And then came the day when Mr Flitchbody, a skin trader who operated in London, but had a network of trappers and hunters all over the world, got a telephone call.
‘Hello. Is that you, Flitchbody?’ a throaty voice said.
‘Yes, Flitchbody speaking. Who is that?’
‘It’s Knacksap here. Lionel Knacksap from Wellbridge. Tell me, is that sheikh of yours still after snow leopard pelts?’
‘You bet he is. Three hundred, he wants, and he’ll sell his soul to get them – and I can’t find one.’
‘Well, I can,’ said Mr Knacksap. ‘I can get him the full quantity. If the price is right.’
‘The price is two thousand eight hundred per skin and I take ten per cent. But I don’t believe you for a moment.’
‘Well, you’d better believe me. I’ve found someone who’s been breeding them in secret. I can send you the bodies, but you’ll have to get them skinned down in London and no questions asked. Can you fix that?’
‘I can fix it. But I still think you’re bluffing.’
‘Well, I’m not. I’ll want the money in cash. Three-quarters of a million in notes, can you do that?’
‘If you can get me three hundred snow leopards, there’s nothing I can’t do.’
‘I’ll keep you posted,’ said Mr Knacksap, and put down the phone.
Chapter Seventeen
Mr Knacksap and Heckie were sitting side by side on Heckie’s sofa and being romantic. Mr Knacksap was holding Heckie’s hand – the one that didn’t have the Knuckle of Power – and they were looking into the gas fire and dreaming dreams.
Or rather, Mr Knacksap was dreaming dreams. Heckie’s foot had gone to sleep which sometimes happens when you are being romantic, but she didn’t like to say so.
‘I was thinking, my dear,’ said Mr Knacksap, ‘about when we are married and living in our cottage in the hills. Paradise Cottage.’
‘Yes, dear?’ said Heckie. ‘What were you thinking about it?’
‘I was thinking how beautiful the mountains are up there. Beautiful, but bare. Terribly bare.’
‘Well, yes. Of course there is the heather, isn’t there?’ said Heckie. ‘That’s very pretty when it flowers.’
‘But it only flowers in August. I would like to be able to look up at the hills and see them covered with something really wonderful. With animals that are happy in high places and that are graceful and lovely and a joy to gaze at all the year round. Heather is all right for ladies,’ said Mr Knacksap, ‘but gentlemen like something a little stronger.’
‘What sort of something?’ Heckie wanted to know.
Mr Knacksap let go of her hand and turned to look into her eyes. ‘I am going to tell you a secret, Hecate,’ he said. ‘Something I’ve not told anyone in my life. Always, I’ve had the same dream. That I wake in the morning and I look up – and there, on the mountain-side above me, are the loveliest and most impressive animals in the world.’
Heckie was very interested. ‘Really, dear? And what are they?’
Mr Knacksap blew his nose. Then he said: ‘Snow leopards.’
‘Snow leopards?’ Heckie was very surprised. ‘But, dearest, you don’t find snow leopards in the Lake District. They’re not English things at all. You find them in the Himalayas.’
‘I know, dearest,’ said Mr Knacksap. ‘So far you don’t find them in England. But you could.’ He seized both her hands. ‘You could make my dream come true,’ he said, rolling his eyes. ‘You, my dearest, sweetest witch, could fill the hillside with snow leopards. You could grant me my greatest wish! Every morning I would lift up my eyes and there they would be! They’re the most valuable . . . I mean, the most beautiful creatures in the world. Their pelts . . . I mean, their fur, is the deepest, the palest; their tails are thick and long. They have golden eyes and every day as I ate my porridge and kippers, which you would cook for me, I would see them roaming free and lovely over the hills. If I could do that, I think I would be the happiest man in the world.’
He looked sideways under his sinister eyebrows at Heckie who was looking very worried indeed.
‘But, dearest, a whole hillside of snow leopards . . . I don’t see how I could do that. And I’m afraid they’d eat the sheep.’
‘Oh, but once the snow leopards came, it would become an animal reserve, that’s certain. And think of the tourist trade, and the work it would bring to the unemployed.’
