Arabel's Raven Page 3

  "Birds and squirrels!" he muttered when they had gone. "Is it likely you'd be a-seeing birds and squirrels with di'mond brooches in a tube station?"

  The phone rang. There was only one telephone in the station, a public phone booth with the door missing, so if people wanted to call Mr. Gumbrell—which did not often happen—they rang on that line.

  This time it was Mr. Jones.

  "Is that you, Uncle Arthur?"

  "O' course it's me. Who else would it be?"

  "We just wondered if you'd seen Arabel's raven. The trail of cheese crumbs led up your way, the police said."

  "No, I have not seen a raven," snapped Mr. Gumbrell. "Coppers a-bothering here all afternoon, but still I haven't! Nor I haven't seen a Socrates bird nor a cassodactyl nor a pterowary. This is a tube station, not a zoological garden."

  "Will you keep a lookout, just the same?" said Mr. Jones.

  Mr. Gumbrell thumped back the receiver. He was fed up with all the bother.

  "Do I wait here any longer," he said to himself, "likely the militia and the beef-guards and the horseeaters and the traffic wardens'll be along, too. I'm closing up."

  Rumbury Tube Station was not supposed to be closed except between 1 A.M. and 5 A.M., but in fact old Mr. Gumbrell often did close it earlier if his bad toe was bothering him. No one had complained yet.

  "Even if me toe ain't aching now, likely it'll start any minute, with all this willocking about," Mr. Gumbrell argued to himself, and so he switched off the escalators, locked the lift gates and ticket office, turned off the lights, called up Nutmeg Hill and Canon's Green to tell them not to let any trains stop, padlocked the big main mesh gates, and stomped off home to supper.

  Next morning there were several people waiting to catch the first train to work when Mr. Gumbrell arrived to open up. They bustled in as soon as he slid the gates back and didn't stop at the ticket office for they all had season tickets. But when they reached the top of the escalator they did stop, in dismay and astonishment.

  For the escalators were not there: nothing but a big gaping black hole.

  "Someone's pinched the stairs," said a Covent Garden porter.

  "Don't be so soft. How could you pinch an escalator?" said a milkman.

  "Well, they're gone, aren't they?" said a bus driver. "What's your theory? Earthquake? Sunk into the ground?"

  "Squatters," said a train driver. "Mark my words, squatters have taken 'em."

  "How'd they get through the locked gates? Anyway, what'd they take them for?"

  "To squat on, of course."

  Mr. Gumbrell stood scratching his head. "Took my escatailors," he said sorrowfully. "What did they want to go and do that for? If they'd 'a took the lift, now, I wouldn't 'a minded near as much. Well, all you lot'll have to go down in the lift, anyways—there ain't twelve of ye, so it's all right."

  It wasn't all right, though. When he pulled the lever that should have brought the lift to the surface, nothing happened.

  "And I'll tell you why," said the train driver, peering through the closed top gates. "Someone's chawed through the lift cable."

  "Sawed through it?"

  "No, kind of chewed or haggled through; a right messy job. Lucky the current was switched off, or whoever done it would have been frizzled like popcorn."

  "Someone's been sabotaging the station," said the bus driver. "Football fans, is my guess."

  "Hippies, more like."

  "Someone ought to tell the cops."

  "Cops!" grumbled Mr. Gumbrell. "Not likely! Had enough of them in yesterday a-scavenging about for ravens and squirrels."

  Another reason why he did not want to tell the police was because he was shy about mentioning that he had left the station unattended for so long. But the early travelers, finding they could not get a train there, walked off to the next stop down the line, Nutmeg Hill. They told their friends at work what had happened, and the story spread about. Presently a reporter from the Rumbury Borough News rang up the tube station for confirmation of the tale.

  "Is that Rumbury Tube Station? Can you tell me, please, if the trains are running normally?"

  "Nevermore!" croaked a harsh voice, and the receiver was thumped down.

  "You'd better go up there and have a look around," said the Borough News editor, when his reporter told him of this puzzling conversation.

  So the reporter—his name was Dick Otter—took a bus up to the tube station.

