William and the Pop Singers (Just William, Book 35)

by Richmal Crompton

  “An’ these with pink cream in are smashin’, too,” said Ginger.

  “An’ so are these,” said William. “The ones with blobs of jam in the middle.”

  The earnest expression returned to his face. “It’s goin’ to be jolly diff’cult to help him ’cause we’ve got to pretend we don’t know who he is. You see, Scotland Yard like workin' on their own. He’d try an put us right off if he thought we knew. He wouldn’t let us go anywhere near him, an’ then we wouldn’t be able to help him at all. We’ve got to be jolly careful . . . I say! Biscuits an’ potato crisps taste jolly good together, don’t they?”

  “Yes,” said Ginger, “an’ they taste better still mixed with dates. I’m goin’ to try a sort of sandwich with a date in the middle an’ a potato crisp an’ a biscuit on each side." They munched in silence for some time, then William said, “They’ve prob’ly found out by now that this Meredith’s a high-up person from Scotland Yard an' that he’s on their tracks.”

  “Y—yes,” said Ginger. The faintly puzzled expression flickered over his face again, then vanished as he finally gave up all attempt to disentangle fact and fiction in his mind. In William’s they now formed a glorious kaleidoscope, full of movement and colour and romance. “Yes, of course.”

  Mr Wansford was mildly surprised to find himself closely shadowed by the two boys for the next few days. He dismissed them brusquely when he came upon them examining the contents of his golf bag and testing his clubs. (William suspected that a bomb might have been placed there by his enemies). They then turned their attention to the course itself and carried on an extensive examination of its equipment, paying special attention to the tee boxes, which William considered might be a convenient hiding place for the diamonds, until they were ejected by an indignant secretary who refused to accept—or even listen to―their carefully prepared excuse of “nature study”.

  But on the following day the annual fair arrived at Hadley and, in the excitement of visiting it—in authorised or unauthorised fashion—every day, they completely forgot Meredith and the desperate gang of criminals ranged against him. It was not till he saw an announcement of the Golf Club Social that William was recalled to a sense of his duty. Consternation and dismay swept over him.

  “Gosh, Ginger,” he said, “we can’t let him go to it. That’s where they kidnap him an’ put him to all the ghastly tortures. I wish I hadn’t made them so ghastly now. I wish I hadn’t made them pull out his teeth an' his nails. We ought to’ve been doin’ somethin’ all this time. There he is, gettin’ nearer an’ nearer the jaws of death an’ we’ve done nothin’ at all.”

  “P’raps he won’t go to this Social thing,” said Ginger reassuringly.

  “I bet they’ll make him,” said William. “I bet they’ll fetch him if he doesn’t. They’ve found out who he is an’ what he’s doin’ an’ they’ve got this kidnappin’ an’ torturin’ all fixed up. Miss Golightly’s set on it. She’s determined to find out who gave the gang away . . . I shouldn’t be s’prised if it was General Moult.”

  “Or Mr Wakely,” said Ginger. “He’s head of the p’lice an’ he might be playin’ a double game.”

  “I wish I hadn’t made those tortures so ghastly,” said William. “There’s one where they hang him up by his feet with his head in a bucket of water. I wish I hadn’t put that one in.”

  “Could we go to the golf course again an’ find some proof an’ get ’em all put in prison before this Golf Social thing comes off?”

  “Gosh, no! They’re on the look-out for us. Why, they sent us off that time we jus’ went to do a bit of quiet nature study. That showed they’ve got guilty consciences, alI right.”

  “We did mess up the tee boxes, you know,” Ginger reminded him.

  “Huh! That was nothin’,” said William. “They jus’ used that to stop us findin’ out their guilty secrets. Tell you what we mus’ do . . . warn Meredith.”

  “When?”

  “Now. Come on!”

  They found Mr Wansford in the kitchen of Clematis Cottage, clearing away the remains of his lunch.

  “Hello!” he greeted them cheerfully. “How are you getting on?”

  “All right, thanks,” said William.

  “Have a banana,” said Mr Wansford, pointing to a dish of fruit on the table.

