglar," said Jimmy.
Cathy and Mabel in one breath reminded him how wrong burgling was, and
Jimmy replied:
"Well, then--a detective."
"There's got to be something to detect before you can begin
detectiving," said Mabel.
"Detectives don't always detect things," said Jimmy, very truly. "If I
couldn't be any other kind I'd be a baffled detective. You could be one
all right, and have no end of larks just the same. Why don't you do it?"
"It's exactly what I _am_ going to do," said Gerald. "We'll go round by
the police-station and see what they've got in the way of crimes."
They did, and read the notices on the board outside. Two dogs had been
lost, a purse, and a portfolio of papers "of no value to any but the
owner." Also Houghton Grange had been broken into and a quantity of
silver plate stolen. "Twenty pounds reward offered for any information
that may lead to the recovery of the missing property."
"That burglary's my lay," said Gerald; "I'll detect that. Here comes
Johnson," he added; "he's going off duty. Ask him about it." The fell
detective, being invisible, was unable to pump the constable, but the
young brother of our hero made the inquiries in quite a creditable
manner. "Be creditable, Jimmy."
Jimmy hailed the constable.
"Halloa, Johnson!" he said.
And Johnson replied: "Halloa, young shaver!"
"Shaver yourself!" said Jimmy, but without malice.
"What are you doing this time of night?" the constable asked jocosely.
"All the dicky birds is gone to their little nesteses."
"We've been to the fair," said Kathleen. "There was a conjurer there. I
wish you could have seen him."
"Heard about him," said Johnson; "all fake, you know. The quickness of
the 'and deceives the hi."
Such is fame. Gerald, standing in the shadow, jingled the loose money in
his pocket to console himself.
"What's that?" the policeman asked quickly.
[Illustration: "WHAT'S THAT?" THE POLICEMAN ASKED QUICKLY.]
"Our money jingling," said Jimmy, with perfect truth.
"It's well to be some people," Johnson remarked; "wish I'd got my
pockets full to jingle with."
"Well, why haven't you?" asked Mabel. "Why don't you get that twenty
pounds reward?"
"I'll tell you why I don't. Because in this 'ere realm of liberty, and
Britannia ruling the waves, you aint allowed to arrest a chap on
suspicion, even if you know puffickly well who done the job."
"What a shame!" said Jimmy warmly. "And who _do_ you think did it?"
"I don't think--I know." Johnson's voice was ponderous as his boots.
"It's a man what's known to the police on account of a heap o' crimes
he's done, but we never can't bring it 'ome to 'im, nor yet get
sufficient evidence to convict."
"Well," said Jimmy, "when I've left school I'll come to you and be
apprenticed, and be a detective. Just now I think we'd better get home
and detect our supper. Good-night!"
They watched the policeman's broad form disappear through the swing door
of the police-station; and as it settled itself into quiet again the
voice of Gerald was heard complaining bitterly.
"You've no more brains than a halfpenny bun," he said: "no details about
how and when the silver was taken."
"But he told us he knew," Jimmy urged.
"Yes, that's all you've got out of him. A silly policeman's silly idea.
Go home and detect your precious supper! It's all you're fit for."
"What'll you do about supper?" Mabel asked.
"Buns!" said Gerald, "halfpenny buns. They'll make me think of my dear
little brother and sister. Perhaps you've got enough sense to buy buns?
I can't go into a shop in this state."
"Don't you be so disagreeable," said Mabel with spirit. "We did our
best. If I were Cathy you should whistle for your nasty buns."
"If you were Cathy the gallant young detective would have left home long
ago. Better the cabin of a tramp steamer than the best family mansion
that's got a brawling sister in it," said Gerald. "You're a bit of an
outsider at present, my gentle maiden. Jimmy and Cathy know well enough
when their bold leader is chaffing and when he isn't."
"Not when we can't see your face we don't," said Cathy, in tones of
relief. "I really thought you were in a flaring wax, and so did Jimmy,
didn't you?"
"Oh, rot!" said Gerald. "Come on! This way to the bun shop."
They went. And it was while Cathy and Jimmy were in the shop and the
others were gazing through the glass at the jam tarts and Swiss rolls
and Victoria sandwiches and Bath buns under the spread yellow muslin in
the window, that Gerald discoursed in Mabel's ear of the plans and
hopes of one entering on a detective career.