  It was a dark, drizzly, foggy day, and when he peered in through the station entrance he thought that it looked like a cave inside, under the round arches—the ticket machines, with their dim little lights, were like stalagmites, the white tiled floor was like a sheet of ice, the empty green candy machines were like hanks of moss dangling against the walls, and old Mr. Gumbrell, with his white whiskers, seated inside the ticket booth, was like some wizened goblin with his little piles of magic cards telling people where they could go.

  "Is the station open?" Dick asked.

  "You walked in, didn't you? But you can't go anywhere," said Mr. Gumbrell.

  Dick went over and looked at the gaping hole where the escalators used to be. Mr. Gumbrell had hung a couple of chains across, to stop people from falling down.

  Then Dick peered through the lift gates and down the shaft.

  Then he went back to Mr. Gumbrell, who was reading yesterday's football results by the light of a candle. It was very dark in the station entrance because nearly all the light switches were down below and Mr. Gumbrell could not get at them.

  "Who do you think took the escalators?" Dick asked, getting out his notebook.

  Mr. Gumbrell had been thinking about this a good deal, on and off, during the morning.

  "Spooks," he replied. "Spooks what doesn't like modern inventions. I reckon the station's haunted. As I've bin sitting here this morning, there's a ghostly voice what sometimes comes and croaks in me lughole. 'Nevermore,' it says, 'nevermore.' That's one reason why I haven't informed the cops. What could they do? What that voice means is that this station shall nevermore be used."

  "I see," said Dick thoughtfully. In his notebook he wrote "Is Tube Station Haunted or Is Ticket Clerk Round the Bend?"

  "What else makes you think it's haunted?" he asked.

  "Well," said Mr. Gumbrell, "there couldn't be anybody downstairs, could there? I locked up last night, when the nine o'clock south had gone, and I phoned 'em at Nutmeg Hill and Canon's Green not to let any trains stop here till I give 'em the word again. No one would 'a gone down this end after that, and yet sometimes I thinks as I can hear voices down the lift shaft a-calling out 'Help, help.' Which is a contradication of nature, since, like I said, no one could be down there."

  "Supposing they'd gone down last night before you locked up?"

  "Then they'd 'a caught the nine o'clock south, wouldn't they? No, 'tis ghosties down there all right."

  "Whose ghosts, do you think?"

  "' Tis the ghosties of they old tramcar drivers. Why do I think that? Well, you look at these 'ere tickets."

  Mr. Gumbrell showed a pile of green fifteen-penny tube tickets. Each had a large triangular snip taken from one side.

  "See! A ghostie did that!" he said triumphantly. "Who else could 'a got into my ticket office? The only way in was through the slot, see, where the passengers pays their fares. A yuman couldn't get through there, but a ghostie could. It was the ghostie of one of they old tramcar conductors, a-hankering to clip a ticket again like in bygone days, see? And the same ghostie pinched the ham sandwich I'd been a-saving for me breakfast and left nowt but crumbs. That's why I haven't rung Head Office, neether, 'cos what would be the use? If they did put in a pair of new escatailors and fix the lift, the new ones'd be gone again by next day. That's what the voice means when it says, 'Nevermore.'"

  "You think you can hear voices crying 'Help, help' down the lift shaft?"

  Dick went and listened but there was nothing to be heard at that moment.

  "Likely I'm the only man as can hear
'em," said Mr. Gumbrell.

  "It seems to me I can smell something though," Dick said, sniffing.

  Up from the lift shaft floated the usual smell of tube station—a queer, warm, dusty, metallic smell like powdered ginger. But as well as that there was another smell—fragrant and tantalizing.

  "Smells to me like coffee," Dick said.

  "There you are, then!" cried Mr. Gumbrell triumphantly. "They old tramcar drivers used to brew up a big pot o' coffee when they was waiting for the last tram back to Brixton of a nighttime."

  "I'd like to get some pictures of the station," said Dick, and he went over to the public phone booth and dialed his office, to get a photographer. But as he waited with tenpence in his hand, something large and black suddenly wafted past his head in the gloom, snatched the receiver from him, and whispered harshly in his ear, "Nevermore!"

