'Oh, no, it'll do when he has a minute to spare. No particular hurry.'

Gerald gave his promise, but as soon as the man was gone he came to the conclusion that the letter was very important, and that the man had only said it wasn't because it really was. Secret Service people did things like that. And since it was very important, and if the Candidate were still at the farms on Mickle, why should not Gerald go up there himself, immediately, and deliver it to the Candidate in person? They would meet, perhaps, in Mrs. Jones's kitchen. 'Where is the young man who brought this message? He has saved my life.What? He lives with Uncle Richard? And I never knew it! How can I ever forgive myself! . . . Mrs. Jones, bring us some of your nettle-drink--we will all quaff together.'

Gerald left the house, walked to the centre of the town, crossed the market-place, and took the turning up the hill. The day was not so fine as when he had set out for Mickle before, and the mountain itself looked heavy and dark; but Gerald did not mind that--he had too many exciting thoughts. At one place where the street narrowed and two factories faced each other, he imagined that the walls were leaning over, and that if he didn't hurry they would fall on him. So he broke into a scamper till the danger was past, and then stood panting and not quite sure whether he was really afraid or only pretending. Then he took the Candidate's letter out of his pocket and looked at it solemnly; it reminded him of what he had to do. He hurried on. Presently he came to the end of the houses; the lane twisted and became steeper; a few drops of rain fell. He thought of the warm red room at Uncle Richard's with Aunt Flo making potato-cakes as she probably would be by this time, and just beginning to wonder where he was; the clatter of cups and the kettle singing, the parrot squawking for a spoonful of tea. Would it not be safer to go back? But no; no; he must climb up and up and deliver the letter to the Candidate. He came to a line of high trees; if there were an odd number of them, perhaps he would go back, but if there were an even number he would keep on. There were twelve. He often settled difficult problems by this kind of method, though he never told anybody about it, except Martin Secundus, who understood. He began to walk faster uphill. You cannot do it, they all cried, mocking him as he pa.s.sed by; it is too dangerous to climb this mountain; no one has ever done it and come back alive. It is my duty, he answered proudly, as he swept on.

Then he began to see that the sky was darkening, not with rain only, but with twilight; the top of Mickle lay in a little cloud, as if someone had drawn the outline of the mountain in ink and then smudged it. He felt tired and his legs trembled. Soon the rain began to fall faster, until there was no mountain to see at all--only a grey curtain covering it; but he knew he was on the right path, because of the steepness. Never, remarked the famous engine-driver, do I remember such a night of wind and rain. . . .

He walked on and on, climbing all the time, till the rain had soaked through all his clothes, and was clammy-cold against his skin.

Suddenly he heard a noise, a strange noise, a kind of rumbling and muttering from the road ahead. He stopped, scared a little, listening to it above the swishing of the rain and the whine of the wind in the telegraph-wires. The noise grew louder, and all at once two bright yellow lights poked round a corner and came rushing at him. He ran for safety to the side of the road, and there slipped on some mud and fell. The next he knew was that the rumbling noise had halted somehow beside him, and had changed and lowered its key. Someone was holding him up and feeling his arms.

'No bones broken, Roberts. I'm sure we didn't touch him--he just slipped and fell over. We'd best take him along with us, anyhow.'

'Yes, sir.'

Gerald found himself lifted off his feet with his face pressing against something rain-drenched and fluffy. A ray of yellow light caught it, and he saw then that it was a rosette fastened to a man's overcoat.

A blue rosette.

Blue.

Once again the truth besieged him in an overpowering rush. This man who was holding him must be the Other Candidate . . . and the noise-making Thing nearby must be the motor-car. There could be no doubt about it. And he was shaken. He felt fear, horror, and the simple presence of evil. 'Let me go!' he shouted desperately, wriggling and twisting and hitting the man's face with his fists.

'Here, what's the matter, youngster?'

'Let me go--let me go!'

'What's all the fuss about? You aren't hurt, are you? Better get him in the car, Roberts.'

'No! No, no!'

