Читать книгу Five On Kirrin Island Again - Enid blyton - Страница 6

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The four of them, with Timmy nosing round their legs, stood staring down at the big stone that hid the entrance to the dungeons. Julian was perfectly right. The stone could not have been lifted for months, because weeds had grown closely round the edges, sending their small roots into every crack.

‘No one is down there,’ said Julian. ‘We need not even bother to pull up the stone and go down to see. If it had been lifted lately, those weeds would have been torn up as it was raised.’

‘And anyway, we know that no one can get out of the dungeon once the entrance stone is closing it,’ said Dick. ‘It’s too heavy. Uncle Quentin wouldn’t be silly enough to shut himself in! He’d leave it open.’

‘Of course he would,’ said Anne. ‘Well—he’s not there, then. He must be somewhere else.’

‘But where?’ said George. ‘This is only a small island, and we know every corner of it. Oh—would he be in that cave we hid in once? The only cave on the island.’

‘Oh yes—he might be,’ said Julian. ‘But I doubt it. I can’t see Uncle Quentin dropping down through the hole in the cave’s roof—and that’s the only way of getting into it unless you’re going to clamber and slide about the rocks on the shore for ages. I can’t see him doing that, either.’

They made their way beyond the castle to the other side of the island. Here there was a cave they had once lived in. It could be entered with difficulty on the seaward side, as Julian had said, by clambering over slippery rocks, or it could be entered by dropping down a rope through a hole in the roof to the floor some way below.

They found the hole, half hidden in old heather. Julian felt about. The rope was still there. ‘I’ll slide down and have a look,’ he said.

He went down the rope. It was knotted at intervals so that his feet found holding-places and he did not slide down too quickly and scorch his hands.

He was soon in the cave. A dim light came in from the seaward side. Julian took a quick look round. There was absolutely nothing there at all, except for an old box that they must have left behind when they were last here themselves.

He climbed up the rope again, his head appearing suddenly out of the hole. Dick gave him a hand.

‘Well?’ he said. ‘Any sign of Uncle Quentin?’

‘No,’ said Julian. ‘He’s not there, and hasn’t been there either, I should think. It’s a mystery! Where is he, and if he’s really doing important work where is all his stuff? I mean, we know that plenty of stuff was brought here, because Aunt Fanny told us so.’

‘Do you think he’s in the tower?’ said Anne, suddenly. ‘He might be in that glass room at the top.’

‘Well, he’d see us at once, if he were!’ said Julian, scornfully. ‘And hear our yells too! Still, we might as well have a look.’

So back to the castle they went and walked to the queer tower. Their aunt saw them and called to them. ‘Your lunch is ready. Come and have it. Your uncle will turn up, I expect.’

‘But Aunt Fanny where is he?’ said Anne, with a puzzled face. ‘We’ve looked simply everywhere?’

Her aunt did not know the island as well as the children did. She imagined that there were plenty of places to shelter in, or to work in. ‘Never mind,’ she said, looking quite undisturbed. ‘He’ll turn up later. You come along and have your meal.’

‘We think we’ll go up the tower,’ said Julian. ‘Just in case he’s up there working.’

The four children and Timmy went to where the tower rose up from the castle yard. They ran their hands over the smooth, shining sections, which were fitted together in curving rows. ‘What’s this stuff it’s built of?’ said Dick.

‘Some kind of new plastic material, I should think,’ said Julian. ‘Very light and strong, and easily put together.’

‘I should be afraid it would blow down in a gale,’ said George.

‘Yes, so should I,’ said Dick. ‘Look—here is the door.’

The door was small, and rounded at the top. A key was in the keyhole. Julian turned it and unlocked the door. It opened outwards not inwards. Julian put his head inside and looked round.

There was not much room in the tower. A spiral staircase, made of the same shiny stuff as the tower itself, wound up and up and up. There was a space at one side of it, into which projected curious hook-like objects made of what looked like steel. Wire ran from one to the other.

‘Better not touch them,’ said Julian, looking curiously at them. ‘Goodness, this is like a tower out of a fairy-tale. Come on—I’m going up the stairs to the top.’

He began to climb the steep, spiral stairway. It made him quite giddy to go up and round, up and round so many, many times.

The others followed him. Tiny, slit-like windows, set sideways not downwards, were let into the side of the tower here and there, and gave a little light to the stairway. Julian looked through one, and had a wonderful view of the sea and the mainland.

He went on up to the top. When he got there he found himself in a small round room, whose sides were of thick, gleaming glass. Wires ran right into the glass itself, and then pierced through it, the free ends waving and glittering in the strong wind that blew round the tower.

There was nothing in the little room at all! Certainly Uncle Quentin was not there. It was clearly only a tower meant to take the wires up on the hook-like things, and to run them through the strange, thick glass at the top, and set them free in the air. What for? Were they catching some kind of wireless waves? Was it to do with Radar? Julian wondered, frowning, what was the meaning of the tower and the thin, shining wires?

