The Wind on the Moon (8 page)

‘They recently had a great sorrow,' Sir Lankester explained. ‘A few days ago Lady Lil laid her first egg. It was a most beautiful egg, and they were naturally very proud of it. So indeed were we all. But then the most dreadful thing happened. The egg disappeared! We searched for it everywhere, but no trace of it could be found. It was a complete mystery. And Sir Bobadil and Lady Lil, poor things, were almost heart-broken. But yesterday she laid a second egg, and they were so delighted that both of them, I hope, have by now forgotten their sad loss. Because, after all, one egg is very like another. And there, beside the lime-trees, is where they live.'

‘Something's up,' said Mr. Plum.

‘What do you mean?' asked Sir Lankester.

‘With the Ostriches,' said Mr. Plum. ‘What are they making all that noise for?'

As they came near the enclosure they could see the Ostriches striding up and down in a very agitated way. They were screaming at each other with anger in their voices, and Dinah and Dorinda were soon able to learn the reason for their quarrel.

‘It's all your fault!' Lady Lil was repeating. ‘Your fault entirely.
All
your fault. Oh, how I hate you!'

‘It wasn't my fault at all,' shouted Sir Bobadil. ‘I just went out for a walk—not a long walk, just a little walk—and I wasn't away for more than half an hour.'

‘After I had sat on it all night!' screamed Lady Lil. ‘All I asked you to do was to look after it for an hour or two, while I went for my breakfast, and when I came back you were nowhere to be seen, and
it
was nowhere to be seen, and now my heart is broken. Oh, whatever shall I do? First one, and then another! My lovely eggs, my dear, dear eggs! Oh, why did you go away? Why didn't you stay and look after it?'

‘I just went down to the river to have a word with the Black Swan,' said Sir Bobadil. ‘What harm was there in that?'

‘What harm?' exclaimed Lady Lil. ‘How dare you say a thing like that! My beautiful white egg has been stolen, because you wouldn't stay to look after it, and then you ask what harm you have done! Oh, you wicked, wicked Ostrich!'

‘No, not wicked,' cried Sir Bobadil. ‘Don't say I'm wicked. Please don't say that!'

‘Yes, you are,' said Lady Lil. ‘You have made me so unhappy, I think I shall die.'

‘It was my egg as well as yours,' said Sir Bobadil. ‘You needn't think that you are the only one to suffer. I've got a very, very tender heart, and at this very moment I'm suffering acutely. Perhaps I did make a mistake, but if so I'm paying for it now. I'm just as unhappy as you are, I'm sure I am. Perhaps I shall die too. So don't let us make things worse by quarrelling. Please don't quarrel with me, Lil.'

‘No, we shouldn't quarrel,' sobbed Lady Lil.

‘Then say you forgive me!' begged Sir Bobadil.

‘Are you truly sorry?'

‘Truly, truly sorry!'

‘Then I forgive you,' whispered his wife. ‘But all the same it was terribly wrong of you to go and leave it. Oh, wickedly wrong, foolishly wrong. So wrong that I can't think how you did it. And what can have happened to our lovely egg? To both our lovely eggs? What black-hearted thief has robbed us of our dear ones? Oh, where have they gone?'

‘If I had the miscreant here,' exclaimed Sir Bobadil, ‘I would make him sorry for his vile behaviour. Oh, comfort yourself, dear Lil, pray comfort yourself. Perhaps we shall find them yet.'

‘Never, never,' sighed Lady Lil, and hung her head, the picture of misery.

‘Oh dear, oh dear,' muttered Sir Bobadil. ‘Why was I so foolish?' And he too hung his head, and looked quite as unhappy as Lady Lil.

Though Dinah and Dorinda could understand the whole of this conversation, it meant nothing to Sir Lankester and Mr. Plum, and it was not until they had thoroughly searched the enclosure that they really knew what had happened.

‘The nest is empty,' said Sir Lankester.

‘Robbers,' said Mr. Plum.

‘But how could they do it?' asked Sir Lankester. ‘It's impossible for anybody to get into the park. The railings are charged with electricity: anybody who touched them would be electrocuted.'

