Archer's Mystery At Mainswell

by Edward Fisher

  As if in confirmation of his statement the study door flew open and their father appeared. ‘Breakfast, good. Someone using the phone?’ He looked quizzically at the youngsters. ‘Only there’s a load of noise on the line and I can’t dial out.’

  ‘Yeah, just letting Rebecca know when we’ll arrive. It’s probably finished by now.’

  ‘You’re using the computer to talk to Rebecca while you’re having breakfast?’

  ‘Sort of, Dad,’ and Mark explained again how his program Cyclops worked.

  ‘Well, my boy, it seems you are definitely onto something with that one. Glad to see you do something useful on the computer once in a while.’

  ‘Look, Dad, I’m going to leave the PC on while we’re away. That way we can send you messages if we want to. I’ll set it to pick up anything from my Internet address twice a day, first thing in the morning and late at night. If I leave the printer hooked up it will print out anything we send and you can read it when you have time.’

  ‘That’s fine by me, if you want to play your little games. How can we contact you?’

  ‘Telephone?’ suggested the older boy.

  ‘But, Mark,’ interjected his mother, ‘that isn’t cool, remember?’

  ‘Pardon?’ The boy’s father looked puzzled.

  ‘It’s okay Dad, just Mum having a little joke. If you want to talk to us, the best way is to phone Uncle Jack, and we’ll ring you back.’

  ‘Right,’ continued the woman holding the frying pan in her left hand, ‘who’s for eggs and bacon?’

  The fried food was served and the family settled down to a few moments of peace as it was devoured. The family, that is, except for one member: Archer. He had smelled the bacon being cooked. His eyes had watered as he remembered days when such smells had brought him generous titbits from young children who regularly disobeyed their father’s instruction not to feed the dog at table. His tongue hung loose with sadness as he remembered how those titbits stopped as the boys had grown older. Then, with watering eyes and a hanging-out tongue, Archer wove in and out of the chairs, brushing people’s legs in the forlorn hope that he would be remembered. Alas, there would be no titbits forthcoming this morning unless, Archer surmised, something was to happen. A plan formed in his doggy brain. He somehow sensed that he was about to go on holiday, and he was in a jovial mood.

  He slipped unnoticed beneath the table and made his way to being just in front of the boys’ father. This was an old game to him and he could almost guarantee it would work. Nonchalantly he sidled up to the man and let his big tongue rest on the man’s lap. Then, seemingly still unnoticed he eyed the fork of bacon that was being lifted to the man’s mouth. He nodded inwardly with appreciation at the precariousness with which the bacon rested on the fork. In one swift movement, and with an agility that had been honed to perfection over the years, Archer let out one raw, penetrating bark.

  The result was as instantaneous as it was guaranteed. The boys’ father hurled his chair backwards in surprise, his fork jerking aimlessly in the air. With the eagle eye of a veteran campaigner, Archer watched the bacon rise from the fork and begin its descent to the floor. No sooner had the chair begun its backwards travel than Archer stirred. He lunged forwards and upwards until his mouth, now wide open in expectation, was in the perfect place to receive the lost, aimless, bacon. The catch was, as always, perfect, and the morsel had been swallowed with relish for some moments before the dog had fled the breakfast room.

  ‘That blasted dog,’ began the boy’s father as he recovered from the shock, gets worse every day. Now it thinks it can eat my breakfast too. I’m telling you, after this holiday it goes. We find it a home where it will be looked after, where there’s space for it to play its stupid games.’

  His fury was finally drowned out by the raucous laughter coming from the other members of the family.

  ‘Funny,’ said James between laughs.

  ‘What’s funny?’ returned the father.

  ‘Funny it’s you he always picks on for his little antics. Perhaps he does it to wind you up. Perhaps he senses you don’t like him and he’s just trying to tell you the feeling’s mutual.’

  ‘The dog goes when you guys have had your holiday.’

  ‘Dad, you can’t do that, it’s not fair.’

  ‘What isn’t fair?’

