“There can’t be, or there’d be a boat against the ladder. He’s got his own boat over on the other shore.”
“It looked just as if there was something moving behind the cabin windows,” said Dorothea.
Dick, in spite of thinking that Dorothea was wrong, had turned Scarab sharply as she spoke. Her sail filled on the port tack. They were moving away from the houseboat again when they were both startled by a splash. They looked back and saw a newspaper being shaken out over the water from the houseboat’s afterdeck.
“Boy!”
The shaking of the newspaper stopped. Someone wearing what looked like a large white turban was beckoning to them.
“Boy!”
“I’ll come round in a minute,” called Dick. “Got to gybe again. Look out, Dot!” Round came Scarab, the boom swung across, and for the third time he was heading for the houseboat to come alongside as Nancy would have done.
THEY WERE STARTLED BY A SPLASH
“I knew there was someone,” whispered Dorothea.
“Why didn’t Timothy tell us?” said Dick. “Don’t talk, just for a minute. I’ll do it this time. Look out for the boom.”
He aimed again straight for the houseboat’s stern, kept on just a little longer, and then swung his little ship up into the wind. For one dreadful moment he thought there was going to be a bump. There were not many inches to spare, but round she came without touching.
“Grab the ladder, Dot. She’s hardly moving. We’ve done it.”
Dorothea grabbed the ladder, but did not speak. She could not. She had seen what Dick now saw as he looked up. The stranger on the houseboat was unwinding the towel she had put round her hair, and, though neither of them had ever had a close view of her, they had watched her from a distance, and knew at once who she was.
For a moment Dorothea, in her horror, thought of pushing off from the ladder and getting away from the houseboat as fast as Scarab could take them. But that was impossible. The Great Aunt was speaking to Dick.
“Boy,” she said again. “Are you a local boy or are you a visitor?”
“A visitor really,” said Dick … “Hang on, Dot, or she’ll start sailing again.”
“Do you know the lake well?”
“Not very.”
“Do you know a house called Beckfoot, on the other side, beyond the island? … There is a small river. …”
“I know it,” said Dick.
“I shall be very much obliged to you if you will take me there. I have to go there before catching a train. Will you be so good?”
“Yes,” said Dick.
“You will excuse me a moment,” said the Great Aunt and went down into the cabin.
“Dick,” gasped Dorothea, “you know who it is?”
“It’s her,” said Dick wretchedly. “But what could I say? I couldn’t say anything else.”
“What are we to do?”
There was no time to say more. The Great Aunt had put on her hat and was coming out of the cabin. They saw her turn. They heard the sharp click as she turned the key in the lock. They saw her take the key out, change her mind and put it back. They heard her sniff as she glanced at a bit of paper pinned to the door. She bent down and handed her parasol to Dick. Dick took it without looking at it and laid it down in the boat. His eyes were on something she was still holding, a flat oblong wooden box, with a name on it. She had found the box with the chemical scales.
“Will you take this, please.”
Dick took it with shaky fingers and put it by the side of his box of caterpillars.
“And now, perhaps, if you will lend me your hand. …”
“It’s easier to turn round and come down backwards,” said Dorothea, seeing the Great Aunt hesitate. “At least,” she added hurriedly, “I should think it would be.”
The Great Aunt came down backwards. Dorothea timidly took hold of one of the Great Aunt’s ankles and guided her foot to a thwart. The Great Aunt came down into the boat and took her seat in the stern.
Dick did not know what to do, because while she was sitting where she was he could not use the tiller.
“Do you happen to know what time it is?” she asked.
Dick pulled himself together and looked at his watch. “Twenty-nine minutes past eleven,” he said.
“How long will it take you?” asked the Great Aunt.
“Not very long if the wind keeps like this,” said Dorothea.
“I have a conveyance ordered to call for me at Beckfoot at one o’clock,” said the Great Aunt.
