Wings Over Witchend, page 17
The Chief was standing in front of the stove and when they stared at him defiantly he smiled grimly.
"You've given us plenty of trouble," he said. "But you're game enough. You can help Charles get something to eat. Make yourselves useful."
There were eight other men in the room and, except for Harry, none of them looked particularly unpleasant. They were all obviously nervous and excited as the Chief strode up and down the room.
Charles, tall, thin and sad-looking, who had befriended them in the van, beckoned them over into his corner.
"Take yer coats off," he muttered. "Find ten plates and mugs. Yer can't wash 'em. We lives rough up here. If one of yer can cut bread without cutting yer hands off 'ave a shot. The loaves are on the floor under those newspapers," and he began to peel bacon from a big chunk of cut rashers and throw them into an enormous frying-pan.
The sight and smell of all this food gave Dickie fresh heart, and when he thought Charles wasn't looking he pulled pieces of crust from the loaves and stuffed them into his mouth. Mary busied herself with an enamel teapot which was almost too heavy for her to carry. Soon the room was filled with the blue smoke of frying fat and frizzling bacon. Charles seemed to have only one fork for everything, but he managed without much fuss to serve bacon, eggs, bread, and sweet, black tea to them all. The twins had to share a plate and a mug, but with every mouthful they felt better. They were warm at last. Their toes and fingers tingled and they scalded their tongues on the steaming tea. When the Chief had finished his meal he got up and stood in front of the stove.
"None of you need worry about the police at the White Horse. I looked after them. They were only on routine stuff, and as you all kept out of the way there wasn't any real risk... Now listen. You're going out in a few minutes and this is our last raid. The police won't be up in the forest, and there aren't many foresters left as you know. They're trying to get volunteers to go out as guards, and if they do we've got the fire plan. Be rough if you've got to, but be quick. You know where to take the stuff tonight, but if the police get too close and enquiring, leave your trucks and scatter. You know where to go if that happens."
The twins, who were helping to clear up the dirty plates, heard all this but there was little they could do about it. Then the door opened again and a woman, dressed in leather coat and flying cap, breeches and long leather boots came in. When she took off her helmet they recognized Primrose Wentworth, who stared at them in amazement.
"So now we know," Mary said loudly. "Now we're sure that you're a liar and a traitress. We helped you when you came to our house and were hurt, and you were a traitress all the time," and she turned her back on her.
"That's it," Dickie said. "A dirty traitress," and he watched her solemnly as a blush spread over her face and neck. Then she turned to the chief.
"I'm ready, but I don't like it. Weather's breaking up. There's a lot of wind and cloud over the moon, but I'll do my best."
He put his hand on her shoulder.
"I know you will, my dear. This is your last trip. Good luck. I shall be in the car," and he nodded to the men and said, "Put her up and then get going."
Without another look at the twins Primrose led the way out and the men followed. Charles turned at the door and winked. When they had gone the Chief filled his pipe and looked at them almost genially.
"Silly kids you've been, but you'll be in no more trouble now. I'm going to put out the lamp and lock you in, but you can keep the fire going, and my advice to you is to settle down and get some rest. Someone will come for you in a few hours and take you home. It's no use shouting and you can't escape. Have a good sleep," and he turned down the lamp, went out and locked the door.
They looked at each other and then put their coats on the floor and lay down on them in front of the stove. Dimly they heard footsteps overhead followed by the subdued murmur of voices. They were both giving up the fight against waves of sleep when the silence outside was shattered by the roar of the launching winch.
Dickie woke first. The fire was still glowing in the stove and making little friendly noises, but something much more frightening was happening overhead. From the corner between the boarded-up window and the stove muffled thumps and scrapings were coming. Then a lump of plaster fell from the ceiling and another thump came from above.
He sat up and shook his sister.
"Wake up, Mary," he whispered. "Something is happening in the upstairs room. D'you remember that the man went up there after he'd locked the door? I thought I heard him talking to somebody too. Did you?"
Mary yawned. "I think so. What day is it?"
"Idiot. We haven't been asleep long because the fire hasn't gone down. Listen."
The scrabbling noise came again followed by another fall of plaster and Dickie jumped up.
"There's somebody there, Mary," he gasped. "Prisoners! We've got to rescue them. Help me move some of these boxes and we'll try and light the lamp."
"I'm afraid of the lamp, Dickie. I saw some candles down by the bread in the corner. Let's light one of those from the stove. Are you sure about the prisoners?"
"Of course! Couldn't be anything else up there, could it?" As soon as a lighted candle was set up they dragged two more packing cases into the corner and as Dickie climbed on to the first the thumping noise started again.
"When I'm on the top of the second box I can reach the ceiling," he whispered. "Hold the candle high, twin, and then I'm going to pull more plaster down."
He was wildly excited now, and although the packing case on which he was standing wobbled he found that he could reach the ceiling without straining.
"There's a hole here already," he hissed to Mary. "I'm making it bigger."
Lumps of plaster crashed to the floor and then he tugged at the laths until they brought more down. Then, in a cloud of dust he reached up to his full height, felt the rotting floor-boards above and began to tear those apart until he had a hole about a foot square. Then, coughing and spluttering, and with torn finger-nails and arms nearly numb with his efforts, he signalled to Mary that he was coming down.