"I shall keep my eyes open to-night, I can tell you," he began. "I shall
keep my eyes skinned, and no jolly error. The invisible detective may
not only find out about the purse and the silver, but detect some crime
that isn't even done yet. And I shall hang about until I see some
suspicious-looking characters leave the town, and follow them furtively
and catch them red-handed, with their hands full of priceless jewels,
and hand them over."
"Oh!" cried Mabel, so sharply and suddenly that Gerald was roused from
his dream to express sympathy.
"Pain?" he said quite kindly. "It's the apples--they _were_ rather
hard."
"Oh, it's not that," said Mabel very earnestly. "Oh, how awful! I never
thought of that before."
"Never thought of _what_?" Gerald asked impatiently.
"The window."
"What window?"
"The panelled-room window. At home, you know--at the castle. That
settles it--I _must_ go home. We left it open and the shutters as well,
and all the jewels and things there. Auntie'll never go in; she never
does. That settles it; I _must_ go home--now--this minute."
Here the others issued from the shop, bun-bearing, and the situation was
hastily explained to them.
[Illustration: "I _MUST_ GO HOME--NOW--THIS MINUTE."]
"So you see I must go," Mabel ended.
And Kathleen agreed that she must.
But Jimmy said he didn't see what good it would do. "Because the key's
inside the door, anyhow."
"She _will_ be cross," said Mabel sadly. "She'll have to get the
gardeners to get a ladder and----"
"Hooray!" said Gerald. "Here's me! Nobler and more secret than gardeners
or ladders was the invisible Jerry. I'll climb in at the window--it's
all ivy, I know I could--and shut the window and the shutters all
sereno, put the key back on the nail, and slip out unperceived the back
way, threading my way through the maze of unconscious retainers.
There'll be plenty of time. I don't suppose burglars begin their fell
work until the night is far advanced."
"Won't you be afraid?" Mabel asked. "Will it be safe--suppose you were
caught?"
"As houses. I can't be," Gerald answered, and wondered that the question
came from Mabel and not from Kathleen, who was usually inclined to fuss
a little annoyingly about the danger and folly of adventures.
But all Kathleen said was, "Well, goodbye: we'll come and see you
to-morrow, Mabel. The floral temple at half-past ten. I hope you won't
get into an awful row about the motor-car lady."
"Let's detect our supper now," said Jimmy.
"All right," said Gerald a little bitterly. It is hard to enter on an
adventure like this and to find the sympathetic interest of years
suddenly cut off at the meter, as it were. Gerald felt that he ought, at
a time like this, to have been the centre of interest. And he wasn't.
They could actually talk about supper. Well, let them. He didn't care!
He spoke with sharp sternness: "Leave the pantry window undone for me to
get in by when I've done my detecting. Come on, Mabel." He caught her
hand. "Bags I the buns, though," he added, by a happy afterthought, and
snatching the bag, pressed it on Mabel, and the sound of four boots
echoed on the pavement of the High Street as the outlines of the running
Mabel grew small with distance.
= = = = =
Mademoiselle was in the drawing-room. She was sitting by the window in
the waning light reading letters.
"Ah, _vous voici_!" she said unintelligibly. "You are again late; and my
little Gerald, where is he?"
This was an awful moment. Jimmy's detective scheme had not included any
answer to this inevitable question. The silence was unbroken till Jimmy
spoke.
"He _said_ he was going to bed because he had a headache." And this, of
course, was true.
"This poor Gerald!" said Mademoiselle. "Is it that I should mount him
some supper?"
"He never eats anything when he's got one of his headaches," Kathleen
said. And this also was the truth.
Jimmy and Kathleen went to bed, wholly untroubled by anxiety about their
brother, and Mademoiselle pulled out the bundle of letters and read them
amid the ruins of the simple supper.
= = = = =
"It is ripping being out late like this," said Gerald through the soft
summer dusk.
"Yes," said Mabel, a solitary-looking figure plodding along the
high-road. "I do hope auntie won't be _very_ furious."
"Have another bun," suggested Gerald kindly, and a sociable munching
followed.
It was the aunt herself who opened to a very pale and trembling Mabel
the door which is appointed for the entrances and exits of the domestic
staff at Yalding Towers. She looked over Mabel's head first, as if she
expected to see some one taller. Then a very small voice said:--
"Aunt!"
The aunt started back, then made a step towards Mabel.
