“No flag,” said Dick. “But there wasn’t the other day either.”
“What shall we do if he isn’t there?”
“He may have gone to look for us because of our not bringing the things yesterday.”
“He may have run right into the policeman. Look out, Dick, that steamer’s going to run us down.”
The steamer, a big one, her decks crowded with passengers, going on her way from Rio to the foot of the lake, gave them, for the moment, plenty to think about. Dick judged her speed, decided that she would pass easily ahead of them, and held on his course. That was quite right, but he forgot the big wash that was following astern of her. The steamer crossed their bows, the passengers cheerfully waving at the little boat, and the next moment Scarab was being thrown all ways at once. Dick and Dorothea hung on as well as they could, helplessly watching the suitcase fall over and slide from side to side.
“Well, if they aren’t broken now …” said Dick as at last their tossing came to an end.
The people on the steamer were still waving handkerchiefs.
“They think we’re doing it for fun,” said Dorothea bitterly.
“Do look in the suitcase,” said Dick, steadying Scarab on her course once more.
It was a miracle. Things had been shaken up a good deal, but nothing was broken and no stoppers had come out. By the time Dorothea had everything packed as it had been, and the suitcase once more leaning against the centreboard, they were already close to the houseboat.
With the wind blowing straight into the bay, the houseboat, lying to her mooring buoy, was heading straight out.
“He isn’t here again,” said Dick, seeing no rowing-boat against the fenders at her side.
“We’ll get rid of the things just the same,” said Dorothea.
Just then, as the houseboat swung a little, they saw the rowing-boat lying astern of her. “Good. Good,” said Dick. “It’s all right. Dot, could you be getting the halliard loose? I’m not going to try sailing her alongside … That’s right … Quick … Don’t let go of it altogether. Let it down hand over hand … Not yet … Wait till the sail flaps … I’ll tell you when …”
He put the tiller down hard. Scarab shot round into the wind. The sail flapped. He hauled in the main sheet. “Now … Dot … Now. Lower … Lower … Lower away, I mean.”
Down came the sail.
“That’s all right,” said Dick, watching Dorothea struggle from under it. “It doesn’t matter, just a bit of it going in the water. Anyhow, it’s down.” He bundled it together with the spars, and put the rowlocks ready. Out of breath but joyful, he pulled the oars free, laid them in the rowlocks and began to row. “Oh bother,” he said. “I forgot the centreboard.” He pulled it up, rowed with one oar, backwatered with the other, as he had seen Tom Dudgeon do when turning Titmouse in a hurry, and warily brought Scarab towards the houseboat.
“We mustn’t bump,” he said aloud. “Dot, you be ready to hold her off.”
“Hullo!”
The tall, lean Timothy, stooping to save his head, had come out of the cabin door.
“Oh, good,” said Dorothea, scrambling for Scarab’s painter.
“I thought I heard a bit of splashing,” said Timothy, and Dick, who had been rather ashamed of that splashing, was suddenly glad that he had made it. With Timothy on the deck of the houseboat, to use a boathook or take a painter, it was going to be much easier coming alongside.
“Here you are, Dorothea,” said Timothy. “I’ll catch that rope if you’ll throw it.”
She threw the painter, but Timothy was no sailor like Captain Flint, and Dorothea had had no practice in coiling a rope and throwing it so that the weight of the coil carries it out. The rope reached the houseboat, but Timothy missed it, and they watched the end slip back into the water.
“I’ll bring her a bit nearer,” said Dick, while Dorothea pulled the painter in again, glad that Nancy and Peggy were not there to see.
At the second try Timothy caught the painter, and, like all landsmen, no sooner had the rope in his hands than he began to pull.
“PLEASE don’t pull,” shouted Dick. “Fend off, Dot. Hold her off, or we’ll bump after all.”
“Sorry,” said Timothy. “You sailors’ll have to tell me what to do.”
Between them they managed to get Scarab lying comfortably against the fenders by the little ladder that hung on the side of the houseboat.