‘I could make one or two leopards for you; I’m sure to meet one or two really wicked people before we get married. But a whole hillside – I don’t see how I could possibly do that. How many do you want?’
‘Three hundred!’ said Mr Knacksap firmly. ‘At least.’
Heckie leapt to her feet. ‘Three hundred! My dearest Li-Li, that’s quite impossible. There probably aren’t three hundred wicked people in Britain, let alone Wellbridge!’
‘Yes, there are, my treasure. There are three hundred wicked people right here in this town. Very wicked people. Murderers and terrorists and embezzlers and thugs. People who shouldn’t be eating their heads off at the government’s expense. People who’d be much happier roaming the hills as free and graceful leopards for me to look at when I ate my kippers.’
‘But where?’ asked Heckie. ‘What do you mean?’
‘In the prison, of course. In Wellbridge prison not a mile from here.’
He leant back, well pleased with himself, and waited for Heckie to tell him how clever he was.
‘You mean you want me to turn all the prisoners into leopards?’ asked Heckie, looking stunned.
‘I do,’ said the furrier smugly.
The witch shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Li-Li, but I can’t do that.’
Mr Knacksap was absolutely furious. How dare she go against his wishes? ‘Can’t! What do you mean, you can’t?’ he said, and turned away so that she wouldn’t see him grinding his teeth.
Heckie sighed. ‘You see, people get sent to prison for all sorts of things. There’s no way I could be sure that all of them are wicked. If someone had bopped his mother-in-law with a meat cleaver, he mightn’t be really bad. It would depend—’
‘Everybody in Wellbridge jail is bad,’ hissed the furrier. ‘It’s a high security prison. That means that anyone who gets out will certainly strike again. And anyway, I’d have thought you’d want to make your Li-Li happy. I’d have thought—’
‘I do want to make you happy,’ said Heckie. ‘I want to terribly. But one has to do what is right and changing people who are not wicked is Not Right.’
It was at this moment that the doorbell rang and Daniel and Joe came in, carefully carrying a large, round box covered in brown paper.
‘We took this from the delivery boy,’ said Joe. ‘It’s addressed to both of you. I expect it’s a wedding present.’
He handed the box to the furrier who took it and simpered. If people were sending silver or valuable glass, he’d have to be sure of getting it to his place so that he could sell it before he bolted for Spain.
‘But where’s the dragworm?’ asked Heckie, looking at Daniel. ‘I thought you were taking him out.’
‘I was,’ said Daniel. ‘But I met Sumi and she wanted to take him for a bit.’
Heckie nodded and smiled at Mr Knacksap who was eagerly undoing the parcel. Perhaps it was a soup tureen, thought the furrier – that could fetch a couple of hundred. Or an antique clock . . . But as he tore off the wrappings, his look of greed turned to one of puzzlement. For there seemed to be holes in the cardboard box and surely neither soup tureens nor clocks needed to breathe?
‘Ugh! It’s a monster! A horrible diseased THING full of boils. Get rid of it! Get it out! Shoo!’
The boys stood very still and looked at Heckie. Now at last she would see! It had been very hard to bring Heckie’s familiar into the room, knowing what would happen to him, but the children would have done anything to save the witch.
‘It’s the dragworm, Heckie,’ said Daniel quietly.
Too late, Mr Knacksap
realized his mistake. He began to cough and splutter and totter round the room. ‘Oh, help! My asthma! I’m choking! I can’t breathe!’
But for once, Heckie didn’t rush to the furrier’s side. She had gathered up the dragworm, so shocked by what she saw that at first she couldn’t speak.
Her familiar had been in a bad way when he was close to Mrs Winneypeg, but it was nothing to the state he was in now. The hair on his topknot wasn’t just white, it was as brittle as that of a ninety-year-old. Some of his scales had actually flaked off, his eyes were filmed over. As for his other end – the most hardened sick nurse would have shed tears when she saw the dragworm’s tail.
