“I’ll row now,” said Dick. “Will you put the rowlocks ready?”
Dorothea, no longer daring even to look at the Great Aunt, set the rowlocks in their places.
“Shall I lower the sail?” she asked.
“No need,” said Dick, thinking of the difficulties of lowering the sail with the Great Aunt in the boat. “We’ll be on port tack going up, and the wind will keep the sail out of the way.”
The reedy banks of the river were closing in on either side.
“Ready now,” said Dorothea.
“Change places with me,” said Dick.
Dorothea sat at the tiller, and Dick put the oars out and began to row.
There was a tremendous noise in the Beckfoot garden, a noise of people talking, shouting, laughing, with now and then a coach call or a hunting call on one of the firefighters’ horns. Dick did not look round. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Amazon’s stern in the reeds. He knew that they were coming near the boathouse. He knew, too, that Dorothea was not steering very well.
Dorothea, gripping the tiller, with the Great Aunt close beside her, could see that the Beckfoot lawn was crowded. She caught sight of Nancy and Peggy. She saw Timothy and Colonel Jolys. That was the doctor, talking to Timothy. That was the postman. And that was Jacky, working his way between larger folk to get a better view.
“If you will put me ashore here,” said the Great Aunt.
“I don’t think she’ll go into the boathouse with the mast up,” said Dick.
“I believe there is quite deep water at the edge of the lawn,” said the Great Aunt.
Hands were reaching from the lawn as Dick stopped rowing, and Dorothea steered towards it. There was a sudden silence. Somebody had hold of Scarab’s mast. Several hands were on her gunwale. Nancy’s and Peggy’s were not among them, though Dorothea caught a glimpse of their horrified faces in the crowd.
Colonel Jolys cleared his throat. He stood all ready to make a speech and at the same time to help the Great Aunt ashore.
“Miss Turner,” he began, “I think I am speaking for all of us when I say …”
“Tommy Jolys,” the Great Aunt interrupted him, “am I right in supposing that you are the leading spirit in all this foolery?”
CHAPTER XXIX
GREAT AUNT MARIA FACES HER PURSUERS
NANCY had been the one to see Scarab sailing towards Beckfoot, with Dick and Dorothea and a passenger with a parasol. She had shouted to Colonel Jolys who was by his car in the road, making up his mind where next to take his men after drawing blank in the wood. He had given the long-drawn blast that signalled “FOUND” to all the others and, collecting his own half-dozen firefighters, had driven straight to Beckfoot. Peggy had been further down the lake but came with another lot of the men a few minutes later. Nancy, watching car after car of men drive up, was waiting for her at the gate.
“It’s all up,” she said. “She’s met the Picts. She’s in their boat with them. They’re coming round the point now.”
“What shall we do?” said Peggy. “Bolt?”
“We can’t,” said Nancy. “There’ll be the most awful row. We’ve just got to explain. I was a galoot to shout when I saw her. But somebody else would have seen her anyway. It’s all up now. Oh! There’s Timothy. Hi! We’re done. It’s all up. She’s met them and they’re bringing her home in their boat.”
“Thank goodness she’s found,” said Timothy, mopping his forehead. “Worse things might have happened.”
“Nothing could be worse than that.”
“Dragging the lake,” said Timothy. “Come on. We’ve got to take what’s coming to us.”
Cook, hearing the noise of the motor cars coming up one after another, ran out of the house.
“Have they found her?” she cried. “Is she badly hurt?”
“Dick and Dorothea have found her,” said Nancy grimly. “And she looks all right. She’s in their boat. They’ll be here any minute now.”
“Them two,” exclaimed Cook. “I knew all along it would come to that.” She wrung her hands. “She’ll find out all now. And what she’ll have to say to your poor mother … She can say what she likes to me. I’ve given notice already. …”
And Cook, with Timothy, Nancy and Peggy, joined the crowd that was pouring round the house to the lawn. The doctor, who had been talking to Colonel Jolys, pushed his way towards them.
