“Are you joking, mister?” asked Ethelred incredulously. “Nothing frightens that lot; they don’t ’ave to be frightened if they can spit out flames eight feet long.”
“He’s quite right,” said Parrot. “Cockatrices have always been arrogant and ambitious animals.”
There was a long silence, broken only by Dulcibelle humming to herself as she remade Parrot’s bed.
“Well,” said Penelope at last. “If we can’t frighten them, what about luring them away somehow ?”
“Not the Cockatrices,” said H.H. “They’ve a really military discipline, you know, which means that none of the sentries thinks for himself, he merely obeys orders. And once they’re told to guard a place, they guard it no matter what.”
There was another silence.
“Tell you wot,” said Ethelred suddenly. “There’s one thing wot might make ’em shift.”
“What?” said everyone eagerly.
“Well,” said Ethelred. “The ’ead Cockatrice, ’e said to everyone that it was their duty, like, to catch H.H., and ’e said that the one wot ’elped to capture H.H. would get promotion. If they saw H.H. and thought they could catch ’im, that might shift ’em.”
“An excellent idea, if H.H. were two hundred years younger,” said Parrot dryly, “but at his age you can’t expect him to go crawling about in drains and running away from Cockatrices.”
“I am sorry to say so, but I must admit that Parrot is right,” said H.H. in a depressed tone of voice.
“Well, then, how about a fake H.H.?” asked Simon.
There was another silence while everybody looked at one another.
“You mean a sort of model?” asked Penelope.
“Yes,” said Simon. “You know, dressed up to look like H.H. One of us, maybe.”
“No, no,” said H.H. “I think I’ve got it. When I last had some robes made, they made a sort of dummy of me to fit the robes on.”
“A tailor’s dummy,” breathed Penelope delightedly.
“That’s it,” said H.H. excitedly. “Now we’ve got that, which is the right size and shape, and I’ve got a spare hat and robes to dress it in.”
“Make a face out of Mooncalf jelly,” cried Simon.
“Paint it to look like H.H.,” shouted Peter.
“And if that doesn’t fetch them guards running, nuffink will,” yelled Ethelred, his hat falling off as he did a wild hopping dance round the table.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” said Parrot. “That’s all very well, but how do we do it?”
“ ’Ere’s ’ow,” said Ethelred, so bursting with excitement that his cutaway coat was straining at the seams. “Wheels, that’s wot.”
“Wheels?” said everybody, looking mystified.
“Yes,” said Ethelred. “Where’s that plan?”
He pored over the plan for a moment and then sat back with a satisfied smile on his face. “Yes, that’s it,” he said.
“What?” asked everybody.
“Well,” said Ethelred, leaning over the plan and showing them with his thumb, “ ’ere’s the two dungeons wot’re used as storerooms, see, and that’s the one we come out into.”
“Yes,” said Parrot. “Go on.”
“Well, ’ere we ’ave the dungeon wot ’as got the Books in,” said Ethelred, “and right opposite it is a long corridor wot slopes down to the moat.”
“Of course,” said H.H., slapping his forehead. “That’s where you go to check on the water level in the moat. How silly of me to forget it.”
“At the bottom of this ’ere corridor,” Ethelred went on, “there’s the moat, see.”
“I don’t understand,” said Peter.
“Well, we comes into this dungeon ’ere, see,” said Ethelred, “and then I goes out and attracts the guards’ attention, like.”
“You create a diversion,” said Parrot.
“No,” said Ethelred, “fair’s fair. I don’t want to do anything dangerous. No, I’ll simply attract their attention, and while their attention is attracted you can go and put the model of H.H. ’ere at the top of the corridor and give it a shove. Then when it goes running off down on its wheels, I shall say, ‘Coo, look, lummy,’ I shall say, ‘isn’t that H.H.,’ and then they’ll all go chasing after ’im, see.”
“What a splendid idea,” said Simon enthusiastically.
“Yes,” said Peter, looking at Ethelred with respect. “He really is turning out to be a master counterspy.”
“Still, we’ve got a long way to go before we’re successful,” said Parrot worriedly.
“Look, let’s divide up the work,” said Simon. “Ethelred, H.H., and I will look at this plan and work out the measurements and things, so that we get it just right. You, Parrot and Peter and Penelope, do the model with the help of Tabitha and Dulcibelle. What’s the best time for our attack, do you think?”
“The middle of the night,” said H.H. He pulled out a large watch from under his robes. “That gives us six hours. To make sure it’s dark, I’ll sw itch off the moon.”
“Can you?” asked Penelope in astonishment.
“Oh yes,” said H.H. proudly. “Easily. I can switch off the sun, too, in an emergency.”
“Right, then we’d better get started,” said Peter. “Come on, Parrot, show me where the Mooncalf jelly is kept.”
The next three hours were full of activity. Ethelred, H.H., and Simon drew the dungeon entrance and the sloping corridor in chalk on the floor and they worked out how best to maneuver the model into place. Tabitha and Dulcibelle, not without a certain amount of argument and rivalry, arranged the robes on the dummy, which was already attached to wheels made out of Mooncalf jelly. But it was the model of H.H.’s head that took the time. Six were made and rejected before they got one that they considered perfect. Then, with great care, Penelope painted it with oil paint. They stuck a false beard and hair on it, attached it to the dummy, put a pointed hat on it, and stood back. There was a long silence, broken at last by Ethelred.
“Coo, lummy,” he said in a hushed whisper. “If that ain’t H.H. to the life. It’s just like his blinking twin brother. If that don’t fool ’em, nuffink will.”
“I must say,” said Parrot judiciously, “I think he’s right. Even I might mistake it for H.H. It’s a deliciously deceiving duplicate.”
“Coo, you don’t ’alf go on when you start,” said Ethelred admiringly. “I don’t know ’ow you remember all them words.”
“You had your chance to have a command over the language,” said Parrot austerely, “when H.H. started his Free School for Toads. But would any of you attend? No! You preferred sitting about in swamps, singing and doing part-time egg hatching for the Cockatrices, and doing both things badly.”
“It wasn’t my fault, ’onest,” pleaded Ethelred. “I wanted to come to school, but my mum said there was no sense in all that learning rubbish. She said I ought to take up a trade, like.”
“So what did you do?” asked Penelope, feeling sorry for him. “Well, I took up spying, didn’t I? Me mum said, ‘There’s always room for a good spy,’ ” said Ethelred.
Parrot gave a heartfelt sigh. “They’re all the same, these Toads,” he muttered. “No logic.”
“Now,” said Simon, “let’s go over the plan of campaign. The ones to go on this expedition are Peter, myself, Parrot, and, of course, Ethelred to act as guide and master counterspy.”
“Here,” said Penelope, “what about me?”
“You’d far better stay here with me, my dear,” said H.H. “After all, it’s a dangerous mission.”
“I don’t care,” said Penelope stubbornly. “I’m going with them. After all, I tricked Ethelred into telling you about the drain, otherwise you wouldn’t be going at all.”
“That’s perfectly true,” said Peter uneasily.
“Well, all right, you can come,” said Simon, “but only if you promise to run like a rabbit at the first sign of danger.”