They went down over the worn carpet, beneath rows of old maps hanging on the walls.
The little corridor, like all the house, had a smell of furniture polish and age and the sea; and yet nothing like these things really but just the smell of strangeness.
“Hey,” said Simon as Barney reached for the door. “I’m the captain, I go first. There might be cannibals.”
“Cannibals!” said Barney with scorn, but he let Simon open the door.
It was an odd little room, very small and bare, with one round leaded window looking out inland across the grey slate roofs and fields. There was a bed, with a red-and-white gingham coverlet, and a wooden chair, a wardrobe, and a wash-stand with an outsize willow-pattern bowl and ewer. And that was all.
“Well, that’s not very interesting,” said Jane, disappointed. She looked about, feeling something was missing. “Look, there isn’t even a carpet, just a bare floor.”
Barney pattered across to the window. “What’s this?” He picked something up from the window-sill, long and dark with the glint of brass. “It’s a sort of tube.”
Simon took it from him and turned it about curiously. “It’s a telescope in a case.” He unscrewed the case so that it came apart in two halves. “No it’s not, what a swizz, it’s just the case with nothing inside.”
“Now I know what this room reminds me of,” Jane said suddenly. “It’s like a cabin in a ship. That window looks just like a porthole. I think it must be the captain’s bedroom.”
“We ought to take the telescope with us in case we lose our way,” said Simon. Holding it made him feel pleasantly important.
“Don’t be silly, it’s just an empty case,” Jane said. “Anyway, it’s not ours, put it back.”
Simon scowled at her.
“I mean,” Jane said hastily, “we’re in the jungle, not at sea, so there are landmarks.”
“Oh all right.” Simon put the case down reluctantly.
They emerged from the little dark corridor, its door, as they closed it behind them, vanishing once more into the shadows so that they could hardly see where it had been.
“Not much else here. That one’s Great-Uncle Merry’s bedroom, there’s the bathroom this side of it and Mother’s studio room the other.”
“What an odd way this house is built,” Simon said, as they turned into another narrow corridor towards the stairs leading up to the next floor. “All little bits joined together by funny little passages. As if each bit were meant to be kept secret from the next.”
Barney looked round him in the dim light, tapping at the half-panelled walls. “It’s all very solid. There ought to be secret panels and things, secret entrances into native treasure-caves.”
“Well, we haven’t finished yet.” Simon led the way up the stairs to the familiar top landing, where their bedrooms were. “Isn’t it getting dark? I suppose it’s the low clouds.”
Barney squatted on the top stair. “We ought to have torches, burning brands to light the path and keep the wild animals off. Only we couldn’t because there are hostile natives all round, and they’d see.”
Simon took over. Somehow imagination worked easily in the friendly silence of the Grey House. “Actually they’re already after us, creeping along our tracks up the hill. We’ll be able to hear their feet rustling soon.”
“We ought to hide.”
“Make camp somewhere that they can’t get at.”
“In one of the bedrooms, they’re all caves.”
“I can hear them breathing,” Barney said, gazing down the dark stairs into the shadow. He was half beginning to believe it.
“The obvious caves wouldn’t do,” Simon said, remembering he was in command. “They’d look there first of all.” He crossed the landing and began thoughtfully opening and shutting doors. “Mother’s and Father’s room—no good, very ordinary cave. Jane’s—just the same. Bathroom, our room, no escape route anywhere. We shall all be turned into sacrifices and eaten.”
“Boiled,” said Barney sepulchrally. “In a great big pot.”
“Perhaps there’s another door, I mean cave, that we haven’t noticed. Like the one downstairs.” Jane peered round the darkest end of the landing, beside her brothers’ door. But the passage came to a dead end, the wall running unbroken round all three sides. “There ought to be one. After all the house goes straight up, doesn’t it, and there’s a door directly underneath there”—she pointed at the blank wall—“and a room behind it. So there ought to be a room the same size behind this wall.”
Simon became interested. “You’re quite right. But there isn’t any door.”