"You naughty, naughty girl!" she cried angrily; "how could you give me
such a fright? I've a good mind to keep you in bed for a week for this,
miss. Oh, Mabel, thank Heaven you're safe!" And with that the aunt's
arms went round Mabel and Mabel's round the aunt in such a hug as they
had never met in before.
"But you didn't seem to care a bit this morning," said Mabel, when she
had realised that her aunt really had been anxious, really was glad to
have her safe home again.
"How do you know?"
"I was there listening. Don't be angry, auntie."
"I feel as if I never could be angry with you again, now I've got you
safe," said the aunt surprisingly.
"But how was it?" Mabel asked.
"My dear," said the aunt impressively, "I've been in a sort of trance. I
think I must be going to be ill. I've always been fond of you, but I
didn't want to spoil you. But yesterday, about half-past three, I was
talking about you to Mr. Lewson, at the fair, and quite suddenly I felt
as if you didn't matter at all. And I felt the same when I got your
letter and when those children came. And to-day in the middle of tea I
suddenly woke up and realised that you were gone. It was awful. I think
I must be going to be ill. Oh, Mabel, why did you do it?"
"It was--a joke," said Mabel feebly. And then the two went in and the
door was shut.
"That's most uncommon odd," said Gerald, outside; "looks like more magic
to me. I don't feel as if we'd got to the bottom of this yet, by any
manner of means. There's more about this castle than meets the eye."
There certainly was. For this castle happened to be--but it would not be
fair to Gerald to tell you more about it than he knew on that night when
he went alone and invisible through the shadowy great grounds of it to
look for the open window of the panelled room. He knew that night no
more than I have told you; but as he went along the dewy lawns and
through the groups of shrubs and trees, where pools lay like giant
looking-glasses reflecting the quiet stars, and the white limbs of
statues gleamed against a background of shadow, he began to feel--well,
not excited, not surprised, not anxious, but--different.
The incident of the invisible Princess had surprised, the incident of
the conjuring had excited, and the sudden decision to be a detective had
brought its own anxieties; but all these happenings, though wonderful
and unusual, had seemed to be, after all, inside the circle of possible
things--wonderful as the chemical experiments are where two liquids
poured together make fire, surprising as legerdemain, thrilling as a
juggler's display, but nothing more. Only now a new feeling came to him
as he walked through those gardens; by day those gardens were like
dreams, at night they were like visions. He could not see his feet as he
walked, but he saw the movement of the dewy grass-blades that his feet
displaced. And he had that extraordinary feeling so difficult to
describe, and yet so real and so unforgettable--the feeling that he was
in another world, that had covered up and hidden the old world as a
carpet covers a floor. The floor was there all right, underneath, but
what he walked on was the carpet that covered it--and that carpet was
drenched in magic, as the turf was drenched in dew.
The feeling was very wonderful; perhaps you will feel it some day. There
are still some places in the world where it can be felt, but they grow
fewer every year.
The enchantment of the garden held him.
"I'll not go in yet," he told himself; "it's too early. And perhaps I
shall never be here at night again. I suppose it _is_ the night that
makes everything look so different."
Something white moved under a weeping willow; white hands parted the
long, rustling leaves. A white figure came out, a creature with horns
and goat's legs and the head and arms of a boy. And Gerald was not
afraid. That was the most wonderful thing of all, though he would never
have owned it. The white thing stretched its limbs, rolled on the grass,
righted itself, and frisked away across the lawn. Still something white
gleamed under the willow; three steps nearer and Gerald saw that it was
the pedestal of a statue--empty.
"They come alive," he said; and another white shape came out of the
Temple of Flora and disappeared in the laurels. "The statues come
alive."
[Illustration: THE MOVING STONE BEAST.]
There was a crunching of the little stones in the gravel of the drive.
Something enormously long and darkly grey came crawling towards him,
slowly, heavily. The moon came out just in time to show its shape. It
was one of those great lizards that you see at the Crystal Palace,
made in stone, of the same awful size which they were millions of years
ago when they were masters of the world, before Man was.
"It can't see me," said Gerald. "I am not afraid. _It's_ come to life,
too."
As it writhed past him he reached out a hand and touched the side of its
gigantic tail. It was of stone. It had not "come alive," as he had
fancied, but _was_ alive in its stone. It turned, however, at the touch;
but Gerald also had turned, and was running with all his speed towards
the house. Because at that stony touch Fear had come into the garden and
almost caught him. It was Fear that he ran from, and not the moving
stone beast.
