Not Just a Witch

And then Heckie unzipped the dragworm’s basket and of course it was love at first sight. ‘Oh, Heckie, you were always so clever with animals! The way the back of him is so different from the front and yet somehow he’s all of a piece!’

So now their worries were over and they could settle down to a good gossip.

‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could visit each other every week like proper married ladies?’ said Heckie.

‘Oh, wouldn’t it!’ said Dora. ‘But I’m going to live in the Lake District.’

Heckie gave a shriek of delight. ‘But so am I! So am I going to live in the Lake District! Isn’t it absolutely splendid! We’ll be able to swap recipes and have tupperware parties and—’

She never finished her sentence. The door of the cheese wizard’s shop burst open and Mr Gurgle came running across the square, still in his bedroom slippers, and as white as a sheet.

‘Thank goodness!’ he said, grabbing Heckie’s arm. ‘I thought I heard you. It’s the boy . . . Daniel. I found him trussed up in Knacksap’s cellar. He’s been hit on the head and he’s got brain fever, I think. He keeps talking about leopards. Three hundred snow leopards going to be gassed at Hankley Hall!’

Daniel lay on Mr Gurgle’s sofa. He had lost so much blood that the room was going round and round, but when he saw Heckie, he made a desperate effort to speak.

‘Leopards,’ he said again. ‘Three hundred . . . at Hankley Hall . . . killed.’ And struggling to make her understand what he had heard: ‘Flitchbody . . .’ he began – and then fell back against the cushions.

Heckie felt his head with careful fingers. ‘He must go to hospital at once and his parents be told. Get an ambulance, Gurgle. When he’s safe you can rally the others, but the boy comes first.’ She turned to Dora. ‘I did it,’ said Heckie, and she looked like a corpse. ‘I made the leopards out of the prisoners, for Li-Li to turn loose on the hills. This Flitchbody must have got wind of Li-Li’s plans and kidnapped them!’

‘Oh, but that’s terrible, Heckie. You see one of them must be Lewis’s Cousin Alfred! He went to the prison to free him. Lewis will never forgive me if Cousin Alfred gets gassed and skinned.’

‘Perhaps it’s not too late,’ said Heckie – and both witches ran like the wind for the lorry.

Chapter Twenty-One

It had been a splendid place once – a long, low building with towers and turrets and an avenue of lime trees. There was a statue garden with queer griffins and heraldic beasts carved in stone, and a lake and a maze – a really frightening maze, the kind with high yew hedges that could trap you for hours and hours.

But now the hall was empty and partly ruined. The people who owned Hankley couldn’t afford to keep it up and then it was found that an underground river was making the back of the house sink into the ground, so nobody would buy it.

The ballroom, though, was in the front and it looked almost as it had done a hundred years ago. There were patches of damp on the ceiling and the plaster had flaked off, but the beautiful floor was still there, and the carved gallery. And now, with candles flickering in the holders and graceful shadows moving across the windows, it might have seemed as though the grand people who had danced there had come back to haunt the place in which they had once been happy.

But the creatures who moved between the pillars wore no ball gowns and carried no fans – and when they turned and wove their patterns on the floor, it was on four legs, not on two.

The leopards had been quiet when Heckie made them, but now it was different. The men who brought them had handled them roughly, prodding and poking with long-handled forks to send them faster down the wire tunnels and into the room. The big cats had smelled the fear in the men; their eyes glinted and they lashed each other with their tails.

A door opened high up in the gallery and a man dressed in black leather came out. His gas-mask hung by a strap round his neck and he carried a zinc-lined box which he lowered carefully on to the floor.

Sid would do anything for money. It didn’t matter to him what he killed. Only the week before he’d shot two dozen horses between the eyes so that they could be sent off to be eaten. He never asked questions either. How Mr Knacksap had got hold of three hundred leopards was none of his business. All the same, as he looked down on the moving, frosty sea of beasts, he felt shivers go up and down his spine.

I wish I hadn’t take it on, thought Sid.

Which was silly . . . He’d clear a thousand just for an hour’s work and nothing could go wrong. The windows were sealed up; the men who drove the lorries would drag the brutes back into the vans. They had masks too. There’d be no trouble.

Better get on with it. He fitted the rubber tight over his face. Now, with his black leather suit, he looked like someone from another planet. Then he bent down and began to prise open the box.