“I ought to have given you away at once,” he said, “and this would never have happened.”
The postman did not come up and speak to them, but Nancy saw him looking, standing first on one leg and then on the other, as if in a mind to go, yet wanting to know the worst and get it over. Nancy could not meet his look and turned away.
“They won’t be dragging t’lake after all.” They heard a shrill complaint, and saw Jacky with his father and their sheep-dog.
All the accomplices, willing and unwilling, were there, every single one who had found himself or herself doing what Nancy thought best because it was too late to do anything else, Cook, Timothy, the doctor, the postman and Jacky. And in a moment or two Dick and Dorothea would be there, with the Great Aunt herself.
“I say, Peggy,” said Nancy. “It’s all my fault anyway. I’ll have to say so. You’d better leave the talking to me.”
“Where did they find her?” asked Peggy.
“I don’t know,” said Nancy. “They were bringing her up the lake when I saw them first, half way between Long Island and our promontory. Idiots to go and pick her up if they saw her on the shore.”
“When I last saw them,” said Peggy, “they were going the other way.”
“If only people would do what they were told,” said Nancy. “I say, Timothy, you did jam it into their heads that they were to go to the houseboat, didn’t you?”
“I did,” said Timothy. “I told them that the one thing that mustn’t happen was for them to meet her, and that they were to go along to the houseboat and sit tight.”
“Mutton-headed galoots,” said Nancy. “If only they’d done that and left things alone. Hullo! Here they are.”
The crowd on the lawn surged towards the river as Scarab came into view by the boathouse. Nancy, Peggy, Timothy and Cook pressed forward with the others. More and more of the firefighters were pouring round the corner of the house.
Suddenly Nancy, seeing all these people waiting for one old lady after they had spent the morning hunting for her, felt as she would have felt if she had seen a fox cornered by a pack of hounds. For a moment she forgot her own troubles. It was going to be pretty awful for Aunt Maria to face a crowd like that.
“She doesn’t look as if anything had happened at all,” said Peggy.
“Give her room to get ashore,” ordered Colonel Jolys.
“He’s pretty sick he didn’t find her,” said Peggy.
“He’s had a good run for his money anyhow,” said Nancy.
The Colonel looked round and made an angry gesture to quiet those of his men who were welcoming the fox with triumphant blasts on their horns. There was half a second of silence. The Colonel loudly cleared his throat.
“Bless my soul,” murmured Timothy. “He’s going to make a speech.”
The Colonel was handing the Great Aunt out of the boat. He began his speech, but did not get very far with it.
“Tommy Jolys,” the Great Aunt interrupted him, “am I right in supposing that you are the leading spirit in this foolery?”
With the first words she spoke as she came ashore, the Great Aunt set the tone for all that followed.
Colonel Jolys, D.S.O., organizer of the district firefighters, leader of men, hero of many wars, became in a moment Tommy, the little boy of fifty years ago. His dignity was gone. It was as if someone had pricked a toy balloon. The speech that he had meant to deliver died on his lips. He shifted from one foot to the other without a word to say. The Great Aunt had no mercy.
THE GREAT AUNT STEPS ASHORE
“No, Tommy,” she went on slowly. “You have real
ly changed very little. You always liked toy trumpets. … I remember seeing you, and hearing you, lying on the nursery floor howling with temper because your sister had trodden on the tin trumpet you had then. You lay there, howling and kicking, until your mother picked you up and very properly chastised you.”
One of the firefighting young men laughed, a laugh that broke off short as the Colonel turned to see who it was.
“But, Miss Turner,” he stammered.
“Tin trumpets, Tommy,” said the Great Aunt, and Peggy, staring at her, suddenly thought that it was very like hearing Nancy calling somebody a galoot.
“Now for it, Peggy,” said Nancy, and pushed through between Colonel Jolys and the sergeant of police from the other side of the lake.
“Aunt Maria?,” she said. “Are you all right? We’ve been in the most awful stew about you …” She broke off short. She had just seen what the Great Aunt was holding in her hand, the wooden box with the chemical scales.
