The Wind on the Moon (14 page)

‘And if we turn ourselves into girls again, we shall be naked,' said Dorinda.

‘You poor humans,' said the Falcon. ‘How helpless you are!'

Dorinda began to cry. ‘It isn't our fault,' she sobbed.

‘It's no good blaming
us
for being human,' said Dinah.

‘Are you sure,' asked the Falcon, ‘that you wouldn't prefer to remain kangaroos?'

‘Quite sure,' said Dinah.

‘It seems to me,' said the Falcon, ‘that a kangaroo has many advantages over a human child. As kangaroos you haven't the daily nuisance of getting dressed and then undressed. You aren't required to learn a lot of dull lessons, you can run faster and leap farther than any mere girl can hope to do. Why not stay as you are?'

‘No, no, no!' cried Dorinda.

‘You are determined to change?'

‘Yes,' said Dinah. ‘Absolutely determined.'

‘Then it is indeed a pity,' said the Falcon, ‘that you will have no clothes to wear.'

Overcome by this new disaster, Dinah and Dorinda sat in a miserable silence till, from the darkness of the house, there came a curious sound. It was harsh and low, like two river pebbles being rubbed together, then softly clapped together, but in a certain way it resembled laughter. Could it really be? Was the Falcon mocking them?

‘Are you laughing at us?' asked Dinah indignantly.

The strange noise stopped. ‘Forgive me,' said the Falcon. ‘I do not often laugh, but the fact is that I have been making a little joke with you.'

‘I don't think it's a very good joke,' said Dorinda glumly.

‘Wait till you have seen the point of it.'

‘Well, what is the point?'

‘You know where the Black Swan lives? A hundred yards from his home there is a row of willow-trees. The third tree from the left has a hollow crown. Go there to-morrow afternoon and look for what you will find.'

‘Not our clothes?' cried Dorinda.

‘They are somebody's clothes,' said the Falcon, ‘and whoever owns them had hidden them in a hollow oak in the Forest of Weal.'

‘But however did you find them?'

‘I can discern a field-mouse in a cock of hay,' said the Falcon complacently. ‘Do you think I would fail to see two bright dresses in a rotten tree?'

‘But how kind of you to bring them here!' said Dinah. ‘How kind and thoughtful!'

‘It's the most thoughtful act I ever heard of,' said Dorinda.

‘Thank you again and again,' said Dinah. ‘We shall
always
be grateful to you.'

‘Remember the Puma,' said the Falcon. ‘We cannot leave without her, and it is your part to make a proper plan for her release.'

‘You can trust us,' said Dinah solemnly.

‘Then good-night,' said the Falcon. The silver gleam of his plumage went out of the darkness, and then they heard the first strong wing-beats of his flight.

‘Dinah!' said Dorinda, ‘what are we going to do first?'

‘We are going to have the busiest night of our lives,' said Dinah. ‘And first of all, go and call Mr. Parker. Then I shall tell you my plan.'

Dinah took charge. She let Mr. Parker have no time to argue, but gave him his instructions as calmly and clearly as if she had been her father issuing orders to his battalion. Mr. Parker was full of admiration for her plan, but even more impressed when she admitted that she had a key which would open all the animals' cages, and he was positively awe-stricken when she divulged the name of the criminal who had been stealing Lady Lil's eggs.

‘What put you on his trail?' he whispered. ‘What was the final clue which enabled you to solve this baffling mystery?'

‘There weren't any clues,' said Dinah. ‘Someone told me who he was.'

‘Ah, yes,' said Mr. Parker wisely, ‘that is often the way. A clue is a very good thing to have, and a lot of clues are still better, but an informer is best of all. The police are very fond of informers, because if they know the name of the criminal, and where he lives, they can solve the most difficult cases quite quickly and with perfect efficiency.'

‘Look at that cloud,' said Dorinda. ‘As soon as it blows a little more to the east, the moon will shine.'

‘It is full to-night,' said Mr. Parker.

