Blyton, Enid – Famous Five 14 – Five Have Plenty of Fun

He yawned, and turned over his page. He read on and on. Half past twelve. One o’clock. Then he thought he heard a sound downstairs and opened his door. Yes – it was Uncle Quentin in his study. Dick could hear his voice.

‘Poor old Aunt Fanny must be up too,’ he thought. ‘I can hear their voices. Gosh, I shall soon fall asleep over my book. I’ll slip down and out into the garden for a breath of fresh air. I shall keep awake then.’

He put on his dressing-gown and went quietly down the stairs. He undid the bolt of the garden door and slipped out. He stood listening for a moment, wondering if he would hear the roar of the American’s car in the stillness of the night.

But all he heard was the sound of the tyres of a bicycle on the road outside. A bicycle! Who was riding about at this time of night? Perhaps it was the village policeman?

Dick stood in the shadows and watched. A man was on the bicycle. Dick could just make him out dimly, a big black shadow in the starlit night. To the boy’s enormous surprise, he heard the sound of the man dismounting, then the swish of the leaves in the hedge as the bicycle was slung there.

Then someone came quietly up the path and went round to the window of the study. It was the only room in the house that was lighted. Dick heard a tapping on the window, and then it was opened cautiously. His uncle’s head appeared.

‘Who is it?’ he said, in a low tone. ‘Is it you, Elbur?’

It apparently was. Dick saw that it was the big American who had visited his uncle two days before. ‘I’ll open the door,’ said his aunt, but Elbur was already putting his leg across the windowsill!

Dick went back to bed, puzzled. How strange! Why should the American come so secretly in the night, why should he ride a bicycle instead of driving his car? He fell asleep still wondering.

He did not know whether the American rode away again, or whether his aunt made a bed for him on a couch downstairs. In fact, when he awoke the next morning, he really wondered if it had all been a dream.

He asked his aunt, when he went down to breakfast. ‘Did that man who telephoned come last night?’ he said.

His aunt nodded her head. ‘Yes. But please say nothing about it. I don’t want anyone to know. He’s gone now.’

‘Was it important?’ asked Dick. ‘Julian seemed to think it was, when he answered the phone.’

‘Yes – it was important,’ said Aunt Fanny. ‘But not in the way you think. Don’t ask me anything now, Dick. And keep out of your uncle’s way. He’s rather cross this morning.’

‘Then something must have gone wrong with this new work he’s doing,’ thought Dick, and went to warn the others.

‘It sounds rather exciting,’ said Julian. ‘I wonder what’s up?’

They kept out of Uncle Quentin’s way. They heard him grumbling loudly to his wife about something, they heard him slam down his desk-lid as he always did when he was bad-tempered, and then he settled down to his morning’s work.

Anne came running to the others after a time, looking surprised. ‘George! I’ve just been into our room and what do you think! Aunt Fanny’s put a camp-bed over in the corner – a camp-bed made up with blankets and everything! It looks an awful squash with two other beds as well in the room – mine and yours!’

‘Gosh – someone else is coming to stay then – a girl,’ said Dick. ‘Or a woman. Aha! I expect it’s a governess engaged to look after you and Anne, George, to see that you behave like little ladies!’

‘Don’t be an idiot,’ said George, surprised and cross at the news. ‘I’m going to ask Mother what it’s all about. I won’t have anyone else in our room. I just will not!’

But just as she was marching off to tell her mother this, the study door downstairs opened and her father bellowed into the hall, calling his wife.

‘Fanny! Tell the children I want them. Tell them to come to my study AT ONCE!’

‘Gracious – he does sound cross. Whatever can we have done?’ said Anne, scared.

Chapter Three

ANNOYING NEWS

The four children and Timmy trooped down the stairs together. George’s mother was in the hall, just going to call them.

‘Oh, there you are,’ she said. ‘Well, I suppose you heard that you’re wanted in the study. I’m coming too. And listen – please don’t make any more fuss than you can help. I’ve had quite enough fuss made by Quentin!’

This was very mysterious! What had Aunt Fanny to do with whatever trouble there was? Into the study went the Five, Timmy too, and saw Uncle Quentin standing on the hearthrug looking as black as thunder.

‘Quentin, I could have told the children,’ began his wife, but he silenced her with a scowl exactly like the one George sometimes put on.

‘I’ve got something to say to you,’ he began. ‘You remember those two friends of mine – scientists working on a scheme with me – you remember the big American?’

‘Yes,’ said everyone.

‘He gave us a whole pound,’ said Anne.

Uncle Quentin took no notice of that remark. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘he’s got a daughter – let’s see now – she’s got some silly name…’

‘Berta,’ said his wife.

‘Don’t interrupt me,’ said Uncle Quentin. ‘Yes, Berta. Well, Elbur, her father, has been warned that she’s going to be kidnapped.’

‘Whatever for?’ said Julian, amazed.

‘Because it so happens that her father knows more secrets about a new scheme we’re planning than anyone else in the world,’ said his uncle. ‘And he says, quite frankly, that if this girl – what’s her name now…’

‘Berta,’ said everyone, obligingly.

‘That if this Berta is kidnapped, he will give away every single secret he knows to get her back,’ said Uncle Quentin. ‘Pah! What’s he made of? Traitor to us all! How can he even think of giving away secrets for the sake of a silly girl?’

‘Quentin, she’s his only child and he adores her,’ said Aunt Fanny. ‘I should feel the same about George.’

‘Women are always soft and silly,’ said her husband, in a tone of great disgust. ‘It’s a good thing you don’t know any secrets – you’d give them away to the milkman!’

This was so ridiculous that the children laughed. Uncle Quentin glared at them.

‘This is no laughing matter. It has been a great shock to me to be told by one of the leading scientists of the world that he feels certain he might give all our secrets to the enemy if this – this…’

‘Berta,’ said everyone again, at once.

‘If this Berta was kidnapped,’ went on Uncle Quentin. ‘So he came to ask if we’d take this – this Berta into our own home for three weeks. By that time the scheme will be finished and launched, and our secrets will be safe.’

There was a silence. Nobody looked very pleased. In fact, George looked furious. She burst out at last.

‘So that’s who the bed is for in our room! Mother, have we got to be squashed up with nowhere to move about the room, for three whole weeks? It’s too bad.’

‘For once you and I agree, George,’ said her father. ‘But I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with it. Elbur is in such a state about this kidnapping warning that he couldn’t be reasoned with. In fact he threatend to tear up all his figures and diagrams and burn them, if I didn’t agree to this. That would mean we couldn’t get on with the scheme.’

‘But why has she got to come here?’ said George, fiercely. ‘Why put her on to us? Hasn’t she any relations or friends she can go to?’

‘George, don’t be so fierce,’ said her mother. ‘Apparently Berta has no mother, and has been everywhere with her father. They have no relations in this country – and no friends they can trust. He won’t send her back to America because he has been warned by the police that she might be followed there – and at the moment he can’t leave this country himself to go with her.’

‘But why choose us?’ said George again. ‘He doesn’t know a thing about us!’

‘Well,’ said her mother, with a small smile, ‘he met you all the other day, you know – and he was apparently very struck with you – and especially with you, George, though I can’t imagine why. He said he’d rather his Berta was with you four than with any other family in the world.’

She paused and looked at the four, a harassed expression on her face. Julian went over to her.