'Well, what the devil do you want?'

Now that the man had used a swear, like that, Gerald was more certain than ever that he must be the Other Candidate. And knowing that he was the Other Candidate, it was easy to see what a wicked face he had. Terrible eyes and a curving nose and a sneery mouth, like pictures of pirates. And what he wanted to do, undoubtedly, was to steal the Candidate's letter that Gerald was carrying. Gerald looked around wildly. The man had put him down to earth again, that was something; but both the men seemed so huge above him, and the falling rain seemed to enclose the darkness through which lay his only chance of escape.

'Come on,' said the man roughly. 'This is no place to hang about all night. We'd better make sure and take him along with us, Roberts.'

'Very good, sire.'

'No!' screamed Gerald. 'You carpet-bagger!' And with that a quick bound into the middle of the darkness, he ran down the hill, leaving the two men standing by the motor-car. He heard them laughing; then he heard them shouting after him and to each other; then he heard them beginning to run after him. He plunged sideways into a hedge, scratching his face and arms and bruising his eye against a thick branch. At last he managed to struggle through the long wet gra.s.ses of a field. He could hear the two men running down the hill; they pa.s.sed within a few yards of him on the other side of the hedge; they pa.s.sed by. As soon as he had gained breath he began to stumble farther across the field. They should not take him alive, and they should not find the Candidate's letter. So he tore it up into very little pieces and let go a few of them whenever there came a big gust of wind. When they were all gone he felt brave again and wished he had some other papers to tear up and throw away.

It was ten o'clock at night when Gerald, in charge of a policeman, arrived at Number 2, The Parade. The Candidate was out, but Uncle Richard and Aunt Flo were waiting up, worried and anxious and by no means rea.s.sured by Gerald's first appearance. For he was nearly speechless with exhaustion; his clothes were drenched and mud-plastered; his arms and face were streaked with scratches, and he had an unmistakable black eye. All the policeman could say was that he had found him fast asleep in a shop doorway along the Mickle road, and that he had been incapable of giving any account of what had happened to him--only the fact that he lived at Number 2, The Parade.

Uncle Richard fetched the doctor; meanwhile Aunt Flo rubbed Gerald with towels, gave him some Benger's Food, and put him to bed with three hot bricks wrapped round with pieces of blanket. He was fast asleep again long before the doctor came.

In the morning he felt much better except for a certain dazedness, aches in most of his limbs, and an eye which he could hardly open. Uncle Richard and Aunt Flo were beside his bed when he woke up. He smiled at them, because they were Good, and he was Good, and Uncle Richard's house was a Good House. They began to ask him what had happened, and when he was awake enough he launched into the full story of how he had been walking along the road when suddenly . . .

'What road?'

'The road to Mrs. Jones's Farm.'

'Jones's Farm!' shouted Aunt Flo, repeating the words in a loud voice so that Uncle Richard, who was deafer than usual some mornings, could hear. 'But what on earth were you doing along that road?'

Gerald dared not mention the letter to the Candidate, because it was a Secret Doc.u.ment, and Secret Doc.u.ments were not to be divulged even to one's best friends. So he said, in a casual way which he hoped would sound convincing: 'I wanted to see Mrs. Jones and Nibby.'

'Nibby?'

'The cat. A very big cat.' He remembered with disfavour how Mrs. Jones had called it 'a big p.u.s.s.y.'

'Mrs. Jones and her cat!' shouted Aunt Flo. 'He says he was going to see Mrs. Jones and her cat! The Mrs. Jones at Jones's Farm! Did you ever hear such a story!'

'Wuff-wuff,' said Uncle Richard.

'Go on,' said Aunt Flo, warningly. 'And let's have the whole truth, mind. We know you bought some ice-cream off Ulio's cart when he came round in the afternoon, because Mrs. Silberthwaite saw you.'

Gerald did not know who Mrs. Silberthwaite was, but he felt that it had been none of her business, anyhow. He went on, reproachfully: 'You see, a motor-car came down the hill.'

