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 seventh 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 moustache 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 spilt 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 on to the carpet.
“I wish Con and Ellen would come,” whispered Ambrose — and it was rather an uncertain whisper. “They promised to say goodbye 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 turned 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 grey 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 lime trees towards the iron-studded door of Farley Towers.
The grounds were surprisingly deserted. No gardeners bent over the flower beds, no strollers enjoying the golden afternoon.
“Look, an aeroplane! A big one!”
Con tilted his head back at 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 aeroplanes made the children rather nervous. They had done their best, pulling the last of their clean clothes out of the battered holdall, 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 having a famous father like El Magnifico he didn’t seem to be interested in mothers any more.
They had reached the gravelled 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 goodbye to the yetis, and both the children had lumps in their throats when they thought of it.
“Come on,” said Con, “let’s get it over,” 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, travelling upwards, they came to a blood-red kilt, a sporran with dangling badger’s 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 goodbye to them. Lady Agatha asked us to—”
“Yetis,” snarled the man. “What are you talking about?”
“The yetis who came just now. Ambrose and the others.”
“Look, if you’re having a joke with me you’ve chosen the wrong person,” said the man. “Yetis, my foot. Now get along both of you. This is a respectable stately home and we don’t want any guttersnipes cluttering it up.”
“But they must be here,” said Con desperately. “Perhaps—” And then he jumped back as the great oak door was slammed in his face.
Feeling suddenly sick with fear, the children turned and went slowly down the steps.
“What can have happened?” said Ellen. “Can they have got lost?”
“Hardly, down a dead straight avenue. Maybe Ambrose found a friend?”
But what sort of a friend? Not only were there no people about in the grounds, there were no animals either. No dogs sniffed the moist earth, no cats climbed the rooftops. Even the rooks in the elm trees seemed to have fled.
“Perhaps they’ve gone to explore the lake or something?”
“We’d better have a look, anyway.”
So, fighting down their panic, they searched the woods around the lake, and the Greek temple, and the kitchen gardens behind their sheltering walls. They searched the banks of the stream and the orchard and the stables but there was no sign of the yetis anywhere.