  Next day the Rumbury Borough News had headlines:

  "IS OUR TUBE STATION HAUNTED? Mr. Gumbrell, ticket collector and clerk there for the last forty years, asserts that it is. 'Ghosts of old-time tramcar drivers sit downstairs,' he says, 'playing dominoes and drinking licorice water.'" (Dick Otter had phoned his story from the phone booth in the sub post office and the girl in the newsroom had misheard "drinking coffee" as "drinking toffee," which she rightly thought was nonsense, so she changed it to "drinking licorice water.")

  "Shan't be able to meet people's eyes in the street," said Mrs. Jones at breakfast. "Going balmy, your uncle Arthur is, without a doubt. Haunted police station? Take him along to see the doctor, shall I?"

  The postman rang, with a special delivery from a firm of lawyers: Messrs. Gumme, Harbottle, Inkpen, and Rule.

  "Dear Madam," it said, "acting as solicitors for Mr. Round and Mr. Toby Round, we wish to know when it will be convenient for you to pay the eight hundred and seventeen pounds, seventy-two pence' worth of damages that you owe our clients for Destruction of Premises?"

  This threw Mrs. Jones into a dreadful flutter.

  "That I should live to see the day when we are turned out of house and home on account of a bad-tempered fiend of a bird fetched in off the street by my own husband and dragged about in a red wagon by my own daughter!"

  "Well, you haven't lived to see the day yet," said Mr. Jones. "Wild creatures, ravens are counted as, in law, so we can't be held responsible for the bird's actions. I'll go around and tell them so, and you'd better do something to cheer up Arabel. I've never seen the child so thin and mopey."

  He drove his taxi up to Round & Round, the record shop, but, strangely enough, neither Mr. Round nor Mr. Toby Round was to be seen; the place was locked, silent, and dusty.

  After trying to persuade Arabel to eat her breakfast—which was no use, as Arabel wouldn't touch it—Mrs. Jones decided to call Uncle Arthur and tell him he should see a doctor for his nerves. She called up the tube station, but the telephone rang and rang and nobody answered. (In fact, the reason for this was that a great many sightseers, having read the piece in the Borough News, had come to stare at the station, and Mr. Gumbrell was having a fine time telling them all about the ways of the old tramcar drivers.) While Mrs. Jones was still holding the telephone and listening to the bell ring, another bell rang, louder: the front door bell.

  "Trouble, trouble, nothing but trouble," grumbled Mrs. Jones. "Here, Arabel, lovey, hold the phone and say, 'Hallo, Uncle Arthur, Mum wants to speak to you,' if he answers, will you, while I see who's at the front door."

  Arabel took the receiver and Mrs. Jones went to the front door where there were two policemen. She let out a screech.

  "It's no use that pair of sharks sending you to arrest me for their eight hundred and seventeen pounds—I haven't got it if you were to turn me upside down and shake me till September!"

  The police looked puzzled and one of them said, "I reckon there's some mistake. We don't want to turn you upside down—we came to ask if you recognize this?"

  He held out a small object in the palm of his hand.

  Mrs. Jones had a close look at it.

  "Why certainly I do," she said. "That's Mr. Round's tiepin—the one he had made out of one of his back teeth when it fell out as he ate a plateful of Irish stew."

  Meanwhile, Arabel was still sitting on the stairs holding the phone to her ear, when all at once she heard a hoarse whisper:

  "Nevermore!"

  Arabel was so astonished she almost dropped the telephone. She looked all around her—nobody there. Then she looked back at the phone, but it had gone silent again. After a minute a different voice barked, "Who's that?"

  "Hullo, Uncle Arthur, it's me, Arabel. Mum wants to speak to you."

  "Well, I don't want to speak to her," said Mr. Gumbrell, and he hung up.

  Arabel sat on the stairs and she said to herself, "That was Mortimer and he must be up at the tube station because that's where Uncle Arthur is."

  Arabel had often traveled by tube and knew the way to the station. She got her red wagon, and she put on her thick warm woolly coat, and she went out the back door because her mother was still talking at the front and Arabel didn't want to be stopped. She walked up the High Street, past the bank. The manager looked out and said to himself, "That child's too young to be out on her own. I'd better follow her and find who she belongs to."