‘Then we have no time to lose,' said Dinah, ‘for everybody should be in position before the moon comes out.'

Without another word she unlocked the door of their cage, let the Giraffe out of his, and went swiftly to the next block of cages, where Marie Louise the Llama, the Zebra, the Ant-eater, and the Kinkajous lived. She woke them all, opened all their doors, and leaving Mr. Parker and Dorinda to explain what they had to do, she proceeded to call many other animals in their turn. Finally, she went to the prison cage where Bendigo the Grizzly Bear was confined. She had a long conversation with him. He was very ill-tempered about being wakened, but Dinah pacified him at last, and when he heard what was about to happen, and what she wanted him to do, he became very cheerful, and laughed in his throat with the sound of a little thunderstorm in a ravine.

By now the great dark cloud, the only one in the sky, which had covered the moon, had blown away to the east, obscuring a few thousand stars on its way but leaving the full moon shining bright and clear like a vast silver tray which had been polished by ten thousand housemaids for ten thousand years. The sky itself was a dark smooth blue, like the skin of a grape, and the park, towards which Dinah was now hurrying with long swift leap-after-leap, was flooded with milky light; but trees and shrubs cast inky shadows. Here and there in the shadow she could see the bright eyes of animals on guard.

Her plan had been to release all the animals who could be trusted—but not the Puma, because many of the others were afraid of her—and post them like sentries round Lady Lil's nest. She had told Mr. Parker that they must not go too near the nest, for Lady Lil should not be unnecessarily disturbed, but they had to be close enough to each other to prevent the thief from slipping through the ring unseen. He was strong and cunning: they must keep a good look-out.

The animals were on guard

She found the animals in position in a great circle surrounding the nest. They were all wide awake and eager to be the first to catch sight of the criminal. But a good many of them were rather frightened. They were all well concealed in the shadow of trees and bushes, and they stood perfectly still, as animals can.

Within the circle, and only about twenty yards from the nest where Lady Lil was calmly sleeping, there stood a group of lime-trees, and Mr. Parker was standing between them with his long neck among the branches and his head looking over the topmost leaves. He stood so still that he was almost invisible, but Dinah could see that he had a good view of the nest, and he at least, she thought, was bound to see the thief if he came. ‘If he doesn't fall asleep, that is,' she added, ‘for he is leaning against a tree in a very comfortable-looking way, and he is shamefully fond of going to sleep.'

She hoped for the best, however, and after she had visited all the sentries, and encouraged them to be alert and brave, she went to look for Dorinda.

She had told Dorinda to wait for her on the far side of the sentry-ring. On the side farthest from the cages, that is, and nearest to the gate-keeper's cottage and the field where Mrs. Grimble's bottle lay in a rabbit-hole. She had said nothing about the bottle to Mr. Parker, of course, but she had told Dorinda, ‘If the animals behave intelligently, and seem as though they can be trusted, then you and I will go and look for the rabbit-hole which the Falcon marked with the rabbit's tail. It should be easy to find in the moonlight, and we may be away for only a few minutes. Then we'll return and keep watch till morning if need be.'

So she and Dorinda waited for perhaps a quarter of an hour a little beyond the sentry-ring, and everything was quiet. The moonlight lay so thickly that Dorinda thought she could see it dripping off the leaves, and the moon, she said, was bulging out of the sky like the old mirror in the hall at home.

‘After all,' said Dinah thoughtfully, ‘he may not come to-night. The thief, I mean. Let's go and look for the bottle. But be careful! We must move as quietly as possible, for on a night like this the smallest sound will be heard\??\—'

She was interrupted by a loud and fearful shriek that would have been heard in the midst of a winter gale.

‘What's that?' cried Dorinda.

‘Lady Lil!' said Dinah. ‘Hurry, hurry!'

The nest, when they reached it, was already surrounded by some twenty or thirty feverishly excited animals, and Lady Lil, in a hoarse high voice, was weeping and bemoaning her loss. She was waving her head to and fro in agitated movement, and her eyes were sprinkling bright tears in the moonlight as though they had been watering-cans.

