The Beasts of Clawstone Castle

And at first Hal looked very surprised to see a skeleton coming towards him, but as soon as Mr Smith greeted him, his face lit up. ‘Well, well, Doug, old man, it’s good to see you.’ He looked his friend up and down. ‘What have you been up to? Lost a lot of weight,’ said Hal, and burst out laughing. ‘Never thought you’d end up a skeleton. Remember how we all teased you because you were too fat to get into the cab?’

They talked about the old days for a while but then Mr Smith came to the point. ‘I need your help, Hal,’ he said. ‘I’m looking for a big truck – perhaps two – carrying a load of cattle. Would have gone through sometime in the last week.’

‘Are you, then?’ said Hal thoughtfully. He lifted his cap and scratched his head. ‘Now let me see...’

In Cousin Howard’s library the children waited. They had been there most of the day, since they woke to find the nursery empty.

There had been no time to panic – Cousin Howard had given them the message which the ghosts had left as soon they woke – but the waiting was hard. They had never known time go so slowly.

Then, in the early afternoon, Sunita came in through the window, carrying The Feet. Both of them looked utterly exhausted and even before Sunita shook her head they realized that there was no news.

Brenda came in soon after that. Her veil was tangled and her bullet holes had dried out on the long journey.

‘Nothing,’ she said wearily. ‘No one’s seen anything.’

Ranulf came next. His shirt had blown open and they could see the weary rat lying like a limp dishcloth against his chest.

Ranulf did not speak; he only shook his head and collapsed on to the couch.

It was hopeless, then. Dead or alive, the cattle were gone.

Mr Smith came last. He too was exhausted. As he touched the floor his leg bones seemed to give way under him and for a few moments he could not get his breath. But when he roused himself they saw that his single eye was shining, and his skull looked as though it was lit up from within.

‘I have news,’ he said. ‘There has been a sighting. All is not lost!’

And he told them what he had discovered.

‘I’ve got this friend, Hal Striver,’ Mr Smith began, ‘and there’s nothing he doesn’t know about motor transport. Well, last week – on Thursday night it was – he saw two big cattle trucks pull up by the garage, and one of the drivers got out and went into the cafe but he didn’t stay more than a minute, and no one else got out. So Hal went to have a look and he saw it was chock-full of cattle, but the animals were very quiet – he thought they must have been drugged. They often drug animals now when they move them. Anyway, Hal had a look inside the cab of the driver who’d got out, and he saw a map on the dashboard and a ring round one particular place.’

Mr Smith paused and the children waited, trying desperately not to show their impatience.

‘Hal reckons he knows where the cattle were going. To a place called Blackscar Island. It’s over the border, in Scotland, off the north-east coast, and it’s a funny place, Hal said. There’s a causeway you can drive over at low tide, but at high tide the island’s completely cut off. No one knows much about it because it’s so isolated and the people who own it don’t like visitors, but Hal reckons he’s seen other loads bound for there.’

‘And it was last Thursday night that he saw them?’ asked Ned.

Mr Smith nodded. ‘The night after the cattle were taken from here.’

‘Did he see what colour they were?’ asked Madlyn.

‘No. It was dark and there were only small gaps in between the slats. But he did say he thought they were horned.’

‘I don’t understand it,’ said Sunita. ‘Why pretend to bury the cattle and then take them somewhere else?’

No one could understand it.

‘It doesn’t matter whether we understand it or not,’ said Rollo. ‘We shall find out when we get there.’

‘Get where?’ said Madlyn – though she knew, of course.

‘To this island place. To Blackscar.’

CHAPTER NINETEEN

It would have been all right, thought Madlyn; she would have been able to hold Rollo back, but everything was against her. First of all Sir George came down to breakfast in his suit, which was only twenty years old, instead of in his thirty-year-old ginger tweeds, and said he was going to London.

He didn’t tell the children why he was going but he looked worried and preoccupied. The truth was that he had decided to go to the Ministry of Animal Health and find out more about the disease which had felled his cattle.

Then Aunt Emily, after staggering about bravely with her eyes half closed against the light, went to bed with one of her sick headaches.

‘You will be all right, won’t you?’ she said anxiously to Madlyn. ‘Mrs Grove will come up if you want her to.’

‘We’ll be perfectly all right,’ said Madlyn firmly.

The last bit of bad luck for Madlyn was that Mrs Grove, not knowing that Emily was laid up, took a local train to Berwick to visit her brother, who had left hospital and was staying with a friend.

Nothing could stop Rollo now.