‘Oh, you poor, poor love; you poor thing!’ cried Heckie – and as she stroked his head, there came from his throat that ghostly, faint, heartbreaking: ‘Quack!’
‘I don’t understand it,’ said Heckie. ‘What has happened? What made him come on like that?’
It was Joe who spoke. ‘He did. Mr Knacksap did. That’s why we brought the dragworm, so that you could see what kind of a person—’
‘Stop it! That’s enough!’ Heckie’s pop eyes snapped with temper. ‘How dare you speak like that about the man I’m going to marry?’
But she looked at Mr Knacksap in a very puzzled way.
The furrier, though, had recovered himself. Still pretending to cough and wheeze, he drew himself up to his full height and pointed at the boys.
‘You lying, evil children! How dare you tell poor Heckie such untruths? As though I didn’t see you. I saw you quite distinctly taking this poor, sensitive creature right up to the prison gate and along the prison walls. Quite distinctly, I saw you, and I thought then how foolish it was to risk him like that.’
‘We didn’t!’ said Daniel and Joe together. ‘Honestly we didn’t! We wouldn’t do a silly thing like that.’
‘In the tartan shopping basket,’ Mr Knacksap went on. ‘I saw you not half an hour ago.’ He turned to Heckie. ‘Now will you believe me? Now will you believe me when I tell you how evil those prisoners are?’
Heckie looked desperately from the furrier to the boys and back again. She was a sensible witch, but no one can be in love and stay sensible for long.
‘Oh, Daniel . . . Joe . . . that was foolish of you. Run along now and I’ll put him in the bath. He’ll soon be better.’
So the children left, wretched and defeated, having made the dragworm ill for nothing. And that night, Heckie phoned the furrier.
‘All right, Lionel,’ she said wearily. ‘I’ll do what you ask. You shall have your leopards.’
To the stone witch, Mr Knacksap didn’t say anything about snow leopards. What he spoke to Dora about was his Cousin Alfred.
‘What’s happened to my poor dear cousin is the one thing that is spoiling my happiness,’ he said, dabbing his eyes with his handkerchief.
‘What has happened to him?’ asked Dora Mayberry.
‘He is in prison,’ said Mr Knacksap, and sighed. ‘Here in Wellbridge. That sweet, sensitive soul eating his heart out among all those ruffians.’
‘Oh, Lewis, that’s so sad. How did it happen?’
‘It wasn’t Alfred’s fault, I promise you. He was led astray by bad people. If only you could have seen him as a little boy. We were such friends. He used to build sandcastles for me, and whenever his mummy bought him a lollipop, he would let me have a lick. Look at his photograph – isn’t that an innocent face?’
Dora took the picture and said, yes it was, and fancy him having ringlets! (The picture was actually of a child actor who had played Little Lord Fauntleroy in a film.)
‘What is he in prison for?’ she asked.
‘He stole the purse out of an old lady’s handbag. The wicked people he fell in with made him do it.’ He dabbed at his eyes again and sniffed. ‘If only I could get him out of prison, I would send him to a wonderful mind doctor that I know of. Then he’d soon be well again and never do anything bad any more.’
‘But how could you, Lewis? How could you get him out?’
This time, Mr Knacksap did go down on his knees. After all, soon he would be able to buy dozens of pairs of new trousers, hundreds of them . . .
‘With you to help me, dearest Dora, I could do it. If you could turn the prison guards to stone, just for one night, I could get him out.’
Dora thought for a while and then she said that if it was only his Cousin Alfred he was going to get out, and if she could turn the guards back into people the next day, she didn’t mind. ‘I couldn’t leave them stone, of course, because they aren’t wicked. Not so far as I know. But for a night it shouldn’t hurt.’
‘Oh, my dearest, dearest Dora,’ said Mr Knacksap, ‘you’ve made me so happy! I just couldn’t face sitting over my porridge and kippers in Paradise Cottage, knowing that poor dear Alfred was lying in a cold stone cell.’
Then he went back to town and put up a big FOR SALE notice outside his shop. Everything was ready – and there was nothing between him and three-quarters of a million pounds.