A new horror swept into Dorothea’s mind. What if Nancy, or Peggy, or Cook, or Timothy, had thought of telephoning to the station to say the motor car was not needed because of the Great Aunt being lost? But she could not speak of that. She saw Dick looking helpless.
“Please,” she said. “You’ll have to move just a bit because of the steering.”
“I am not accustomed to sailing-boats,” said the Great Aunt, “though I have two nieces who sail quite a lot. You will have to tell me what to do.”
“If you sit just there,” said Dick, “just a little further forward, I can manage sitting here, and D—… (he pulled himself up, thinking that it might be better to mention no names) … my sister can keep the weight right by coming on this side. Push her nose off. …”
Dorothea pushed off from the ladder.
“I’m awfully sorry,” said Dick. “You have to look out for that boom. It won’t do it again. At least, I’ll tell you if it’s going to.”
“My own fault,” said the Great Aunt.
Scarab’s sail filled and they were off.
Just then horns sounded again on the far side of the lake.
“Curious,” said the Great Aunt. “This is not the hunting season, and there are no coaches now as there used to be, but I think I have heard horns again and again during the last two hours.”
CHAPTER XXVIII
THREE IN A BOAT
“WHAT are those horns?”
The Great Aunt asked the question, but Dorothea was not sure that she expected an answer. She looked at Dick, but got no help from him. Dorothea knew Dick’s steering face, the look he always had when he was busy with something and thinking of that and nothing else. She had seen it when he was thinking of stars, of mining, of sailing, of birds or even of caterpillars. His face was different now, and she knew that he was, very unhappily, thinking of two things at once. Steering, of course, was one of them. But the other?
Dorothea looked at the Great Aunt, sitting in the stern, just far enough forward to give Dick room to use the tiller. She looked at Dick and saw his eyes glancing again and again at the wooden box with James Turner’s name on it. “Whatever happens, you must not run into her now,” Timothy had said. And here they were, with the Great Aunt in their own boat, taking her to Beckfoot with evidence of the burglary beside her. No wonder Dick was finding it hard to keep his mind on his steering. Just for a moment Dorothea caught herself thinking it would have been better if Jacky had been right and the Great Aunt was drowned and done with. But she thought that only for a moment. That would have been far worse. Still, if it had been a sprained ankle, or even a broken one, it would not have been so bad. She would have been found by now, and found by someone else. That was what mattered. If only somebody else had found her.
Then another thought startled her. The Great Aunt did not know them. They must not let out that they knew her. Would Dick think of that? At any moment he might call her Miss Turner, and she would ask him how he knew.
“I wonder what they are doing,” said the Great Aunt as the horns sounded again.
“They’re looking for somebody who’s lost,” said Dorothea, very clearly, looking at Dick. It was no good. She could not catch his eye.
“Somebody lost?” said the Great Aunt, and a spot of red showed on each cheekbone. “Do you know who?”
“We heard it was a Miss Turner,” said Dorothea, gripping very tightly the thwart on which she was sitting, to stop the trembling of her
fingers.
“Humph!” The spots of red were spreading over the Great Aunt’s cheeks, and she pressed her lips together. “I am Miss Turner,” she said after a pause, “and I am not lost.”
“Of course not,” said Dorothea, with great relief. It would be all right now even if Dick did call her Miss Turner without thinking.
Just then, far away down the lake, they heard a deep, echoing bark.
“That’s the bloodhound, Miss Turner,” said Dick. “It must have made a mistake.”
The Great Aunt snorted. At least, that was the only word Dorothea could find afterwards that seemed to fit the noise she made. It was certainly more than a mere sniff. “Bloodhounds!” she said. “What foolery! I have been spending the night in my nephew’s houseboat, cleaning up the pigsty I found there. Lost! I have been working like a charwoman. Why, you saw me emptying into the lake the last of the rubbish I found there, heaps of it, even on the table in the cabin.”
Dorothea glanced anxiously at Dick, as Scarab made a sudden swerve. Rubbish. Heaps of it. … The Great Aunt had thrown overboard all the samples from the mine. Timothy’s work wasted, and Captain Flint coming back tomorrow. Dick turned white, but remembered in time that he must not say anything about it.