“Has Nancy sent the things I asked for?” said Timothy.
“They’re all in my suitcase,” said Dick. “I ticked them off on your list.”
Timothy reached down and Dick passed the suitcase carefully up. Timothy opened it at once.
“Nothing broken,” he said. “And you’ve got the scales. And the book. Thank you very much. I’ve been wanting those things badly. Come on board, won’t you?”
“You haven’t begun the assays?” asked Dick.
“Couldn’t without these things,” said Timothy. “And you’re going to help, aren’t you?”
They climbed aboard, and Timothy, suitcase in hand, led the way down into the cabin. He began to unpack at once and put the things on the table as he took them out. His visitors could hardly believe that this was the tidy cabin they had seen the year before. The mess was dreadful, worse in some ways than when the Arctic explorers had been busy there making fur hats out of sheepskins. A big sheet of the ordnance survey was pinned between two of the windows. The long seats on either side of the cabin were covered with papers. On one end of the table were the remains of what looked as if it had been breakfast and the supper and dinner of the day before, and the whole of the other end was covered with plates and saucers, each with its little pile of copper ore, and each with a bit of paper with a number on it.
“Bit of a chemist’s shop,” said Timothy, happening to see Dorothea’s face as he found room among everything else for the last of the contents of the suitcase. “But, with not being able to work in Jim’s study … By the way, did Nancy have any difficulty with the old lady about borrowing the things?”
“I got the things,” said Dick.
“And the old lady didn’t mind?”
“She didn’t know,” said Dick.
“But didn’t she see you when you went in to get them?”
“No,” said Dick, catching a warning look from Dorothea.
“We’ll be able to get ahead now,” said Timothy, who had taken the list that the pigeon had carried and was adding a tick in ink to each of Dick’s pencilled ones. “You’ve brought the whole lot.”
“Are you going to begin?” asked Dick.
Timothy glanced at the clock. “May as well start right away. We’ll have to dig out something to eat, though.”
“I can do that,” said Dorothea.
“Better than I can,” said Timothy. “You’ll find a lot of stuff through that door. Give us anything you like.” He took up the book on quantitative analysis and began turning the pages, looking for a formula he wanted.
Dorothea went through to the fore cabin, to find the galley in a state that would have been very shocking to Susan. She looked back, saw that Timothy was reading, caught Dick’s eye and beckoned. Dick followed her through the door.
“He doesn’t know it was a burglary,” she said. “We’d better say nothing about it.”
“Anyhow,” said Dick, “it isn’t a burglary any longer. He’s got the things, and Captain Flint said he could use them.”
“I’m glad we haven’t got them any longer,” said Dorothea. “But I do wish we knew what’s happening at Beckfoot. Buttered eggs, I think,” she went on. “He’s got lots of eggs and butter and I know I can do that. But the frying pan’s in an awful mess, and there isn’t a single clean plate. You go back and stay with him while I get a bit tidy. Susan wouldn’t begin to cook with everything like this.”
Dick went back into the main cabin, but found Timothy hard at work, copying things out of the book. He watched for a time and then came back to Dorothea. “He is
n’t ready for me yet,” he said.
“You take that towel,” said Dorothea. “I’ve got the Primus going, and the water’s fairly warm. I’ll wash and you wipe.”
It was a full hour before Timothy thought of them again. Suddenly they heard the book slam, and a moment later he was stooping at the door into the fore cabin. “I say,” he said. “It’s two o’clock. You people must be starving.” Then he saw that Dick was rubbing the last of a pile of clean plates, and that Dorothea was anxiously breaking eggs into a basin, and at the same time watching a big lump of butter dissolving in a frying pan on the stove. “That’s mighty good of you,” he said. “Cleaning up like that. I’m afraid I’ve been rather letting things slide.”
“It’s going to be buttered eggs,” said Dorothea. “But there may be just a few bits of eggshell.”
“No matter,” said Timothy. “Somebody else will have cooked it. Not me, for a change. And as soon as we’ve had it, Dick and I can get to work.”
