The Ribbajack Read Free Page B

their ordeal was over. Soames felt lucky to have got away with just the loss of a letter, Wilton ruing the fact that he had revealed his fear of the dark. As they emerged onto the driveway, he whispered to his pal, “I say, Peterkin, it looks like Smifft is cooking something pretty horrible up, what d’you think?”
    Soames thrust both hands into his blazer pockets. “Rather, he’s up to some wickedness, I’m sure. I don’t like it one little bit. One thing’s certain, though, we can’t be left alone in that dorm with Smifft for almost two months’ summer hols. How much money have you got, chum?”
    Wilton frowned. “In my money box there’s two fivers from my parents last Christmas. What do we need money for?”
    Soames did some quick calculating. “I’ve got six pounds from my people last birthday, and a ten-bob note left from my allowance. What d’you say we go and stay at my aunt Adelaide’s place for the recess? It’s up in Yorkshire, at Harrogate. Come on, let’s take a walk down to the post office, I’ll give her a ring.” He broke into a trot. Wilton ran to keep up with him.
    “What about me, d’you think she’ll mind terribly?”
    His friend chuckled. “What, Aunt Addie? Not a bit, old man. She’s half deaf and totally nutty. Lives alone, except for a cook and gardener, in a great rambling place up by the moors. She’s got loads of cats, and keeps geese, too. We’ll be safe from Smifft up there for the summer. Are you game?”
    Wilton felt as though a great weight had been lifted from his young heart. “Rather! Lead on, old chap, I’d sooner be marooned on the ocean in a bathtub than be stuck with that bounder Smifft for the hols!”
    Less than an hour later, both boys skipped blithely out of the telephone box. Soames rubbed his hands together joyfully.
    “Here we are, all set to go. There’s a train for Harrogate at seven-ten this evening, should get us in about ten. Aunt Addie is sending old Jenkins the gardener to pick us up in the car. All we’ve got to do is pack a case each. The dreaded Smifft shouldn’t even notice we’re gone, you know how he is when he’s swotting up a foul new scheme. Come on, race you back!”
     
     
     
    The school chaplain of Duke Crostacious the Inviolate was Reverend Rodney Miller, a bluff, hearty old fellow. He was known by several nicknames: the Sky Pilot, Big Dusty, Rev, or the Padre. This was owing to his long service with the King’s Lancashire Rifle Regiment. He had spent many years in India, Burma and Bhutan as Padre to the soldiers. Rev. Miller stood well over six feet tall, a portly, congenial figure with a fiery complexion and white bushy eyebrows. He had an extensive fund of stories about life in the far-flung outposts of empire—it had been said that he could bore the legs off a table with them.
    Rev. Miller sat in the headmaster’s study, taking tea with Mrs. Twogg and Mr. Plother. Helping himself to slices of Dundee cake and Bath Oliver biscuits, washed down with copius amounts of Darjeeling tea, he listened to them holding forth on the subject of Archibald Smifft—the boy’s unhealthy fascination with occult magic and the forbidden arts. The matron explained about the materials they had discovered beneath the bed and the possible atrocities Smifft could wreak upon both them and the school. The headmaster recounted the incident of the cockroaches and flies. Rev. Miller sucked the chocolate from a Bath Oliver, and dunked it in his tea reflectively.
    “Ah, yes, the old jiggery pokery, y’know. Saw quite a bit of it for m’self out on the subcontinent, India and all that. By Jove, watched a chap climb up a rope and vanish into thin air. Amazing! Where the dickens he went to, I’ll never know. Another time I saw a fakir take a pair of live scorpions—d’you know what he did with ’em, eh?”
    The matron poured more tea, remarking primly, “I’m sure we’d shudder to think, Reverend. However, this isn’t getting us anywhere