“Lost?” the Great Aunt went on, and Dorothea knew that she was explaining things to herself. “There may have been a slight misunderstanding. I did expect that my nieces would be calling for me. But lost! Bloodhounds! They must indeed have gone out of their senses.”
“I think the police brought the bloodhound,” said Dick, and Dorothea trembled again. She caught Dick’s eye and opened her own wide. Dick had been just going to say something else, but he saw that he had better not and bit off his sentence before it was out of his mouth.
As Dorothea said afterwards, it did not really matter, because the Great Aunt was too angry to notice. Her anger showed in a queer way. She opened her parasol with a jerk, held it over her head, sat up even straighter and looked about her as if she were a visitor being taken for a turn on the lake. She lifted her chin. Her lips were tight together. And Dorothea suddenly knew that the Great Aunt was herself afraid of something. Not exactly afraid. Defiant was the word, thought Dorothea, and remembered the picture of the stag at bay on the bedroom wall at Dixon’s farm.
“It’s quite all right,” said Dick earnestly. “Only you’ll have to put it down a bit if we have to gybe. It’s quite all right now. If anything, it acts as an extra sail.”
The Great Aunt hardly seemed to have heard that he was speaking. She certainly did not hear what he said.
“But those horns,” she said. “They don’t belong to the police.”
“That’s the firefighters,” said Dorothea. “Colonel Jolys’s firefighters.”
“Tommy Jolys!” exclaimed the Great Aunt. “Hunting me with horns. I shall have something to say to him. He was always a noisy and ill-behaved little boy.”
Dorothea remembered the stout, white-moustached, bald-headed Colonel, standing in his car and talking to his men, and found it hard to put the two pictures together. Suddenly she found herself wondering what the Great Aunt had been like as a little girl. She gave it up. The Great Aunt was one of those people who could never have been young at all. She must have been a Great Aunt, and her sort of a Great Aunt, from the beginning of time.
“It is really a beautiful day, though very hot,” said the Great Aunt. “Colonel Jolys and his friends seem to be doing a great deal of hard work for nothing.”
“IT ACTS AS AN EXTRA SAIL”
Dick cleared the little rock at the southern end of Long Island and turned north. That brought the wind dead aft and he had to look to his steering and watch the little flag at the masthead, for fear of a sudden gybe that would bring the boom swinging across to knock the parasol out of the Great Aunt’s hand. Dorothea, without being told, pulled up the centreboard.
She sat down again and made ready for the worst. She had a faint glimmer of hope that they might be able to take the Great Aunt to Beckfoot, put her ashore without meeting anybody, and sail hurriedly away to safety. She had hoped that Dick had the same idea in his mind. But now, sailing not on the Rio side of the island but between the island and the western shore, they would be in full view of any of the hunters who might happen to look out over the lake, unless by good luck one of the smaller islands might happen to be in the way. Of course there were plenty of other boats about, but there was only one sailing boat with a red sail and a scarab flag, and only one with an old lady sitting in the stern, holding a blue parasol, as if on purpose to catch anybody’s eye. Nancy or Peggy or Timothy might be anywhere, and any one of them was likely to look out over the lake to see whether or no Scarab was lying astern of the houseboat with the Picts, who had to be invisible, safely hidden in the houseboat’s cabin. She looked anxiously along the shore.
Here and there she thought she could see people moving across open spaces between the trees. She looked for the flash of a white frock. If Nancy or Peggy saw Scarab they would shout at once, or would they think in time, and not let the other hunters know till she and Dick had got away again? There was nothing to be done about it. Sailing along, with the Great Aunt in the boat with them, they were trapped. Their only hope was to get quickly to Beckfoot and find it still deserted as it had been when they left the river.
“Do you know some children called Walker?” asked the Great Aunt, and Dorothea felt her heart trying to jump out of her throat.