Presently, sitting round the end of the table where they had made room for their plates among the samples and bottles and chemical apparatus, they were eating buttered eggs, drinking ginger-beer from the store that had been left by Captain Flint, and hearing of all that had been going on at the new copper mine that had been the result of their last summer’s gold prospecting with the Swallows and Amazons. Everything had gone very well, and now there were all these samples that Timothy had meant to analyse in Captain Flint’s study, before his partner came back. They had nearly finished their meal when there came another awkward moment.
“Bit of a nuisance that old lady turning up,” Timothy said. “But it don’t matter now that she’s let us have the things I wanted. She can’t be quite as bad as Nancy seemed to think her.”
Dick and Dorothea looked at each other, remembering last night and seeing once more the dreadful picture of the policeman searching for their tracks with the Great Aunt telling him where to look.
“It wasn’t really quite like that,” began Dorothea. “You see …”
She was interrupted by a cheerful shout at the very door of the cabin.
“Houseboat ahoy!”
“Who said we’d come bumping into paint? You never even heard us come aboard.”
Nancy and Peggy, in their white frocks, came charging in.
“She’s taken an aspirin and gone to bed,” said Nancy. “Thank goodness. Did you get everything last night? Is it here? Well done. At our end, we’ve got the police fairly flummoxed.”
CHAPTER XXI
AS OTHERS SEE US
“POLICE?” said Timothy, staring at his new visitors. “What do you mean?”
Nancy laughed. “It looked pretty awful at one time, but it’s all right now. I say, you did manage to get everything? We looked all round but we couldn’t see that anything had been taken.”
“He got everything,” said Dorothea.
“Good. Though you were a bit of a galoot to come back and open the window after she’d shut it. Whatever did you do it for? I told you that window makes a row.”
“I couldn’t help it,” said Dick. “I tried to do it quietly, but it stuck and then went up with a jerk.”
“But why on earth didn’t you leave it alone?”
“There was no other way out,” said Dick.
“Great snakes and crocodiles,” exclaimed Nancy, while Timothy looked from one to the other, not understanding at all what they were talking about. “Jibbooms and bobstays! You don’t mean to say you were inside, watching her snooping round?”
“I couldn’t see her,” said Dick, “but I knew she was there.”
“But why didn’t she see you?” said Nancy. “She had a lamp.”
“I know.”
“But there’s nowhere to hide except behind the curtains and she must have looked there because she shut the window.”
“I was in Timothy’s … I mean the armadillo’s … You know … the boot cupboard.”
Nancy’s mouth fell open. “Giminy!” she gasped. “You were in there … You and she were in the study together!”
“When I heard her shut the window I thought she’d got him,” said Dorothea.
“Giminy!” said Nancy again. She picked up the flat wooden box of the chemical scales. “She was right after all. Look here. Was this one of the things you took? Was it on the table when she was in there shutting the window?”
“I think so,” said Dick. “Yes. I found it just before I heard her coming downstairs. I’d put it on the table while I was hunting for the book. We’d got everything else safely away.”
“Golly, how lucky we didn’t know about it. It was just that box that settled Sammy. He asked her what was in it, and she didn’t know, and he asked us and of course we didn’t know either.”
“Sammy is the policeman,” explained Peggy.
“But what on earth is all this?” asked Timothy.
“Burglary,” said Nancy, in a voice at the same time grim and gleeful. “It was the only way. You see, Dick was the only one who knew all the things you wanted by sight, so he had to come in and get them. And we couldn’t bring him in broad daylight without telling the G.A. about him, and of course we couldn’t do that. We’d have had to tell her about you, too. So it had to be burglary. I left the window open for the burglar to get in and in he got and then something happened. …”
“We were listening in terror,” said Peggy.
“No terror about it,” said Nancy. “At least, not until there was a bit of noise.”
“I kicked Timothy’s … the boot cupboard, by mistake,” said Dick.