“Perhaps there’s a secret panel,” Barney said hopefully.
“You read too many books. Have you ever seen a real secret panel in a real house? Anyway there isn’t any panelling on this wall, just wallpaper.”
“Your room’s on the other side,” Jane said. “Is there a door in there?”
Simon shook his head.
Barney opened the door into their bedroom and went in, kicking his slippers under the bed as he went past. Then he stopped suddenly.
“Hey, come in here.”
“What’s the matter?”
“That bit between our beds, where the wall makes a sort of alcove for the wardrobe. What’s on the other side?”
“Well, the landing, of course.”
“It can’t be. There’s too much wall in here. You stand in the doorway and look on both sides—the landing stops before it gets that far.”
“I’ll bang on the wall where it does stop, and you listen in here,” said Jane. She went outside, pulling the door shut, and they heard a faint tapping on the wall just over the head of Barney’s bed.
“There you are!” Barney said, hopping with excitement. “The landing only reaches to there, but the wall in here goes on for yards, right over your bed to the window. So there must be a room on the other side.”
Jane came back into the bedroom. “The wall doesn’t look nearly as long out there as it does in here.”
“It isn’t. And I think that means,” Simon said slowly, “that there must be a door behind the wardrobe.”
“Well that finishes it, then,” Jane said, disappointed. “That wardrobe’s enormous, we shall never be able to move it.”
“I don’t see why not.” Simon looked thoughtfully at the wardrobe. “We shall have to pull it from down low, so the top doesn’t overbalance. If we all pull at one end perhaps it’ll swing round.”
“Come on then,” Jane said. “You and I pull, and Barney hold the top and shout if he feels it overbalancing.”
They both bent and heaved at the nearest leg of the wardrobe. Nothing happened.
“I think the stupid thing’s nailed to the floor,” said Jane in disgust.
“No it’s not. Come on, once more. One, two, three—heave!”
The great wooden tower squeaked unwillingly a few inches across the floor.
“Go on, go on, it’s coming!” Barney could hardly stand still.
Simon and Jane tugged and puffed and blew, their sneakers slithering on the linoleum; and gradually the wardrobe moved out at an angle from the wall. Barney, peering into the gloom behind, suddenly shrieked.
“There it is! There is a door! Ouf—” He staggered backwards, gasped, and sneezed. “It’s all covered in dust and cobwebs, it can’t have been opened for years.”
“Well go on, try it,” panted Simon, pink with breathlessness and success.
“I hope it doesn’t open towards us,” Jane said, sitting weakly on the floor. “I can’t pull this thing another inch.”
“It doesn’t,” Barney said, muffled from behind the wardrobe. They heard the door creak protestingly open. Then he reappeared, with a large dark smudge down one cheek. “There isn’t a room. It’s a staircase. More like a ladder really. It goes up to a sort of hatchway and there’s light up there.” He looked at Simon with a crooked grin. “You can go first, Boss.”
One by one they slipped behind th
e wardrobe and through the little hidden door. Inside, it was at first very dark, and Simon, blinking, saw before him a wide-stepped ladder, steeply slanting, rising towards a dimly-lit square beyond which he could see nothing. The steps were thick with dust, and for a moment he felt nervous about disturbing the stillness.
Then very faintly, he heard above his head the low familiar murmur of the sea outside. At once the comfortable noise made him more cheerful, and he even remembered what they were supposed to be. “Last one up shut the door,” he called down over his shoulder. “Keep the natives at bay.” And he began to climb the ladder.
• Chapter Three •
As Simon’s head emerged through the hatch at the top he caught his breath just as Barney had: “Aah—aah—” and sneezed enormously. Clouds of dust rose, and the ladder shook.
“Hey,” said Barney protestingly from below, drawing his face back from his brother’s twitching heels.
Simon opened his watering eyes and blinked. Before him and all round was one vast attic, the length and breadth of the whole house, with two grubby windows in its sloping roof. It was piled higgledy-piggledy with the most fantastic collection of objects he had ever seen.