"Can't stick it any longer, Mary. You try. Put your coat on and your hood up and try and poke your head and the candle through the hole and see who's there."
Mary passed him the candle and ran for her coat as some more scrabbling noises came from above.
"Hold the box tight," she said as she clambered up. "I'll put the candle through the hole first."
As soon as she did so a loud series of thumps followed, but it took the two of them to make a hole in the ceiling large enough for Dickie to push Mary through and then pass her the lighted candle.
And so it was the Morton twins who rescued Donald Gibbs and one of his companions, and so did more than anyone else to bring justice to the gang of tree thieves.
With her twin clutching her legs as she was half-way through the hole and holding up the candle, Mary screamed when she saw a man lying on the floor with his wrists and ankles bound and a gag across his mouth. But she recognized him, and in her excitement hardly realized what she was saying.
"Don't you worry, Mr. Gibbs. You're rescued now. You're safe. Leave it to Dickie an' me. We'll cut you free. Just trust us."
Gibbs shook his head and rolled his eyes and drummed on the floor with his heels to show his appreciation.
"We'll get a knife," Mary chattered. "Dickie is here too. We're all prisoners together but we're not tied up. The others have gone, but we've found out lots." She crawled forward without noticing the shouted questions of her twin below and touched Gibbs' bruised hands. "Oh! You're so cold. We'll get you some tea, but don't you worry. I'll send Dickie up with a knife."
She slid back through the hole and told her excited brother all about it while she searched for Charles' old knife. It took nearly fifteen minutes to free Gibbs for although Dickie soon had the gag off the old knife was blunt.
"Bless you kids," Donald gasped through his bruised and swollen lips. "You must tell me how they got you, but we've got to get down to the forest and find the others. That woman warns the gang from her glider with walkie-talkie radio... There's another of our chaps tied up in the next room... "
As soon as he was free he stretched himself and chafed his arms and legs until the blood came back into them. Then he gave a sort of roar of excitement and before Dickie's astonished eyes he kicked down the door and smashed his way into an attic the other side of the landing where another man lay bound and gagged.
"So they got you, too, John," he roared as he freed him with the old knife. "Tell me how some other time, but we wouldn't be free now but for these two grand kids who were locked up downstairs. Have you got a headache too? Bad luck, because we've got a lot to do in a hurry. You're in Wildmoor Cottage, by the way."
John Green, the other forester, looked dazed and shaken, but Donald hauled him to his feet and they went downstairs to where Mary was pouring out mugs of tea. Donald picked her up and hugged her, and then the two men gulped scalding tea and munched chunks of bread while the twins tried to tell their story.
Ten minutes later they were outside. Donald found a car at the side of the cottage but there was no ignition key in it so he opened the bonnet and pulled out wires and removed the distributor.
"That won't be much use to anybody who comes back in a hurry," he said grimly. "You kids have got to stick it now because we're going straight back across the mountain. We've got to warn the others, and if we're too late we've got to try and catch the thieves. If you're too tired say so and we'll carry you on our backs. Come on."
The weather was changing. It was still cold and dry, but a great wind was roaring across the mountain, and although Donald and John held their hands the twins found it very difficult to hurry through the snow-covered heather.
They were perhaps a quarter of a mile from the trees when Gibbs, who was a few yards ahead with Mary dragging at his hand, suddenly stopped and pointed. "A fire!" he shouted. "Look! The forest is burning and this wind will help it... Come on, John," and the two men ran off with long strides across the snow.
"Wait for us," Dickie yelled. "Please wait for us. We can't keep up."
Then Mary, now so tired that she could not have run a step, looked up into the sky as if they might find help there.
"The glider, Dickie! There's the glider again." Over their heads the familiar red-winged glider whistled. It was losing height. As it passed over the boundary of the forest where the two men were running it rose a little, and then as the twins watched in fascinated horror it lurched and then seemed to crash into the tree tops.
12. The Traitor
Jenny stood up and watched the twins climb away from the Lone Pine camp.
'They're mad with us," she said. "Couldn't we have planned something so that they could have been with us? You're not fair to them, Tom."
Tom looked a little abashed. "They show off," he muttered. "David and Peter are used to them and I'm not. They'll be all right."
"So they will," David laughed. "They're wild because they can't share in anything we do to-night. What about you, Jenny? Sure you're going to stay?"
"I couldn't leave you all now, David. How could I? I've just got to be in this adventure to the bitter end. Let's go back to Ingles and telephone my dad."
So they packed up and while the boys stamped out the embers of the fire, Peter found the twins' paper chains at the bottom of their rucksack.
"Look what they brought, Jenny," she said. "We haven't been fair to them, you know. They have wonderful ideas, and they're jolly good at doing things too. I wish we hadn't let them go off like that. P'raps they'll be at the farm?"
But they weren't. Mrs. Ingles was in the kitchen and her husband had gone off with Mr. Morton to the forestry headquarters after collecting more volunteers from the village. When they told her they wanted Jenny to stay the night without explaining where she was likely to spend it, she agreed to ring up Barton Beach. Mr. Harman answered the telephone and after he had thanked Mrs. Ingles, Jenny had an excitable and incoherent conversation with him.