“Yes,” she said. “They stay at Holly Howe.”
“Are they here now?”
“No,” said Dorothea. “But I believe they are coming next week or the week after.”
“Indeed,” said the Great Aunt. “So I have been told. I fear I have done my nieces an injustice.” She said no more, and Dorothea said nothing. She had not the smallest idea what the Great Aunt meant, but she was full of dread lest the next question should be, “Do you know my nieces?”
It was never asked. They had left the islands and were sailing along towards the Beckfoot promontory. The Great Aunt had asked again about the time. Dick, narrowly avoiding a gybe while he looked at his watch, had told her. The Great Aunt had said, “That is very well. It would be unfortunate if I were not ready at one o’clock. I am really very much obliged to you both.” Dorothea was just thinking that things might go right after all, when she heard a sudden shout from the shore where the road ran close to the lake.
All three of them had heard it. A moment later they heard it again. Then several people were shouting together. Then came a long triumphant blast on a coach-horn, a long blast that went on and on and on and broke off with a sigh as if the horn blower had no more breath. A moment later they heard the same long blast from another horn. Horn after horn took it up, far away down the lake. From the shore a voice, that might have been Colonel Jolys’s, let loose a ringing, echoing “View Halloo!”
The Great Aunt’s parasol shook a little more than could be explained by the gentle wind. She tapped impatiently with her fingers on the box with the chemical scales that was now resting on her knee.
“View HALLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
Ten or a dozen men were shouting together.
“VIEW HALLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
The shout was taken up far along the shore. They could hear the old hunting cry coming from the high woods. Again and again the horns blew that long triumphant blast.
“They’ve seen you,” said Dorothea. “They’re awfully pleased.”
She thought to herself that only Jacky would be disappointed that there would be no dragging for the Great Aunt’s corpse. She was alive. She was found. Of course everybody was pleased! And then again she remembered that the one thing had happened that ought not to have happened. They had met the Great Aunt. It was not her fault, or Dick’s, but there they were in the boat with her. There was small hope now that they would find Beckfoot deserted. Nancy’s plan, which had worked so well, was all going wrong at the very last minute. The Martyrs had been angels a
ll that time for nothing. The Picts had hidden in vain. And many other people were going to get into trouble as well.
Motors were hooting now, here and there, along the road by the shores. Through a gap in the trees, Dorothea saw men piling into one of the cars. Was that a white frock among them? She could not be sure. Hooting joyfully, the car was moving off towards Beckfoot. There was another, and another. She looked at Dick. Dick, too, had seen, but the wind was dead aft, and he was trying not to let himself think of anything but his steering. She saw him glance anxiously at the Great Aunt’s parasol. It might be working as a mizen sail, but it would be pretty awful if there were a gybe and the boom were to come over and knock it out of her hand. He had never practised in Scarab picking things up when they had dropped overboard. He had done it in Titmouse when Tom and the Coots had been giving him lessons in sailing. He wished he had thought of trying it in Scarab. Tomorrow he would try it with a matchbox. Tomorrow? Dorothea did not know what he was thinking, but she saw his face change. Dick, like Dorothea, knew that disaster was ahead of them.
“Do you not think,” said the Great Aunt, “that rowing might be a little quicker than sailing?”
“I don’t think so,” said Dick. “But it will be when we get into the river.”
“You know best, I dare say,” said the Great Aunt. “I mention it only because it is really important that I should get back. I have a train to catch.”
Nobody knew better than Dick and Dorothea how important it was that she should catch it.
“What about trying with the oars?” said Dorothea.
“No use,” said Dick. “We should only lose time.”
“I am sure you are doing your best,” said the Great Aunt, little knowing how very true it was.
Already it was clear that a great many people would be at Beckfoot before them. Motor car after motor car hooted along the road by the lake, carrying the hunters back. However fast a little boat sails, it is a tortoise compared with a motor car. Horns were cheerfully blowing behind the Beckfoot promontory long before Scarab had rounded the point and was coming into the river.