'A motor-car!' shouted Aunt Flo, in great excitement. 'Richard, listen to that! He says a motor-car met him along the road! It would be Beale's motor-car, for certain--there's only the one! Beale in his motor-car knocked him down!'

Now this was not what Gerald had said at all, but he thought it an interesting variant of what had really happened, and he was just picturing it in his mind when Uncle Richard let out one of his biggest and most emphatic 'wuffs.'

'G.o.d bless my soul, that young carpet-bagger knocked him down! Knocked the boy down with his new-fangled stinking contraption! Knocked the boy down--G.o.d bless my soul! We'll have the law on him, that we will--it'll cost him something--wuff-wuff--knocked the boy down in the public highway! Goodness gracious, the Candidate must know immediately! Wuff--immediately! When Browdley hears of all this, young Beale won't stand a chance! It'll turn the election--mark my words--'

And Uncle Richard began capering out of the room and down the stairs with more agility than Gerald had ever seen him employ before. Gerald was excited. His mind was racing to catch the flying threads of a hundred possibilities; meanwhile Aunt Flo was rushing about to 'tidy up' the room; for the Candidate was like the doctor in this, that it would never do to let him catch sight of a crooked picture or a hole in the counterpane.

After a few moments, footsteps climbed the stairs, slowly and creakingly; Uncle Richard was talking loudly; another voice, rather tired and hoa.r.s.e, was answering.

And so, after those many wonderful days of waiting and dreaming, Gerald at last met the Candidate face to face; and because he knew he was the Candidate he saw what a kind and beautiful face it was, the face of a real knight. Overwhelmed with many thoughts, transfigured with worship, Gerald smiled, and the Candidate smiled back and touched the boy's forehead. Gerald thrilled to that touch as he had never thrilled to anything before, not even when he had first seen the Ba.s.sett-Lowke shop in London.

'Better now?' asked the Candidate.

Gerald slowly nodded. He could not speak for a moment, he was so happy; it was so marvellously what he had longed for, to have the Candidate talking to him kindly like that.

'Tell the gentleman what happened,' said Aunt Flo, on guard at the foot of the bed.

'Yes, do, please,' said the Candidate, still with that gentle, comforting smile.

'I will,' answered Gerald, gulping hard or he would have begun to cry. And he added, in a whisper: 'Sir Thomas.'

They all smiled at that; which was odd, Gerald thought, for there could really be no joke in calling the Candidate by his proper name. He went on: 'You see, the motor-car came straight at me--'

'He says the motor-car charged straight into him!' shouted Aunt Flo, for Uncle Richard's benefit.

'Let the boy tell his own story,' said the Candidate.

That calmed them, and also, in a queer way, it gave Gerald calmness of his own. He continued: 'The motor-car came charging into me and knocked me over--'

'Was it going fast?'

'It was going very fast,' answered Gerald, and added raptly: 'Nearly as fast as the Scotch Express.'

'He's all trains,' said Aunt Flo. 'Never thinks of anything else.'

But the Candidate showed an increasing unwillingness to listen to her. 'So the motor-car was travelling fast,' he said to Gerald quietly, 'and I suppose you were knocked down because you couldn't get away in time. Is that it?'

'Yes, sir--Sir Thomas.'

'And what happened then?'

'The motor-car stopped and two men got out and came up to me. One of them was wearing a blue badge.'

'Beale!' cried Aunt Flo. 'Didn't I say so? Richard, he says one of them was Beale himself!'

'Please go on,' said the Candidate.

Gerald said after a pause: 'They picked me up and stared at me.'

'Stared at you?'

'Yes. That's what they did.'

'And what after that?'

What, indeed? Gerald could not, for the moment, remember just how everything had happened. But suddenly the answer came. 'They laughed,' he said.

'They what?' asked the Candidate, leaning forward nearer to Gerald.

'He says they jeered at him!' shouted Aunt Flo.

