William The Outlaw (19 page)

He told his father first and his father said: ‘Thank Heaven!’

Then he told the village policeman and the village policeman slapped his thigh and uttered a guffaw that sent Jumble flying down the road in panic.

After much silent cogitation William decided to approach the robber himself. He waylaid him on the road later in the day and said unctuously:

‘Please, can I have my whistle back?’

The robber uttered a loud ‘Ha!’ and then said very firmly, ‘No! you
cannot
have your whistle back! On
no
account can you have your whistle back. You can
never
have your whistle back. Wild horses couldn’t make me give your whistle back. You may look upon that whistle, my boy, as lost to you for ever and likewise every other fiendish
contrivance you use to drive away my sleep. Ha!’

With that he passed on still snorting.

William stood motionless in the road gazing after him. Well, he’d tried every lawful means. He’d appealed to his father who ought to have protected his own son from these outrages.
He’d appealed to the strong arm of the law who should have taken drastic steps against such lawless extortion of property, he’d appealed to the criminal’s own better feelings
– all to no avail.

The only thing that remained was to take matters into his own hands. For William felt that never could he hold up his head again while this blot upon his honour remained unavenged.

With no very clear plan of action in his mind, William progressed furtively up the drive of the big brown house. He had seen the old gentleman in the mauve suit drive down
towards the station that morning in a cab with a suitcase, so that bold advance into the enemy’s country was less heroic than at first it sounds.

For safety’s sake William had left Jumble at home. Jumble was well meaning but could never understand the need for secrecy. Idly William thought that he’d train Jumble to be a police
dog when he’d finished training him to be a sheep dog. He’d train him to hunt down robbers and bite them hard.

But he couldn’t continue the sheep dog training till he’d recovered his whistle –
his
whistle. Had you offered William then a hundred golden whistles set with gems in
exchange for
his
whistle, he would have refused them with scorn. It was
his
whistle and he was going to have it or know the reason why.

He wandered round the front of the house with an elaborate display of secrecy that would have attracted anyone’s attention from miles away had anyone been there to see. The front
downstairs rooms were all empty with windows securely locked. The front and side doors also were locked. He had a wholesome awe of inhabitants of kitchen regions. They had such effective weapons to
hand in the way of rolling pins and saucepans. Even had the doors and windows been open it would have been difficult to know where to begin looking for his whistle. There was moreover a horrible
possibility that the man in the mauve suit might have taken it with him. His voyage of investigation round the house, though fruitless, gave him a certain amount of satisfaction by its vague
element of heroism and danger. Having finished it he decided to go home and think out some more definite plan of campaign.

He set off still with a melodramatically conspiratorial air down the drive, and suddenly when he’d almost reached the gates he heard the sound of a motor car in the road outside. It was
coming in. He looked about wildly for some place of hiding. There was none. With admirable presence of mind he stretched himself out by the edge of the drive and lay there with closed eyes. The car
turned in at the gate – passed him, stopped, backed.

‘Good Heavens,’ said a girl’s voice, ‘it’s a boy.’

‘Is he dead?’ said another.

Without opening his eyes William perceived that four people were getting out of the car. He remained motionless with closed eyes. He felt that as long as he remained in that position no one
could call upon him to account for his presence in their private ground.

‘See if he’s breathing,’ said someone.

A firm hand was laid on his chest. William was very ticklish and it needed all his self-control not to wriggle. But he remained stark and motionless.

‘Yes, he’s alive,’ said the voice with a note of relief in it, ‘he’s breathing.’

‘Let’s take him into the house,’ said someone else, ‘and Freddie can see what’s the matter with him.’

A youth’s voice spoke.

‘Well,’ it said rather uncertainly, ‘I’ve only been doing medicine a month, you know.’

‘But, my dear, surely you can diagnose a little thing like this when you’ve been doing it a whole
month
,’ said the voice.

‘Oh yes,’ said Freddie, ‘I – I daresay I can. It – it’s probably something quite simple.’