Chapter Eighteen
Mr Knacksap’s plan was simple. He would take Dora to the prison as soon as it was dark and when she’d turned the guards to stone, he’d send her packing. Then two of his accomplices, Nat and Billy, would drive the vans into the prison – they were huge ones, hired from a circus, and would take the leopards comfortably enough. Nat knew about electronics too; there’d be no trouble with the alarm system with him around.
When they’d taken over the prison, he’d go and fetch Heckie and let her in by a side door so that she wouldn’t see the stone guards, and bring the prisoners to her one by one – and when she’d changed them into leopards, she’d be sent packing too.
And then the following morning both witches would meet on the station platform to catch the 10.55 to the Lake District! It was this part of the plan that always made Mr Knacksap titter out loud when he thought of it. For he had told both witches to wait for him at the Windermere Hotel. He had told both of them that he would marry them in a little grey church by the edge of the water. Both of them thought they were going to live happily ever after with him in Paradise Cottage!
If only he could have been there to see them scratch each other’s eyes out! But by that time the leopards would be dead and skinned, and he’d be on the way to Spain!
As for how to kill three hundred leopards without marking their pelts, Mr Knacksap had got that sorted out too. About five miles to the east of Wellbridge, there was a derelict stately home called Hankley Hall. No one went there – it was said to be haunted – but some of the rooms were still in good repair. The ballroom, in particular, had windows that fitted well and a wooden gallery that ran round the top. The man he’d hired to do the actual killing said it was a doddle. You just lobbed a canister down from the gallery and waited.
When you wanted to kill someone and leave no mark, Sid had said, there was nothing like plain, old-fashioned gas.
Farewell parties are often sad, and Heckie’s was sadder than most.
She gave it on her last day before leaving Wellbridge, and she gave it in the afternoon because in the evening she had to go and change the prisoners. Heckie had told no one of Mr Knacksap’s plan – not even her helpers – but they could see that she looked tired and strained, and not really like a bride.
The furrier couldn’t be at the party, but almost all her friends were there and had brought presents. Sumi’s parents had sent a huge tin of biscuits with a picture of Buckingham Palace on the lid, Joe had made some book-ends, and the cheese wizard brought a round Dutch cheese.
‘It can’t do much,’ he explained. ‘Just a few centimetres. But if you’re going to eat it, it won’t matter.’
Madame Rosalia gave her a make-up bag full of useful things: pimples, blotches, pockmarks and a tuft of hair for joining her eyebrows together; and the garden witch brought a cauliflower which got stuck in the door and had to be cut free with a hatchet.
But the best present – really an amazing present – ca
me from Boris Chomsky, and it was nothing less than a hot air balloon which really did fly on the hot air talked by politicians!
Boris had been very upset by what happened at the Tritlington Poultry Unit and he began to work much harder at his invention. He got out all his books of spells and studied late into the night. Then he went up to the Houses of Parliament with his tape recorder hidden under his greatcoat and started to record the speeches that the members made. He took down the waffle that the Minister for Health talked about it being people’s own fault if they got ill, and the piffle that the Minister for Employment talked about there really being lots of lovely jobs for everyone if only they weren’t too lazy to look, and the garbage that the MPs shouted at each other during Question Time.
Then he went back to his garage and boiled things in crucibles and burnt them in thuribles – and at last the day came when he put a tape of the Chancellor’s speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet into one of the fuel converters, and the balloon rose up so quickly that it hit the roof.
So now they all trooped across the road and round the corner to Boris’s garage and admired Heckie’s balloon (which was grey because it rains a lot in the Lake District) and the other balloons which he had converted so that they could be used by any wizard or witch who wanted them.
But when Heckie had thanked him again and again, and taken her guests back to the party, her face grew very sad and her eyes went more and more often to the door to look for the one person who hadn’t come.
‘I’m sure he’ll be along soon,’ said Sumi, who always seemed to know what was troubling people. ‘I expect the professors have made him do some extra piano practice.’
But the clock struck five, and then six, and Heckie had to face the fact that the boy she loved as though he was her son had not even troubled to say goodbye.