'They laughed,' continued Gerald, with gathering confidence. 'And one of them said it was all my fault for being in the way. He hit me.' Pause. 'He hit me in the eye. I ran away then and they both chased me, but they couldn't catch me.' He sighed proudly. 'I ran too fast.'

'Richard--Richard--just listen to that--would you believe it--he says they hit him!'

'Wuff-wuff--my--goodness--wuff--just wait--scandalous--wuff--'

'Tell me now,' said the Candidate, still quietly. 'You say one of the men hit you and gave you this black eye. You're sure he hit you?'

'He hit me,' answered Gerald, with equal quietness, 'twice.'

Gerald stayed in bed for several days after that, for it seemed that despite all the doctoring and hot bricks, he was destined to catch the thoroughly bad cold that he deserved. For a time his temperature was high--high enough to swing the hours along in an eager, throbbing trance, invaded by consciousness of strange things happening in the rooms below and in the streets outside. Voices and footsteps grew noisier and more continual, shouting and singing waved distantly over the rooftops. Aunt Flo brought him jellies and beef-tea, and Uncle Richard sometimes came up for a cheery word; but for the most part Gerald was left alone, while the rest of the house abandoned itself to some climax of activity. He could feel all that, as he lay huddled up under the bedclothes. But he was not unhappy to be left alone, because he felt the friendliness of the house like a warm animal all around him, something alive and breathing and lovely to be near. There had been nothing in his life like this before. He could not remember his father and mother (they had both died when he was a baby); and Aunt Lavinia, who usually took charge of him during the school holidays, lived in a dull, big house in a dull, small place where nothing ever happened--nothing, at any rate, like this magic of Browdley streets and Ulio's ice-cream and climbing right to the very top of Mickle.

But the most wonderful thing of all had been when the Candidate bent over him and touched his forehead. As he lay feverishly in bed and thought of it, it all happened over again, but with more detail--with every possible detail.

'Gerald Holloway, I owe everything to you. If that letter had been discovered . . .' And suddenly Gerald thought of a big improvement: the Candidate was really his father, who hadn't actually died but had somehow got lost, but now here he was, found again, and they were both going to be together for always. They would live in the Parade, quite near to Uncle Richard, and Gerald need never go back to Grayshott except to see Martin Secundus and ask him to come and stay with them. 'Father . . . this is Martin . . .'

And when he grew up he would go on serving his father in the Secret Service, because he was more than an ordinary father. He was a Loving Father, like the Father people talked about in church.

The clock on the mantelpiece ticked through Gerald's dreaming, ticking on the seconds to the time when he should be grown up and a man. What a long time ahead, but it was pa.s.sing; he was eight already, and he could remember as far back as when he was four and Aunt Lavinia hit him for blowing on his rice pudding to make it cold.

But why 'Our Father'? My Father, he said to himself proudly, remembering how the Candidate had smiled.

So the hours pa.s.sed in that shabby little back bedroom at Uncle Richard's; but Gerald never noticed the shabbiness, never noticed that the furniture was cheap and the wallpaper faded, never realised from such things that Uncle Richard and Aunt Flo were poor people compared with rich Aunt Lavinia in her dull, big house. All he felt was the realness here, and the unrealness of everywhere else in the world.

One morning the doctor p.r.o.nounced him better and fit to get up. 'His school begins again on Tuesday,' said Aunt Flo. 'Will he be able to go?'

'Good gracious, yes,' replied the doctor. 'Good gracious, yes.'

Till then Gerald had had hopes that somehow the cloud of Grayshott on the horizon might be lifted, that the holidays would not end as all other holidays had done; but now, hearing that most clinching 'Good gracious, yes,' he felt a pin point of misery somewhere inside the middle of him, and it grew and grew with every minute of thinking about it.

That night was very quiet and there were no footsteps or voices, and in the morning, when he got up and dressed and went downstairs, he saw that the door of the parlour was wide open.

'Well,' said Uncle Richard, tapping the barometer as usual, 'so here you are again, young shaver.'