  “Thanks,” said William, putting a banana in his pocket and handing one to Ginger. Then he cleared his throat portentously and added, “You goin’ to this Golf Club Social?”

  “Yes,” said Mr Wansford. “One might as well be sociable. Have a pear.”

  “Thanks,” said William, selecting the two largest. “I say . . ”

  “Yes?”

  “I—I don’t think you ought to go to that Social.”

  Mr Wansford looked at him in surprise. “Why ever not?”

  "There’s reasons,” said William darkly.

  “The jaws of death,” said Ginger.

  “Fiends in human shape,” said William.

  “Oh, come!” laughed Mr Wansford. “You’ve been listening to one of the more disgruntled members. Some of them do play a pretty selfish game, I admit, but—fiends in human shape! Definitely not! Now run off, boys. I have a lot to do this afternoon.”

  Reluctantly they left the cottage and made their way down the road to William’s house.

  “He’s set on goin’,” said William gloomily, peeling banana and throwing the skin into the ditch, “an’ he' tryin’ to put us off the scent.”

  “Seems like it,” agreed Ginger.

  “I think he’s beginnin’ to suspect we know too much," said William. “How many bites can you eat your banana in?”

  A silent contest took place.

  “I did mine in four,” said Ginger at last.

  “I did mine in three,” said William. “I won. Well, now listen . . . We’ve got to stop him goin’ to that Social thing. There’s one torture where they put nettles in his shoes an' make him walk about in them. I wish I hadn’t thought of that one. It’s ghastly. Well, we’ve got to do somethin’."

  “What?” said Ginger.

  “Oh, shut up!” said William. “Give me a bit of peace to think in, can’t you.”

  Ginger turned his eyes hopefully and respectfully on his friend and kept silence till William suddenly stopped short. The cloud had lifted from his brow. It shone with the light! of a dawning idea.

  “I think I’ve got it,” he said. “Now listen. This Social thing’s tomorrow night an’ we’ve got to stop him goin' to the Club for it, ’cause if he did he’d get kidnapped an' tortured, so we’ll have to find somewhere else for him to go to so that he’ll think he’s goin’ to the Social but isn’t really.”

  “Yes—yes?” said Ginger with mingled doubt and apprehension in his voice. “But where?”

  “Well, there’s The Hall,” said William.

  “The Hall? I don’t see how that comes into it.”

  “Gosh, aren’t you stupid!” said William helplessly. “It’s empty, isn’t it? The Botts are away.”

  "Yes, but there’s a caretaker there.”

  "Ole Mr Miggs . . . Yeh, but it’s Thursday tomorrow an’ on Thursdays he goes over to Marleigh to see his daughter an’ then he calls at all the pubs on his way home an’ doesn’t get back till late. I’ve heard people talkin’ about it.”

  “Well?” said Ginger.

  “Well, don’t you see! We can get this Mr Meredith to go to The Hall ’stead of the Club an’ we can keep him there till the danger’s over.”

  “How can we?” said Ginger.

  “We’ll have the front door open. I can open it ’cause I know where Mrs Bott keeps her spare key in the toolshed, an’ when he’s gone in we’ll put Jumble to guard the front door. He ought to be able to do it all right. He’s had enough p’lice dog trainin’.”

  “He’s never really taken to it,” put in Ginger.

  William ignored the interruption. “An’ we’ll fix up somethin’ at the back door so’s he can’t get out.”


  “But how’re you goin’ to get him in, to start with?”

  “Oh, it’ll be easy enough,” said William airily. “I’ll jus’ send him a message.”

  “I bet it won’t be as easy as that!” said Ginger.

  But, oddly enough, it was.

  An ancient crone called Mrs Parkinson came for an hour each morning to “do” Clematis Cottage. During that hour she mooched about the cottage with mop and feather duster, idly flicking such objects as came within her range of vision. It was while she was engaged in flicking her feather duster over the surface of the kitchen linoleum that the telephone bell rang. A deep gruff voice informed her that it wished to leave a message for Mr Meredith, correcting the name almost immediately afterwards to Mr Wansford. Mrs Parkinson fetched a pencil and wrote down the message on the paper the bread had been wrapped in, hung it on the hat stand, and returned to her feather duster.

