The Cuckoo Tree (23 page)

"Well, here's a right hugger-mugger!" said Yan furiously.

Dido had spread the rest of the chewed Dispatch on the cabin roof and was poring over it, by the light of the lantern and the last rays of the setting sun.

"To my Lord Forecastle Master of the
lace horse and Westminster Foxhou
First Lord of the Admiralty.
Sir: Whilst interrogating prisoner
captured French frigate
Madame de Ma
I was lucky enough to discover detail
laid and diabolical plot to assassina
well-beloved Prince of Wales on the oc
his Coronation. The details are as
Cathedral of St. Paul's has already be
mined & its foundations rest merely
at a given signal or impetus these rol
set in motion and the whole Sacred Edif
slide with uncontrollable speed in
River Thames. Proof of this can
visiting the Crypt. I there
it right to communicate the fright
tidings without delay. I remain
Your lordship's
Charles Tran

Rear-Admi

Dido read through this very carefully three times.

"Holy Peggotty!" she said then. "What time's the coronation tomorrow?"

"Ten in the morning."

"Us has got to hustle," Dido said.

"Why, what's it about?" Yan peered over her shoulder at the damaged Dispatch. But he said, "You've got more book-learning than I have, reckon, ducky; blest if I can make trotter nor tail of it. What's it say?"

"Why," said Dido, "near as I can reckon, some admiral is writing to this here Lord Forecastle about a plot to push St. Paul's Cathedral into the Thames, with the whole coronation a-going on inside it. That's what they means when they keeps talking about the Wren's Nest! Oh, the villains! Here, I'm off—where does Lord Forecastle live, Yan?"

"House in the Strand. How'll you get there?"

"Lord Sope lent me his elephant."

"I was wondering where that came from," Tethera said.

"Shall I come with ee, duck?" said Yan. "Old Lord Forecastle is a tiddy bit slow and given to argufication. But
he knows me, reckon I could help get the notion into his noodle as there's need to hurry."

"That'd be prime, Yan. How about the ship?"

"The others can bring her on the reg'lar way, and we'll all meet at Aunt Grissie's in Wardrobe Court."

"But Tobit!" said Cris, half crying.

"Look, gal, us simply can't wait to hunt for him now," Dido said. "But he's got sense. He can ask his way to Wardrobe Court—you told him where that is?" Yan nodded. "He'll be all right, I reckon. Besides, wouldn't Aswell give you a warning if he was in any kind o' trouble?"

"Aswell?" Cris looked vaguely puzzled.

Dido stared at her, equally astonished. Had she already forgotten about Aswell? But there was really not an instant to waste. Yan slipped what was left of the Dispatch into another oilskin case, he and Dido jumped ashore, and ran to where the elephant was patiently waiting.

Steering Rachel through the streets of London to Lord Forecastle's residence proved considerably more difficult than letting her find her own way from Stopham Park to Wandsworth. In fact it proved impossible. Rachel had her own theories about the right route into London and whether they threatened, pleaded, thumped, or tried to lead her, she pursued her own course, quite regardless of their wishes.

"Oh well, let her take her own way," said Dido at length. "She seems to have a powerful strong notion o' where she wants to go."

She took them across Wandsworth Bridge and along the King's Road, Chelsea.

"Why," exclaimed Dido, "that's Doc Furneaux's Academy of Art! Hang on just a moment, Rachel, my ducky, I used to have a pal as learnt painting there. I'll just nip in and ax if anyone knows where he is. I've been trying to get in touch with him—he'd be a right useful cove in a fussation like this—chap called Simon."

And she slid down the rope ladder like a powder monkey, muttering to herself,

"Oh I
does
hope he's still alive."

But Dr. Furneaux's Academy of Arts presented a very blank and silent aspect: in the wide forecourt, usually choca-block with students eating impromptu meals and doing their laundry in the fountain, no one was to be seen but an aged Chelsea pensioner, who was slowly and thoughtfully trying to remove a Dutch cheese from the hole in the middle of a statue where someone had rammed it.

"Where's all the folk?" Dido asked. The old man turned bleary eyes on her.

"What folk?"

"The students!" Dido said impatiently. "And the teachers! And Doc Furneaux! Where are they?"

"Gone for to put up the decorations in the cathedral. And in Threadneedle Street and Paternoster Row and Cheapside. Fancy wasting a good bit o' cheese like that," said the old man in disgust, giving it another vain poke.

