“Yes, there are, there are!” shouted Mr. Prink. “Look!”
And he took out a bundle of newspapers and threw them down on the table.
They were the papers that had been printed after Lucy’s footsteps had been found on Nanvi Dar, and the headlines said things like: ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN STALKS AGAIN or MYSTERIOUS DENIZENS OF THE MOUNTAIN HEIGHTS or IT’S YES TO THE YETIS.
“Pull yourself together, Prink,” snarled Bagwackerly. “A pack of newspaper lies.”
“It isn’t; I’m sure it isn’t,” squealed Mr. Prink. “We could stalk them in the snow and flush them from their lairs and shoot them with exploding bullets. We could have a yeti skin for the billiard room and yeti tusks in the armory and—”
“Ein yeti schkalp für die library!” shouted Herr Blutenstein from Hamburg.
“That’s enough!” thundered Colonel Bagwackerly. “If I hear another word about yetis, Prink, I’ll have you thrown out of the club.” He broke off. “Drat it, that’s the doorbell, and I had to send the servants away. Can’t have them prying into our affairs. Go and see who it is, Prink. You might as well do something useful for once.”
So Mr. Prink got up and went out of the room. When he came back, he couldn’t speak. His mouth opened, his mouth shut, but that was all.
“Well, what is it?” said Bagwackerly impatiently. “Who was there?”
“It’s … it’s … what you said I mustn’t say another word about,” stammered Mr. Prink. “With … bedsocks.”
Furiously, Bagwackerly pushed him aside and strode out into the hall. When he came back, his bloated face looked as though it had been dipped in flour. “My God,” he said, groping to loosen his tie, “my God …”
And then, with a great effort, he pulled himself together. “Shut the door, quickly, quickly,” he said. “We’ve only got a couple of minutes. We must make a plan.”
The yetis were sitting in the Blue Salon having afternoon tea. They were sitting very close together though the room was vast — so close that Ambrose and Lucy could curl their eighth toes together like they used to do when they were small.
Polite afternoon tea is not an easy meal for yetis. When they balanced the fragile teacups on their knees, the cups sank right into their fur and couldn’t easily be found again, and the biscuits were so thin that they had to say “Sorry, biscuit” about ten times before they got a mouthful.
But that wasn’t why they were sitting so close together. They were sitting like that because of the things on the walls. Lady Agatha had not told them about the things that would be on the walls of the Blue Salon and the Gold Drawing Room and all the other rooms that the yetis had seen. Right above Ambrose, so that his trunk almost dipped into Ambrose’s teacup, was the head of a poor dead elephant. Grandma was sitting next to a large stuffed marabou and Uncle Otto’s bald patch had two nasty scratches where a pair of moose antlers had caught him as he bent forward to pass the jam.
And though Lady Agatha’s relations had been very nice to them, somehow they had not been quite like the yetis expected. The one with the red face and the gingery mustache who said he was Uncle George had such strange pop eyes, and when he spoke, it made the yetis feel that they were soldiers on parade rather than members of the family. Uncle Mac, who came from Scotland, had sworn quite dreadfully when he had spilled some hot water on his bare and tufty knees, and though the yetis were used to Bad Language from when Perry changed a wheel, somehow this was different. As for Uncle Leslie, he was such a twitchy, squeaky little man that he made the yetis very nervous. There didn’t seem to be any women in the family either, which was a pity. A woman’s touch would perhaps have made them feel more welcome.
“’Ump,” said Clarence sadly. He meant the lump of sugar, which, for the third time, had dropped from the sugar tongs onto the carpet.
“I wish Con and Ellen would come,” whispered Ambrose — and it was rather an uncertain whisper. “They promised to say good-bye to us.”
“Another cup of tea?” asked Uncle George.
But the yetis said thank you, they had had enough.
“Come, come, just one more cup, I insist. Prink — er, Uncle Leslie, another cup for our visitors. For our relations, I should say.”
So Uncle Leslie poured out another five cups of tea, keeping his back to the yetis, and then Uncle George leaned over and dropped a small white pill into each of them.
“Let us drink to your happy stay with us,” he said.
The yetis were far too polite to refuse a toast. They hadn’t wanted any more tea but now, one by one, they tilted their cups into their mouths and drank.
“That … poor elephant’s … all … swelled up,” said Ambrose groggily.
“I feel funny,” whispered Lucy. “Not nice funny: nasty funny.”
For a moment longer, the poor drugged yetis struggled against unconsciousness. Then there was a crash as Uncle Otto fell forward across the tea things. Grandma slid off the sofa and came to rest in a gray and crumpled heap on the Persian carpet. Poor bewildered Clarence keeled over sideways, taking a case of stuffed pike with him as he fell. Then Lucy and Ambrose collapsed into each other’s arms — and it was over.
It is easy to trick innocent creatures who trust you. The yetis would not wake for a long time now. And when they did, the fate in store for them was too dreadful for anyone to imagine.
An hour later, Con and Ellen walked up the long avenue of linden trees toward the iron-studded door of Farley Towers.
The grounds were surprisingly deserted. No gardeners bent over the flowerbeds, no one strolled in the golden afternoon light.
“Look, an airplane! A big one!” exclaimed Con.
Con tilted his head back to watch the plane, which had appeared suddenly, rising steeply from the fields behind the house. The Farlinghams must have their own airstrip! The thought that they were going to visit people rich and grand enough to run their own airplanes made the children rather nervous. They had done their best, pulling the last of their clean clothes out of the battered suitcase, but they still weren’t exactly smart.
“I’m glad we didn’t bring Hubert,” said Ellen.
Perry, who wanted to get to the pub for opening time, had lifted Hubert over a low fence into a field of cows. They were the very best cows, pedigree Jerseys with soft doe eyes, but Hubert had just turned his back on them and started grazing. After finding a famous father like El Magnifico, he didn’t seem to be interested in mothers anymore.
The children had reached the graveled space in front of the house. For a moment they hesitated. The Farlinghams would probably ask them to stay the night, but after that, it was good-bye to the yetis, and both the children had lumps in their throats at the thought of it.
“Come on,” said Con, “let’s get it over with,” and he ran up the wide flight of steps and rang the bell.
For a long time nobody came. Then there were footsteps: slow, heavy ones, and the door was creakingly pulled back.
The first thing the children saw, almost at eye level, was a pair of bony knees with black tufts of hair on them. Then, traveling upward, they came to a bloodred kilt, a sporran with dangling badgers’ claws, and — much, much higher — a black beard and glittering black eyes …
“Yes?” snapped the bearded Scotsman.
“I’m Con Bellamy. This is my sister, Ellen. We’ve come to see that the yetis are all right and to say good-bye to them. Lady Agatha asked us to—”
“Yetis,” snarled the man. “What are you talking about?”