The Wind on the Moon (21 page)

‘Absolutely enthralling,' said Mr. Jobson.

Then Mr. Hobson pointed to a book that lay on a small table by the Judge's chair, and said, still in a tone of fervent admiration, ‘I suppose you are a great reader, sir?'

‘That is a book,' said the Judge, ‘which I have lately been reading with close attention. It is about Ancient Egypt. Or else it is about Ancient Greece, or Ancient Mesopotamia. I haven't got very far in it yet.'

‘And do you always read the same book?' asked Mr. Jobson.

‘Good gracious, no!' said the Judge. ‘As soon as I have finished one, I start another.'

‘So you change your books?' said Mr. Hobson. ‘You change them quite often, in fact?'

‘Naturally,' said the Judge. ‘Who doesn't?'

There was a little pause after that, and the Judge was beginning to wonder why Mr. Hobson and Mr. Jobson wanted to know so much about his personal habits, when Mr. Jobson suddenly asked him another question. At this point both Mr. Hobson and Mr. Jobson leant far back in their chairs and gazed upward at the ceiling as though they were profoundly meditating.

‘You remember the case of Mrs. Taper?' asked Mr. Jobson.

‘I do,' said the Judge, rather stiffly.

‘The Jury,' said Mr. Hobson, ‘are still in prison.'

‘And there they will stay,' said the Judge in a loud fierce voice. ‘There they will stay, as I solemnly warned them many weeks ago, until they come to a unanimous decision whether she is Guilty or Not Guilty.'

‘You have made up your mind about that?' asked Mr. Jobson.

‘I have,' said the Judge.

‘Why don't you change your mind?' demanded Mr. Hobson.

‘I
never
change my mind!' shouted the Judge.

‘What, never?' asked Mr. Jobson.

‘Not even once a month?' said Mr. Hobson.

‘I said
never
!' roared the Judge.

‘How disgusting!' said Mr. Jobson.

‘How insanitary!' said Mr. Hobson.

‘You change your shirts and your socks,' said Mr. Jobson.

‘Your pillow-slips and your sheets,' said Mr. Hobson.

‘Your dinner-plates and your pocket-handkerchiefs.'

‘Your books and your vests.'

‘And yet you never change your mind!' said Mr. Jobson. ‘It's almost unbelievable, isn't it, Hobson?'

‘It is undeniably dirty,' said Mr. Hobson.

‘Do you notice a curious smell in the room?' asked Mr. Jobson.

‘There
isn't
a smell in the room,' bellowed the Judge.

‘Oh yes, there is, and a very nasty smell too,' said Mr. Hobson, holding his nose.

‘You really ought to change your mind,' said Mr. Jobson, also holding his nose.

‘Get out of my house!' shouted the Judge.

‘With pleasure,' said Mr. Hobson.

‘We shall feel all the better for some fresh air,' said Mr. Jobson.

Then they both stood up, and putting on their bowler hats—which, when they came in, they had laid on the floor beside them—walked out of the library in a dignified manner, and closed the door carefully behind them. The Judge was in such a furious temper that he took off his wig, threw it on the floor, and began to jump on it.

He had jumped on it three times when the door opened a little way and Mr. Jobson again appeared in the narrow entrance. He was still holding his nose.

‘By odly reasod for returdig,' he said, ‘is to rebide you that cleadlidess is dext to godlidess.'

At about nine o'clock that night Dinah and Dorinda heard someone whistling in the garden. They had gone to bed but they were still wide awake, and as soon as they heard the whistle repeated they got up, put on slippers and dressing-gowns, and going quietly downstairs, went into the garden through the french window in the dining-room. In a corner of the rhododendron shrubbery they found Mr. Hobson and Mr. Jobson.

They listened with great interest while the two lawyers described their interview with the Judge, and were filled with admiration of their cleverness.

‘Now we have done all we can,' said Mr. Hobson, ‘but whether we shall be successful or not depends on what you can do.'

‘We have cut the bread, but you must toast it,' said Mr. Jobson.