Dido scurried back to the elephant.

"No good ... You can roll on, Rachel." So Rachel continued, looking neither to right nor left, along the King's Road, across Sloane Square, through Belgravia, across Green Park, and presently drew up outside what was presumably Lord Sope's club in St. James's. It was called Toffy's and, judging by the white steps, polished brass, window boxes, and the uniformed porter, was very grand indeed.

"What'll us do now?" Dido said. "Leave Rachel here and call a cab?"

But Yan, all excited, exclaimed, "There! There he is!"

"Who?"

"Lord Forecastle. He just got out of that phaeton and went into the club."

"Oh, well, that's prime," Dido said. "We'll go in too."

But this was easier said than done.

The uniformed porter, who was about seven feet tall, said coldly,

"Lord Sope's elephant always gets taken around to the back."

"Well, you do that, will you?" Dido said. "Us has an urgent errand with Lord Forecastle. Just ax him to step back and speak to us for a minute, can you?"

"I
beg
your pardon," the porter said in frozen tones. "I fear that will be quite out of the question."

"Why?" demanded Dido.

"Gentlemen when availing themselves of the facilities of this establishment may not be disturbed for any reason whatsoever by
anybody.
It is the first club rule. Why, when the Battle of Trafalgar was won, they had to wait for two days till Mr. Pitt came out before they could tell him."

"What did he say? I'll bet he was right vlothered that everyone else had known for two days before him."

"History does not relate," the porter said snubbingly. Then his tone changed to one of outrage and he exclaimed,

"
Where
do you think you are going?"

"In, to look for Lord Forecastle, if you won't."

"Persons of the female sex are not on
any
account
ever
allowed into these premises."

"Yan,
you
better go," Dido said crossly.

Yan looked daunted.

"When d'you reckon his lordship's liable to come out?" he asked the porter.

"I cannot possibly undertake to say."

"Oh, drabbit!" said Dido. She retired to the street, filled her lungs to their maximum capacity with air, and bawled,

"L
ORD
F
ORECASTLE
!"

Yan, approving of this tactic, joined her, filled his lungs, and shouted even louder,

"LORD FORECASTLE!"

Rachel, entering into the spirit of the enterprise, joyfully trumpeted. Windows were opened in clubs all up and down St. James's. About a hundred white-wigged heads and scandalized old faces poked out. "Like cheese mites," Dido said.

The elderly gentleman who all this time had been slowly climbing the red-velvet-carpeted stairs of Toffy's club, slowly retraced his steps.

"What is all the commotion about, Prothero?" he demanded. "Pray cause it to cease."

"Begging your humble pardon, your lordship, but there is a—a person, and a—a
young
person that are desirous to have words with your lordship."

"Indeed? Where are they?" inquired Lord Forecastle icily.

"In the street, your lordship."

"I can hardly converse with them in the street, can I?"

"The young person is of the female sex, your lordship."

This might have been insoluble, but luckily Lord Forecastle, peering through the entrance, observed,

"Dear me, there is old Plantagenet Sope's elephant. I'd no notion he was coming up for the crowning. Planty! Planty! D'you care to come and take a dish of tay with me?"

"Lord Forecastle!" said Yan, springing on him like an active thrush on a very ancient snail, before he could discover his mistake and retreat inside the club again. "You knows me—Yan Wineberry, as delivers your corkscrews and organ-grinder's oil."

"Good gracious, my good fellow—" Lord Forecastle was scandalized, "St. James's Street is
not
the place to allude to such commodities."

"Well, I ain't a-going to," Yan said reasonably. "We bring you half a Dispatch from Rear-Admiral Charles Tran."

"Charles Tran? I have no acquaintance of that designation. And in any case, this is not a suitable place to bring me a dispatch, or half a dispatch. I am off duty, I am in mufti! Take it to the office—take it to the Admiralty. I will look at it on Friday. Or, no, on Friday I shoot partridge at Ravenscourt Park—Monday. Monday will be better. Charles Tran? Some imposter, I daresay; never heard of the fellow."

"Look, Lord Fo'c'stle, this is
urgent,
" said Dido. "We borrowed Lord Sope's elephant special to come and find you. Are you a-going to the coronation tomorrow?"

"Of course I am, child. What has that to say to anything?"