William, who was beginning to enjoy the situation, felt himself lifted up and placed in a car, taken up to the front door of the brown house, lifted out, carried in and laid upon a sofa.

‘What is it, Freddie?’ said a girl’s voice, ‘what’s the matter with him? Perhaps he’s been run over. He’s breathing. See – put your hand over his
heart, you’ll feel its beating.’

But at this point, partly because he could contain his curiosity no longer and partly because his ticklishness could not endure the thought of a hand being placed again upon his chest, William
opened his eyes and sat up. He saw three girls, one with red hair, one with black hair, one with fair hair and a very young man. The very young man looked relieved by William’s return to
consciousness.

‘Better, dear?’ said the girl with red hair.

‘Yes, thank you,’ said William.

‘What do you think it was, Freddie?’ said the girl with dark hair.

‘Oh – er – j’st a slight er – vertigo, said Freddie.

‘Well, you’d better stay there and rest a little, dear, hadn’t you?’ said the girl, ‘just till you feel well enough to go home.’

‘Yes,’ said William speaking faintly and trying to assume the expression of one suffering from vertigo, whatever vertigo might be. He was much interested by his present position and
did not want to abandon it. Moreover he was within the building that presumably held his precious whistle and he hoped that Fate might yet deliver it into his hands. The girl with fair hair put a
cushion under his head and the girl with dark hair went to fetch the motor rug and spread it over him, and Freddie held his wrist and took out his watch hoping that the action would add to his
medical prestige and that no one would notice that the watch was not going. The others gazed at him in an awed silence.

WILLIAM OPENED HIS EYES AND SAT UP. ‘BETTER, DEAR?’ SAID THE GIRL WITH RED HAIR.

‘Oh yes,’ said Freddie putting away his watch, ‘he ought to rest a little before he goes out, though.’

‘Shut your eyes, dear,’ said the girl with the red hair, ‘and try to get a little sleep before you go home. Count sheep going through a gate.’ William closed his eyes
obediently, forebearing to remark that he’d had quite enough of sheep going through gates.

Then they all sat down in the window alcove and began to talk.

‘It’s really quite a jolly place, isn’t it?’ said the girl with the dark hair. ‘Awfully decent of Uncle Charles to say we could come out here to picnic whenever we
like.’

‘Only while he’s away,’ said the girl with fair hair.

‘I know. He’s not exactly sociable but we can have some quite jolly times driving down here from Town while he’s away. I think it would be an awfully good plan to have the
dress rehearsal here on Thursday, don’t you? All come down in cars and picnic and then have dinner here. He’s got an angelic cook and he said we could feed here whenever we like and
then drive back to Town by moonlight.’

‘Don’t you think we ought to mention it to him – the rehearsal, I mean?’

‘Well, we might if it were anyone else but you know what he is. If it were any other play, too, we might, but a play about the Russian Revolution – well, it’s like a red rag to
a bull to him. He’s scared stiff of a revolution, you know. It’s a regular bee in his bonnet.’

‘He said to me only last week that he never went away from home without being quite prepared to find the communists in possession of his home when he returned. So the poor old thing
wouldn’t be able to sleep o’ nights if he thought we were rehearsing a play like that in his house. He won’t be back till the day after so he won’t know. In any case he
doesn’t know any of the people who’re acting except us so it’s just as well the old boy shouldn’t know anything about it.’

‘Right! And it would be fun to come down here and make a real excursion of it. This room is a bit too small, isn’t it? Freddie, go and see whether the library would be
better.’

Freddie departed and they turned to William again.

‘Better, dear?’ they said again.

‘Yes, thank you,’ said William.

‘What is this vert whatever it is that Freddie says he’s got?’ said the dark-haired girl to the red-haired girl.

‘Something to do with the backbone, I think,’ said the red-haired girl vaguely. ‘You know they call things that haven’t any backbone invert something or other.’

‘I suppose,’ said the fair-haired girl to William, ‘that you were walking down the road and the attack came on suddenly and you came in here for help and succumbed before you
could get help.’

