We really were having a lot of fun.
I’m probably not the best person to describe a stately home. See one and you’ve seen them all as far as I’m concerned, and I wouldn’t exactly get into a state if I didn’t see any. I mean, tapestries and paintings and chandeliers and fancy tables are fine if you like that sort of thing in your front room. But just following a red rope around the place gawping at them . . . well, it’s not my cup of tea—even if the cup is over three hundred years old and was once used by King Charles the First.
So I was bored by the book room, sent to sleep by the staircase, and I was hardly drawn to the drawing room either. You wouldn’t believe how much stuff there was in that place. Paintings, mirrors, bronze clocks—you name it, at some time or other they’d bought it. By the time we got to Queen Victoria’s bedroom, I’d have gladly thrown myself into the bed, even if the old girl had been in it at the time.
Our progress through the house had been watched by a number of antique ladies sitting in equally antique chairs. They were the only security on view and they looked about as lethal as a box of after-dinner mints. Half of them were knitting. The other half were smiling sweetly and blinking behind their horn-rimmed spectacles. But as we shuffled toward the Grand Salon, I noticed two security guards in uniform standing beside the door. One of them brushed against me as I went through. He didn’t apologize.
The Grand Salon was like any other room in the house. Which is to say, it was certainly grand. This one was furnished in blue with blue chairs and sofas and blue murals on the walls. But the reason for the security guards wasn’t blue at all. It was bright red. There were a dozen of them, glittering in a case in the center of the room. The Woburn Carbuncles—very pretty and doubtless worth a pretty penny.
“The Marquess of Tavistock discovered them in the attic, apparently,” remarked Mr. Roberts.
Lucky marquess, I thought to myself. All we’d ever found in our attic was dry rot.
“Aren’t they beautiful?” Mr. Roberts went on.
“This way!” Palis cried, and went on himself. We followed.
I was the last to leave the room. For some reason there were no tourists behind me. I thought it was strange. There had been at least twenty other people in every room we’d visited, but suddenly there was no one at all. I walked toward the door. At the same moment there was a crash of breaking glass. A bell went off. I turned and looked back.
It was impossible. A minute ago I’d been looking at a glass-topped cabinet with twelve red carbuncles inside. Now I was looking at a shattered cabinet with only eleven carbuncles lying in the wreckage. But apart from the security guards, there was nobody in the room. Someone had just stolen part of the Woburn windfall. The alarm bell was still ringing. But I knew it wasn’t me and it couldn’t have been them, so . . .
“All right, sonny. Stay where you are . . .”
The two guards were walking toward me, the splinters of glass crunching on the carpet beneath their feet. I looked over my shoulder. All the kids from the school were jammed into the doorway, staring at me.
“What’s going on?” Palis called out from behind them.
“Give it back, son,” the security guard muttered, holding out one hand. He was moving very slowly, like I was dangerous or something. “You can’t get away with it.”
“Get away with what?” I squeaked. My voice seemed to have climbed up my nose and hidden behind my eyes.
I pushed my hands into my pockets. I wanted to show them that they were empty, that it was all a terrible mistake. But before I could say another word, my palm came into contact with something cold and round. I took it out. It glittered in the sunlight.
“What . . . ?” Palis exclaimed.
“Wait a minute . . .” I said.
But it was clear that nobody had any intention of waiting a minute. If Palis didn’t grab me, the guards would. The bell was still ringing and now I could hear other voices shouting in the corridor. Perhaps half a second passed—enough time for an instant playback and an even more instant decision. It was a frame-up. It had to be. Somebody had slipped the jewel into my pocket. Who? I remembered the guard jostling me as I went into the Grand Salon, the same guard who was now about six feet away from me and getting closer. It didn’t make sense. But it had to be him. He’d been in the room. He’d seen . . .
An instant decision! I stuffed the jewel back in my pocket, turned, and ran.
The guard shouted something after me. Palis reached out. Somehow I twisted out of his grip and then I was pushing my way through my own friends, hoping that none of them would try to stop me. At least I was right about that. They did quite the opposite, crowding around the door and stopping Palis and the two guards who were already trying to force their way after me.