The others crowded into the little room. Timmy came too, having managed the spiral stairs with difficulty.

‘Gracious! What a queer place!’ said George. ‘My goodness, what a view we’ve got from here. We can see miles and miles out to sea—and on this other side we can see miles and miles across the bay, over the mainland to the hills beyond.’

‘Yes. It’s lovely,’ said Anne. ‘But—where is Uncle Quentin? We still haven’t found him. I suppose he is on the island.’

‘Well, his boat was pulled up in the cove,’ said George. ‘We saw it.’

‘Then he must be here somewhere,’ said Dick. ‘But he’s not in the castle, he’s not in the dungeons, he’s not in the cave and he’s not up here. It’s a first-class mystery.’

‘The Missing Uncle. Where is he?’ said Julian. ‘Look there’s poor Aunt Fanny still down there, waiting with the lunch. We’d better go down. She’s signalling to us.’

‘I should like to,’ said Anne. ‘It’s an awful squash in this tiny glass room. I say—did you feel the tower sway then, when that gust of wind shook it? I’m going down quickly, before the whole thing blows over!’

She began to go down the spiral stairs, holding on to a little hand-rail that ran down beside them. The stairs were so steep that she was afraid of falling. She nearly did fall when Timmy pushed his way past her, and disappeared below at a remarkably fast pace.

Soon they were all down at the bottom. Julian locked the door again. ‘Not much good locking a door if you leave the key in,’ he said. ‘Still—I’d better.’

They walked over to Aunt Fanny. ‘Well, I thought you were never coming!’ she said. ‘Did you see anything interesting up there?’

‘Only a lovely view,’ said Anne. ‘Simply magnificent. But we didn’t find Uncle Quentin. It’s very mysterious, Aunt Fanny—we really have looked everywhere on the island—but he’s just not here.’

‘And yet his boat is in the cove,’ said Dick. ‘So he can’t have gone.’

‘Yes, it does sound queer,’ said Aunt Fanny, handing round the sandwiches. ‘But you don’t know your uncle as well as I do. He always turns up all right. He’s forgotten I was bringing you, or he would be here. As it is, we may not see him, if he’s quite forgotten about your coming. If he remembers, he’ll suddenly turn up.’

‘But where from?’ asked Dick, munching a potted meat sandwich. ‘He’s done a jolly good disappearing trick, Aunt Fanny.’

‘Well, you’ll see where he comes from, I’ve no doubt, when he arrives,’ said Aunt Fanny. ‘Another sandwich, George? No, not you, Timmy. You’ve had three already. Oh George, do keep Timmy’s head out of that plate.’

‘He’s hungry too, Mother,’ said George.

‘Well, I’ve brought dog-biscuits for him,’ said her mother.

‘Oh, Mother! As if Timmy would eat dog biscuits when he can have sandwiches,’ said George. ‘He only eats dog biscuits when there’s absolutely nothing else and he’s so ravenous he can’t help eating them.’

They sat in the warm April sunshine, eating hungrily. There was orangeade to drink, cool and delicious. Timmy wandered over to a rock pool he knew, where rain-water collected, and he could be heard lapping there.

‘Hasn’t he got a good memory?’ said George proudly. ‘It’s ages since he was here—and yet he remembered that pool at once, when he felt thirsty.’

‘It’s funny Timmy hasn’t found Uncle Quentin, isn’t it?’ said Dick, suddenly. ‘I mean—when we were hunting for him, and got “Warm” you’d think Timmy would bark or scrape about or something. But he didn’t.’

‘I think it’s jolly funny that Father can’t be found anywhere,’ said George. ‘I do really. I can’t think how you can take it so calmly, Mother.’

‘Well, dear, as I said before, I know your father better than you do,’ said her mother. ‘He’ll turn up in his own good time. Why, I remember once when he was doing some sort of work in the stalactite caves at Cheddar, he disappeared in them for over a week—but he wandered out all right when he had finished his experiments.’

‘It’s very queer,’ began Anne, and then stopped suddenly. A curious noise came to their ears—a rumbling grumbling, angry noise, like a giant hidden dog, growling in fury. Then there was a hissing noise from the tower, and all the wires that waved at the top were suddenly lit up as if by lightning.

‘There now—I knew your father was somewhere about,’ said George’s mother. ‘I heard that noise when I was here before—but I couldn’t make out where it came from.’

‘Where did it come from?’ said Dick. ‘It sounded almost as if it was underneath us, but it couldn’t have been. Gracious, this is most mysterious.’

No more noises came. They each helped themselves to buns with jam in the middle. And then Anne gave a squeal that made them all jump violently.

‘Look! There’s Uncle Quentin! Standing over there, near the tower. He’s watching the jackdaws! Wherever did he come from?’