‘I don't quite see what you mean,' said Dinah.

‘We have put a certain idea into the Judge's head,' said Mr. Hobson. ‘Namely, that a person who doesn't change his mind is no better than a person who doesn't change his shirt or his socks.'

‘And you,' said Mr. Jobson, ‘must show him the dreadful consequence of
not
changing his mind.'

‘Of course!' said Dinah. ‘Now I understand.'

‘So do I,' said Dorinda, ‘and I've thought of something already. Something we can do, I mean.'

‘In that case,' said Mr. Hobson, ‘Mr. Jobson and I will go home and start work on our next case. We are busy men, we lawyers.'

‘We're very, very grateful to you indeed,' said Dinah, ‘and now will you please tell us how much we owe you?'

‘How much have you got?' asked Mr. Jobson.

‘Sixteen and elevenpence,' said Dinah. ‘Did you remember to bring it with you, Dorinda?'

‘Here it is,' said Dorinda, taking a knotted handkerchief from the pocket of her dressing-gown.

‘Sixteen and elevenpence is what we always charge for a case of this kind,' said Mr. Hobson politely.

Dinah untied the knots and spread the handkerchief out on the grass. ‘I'm afraid you'll find it rather difficult to divide it evenly between you,' she said.

Mr. Hobson and Mr. Jobson knelt down, and with their forefingers stirred the coins on the handkerchief.

‘Not at all,' said Mr. Jobson. ‘I see there are twice as many half-crowns as shillings, and the number of ha'pennies is the same as the number of shillings and half-crowns added together, including that very shiny bob with the head of Queen Victoria on it. Then, if you add to that the number of two-shilling pieces, the total is one and a half times the number of pennies. Now let me see . . .'

‘There are two single shillings,' said Mr. Hobson, ‘and if you multiply the number of half-crowns by that you will get the exact number of pennies. It's perfectly easy, Jobson. We divide the sixteen shillings and elevenpence into two exactly equal halves by taking eleven coins each. There are no complaints and nothing left over.—Good heavens, what's that?'

It was growing dark by now in the shadow of the bushes, and from the depths of the shrubbery, facing Mr. Hobson as he knelt on the grass, there had suddenly appeared two small and golden lights, as though a pair of tiny lamps were shining there.

‘Don't be alarmed,' said Dorinda kindly. ‘It's just a friend of ours.' And softly she called, ‘Good-evening, Puma.'

She was answered by a curious sound that was half a cough and half a growl, and at the same moment there was a rushing noise in the twilit air, and something with great wings came swooping down, and abruptly soared again.

‘And
that
?' asked Mr. Hobson in a trembling voice. ‘What was that?'

‘Another of our friends,' said Dinah, and putting her hands to her mouth she cried upwards to the sky: ‘Hullo, Falcon!'

Mr. Hobson and Mr. Jobson rose to their feet.

‘I think,' said Mr. Jobson, ‘that it's time we were going.'

‘It's getting late,' said Mr. Hobson, and looked nervously at the little golden lamps in the shrubbery.

‘So good-night,' said Mr. Jobson, ‘and good luck.'

‘We're terribly grateful,' said Dinah and Dorinda. ‘Terribly grateful!' they cried more loudly, for by now the two lawyers were hurrying away as fast as they could.

Then the Falcon, stooping out of the darkening sky, dropped swiftly down and landed, light as a feather, on Dinah's shoulder, while the Puma came noiselessly out of the shrubbery and put her head between Dorinda's hands. They all made themselves comfortable on the grass, and had a long talk.

It was Dinah and Dorinda who talked most, for they were eager to tell of the progress they had made towards getting Mr. Corvo out of prison, and to describe what they meant to do next. They had made all their plans by now, and they wanted the Falcon to help by bringing them half a dozen mice.

‘Alive or dead?' asked the Falcon politely.

‘Oh, dead!' said Dinah hurriedly. ‘Quite dead, please.'

‘You are busy creatures, you human beings,' said the Puma with a yawn. ‘You are always planning something, making something, or talking about something. It must be very tiring.'