He stood panting under the fifth window; when he had climbed to the
window-ledge by the twisted ivy that clung to the wall, he looked back
over the grey slope--there was a splashing at the fish-pool that had
mirrored the stars--the shape of the great stone beast was wallowing in
the shallows among the lily-pads.
Once inside the room, Gerald turned for another look. The fish-pond lay
still and dark, reflecting the moon. Through a gap in the drooping
willow the moonlight fell on a statue that stood calm and motionless on
its pedestal. Everything was in its place now in the garden. Nothing
moved or stirred.
"How extraordinarily rum!" said Gerald. "I shouldn't have thought you
_could_ go to sleep walking through a garden and dream--like that."
He shut the window, lit a match, and closed the shutters. Another match
showed him the door. He turned the key, went out, locked the door again,
hung the key on its usual nail, and crept to the end of the passage.
Here he waited, safe in his invisibility, till the dazzle of the matches
should have gone from his eyes, and he be once more able to find his way
by the moonlight that fell in bright patches on the floor through the
barred, unshuttered windows of the hall.
"Wonder where the kitchen is," said Gerald. He had quite forgotten that
he was a detective. He was only anxious to get home and tell the others
about that extraordinarily odd dream that he had had in the gardens. "I
suppose it doesn't matter _what_ doors I open. I'm invisible all right
still, I suppose? Yes; can't see my hand before my face." He held up a
hand for the purpose. "Here goes!"
He opened many doors, wandered into long rooms with furniture dressed in
brown holland covers that looked white in that strange light, rooms with
chandeliers hanging in big bags from the high ceilings, rooms whose
walls were alive with pictures, rooms whose walls were deadened with
rows on rows of old books, state bedrooms in whose great plumed
four-posters Queen Elizabeth had no doubt slept. (That Queen, by the
way, must have been very little at home, for she seems to have slept in
every old house in England.) But he could not find the kitchen. At last
a door opened on stone steps that went up--there was a narrow stone
passage--steps that went down--a door with a light under it. It was,
somehow, difficult to put out one's hand to that door and open it.
"Nonsense!" Gerald told himself; "don't be an ass! Are you invisible, or
aren't you?"
Then he opened the door, and some one inside said something in a sudden
rough growl.
Gerald stood back, flattened against the wall, as a man sprang to the
doorway and flashed a lantern into the passage.
"All right," said the man, with almost a sob of relief. "It was only the
door swung open, it's that heavy--that's all."
"Blow the door!" said another growling voice; "blessed if I didn't think
it was a fair cop that time."
They closed the door again. Gerald did not mind. In fact, he rather
preferred that it should be so. He didn't like the look of those men.
There was an air of threat about them. In their presence even
invisibility seemed too thin a disguise. And Gerald had seen as much as
he wanted to see. He had seen that he had been right about the gang. By
wonderful luck--beginner's luck, a card-player would have told him--he
had discovered a burglary on the very first night of his detective
career. The men were taking silver out of two great chests, wrapping it
in rags, and packing it in baize sacks. The door of the room was of iron
six inches thick. It was, in fact, the strong-room, and these men had
picked the lock. The tools they had done it with lay on the floor, on a
neat cloth roll, such as wood-carvers keep their chisels in.
"Hurry up!" Gerald heard. "You needn't take all night over it."
The silver rattled slightly. "You're a rattling of them trays like
bloomin' castanets," said the gruffest voice. Gerald turned and went
away, very carefully and very quickly. And it is a most curious thing
that, though he couldn't find the way to the servants' wing when he had
nothing else to think of, yet now, with his mind full, so to speak, of
silver forks and silver cups, and the question of who might be coming
after him down those twisting passages, he went straight as an arrow to
the door that led from the hall to the place he wanted to get to.
As he went the happenings took words in his mind.
"The fortunate detective," he told himself, "having succeeded beyond his
wildest dreams, himself left the spot in search of assistance."
But what assistance? There were, no doubt, men in the house, also the
aunt; but he could not warn them. He was too hopelessly invisible to
carry any weight with strangers. The assistance of Mabel would not be of
much value. The police? Before they could be got--and the getting of
them presented difficulties--the burglars would have cleared away with
their sacks of silver.
[Illustration: THE MEN WERE TAKING SILVER OUT OF TWO GREAT CHESTS.]
