‘Go on, what else?’ he prompted, digging his son roughly in the ribs.
But Lambert had said all he could. The sight of that island in the bay that hadn’t been there at night and then really hadn’t been there in the morning had frightened him so much that he couldn’t say another word, nor about the small island that had broken off from the big one and was around somewhere.
‘Please, Daddy, take me home,’ he whined. ‘Look, there they are; they’re coming for me!’
Stanley Sprott looked up. The three dreaded women whose pictures were on the wall of every police station in London were coming towards them.
Aunt Myrtle was in the lead, which was unusual for her. She was carrying a brown paper parcel and she was very nervous — but in a way Lambert was hers, just as Fabio was Aunt Coral’s, and Minette belonged to Etta, and she felt she had to hand him back herself.
‘Good morning,’ she said, bracing herself. ‘I see you have come to fetch Lambert — he will be pleased to go home. I’m afraid he never quite fitted in.’
Mr Sprott stared at her. The cheek of the woman was unbelievable!
‘I’ve washed and ironed his underclothes and his pyjamas. I wasn’t able to take many of his clothes in the cello case but you’ll find everything is there.’
Myrtle now felt she had done all she could and stepped back, leaving her sisters to take charge, which they did by asking Mr Sprott if he would care to stay to lunch.
As she spoke, Etta was looking warily over the bay. She had told everyone to stay out of sight as soon as the dinghy had rounded the point but one could never be sure, she thought, not realizing that it was already too late.
‘No, don’t,’ begged Lambert. ‘Don’t eat anything in there — you’ll think you’ll see creepy-crawlies.’
‘Be quiet, Lambert,’ said his father — and told the aunts he would be delighted.
It was a strange lunch. The aunts had been well brought up and though they thought that Mr Sprott was just as nasty as one would expect from someone who was Lambert’s father, they were most polite, passing him the salt and pepper and filling up his plate.
‘Won’t you try a brandy snap?’ asked Aunt Coral. ‘They were freshly made this morning.’
Mr Sprott took one and decided it was time to come to the point.
‘Now, ladies,’ he said, smiling his oily smile. ‘I have a suggestion to make to you.’ He leant forward, folding his hands on the tablecloth. ‘I am getting on in years and I need somewhere to end my days — so I want you to sell me this island.’
There was a gasp from Myrtle, and Aunt Etta stared at him in amazement.
‘Sell the Island?’ said Coral.
‘Sell the Island?’ said Myrtle.
‘Sell it!’ thundered Aunt Etta.
‘I take it it belongs to you, does it not? And Captain Harper?’
The sisters looked at each other. They had never thought of owning the Island. It was just there and they looked after it. But now they remembered that their father had in fact bought it from an old couple who could no longer do the work.
‘I suppose it does,’ said Etta now. ‘But there’s absolutely no question of selling it.’
‘No question at all,’ said Coral.
‘Oh no, we couldn’t do that,’ said Myrtle bravely.
Mr Sprott leant back in his chair and smiled. They did not seem to realize that they were completely in his power.
‘I’m prepared to offer ten thousand pounds,’ he said. ‘And that’s generous for a miserable little island … I mean for a simple unspoilt island with only one house on it.’
He’d get the money back in a month, charging two hundred pounds for helicopter rides to the Island of Freaks. The pretty mermaid was worth a fortune on her own; he’d put her in an aquarium and people would have to pay extra to hear her sing and comb her hair. As for that creepy worm, he could just see the visitors clutching each other and screaming.
He’d have to keep him in a cage with electric wire. It would be a cross between a zoo, a funfair and Disneyland.
‘Very well, ladies. Twelve thousand pounds and that’s my last word absolutely!’
But Etta had had enough of this unpleasant game. ‘I’m afraid we wouldn’t sell the island for a hundred million pounds,’ she said. ‘We regard it as a Sacred Trust. Now if you would care to take Lambert back with you, I will tell Art that he can clear the table.’
‘Oh no you won’t!’
Mr Sprott’s voice had changed. He had become the dangerous bully that he was before. ‘I think you have forgotten something, dear ladies. You have kidnapped three children. Abducted them by force. My son and two others. The penalty for kidnapping is life imprisonment — and it might even be hanging. They’re thinking of bringing back the death penalty, I’ve heard. So I really think you’d better sell me the Island — or would you rather I turned you over to the police?’
There was a sudden scuffle at the door.
‘You can’t! You can’t turn them over to the police because they didn’t kidnap us.’ Minette had run all the way from the North Shore. Her hair was tousled, her clothes were in a mess but what was strange was that she wasn’t at all frightened. ‘I asked if I could come. I asked Aunt Etta if there was a third place and she brought me here.’
Fabio, who had followed her into the room, caught on at once. ‘And I wasn’t kidnapped either! Aunt Coral saved me from a vile school where they tie you to pillars and try to set fire to your clothes. If anybody says I was kidnapped, I’ll thump them!’
‘And Lambert wasn’t really kidnapped either.’ Minette, who never lied, seemed to have gone crazy. ‘He tried to steal Aunt Myrtle’s chloroform and the fumes knocked him out and Aunt Myrtle brought him along because there was no one at home to look after him.’
Both children stood and glared at him like angry tigers.
What they were saying was rubbish, Mr Sprott knew that. The police would get the truth out of them in no time — but he had changed his mind. It had seemed worth a try to do everything the easy way — buy the island and then do what he wanted with it when they’d all gone. But there were other ways of getting what he wanted.
‘Very well, it looks as though I was mistaken. Come along, Lambert, I’ll take you home.’
He took the brown paper parcel with Lambert’s pyjamas, shook hands politely, and left with his son.
Oh yes, there were other ways of getting his hands on those weird beasts, thought Stanley Sprott. Before he’d finished they would wish they had sold him the island, because what was going to happen now would not be pleasant at all!
Chapter Seventeen
Meanwhile, in London, Minette’s parents had found a better way of making money than suing the police.
Mrs Danby thought of it first and Professor Danby didn’t hear about it till he saw a newspaper which the tea lady had brought into the University Common Room.
On the front page was a picture of Minette as a baby in her mother’s arms. Heartbreak Mother Mourns Lost Daughter said the headline, and underneath the picture were some terribly sad things that Minette’s mother had said, like there was no second of the day when she did not feel the pain of being without her daughter like a wound in her side. She was a little angel Mrs Danby had told the reporter, and she went on to say that a candle burnt night and day by Minette’s bed and would go on burning till she was safely returned.