  William and Ginger, with Jumble in unwilling attendance lurked near the gate of Clematis Cottage the next evening to watch Mr Wansford emerge from his front door, then followed him down the road with mounting anxiety till he reached the lane that led to the golf club. He passed it and continued his way down the road that led to The Hall.

  “Good!” said William with a sigh of relief. “We’ve saved him! Gosh! Think of ’em all there waitin’ for him with all those ghastly tortures an’ him not turnin’ up. I ’spect they’re all there ’cept Miss Golightly. She’ll be at Rose Mount sending out secret radio messages that they don’t know where they come from telling them when to start the tortures an’ how long to do them an’ that sort of thing."

  “P’raps he’s not goin’ to The Hall,” said Ginger. “P’raps he’s jus’ goin’ into the village to get some cigarettes."

  “No, he’s not,” said William. “Look! He’s goin’ into The Hall gates.”

  And, sure enough, Mr Wansford was turning into the gateway of The Hall and making his way slowly and rather uncertainly up the drive.

  William and Ginger had not been idle during the day. Besides the telephone call (for which William had practised his “grown-up” voice till he was almost too hoarse to speak) they had secured the spare key to the front door, unlocked it, and left it ajar.

  Jumble had been enlisted in their service under protest. Jumble disliked his police-dog role and evaded it whenever possible. He had evolved a technique of non-co-operation that he was finding highly successful: he simply behaved as if he were not there at all. He allowed himself to be led— or dragged—to the scene of his police duties and there he lay down and dozed till his term of duty was over. He accompanied William and Ginger now in the aimless fashion of a sleep-walker as they followed Mr Wansford up the drive of The Hall, slipping from the cover of one shrub to the cover of the next, concealing themselves hastily whenever he seemed about to turn round.

  Mr Wansford hesitated for a moment at the front door, rang the bell, waited, rang the bell again, hesitated again for a few more moments, then pushed open the door and vanished inside.

  “Got him!” said William triumphantly. “Let’s fix Jumble an’ then go round to the back.”

  Jumble, assigned his post on the front door mat, stretched himself out as comfortably as he could, his nose between his paws.

  “On guard! Good dog!” whispered William.

  Jumble opened one eye, gave William a sardonic glance and settled down to sleep.

  William and Ginger went round to the back of the house, fixed up a wire entanglement at the back door which, they thought, would effectively prevent their prisoner’s escape, then crept round to the long veranda that sheltered the library window and peered cautiously through the glass.

  The library was a square, little-used room. The Botts’ tastes were not literary and the books that lined the walls bad a decorative rather than functional purpose. The room had two doors. One, made of oak, led into the hall. The other, inadequately camouflaged by painted books (a

  “whim” of Mrs Bott’s), led into a small breakfast room beyond.

  Mr Wansford was there, walking to and fro, glancing every now and then at his watch, gazing about him with a slightly bewildered expression. Occasionally he would stop by the bookshelves, take down a book, turn over a page or two, put it back and continue his restless pacing to and fro.

  “I wish he could find an excitin’ book,” whispered William. “Then he’d get int’rested an’ forget the time an'—"

  He stopped. The colour had faded from his cheeks. “Gosh,” he breathed.

  For the camouflaged door was slowly opening. It opened to its full width and Miss Golightly appeared in the aperture.

  “Gosh!” said William again. “We’ve led him straight into the jaws of death.”

  “How did she know he was here?” whispered Ginger.

  “I dunno, but she did,”'said William. “Be quiet an’ let’s try an’ hear what they’re sayin’.”

  The two inside the room were speaking to each other, but William and Ginger could hear no words. They could only see the movements of their lips.

  “I bet she’s sayin’ that if he doesn’t tell her who gave the gang away she’ll start puttin’ him to those tortures . . . He’s talkin’ now. He’s tellin’ her he won’t . . . "

  “She’s talkin’ now,” said Ginger.

  “Yes, she’s tellin’ him that she’s got the tortures all ready in the dungeon.”

  “There isn’t one.”

  “There’s a coal cellar that can be used as a dungeon. I bet she’s got ’em all ready. He’s talkin’ now. He’s tellin’ her that his lips are sealed.”