‘Aeroplane,' said Mr. Plum. ‘Came down by parachute.'

‘Nonsense,' said Sir Lankester. ‘We should have heard an aeroplane, and if a parachutist did come down in the zoo, he couldn't get out again. No, no. The thief is in our midst!'

‘Don't ask me,' said Mr. Plum. ‘I'm a keeper, not a detective.'

‘A crime has been committed,' declared Sir Lankester. ‘There can be no doubt of that.'

‘Two crimes,' said Mr. Plum. ‘Two eggs, two crimes.'

‘Take the kangaroos back to their cage,' said Sir Lankester, ‘and I shall make another search.'

So Mr. Plum took charge of Dinah and Dorinda, and Sir Lankester looked here and there for the missing egg, and Sir Bobadil went searching in one direction, and Lady Lil in another. And the Barbary Sheep and the Fallow Deer who lived in the park came to help, and the other animals soon learnt what had happened, because news travels quickly in a zoo, and all grew very worried to think that one of them must be a thief. When they were let into the park, to play and take their exercise, they all gathered round the Ostriches' enclosure, and Sir Bobadil and Lady Lil had to tell their sad story over and over again. And every animal looked at every other animal and wondered who was the horrid miscreant.

Dinah and Dorinda were not allowed into the park, because it was only their first day in the zoo, and Sir Lankester thought that new arrivals ought to stay in their cages to begin with, and settle down. So for a week they had a very dull time, and though they were sorry for the Ostriches, they were also very sorry for themselves.

‘Lady Lil may have lost her egg,' said Dinah, ‘but I don't think that's any worse than losing our magic draught. Because Lady Lil, I daresay, can lay another egg, but we can't get more medicine without going to see Mrs. Grimble. And if we don't get any more, we shall have to be kangaroos for the rest of our lives.'

‘Don't ask me,' said Mr. Plum

‘Perhaps we can escape,' said Dorinda.

‘Sir Lankester said that no thief could get into the zoo, or out of it either. All the railings are electrified. And if a thief can't get out, how shall we?'

‘We may find some way that Sir Lankester doesn't know about,' said Dorinda.

‘We shall have a good look round, of course,' said Dinah, ‘as soon as they let us out into the park. Sir Lankester
may
be wrong. People often are.'

‘Very often,' said Dorinda.

Every day they ate a good dinner which Mr. Plum brought them. It usually consisted of some hay and some turnips, a few pounds of carrots, a couple of cabbages, and a bucket of beans. And carrots and hay, to their surprise, now tasted rather like roast chicken and chocolate pudding, so they enjoyed their dinner and often went to sleep for a little while afterwards. But when they woke up they generally felt very sad and lonely, and it was all they could do to keep from crying. They used to go to bed quite early.

One night when they had been sleeping for two or three hours, perhaps, Dinah woke and saw a light shining faintly through a chink in the left-hand wall of their little house. On the other side of the wall lived Bendigo the Grizzly Bear, and Dinah wondered why there should be a light in his house. Perhaps he was ill?

She got up and peeped through the chink in the wall, and what she saw was most surprising.

A candle, about three inches long, stood in its own wax on the edge of the feeding-trough in Bendigo's house, and Bendigo himself, sitting comfortably in the corner beside it, was reading
The Times
!

She recognised the newspaper at once, because her father always read it when he was at home, and she had, indeed, seen a copy of it only that morning—a copy of it sticking out of Sir Lankester's pocket as he leaned against Bendigo's cage on his daily round. She remembered the look of it quite clearly. And then she remembered something else: there was no newspaper in Sir Lankester's pocket when he walked away again! Where had it gone?

There could be only one answer: Bendigo had stolen it. Bendigo was a thief! And since he was a thief, perhaps it was he who had stolen the egg from Lady Lil?

She was so excited by this possibility that she quite forgot how strange it was to see a Grizzly Bear reading a newspaper. She woke Dorinda and told her to keep very quiet and look through the chink in the wall.

