“No—or at least not for anything but information. Come, and I’ll see you home.”
“Mabel lives at the Towers,” said Gerald, as the stranger turned into the broad drive that leads to the big gate.
“No relation to Lord Yalding,” said Mabel hastily—“housekeeper’s niece.” She was holding on to his hand all the way. At the servants’ entrance she put up her face to be kissed, and went in.
“Poor little thing!” said the bailiff, as they went down the drive towards the gate.
He went with Gerald to the door of the school.
“Look here,” said Gerald at parting. “I know what you’re going to do. You’re going to try to undo that door.”
“Discerning!” said the stranger.
“Well—don’t. Or, any way, wait till daylight and let us be there. We can get there by ten.”
“All right—I’ll meet you there by ten,” answered the stranger. “By George! you’re the rummest kids I ever met.”
“We are rum,” Gerald owned, “but so would you be if—Good-night.”
As the four children went over the smooth lawn towards Flora’s Temple they talked, as they had talked all the morning, about the adventures of last night and of Mabel’s bravery. It was not ten, but half-past twelve; for Eliza, backed by Mademoiselle, had insisted on their “clearing up,” and clearing up very thoroughly, the “litter” of last night.
“You’re a Victoria Cross heroine,ef dear, said Cathy warmly. ”You ought to have a statue put up to you.”
“It would come alive if you put it here,” said Gerald grimly.
“I shouldn’t have been afraid,” said Jimmy.
“By daylight,” Gerald assured him, “everything looks so jolly different.”
“I do hope he’ll be there,” Mabel said; “he was such a dear, Cathy—a perfect bailiff, with the soul of a gentleman.”
“He isn’t there, though,” said Jimmy. “I believe you just dreamed him, like you did the statues coming alive.”
They went up the marble steps in the sunshine, and it was difficult to believe that this was the place where only in last night’s moonlight fear had laid such cold hands on the hearts of Mabel and Gerald.
“Shall we open the door,” suggested Kathleen, “and begin to carry home the coats?”
“Let’s listen first,” said Gerald; “perhaps they aren’t only coats yet.”
They laid ears to the hinges of the stone door, behind which last night the Ugly-Wuglies had shrieked and threatened. All was still as the sweet morning itself. It was as they turned away that they saw the man they had come to meet. He was on the other side of Flora’s pedestal. But he was not standing up. He lay there, quite still, on his back, his arms flung wide.
“Oh, look!” cried Cathy, and pointed. His face was a queer greenish colour, and on his forehead there was a cut; its edges were blue, and a little blood had trickled from it on to the white of the marble.
A painted pointed paper face peered out
At the same time Mabel pointed too—but she did not cry out as Cathy had done. And what she pointed at was a big glossy-leaved rhododendron bush, from which a painted pointed paper face peered out—very white, very red, in the sunlight—and, as the children gazed, shrank back into the cover of the shining leaves.
CHAPTER VIII
It was but too plain. The unfortunate bailiff must have opened the door before the spell had faded, while yet the Ugly-Wuglies were something more than mere coats and hats and sticks. They had rushed out upon him, and had done this. He lay there insensible—was it a golf-club or a hockey-stick that had made that horrible cut on his forehead? Gerald wondered. The girls had rushed to the sufferer; already his head was in Mabel’s lap. Kathleen had tried to get it on to hers, but Mabel was too quick for her.
Jimmy and Gerald both knew what was the first thing needed by the unconscious, even before Mabel impatiently said: “Water! water!”
“What in?” Jimmy asked, looking doubtfully at his hands, and then down the green slope to the marble-bordered pool where the water-lilies were.
“Your hat—anything,” said Mabel.
The two boys turned away.
“Suppose they come after us,” said Jimmy.
“What come after us?” Gerald snapped rather than asked.
“The Ugly-Wuglies,” Jimmy whispered.
“Who’s afraid?” Gerald inquired.
But he looked to right and left very carefully, and chose the way that did not lead near the bushes. He scooped water up in his straw hat and returned to Flora’s Temple, carrying it carefully in both hands. When he saw how quickly it ran through the straw he pulled his handkerchief from his breast pocket with his teeth and dropped it into the hat. It was with this that the girls wiped the blood from the bailiffs brow.
“We ought to have smelling salts,” said Kathleen, half in tears. “I know we ought.”
“They would be good,” Mabel owned.
“Hasn’t your aunt any?”
“Yes, but—”
“Don’t be a coward,” said Gerald; “think of last night. They wouldn’t hurt you. He must have insulted them or something. Look here, you run. We’ll see that nothing runs after you.”
There was no choice but to relinquish the head of the interesting invalid to Kathleen; so Mabel did it, cast one glaring glance round the rhododendron-bordered slope, and fled towards the castle.
The other three bent over the still unconscious bailiff.
“He’s not dead, is he?” asked Jimmy anxiously.
“No,” Kathleen reassured him, “his heart’s beating. Mabel and I felt it in his wrist, where doctors do. How frightfully good-looking he is!”
“Not so dusty,” Gerald admitted.
“I never know what you mean by good-looking,” said Jimmy, and suddenly a shadow fell on the marble beside them and a fourth voice spoke—not Mabel’s; her hurrying figure, though still in sight, was far away.
“Quite a personable young man,” it said.
The children looked up—into the face of the eldest of the Ugly-Wuglies, the respectable one. Jimmy and Kathleen screamed. I am sorry, but they did.
“Hush!” said Gerald savagely: he was still wearing the ring. “Hold your tongues! I’ll get him away,” he added in a whisper.
“Very sad affair this,” said the respectable Ugly-Wugly He spoke with a curious accent; there was something odd about his r’s, and his m’s and n’s were those of a person labouring under an almost intolerable cold in the head. But it was not the dreadful “oo” and “ah” voice of the night before. Kathleen and Jimmy stooped over the bailiff. Even that prostrate form, being human, seemed some little protection. But Gerald, strong in the fearlessness that the ring gave to its wearer, looked full into the face of the Ugly-Wugly—and started. For though the face was almost the same as the face he had himself painted on the school drawing-paper, it was not the same. For it was no longer paper. It was a real face, and the hands, lean and almost transparent as they were, were real hands. As it moved a little to get a better view of the bailiff it was plain that it had legs, arms—live legs and arms, and a self-supporting backbone. It was alive indeed—with a vengeance.
“How did it happen?” Gerald asked with an effort at calmness—a successful effort.
“Most regrettable,” said the Ugly-Wugly. “The others must have missed the way last night in the passage. They never found the hotel.”
“Did you?” asked Gerald blankly.
“Of course,” said the Ugly-Wugly. “Most respectable, exactly as you said. Then when I came away—I didn’t come the front way because I wanted to revisit this sylvan scene by daylight, and the hotel people didn’t seem to know how to direct me to it—I found the others all at this door, very angry. They’d been here all night, trying to get out. Then the door opened—this gentleman must have opened it-and before I could protect him, that underbred man in the high hat—you remember—”