Gerald stopped and thought hard; he held his head with both hands to do
it. You know the way--the same as you sometimes do for simple
equations or the dates of the battles of the Civil War.
Then with pencil, note-book, a window-ledge, and all the cleverness he
could find at the moment, he wrote:--
"_You know the room where the silver is. Burglars
are burgling it, the thick door is picked. Send a
man for police. I will follow the burglars if they
get away ere police arrive on the spot._"
He hesitated a moment, and ended--
"_From a Friend--this is not a sell._"
This letter, tied tightly round a stone by means of a shoe-lace,
thundered through the window of the room where Mabel and her aunt, in
the ardour of reunion, were enjoying a supper of unusual charm--stewed
plums, cream, sponge-cakes, custard in cups, and cold bread-and-butter
pudding.
Gerald, in hungry invisibility, looked wistfully at the supper before he
threw the stone. He waited till the shrieks had died away, saw the stone
picked up, the warning letter read.
"Nonsense!" said the aunt, growing calmer. "How wicked! Of course it's a
hoax."
"Oh! do send for the police, like he says," wailed Mabel.
"Like who says?" snapped the aunt.
"Whoever it is," Mabel moaned.
"Send for the police at once," said Gerald, outside, in the manliest
voice he could find.
"You'll only blame yourself if you don't. I can't do any more for you."
"I--I'll set the dogs on you!" cried the aunt.
"Oh, auntie, _don't_!" Mabel was dancing with agitation. "It's true--I
know it's true. Do--do wake Bates!"
"I don't believe a word of it," said the aunt. No more did Bates when,
owing to Mabel's persistent worryings, he was awakened. But when he had
seen the paper, and had to choose whether he'd go to the strong-room and
see that there really wasn't anything to believe or go for the police on
his bicycle, he chose the latter course.
When the police arrived the strong-room door stood ajar, and the silver,
or as much of it as three men could carry, was gone.
Gerald's note-book and pencil came into play again later on that night.
It was five in the morning before he crept into bed, tired out and cold
as a stone.
= = = = =
"Master Gerald!"--it was Eliza's voice in his ears--"it's seven o'clock
and another fine day, and there's been another burglary---- My cats
alive!" she screamed, as she drew up the blind and turned towards the
bed; "look at his bed, all crocked with black, and him not there! Oh,
Jimminy!" It was a scream this time. Kathleen came running from her
room; Jimmy sat up in his bed and rubbed his eyes.
"Whatever is it?" Kathleen cried.
"I dunno when I 'ad such a turn." Eliza sat down heavily on a box as
she spoke. "First thing his bed all empty and black as the chimley back,
and him not in it, and then when I looks again he _is_ in it all the
time. I must be going silly. I thought as much when I heard them
haunting angel voices yesterday morning. But I'll tell Mam'selle of you,
my lad, with your tricks, you may rely on that. Blacking yourself all
over like a dirty nigger and crocking up your clean sheets and
pillow-cases. It's going back of beyond, this is."
"Look here," said Gerald slowly; "I'm going to tell you something."
Eliza simply snorted, and that was rude of her; but then, she had had a
shock and had not got over it.
"Can you keep a secret?" asked Gerald, very earnest through the grey of
his partly rubbed-off blacklead.
"Yes," said Eliza.
"Then keep it and I'll give you two bob."
"But what was you going to tell me?"
"That. About the two bob and the secret. And you keep your mouth shut."
"I didn't ought to take it," said Eliza, holding out her hand eagerly.
"Now you get up, and mind you wash all the corners, Master Gerald."
"Oh, I'm so glad you're safe," said Kathleen, when Eliza had gone.
"You didn't seem to care much last night," said Gerald coldly.
"I can't think how I let you go. I didn't care last night. But when I
woke this morning and remembered!"
"There, that'll do--it'll come off on you," said Gerald through the
reckless hugging of his sister.
"How did you get visible?" Jimmy asked.
"It just happened when she called me--the ring came off."
"Tell us all about everything," said Kathleen.
"Not yet," said Gerald mysteriously.
= = = = =
"Where's the ring?" Jimmy asked after breakfast. "_I_ want to have a try
now."
"I--I forgot it," said Gerald; "I expect it's in the bed somewhere."
But it wasn't. Eliza had made the bed.
"I'll swear there aint no ring there," she said. "I should 'a' seen it
if there had 'a' been."