"Well then you won't be in the Admiralty on Monday, I can tell you that. You'll be squished in sixteen feet o' Thames mud under twenty thousand ton dead-weight o' fancy stonework."

"My dear young person, are you raving? Shall I be obliged to call the Watch?"

"See here," said Dido, and spread out the gnawed Dispatch under his eyes.

"Tut! What is this rigmarole?" he said peevishly. "French frigate
Madame de Ma?
There is no such vessel. Cathedral has been mined? Unthinkable rubbish. Why, the fellow who wrote this must have been drunk—half the sentences are incomplete. Either drunk or mad! Tush—take it away—I dare swear the whole thing is an arrant fraud."

"It ain't!" said Dido indignantly. "Captain Hughes o' the
Thrush
asked us to bring it to you."

"Ha!" said Lord Forecastle triumphantly. "I know Hughes—sensible, reliable, gentlemanly sort of officer—excellent disciplinarian—know
he'd
never act in such an irregular manner. Why not bring it himself, pray?"

"He's ill—he was wounded at sea, and in a carriage accident, and overlooked by a witch."

"Fiddledeedee! Be off with you, miss—pray don't try such Billingsgate stories on me. A witch—Owen Hughes—there's a likely fairy tale. Why, my great friend Rear-Admiral Charles Transome, under whom he serves, thinks
the world of Hughes."

"Transome!" exclaimed Dido. "Don't you see this letter
is
from Transome, you clutter-headed old—"

"Steady, steady, ducks!" cautioned Yan. "No use setting his whiskers on fire!"

Lord Forecastle was indeed in a dangerously empurpled condition.

"Wineberry!" he sputtered. "I've always found you a businesslike fellow in our dealings. What you are doing with this disgracefully impudent young person who appears to be mentally deranged as well, I cannot imagine, but I wish you will take her away!"

"But, sir, what she says is quite true, 'tis they bothering Hanoverians, at it again—digging away under St. Paul's like mouldy warps, they be."

Lord Forecastle cooled down a little. He read the Dispatch again.

"Well," he said at length, "if this really is from Charlie Transome—though why he cannot sign himself properly I quite fail to comprehend—"

"The Dispatch was gnawed by a rat—"

"A rat? Oh, good gad, man, how can you expect me to believe such a farrago of preposterous balderdash?"

"Because it's the truth!" exclaimed Dido, with such indignant and passionate conviction that a number of people in the street turned to look at her.

A spare, shrewd-looking gray-headed gentleman who happened to be driving past in a curricle reined in his horses.

"Evening, Fo'c'stle!" he called. "Is Planty Sope in town, then? I see his beast there."

"No, he is not," said Lord Forecastle peevishly. "So far as I can make out this precious pair appear to have purloined his elephant in order to come and tell me a ramshackle tale of rats and witches and a plot to dig up St. Paul's—I wish you will call up your constables, Sir Percy, and have them consigned to the Tower—"

"Sir Percy!" exclaimed Yan joyfully, while the gray-headed gentleman, seeing Yan at the same moment, remarked,

"Nay, that's young Wineberry, who brings me my Hollands every month, regular as the Bank of England. I can't believe he'd be mixed up in anything havey-cavey."

"Sir Percy, do but take a look at yon message!" Yan begged. "It bean't a ramshackle tale, indeed it bean't. It got chawed by a rat aboard the
Gentlemen's Relish,
but you can see it's from Rear-Admiral Transome and it's mortal important—"

With obvious relief, Lord Forecastle passed over the Dispatch to the gentleman in the curricle, who read it attentively.

"That's Sir Percy Tipstaff," Yan muttered in Dido's ear. "He'll pay a bit more heed, I'll lay—"

"Humph," grunted Sir Percy. "This certainly bears
some
appearance of a genuine warning. I feel it had best be looked into. I'll put matters in train, shall I, Fo'c'stle, and spare you the trouble?"

"Do, Tipstaff—do—if you really think it is not a hoax.
And now, if you'll pardon me, I am sadly late for an appointment to play backgammon with the Bishop of Bayswater—" Plainly much relieved at being able to wash his hands of the business, Lord Forecastle gave a final disapproving glare at Dido and Yan, turned, and stumped up the steps of Toffy's club.

"You two had best come in my carriage," said the Lord Chief Justice. "Then you can tell me the details as we ride."

"What about the elephant?"

"Prothero!" called Sir Percy.

"Yes, sir? What can I do for you, Sir Percy?"