  He started after her.

  Next Arabel passed the supermarket. The manager looked out and said to himself, "That's Mrs. Jones's little girl. I'll just nip after her and ask her where her mother's got to today." So he followed Arabel.

  Then she passed the Round & Round record shop, but there was nobody in it, and Mr. Jones had become tired of waiting and driven off in his taxi.

  Then she passed Peter Stone, the jeweler's. Peter Stone saw her through the window and thought, "That girl looks as if she knows where she means to go. And she was the only one who showed any sense after my burglary. Maybe it was a true story about the squirrel and the raven. Anyway, no harm following her, to see where she goes." So he locked up his shop and followed.

  Arabel passed the fire station. Usually the firemen waved to her—they had been friendly ever since they'd had to come and climb in the Joneses' bathroom window—but today they were all hastily pulling on their helmets and rushing about. And just as she had passed on, the fire engine shot out into the street going lickety-split.

  Presently Arabel came to the tube station. The first person she saw there was her great-aunt Annie Gumbrell.

  "Arabel Jones! What are you doing walking up the High Street by yourself, liable to get run over and kidnapped and murdered and abducted and worse? The idea! Where's your mother? And where are you going?"

  "I'm looking for Mortimer," said Arabel, and she kept on going. "I've stayed on the same side all the way; I didn't have to cross over," she said over her shoulder as she went into the tube station.

  Aunt Annie had come up to the station to tell Uncle Arthur that he was behaving foolishly and had better come home, but she couldn't get near him because of the crowd. In fact, Arabel was the only person who could get into the station entrance now, because she was so small—there was just room for her and then the place was completely crammed. Aunt Annie wasn't able to get in at all. When Arabel was inside somebody kindly picked her up and set her on top of the fivepenny ticket machine so that she could see.

  "What's happening?" she asked.

  "They reckon someone's stuck in the lift, down at the bottom. So they're a-going to send down a fireman, and he'll go in through the trapdoor in the roof of the lift and fetch 'em back," said her great-uncle Arthur, who happened to be standing by her. "I've told 'em and told 'em 'tis the ghosties of old tram drivers, but they don't take no notice."

  "Why don't they just have a train from Nutmeg Hill stop down below and someone from it go to see what the matter is?"

  "Train drivers' union won't let 'em stop. They say if 'tis the ghosties of old tram drivers stuck in the lift, 'tis a different union and no concern of theirn."

  Now the firemen, who had been taking
a careful look at the lift, asked everybody to please step out into the street to make room. Then they rigged up a light, because the station was so dark, and they brought in a little minihelicopter, which was mostly used for rescuing people who got stuck on church spires or the roofs of burning buildings, but they had worked out that it would be just the right size to go down the lift shaft if the pilot steered with care. So down it went, and the whole population of Rumbury Town, by now standing in the street outside, said, "Coo!" and held their breath.

  Presently a shout came from below.

  "They've found someone," said the firemen, and everybody said, "Coo!" again and held their breath some more.

  Just at this moment Arabel (still sitting on the fivepenny ticket machine for she was in no one's way there) felt a thump on her right shoulder. It was lucky that she had put on her thick warm woolly coat, for two claws took hold of her shoulder with a grip like a bulldog clip, and a loving croak in her ear said, "Nevermore!"

  "Mortimer!" cried Arabel, and she was so pleased that she might have toppled off the ticket machine if Mortimer hadn't spread out his wings like a tightrope walker's umbrella and balanced them both.

  Mortimer was just as pleased to see Arabel as she was to see him. When he had them both balanced he wrapped his left-hand wing around her and said, "Nevermore" five or six times over, in tones of great satisfaction and enthusiasm.

  "Look, Mortimer, they're bringing someone up."

  The minihelicopter had room for only one passenger at a time. Up it crept, buzzing like a mosquito, dangled by the lift shaft, and who should climb out but Mr. Toby Round, looking hungry and sorry for himself. The minute he had landed all sorts of helpful people, St. John ambulance men and stretcher bearers and clergymen and the matron of the Rumbury Hospital, all rushed at him with bandages and cups of tea and said, "Are you all right?"