I paused for breath beside a window. At the same moment there was a sudden wailing and six police cars, blue lights flashing, tore up the drive and screeched to a halt outside. It was impossible. They couldn’t possibly have gotten there that fast. My stomach shrank like a punctured football. It was a frame-up all right. But it didn’t just stop with the two security guards. It had been organized on a massive scale.
About a dozen policemen were scattering across the drive, moving to surround the house. Palis had almost broken through the barrier of schoolboys. This was no time to ask questions. It was crazy, of course. Even if I could get out of the house, I had nowhere to go. But right then I didn’t care. I just wanted to get out. I could ask questions later.
I looked round. I was in the State Dining Room. A dozen dukes and duchesses stared down at me accusingly from the walls. In the middle of the room there was a table set for eight—eight guests who would never arrive. Perfect white porcelain, gleaming silver cutlery, and slender glasses stood on the polished surface to be admired by the passing tourists. There was a door at the other end of the room. I made for it.
But I hadn’t taken two steps before my way was blocked. One of the antique ladies, roused by the bell and the shouting, stood there, holding a half-finished pink cardigan on two knitting needles. She was about sixty, dressed in a two-piece suit with permed hair and two angry red spots in her cheeks.
“Stop him!” Palis yelled out behind me.
The old lady’s lips pouted in anger. She must have thought I was a vandal or something. “Oh, you beast!” she exclaimed. “You little beast!”
She jerked her hands. The pink cardigan fell to the ground and suddenly she was holding the two knitting needles above her head as if they were daggers, the points pointing at me.
“You beast!” she shrilled for a third time, and, with her eyes blazing, charged toward me. At the same time I ran toward her.
About one second later we met.
I didn’t mean to do it. I don’t know what I meant to do. But she could have killed me with those needles and I had to defend myself. As she stabbed downward, I ducked. My shoulder went into her stomach in a sort of crazy football tackle. I heaved upward. And then she was soaring through the air, carried by her own momentum, a whirling mass of tweed suit, nylon stocking, and stainless-steel knitting needles. With a little screech she landed on the dinner table, then slid all the way down with an explosion of shattering plates and glasses and clattering knives and forks. The polished wood offered no resistance. She shot off the other end like a rocket, hit the wall, and finally disappeared as, with a resounding crash, one of the portraits fell on top of her. I didn’t see what state she was in after that. I was already gone.
I found myself in yet another, smaller room—some sort of library. A third guard was struggling out of his chair as I approached. I pushed him back with the flat of my hand and sighed as he crashed into a shelf, instantly disappearing in an avalanche of books. There was a long corridor leading off with a window at the end. I opened it and climbed out.
The window led onto a narrow balcony running along the side of the house. My luck was still holding out. There was nobody in sight. Quickly, I hoisted myself over the edge, clinging on with both hands. For a moment I hung there. Then I dropped. It was a long way. A bank of grass broke my fall. It also broke my leg—at least, that’s what it felt like. When I got up I found I could barely stand. I’d twisted my ankle and torn my trousers. But at least I was out.
I limped round to the back of the house and through a wrought-iron gate. I had got as far as the parking lot before I realized that I had no idea where I was going. After all, I couldn’t just get onto the bus and expect them to take me back to school. And running was out of the question.
Quite apart from my ankle, the fields around Woburn Abbey were flat and wide. I’d be spotted a mile away. Worse still, the police were streaming out of the building, spreading out and searching for me.
And everything I’d done up to now had only made matters worse. Perhaps I could have explained away the jewel in my pocket. Even if they hadn’t believed me, I could have put it down to a schoolboy prank. I could have told them I was going to give it to charity. But I’d also hurled an old lady through the air. I’d smashed hundreds of dollars’ worth of plates and glass. How could this have happened to me?