  ‘It’s not fair to take it out on a dumb, helpless animal.’ Mark was almost serious now and his father couldn’t be sure if the boy was being sincere or still joking.

  ‘That creature is not dumb, and nor is it helpless. When you come home, it goes. I’ve had enough. End of conversation.’ The boy’s father looked at them seriously and they knew better than to answer back.

  Breakfast finished, the boys helped tidy away. Their father retired to his precious study and was deeply engrossed in his work when the letterbox opened and shut as the morning paper was delivered. Archer, the canine disaster zone, had reappeared after the boys’ father had left the breakfast table. If dogs could grin, this dog was grinning. After all, he’d won another victory. Now he saw the paper lying on the mat he saw one further chance to score a point over his old adversary. He was looking at the paper when James appeared at the top of the stairs.

  ‘Archer,’ he hissed in a voice that was low enough to hopefully attract the dog’s attention without disturbing his father. ‘Archer,’ he hissed a little louder when the dog ignored him, but it was too late. The dog had a one-track mind that seemed hell-bent on destruction that morning. He padded noiselessly over to the mat. Sticking out his large pink tongue, which he diligently wrapped round the paper, he folded his teeth round the bundle and bit hard. Then he dropped the paper onto the mat and picked it up again, still without any undue commotion or noise. This was not the action of a mischievous puppy playing a game, James surmised as he began to walk down the stairs, but rather a skilfully worked out strategy of carefully planned moves. Five times the dog picked up, chewed and dropped the newspaper until it was a soggy mess that was totally unreadable. Then the dog picked up the paper and walked to the study door. Raising his right paw, Archer began to stroke the door, gently at first but more forcefully as time progressed. After a few seconds, and unheard to all but the canine, the occupant in the room pushed back the chair behind the desk and took three big strides across the deep-pile carpet in the direction of the door. Archer dropped the paper on the third stride and, just as the door-handle turned, he fled upstairs out of sight, pushing the boy back into the wall as he passed. The door opened, and as it did so James, recovering from his canine assault, retreated quickly back up to the landing.

  ‘Archer,’ the voice at the study door screamed as the occupant retrieved the soggy mass. ‘Just wait until I get my hands on you, you damn dog. This is the last straw. This time you go, holiday or no holiday.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ The boys’ mother had appeared from the lounge and looked perplexed at the sudden disturbance.

  ‘That blasted dog has eaten the paper again. This time it’s curtains.’

  ‘Now, now, dear, in two hours the dog will be gone for a whole fortnight, so just calm down and get back on with your work. James,’ continued his mother as she spotted him at the top of the stairs, ‘if you find the dog, will you keep him locked up somewhere where he can’t disturb your father?’

  ‘Okay, Mum.’

  With a grunt of disapproval the study door was slammed shut, and a few seconds later the soggy newspaper was consigned to the rubbish bin.

  ‘Archer,’ said James a few moments later when he joined the dog in his bedroom, ‘you’re a very naughty dog, annoying Father like that. Now I have to keep you up here until we go.’

  ‘Woof,’ replied the dog sorrowfully, though there was a definite twinkle in his eye. Archer knew that this time he had probably gone just a bit too far, but he certainly didn’t understand the gravity of the situation that now faced him, though even if he had realised that his old adversary was about to send him away for good, he probably wouldn�
��t have wanted to apologise. Apologies were something Alsatians didn’t have to do very often, it was not part of their breeding and, so far as he was concerned, the several years of animosity between the master and himself fully justified his lunatic behaviour from time to time.

  Chapter 3

  The morning passed swiftly. Archer rapidly tired of his incarceration in the younger boy’s bedroom. He lay on the floor on his back and did a doggy walk in the air. It didn’t attract James’s attention at all. In fact, after about ten minutes of the mutual imprisonment, James got up from his desk and left the room, apparently unaware of the dog. Archer eyed the door as it was closed. He stood up and jumped on the bed to look out of the window. The boys were in the drive below, piling their bags and the tent into the back of their mother’s car, a grey Escort. Each item was carefully checked to ensure it was securely locked or tied up and then it was placed purposefully in the hatchback boot of the car. This process seemed, to the dog upstairs, to last for a very long while indeed.

