Arabel and Mortimer by Joan Aiken Read Free Book Online Page A

just opened) and made his way quite fast along the pavement.
    "Stop him,
stop him
!" said Mr. Jones. "That bunch has the front-door key on it, too."

    But before Arabel could get to him, Mortimer had reached up, tip-claw, and posted the whole bunch of keys into the open slot of the letter box that stood in front of Number Six.
    Then he happily climbed up the front steps, dragging his tie behind him.

The Spiral Stair

1
    "Excuse me. Are you two gentlemen going as far as Foxwell?" Mrs. Jones inquired nervously, having opened the railway carriage door and poked her head through. The hand that was not holding the door handle clasped the wrist of Mrs. Jones's daughter, Arabel, who was carrying a large canvas bag.

    Mrs. Jones had been opening doors and asking this question all the way along the train when she thought the occupants of the carriage looked respectable. Some of them did not. Some weren't going as far as Foxwell.

    But the two men in this carriage looked
very
respectable. Both had bowler hats. One was small and stout, one was large and pale. Their briefcases were in the rack, and they were talking to each other in low, confidential, businesslike voices.
    Now they stopped and looked at Mrs. Jones as if they were rather put out at being interrupted. But one of them—the small fat one—said, "Yes, madam. We are getting out
at
Foxwell, as it happens."

    The other man, the large pale one, frowned, as if he wished his friend had not been so helpful.
    "Oh, are you, that's ever such a relief then," cried Mrs. Jones, "for you look like nice reliable gentlemen and I'm sure you won't mind seeing that my little girl, that's Arabel here, gets out at Foxwell where her uncle Urk will be meeting her and I know it looks ever so peculiar my not going with her myself, but I have to hurry back to Rumbury Hospital where my hubby, Mr. Jones, is having his various veins seen to and he likes me to visit him all the visiting hours and I couldn't leave poor little Arabel alone at home every day, let alone Mortimer, and my sister Brenda isn't a
bit
keen to have them, but luckily my hubby's brother Urk lives in the country and said he would oblige, leastways it was his wife, Effie, that wrote but Ben said Urk would know how to manage Mortimer on account of him being used to all kinds of wild—"
    Luckily, at this moment the guard blew a shrill blast on his whistle, for the two men were beginning to look even more impatient, so Mrs. Jones hastily bundled Arabel into the railway carriage and dumped her suitcase on the seat beside her.
    "Now you'll be ever such a good girl, won't you dearie, and Mortimer, too, if he
can,
and take care among all those megadilloes and jumbos and do what Aunt Effie says—and we'll be down to fetch you on Friday fortnight—"

    Here the guard interrupted Mrs. Jones again by slamming the carriage door, so Mrs. Jones blew kisses through the window as the train pulled away. One of the bowler-hatted men—the short fat one—got up and put Arabel's case in the rack, where she couldn't reach it to get out her picture book. He would have done the same with the canvas bag she was carrying, but she clutched that tightly on her lap, so he sat down again.
    The two men then took their hats off, laid them on the seat, settled themselves comfortably, and went on with their conversation, taking no notice whatever of Arabel, who was very small and fair-haired, and who sat very quietly in her corner.
    After a minute or two she opened the canvas bag, out of which clambered a very large untidy black bird—almost as big as Arabel herself—who first put himself to rights with his beak, then stood tip-claw on Arabel's lap and stared out of the window at the suburbs of London rushing past.
    He had never been in a train before and was so astonished at what he saw that he exclaimed,
"Nevermore!"
in a loud, hoarse, rasping voice which had the effect of spinning round the heads of the two men as if they had been