Boxes, chests and trunks lay everywhere, with mounds of dirty grey canvas and rough-coiled ropes between them; stacks of newspapers and magazines, yellow-brown with age; a brass bedstead and a grandfather clock without a face. As he stared, he saw smaller things: a broken fishing-rod, a straw hat perched on the corner of an oil-painting darkened by age into one great black blur; an empty mousetrap, a ship in a bottle, a glass-fronted case full of chunks of rock, a pair of old thigh-boots flopped over sideways as if they were tired, a cluster of battered pewter mugs.
“Gosh!” said Simon.
Muffled noises of protest came from below, and he hauled himself out through the opening and rolled sideways out of their way on the floor. Barney and Jane came through after him.
“Simon!” said Jane, gazing at him in horror. “You’re filthy!”
“Well, isn’t that just like a girl. All this round you, and you only see a bit of dust. It’ll brush off.” He patted ineffectually at his piebald shirt. “But isn’t it marvellous? Look!”
Barney, cooing with delight, was picking his way across the littered floor. “There’s an old ship’s wheel. . . and a rocking-chair . . . and a saddle. I wonder if the captain ever had a horse?”
Jane had been trying to look insulted, but failed. “This is something like exploring. We might find anything up here.”
“It’s a treasure-cave. This is what the natives were after. Hear them howling with frustrated rage down there.”
“Dancing round in a circle, with the witch-doctor cursing us all.”
“Well, he can curse away,” Barney said cheerfully. “We’ve got enough provisions for ages. I’m hungry.”
“Oh not yet, you can’t be. It’s only four o’clock.”
“Well, that’s tea-time. Anyway, when you’re on the run you eat little and often, because you daren’t ever stop for long. If we were Eskimos we’d be chewing an old shoelace. My book says—”
“Never mind your book,” Simon said. He fished inside the rucksack. “Here, have an apple and keep quiet. I want to look at everything properly, before we have our picnic, and if I can wait so can you.”
“I don’t see why,” Barney said, but he bit into his apple cheerfully and wandered across the floor, disappearing between the high brass skeleton of the old bed and an empty cupboard.
For half an hour they poked about in a happy dusty dream, through the junk and broken furniture and ornaments. It was like reading the story of somebody’s life, Jane thought, as she gazed at the tiny matchstick masts of the ship sailing motionless for ever in the green glass bottle. All these things had been used once, had been part of every day in the house below. Someone had slept on the bed, anxiously watched the minutes on the clock, pounced joyfully on each magazine as it arrived. But all those people were long dead, or gone away, and now the oddments of their lives were piled up here, forgotten. She found herself feeling rather sad.
“I’m ravenous,” Barney said plaintively.
“I’m thirsty. It’s all that dust. Come on, let’s unload Mrs Palk’s tea.”
“This attic’s rather a swizz,” Simon said, squatting on a crackling edge of canvas and undoing the rucksack. “All the really interesting boxes are locked. Look at that one, for instance.” He nodded towards a black metal chest with two rusting padlocks on its lid. “I bet it’s full of the family jewels.”
“Well,” Jane said regretfully, “we aren’t supposed to touch anything locked, are we?”
“There’s a lot not locked,” Simon said, handing her the bottle of lemonade. “Here. You’ll have to swig from the bottle, we forgot to bring any cups. Don’t worry, we won’t pinch anything. Though I shouldn’t think anyone’s been up here for years.”
“Food,” Barney said.
“The scones are in that bag there. Help yourself. Four each, I’ve counted.”
Barney reached out an extremely dirty hand.
“Barney!” Jane squeaked. “Wipe your hand. You’ll eat all sorts of germs and get typhoid or—or rabies or something. Here, have my handkerchief.”
“Rabies is mad dogs,” Barney said, looking with interest at the black finger-prints on his scone. “Anyway, Father says people make too much fuss about germs. Oh all right, Jane, stop waving that silly thing at me, I’ve got a proper handkerchief of my own. I don’t know how girls ever blow their noses.”