  He began to paw at the window to attract attention but he was too far away from the boys and the double-glazing muffled his attempts. Archer also knew that glass was dangerous. Glass, he had come to discover as a puppy, had a tendency to break, leaving sharp pieces for him to tread on. Also, he had discovered a very short time afterwards, that the master was not a placid person when Archer caused trouble. So today, having already advanced his cause about as far as he could reasonably go, Archer decided to desist from pawing the window. For some reason he had the thought that that a broken window might mean he didn’t go on holiday. So, in mid-swipe, Archer stopped and put his paw back on the bed. A few seconds later his mouth opened wide, he let out a great doggy yawn, and lay down on the younger boy’s bed. In a matter of moments he was asleep.

  As he slept, he dreamed of big piles of freshly cooked bacon, pile upon pile of soggy, chewed newspapers, and then to complete his ecstasy, of his master, red with fury, finally blowing the gasket that was waiting to erupt. This was not a pretty sight. The bottled fury erupted in a wave of outpoured wrath, culminating in the dog and man wrestling in the lounge. It was not a fair wrestling match, and Archer soon had the upper hand. In fact, just as he was about to bite off the hand that was near the upper part of his jaw, the bedroom door opened and James came in.

  ‘Archer, come on, it’s time to go.’

  Archer opened one of his dark brown eyes and peered out wearily as if to beg the boy to let him have just a couple more minutes while he finished off the dream. He closed the eye, but alas the dream had gone and his appetite for battle had subsided. He opened the other eye and saw that the boy had the chain lead in his hand. Archer hated wearing that lead. He hated wearing the studded collar that went with it. He felt a sissy having to wear the tag, which told everyone his name and where he lived. So he simply closed his eyes again. He felt the hand on the back of his neck and froze with anticipation of impending doom. He half opened the left eye, just in time to see the collar being placed round his neck. If he’d been awake he might have had just enough time to make a bolt for the doorway and freedom, but he wasn’t awake and before he had time to rouse himself and react to the situation the collar was fastened securely.

  ‘Right, now let’s go, or we’ll miss that train.’

  Archer looked at the boy with the sort of expression that said ‘Nasty smelly things, trains are. Why do we have to go on the train?’

  ‘I know you don’t like trains old boy, but it’s only for an hour or so. Then it will be freedom, a whole fortnight on a farm. That’ll be fun won’t it?’

  ‘Woof,’ he said, rising slowly on the bed. He dropped onto the floor and obediently followed the boy down to the car.

  The train was waiting at the platform as the two boys, dog, and assortment of bags descended the stairs from the ticket office.

  ‘Bye, Mum, see you in two weeks,’ James yelled as they ran down the stairs.

  They had just reached the last carriage as the platform attendant blew his whistle. They had barely sat down when the train lurched forward at the start of their journey. Archer was not, in fact, sitting at all. He stood with his nose firmly stuck at the partly opened window, watching the scenery outside change from the housing of outer suburbia, to the peaceful green colours of the country. As the scenery changed colour his tail, which had hung limply at the start of the journey began to wag. It moved slowly at first, but with the passing of the minutes, the rhythm became more intense. The carriage was almost empty, which was a good job, because as Archer became more and more excited he began to whine, and he even expressed doggy greetings in the form of barks at the animals in the fields past which the train journeyed.

  ‘Better weather today, thank goodness,’ Mark began.

  ‘Yeah, at least we’ll get the tent up okay. Hope Bec does look at her mailbox. Perhaps Mum was right and we should have phoned.’

  ‘Stop worrying, even if Bec hasn’t seen it, she knows we’re coming, and anyway it’s not that long a walk to the farm.’

  ‘Do you think she’ll bring the trap?’

  ‘She’s sure to. You know what she’s like with horses. This is just the sort of thing she loves to do.’

  ‘Guess you’re right. Do you think Father will get rid of the d-o-g when we get home?’ He spelt the word d-o-g so as not to arouse Archer’s attention.

