They were searching the topiary, with its yew trees cut into all sorts of shapes, when they saw a second plane come up from behind the house and fly off towards the south.
“There’s something very wrong with this…” began Con. Then he broke off. “What is it, Ellen?”
His sister was standing stock still with her hands over her face. He went over to her. Lying at her feet was a cat — an ordinary, tortoiseshell cat.
It had been shot clean through the heart.
For a moment, neither of them could speak. Then: “I’m going to break in,” said Con. “I’m going to get into the house somehow. Come on, let’s try the back.”
At first it seemed to be hopeless. The hundred or so windows were tightly shut; the green-painted doors were bolted. And then Con saw one narrow window on the ground floor where the catch had not been pushed completely across the frame. Carefully, levering with his penknife, Con started to work the wood away from the sill. It came slowly, but it came. And then they had climbed through and dropped down safely inside Farley Towers.
They were in the butler’s pantry. There was silver waiting to be polished, striped aprons lying on the chair, a big sink… Silently pushing open the green baize door they crept along the stone corridor which connected the servants’ quarters with the main part of the house.
There were no footsteps to be heard, no sound of voices. Farley Towers seemed to be totally deserted.
And then, as they reached the hallway which led to the main back door, they stopped with a gasp.
Lying like a blue stain across the flagstones — was Ambrose’s bedsock.
“So the man was telling lies. The yetis have been here,” said Con.
But Ellen had noticed something else. “Look, there’s Grandma’s shawl, all crumpled up behind that chest. And Queen Victoria…”
“They’ve been stripped,” said Con, his teeth beginning to chatter. “Someone has—”
He was stopped by a cry. A weird, strangled, spluttering cry from somewhere below them. “Hublopp!” it sounded like. “Blumph. Haroo!”
“It’s coming from the cellar,” said Ellen.
They opened one door to a cupboard, another to a lumber room. Then they found it — a dusty, wooden door from which a flight of dank, stone steps led downwards. And there, between cobwebby barrels, the thing that had been making the noises writhed and wriggled.
Con wrenched the gag from its mouth. It was Mr Prink, whom the other Hunters had gagged and bound and thrown into the cellar.
“What’s happened?” said Con. “Who did this? Where are the yetis?”
Mr Prink became hysterical. “It was just because they talked that I didn’t want to join in the shoot. I’ve never shot anything that talked,” he gabbled. “If I’d been able to shoot anything that talked I’d have shot Mrs Prink. Mrs Prink is my wife and she makes me eat mashed potatoes with lumps in them—”
“Shut up about Mrs Prink. What’s happened to the yetis?”
“They’re on a plane, on the way to the ice floes. There’s going to be a great hunt down there in the Antarctic.”
Con steadied himself. It was no good giving in to panic now.
“Why there? Why ice floes?”
“So they can run better. They want some sport, you know. This is the famous Hunter’s Club. It’s no fun shooting animals that just stand still. And everyone in England’s so namby-pamby. You can’t shoot this, you can’t kill that.”
“When is this hunt going to start?”
“On Thursday. It’s for the centenary of the Hunter’s Club. They’re all going to fly out and chase them in snowmobiles. The only yetis in the world and all for the club. Yeti skins,” raved Mr Prink, “yeti antlers, yeti tusks!”
Con kicked him. “Shut up, you murdering brute. Where exactly are they being dropped?”
“I can’t tell you— Ow! Ow! You’re hurting me!”
“If you don’t tell me I won’t hurt you, I’ll kill you,” said Con, and he meant it.
“A place called Coldwater Straits, near Smithson Island. It’s really good hunting country because there’s nowhere for them to hide. And I wanted to go too. But I’ve never shot anything that talked. If I’d been able to shoot anything that talked I’d have shot my wife. Mrs Prink is not a nice woman. She makes me take castor oil even when I’m regular and—”
Con wanted to put his thumbs against Mr Prink’s jugular vein and press hard, but there was one more thing he wanted to know.
“How did they make the yetis go with them? What lies did they tell?”
Mr Prink giggled. “They didn’t. They put drugs in their tea. And I wanted to go with them, I did really, but I’ve never shot anything that talked. I’ve shot a very big rhinoceros from an armour-plated Land Rover, but it didn’t talk. If I’d been able to shoot anything that talked I’d have shot Mrs— Help! Help! Where are you going? You’ve got to untie me!”
“Not a chance,” said Con.
It was only when they got out into the fresh air that the real horror of what they’d heard hit the children and then they just clung together in shock, unable to speak.
“It’s Monday today, isn’t it?” said Con when he could manage words again.
Ellen nodded. On Thursday a plane load of crazy men would set off for Coldwater Straits to murder the yetis.
They had three days to stop them. To achieve the impossible. Just three short days.
12
Coldwater Straits
When the yetis woke they were in the bleakest, most terrible place you could imagine. All around them, stretching to the horizon, was a flat plain of snow and ice, broken only by low ridges like ragged teeth, and here and there a huge frozen block. There was no trace of colour, no blade of grass, no living thing as far as the eye could see — only the shrill screaming of the wind across the sunless waste.
“Oh, where are we? What has happened to us?” cried Ambrose, who was the first to come round after the drugs.
One by one the yetis came to, and stared with wretchedness at the place to which they had been brought.
“I can’t remember anything after we drank those cups of tea with the Farlingham uncles,” said Lucy.
“Why have they sent us here?” said Grandma. “This place isn’t fit for a worm.”
“They can’t have meant to,” said Ambrose wretchedly. “Unless we’ve been bad. Was it our table manners?”
“Pack ice,” mused Uncle Otto. “The North Pole? The South Pole? Alaska…?”
“I don’t want to be in a pole,” wailed Ambrose. “I want Con and Ellen. I want—”
But Lucy had discovered something even more serious. “There’s nothing to eat here,” she said. “Absolutely nothing.”
It was true. Nothing grew on that frozen desert — no moss, no lichen, no grass.
“Wait a minute,” said Grandma. “What are those black and white chickens over there?”
“The penguins, do you mean?” said Uncle Otto.
“We can’t eat them,” said Ambrose, shocked. “They’re our brothers.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Grandma, “Of course we can’t eat flesh. But maybe they’ve laid some eggs.”
So they made their way slowly and painfully across the ice, doubled up against the wind. It was dreadfully hard going. The surface looked smooth from a distance, but in fact it was rough, and sharp where floes had been cast on edge by the wind before freezing into the solid mass. The yetis’ poor backward-pointing feet were soon bruised and torn. And it was unbelievably cold. Yetis can stand almost any amount of cold, but this was beyond anything they had ever experienced. The wind whipped the heat out of their faces and hands, and even the almost impenetrable yeti hair was not enough to keep them warm. Soon they were freezing as they had never frozen in their mountain home.