“That was it, was it?” said Nancy. “Well, the next thing we knew was the G.A. out on the landing and looking into our bedroom. We were asleep of course. Then we heard her go downstairs, and we stood by, ready to dash down and explain if the worst came to the worst. It would have been pretty awful if we’d had to do that. All our plans about being angels and keeping her happy would have gone bust.”
“Angels!” muttered Timothy to himself.
“Martyrs, really,” said Dorothea, who had heard him. “You don’t know what a dreadful time they’ve been having.”
“Then we heard her slam the window down. There was no talking, so we thought the burglar had got away. All we bothered about was whether he’d had time to get all the things. We heard her lock the door and come upstairs again. She came straight to our room, and we were wide awake this time, because of the noise, of course. She said somebody, meaning one of us, had carelessly left a window open. Then she stalked off to the spare room. And then … Kerwallop, but that window did go up with a bang. We couldn’t think of what was happening, but after a row like that there was no point in pretending not to hear it, so I yanked Peggy out. There was a light under the spare-room door, so I thought we’d better charge in and we did, and there was the G.A. leaning out of the window and saying she was going to shoot. She said there was a man in the garden. Of course she hadn’t got a gun. I said so pretty loud in case Dick was down there and thought she had. Jolly sporting of her, anyhow, even to pretend. I never would have thought she had it in her.”
“She’s your aunt, you know,” said Timothy with a grin. “But, look here, Nancy, I’d never have asked for those things if I’d thought for a moment it would mean anything like this.”
“Rot,” said Nancy. “You had to have them, and burglary was the only way. Dick and Dot made a jolly good job of it. It was just a bit of bad luck kicking your hutch … But a bit of good that it was there and that Dick nipped into it in time.”
“I’m glad it’s been useful,” said Timothy. “I’ve always felt it was wasted on me.”
“Well, you’re too big for it,” said Nancy.
“There wasn’t much room in it even for me,” said Dick.
“Weren’t you in a stew when she said she’d shoot?” asked Peggy.
“I was, a bit,” said Dick. “Specially when she said she could see me. Then I remembered that the wall was in shadow, and she couldn’t see
down there anyhow unless she had a neck like a giraffe … Or perhaps an ostrich,” he added.
“I was just waiting for the bang,” said Dorothea.
“Well, it’s been a huge success,” said Nancy. “And they’re quite safe now. The only thing is, Cook’s given notice. She just couldn’t stand it any longer. She wanted to do it the very first day and then again about the milk.”
“But that’s awful,” said Dorothea.
“It will be if she sticks to it,” said Nancy. “We’ve simply got to get her to take it back, but it’s no good saying anything about it till the G.A.’s safely gone.”
“But go on,” said Timothy. “What happened next? How do the police come into it? Once they’re in, you never know where they’ll stop.”
“What do you know about it?” asked Nancy. “Have you ever been wanted by them before?”
“Only in Peru,” said Timothy. “Did your Uncle Jim never tell you about that time when he and I … Oh, never mind about that. Go on. What sort of a mess are we all in now?”
“No mess at all,” said Nancy. “It all turned out very well. Thanks to the G.A. being so certain she saw the burglar.” She paused.
“Go on,” said Timothy.
“Well, if anybody’s wanted by the police, it isn’t Dick,” said Nancy with a grin. “That’s one thing. She said it was a tall man, thin, with a battered felt hat. She said she’d seen him before, slinking off with a very suspicious manner …”
“But I was nowhere near,” said Timothy. “And I’ve only seen her that once.”
“Well, she even described your clothes. Grey trousers, baggy at the knees. Brown coat, not fitting very well, probably stolen.”
“Great Scott!” said Timothy.
“It’s all right,” said Nancy. “Sammy was quite good for a policeman. He asked her if she could be sure of the colours in the moonlight, and she had to explain that she had only seen the colours in the daytime when you were loitering … yes, that’s the word she used … loitering suspiciously in the road.”
“But look here,” said Timothy.
“Then she didn’t really see Dick at all,” said Dorothea.