  “She’s talkin’ now. I bet she’s tellin’ him about hangin’ him up by his feet with his head in a bucket of water ... "

  “Come on!” said William. “We’ve got to rescue him.”

  “How can we?”

  “I tell you, we’ve got to. I once read about some people rescuin’ a person by creatin’ a disturbance an’ shoutin’ ‘Fire!’ an’ then rescuin’ the person while the disturbance was goin’ on. An '—tell you what! We can do more than that. There’s a real fire extinguisher we can squirt at her. I know where its kept cause I watched Mr Bott fillin' it up an’ puttin’ it away in the hall. He put water in it ’cause he said he hadn’t any of the right stuff an’ anyway water made less of a mess than the right stuff, an’ I bet if we squirted water out of it at Miss Golightly we’d get her so’s she couldn’t see or hear an' then while she couldn’t see or hear we’d rescue Meredith.”

  “Yes, but how?” said Ginger. “I bet she’ll turn savage when we’ve got her at bay. I bet she’s got the strength of ten when she’s at bay. A villainess like that would have.”

  “Tell you what!” said William. “We’ll comer her.”

  “Comer her?”

  “Yes. There’s a sort of trolley in the hall an’ one of us can shoot the water out at her an’ the other can run the trolley at her an’ pin her in a comer of the room so she can’t escape an’—an’ rescue Meredith—Come on. Let’s get started.” He paused for a moment or two to watch the couple inside the room. “They’re talkin'—He’s shakin’ his head—He’s still sayin’ he won’t—Come on quick!”

  Mr Wansford had turned sharply from the bookshelves when Miss Golightly entered the room.

  “Oh . . . " she said. “I don’t know who you are, but the Botts are away.”

  “The Botts?” he said vaguely.

  “Yes. They’ve shut up the house and gone to Scotland for a month or two. My name’s Miss Golightly. I’m having rather large-scale alterations done at my school, and Mrs Bott kindly said I could spend a night here whenever the invasion became too much for me. It’s become too much for me today so I’ve taken refuge here.”

  “But—I understood that the Golf Gub Social was being held here.”

  Miss Golightly stared at him.

  "However did you get that idea?" she said.

  “Mrs Parkinson gave me the message. She wrote it down but she may have got it conf
used.”

  “Knowing Mrs Parkinson," said Miss Golightly dryly, “I should think it more than likely. I haven’t met you before, by the way have I?”

  “My name’s Wansford. I’ve come here for a short golfing holiday and I’ve joined the club as a temporary member.”

  “How odd!” said Miss Golightly. “I mean I can’t quite understand why anyone should choose this particular neighbourhood for a golfing holiday. I don’t play the game myself, but I’m told the course is infamous.”

  “It’s not too good,” said Mr Wansford, “but actually I had another object in coming here. I have an aunt who’s fanatically interested in the family history, as aunts are apt to be, and she persuaded me to come along to this district to find out what I can about a branch of the family that used to live around here. They migrated to Australia in 1840, and my aunt is most anxious to find out whether any trace of them can be found.”

  “What was the name of the man who emigrated?”

  “Thomas Golightly.”

  “Oh but how thrilling! I’m a native of these parts myself you know and Thomas Golightly was my great grandfather. His grandson, my father, returned here, but he was completely uninterested in the family. Now I, on the contrary, have always been intensely interested and I’ve always meant, when I had more leisure, to try to discover the other branches of the family.”

  “I must put you in touch with my aunt,” said Mr Wansford. “She has a whole roomful of papers and diaries and family trees. She’ll be delighted to hear that I’ve found the missing branch.”

  “And I’m delighted to find the missing tree,” said Miss Golightly. “Now do tell me—” She stopped and looked round. “I thought I heard the sound of scuffling outside in the hall. I―”

  And then the two doors burst open.

  William charged through one, brandishing his fire extinguisher, and Ginger charged through the other, hurtling his trolley before him. But, unfortunately, no rehearsal had been possible and their sense of direction misfired. They charged across the room full tilt into each other. William directed his fire extinguisher into Ginger’s face and Ginger drove his trolley with all his might against