''That's all right then," David said when she had put down the receiver and before she could explain what they already knew. "Let's go back to Witchend and see what's been happening there. I expect the twins will be back by now."
But they weren't there, either. Mrs. Morton and Agnes were knitting by the kitchen fire and were not at all pleased when David admitted that he didn't know where they were!
"I think it's too bad of you, David," his mother said. "You know how much I dislike you all getting mixed up in the foresters' troubles, and the twins were only allowed to go off this morning on the understanding that they would stay within reach of the house."
David flushed. His mother did not often speak to him like that and he was annoyed because he knew that she was right. Tom fidgeted and gave Agnes a sheepish grin which was not returned, while Peter, who was so fond of Mrs. Morton, was not far from tears. Jenny tried to save the situation by running across the room and going down on her knees by Mrs. Morton's chair.
"Please don't be so cross with us. You've hardly said a word to me, and I expect the twins are quite near really just having one of their games with us. You know how they make up adventures and they just got tired of waiting for us in our secret place while we were talking about this wonderful, wonderful adventure... It wasn't David's fault any more than ours really."
Mrs. Morton smiled and ruffled Jenny's red curls. "You're always welcome at Witchend, Jenny, but it was David's fault. He's responsible, and I think you'd all better go out and find them now."
Almost before she had finished speaking there came a knock on the door, which David opened. They had not heard the car come into the yard but he recognized the man standing in the porch. "Sorry to disturb you all," he said. "May I come in? You may remember that I promised to come and talk to you to-day."
David glanced across at his mother.
"This is Mr. Hamish, the detective. Peter and I met him last night, Mother. We told you about him... I'm sorry my father isn't here. He's up at the forestry headquarters with Mr. Ingles."
Hamish didn't look much like a detective, they thought. He was a little, bird-like man with quiet, questing eyes, but he missed nothing and never asked the same question twice. And he called Mrs. Morton "Madam," grinned at Tom and said that he'd heard about his uncle, and gave Jenny a smile that didn't mean anything much but made her catch her breath with excitement. Then he turned to Peter, who was praying that he wouldn't mention that he nearly ran over her last night.
"You're the girl who knows her way round here, aren't you? Please tell me all you know about this business, and most particularly what has happened to you and your friends, if you think it has anything to do with the thieves. Now, off you go, Miss."
Peter felt that she ought to stand up, but she just blushed and started by telling him her name. As she was sure now that the lorry driver who had given them a lift on the night of their arrival was a member of the gang, she began her story there, and remembered how curious this man had been about Witchend and that he had particularly asked for the White Horse by name. She told him about the finding of Primrose, and the detective made notes while the story unfolded. Then David and Tom told him how they had found Peter in the blizzard and then followed Burton down the hidden track thinking that he was one of the gang. Lastly, Jenny, who had been on edge with excitement, told him that they had found traces of a spy in their secret camp on the other side of the valley and that they believed he had been watching Witchend from there.
This reminded Mrs. Morton that the twins had not yet returned and she looked anxiously at the clock while Agnes lit the lamps. She had no chance to say anything, however, because Hamish flicked over the pages of his notebook and asked them a few more questions.
'That pub, the White Horse, now? Any of you know anything about the man who runs it? Name of Hodges, I believe. We thought him a bit simple."
"He's a thorough bad lot," Agnes said suddenly. "Always has been. He may be simple, but nobody knows how he can keep that place open. I've heard tell that many of the chaps who drive the milk lorries have stopped going there now."
Hamish thanked her, but before he could say any more Mr. Morton arrived.
"Glad to have a word with you, Hamish," he said as he pulled off his boots. "I can probably tell you something you don't know, as I've just come from Hardwick. There's no news of the missing Gibbs yet and now another of the foresters called John Green has disappeared. Ingles and I have roped in twelve chaps from Onnybrook to help guard the forest, and I've agreed to Burton's suggestion that three of these youngsters shall spend the night in the fire tower watching for anything suspicious when the moon comes up. There's a telephone, of course." He looked round for his slippers and added, "Where are the twins?"
Before his mother could speak, David told his father what had happened, "But they can't be far off, Dad. Some of us will go out and look for them. They've got Mackie too. I'm awfully sorry, but you know what they are. They're fooling around outside somewhere I'm sure, and hoping we're going to send out a search party."
"But it's almost dark now," his mother added. "They're very naughty to worry us like this."
Mr. Morton looked anxious and Peter was suddenly aware that he had good reason to be. She was scared herself and saw that David was too. But the detective was speaking again.
"You've all been very helpful, sir, and you'd better know what we're going to do to-night. We're not going to worry about the forest, but every possible way off the Long Mynd will be cordoned. No vehicle of any sort will be able to approach the mountain and nothing on wheels will get away. And don't you worry about those youngsters, madam. We're patrolling the roads now and I'll tell my men to keep a look-out for them."
As soon as the door closed behind him, Mr. Morton went over to his wife. "Don't fret, my dear. They can't be far away. Are you going now, David?"