Scowling, he thrust his free hand into his pocket, and then his expression changed to disgust. “Ugh,” he said, and brought out a brown, squashed apple core. “I’d forgotten that. All cold and horrible.” He flung the core away from him into the far corner of the attic. It bounced, slithered, and rolled into the shadows.
Simon grinned. “Now you’ll bring the rats out. All attics have rats. We shall hear greedy little squeakings and see twin green points of fire and there’ll be rats all over the floor. First they’ll eat the apple core, and then they’ll come after us.”
Jane turned pale. “Oh no. There wouldn’t be rats up here, would there?”
“If there were they’d have eaten all the newspaper,” Barney said hopefully. “Wouldn’t they?”
“I expect they don’t like ink. All old houses have rats. We’ve got them at school, you can hear them scuttling about in the roof sometimes. Come to think of it their eyes are red, not green.” Simon’s voice began to lose its brightness. He was beginning to feel slightly unhappy about the rats himself now. “I think maybe you’d better pick that apple core up, you know, just in case.”
Barney gave an exaggerated sigh and got to his feet, swallowing his scone in two gigantic bites. “Where did it go, then? Over there somewhere. I wonder why they didn’t put anything in this comer.”
He crawled about on his hands and knees, aimlessly. “Come and help, I can’t find it.” Then he noticed a triangular gap in the sloping wall of the attic where its planks joined the floor. He peered through, and saw daylight gleaming dimly through the tiles. Just inside the gap the floorboards ended and he could feel wide-spaced beams.
“I think it must have gone through this hole,” he called. “I’m going to look.”
Jane dived across the floor towards him. “Oh do be careful, there might be a rat.”
“Couldn’t be,” Barney said, half-way through the gap. “There’s light coming through the tiles and I can see, more or less. Can’t see any core, though. I wonder if it fell between the floorboards and the underneath part. Ow!”
His rear half jerked suddenly.
“What is it? Oh do come out!” Jane tugged at his shorts.
“I touched something. But it can’t be a rat, it didn’t move. Where’s it gone . . . here it is. Feels like cardboard. Blah—here’s that disgusting core next to it as well.”
His voice grew suddenly louder as he backed out of the hole, flushed and blinking. “Well, t
here it is,” he said, triumphantly, flourishing the apple core. “Now the rats’ll have to come and get it. I still don’t believe there are any.”
“What’s that other thing you’ve got?” Simon looked curiously at a tattered, scroll-like object in Barney’s other hand.
“Piece of wallpaper, I think. I bet you’ve eaten all the scones, you pigs.” Barney bounded back across the floor, making the floorboards rattle. He sat down, pulled out his handkerchief, waved it ostentatiously at Jane, wiped his hands, and began to munch another scone. As they ate, he reached over and idly unrolled the scroll he had found, holding one end down on the floor with his toe and pushing the other back with a piece of wood until it lay stretched open before them.
And then, as they saw what it was, they all suddenly forgot their eating and stared.
The paper Barney had unrolled was not paper at all, but a kind of thick brownish parchment, springy as steel, with long raised cracks crossing it where it had been rolled. Inside it, another sheet was stuck down: darker, looking much older, ragged at the edges, and covered with small writing in strange squashed-looking dark brown letters.
Below the writing it dwindled, as if it had been singed by some great heat long ago, into half-detached pieces carefully laid back together and stuck to the outer sheet. But there was enough of it left for them to see at the bottom a rough drawing that looked like the uncertain outline of a map.
For a moment they were all very quiet. Barney said nothing, but he could feel a strange excitement bubbling up inside him. He leant forward in silence and carefully stretched the manuscript flat, pushing the piece of wood aside.
“Here,” Simon said, “I’ll get something to weight the edges down.”
They put an old paper-weight, a pewter mug and two carefully dusted chunks of wood on the corners, and sat back on their heels to look.
“It’s terribly old,” Jane said. “Centuries, thousands of years.”