‘It's gone, gone, gone!' she cried. ‘My latest, loveliest, littlest egg is for ever gone.'

‘It was quite a big egg when I saw it,' said Mr. Parker suspiciously.

‘What does that matter now,' screamed the Ostrich, ‘when it's gone, gone, gone?'

‘But how did it go?' asked the Cassowary. ‘You have been sitting on it all night, and we have been watching you.'

‘There was a pair of eyes,' said Lady Lil. ‘I woke in a fright, and two great yellow eyes were staring at me. They were as yellow as, as . . .'

‘As butter?' asked one of the Kinkajous.

‘No, no!' said Lady Lil. ‘They were hard and yellow, like, like . . .'

‘Like cheese?' asked the young Baboon.

‘
No!
' shouted Lady Lil. ‘They were bright and hard and yellow . . .'

‘Like a topaz,' said Marie Louise.

‘Yes, like a topaz, and they glittered in the moonlight only a yard from mine. And then, I think, I fainted. I rose a little way from my nest, and fell again. And when I came to my senses, my egg was gone. My latest, loveliest egg, for ever gone. Ah me, I am the most miserable Ostrich that ever lived! Why, if this was to be my fate, did my poor mother sit so long and patiently to hatch me? In such a world as this, an Ostrich has no hope of happiness.'

‘Mr. Parker,' said Dinah in her most efficient voice, ‘did you see this happen?'

‘I saw nothing,' said Mr. Parker. ‘Absolutely nothing! I am completely baffled by this wholly unexpected development.'

‘You were asleep,' said Dinah.

‘I resent that,' said Mr. Parker. ‘I strongly resent it. I bitterly and deeply resent it. I resent it from the depths of my being. I am not unduly sensitive, but\??\—'

‘You were unduly sleepy,' asid Dorinda unkindly.

‘Anyway,' said Dinah, ‘we are only wasting time standing here and talking. We should be looking for the thief. We all know who he is, and he has been too cunning for us. I believe that most of you were keeping a good look-out, but he has beaten you. He got through between two sentries and stole the egg. But he may not have eaten it yet, and perhaps he isn't far away. He may have gone towards home, but he won't get home very easily, for I've seen to that, and he is just as likely to be hiding somewhere quite near. So scatter and look for him. Some of you should go towards his cage, but all the others must hunt in every direction.'

‘Admirable advice,' said Marie Louise. ‘Scatter, my friends, pray scatter! Two or three of you, however, may come with me.'

She spoke rather coldly, for she strongly disapproved of a young kangaroo like Dinah, who had so newly come to the zoo, setting herself up as a leader; but though Marie Louise was inclined to be jealous, she was also fair, and she knew that Dinah's plan was the proper one. So she offered a good example to the other animals, who quickly began to search for the criminal in all directions. But they were, by now, far too excited to keep quiet, as they had been while they stood sentry round the nest, so presently the moonlit air was trembling with the wild noises of the hunt, with baying and barking and crying and grunting and chattering and twittering and hissing and hollering and hip-hip-hurrahing and view-hulloing. But Lady Lil, entirely forgotten, sat alone upon her nest and wept.

Then Mr. Parker, regarding the scene from his superior height, uttered a sudden tremendous shout and attracted nearly everyone's attention. ‘Tally-ho, tally-ho!' shouted Mr. Parker, with his forelegs stiffly braced and wide apart, his long neck stretching like the jib of a crane, and his great dark eyes ashine. The other animals looked in the direction to which he was pointing, and all were completely astonished. For there in the moonlight stood Sir Bobadil, and Sir Bobadil was obviously embarrassed. Sir Bobadil wore a guilty look, and midway between his beak and his breast, in the very middle of his neck, there was a sinister, suspicious bulge!

But Sir Bobadil was
not
the thief they had expected. It was not Sir Bobadil against whom they had been on guard and for whom they were now searching.