‘What have you been doing to-day?' asked Dorinda.

‘Nothing,' said the Puma. ‘Nothing at all, except living.'

‘It was so fine a day,' said the Falcon. ‘One of the loveliest days I have ever seen.'

‘Was it?' asked Dinah. ‘We have had so much to think about that we hardly noticed what it was like.'

‘That was foolish,' said the Puma.

‘I think it was wicked,' said the Falcon. ‘You wouldn't waste food or drink, would you? Then why do you waste fine weather?'

‘But we had things to
do
,' said Dinah.

‘That's the worst of being human,' said the Puma.

‘You know the north end of the Forest?' asked the Falcon. ‘The ground climbs to a hill, and then falls steeply away. Near the highest part of the hill there was a landslide, many hundreds of years ago, and the rock is still naked there, a cliff rises out of the sloping wood. That is where we spent the day. I sat on a ledge of the rock, with fifty miles of landscape below me, and the Puma lay upon the branch of a great tree, with the sun sifting through the leaves upon her.'

‘Some time,' said the Puma, ‘when you are tired of doing things, you must come and spend a whole day with us. Not doing anything, but simply being. You will feel all the better for it.'

‘But didn't you get hungry?' asked Dorinda.

‘I had a good supper last night,' said the Puma. ‘I killed a fat lamb.'

‘Whose was it?' asked Dinah.

‘How should I know? It was mine when I had killed it.'

They talked for a little while longer, and then the Puma and the Falcon went back to the Forest, Dinah and Dorinda to bed.

But they didn't go to sleep very quickly, because they were rather worried to hear that the Puma had begun to kill sheep.

‘And it's no use telling her that it's wrong to kill them because they belong to someone,' said Dinah unhappily. ‘She simply wouldn't understand.'

‘But you're not sorry that we let her out of the zoo?'

‘No, of course not, we couldn't do anything else after we'd made friends with her. But whenever you do anything, something always seems to happen because of it. That's what makes life difficult.'

‘Well, she'll be very hard to catch,' said Dorinda comfortingly. ‘I shouldn't think a farmer could ever catch her.'

They talked for a little longer, then grew drowsy without noticing it, and when they woke in the morning they found that the Falcon had already been to visit them, and had left six dead field-mice on their window-sill.

‘Go and get one of Father's big handkerchiefs, and we'll make a little bag to carry them,' said Dinah.

Dorinda went along the passage to her father's deserted dressing-room, and found a handkerchief. She stood thinking for a moment, and then, with a sudden idea that delighted her, ran back to their own room, and exclaimed as she threw open the door, ‘Dinah! I know exactly where we ought to put them.'

‘Where?'

‘Wait till we get there,' said Dorinda, ‘and I'll show you.'

‘Do you remember,' said Dorinda after breakfast, ‘that quite a long time ago, before Father had gone abroad, we went down to the river, and I happened to have a fork, and we caught two eels?'

‘And put them in a bottle that we found,' said Dinah.

‘And then put a cork in the bottle, to prevent them from getting out.'

‘And took the bottle home, and left it behind the tool-shed, and then we forgot all about it.'

‘The eels must be dead by now,' said Dorinda.

‘Horribly dead,' said Dinah thoughtfully. ‘It was very naughty of us, but all the same they may be useful.'

‘That's just what I was thinking.'

‘And the three kippers that we bought yesterday are beginning to smell already.'

‘We've got all we need now except the postcards,' said Dorinda, ‘and we can write them while we're doing our lessons.'

In the afternoon they walked over the fields to Mr. Justice Rumple's house on the other side of the river. They avoided Midmeddlecum, because they were carrying several parcels which they did not wish to be seen. They had chosen the proper time to arrive—the time when the Judge, with his Cook and his Tablemaid and his Housemaid, usually went out to have a game of clock-golf—and because the dining-room window was wide open, and the sill no more than two feet from the ground, they got in quite easily, without anyone seeing them, and without having to ring the bell or knock at the door.