“Quite all right, my dears,” said the Great Aunt. “Do you know, Ruth, that you have torn your frock? And Margaret seems to have been rolling on the grass in hers. …”
Cook broke in. “And how would they not, Miss Turner? Hunting the woods looking for your corpus. There’s never a white frock made to last two minutes in them brambles.”
“Ah, Cook,” said the Great Aunt. “It’s nearly one o’clock, when, as I think you know, I shall be going to the station. I hope you have remembered to prepare my sandwiches.”
“Sandwiches, Miss Turner! We was thinking more’n likely you was gone where you wouldn’t want sandwiches.”
“I hope they will be ready,” said the Great Aunt.
The sergeant of police took his turn. “It is Miss Turner, isn’t it?” he said. “We were informed last night that you had disappeared, leaving no trace, from a motor car left standing on the road. …”
“I am not, so far as I know,” said the Great Aunt, “under any obligation to keep the police informed of my whereabouts. Nor, if you will allow me to say so, have I any reason to suppose them other than disgracefully incompetent.”
The sergeant of police was not to be put down so easily. “I should point out to you, Miss Turner, that a section of the police have been taken from their duties, and a large number of other men have had to leave their work. …”
Nancy hesitated only a moment, and charged in to the rescue.
“She had nothing to do with it,” she said. “It was all my fault. It was just that when Aunt Maria didn’t come home, I got a bit worried and couldn’t think of anything else to do, except telephone to you and to Colonel Jolys.” She glanced at the Great Aunt. Their eyes met for a moment. It was surprising, but it almost seemed that the Great Aunt was pleased.
“And madam,” said Colonel Jolys, “I think I may say that though we did not have the good fortune to find you, my men made a pretty good job of combing the grounds. If by any chance you had fallen anywhere in these woods, I think one or the other of us could hardly have failed to rescue you.”
“Tin trumpets,” said the Great Aunt as if to herself, and added, “I hope at least that you have enjoyed yourselves, even though you were looking for somebody who was never lost.”
“Madam,” said the sergeant of police, opening his notebook, “I have to complete my report. Have you any objection to stating where, in fact, you were?”
“None whatever, sergeant. I was in my nephew’s houseboat, which I found untenanted, open and in a disgraceful condition.”
Nancy’s mouth fell open. Nobody heard Peggy’s stifled gasp. Timothy, very red in the face, came forward, hardly able to keep his eyes from the box with the chemical scales that the Great Aunt had in her hand, as she watched the sergeant of police writing busily in his note-book. She turned as Timothy spoke to her.
“I really must apologize,” he said. “I fear you were misled by the note I left on the cabin door. It was meant for other visitors. If I had known you were coming, I should have done a bit of tidying.”
The Great Aunt looked him up and down. “We have, I think, met before. Unwillingly, on your part. If you remember, you jumped over a wall and ran away into the wood. There was also another occasion, after which I found it necessary to describe you to an imbecile of a local policeman. You will, I think, recognize this box belonging to my nephew. If you needed it, and were a friend of his, do you not think it would have been simpler to ask for it, instead of breaking into this house at night? But for the obstinate stupidity of the constable, who refused to act on the information I gave him, information exact in every particular, you would have been very properly laid by the heels. I cannot say I congratulate my nephew on his choice of friends. As for the state in which I found his houseboat, to describe it as a pigsty is unjust to the brute creation. You will at least, when you go back there, be able to make a fresh start, and I hope you will try to keep it clean for the twenty-four hours before he returns. I have spent much of the morning emptying dirt into the lake. Now, if you are a friend of Jim’s I will let you have this box, and I hope that you will in future remember that burglary is not usually held to be among the accomplishments of a gentleman.”
There was a moment of dreadful silence, when Nancy thought that Timothy could hardly help telling the truth to save himself. But he said nothing at all.
“Do I understand?” the sergeant of police began again.