  ‘Probably not. Father will almost certainly have forgotten in a fortnight.’

  ‘I don’t know. The old chap went a bit too far this morning. I’ll bet that newspaper’s still in the bin when we get back. A sort of reminder for him.’

  ‘Could be, but I’m not going to worry about that now. We’re off on hols, and I’m going to get the most out of this next fortnight. The d-o-g can wait till the end of the holiday. What is that crazy mutt doing now?’ he exclaimed suddenly.

  Archer, bored with the window, had wandered off down the carriage to the other end. Invisible to the boys except for his wagging tail, it was evident that Archer had found something of interest to him. When after a couple of minutes, the dog had not returned, Mark stood up and began to walk down the aisle towards him. He was almost halfway down the carriage when he heard a voice loudly proclaim, ‘Hey, put that down. It’s not for you.’

  At almost the exact same moment, Archer turned round and his head became visible. In his mouth he held what looked like a leg of chicken. Archer sauntered back up the aisle. As he did so, the owner of the loud voice poked his head round into the aisle.

  ‘That your dog, boy?’

  ‘Err, yes sir, he is.’

  ‘Well, he’s just stolen my lunch. It’s one thing to come looking for a pat on the head, it’s quite another to pinch a man’s lunch.’ The owner of the voice was not, Mark surmised, particularly tall. His face was ruddy and he wore tiny circular glasses that perched somewhat insignificantly on top of his rather large, fat, nose.

  ‘Sorry, sir, he won’t do it again. Now come on Archer, back to your place at the window. Will you never learn to leave other people alone?’

  When Archer reached the boy he dropped the chicken drumstick and turned momentarily back to the owner of the voice. He let out a menacing ‘grrr’ before picking up the bone and returning to his place by the window. Mark apologised once again and followed him back.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ whispered Mark to the dog once he was back in his seat. ‘When will you grow up?’

  Archer simply looked at the boy with his two big brown eyes and insolently continued to gnaw the drumstick. Archer had his reasons for stealing the bone, but Mark didn’t know what the dog had sensed and Archer couldn’t explain it to the boy. But Archer, as always, had his reasons.

  The train made four stops at rural stations. At each one the dog looked expectantly at the boys, waiting for them to open the door and get off. At each one the boys continued talking, so Archer went back to gnawing. He couldn’t understand why humans ate their chicken so quickly but always left the best bit. A fresh leg bone was something he
could extract hours of fun from if he wanted to; and as there wasn’t anything else to do, that is exactly what he did. For nearly an hour Archer sat and licked the bone; he chewed it, turned it round in his mouth, played football with it and tossed it in the air. His attempts to show off failed to have any effect on the boys. They were so used to his little ways that they no longer noticed them.

  At the fifth stop Archer got excited. He got excited because James stood up quite suddenly as the train pulled into the station. He forgot about his bone for a minute. The meat on the bone had long since disappeared, and now it looked tired and distorted. He watched with anticipation as James moved some of the bags above their heads. Then his excitement dwindled and despair set in. James, unable to quickly find what he was looking for, sat down again.

  ‘I’m sure I put the code book in the green bag, but I can’t find it.’

  ‘You’d better have remembered it otherwise we can’t send any messages home. I can’t remember the code words and passwords we need to activate the system from remote,’ Mark retorted. ‘It must be in there; it was when we checked it last night.’

  Archer looked at the boys sheepishly. He opened his mouth and yawned as if to say, ‘I hope this holiday isn’t going to be all about computers.’

  ‘It’s all right Archer,’ James laughed, ‘I promise we won’t bore you with computers for the next two weeks. It’s just a little something we have planned for Father’s benefit.’

  ‘Yeah, like do you think he’ll get rid of us too?’

  ‘Nah, he’ll see the funny side to it eventually.’

  ‘You sure about that?’

  ‘I’m fairly sure. He really can’t blame us if he hasn’t secured his own computer. I reckon Cyclops could give him a hand or two over the next few weeks.’