‘Well,’ said William with a burst of inspiration, ‘I was coming in here for my whistle when this vert thing came over me sudden and I fell down.’

‘For your whistle, dear?’ said the fair-haired girl in a puzzled voice.

‘Yes,’ said William brazenly, ‘Mr what’s his name? The man what lives here?’

‘Oh, Uncle Charles, Mr Morgan.’

‘Yes – well, this Mr Morgan came out to me the other day to borrow my whistle an’ he said he’d give it me back if I called for it today. He asked if I’d just lend
it him till today and said that it would be all ready for me to take back today if I called for it.’

‘But – why did he want to borrow your whistle?’ said the fair-haired girl, still puzzled.

‘Jus’ to blow on. He liked it,’ said William casually.

They looked at each other meaningly.

‘Poor Uncle Charles,’ said the dark-haired girl, ‘I’m afraid he’s – well, it
sounds
as if he were getting a little childish.’

‘An’ please,’ said William firmly, ‘I’d like to take it home now.’

‘But, where is it? Did he say where it would be?’

‘No, he didn’t,’ said William and added hopefully, ‘but I speck it’s somewhere about.’

‘Well, we’ll try to find it for you,’ said the dark-haired girl doubtfully, ‘but – don’t lend him anything else, will you?’

‘No,’ said William fervently.

Making a complete and rapid recovery from his recent attack of vertigo, William arose from his couch and joined in the search. They looked round the drawing-room, dining-room and library without
finding the whistle.

‘Well, we’ll remind him the very first time we see him,’ said the red-haired girl obligingly.

‘Thanks,’ said William without enthusiasm.

‘And now you feel well enough to go home, don’t you? This gentleman who is a doctor – well,
almost
a doctor, will drive you home in the car and explain to your mother
exactly what’s wrong with you.’

But William and Freddie seemed equally anxious to avoid this anti-climax so they finally yielded to William’s assertion that he felt
quite
all right now and would
much
rather
walk home, and to Freddie’s assertion that probably the family already had a doctor, and it would be against medical etiquette for him to go butting into someone else’s patient and it
would do the kid good to walk – get the circulation going again after the vertigo. So Freddie returned to the library and the three girls walked down to the gate with William and watched him
depart down the road.

‘Poor little child,’ said the fair-haired girl with a sigh.

‘He doesn’t
look
as if he had a diseased backbone,’ said the red-haired girl.

‘No,’ said the dark-haired girl, ‘but some of these internal things don’t show.’

William walked jauntily. He hadn’t got his whistle, but he’d had quite an interesting morning.

It was Thursday evening. William crept up the drive again and walked round to the brown house.

The windows of the library and drawing-room were lit up. The drawing-room was apparently being used as a green room. Actors in various stages sat on chairs or sofa, or ‘made up’ in
front of the Venetian mirror. In the library the play was just beginning. An inhuman-looking bearded gentleman of obviously Communist persuasions, his face deeply – perhaps too deeply –
scored by lines of cruelty and ill-temper, was sitting on the armchair, his boots on the table. A large red flag was planted beside him and the table was covered with a red flag. Brutal-looking
soldiers held a shrinking prisoner in front of him. Other brutal-looking soldiers lounged about the room. The play was evidently just beginning. Neither Freddie nor any of the three girls were in
this scene. William, who had only a faint hope of recovering his whistle, but a very real curiosity as to the dress rehearsal, stood outside in the darkness, flattening his nose against the window.
The brutal man in the chair was overacting – banging the table and shaking his fist and snarling and shouting – but this made it all the more thrilling to William. Then suddenly he
heard the sound of wheels coming up the drive. Still impelled by curiosity, he crept round the house to see who it was. Then he stood amazed. It was the man in the mauve suit. He was descending
from a taxi with his suitcase, and preparing to enter his front door. Then a glorious inspiration came to William. The taxi drove off, but before the owner of the house could enter his door, a
small boy whom he could not see distinctly in the darkness darted forward and seized his arm.