Desperately I looked around; at the cars parked in neat rows, at the families strolling toward the abbey wondering what all the fuss was about, at the first policemen rapidly approaching. I was thinking on my feet. I could barely stand on my feet. My ankle was doing a good impersonation of a beach ball. I had nowhere to go, no way of getting there.
Then I saw the Land Rover. It was parked at the end of a row, with no one around. The doors would be locked, of course, but there was something on the roof, covered with a sheet of tarpaulin. But the tarpaulin hadn’t been tied down properly. There was a gap.
Without a second thought I climbed up the back of the Land Rover and crawled through. There were a whole lot of sacks on the roof, filled with some sort of grain. Either the driver was a farmer or a health-food fanatic. There was just enough space for me. I lay there in the darkness, listening to my heart thumping. I’d just made it in time. I heard the crunch of footsteps on gravel.
“You see him?” somebody asked.
“No.”
“Thirteen years old. Scruffy. And dangerous.”
“Try over there . . .”
About two minutes later there were more footsteps and the sound of a man and a woman talking in low voices. I heard the Land Rover doors open and close. There was a rattle as the engine started and the whole vehicle shook. Then I felt myself pressed against the sacks as the Land Rover jerked forward. We were away!
Given more time, the police might have set up a roadblock and searched every car as it left the abbey. But we weren’t stopped as we trundled out, traveling at about ten miles an hour. I couldn’t see anything under the tarpaulin and I didn’t dare look. I just hoped that wherever the Land Rover was heading it was somewhere a long way away—preferably New Zealand. I imagined we’d hit the M1 pretty soon. After that I’d be safe, at least for the time being.
But we didn’t go anywhere near the highway. The driver seemed to be in no hurry. Ten minutes later we were still moving along at a snail’s pace. It was getting hot under the tarpaulin with the sun beating down. I could hardly breathe. Carefully I reached out, lifted up the loose flap, and looked out.
We were in a traffic jam—just what I needed. There were at least six cars behind us. I couldn’t see how many more in front. The road was following a tall silver fence with a second, lower fence behind it. Otherwise all I could see were fields and trees.
Stop and start, stop and start. We didn’t seem to be going anywhere and we were taking an awful long time getting there. I peeked out again, just in time to read a notice on a wooden board beside the road. PLEASE PUT YOUR RADIO ANTENNAS DOWN, it said. Put your antennas down? Where was the road leading? Under a low bridge?
The Land Rover stopped again. I didn’t dare look out, but I heard voices.
“Have you got any pets in the car?” a woman asked.
“No.” That was the driver.
“Here you are . . .”
“Thank you.”
So we weren’t carrying any pets. That was really nice to know. But what had that got to do with anything? Where were we? I was almost suffocating. We were still crawling along and the sun was hotter than ever. By now I’d decided to clear off at the first opportunity. Getting onto the Land Rover had been a mistake in the first place. I’d just have to leg it cross-country.
About another fifteen minutes passed before I’d had enough. We’d stopped and started more times than I could count and I had no idea where I was. But at least I was out of the abbey. Throwing caution to the wind, I shifted on the roof and slithered out from under the tarpaulin. Without looking around, I dropped to the grass. My ankle screamed at me. Ignoring it, I ran.
Only when I was sixty feet from the Land Rover did I stop and take my bearings.
I was in a field, penned in. A fence ran the whole length, boarded at the top, like something in a prison. The Land Rover was standing in line with about a dozen cars on either side. A picnic area. That was my first thought. But why should anyone want to have a picnic here? It was a rough, uneven field with knotted grass and bumpy hillocks. A few trees twisted upward here and there. The road we’d been following zigzagged all the way from the fence. I looked at the cars. Despite the weather, all the windows were rolled up. The people inside were waving at me and pointing. They didn’t look like they were inviting me to a picnic.
Then a loudspeaker crackled into life and a voice echoed across the grass.
“Get back into the car!” it commanded. “Get back into the car!”
And at the same time I heard a low, angry growling that sent my heart scuttling into my mouth and made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up like a pincushion. I turned around. A full-size lion was padding slowly toward me.