Dorinda had a good look, and then she whispered, ‘Did you know that bears could read?'

‘No,' whispered Dinah.

‘It just shows,' murmured Dorinda, ‘how much we
don't
know.'

‘He must have stolen it from Sir Lankester,' said Dinah. ‘
The Times
, I mean.'

‘Perhaps he's only pretending to read it,' said Dorinda. ‘Look again, and see if he's holding it the right way up.'

At that moment, however, the light in Bendigo's house went out.

‘Do you think he heard us talking?' asked Dinah, and held Dorinda's hand.

For two or three minutes all was quiet, and then Dorinda whispered, ‘I can hear somebody else talking!'

They both listened, and from the cage on the other side, that belonged to Mr. Parker the Giraffe, they heard the low mutter of another voice.

Moving as quietly as they could, they looked out from the door of their house and saw against the starry sky the tall shape and the long dark neck of their other neighbour. He was pacing slowly to and fro, as if deep in thought, and talking very quietly to himself.

‘A very baffling mystery,' he was saying. ‘Very baffling indeed. The Case of the Stolen Ostrich Eggs. As baffling a case as I can remember. There were, to begin with, no footprints: that makes it baffling. There is, so far as I can see, no motive for the theft: that makes it more baffling. And as we don't know who the thief is, we can't ask him if he's got an alibi: and that makes it utterly baffling.'

Mr. Parker walked up and down for a minute or two without saying anything at all. But his head, nodding so wisely among the stars, showed that he was thinking very hard indeed.

‘A note-book!' he suddenly exclaimed. ‘If I had a note-book, I could write down the various clues, the names of everybody I have cause to suspect, and so on and so forth. But without a note-book, what can I do? What could any detective do? Nothing at all!'

‘If you please,' exclaimed Dinah, ‘I've got a note-book, and if you really want it, I'll be glad to lend it to you.'

Mr. Parker was almost frightened out of his skin. He had not known that anyone was listening to him, and to hear a strange kangaroo making so curious an offer was quite unnerving. In a single bound he leapt into his house, and though the door was ten feet high, he knocked his head on the lintel, and at once began to shout, ‘Oh, oh, somebody hit me! I'm sure somebody hit me!'

Half a minute later, very cautiously, he poked out his long neck and asked, ‘Was it you who hit me?'

‘Of course we didn't,' said Dinah.

‘Then who did?'

‘You hit yourself,' said Dorinda.

‘My mother often told me that I didn't know my own strength,' said Mr. Parker sadly, and bending his head very low, he rubbed the sore place with his right hind hoof. Then abruptly he demanded: ‘Who are you?'

‘My name is Dinah Palfrey, and this is my sister Dorinda.'

‘Then you are in disguise,' said Mr. Parker.

‘I suppose we are,' said Dinah.

‘Why?' asked Mr. Parker.

‘It's rather hard to explain,' said Dinah.

‘A very suspicious circumstance,' said Mr. Parker. ‘Very suspicious indeed. Are you fond of eggs?'

‘Not ostrich eggs.'

‘I wonder,' said Mr. Parker. ‘I wonder very much indeed. I wonder, I wonder, I wonder!'

And suddenly withdrawing his head, he shut his door with a bang.

The morning was quiet. Dinah and Dorinda sat in their cage and nobody spoke to them till Sir Lankester came and said good-morning. ‘We are going to let you out in the park this afternoon,' he said, ‘and I hope you will enjoy yourselves.'

Mr. Parker walked up and down, and often looked at them with a very suspicious eye, but he said nothing, and they didn't like to speak to him unless he spoke first. Bendigo slept in the sun.

But in the afternoon, just before the animals were let out to play and take their exercise, Mr. Parker put his head over the bars of his cage and whispered to Dinah, ‘Bring your note-book!'

Then Mr. Plum came round, opening doors, and said to Dinah and Dorinda, ‘Now see and behave yourselves, and if so you'll have a good time like the others.'

So they went out in a very quiet and modest way, though they were both excited by the thought of a little freedom and the prospect of meeting so many strange animals.