There was a difference somewhere. Something had happened. After breakfast he began to ask, as he had so often begun: 'Can Olive and I--' and Uncle Richard said: 'Eh, what's that? Olive's not here any more--wuff-wuff--she's gone away with her father.'

'Gone away? The Candidate's gone away?'

Uncle Richard laughed loudly. 'Don't you go calling him the Candidate any more, my boy. Because he isn't. He's the Member now.'

'What's the Member?'

'It means he's Got In. Margin of twenty-three--narrow squeak--but that doesn't matter. Still, it shows he wouldn't have done but for young Beale's behaviour with that motor-car of his--perfectly scandalous thing--as I said at the time--perfectly scandalous--wuff-wuff--and--consequently was--as I said--it turned the scale. Turned the scale--wuff-wuff--didn't I say it would?'

All this was nothing that Gerald could understand much about, except that the Candidate had gone. 'Uncle Richard,' he said slowly, and then paused. Aunt Flo shouted: 'Richard, why don't you answer the boy? He wants to ask you something!'

Uncle Richard put his hand to his ear. 'Ask away, my boy.'

'Uncle Richard--will--it--all--ever--happen--again?'

'Eh, what? Happen again? Will what happen again?'

Then Gerald knew it was no use; even Uncle Richard couldn't understand. He ran away into the greenhouse and stared through the red gla.s.s.

The next morning Aunt Flo wakened him early and gave him a brown egg for breakfast, because he had 'a journey in front of him.' Then he kissed her and said good-bye, and looked at the tricycle in the greenhouse for the last time. Uncle Richard took him to the station and told the guard about his luggage and where he was going. Thump, thump, thump, along the wooden platform; the train came in, actually drawn by a Four-Six-Nought, but Gerald had hardly the heart to notice it.

'Good-bye, my boy. Wuff-wuff. Don't forget to change at Crewe--the guard will put you right. And here you are--this is to buy yourself some sweets when you get back to school.'

Fancy, thought Gerald, Uncle Richard didn't know that you weren't allowed to buy sweets at school; still, a shilling would be useful; perhaps he would buy some picture-postcards of railway engines. 'Oh, thank you, Uncle Richard. . . . Good-bye . . . Goodbye.'

'Good-bye, my boy.'

Gerald kept his head out of the window and waved his hand till the train curved out of sight of the station. Then, as the wheels gathered speed, they began to say things. . . . Grayshott tonight, Grayshott tonight. . . . This time a week ago. . . . This time two weeks ago. . . . Oh dear, how sad that was. . . . The train entered a tunnel and Gerald decided: If I can hold my breath until the end of this tunnel, then it means that I shall soon go to Uncle Richard's again and the Candidate will be there and Olive too, and we shall all climb Mickle together and see Mrs. Jones and Nibby. . . . He held his breath till he felt his ears singing and his eyes p.r.i.c.king . . . then he had to give way while the train was still in the tunnel. That was an awful thing to have had to do. He took out of his pocket the pencil he had poked Polly with (that first morning, how far away!) and began to write his name on the cardboard notice that forbade you to throw bottles on the line. 'Gerald,' he wrote; but then, more urgently, it occurred to him to black out the 'p' in 'Spit,' so that it read 'Please do not Sit.' Very funny, that was; he must tell Martin Secundus about that, because Martin had his own train-joke when there was n.o.body else in the compartment; he used to cross out the 's' in 'To Seat Five,' so that it read 'To Eat Five.' Gerald did not think this was quite as funny as 'Please do not Sit.' But suddenly in the midst of thinking about it, a wave of misery came over him at having to leave Uncle Richard's, and he threw himself into a corner seat and hid his face in the cushions.

All this happened a long time ago. Gerald never stayed with Uncle Richard again.

Uncle Richard is dead, but Aunt Flo is still living, an old woman, in a small cottage on the outskirts of Browdley--for Number 2, The Parade, has been pulled down to make room for Browdley's biggest super-cinema. The parrot, too, still lives--as parrots will. Just the two of them, in that small cottage.

The Candidate is dead, and Olive is married--to somebody in India, not such a good match, folks say.