“I hardly think so,” said the Great Aunt. “And now, if you will excuse me, I must leave you. Bad manners are, alas, infectious, and I have yet to thank the two charming and well-behaved children but for whose unselfish action I should have been in danger of missing my train.”
The moment had come. Nancy braced herself for confession. Everybody turned to look towards the river. And there was the river flowing placidly by the edge of the lawn. But of the little boat with the red sail that had been waiting there against the bank, there was nothing to be seen.
“But they’re not there,” said Peggy.
“They’ve gone,” exclaimed Nancy, almost shouting, as hope, that had died altogether, leapt again to life in her heart.
“I have been most remiss,” said the Great Aunt. “I omitted to ask them their names. I dare say you will see them again on the lake. They would, I think, be most suitable friends for you. Their boat, I noticed, has a red sail, and some sort of green insect on its flag. You will tell them that the old lady to whom they were so kind is very sorry that she had no opportunity of saying how grateful she was to them. And now, Ruth, we will leave these hunters. Come, Margaret, the motor car I have ordered should be here at any minute. And I have a letter to write to your mother.”
The crowd made room for them again as the Great Aunt, with Nancy and Peggy, walked up towards the house.
Colonel Jolys, twice suppressed, took fresh courage. “Miss Turner,” he said, “I have a car here, and if I may offer you a lift. …”
“Thank you, Tommy,” said the Great Aunt. “Your triumph must be incomplete. You have had your nice, noisy hunt, but I fear you must go home without carrying your kill in your car.”
The doctor, who was beginning to think that he at least was going to escape without trouble, had the misfortune to be just in her way as she moved on across the lawn.
Nancy glared at him. The danger was not over yet. But she need not have been afraid.
“Ah, doctor,” said the Great Aunt. “So you, too, have been amusing yourself with Tommy Jolys and his friends?”
“I thought,” stammered the doctor. “I feared that I might be needed.”
“Indeed,” said the Great Aunt. “Then at least I cannot accuse you like the rest of them of not minding your own business.”
“I am very happy to find that I … that my … that …”
The Great Aunt bowed to him and passed on. She stopped short by the door at the sight of the unlucky Sammy, the policeman, who was carrying a black silk cloak on his arm. She pointed at it with her parasol.
“Constable,” she said, “wh
at are you doing with that cloak?”
“We had to have something, Miss, just to give the smell to the dog.”
The Great Aunt drew in her breath. “Do you mean to say that you have had the impertinence to open my boxes. I packed that cloak yesterday.”
“We didn’t touch owt else,” stammered the policeman.
“Take it from him, Margaret,” said the Great Aunt.
“It was for the bloodhound,” said Nancy.
“I know,” said the Great Aunt. “Bloodhound indeed! Constable. You will remember that I described to you the disreputable fellow who was responsible for breaking into this house. You were unwilling to believe me. You will find him now, talking to Colonel Jolys. No. I do not intend to prosecute. That incident is closed, but not thanks to any efficient action on the part of the police.”
“No, Miss,” said Sammy.
“You are, I think, Mrs Lewthwaite’s son,” said the Great Aunt. “It would be useless to talk to your sergeant, but I regret that I am leaving too soon to have a few words with your mother.”
She went up the steps and into the house, followed by Peggy with her cloak.
Nancy lingered a moment.
“Cheer up, Sammy,” she said. “I say. Did the bloodhound find anything?”
“Nowt,” said Sammy. “He called to a scent by Crag Gill gates and ran it near to Swainson’s and then down t’lake.”
“Swainson’s,” said Nancy. “What can she have been doing there? They told us they’d never seen her.”
She hurried in, and upstairs, to find the Great Aunt in her bedroom, carefully refolding the cloak and putting it back into her box.
“Now, Margaret, just look carefully round to see if I have forgotten anything,” said the Great Aunt, going to the writing table in the bedroom. “And, Ruth, go down and see that Cook is making my sandwiches, and ask her to let me know as soon as the motor arrives.”